The Fall of Clan Nama

By Vincent N. Terrell

           Our lives are like circles, little microcosms: first you're born,
           Then they exploit you, then you bear children, then you die,
           And then your children get to go through the same miserable path.
           Eventually someone is going to break the circle;
           Maybe they'll actually go somewhere.
           - Mazira Nama
           I. The Citadel.
          
           In the final days of the last Dark Age Nama province held the northlands of Kydra, the northernmost continent. The royalty ruled absolutely, brutally subjugating and dominating the serfs who tilled the surrounding lands. Plagues and famines often ravaged the peasants, but Nama gave them neither solace nor respite. Throughout the centuries peasants revolted, but the royal sher'amn, all-female servant-bodyguard-assassins, consistently put down the peasant insurrections with unparalleled skill. It was into this world that Mazira, a young sher'amn, prayed for a change that would bring prosperity to the people. It was also in this world that the gods decided Mazira's prayer would be answered.
           During the darkest night of the winter, in the strongest storm of the winter, a young boy was born to the royal family. The Queen of Nama bore him without warning, inciting the King's suspicions and sending the family into disarray. Her son was alien to their eyes: white-pelted instead of brown, his eyes were green while other Namans' were yellow, and he stood a full ear's-length taller than any in his family did. Errant genes, the apothecaries concluded, and no true son of Nama. Yet to kill one of noble blood was a cardinal sin, and therefore the infant was given into the hands of a single sher'amn - Mazira herself- and sent to an ancient citadel, a long-since abandoned frontier outpost at the province's edge.
           Yoichi lived there for eighteen years with his tutor Mazira. On orders she kept him confined to the citadel attic and would not leave the building herself. In an iced field below the citadel ten Hrasi serfs slaved away for eighteen years as Yoichi watched from above. They were specks far below, but they were his specks. Mazira had told him that his family had forced a small clan to live there and farm for him. Indeed they did - at the end of each day he would watch one enter the citadel and then leave, whereupon Mazira would descend the citadel's forty floors and return with the next day's meals.
           Day after day, year after year they worked. He watched them as the seasons changed: burning the fields in summer, then aerating and fertilizing them, planting them in autumn, covering them in winter, then finally reaping the crops in spring. They did other things too, his specks. The youngest - born scarcely two years after him - would in their youth play in the fields, feed the stabled animals, and lavish care on the old Mah'sur, an ancient beast mount the adults sometimes rode away on. When the children each turned six they went to the fields - Yoichi could barely hold a sword at six! Then, with the two older brothers, their four parents, and several cousins, all the able-bodied peasants worked at the fields from nearly sunrise to nearly sunset. He felt badly for them; only four elders were so old the family let them away from the fields, and they'de been crippled by the work, left to weave his clothes and cook his meals.
           Yoichi secretly watched his flock as they worked over the span of his life. The sisters, daughters of the auburn-red women and the younger blonde-pelt man, were only a few years his junior, so he watched firsthand what his blood had freed him from. They lived harder lives, facing death and misery more than he, whose worst personal trial had been a few days without food during a winter blizzard. He pretended to be of their clan as a child, and eventually halfway convinced himself, mourning when the eldest couple, pelts white as his from age, finally passed. Thus it was that young Yoichi Nama learned the tenants of wise and just rule.
           Mazira grew older, from twenty-eight seasons to forty-six. As a sher'amn she waned, losing the supple movements and swiftness of youth, but as a teacher she excelled. She taught to Yoichi nearly everything she'd ever learned, even the hidden arts of the sher'amn that only sher'amn were to divulge to other, proven sher'amn-in-training. By the eighteenth anniversary of Yoichi's birth he could wield with unerring accuracy and deft skill her lleiri, the long, thinly cut blade of the sher'amn, which by all accounts of ancient lore no male had ever had the focus or discipline to use. Mazira failed to mention this to her young disciple, who improved blissfully unaware of what he was not supposed to be capable.
