Monasco: Passage to Anathema (Part II)

Part Two

The Inception

         The desert had a fickle climate during the season of Abeya, and the night had grown colder than usual. The sandstorm persisted most of the way to Camp Vallone but was showing signs of reprieve in the final miles. Forty recruits had dwindled down to thirty-three as they trudged through the dunes in a trail of desperation, stepping over the fallen while the cadre ushered the rest along on horseback. Tai had been paired with Arehlya Seguro and a boy she knew only as “Driss” and together they’d hauled the dead man for an eternity. Cold as he was, he kept them warm. His listless remains, so much larger than they, shielded them from the wind and the stinging spray and the snap of the switch. But Driss was buckling under now. The weight of the man was like pulling an ox through a rabbit hole, and Tai could scarcely feel her own legs, couldn’t figure how they kept her up, limp as gooseberry vines. Driss took two more steps then crumbled to his knees and the dead man drove them all down with him. Seguro was tall and stocky for her age, and so she bore the weight until Tai could hook an arm around the boy and drag him to his feet again, and they pressed on.

She lifted her eyes from the path and saw faintly the smoke from a campfire at the horizon, then the tiny silhouette of civilization like a dark phantom resting in an ocean of sand. Driss spit up something black and bloody and vomited more of it down the front of his shirt.

“Just a little longer,” Tai breathed, hefting the corpse up onto her shoulders. He was beginning to rot and she choked back last night’s dinner and told Driss, “We’re almost there. Maybe a mile. Maybe two.”

“We should cut him loose,” Seguro growled. She had a hold of the dead man’s shredded pullover, had it twined around her forearms for leverage; remnants of blood from a gaping wound at his throat had coagulated into the back of her hair. “He’s not gonna make it, and we can’t afford his weight, too. Just let him drop.”

“No,” Tai insisted raspily.

Seguro heaved the body forward in an angry huff. “You’re sympathy’s gonna cost us both,” she warned. “This is a test. Don’t you see that? Weeding us out. The strong survive, not the compassionate.”

Tai dropped an arm to grab at Driss and pulled him along, and the body toppled and the three of them were driven knee-deep again, buried in the dead man’s stench.

“You see?” Seguro wheezed as she stumbled for footing. “Let him go!”

“No!” Tai crawled around and placed herself at the rear, braced each of the dead man’s stiffening legs onto her shoulders and stood upright. She reached back to Driss, took his hand and lured him in close so that he could hang onto her waistband. “There’s supposed to be a code,” she grumbled and staggered forth. “You never leave a warrior behind. It’s written in the Hall of the Gods. You’re supposed to know that.”

“Well, I’m not one of the gods, and I’m telling you—“

A war horse plodded over to where they bickered, and Tai winced up into the face of Sergeant Muralii. She was at once beautiful and frightening, and she glared down at them as if to burn a hole right where they stood that would swallow them away, dead man and all. She flicked her eyes over the situation to asses it for consequence and saw Driss sprawled in the sand back behind them. Muralii dismounted. She went over and touched fingertips to the boy’s neck. When she rose her expression darkened with finality, and Tai heaved a dispirited sigh.

“Move out,” Muralii snapped. “Go.”

“I told you,” Seguro muttered to Tai as they steadied themselves in the sand. Then Sergeant Muralii produced a leather snakewhip from her weapon belt and slashed a bleeding welt across Seguro’s face and Tai cowered, awaiting a similar blow, but nothing happened.

“I said move out,” the sergeant hissed. She glanced at Tai, and her eyes were black wells filled with a complicated muddle of venom and duty.

The cadets obeyed and secured the dead man for the last mile. Tai wondered when Driss had actually passed because she thought he’d had a hold of her for several paces. She stole a glimpse behind her for a silent goodbye, to wish him safe travels on the heels of Numaih, but when the wind desisted and her visibility cleared, Driss was gone. She thought perhaps he had faked his death and was now skulking across the desert in an attempt to defect. She scoured the landscape but found no trace of him until Sergeant Muralii trotted past with the boy’s body draped over the back of her stallion, and she continued on toward Camp Vallone. Leave no warrior behind.

When they arrived at the training grounds, Tai sank to the earth like a boulder on quicksand but it was short-lived. The recruits were summoned into formation at the barracks; it was a haggard lot, thirty-one left barely standing, and the silence among them was eerie. The murdered slaves were heaped like firewood in the center of the camp where a hole would be dug in which the bodies would later burn. She thought about Driss and whether he would join them, but as she awaited further instructions, one of the cadre pulled a transport wagon up next to the formation. It was the same wagon that had carried them, bound and kicking, from Monasco out into the middle of Sähm. Only now it carried twenty-seven dead cadets, wrapped in treated linens for the same trip back to the city where their families could claim them for burial. That had been a tradition, one that Tai thought might have been abandoned with the rest of the old protocol as she stumbled over so many lifeless friends en route to the encampment.

The cadre went over a list of names of those who had lived to secure a bunk in the barracks, and then they were dismissed, at last, for a water break. Tai spotted Seguro standing at the wagon with blood in her hair and a swollen gash on her face, gazing into the pile of Monascan children with tired troubled eyes.

Tai strode up beside her and took a long hard look at it, too. She said a silent prayer and then turned to Arehlya Seguro. “See. I told you,” she uttered, then headed for the water bags.

**************

          By the end of Abeya the cadre seemed less bent on eliminating recruits and had focused their efforts on survival training. Basic skills would be necessary to sustain themselves under Sähm’s harshest conditions, and so they learned to make fire from animal fat and a polished section of body armor. They learned how to hunt with a long bow and shot down red deer and antelope and jack rabbits. They removed the hides and dried them on spikes in the sweltering Lumina sun, extracted blood meal from the innards to fertilize small gardens where they planted leeks, radishes, and papyrus root, which they were forbidden to eat. After days of enforced fasting, limited rations of corn meal and flatbread were delivered from the city, but this was a luxury that pitted one recruit against another in sudden slapdash brawls, the spoils of which went to the cadet who was still conscious when it was finished.

Tai Ogami found herself embroiled with Seguro over a bowl of wheat gruel and throttled her with a flax rope until she turned purple and finally relented. It was calculated chaos, sanctioned by the cadre, a closely-monitored interface to establish leaders and followers. And Tai was making quick and solid headway.



On the eighty-first day of Lumina the cadets were called to formation. Two large wooden crates were placed before the group, and within them something moved and scrambled about like earthworms trapped in a mud hole. The recruits stood by with wary faces as their names were called, one by one, each summoned from the ranks into a single-file line for instructions on the next exercise in soldier readiness. Sergeants Kiraç and Siva pried open the lids with iron rods and threw them aside. Then Kiraç reached inside and produced a wriggling shepherd pup that couldn’t have been older than a season; he handed it over to Seth Broussard and ordered him back in line. And the process continued until thirty-one pups found thirty-one new masters. The cadets were delighted and bewildered. Tai’s animal was a male with a black saddle, huge brindle paws, and a wet black nose that nudged her neck and nibbled her fingertips. The recruits had consequently forgotten themselves and an eager chatter moved through the ranks, but it was abruptly squelched when Kiraç bellowed for them to be silent and brought them to attention with the pups milling about at the ends of their leads.

