Warnings - A Ship is Seen - Battle Alignment - Battle

  Ku’mae at times took the corners around cliffs too tightly. The tide was flowing, and surges came close to throwing the boat onto a cliff face or into one of the yawning caves that teemed with bats escaping the onrush of water. They rowed through a small fleet of weathered sampans within the inner bay and in view of the village. The sampan pilots pushed the boats along with long oars. Old, toothless men, rigidly stuck to their helms like the barnacles on their hulls, removed their broad straw hats, and waved. “Fight well,” they yelled.

  A small collection of village war boats formed into an armada. More came and gathered.

  “Ta’maal will have gathered the crew by now,” Pai said.

  “Almost there,” Ku’mae said, and he centered the boat to fit into a narrow docking space ahead. “Three hard pulls now.” After the last, the boat glided forward, and as it came alongside the dock, they leaped from it, their feet catching the dock in stride. The bow bumped gently against its mooring.

  Running to their muster point, Pai recalled the first lesson he received as a child to prepare for an eventual Blood Day. All boys from the same birth cycle were brought to the main dock. Their teacher was a stern but venerable man. He paced, saying, “Understanding war is understanding life. You’ll first learn what makes a creature live.” Each morning, sacks of rice from shoreline villages were delivered and stacked onto the docks. Flocks of yellow-tufted finches flew in from the karst peaks and gathered on them. They pecked through torn seams to steal grains. “To start your first lesson,” the instructor said, “You’ll need to trap and cage a finch.”

  It was not so difficult, Pai found. He had a cage, one made of a sawed wood base and an arch of reeds held together with reed rope. He’d tricked a finch into it with dead insects, but when he witnessed the bird’s frantic attempts to escape its confinement, he wailed. He was younger then, but thinking of his tears later still brought embarrassment. What had made him settle was seeing how Ku’mae had been patient, letting his bird screech and screech until it eventually stood still.

  “Once your bird is calm, reach in and take it. Hold it gently in your hands,” the instructor said.

  Pai’s bird wiggled hard. He squeezed it so he wouldn’t have to feel it struggle.

  “Here,” the instructor said, putting his hands gently onto Pai’s wrist to ease them, “Using force is an easy temptation to stop struggling. But fight that temptation. Be gentle when a creature would do better with gentleness.” The finch, now held between Pai’s lightened hands, turned and looked at Pai. Pai saw his reflection in the beaded black eyes. “This finch is yours,” the instructor said to all the boys. “Feed it. Give it water. Ensure it survives through the week. Understand each of its needs. It is not sufficient for it to survive. It must thrive under your care.” Pai dutifully watched the bird for hours. He felt it a triumph when the bird seemed to look at him with affection and slept under his security. At the end of the week, the instructor told all the boys to release the birds. Pai nearly wept when he opened the cage. The finch retreated to the rear, as if in shock that the freedom that had been snatched from it was gifted back so swiftly. It moved its wings. With a dart, it was gone.

  “Your first lesson,” the instructor said, “Proving that you have the honor to take a life by keeping one.”

  Pai and Ku’mae saw Ta’maal and their crew. “It was their duty, and by duty they are here.” Ta’maal said and ushered Pai and Ku’mae to their ranks.

  “Are they almost here?” Pai asked Ta’maal.

  “We can just make out their horns. In less than a quarter tide I imagine we’ll hear their oars and their invitation to fight. We cannot wait longer. Painters are here, and they’ll finish with us, and then we’ll depart. We’ll be one of the last boats to assemble.”

  “Plu’kwa?” Ku’mae asked.

  Ta’maal nodded.

  A group of women and a shaman descended upon them. The women held large bowls, some filled with a sludge of black, others carmine, others a dense white paste. They dipped their hands into the paints and slathered colors onto the boys. The shaman, nose pierced with bone and with opaque eyes, spoke: “Black on your bodies to remain strangers to the gods for spilling the blood of their creations. Red to hide your blood. White for the constellation of our sacred stars. Should you die, a map to the afterlife is upon you. Gods with you.”

  “My fate is theirs,” the boys yelled.

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  Ku’mae stepped up to Pai. “Gods give strength to you brother,” Ku’mae said.

  “And to you,” Pai returned. Ku’mae showed no apprehension. Pai did, but for shame could not reveal it. Ta’maal commanded that they step into the boat. Ku’mae took his place in the center; Pai the bow.

  Ta’maal steered from a raised seat on the stern. Pai and the bow mate behind him began to row until the outrigger cleared the dock. Ta’maal gave the instruction for all to row. The eight oars dipped simultaneously, and the strength of the strokes lifted the boat. They swung out into the bay. The armada was formed. Many boats were the size and shape of their own, carved from a single hardwood tree. Six held crews of forty men. These had square hulls with tipped bows for ramming. Their outer aisles of men rowed, while nested in the galley sat archers swaddled in light leather armor.