           Like all sher'amn, Mazira kept through her entire life intense loyalty to her master, King Nama. When Yoichi's prowess excelled to the point where he had learned everything that Mazira had to teach him, she felt compelled to report this. The two sisters born to the serfs came to deliver food one autumn night and Mazira was waiting for them. She made them vow on each other's names to deliver a message to the royal house of Nama. Her message was relayed, so that the King knew Yoichi had become skilled and adept in the ways of ruling and war.
           Enraged at his estranged sher'amn and fearful that his even more estranged son would escape from the citadel to depose him, the King flew to action. King Nama sent five of his most skilled and beloved sher'amn, lead by the senior sher'amn Pauran, to kill the traitor Mazira, the hapless boy Yoichi, and his few subjects. Blindly loyal, the sher'amn readily went forth from the Naman castle across the province to the ancient citadel. They arrived in the dead of winter on the day when Yoichi was born, to end him on the day he began.
           Mazira and Yoichi had long since forgotten the importance of that day. Mazira sat at her place at the foot of Yoichi's bed, watching him move fluidly through arcs with her lleiri. Her acute sher'amn ears perked to the sounds of metal tearing flesh in the distance and Mazira rose to the citadel window. Below, black-clad sher'amn worked methodically through the peasants, cutting down the old man and the two foolishly brave young men who fought feebly with their rakes. She moved away then, realizing what had come to pass.
           "The farmers," She said to Yoichi, "My sisters slay them. Give me my lleiri and run south to the plains." Yoichi came to the citadel window, watched a moment in disbelief, but turned to Mazira resolutely.
           "I will not. You have trained me in the ways sher'amn, and done well, and so shall I defy them." Mazira scoffed at him.
           "Defy the sher'amn? You cannot. I am sher'amn and I could not defy my sisters. You must take your subjects and flee. I will show you the truth of this." She then wrested away her lleiri from Yoichi, turned to the window of the highest room in the forty-floor citadel, and jumped to the ground. Yoichi rushed to lean over the window rim and watch his nurse descend. Forty floors she fell, yet when landed it was on her feet and with no more force than as though she had fallen forty whisker-lengths.
           "Would she had taught me that," Yoichi breathed, aghast, "I would be a free man." He saw Mazira run to knock away a black sher'amn engaged with one of the commoner sisters. When he saw the other lying bloodied in the field nearby, the snow around her soaked crimson, his heart filled with rage. "I've no choice," Yoichi growled, "No more than Mazira had to raise me, or the farmers had to feed me, or this cursed citadel has had to house me." With such words he flung himself from the window and into the sky of his ill-lit world.
           Yoichi's bravery, strong as it was, did not conquer the forces of nature. He too fell forty floors, but he did not land on his feet, and the fall had the impact of one several thousand whisker-lengths in depth. Yoichi's ankle tore on a rock jutting upwards out of the snow and he tumbled from the citadel's wall, rolling through snow, mud, and the warm syrup of his own blood. When he rose it was between the peasants and all of the sher'amn, including Mazira.
           The sher'amn looked at him and were revolted that they were sworn to protect such a thing: tall, thin, his white coat turned brown form the dirt, matted and caked from open wounds covered with twigs, leaves and soil. The peasants shied way in fear, seeing the monster they had squandered their lives living for. Only Mazira saw him as the gods meant him to be seen: unbowed and standing after what should have killed him many times over.
           "Yoichi, you learn by example?" Mazira called, smiling even as she sealed her fate. "Then I will show you why it is futile to oppose the sher'amn. You, serfs, this is your lord. You will serve him well, for even now you should be able to see your single hope standing before you. Run now; Yoichi, stay."
           Pauran stared at Mazira.
           "You are traitor, and have forsaken your ideals and doctrine for a lost, forlorn cause." As the two moved closer Yoichi moved towards them, but both sher'amn held out outstretched arms to dissuade him. He stopped, watched them charge each other. Lleiri clashed, sounding plangent cries, and the other sher'amn did nothing to interfere. Their altercation was short; Mazira was eighteen years out of practice while Pauran was not. Pauran knew this, Mazira knew this, yet neither cared, so Yoichi cried out along with a slashing open of flesh as Mazira tumbled lifelessly to the ground, head rolling into the crook of her arm. The snow ran red, and the sentimental cloth lining the hilt of Mazira's lleiri stained with the life spilling from her neck.