“These animals are not gifts,” he roared. “They are not a cuddly reward, nor a pleasant distraction from your training. On the contrary. They are a direct and critical part of your training, for you will be required to care for, groom, and condition these canines for military service, just as we are grooming you.” He strolled over to Seth, grabbed his pup by the scruff of her neck and held her up high for the others to see as he continued. “The dogs of war,” he announced. “These animals are future warriors that will serve a vital purpose in combat operations. They will learn to hunt, to detect foreign intruders a hundred yards off, and they will leap into battle without hesitation to protect those who have protected them. Sound familiar? You will learn as much from your canine as they will from you. Loyalty. Fearlessness. Perseverance.” He handed the dog back to Broussard and made a slow and deliberate circle around the formation while he spoke. “Your dogs are not your pets—they are your responsibility. Each animal will, in time, be a direct reflection of the warrior that molded him, and if he grows to be timid or unfaithful or disobedient he will be deemed unfit for warfare and will be disposed of…and so will his master. It shouldn’t take more than a few seasons to make that assessment, so I suggest you begin the bonding process now, as if your lives depended upon it.” He stopped in front of Tai and made direct eye contact for a long moment. “Because they do.” Then he lifted his eyes to the group and dismissed them to the barracks for the night.

Seth named his female Lyrah, after the goddess of good fortune, with hopes that doing so might exempt them both from certain demise. Seguro, after thinking long and hard, would call hers Nikos, after no such deity; it had been her grandfather’s name, now deceased.

“Sure that’s a good idea?” Seth mumbled as Seguro examined the dog’s teeth and paw size. “Might wanna rethink naming him after somebody who’s already dead,” he smirked.

“Why don’t you mind your own business?” she quipped. “And disrespect my grandfather like that again and I’ll cut your tongue out,” she snarled.

Seth made a preposterous sound. “Yeah, right. With what? Your wooden khanjar? They won’t let us have real blades for another four seasons, so I’d hate for you to splinter me to death,” he chuckled.

Seguro shot from her bunk with a hand around the boy’s throat, but Tai stepped between them and broke it up. “Knock it off!” she demanded. “This isn’t the time. You need to stop thinking about yourselves and figure out how to keep these dogs from running wild.” She left them be and dropped onto her bunk. “If they don’t start learning early, we’ll never gain their trust.” Her pup groped for footing to climb onto the bunk with her, and she firmly pushed him back to the floor where she felt he belonged. The straw mattress might prove too comfortable and make him lethargic and hesitant to one day leap at an intruder.

“Well, what’d you decide to name yours?” Seth asked. “You could call him Apaimah, after the god of war. Or Tahar, after your father’s horse?”

“I’m naming him Sargon,” she told him.

Seguro made a sour face and said, “Sargon? Never heard of that god. What kinda name is that?”

“If you read your Pre-World history books instead of looking for ways to bully people all the time, then maybe you’d know,” Tai mumbled.

Seguro rolled her eyes but had nothing to say, and Seth giggled. He stretched out on his bunk with Lyrah on his chest, pawing at his face and licking his chin. He smiled fondly at her and scratched her ears, muttered playful mantras under his breath. Then the barracks doors burst open and Muralii and Siva stormed inside with torches blazing and broadswords drawn. They clanged at the bedposts and made an alarming cacophony that sent Nikos and Lyrah tumbling to the floor as their masters bolted to attention. Sargon tried to shimmy under the bunk on his belly, but Tai fished him back out into the commotion and, with a firm grip on his lead, had him lay still and quiet at her feet. She found it easy to subdue him with fear but preferred if she could do so through discipline and respect. For now, however, fear would have to suffice as the training sergeants ordered the cadets out into camp for an impromptu round of evening calisthenics. They tied their animals together and did diving push-ups and ran in place, bringing the knees up to the chest until it was nearly impossible to lift their feet. They rolled in the dirt and used each other’s weight for resistance while struggling through an endless series of squats and wide-arm pull-ups. When the group was thoroughly spent, they were ordered back to formation and brought to attention, slouched and teetering, and there they remained until the cadre finally grew bored and, alas, returned them to the barracks to sleep.

This would become a daily ritual. They had lost only one more cadet to heat exhaustion, but the remainder flourished over the next two seasons, as did their animals. Sargon had grown into an eighty-pound brute and still had another season of growing left in him. Lyrah was affectionate and cunning; she loved Seth Broussard and it was evident in the way she watched his every move, waiting for command or a proud slap on the side. Nikos was protective. He didn’t need a leash and instead followed Seguro on his own, but if one stepped too close he warded them back with a show of teeth and a low rumble.

And this continued through the following season, and the season after that. Everywhere the cadets went, their canines followed. They tailed them up into the mountains where the most rigorous training exercises took place on rugged, ankle-breaking terrain. They crept alongside through mountain caves and sniffed the air for danger, investigated every crevice and crag and negotiated over three hundred foot ravines on tremulous rope bridges with no more fear than their young masters. They sat by with watchful patience while cadets crossed wooden broadswords in the cliffs, and they later ran through training exercises of their own. Each canine was fitted with an elephant hide vest and a spiked collar and deployed into mock prison camps to track their masters’ scents and neutralize ‘enemy guards’. Tai’s dog Sargon excelled at this exercise, tearing a bloody gash in a fellow cadet’s forearm who’d posed as a Calabrecian sentry and lunged at the animal with a pole ax. When the threat was defused, Tai played her part well and lay as still as death while Sargon clenched her uniform collar and dragged her thirty meters to a predetermined safe zone.

Nikos thrived on his function in hand-to-hand combat training. Sergeant Siva kept him detained and snarling, several yards off, while Seguro and Broussard grappled in the dirt. It was Seth’s job to subdue his battlemate and pin her to the ground, which he now did with ease at age fourteen, for his shoulders had broadened and his chest was filling out. When Seguro was satisfactorily restrained, Nikos was released. He sprinted for Broussard, leapt like a mountain lion, and knocked him into a tumbling heap with glistening fangs poised to take a piece of his throat. Seguro stumbled to her feet and called the dog back but not quickly enough for Seth who shook it off, then darted across the sand after her. But the two never made contact—their animals fought in their stead as Nikos charged the boy again in his master’s defense and collided with Lyrah who sprang from the rocks and took him down in a vicious tumult. The cadets called their animals off but continued their own confrontation.

“What’s your problem?” Seth demanded, stepping into Seguro’s face. “How long was it gonna take before you stopped him from ripping my head off!”

“That’s what he’s supposed to do! Where’ve you been for the last four seasons? And I called him back as soon as I could after you crushed my ribs back there! Could you give me a second to get up?”

Seth winced at her. “Oh, yeah right, Seguro. You waited on purpose, and you know it. You were hoping he’d do just enough damage to take me outa training ‘cause you’re jealous that I can beat you now. Just admit it.”

“Well, if I’d known you were gonna whine like this I would’ve brought you a bottle and a blanket,” she sassed. “You knew he was gonna take you down; it’s part of the exercise. You’re supposed to brace for it, dummy, and take the hit, not cry like a baby just ‘cause he scared you.”

“You’re the only thing that scares me, with that ugly face ‘a yours, Brutilda,” he snapped, and she laughed at him.

“Ohhhh, that really hurt,” she sang. “Real clever come-back. Been thinkin all season on that one, sissy boy?”