  A hundred enemy outriggers emerged from the porous entryways of the bay ahead. They formed a loose but deep line, with most of their boats crowding behind the vanguard.

  The boats from Pai’s village took an opposite position, and with no rowing, rocked gently in place. Every now and again a coxswain would pull on their steering oar to retain the formation.

  Pai tried to make out the closest faces of the men in front. He imagined he saw his likeness in their tear drop eyes and black, threadlike hair, cut straight above their eyebrows. But he was not near enough to see what emotions they carried on those faces to compare them to his own. He’d never be nearer to his Blood Day, he realized. This day, a demarcation in his life that for others songs had been set to, their actions in it a gauge and measure of their future worth. He felt as fragile as a child. Unprepared, too weak for the moment, his flesh incomprehensibly light against the armory built to pierce it. This is where his days had led him.

  A thought came, and it flared into an ambition to leap from the boat and swim as far down as his lungs could support. The dark water of this thought enclosed around him. All senses and sounds of the world failed to fit within the narrowing aperture of Pai’s perception; his mind delineated and conspired the ways it could keep itself and its body unharmed. His upset eyes looked into the water. In its gloomy depths there were the coral shapes that his hands might hold for refuge as the fight took place above. Currents of energy passed through him again, as they had when he’d first seen the ship. They rapidly agitated his senses. The desire to abandon his duty was momentary. The episode too quick to even extract shame from it.

  An equal and opposite thought and desire came to him. He was prepared, and he’d be heroic in the moment. What made him think this was recalling the final lesson he’d undergone to prepare for a Blood Day. The instructor gathered the boys around a corral, in which a sounder of pigs ate scraps.

  “All creatures have an innate desire to live. They also possess a trait that lets them sense when death threatens. It gives them a strength you must be prepared for. Now, you must learn how that strength feels underneath you and know what it means to overcome it.”

  He instructed them in how the blade should insert into a pig’s neck and be pulled to let it die quickly. Pai watched as other boys performed. Pigs squealed. Blood moved thickly across the corral’s ground and dripped through its cracks into the bay water below. Pai wrestled a large stag and put his blade softly against the pig’s throat. When the knife touched the creature, it bucked. Hind legs snapped swiftly up; Pai was thrown forward. He screamed and lay on the ground writhing. The instructor thrusted the knife back back into Pai’s hand. “Finish. Remember, kill swiftly and with force.” Pai wrestled the pig under him. With steady breath, he cut the pig’s throat deeply. He stood panting a long time looking at what he’d done.

  A pig was different than a man, but the instructor assured them the flesh felt no different. Plus, he said, pigs squeal more than men.

  One boat from the enemy’s side pushed through the front line. Celebratory etchings of past triumphs were carved into the hull, and a rotund man stood in the bow. His face shone like it was polished underneath and extravagant headdress of bird feathers; his stomach bulged. In his hand he held a bone funnel that he brought to his lips. He sang with a stony voice, the vowel heavy words of the language making each line drift into the next.

  Karst Bay Kwa.

  By custom which we here respect,

  We’ll honor the fertile virgin sons you surrender,

  To fill our depleted ranks;

  Taken by illness, war, and storm.

  We’ll leave your remaining men,

  To replenish what you’ve lost.

  Should you raise arms against us,

  All will pay in blood,

  Virgin sons we’ll take us still,

  Their last infirm days spent on our shores,

  Their children ours in birthing.

  We speak this now, and give you your final say,

  We ask you this.

  This is the way.

  A thousand high-pitched screams, tongues clacking, followed the ending. The man halted them with a raised hand.

  Pai saw Ku’mae’s father stand from his command boat. A cosmic air magnified his presence, yet he barely stood fully. He rose long enough to respond, “We defy. This is the way.”

  Pai, and all on his side, repeated, “We defy,” while slapping the sides of their boats and contorting their faces. With continued yelling, they deconstructed their syllables until the sounds ceased to be words. They shed into something older. Some atavistic form that had been the locomotion of survival since before words and civilization. Mouths frothing, the black and white and red war paint already smeared from how they dragged and slapped their knuckles on their bodies, the warriors wanted for the command to pick up their paddles.

  “Row forward,” a distant voice yelled. Together they hurled the still water back. The forefront edge of the boats tightened. Pai’s oar interlocked with the bowman in the boat to either side. Bows surged forward, feet at a time. The Plu’kwa boats approached with equal speed. Pai saw the faces and the boats nearly upon them.