           Yoichi stared. The peasants stared. Shadows lengthened as the very sun itself hid in abject shame behind dark grey clouds. Pauran turned to Yoichi, lowering her weapon and wiping a small river of blood against a nearby log on the ground. "A storm approaches, boy. You are dead to me." She pointed upwards, to the peak of the mountain where the citadel had been built eons ago. "Across this mountain range lies the Re'jha, the desert of exiles, into which all outcast go and from which none return. Do as you will, boy, but know this: the day that Naman eyes lay once again upon your wretched carcass, that day will be your last."
           "My lleiri," Yoichi spat, his heart black with fury. The sher'amn only chuffed, then picked up Mazira's sword and flung it at him. The peasants watched in amazement as Yoichi let it come, then flinched as he raised a hand and caught it squarely in the middle of the blade. Blood seeped from his grasp, running down the length of the sword's single groove, and Hrasi ears went down all around him. Silently he sheathed the blade and turned his back to the sher'amn. The last surviving peasant sister lay shaking in a ball on the ground; he picked her up, looked the other serfs, and ran into the mountain's forest. They were not long in following.
          

---v---

          Fools say the desert is empty. They see the tiny sand-lizards, the worm-like Osa, and say that desert life is meager. What they don't see is the real truth - that the desert is more alive than they are. Desert life survives. It adapts. Just like people. - Yoichi Nama
          
           II. The Desert.
          
           Yoichi walked away from Nama, and such was his charisma that the eight living serfs followed him without question into the night. Sickened, the limp girl in Yoichi's arms would not speak or protest at her manhandling. At daybreak, though the group tired. Yoichi saw the signs of fatigue in the hanging tongues, drooping ears, and sagging shoulders, so he wisely stopped them in a forest grove and bade them make fire. As the commoner complied he laid down his light-pelted cargo, who looked more like her auburn-red mother for the red and brown of dried and fresh blood leaking from the gashes through her body. She flicked an ear when he touched it, but no more.
           "I will hunt for a meal," he said softly to the eight, to the four men and women bent solemnly around a growing pile of wood, to the blind elder woman purring into the neck a young mother who in turn quieted her single child. There was a sickening sense of… singleness, of couples split and bonds broken, that made the sight in many ways more horrible than the bloodied killing fields back at the citadel. "You need not remain here until I return, but I beg it of you." So he went to hunt, and killed seven Geri. Normally the little rodents would've been caged - he used to watch the sisters catch them in autumn - and reserved for the spring new year or an expected birth, the only times he'd ever received any, but circumstances dictated a break from tradition.
           The peasants were where he'd left them when he returned, now sporting a blazing fire. They'd chosen to cluster together directly opposite the sixteen-year-old young woman he'd rescued, on the other side of the fire. She lay abandoned there, conscious and alive enough to stare at the flames. He approached the other peasants, wondering at whether they'd disowned the girl, and dropped five Geri at their feet. "They are yours to eat, because that is all I can provide you with. I shall cook for myself and the young girl."
           "You can't cook," a soft voice chuffed, obviously aching as each humorous rumble escaped a wounded chest. Yoichi looked back to see the girl staring at him with a sneer. "You're a noble. My clan wasted our entire family's lives so that you wouldn't have to learn to cook, or do anything. You're useless." Yoichi took the Geri, put stick through them, and set them up whole above the fire before he responded.
           "I had no wish to waste your lives. I am 'useless', if you mean for cooking and cleaning, but I can protect you, and I will learn your ways. What is your name?" The girl spat at him; mostly it was blood.
           "I will not let your tongue have my name - it speaks only lies! If we weren't with you we wouldn't need protection. You're why everyone is dead. Besides, you could never be one of us. You're Naman."
           "I am the son of King Nama, but no Naman," Yoichi said in measured tones, "And I know the suffering and evil I have already caused and am sorry for it. I would happily commit myself to your life of hard work and few rewards if you will but teach it to me." And at the young woman's ears lowered, then slowly rose, and she chuffed, fighting back a cough.