“Enough!” Sergeant Muralii then commanded. She strode up between them and brought them both to attention. Tai Ogami pulled Sargon in close to her, kept her mouth shut, and watched from a safe distance. She hadn’t yet lost a sparring match with anyone and found such competitiveness to be petty and trifling. Apparently, Sergeant Muralii agreed. “I’ve just about had my fill of watching you two bicker like a couple of old women,” she growled. “You can despise each other all you want…on your own time. But when you’re out here, in my training circle, you’ll keep your differences to yourselves. Out here, you better figure out how to the best of friends because out there…” and she pointed out across the desert, “….all you’ll have is each other. You wanna know why the Monascan army was so successful at the Battle of Buhari? Why we leveled the Nyians in just two passings? Because they were disorganized, and their infrastructure was weakened by dissention among the ranks. Too many generals and not enough warriors. No cohesion whatsoever. Instead of aiming their hostility at the army on the other side of the battle ground, they let personal disputes become a distraction that ultimately destroyed them. And I’ll be damned to the gods if that happens here.” She shoved them both back into the training group and said, “If I hear another word or even think I see so much as a scowl from either of you, I’ll have you strung up by the wrists and whipped until the flesh falls.”

For the next several passings each recruit was required to wear a cumbersome hemp jacket, lined with thirty pounds of sand. They were forbidden to take it off, even while they slept, and the cadets’ initially understood it to be a mass punishment, shared with Broussard and Seguro for all the infractions they had accumulated to date. The combat exercises also continued, without canine intervention but under the scrutiny of General Monasco’s military advisers instead. They made frequent visits and strolled through camp in formal-dress uniforms, stood at the sides of Sergeants Kiraç and Siva, watching the goings-on with severity.

On the fifteenth passing of the sand jacket sentence the cadre went around the training circle and confiscated each cadet’s wooden sword. Then they went around again and distributed to each a thick leather breastplate, heavy rawhide greaves for the thighs, and a handheld katar knife, filed sharp as the edge of an eagle feather. Tai turned the weapon in her hands and marveled at its craftsmanship. It was a promotion of sorts, to be offered the tools of a true warrior. The katar wasn’t much more than a hunting knife but lethal nonetheless, if handled properly. She looked at Seth who offered a smirk and an eager wink. They had all been waiting for this moment since the cadre dumped them out into the middle of that sandstorm, six seasons ago.

“This is the first and only blade you will be issued until you graduate to Corporal status,” Sergeant Muralii announced. “There are a variety of others with which you will eventually become very proficient—kendo swords, batliffs, khanjars, broadswords. But those will be introduced in due time. Until then, this weapon will become your best friend. Not your canine or your beloved battlemate, but this.” And she held hers up high for them to see. “You will keep it at your side in the same sheath that once held your training weapon, and there it will remain until death do you part. You will learn to make precision strikes at close range as well as how to eliminate the enemy from as far off as twenty meters.” She flipped the blade in her hand and flung it across the encampment with all the might and swiftness of a bolt of lightning, and it speared the trunk of a baobab tree behind the barracks. She dispatched a recruit to retrieve it and continued. “Cadet Ogami.”

Tai’s stomach soared. She brought herself to attention and stepped forward, her chest pounding. Muralii rarely singled her out, and Tai spent the past four seasons punishing herself with overachievement, defeating everyone who challenged her, honing her fitness and survival abilities, excelling in her classroom studies, all with hopes that Sergeant Muralii just might take notice.

“Cadets Ogami and Seguro will be the first demonstration subjects,” Muralii said, and Seguro came forth as well. “Suit up and take your positions.”

The new uniform was bulky and felt like she’d strapped a small child to her back, which now accounted for the sand jacket assignment. The breastplate was too big, though the greaves were adjustable and snug. She stole a quick glance at Seth who was suiting up as well, and she envied his masculine frame, for his armor fit quite well and looked good on him. Seguro wasn’t fairing much better than she but they tightened the buckles as best they could and faced each other in the center of the circle. The exercise was identical to those they’d learned with cedar wood blades, and they knew the maneuvers well. Cadet Seguro harbored four seasons and twelve losing bouts worth of angst toward Tai Ogami, and it was evident in her strike, wild and careless. Tai took full advantage of this weakness and with the protection of polished elephant hide she could make it a more intimate match. She lunged at Seguro with a quick change of hand and a half turn that connected elbow to jaw and lay Seguro flat on her back; Tai grasped Seguro’s breastplate and rested her katar against her battlemate’s windpipe and the bout was over. She looked to Sergeant Muralii for approval and could have sworn she saw a smile, ever so slight. Her confidence exploded. She held out a hand to help Seguro up but she batted it away and scrambled to her own feet, seething.

Tai chuckled lightly and shook her head. “Whatever. Suit yourself. So, who’s next? Seth? Wanna see if your reverse cut has improved since the last match?” she teased, twirling the weapon through her fingers the way Muralii had done in the desert at reception. It’d taken her two years to master it with cedar wood, and now she tested the skill with the new blade.

“I’m next,” Muralii then announced and an anxious murmur traveled through the training circle. She gestured for Tai to take her position, and suddenly the cadet had boots of granite. She fumbled and dropped the katar into the sand.

“Go ahead, Ogami,” Seguro taunted, dusting herself off. “We’re all on the edge of our seats, here. Show us how skilled you really are,” she smirked.

A group of the General’s officers gathered at the circle and looked on. They folded their arms across the medals on their chests and spoke amongst themselves, taking note of the newest training techniques.

Tai swiped her weapon from the dirt, gave Seguro a scowl, and readjusted the straps of her breastplate. She stood before Sergeant Muralii and took a fighting stance. She was solid and well-defined, like a sculpture of something from another time, and her brown eyes were sharp as any predator, yet sparkled in a way that moved Cadet Ogami to daydream.

Together they side-stepped slowly, cautiously, mirroring each other’s movements in a strategic limbo, waiting for the other to flinch. It made Tai uneasy. She expected Muralii to charge her and in one broad sweep, slam her to the dust with a boot across the back of her neck and a khanjar poised to take her life, the way she herself had leveled Seguro. But instead the sergeant just circled and stared, piercing Ogami’s eyes with the coolness of a hooded cobra.

And then she struck. It was so quick and flawless that Tai wasn’t sure it even happened until she found herself stumbling into her battlemates. They roared with the thrill of conflict and shoved her back into the circle. She could have blamed her sluggishness on the armor, but even if she were covered in fine silk, Muralii’s speed was astonishing and her technique unparalleled. Tai tossed the katar to the other hand, thought about attempting the same unorthodox maneuver that confused Seguro, then reconsidered and thought it wiser to toss it back to her strong hand. She watched Muralii’s eyes, searched them for a flicker or a glint that might warn of another strike. Muralii then glanced over Tai’s shoulder, as if someone approached from behind and Tai glimpsed back to secure herself, for she didn’t put it past Seguro to sabotage the bout for spite. Before she could refocus on Muralii, she was airborne. Her face hit the sand and somewhere in the toss her katar vanished and she heard a thunderous ringing in her skull and felt the dull throb of a knee between her shoulder blades. And then the roar of the others.

“Never watch your opponent’s eyes, cadet,” Muralii hissed into her ear. “Eyes tell lies, and lies will get you killed.” She released her and dropped the katar into the dirt at her face. “You might want that back.”

Tai lay there for several moments, staring at her weapon. She did not relish the idea of facing her fellow cadets after such a punishing display, but two more recruits were suiting up and needed the space to practice. She pushed herself to her knees and sheathed her katar. Seguro came over and gave her a slap on the back and told her not to feel so bad; no one ever expects the mouse to out-wrestle the python.

“Shut up,” she muttered and staggered to her feet. Then she made a promise to herself. From this passing, she would never lose another match, and before she left for her final rite of passage she would challenge Sergeant Muralii again…and win.