           "So you would have us be controlled once again with marriage and bonds, so that we forget who is peasant and who is royalty. Arrogant fool - you cannot even roast Geri. Take those hides off before their stinking carcasses light afire." That dawn Yoichi begrudging gained a friend and follower, and through her the continued leadership of her clan, and through them was able to continue.
           For two days he climbed the mountain until they reached the summit, where a pure spring gurgled sweet, clear water. Yoichi's wounds had turned black and green, as had his followers', so he laid down the girl, two years his junior, whom he had watched grow with him, and washed at the spring's bank. The commoners grew distressed as they saw him soil the spring, but Yoichi emerged whiter than the freshest snow and the filth washed from the stream in seconds.
           As his flock looked on he clawed the sickened flesh from his body, then let the wounds wash in the spring until no blood ran with the water. Only his hand did not cease to bleed. He then wrapped his wounds in common cloth, supped from the spring, and turned to them.
           "This spring's water is pure. Drink deeply, for from here we go into the deserts." They bowed to his will, doing as had done and emerging equally refreshed. The girl Yoichi had watched all his life drank from a crouch, then stiffly rose to stare at him quietly. "Your name?" he asked. The question, often repeated, had been often denied, but for some long since forgotten reason she chose that time to respond softly.
           "S'jet. You would take us into Re'jha?"
           "I would," he replied, "although you need not follow me."
           "We will," she affirmed, and so it was that Yoichi's party descended to Re'jha.
           At the base of the mountain they saw a vast expanse of sand, pure black as the basalt that made the mountains. The sun glinted from the rocks, making them glow like black fire. The grasses and trees at the mountain base were thin, scrawny, and worn. Hrasi eyes squinted at the light, but Yoichi simply moved forward into the black dunes. S'jet followed willingly, and for lack of options the others did as well.
           "We travel to the other side of the desert," Yoichi said to S'jet, who walked at his side. "We will see what is there." S'jet hissed at that.
           "We will be dead in four days," she cried, "We'll tire, struggle, lose hope, then collapse. We cannot do this!" Yoichi held up his ruined, bandaged hand.
           "I can. You need not follow." S'jet wilted, but followed. At the end of their first day Yoichi's perseverance kept his people going quickly. By the second they were tired, but Yoichi's determination kept them going. By the third they were exhausted, struggling, but Yoichi's subjects held fast. By the third even Yoichi was beginning to tire; his disciples had all but lost hope. Halfway through the fourth day Yoichi's followers collapsed and curled up to die. S'jet stumbled and Yoichi caught her.
           "You see?" she said. "We have lasted four days. Now we die, nameless." Yoichi looked up at the sun, flicked an ear, then slanted his eyes back down to S'jet.
           "Is it hot?" he walked back to the collapsed Hrasi who panted dryly on the ground. "The sun, does it burn you? The sand, does they feel like burning coal? Then drink." He unwrapped his bandaged hand and slit his newly covered flesh open, letting some blood spill onto the sand. Yoichi held his palm up to S'jet's face. "Thirsty? Drink." She turned her muzzle away. The others looked at him quietly. "No? You would not?" Yoichi asked. "Then we continue." To this there was no response: the peasants got to their feet, hung their heads, and began walking.
           On the morning of the fifth day blue haze was on the horizon. "Water," Yoichi pointed out. By the afternoon the of sixth day they crossed a dune and found a lake in the middle of the desert. Desert peoples had set up camp at the banks: there were Hrasi with wickedly curved, thick blades, wearing flowing, vibrant silks, milling about among equally colorful silk tents and tough desert-breed Mah'sur loaded down with equipment.
           Yoichi's serfs ran to the lake and began drinking and bathing joyfully. A single Hrasi from the caravan yelled in surprise and charged them with sword held high, but Yoichi jumped into his path and drew his blade. The man stopped, moved back, and held his sword at the ready. Neither moved: both stood silently as S'jet and her commoner clan drank deeply. The lake pulled at him, made him ache for water, but he waited patiently for them to finish. S'jet came to him as he stood on guard, a sentinel against the silent gypsy. Water was in her cupped hand; she put it to his mouth and stood patiently as he lapped it up. The gypsy-man smiled.
           "It's a true leader," he spoke, using the desert trader's tongue, "who watches over his people first and attends to himself last." With that the sword came down. "You do not know us - I can see it in your demeanor, in your eyes, in the set of those rags you call ears. We are the Alman'queda, the people of the desert. A more enduring group of clans you will never find." Yoichi sheathed his sword as well. "And willing to talk at that! Then join us in our midday slumber- you will find the cool of the night and the dark your truest friends here in Re'jha."
           Yoichi came to know the man as Hesmenthe, leader of the desert nomads, the Alman'queda. At their first meal together Yoichi brought all eight of his commoners, with S'jet on his right hand, and Hesmenthe saw what none of the others did. It was much to Yoichi's surprise, then, that such a noble man would keep sher'amn. Even as they began to sit at the table Yoichi saw arms on Hesmenthe's three serving-girls: knife outlines under their breeches, pins and throwing implements in their manes, and even the lleiri themselves in scabbards at the women's belts.
           "Why do you use the sher'amn?" Yoichi asked the desert warrior. Hesmenthe was a while in answering.
           "I do not use them," he finally said. "They come to me from across the desert's edges and I take them in. Simply having a sher'amn does not make you evil. Even now you have the makings of a deadly sher'amn at your side. Like a sword, Yoichi, the sher'amn are; you can use them to slaughter children just as easily as to slay monsters." Yoichi, who learned wise and just rule from watching a peasant clan slave their lives away in his fields, watched S'jet eat, carefully picking meat from bone, and understood Hesmenthe's truth.
           The Alman'queda took in Yoichi and his flock. They were a sympathetic people who were quick to shelter Yoichi. Under genuinely loving care his hand healed, as did his resolve. In a month's time the Alman'queda were the staunchest allies of Yoichi and his beleaguered people.
           For a two years afterwards Yoichi lived in peace. His people learned desert ways: hunting desert animals at night, sleeping in tents by day. Hesmenthe's sher'amn took S'jet away from Yoichi, who in turn departed from the Alman'queda and his peasants along with Hesmenthe himself. The Alman'queda leader's knowledge was unsurpassed. He taught Yoichi how to culture plague from his own blood without becoming ill, then how to tip his arrows with it so that a mere grazing of the hide could prove fatal. He showed Yoichi how to use a bow, then how to prepare one from nearly any wood and nearly any sinew or reed fiber. He showed Yoichi how to turn sand into glass, then how to start fire and wreak havoc with flame. Yoichi absorbed these finer points of war quickly, and though Hesmenthe knew perfectly well why, he said nothing of it.
           Months later, when the serfs were almost proficient archers, when Yoichi was a formidable general, and when S'jet had donned a white version of the sher'amn uniform and pledged her fealty to Yoichi, his hand still ached. Through long nights spent talking with S'jet and Hesmenthe his pain's source became clear. Though everyone knew that Yoichi was determined, they tried every argument possible to stop him.
           "Suicide," S'jet proclaimed it. "Utter, inexcusable suicide. Your own nurse and tutor gave her life to show you that."
           "Unwise," Hesmenthe said of it. "You would be murdered along with the poor young men and women you convinced to accompany you."
           "Foolish," Yoichi's people agreed when he held audience with them. "We have no wish to see you dead." Yoichi shrugged at his friends in the caravan wagons, at his subjects in the audience, at S'jet when they lay beside one another next to the nightly campfire.
           "I have decided to return to Nama," Yoichi pronounced one morning to his people and his staunchest allies, the Alman'queda. "You need not follow me." Then he turned to the mountains on the horizon.
           Every man, woman, and child fell in step behind him, and thus Yoichi Nama returned to his homeland to challenge his clan.
          

---v---

           There is a lot to be said for vicious cycles.
           You may not like what happens to you,
           And you may not be going anywhere,
           But at least you have an idea of what happens next.
           Walking the unwalked path can sometimes be worse.
           - Pauran Nama
          
           III. The Countryside.
          
           In a few days time Yoichi and his company reached the summit of the mountains only to stare down at a firestorm. The mountainside forest was aflame everywhere. The citadel, at the base of a mountain far to the west, glowed red, pouring forth thick black smoke from every window. S'jet held to Yoichi protectively, free hand on her sword.