When the training was finished for the day and everyone made themselves ready for bed, Seth came to Tai’s bunk and eyed her strangely.

She pulled off her boots and returned his curious stare. “What?”

“How’d you do that?” he asked and Tai winced at him, befuddled.

“Do what?” She massaged her throbbing shoulder and peered up at him with a shrug.

“She charged you, full on, weapon drawn and ready to take a piece of you, and you made her miss. How’d you do that?”

Tai issued a breath of humorless laughter and told him, “I stumbled over my own two feet, that’s what. If she missed, it was because I just happened to not be in the wrong place at the right time. I couldn’t even get out of her way fast enough to keep from getting run over. So, I dunno what you’re talking about.”

He considered that for a long moment, then shook his head. “No. Well…yeah, okay. Your form was pretty wretched, and you looked like you’d seen a monster when she came after you. But when she made contact, you blocked and spun away with exceptional poise, it was like—“

“She tossed me into four cadets, Seth,” Tai grumbled refutably. “And they threw me right back into her path.”

“Yeah, but that was only ‘cause she got an arm around you after the fact and then gave you a shove. It was all she could do. I’m telling you. You couldn’t see yourself, but from my vantage point, it was awesome. Next passing,” he said. “I’ll show you exactly what you did. I dunno if I can do it the same way, but I’ll show you what I saw.”

Tai shrugged it off and stretched out on her bunk. “If you want. But whatever it was, I’m sure it was beginner’s luck. At least against Muralii, anyway.” Then she grinned and said, “Now, if I was sparring with you, then yeah. Totally intentional.”

He smirked and shook his head. “Hey, don’t get too cocky, Ogami. You know I’m taller than you now. And I have a longer reach, so just watch yourself. There’s a glorious upset in your future that’s gonna bring that undefeated streak to an end, so I suggest you be ready.”

Tai made a terrified face, then waved him away, and they bid each other goodnight.

***********

          Over the next seasons Tai learned to feint and parry with a kendo sword. It was no accident that her abilities remained unrivaled, and regular reports of her progress were being dispatched to the general by his most trusted advisor, Lieutenant Arturus Olanga. But Tai had a secret. She had watched the schedules of the barracks guards until she had every shift memorized according who was on post and for how long. There was a brief intermission between shifts, and in those prized moments Tai crept from her bunk and out into the shadows of Camp Vallone. Each night in the officer’s pavilion Sergeant Muralii sparred with Sergeant Siva, and Tai had found a shaded corner from which to watch from the outside. She peered through the wall slats, transfixed on Muralii’s technique, and she committed to memory every rising cut, every thrust, every turn, twist, and block until her head could hold no more. Then she put it all into practice on her own time, spearing and gouging imaginary enemies by the droves until she fancied having slain the entire Calabrecian infantry.

By the age of fifteen Corporal Ogami could disengage her opponents with such alarming quickness that many of them refused to spar with her unless she was blindfolded. She took to swordsmanship like breathing and had developed a hand so steady that it advanced her toward the art of snake handling, as vipers were a common desert nuisance and showed little mercy for a noisy, trampling horde of military cadets. She learned how to creep up slowly and snare it behind the head as it struck, and in one swift twist, fracture its neck. She was bitten only once on the arm and transported to the infirmary in a heavy daze during which she caught glimpses of Sergeant Muralii from where she hung across the back of Muralii’s horse. Snatches of conversation, Muralii’s voice. Tai spent the next six passings in the throes of the most hideous visions until the wound seeped dry and finally closed. When she awoke, Muralii was standing over her bunk with a scimitar sword pointed at her chest. Tai scarcely issued a breath for fear the sergeant might slice her from sternum to midsection for some mysterious infraction. But instead she withdrew it and stood down.

“I have to leave,” she told her matter-of-factly.

Tai rubbed the grogginess from her eyes and sat up. “What do you mean, leave? I don’t understand, Sergeant.”

Muralii thought on it for several moments and said, “A classified mission. I just wanted to check in on you because we ride out at sunfall. Lieutenant Olanga will be monitoring the training with Kiraç and Siva until I return. Shouldn’t be more than a few passings.”

Tai could not put words to the weight of the situation and sat mute, blinking at Muralii with a gamut of possibilities swarming in her head. Perhaps she was a spy doing a tour in the desert to observe Calabrecian training tactics. Or maybe she had been chosen as a clandestine assassin to creep into Mirielle Delamere’s bed chamber and slit her throat while she slept. Corporal Ogami was delighted by the thought of either and further so that Sergeant Muralii would make her privy to such speculations.

Then she revealed the scimitar again. She slid it into a decorative black sheath, studded with ruby gems and silver etching, and she offered it over to Tai. “For your accomplishments,” she said. “It was given to me when I was much younger than you by Saidi-Saif, and it’s time it changed hands.”

Tai’s eyes grew wide as saucers as she ran her fingertips over the design and she said, “Master Saidi-Saif? You mean, the menguasai, Saidi-Saif, gave you a gift? I thought he was just a Monascan legend, dead and gone a hundred seasons ago, if he lived at all.”

A very faint smile flickered across Muralii’s face and she told her, “He is a legend, yes, but very much alive. He’s selective about who he instructs, sometimes no one at all for ten seasons, and then someone’s name drifts his way, and there he is.” She rose to her feet and turned for the door with a solemn goodbye. Then she stopped and said, “Oh, and just so it’s abundantly clear, do not brandish that weapon until you’re twenty-one. If you do I’ll cut your hands off.”

“Yes, Sergeant. And thank you!”

“Don’t thank me,” she said over her shoulder. “Thank the gods you’re still alive.” And she disappeared out into Camp Vallone.

***********

          A few passings came and went and Muralii had not returned. Instead Lieutenant Olanga orchestrated the training exercises in a very rigid fashion. He oversaw the kendo matches and often assigned himself as partner to the less experienced recruits. It seemed he took a Machiavellian delight in defeating them in only a few moves, and Tai found it less like training and more like an overt display of supremacy. When he advanced to the older trainees, Seth gave him significant trouble. He had borrowed several maneuvers from those Tai solicited from Muralii and put Olanga in an exhausted state after the first round. The Lieutenant caught his breath and responded with a series of combat patterns that hadn’t yet been taught, and it threw Seth into a desperate windmill of defense that ended with a broken nose and two cracked ribs. He called Seguro forth, and though her skills had improved immensely over the seasons, she was no match for Seth and in turn took a punishing kick to the midsection from the Lieutenant. He made examples of all the advanced Corporals. He used his expertise to subjugate them, one by one, round after round, until it was indisputable who the alpha was among them. Tai stood by and watched her comrades falter and stumble, cough and bleed, and she twirled the katar between her fingers and paced like a panther in a cage, waiting for her turn with venom in her veins. But it never came. Lieutenant Olanga dismissed them to their classes and took his leave, having passed her over without the slightest acknowledgment. She watched him as he disappeared through the camp, unsure as to whether he had forgotten her or if he was just saving himself for a fight much deadlier than she anticipated.

“Thus is the man whose talent brings him prominence, but whose pride makes him a coward,” she heard someone say from behind. Corporal Ogami turned to face the frailest man she had ever seen. He was no taller than she and propped himself up on a knotted Blackwood cane. He smiled through a silver braided beard as he shuffled closer. “He fears you. And by leaving you to ponder his motives, he can disguise fear with indifference and turn jealousy into power.” He smiled at her again, fondly.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not sure what you mean,” she said. Then a sudden and startling realization hit her, and she nearly backed into a thorn tree. “Wait a second. You’re him, aren’t you,” she marveled. “You’re really him. The menguasai. Sergeant Muralii said you were real, but I didn’t believe her. By the gods, you must be as old as the desert itself.”

Saidi-Saif chuckled and said, “Older. Or so it feels at times. But you—you have many seasons in front of you and few behind. Inexperience is often a better teacher than I; it provides immeasurable opportunity, which is why we must get started without delay.”

“Started?” she gaped. “You mean, you and me?”

Saidi-Saif nodded once and told her, “I had the privilege to guide the late Lieutenant Ogami when he was not much older than you. Why should I expect any less from the daughter of an icon?”

Moved by the recollection of her father, Tai thought on those words at great length, then squared her shoulders and said, “You shouldn’t. And you won’t be disappointed.”

        And so a new brand of instruction began the following sunrise. Master Saidi-Saif held great respect for the requirements of a burgeoning soldier and insisted Tai maintain her studies and that she not forego Sergeant Kiraç’s training agenda for his own. It filled each passing with a brutal inventory of philosophy and history classes, kendo katas, calisthenics, canine scenarios, and sparring bouts. When all military requisites had been satisfied, she came to Saidi-Saif each sunfall and balanced acacia leaves on her fingertips, counted water droplets in mid-air, and learned a myriad of acrobatics to surpass those in the city carnivals. The dog Sargon watched with ears pricked in bewilderment as she dug holes in the dirt with her bare hands and put the dirt back, as she carried stones from one pile, twenty meters to another pile, and back again until her palms cracked and bled. And after twenty-seven passings of this she hadn’t yet picked up a formal weapon or blade under the tutelage of Master Saidi-Saif. So, during each day of military schooling, Corporal Ogami was like a racing stallion bucking at the stall.

The other recruits were mystified by Saidi-Saif’s presence in the camp, for his prodigy as the most revered and elusive menguasai—or ‘spirit guide’—had made him a categorical myth, and so they were driven to all sorts of fantastical speculations. They deliberated over his function among the gods and wondered if his instruction was reserved for gods themselves. For every sunfall that Tai Ogami spent with him in the desert, she returned at sunrise a more dazzling combatant than when she left.

Lieutenant Olanga continued to pass her over. He paired her up for sparring with every Corporal in the training platoon, and she defeated them as if it bored her, and perhaps it did. But Olanga would not indulge her, still. It wasn’t long before the recruits became exasperated with his methods and longed for those of their true instructor, and one of them spoke up.

“When’s Sergeant Muralii coming back?” Corporal Ahmat Kabadi questioned after Seguro’s collarbone was fractured by the butt of Olanga’s broadsword. Casualties were commonplace in Camp Vallone, and fatalities were no less ordinary. But the trainees’ respect was quickly waning under the Lieutenant’s unbridled ego.

Olanga gave the young Corporal a detached gaze, sheathed his weapon, and told them all flatly, “Sergeant Muralii isn’t coming back. Sergeant Muralii is dead. So, unless you all would like to meet the same careless fate, then I suggest you stop pining for the past and learn to defend yourselves.” The group crescendoed with a flurry of talk, and he silenced them. Then he commenced the exercises again without ever returning to the subject of Sergeant Muralii again.

Tai Ogami thought she had been bludgeoned with an iron club. It felt as if something had reached inside and tore a hole in her gut and filled it with flames. And Olanga’s callous disposition only fed those flames, and so she broke rank and approached him with a defiant tongue.

“What do you mean, she’s dead?” she demanded, stepping into his space. “How do you know that? You can’t possibly know that for certain. What if she’s just…I dunno, detained? Or maybe she just needs more time to—“

Olanga’s sword whipped around from his side with a metallic swoosh and stopped Tai Ogami in her tracks. She stood at the tip of all his resentment as it pierced a tiny slit in the leather of her breastplate. She lifted a malevolent glare from the edge of his blade and met his eyes for the first time all season. The training circle fell silent.

Olanga said, “You’ll get back in line and stand down, or I will see to it that you and Sergeant Muralii have plenty of time to discuss her combat inefficiency in the afterlife…Corporal.”

The consequences for threatening an agent of the general’s court, if it were perceived as such, were expulsion from the Monascan army and life imprisonment, and he was baiting her, salivating for a reason to make that report. She wanted to slip a hand around his sword arm, snap it at the elbow, appropriate his weapon, and jam it into his throat. If for no other reason than the apathetic delivery of the news of Muralii’s death. He honored nothing and no one but himself, and in that moment of clarity, Corporal Ogami deemed him unworthy of the dust on her boots.

She uttered a begrudging, “Yes, sir.”

Tai took her place with the others as the subject was abandoned and the incident dismissed.

They practiced until they were offered a short meal break where they ate well. For having advanced to the rank of Corporal, they were permitted—and encouraged—to eat with the enlisted soldiers on the far side of the camp where cooks roasted wild boar over glowing hickory coals and shucked cacti and crushed maize for polenta cakes. They were no longer required to go hungry for the sake of endurance and elimination. It was important now that they maintain a robust physique and a vigilant mind because each season would become more combat-intensive until the final rite of passage at twenty-one.

Tai had no appetite. She took a cup of pehka juice to a remote seat outside the refectory and watched an eagle owl as it soared across the Ahagaar. Sargon lay at her feet and rested his head on her boots. A tangle of emotions twined around her heart and confused her, for she had never loved anyone before, aside from her parents. She loved Seth dearly, but that was something else. Inside she had always known that looking for affection from Sergeant Muralii was like hoping for the love of a wild tiger—capricious, unpromised, and hypothetical. It was forbidden, foremost. Military laws against fraternization would have made it a dangerous and impossible affair. And Muralii was fourteen years her senior; what would she have ever wanted with a lovesick Corporal whose life had been so systematically predesigned by her superiors. And what in all of Sähm had she done to get herself killed? Tai hadn’t considered that possibility, couldn’t envision her mentor taking a death blow. Mortality made her shudder—she despised death and all its black mystery. She knew all the promises of the Order Of Gods, studied the ancient texts and listened to the proselytizing of holy men and still could not reconcile the finite with the eternal. She wondered if Muralii’s death had been glorious enough to secure her place in Osyrion, the warrior’s paradise, or if it was all for not.

“Crazy passing, eh?” Seth approached with Lyrah and took a seat beside her. “Can’t believe that about Sergeant Muralii,” he said through a deep sigh. He peered over at her for a long quiet moment. “You gonna be okay?”

She shrugged. Tears welled in her eyes and threatened to expose her sensitivities, and Seth’s gentle understanding did little to prevent it. She swiped a stray tear from her chin and tried to steel herself. It was better to be hardened. “Well, whatever happened, it was probably her destiny, anyway, so it really doesn’t matter, does it? It’s not like we have any control over it, so why sit around obsessing?” She knew her words were weighted with cynicism and she didn’t care if it made her seem pitiless. She picked up a stone and skipped it across the sand. And then another.

Seth took it all into consideration and said, “Well, there’s nothing wrong with being upset. We’re human beings first, then soldiers, I suppose.”

“Not if we can help it.”