           "What is this?" she hissed, ears flagging in dismay. Hesmenthe flicked one of his towards her.
           "Recent. Clan Nama punishes his people."
           "The cause matters little," Yoichi said. "I go to the villages." They crashed down the mountainside, running for the lives of those possibly caught in the fire. Soon a forest thick with brush overgrowth blocked their path, its canopy bursting in flames. The Hrasi mortal fear of fire - rightfully placed - kept all but Yoichi back. He charged through. At the sight of this S'jet hesitated, then followed, as did Hesmenthe. The others looked at each other, all pressured but none willing, until a single person's mad dash had them all running through the forest.
           When Yoichi emerged from the forest of embers and ash he was soot grey, but ignored his plight. Below him the mountainside sheared away, forming a cliff whose drop was almost twice as high as the citadel's had been. At the bottom a village burned steadily as its inhabitants were rounded up by a small legion of armed soldiers in black and red Naman livery. S'jet scrambled up beside him. She took one look at the drop, then turned to Yoichi and silently shook her head. He pursed his lips, ruffled her cheek fur with his bad hand, and then looked at the jump. Yoichi drew his lleiri, stared at his reflection in the blade, and then stepped off the edge with a single word of prayer.
           "Mazira."
           Young Yoichi, twenty years and a few months old, fell to what everyone except he fully expected to be his death. The fall felt to him to be a minute or more, and then the ground came to greet him. All the Hrasi, above and below, looked away from where he'd fallen. There was a loud, sickeningly wet snap. When they turned their heads back, though, all hissed or jumped away in fear. He stood, head bowed respectfully to the sun, sword in hand, an unblemished figure. Yoichi lift his head to the soldiers and stepped into an offensive posture. Inside his body the raw forces involved, even if mostly canceled out by a proper sher'amn-style fall, felt like they had shattered his ribcage. Perhaps they had, but he kept the blood in his mouth and showed no outward signs of injury.
           The captain of the soldiers was terrified, but at the same time he saw equal fear in his men and could not accept such a thing. He threw the corpse of a village man with a slit throat to the ground, pulled his sword, and threw himself at Yoichi with a scream of death. Yoichi watched dispassionately as the captain charged, then halved the man's sword with a flick of the wrist and felled him with another. Across the village soldiers dropped their weapons and ran.
           Grateful, the village people were quick to reinforce Yoichi's ranks, but at the same time asked him to be gone. The village elder, an ancient woman who'd all but outworn her pelt, bade them disappear for fear that Nama would execute them for open rebellion, and so Yoichi left with his fledgling army that same day. The firestorm was quenched with showers in the night, but the charred forests remained, an atrocity for all to see. The burnt stumps grated on the eyes, agitating Yoichi's troops.
           In the span of a few weeks Nama suffered defeat after defeat as Yoichi and his archers swept from village to village, cleansing away the Naman garrisons and adding to their numbers each time. After eight straight victories and eight liberations Yoichi crouched at the edge of a mountainside forest, watching to a trail that cut through the forest, listening as a line of wagons squealed and rumbled forward. As the convoy neared he yowled once and thrust an arm forward. Archers - half his army - appeared from the bushes everywhere and fired into the convoy.
           No arrow hit flesh. There were several sounds of arrows hitting wood, but not so much as a startled yelp emerged from the wagon. The dumb, thick-skinned Mah'sur that pulled the wagons snorted and stopped dead in their tracks. For a hundred of Yoichi's strong, quick heartbeats nobody dared move, but rearmed and stood, waiting. Nothing happened - not so much as whisper or groan came from the wagons. Archers all around the convoy dropped their bows, confused, and inadvertently caused the attack.
           Sher'anm in full black dropped in fours from beneath the wagons. Yoichi's archers swore to their personal deities and reached for their bows as though it was not too late. The sher'amn moved quickly for the trail's edges, each drawing their lleiri and leaping into the archer's ranks with deadly grace. Yoichi himself drew his blade and rushed to defend his people, but the Sher'amn he attacked stared at him with a grin and kicked him full in the face, sending him crashing to the ground with blood wetting his cheek.
           S'jet picked him up from the ground, snarling. The battle was short and vicious: in close quarters the Sher'amn massacred Yoichi's soldiers. Too late to be of help, the Alman'queda arrived from the rear. As Yoichi watched from across the battlefield Hesmenthe hissed his dismay and called his forces into retreat. Yoichi lay on the ground, stunned at the betrayal. If it had not been for S'jet he would have stayed there, but she dragged him away with her bare claws on his hide.
           "Let's go, Yoichi. You want to die?" she hissed, and Yoichi finally responded. He got to his feet and ran like a coward with S'jet not far behind. Yoichi ran until he'd lost the sounds, the smells of death. S'jet followed loyally, catching him as his legs finally gave way. "Milord," she panted. Nothing else: they both collapsed in the middle of the road and caught their breaths. S'jet recovered first. "This is not safe."
           "Go," Yoichi coughed. "Find Hesmenthe. Bring me his support or his ears." S'jet was taken aback at this.
           "Leave you? Now?" S'jet asked.
           "Now!" And so she bowed her head and went, leaving him in the road.
           Yoichi remained for a while, neither content to lie in the road nor willing to stand and face the world. In the end he had little choice in the matter: Yoichi pushed himself and walked down the mountainside, away from the death and suffering wrought upon his men. For the rest of the day he walked, until the stars and moons glittered in the heavens. Even then he trudged on, but was stopped by a rustle. "S'jet?" he asked, she being the only person left alive whose company he could possibly want. In front of him a black shadow fell from the trees. It rolled up and drew a lleiri that shone brilliantly in the light. Yoichi jumped back, drew his weapon, and came to an on-guard stance as the figure rudely attack without formal warning.
           Blades clashed, spat sparks as the Hrasi wove their lleiri in and out of each other's guard. Yoichi growled frustratedly as his attacks were successively blocked, then grunted from exertion as he tried to block his attacker's swipes. The sher'amn kicked him in the side, offering an opportunity. Yoichi took the blow and used the time she took regaining her footing to parry the woman's sword into the bushes. She bounced away, but Yoichi threw himself forward and grounded her with a kick to the gut. The sher'amn went sprawling, then growled as he stood over her.
           "Kill me, then," The sher'amn said as he held his blade to the fallen woman's neck. He blinked, pulled the blade away, and sheathed it.
           "Go," he whispered. She chuffed.
           "Fool." Slowly she stood, then stared at him. "Amazing you've lived so long, boy." She turned her back to him to walk away, then stopped and spun on her heel. "Down this road are two paths. The left leads to Sasako, where nine sher'amn guard the royal family of Nama. The right leads to Lereham. It is guarded by the remaining thirty sher'amn. If you go there you will die. Eldest sister believes that you will come regardless of this because she has your girl confined there. The one that imagines herself a sher'amn - she'll be executed by nightfall tomorrow. Still, there is nothing you can do there except die." Yoichi stared at her and saw in her expression that she spoke the truth. He pointed a finger at her.
           "Your uniform. Your clothes. Give them to me." The woman flattened her ears. "I will kill you if you do not," Yoichi said, and so she complied. He changed quickly, then handed her his battered, muddied, oft-stained clothing.
           "I know what you plan," she purred. "It will not work. They will strike you down at first sight." Yoichi ignored her.
           "Take these. Go to Sasako and give my father a message."
           "What message?"
           "Tell my father that his time has come."
          

---v---

           Fate and luck have carried us this far,
           But they, along with the gods, have left us here.
           What's left but to try and make our own 'fate'?
           If divine intervention doesn't set things straight, we will.
           - S'jet Yoichi
          
           IV. The Fortress City.
           Morning dew matted Yoichi's fur as he walked the final distance to Lereham. The Sher'amn uniform he wore chafed, pulling and tearing on bare fur where there should have been more clothing: it was simply not made for a man's frame. Still he walked, unconsciously pawing the two lleiri at his side even as he approached the gate to Lereham. A stone wall ten times his height made Lereham's perimeter, and from atop it he saw guards in black chainmail pacing nervously.
           "What business have you?" They called. Yoichi looked up and answered with his most effeminate voice.