Seth chuckled. “Wow. Okay. Well, it’s good to see Sergeant Kiraç has rubbed off on you. He’d be very proud of such merciless devotion.” And he laughed again, hoping for a little levity, but she just shrugged it all off and flung another rock out into the desert. He tried again and said, “Hey, you better be careful or you’re gonna end up like Olanga. What a vulture he is. Mr. Brutality. It’s supposed to be sparring, not enemy combat. You know?”

“Yeah, well, he better be careful, not me,” she mumbled.

He laughed heartily and recounted that passing’s events with excited grandeur. “Oh, man! I thought I was gonna swallow my tongue when you confronted him like that! You’ve got elephant balls, Tai Ogami, that’s for sure. We all thought we’d finally see the ultimate match when he pointed that saber at you. I mean, what was that all about? He doesn’t mind cracking everyone else’s skulls, but when he had the chance to fight you, all he did was pull rank. What a blockhead. I mean, with everything you’ve been learning from Master Saidi-Saif, you had to be so ready to put him in the dirt. Seriously,” he told her, shaking his head. He stroked Lyrah’s fur and looked to Tai for response, but she said nothing. She gazed out at the Ahagaar, brooding, turning something mysterious over in her mind, and so Seth left it well enough alone. He sat with her in silence but could not bring himself to leave her side unless she demanded he go. Together they watched the sun make its approach along the horizon toward the mountains.

************

          When she returned to Master Saidi-Saif the following sunfall, he regarded her thoughtfully as she prepared for their session. Her strict silence reaffirmed what he already understood, and so he left her to it and spoke without expectation.

“Absence does not unravel matters of the heart. You can remove yourself from every circumstance, ignore your commitments, disappear altogether, if you like. But antipathy is a thing you carry like a satchel, everywhere you go, and it only fills with more suffering until you put it down and leave it.”

Tai breathed a sigh and said, “Look, I’m sorry I wasn’t here last passing, okay? I just had something I needed to do. And I’m not ‘suffering’,” she insisted, then added darkly, “I don’t do that, anymore.”

“One cannot try to eliminate the anger experience,” he said. “The more you anticipate being separate from it, the more united with it you are.” She was balanced against an acacia tree, stretching her limbs for the punishing tasks ahead, and he shuffled across the sand and put a hand on her shoulder. “Sit.”

She indulged him with an eye roll and took a seat in the dirt. She peered up into his sun-weathered complexion, dark as ground chicory, his beard like sewn cotton. He stood before her for a long moment and leaned on his walking stick. Then he said, “There are three illusions that have upheld the human condition from the onset of the first season of seasons. The first is that of separateness from the Gods. Be it one singular god, a goddess, or a pantheon, this understanding has been man’s most significant source of doubt and the endless cause of his own demise.”

Tai exhaled sharply and said, “Okay, and so what does this have to do with me? What does it have to do with Sergeant Muralii’s death or Lieutenant Olanga’s arrogance or Calabrecian supremacy or anything else that makes no sense? It’s all the will of the Gods, and we don’t have a say in any of it because we’re human. Nothing on earth is of our own design. We just wait around for things to happen to us, whether we like it or not, and that’s that. Seems pretty clear to me, so I really don’t see where the illusion comes in.”

“Precisely.”

“Okay. And?”

“You don’t see the illusion,” he said. “Which is how illusion works, or else it wouldn’t be so.”

“Okay, you lost me.”

The menguasai grinned. “Your spirit is bright and fervent, but instead of being a sponge that absorbs knowledge and experience, you are in a state of devouring, of consumption. Everything that gets in is evaluated, judged, defined, and ultimately expelled as a waste of your energy. When you learn to simply receive information as it is and accept experience for what it is, the illusions will begin to fall away and you will be left with an elevated consciousness that will liberate you from such bondage. But until then…” and he reached around to a cloth sack behind the tree and drew from it a pair of iron shackles. He tossed them to the dirt where she sat. “You’ll wear these.”

Tai shot him a preposterous glare and said, “You can’t be serious, menguasai. You want me to wear these things everywhere I go? Well, that’s just ridiculous. How am I supposed to train?”

“In the very same manner that you’ve been training,” he said. “We are simply making it a more literal experience so that you can truly comprehend the magnitude of your circumstances. And further, Corporal,” he clarified, “it is you who wants you to wear them, not I. And so you will. Until you don’t anymore.” He gestured for her to clamp them around her wrists.

Tai Ogami gaped at him. She picked the chains out of the sand and gaped at those, too. “You have got to be kidding me,” she muttered in disbelief as she turned the rusted iron in her hands. “So, I guess I’m supposed to just trust you on this, huh?”

He shook his head. “No. Trust yourself.”

And so Corporal Ogami set aside her misgivings and placed her wrists in the cuffs. They were tight and abrasive but there was enough slack in the chain to perform general functions such as strapping her boots and sharpening her katar, but all other activities would be considerably hampered. “This is never gonna work,” she mumbled.

“And so it won’t.”

“Then why am I doing it?”

“Because it is necessary in order for you to be free.”

“I’m gonna find freedom with my hands in chains.”

“That is more like it,” he said. “Whatever you profess to the skies, the Gods throw back to you as truth but only if you believe it thoroughly. You must know that you know that you know.”

“Well, it was more of a question, really. But, whatever you say,” she muttered.

He turned from her and walked away. “Come with me.”

          She and Sargon started after him, but he insisted the dog stay behind, and so she gave him the command to return to the barracks, and he obeyed and trotted off toward camp. She followed the menguasai through the desert, shackles jangling at her waist like a captive of war, and after a long trek he stopped at the Ahagaar foothills and beckoned her into a small cavern where he built a fire for light. She sat on the rocks and waited while he disappeared out into the desert again for a lengthy spell. When he returned he carried the cloth sack, and in it something twisted and stirred. He opened it quite carefully and dumped into the dirt a five-foot queen cobra. The snake spun around to him and flared her hood, and he waved the bag like a slow hypnotic pendulum while steering the snake toward Tai with the tip of his walking stick. She rose to her feet to put some distance between herself and the agitated queen, but Saidi-Saif forbid her that luxury. “Sit,” he insisted. “This is neither for sport nor a demonstration of your own ego. You’re going to learn something quite different than what you’ve been accustomed to.”

She locked her eyes on the creature’s movements and told him, “That’s all fine, but you’re going to have to take these shackles off, or else that thing’s gonna put me right back in the infirmary. And I have a feeling we’re a long way from Camp Vallone,” she said, backing out of the cobra’s reach. “So if you’ll just do me that favor, I’ll do whatever you ask.”

“The second illusion that afflicts man is that of superiority,” he replied. “You’ve no cause to fear this creature any more than it should fear you.”

“I’m not afraid of it,” she explained. “But I do know what it’s capable of, and I need two hands, two free hands, to catch it before it strikes either one of us. I know what I’m doing, menguasai. I’ve done this before. But you’ve got to take these off.”

The cobra made figure-eights in the dust as it vacillated between which threat to monitor more closely, the old man with the big black stick or the female whose intrepid scent promised it a swift and sudden death.

Saidi-Saif paid her no mind. “Sit,” he instructed again. “Only when you abandon your pride and the desire for dominance will you find your ki, the inner spirit directed outward, and for that journey to begin you must accept the reality of oneness.”

Tai lowered herself to a seat on the rocks and shook her head. She held her hands out in front of her and pulled the shackle chain taut with the notion that perhaps she could strangle the thing if it lunged at her. Then she said to Saidi-Saif, “Oneness with a queen cobra typically results with fangs embedded in your flesh, pumping poison into your veins. That’s really not how I wanna be one with the cobra.”

The snake saw her posture and stood up tall with its neck spread wide, mirroring what it interpreted as an attempt to appear large and fearsome, and she flicked her tongue with a low hiss, then delivered a quick warning strike but did not make contact. Tai flinched, unnerved by the physical impediment of the iron cuffs, but she was beginning to welcome this heretical challenge and remained in her seat while the snake danced between her and the fire.

Saidi-Saif watched from the other side and strolled the grotto as he spoke. “If separation from the Gods is not reality, then the very same logic must apply to all living things. If we are the Gods and the Gods are the givers of life and power, then all life is us and all power is preordained accordingly. The serpent is a reflection of you in the moment of now. Because she is you and you are her explains why she is so fixated on your gestures, your scent, your intentions. But what she understands that you do not is that there is only this moment. And she will exist within it and only within it because there are no expectations other than what presents itself in the now. You, on the other hand, are existing through the possibility of venom in your veins and the anticipation of not surviving a trip back to Camp Vallone, both of which are scenarios that your spirit already determined before it chose this life, in that body, which you are protecting so valiantly.”

The cobra delivered another warning strike, and Tai jumped.

“I want you to close your eyes,” the menguasai instructed.

Tai threw him a bewildered glance and frowned. “Close my eyes? Now? That’s crazy. Why in all of Sähm would you ask me to do that?”

“Crazy is a judgment borne of fear, and fear is a lie, another illusion that stems from the misconception of separation from self, separation from the Gods. Embrace these truths and you will understand that what you fear is all of your own design, and the only power it holds over you is the power you have already given it. Close your eyes.”

Corporal Ogami was at once fascinated and affronted by the notion of being at the mercy of her own fears. She thought, without having ever reconsidered, that she had left them the desert eight seasons ago, when she’d witnessed the deaths of twenty-seven friends and wallowed in the rotted remains of an enemy dreg. She had out-lived the fiercest woman in the Monascan Army and won favor from a demigod. Yet, to look death in its glassy, obsidian eye and shut her own took an extraordinary, unfamiliar valor, like stepping off the edge of a cliff toward the promise of an invisible bridge. The cobra swayed and studied her. Tai lowered her hands and let the chain fall slack in her lap.

“You have lived in this moment for an eternity and have decided upon every possible outcome and survived them all,” the menguasai said. “Even when you knew you hadn’t. It is the paradox of spiritual perpetuity, the difference between consciousness and oblivion. Trust the darkness and in it you will find your ki.”

And so she inhaled the mesquite of the wood smoke, exhaled all her consternation, and gave herself up to the Gods. The serpent faded into the quiet nothing. She could still feel it there in the space before her and wondered if it had drifted closer, encouraged by her vulnerability. And, in fact, it had; the forked tongue flitted across her cheek, and she felt the cool corrugated skin glide along the length of her calf. Her chest hammered. She wanted to open her eyes and for a moment she did, and in that moment she found the snake had retracted its hood and backed away, but it flared again at the sudden change in Tai’s cognizance, and the queen snapped at her with another warning. A cobra strike was significantly slower than that of a viper or python, and if the circumstances had allowed it, she could have destroyed the thing in an instant. But this game had a peculiar set of rules to which she was mortally bound, so she tried again to still herself and shut her eyes.

“The lack of knowledge of who we are has been an insurmountable crisis to man,” the menguasai explained. “It is the third and most significant illusion because it is the most difficult to accept. He has learned to consider the physical first, then the mental, then the spiritual, the order of which has led him toward unnecessary anguish and needless trepidation. In reality, the spirit controls the mind, which controls the body, but in reverse a human being is merely a pawn for the Gods’ delight and amusement. Helplessness is a figment of your imagination, Corporal Ogami, as is powerlessness. To be a truly effective warrior, you must understand that they are all intertwined—separateness, fear, and ignorance of self, and when you begin to look to your own spirit for guidance, your thought process will follow, and the body will obey whatever the spirit ultimately wishes. Do you wish to die tonight, beside the fire in a cavern in the middle of Sähm?”

Tai shook her head, listened to the dry subtle chafe of the serpent moving through the sand.

“The question is not whether your mind fears the destruction of the body and the mystery that awaits the spirit after,” he reiterated. “The question is whether you want to die this passing, you, the quintessence of the Gods that gives you life in this moment. You’ll have to look much deeper than the hiss of a cobra to find that answer, I’m afraid. When your fear is elevated, so is your heart rate. The body temperature rises, thus giving off the corresponding scent to a predator such as our good queen, and she, like anything that threatens your well-being, will react accordingly. Control the spirit, find serenity in the mind, and the body will follow. For the spirit already knows the manner by which it will leave the body to conclude its time as Corporal Tai Ogami. You already know whether tonight will be your last.”

These things settled in Tai’s heart like an unacceptable sickness. She struggled toward tranquility, needed to face these new ideas, but the queen cobra slid across her lap and around behind her, tasted her secret fear with another fluttering kiss, and growled with disapproval. Tai could not bring herself to a place of harmony between spirit and snake, and her eyes flashed open again to find the cobra at her nose, hood spread open for a strike that would put an end to her by sunrise. It reared back, and in a wisp of a breath and with a single sweep she leaned out of its path and snagged it by the neck as it brushed her left ear. She snapped its vertebra before it could whip around for another strike, and the creature fell limp in the dust.

“I’m sorry,” she uttered, catching her breath. “Guess I failed that test.”

Saidi-Saif smiled. “Another trick of the mind, failure. You answered the question, did you not?”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t really acting from my ki, was I? I was afraid, and so I eliminated the threat...barely. It’s all I know, I guess,” she sighed.

The menguasai chuckled at her and said, “You know more than you think. Your spirit was at work, whether you accept it or not. It is a truth that cannot be defeated because it is all there is.” He motioned for her to rise. “Come. Back to camp, so you can sleep now. Next passing we’ll try it again,” he winked.

And so she followed him back the way they had come, chains rattling in the darkness, her mind turning over the events of that evening. If she had not yet learned to conquer her fear, then she had certainly gained an unsettling respect for it. She wondered if the Gods were watching when she’d saved herself from the serpent’s strike and if they’d marked her as a coward. The notion itself frightened her further and placed her at a crossroads; from this passing forth, she would have to learn to eliminate emotion altogether if she meant to survive a lifetime as a Monascan soldier. She saw no other option for a future sewn with ambiguity and harvested by fate.

**********

          The remaining days of Abeya reinforced her notoriety, particularly among the established soldiers who marveled at her ability to maneuver a batliff blade with her wrists tethered in chains. Through her continued sessions with Saidi-Saif, she learned to slow the rhythm of her heartbeat and to internalize her emotions as if she had none. Her reputation traveled through the ranks, around the encampment, and up Lieutenant Olanga’s spine until it throttled him with envy. It would be his final season as a training officer, as his duties called him back to the city of Monasco for the inception of a classified weapons project, and he intended to leave his subordinates with an indelible contribution to their military growth. He called them out into formation and had them bring their animals.

“Take out your weapons,” he instructed, and they did. Each unsheathed his katar and waited for additional orders. Then he said to them, “As Monascans in an era so unkind as these past forty seasons, it is vital that the newest recruits understand the importance of your final training mission. You are all aware of what will be expected during that time, and if it is not carried out to the satisfaction of everyone on the Warrior Council, to the satisfaction of myself and General Monasco, your status in this army will be nullified. You will count for absolutely nothing, regardless of your time spent here, and regardless…” he announced, peering directly into the face of Corporal Ogami, “…of whatever popularity you’ve managed to garner from the troops.” He gazed out at the rest of the platoon and continued. “Failure to complete the rite of passage will not only disqualify you from military service—it will label you as combat inefficient, at which time you will no longer be of use to your city-state, and your public execution will be scheduled directly thereafter. That’s how it has been done for four hundred seasons, and it is not going to change for you. So, to be certain that you all avoid such a demoralizing fate, we’re going to have a little practice session, this passing.” His eyes swept around the group for their undivided attention, and when he was sure he’d captured it, he said, “Secure your canines.”

Tai and Seth shared a cagey glance with Seguro and the others, as it seemed they all came to a unanimous deduction, and Seguro gripped Nikos’ collar tight and stepped back. Seth frowned and backed away as well, and he said, “Wait a second. You can’t do this. These dogs are soldiers. Like us. Like any soldier in this camp. They’re not livestock, some wild things to practice on. We’ve done that,” he demanded. “What you’re suggesting now is treason, and I’m sorry but I won’t have any part of it, sir. No way.”

Olanga stood tall and composed and told him, “Treason is disobeying a lawful order, Corporal. Treason,” he clarified further, “is refusing to submit to your commanding officer. Now, secure that animal and take out your weapon, or consider this your last day as a Monascan soldier. I’m sure your father, the esteemed colonel, would be quite proud to bury his young son in a nameless grave for such reckless heroics.” He raised a cunning eyebrow and stared the boy down.

Then Tai stepped up to Broussard and met him at the eye. She stood close and spoke to him in confidence as Seguro took note. “Listen to me,” she said lowly. “Everything and everyone in this army is expendable. Including us. Especially us. They’ve got a whole new cycle of recruits in their first season, waiting to advance far enough to take any one of our places, if necessary. That’s never changed, so why should this be any different?”

“Yeah, but—“

“But nothing,” she insisted. “You wanna throw everything away over a dog, then that’s fine. But if you do that, then your fate is on his terms, not your own, no matter how much integrity you think you’ve got. You’re gonna have to just put your feelings aside and do this. It’s a game, Seth, a test. Play by your own rules if you want, but there’s a bigger picture than this, and you’re either gonna be in it with the rest of us, or you’re not.”

He smoldered, clenched his jaws at the boggling politics. “This is not part of the training,” he hissed. “Sparring fatalities are one thing, but murdering our own was never supposed to be a consideration.”

“Yeah, well, today it is.” She turned from him to take her place in formation. “Either your terms or his, Seth. Figure it out.”

He stood back from the group and deliberated over his choices. The first of thirty canines yelped from somewhere on the opposite side of the ranks. And then another. He glared out at Olanga with all the malevolence of his fifteen years compounded into one passing and stroked Lyrah’s coat. He knelt down to the animal and pulled her close, scratched her chest and spoke to her in a gallant whisper as another dog fell to its master’s blade. Olanga monitored the proceedings with a running commentary on loyalty and the desolate future of Monasco in the hands of traitors. He spoke of commitment to the Monascan ideal and promised them all a lifetime of security in exchange for ruthless detachment and tireless duty. He promised a utopia, washed in the blood of all who were opposed.

Seth weighed the consequences of rejecting Olanga’s orders against his father’s vision for Monasco, which wasn’t much different than that of the Lieutenant, except for a code of honor that Olanga seemed to have forgotten in his recent bid for succession to the General’s seat. General Monasco understood that code, as did Colonel Broussard, and then, of course, there was Tai whose ambitions toward the betterment of their people surpassed them both. And that, to him, was the biggest picture of all, the ultimate future in the making. Seth searched the ranks for her. She was on her knees in the dirt with blood on her shackled hands and Sargon limp in her arms, but he could see she was as troubled as he, despite all the noble talk.

Seth ruffled the fur under Lyrah’s collar. He smiled at her and let her lap his chin. Then he took the katar from his weapon belt and fixed his eyes on the cloudless sky. The animal struggled for only a moment, and then it was finished. He rose to his feet, disgusted and disillusioned, yet strangely empowered just the same. He walked away and left the dog for whatever disposal Olanga had arranged and did not return to the training circle again that passing.

The Lieutenant was stricken with a moment of good will at sunfall and allowed the recruits to bury their canines in the fashion of any fallen soldier. Corporal Broussard was the last to mound his animal’s grave. He packed the final shovel of loose dirt and let himself down into the sand for a rest where Tai found him much later in a sober state of reflection.

“Missed you at dinner,” she said and took a seat beside him.

“Not much of an appetite, I don’t guess,” he shrugged.

She thought for a long while on how to console him, then chose her words carefully. “If I was harsh earlier it was for your own good,” she confessed.

“I don’t doubt that,” he said. “That’s not what I’m angry about, so don’t worry about it.”

She took another moment to collect her thoughts, fidgeted with the wrist irons, which had begun to scrape away the flesh and had to be treated with vinegar and lard to prevent infection. She looked at him and said, “Those dogs were never meant to be ours, anyway, you know.”

“What makes you so sure of that?” he grumbled. “They gave us sole care, threatened our lives if we abandoned them. So, why wouldn’t they have been ours? Makes no sense.”

“Well, you gotta think about the timeline,” she explained. “We got them in our second season here, and they were all five years old last season. By the time we would be ready for service, they’d be almost eleven.”

Seth shrugged. “So?”

“Large breed dogs have shorter life spans,” she pointed out. “They’d have been too old for battle. The army’s not gonna put a canine into service that only has a few good seasons left. They’re gonna want dogs that are young and strong with lots of time ahead of them. No different than any other soldier.”

"Then why not just give them away to the veterans?" he demanded. "Why'd we have to kill them? All it did was waste time and eliminate valuable troops. What kind of insanity is that?"

"There's a canine unit already established, Seth, and they've been breeding those dogs since before you and I were born. They train more than a hundred dogs a season. Thirty canines sent to their deaths to teach some recruits a hard lesson is nothing in the whole scheme of things."

Seth was struck with the indisputable soundness of that and exhaled a foolish sigh. Then his expression darkened and he said, “So, they always knew, then. It was all just an exercise.”

Tai nodded and gave him a sympathetic smile. “From day-one. I figured that out when I saw them bring the new recruits in. That’s why I didn’t want you to get so worked up in front of Olanga and do something stupid just because you thought you were being honorable. It really was not the time to be virtuous. You’ve got a great future in this army, and I just didn’t wanna see you make a terrible mistake.”

He shook his head at all of it and scoffed, “Well, if that’s the way things are done, is there ever a time to be virtuous?”

It was a rhetorical question, but Tai indulged him, anyway. “I dunno,” she sighed. “I guess if I’m ever in a situation where I’ve got to make a choice between honor and military law, then I can only hope my head and my heart are on the same side.”

        Corporal Broussard took her words into full account as he rested his eyes on the desert horizon. She had, in fact, saved his life that passing, for if she hadn’t shaken him out of a dutiful rage, he would surely be among the walking dead, stripped of his rank and bound for the dungeons. There were many anomalies that he would have to put behind him, a surplus of indecision that would take seasons to dispose. He looked over at her as she studied the distance and found himself with only one certainty, and that was that he loved her.

        It had grown cooler and the daylight was all but extinguished as the sun leaned against the mountainside. They sat for a long while and talked a lot about nothing, and when the conversation waned they made their way back to Camp Vallone to face the seasons ahead.