           "My sister's and King Nama's!" The guards descended inside the wall then, and with a groan the first set of gates lifted. Yoichi walked into the space between the inner and outer gates, an antechamber of sorts. Each wall had a doorway in its side, and from the west door a single guard came to check him. The man drew up close, then shrank away.
           "You're-"
           Whatever the man had planned to say was cut off along with his vocal cords. Yoichi refreshed his disguise and walked freely into Lereham as a royal Naman guard. He saw sher'amn in the streets, sometimes even caught their eye, but none recognized him. The lleiri he hid inside the guard's longsword scabbard as he walked through the city. At length he found what he was looking for: a stone building with no windows and a chopping block outside that had long since been permanently stained dried-blood brown. He stepped inside, gazing at rows of convicts who wasted away in pairs behind cheap iron bars. Two guards sat at a table in the corner casting bone dice idly - they gurgled protest and blood when he slew them.
           In the corner cell S'jet lay facedown on the floor, broken and bloody. As Yoichi's shadow fell over her she growled.
           "Go to hell, Nama." Yoichi smiled, then cut away the iron bars that confined his sher'amn. S'jet turned at the screeching, then hissed in surprise and came to kneel at his feet. He bent to her level and proffered to her the lleiri he'd taken from his last sher'amn assailant.
           "Take this. I'm going to Sasako." His ears twitched. "You need not follow me," he added, then silently rose and padded a few steps before looking back. "…although I would appreciate it." S'jet ignored her pulled ligaments and broken arm, rising as well and following with lleiri in hand. Their journey, however, ended at the door.
           "I told you once before, boy, that you'd die the day Naman eyes laid sight on you, yet you still came back, and with a commoner girl hanging on your belt no less. Perhaps I overestimated your intelligence." Pauran Nama stood outside, sword at the ready, accompanied by thirty-nine of her sisters, the entire Naman royal family, and a hundred armed soldiers. "Your girl fought well. She might've been a sher'amn if you hadn't interfered."
           Yoichi and S'jet stood lamely on the execution grounds. Suddenly, then, a thunderclap sounded. Everyone jumped and turned to energetic whistles from behind Yoichi. Each sher'amn, confused as the rest of the people, drew instinctively nearer her respective lord and pulled her arms. The sound of swords clashing came from behind Yoichi along with a waterfall's roar. Ignoring the obvious dangers presented by turning his back to the Namans, Yoichi did just that to look past the jail and to the Lereham gates in the distance.
           The inner gate seemed to expand and contract like a dying heart or lung. It was curious, and Yoichi found himself quite bewildered until he saw the telltale embers floating from the gate's edges. In a burst the gates exploded pyrotechnic pressures forcing the flames to find more oxygen. Riderless Mah'sur poured out, stamping out the fire, then followed by an innumerable horde of gypsy-warriors with blades and bows. A cloud of arrows was let fly by the sudden invaders, covering the area in a hail of white-feathered bolts and felling a score of soldiers along with half as many sher'amn who threw themselves in harms way. From both sides of the building Mah'sur with riders in flowing silks charged forth. The riders waved their massive blades, yelling in the desert trade tongue, and Hesmenthe himself dismounted to walk up from behind Yoichi and join him at his right hand side.
           "Surrender, Nama," Hesmenthe called. "You're no match for the Alman'queda." Pauran chuffed softly.
           "Do you think desert rabble intimidates me?" she asked, deadly soft. Hesmenthe snarled.
           "Rabble?" The proud warrior of the exiles of Re'jha spat. Forever an honorable man and as duty-bound as any leader, he stepped forward. At once his sher'amn appeared from within the Alman'quedra's ranks, but he stopped them with a nod. "I'll show you the ferocity of the Alman'quedra spirit," He growled at Pauran, edging on berserker-rage, and with that charged headlong at the eldest sher'amn. Pauran never stopped chuffing, but batted away his sword blows and then struck him down with a cut to the head. Yoichi stepped forward in fury, but was restrained by a weak pawgrip on his arm. S'jet held him, staring at him as she had before he jumped the two-citadel cliff. Yoichi paused, though.
           "Pauran," he said, concentrating on holding the contempt in his voice checked, "your forces are no match for mine. If you're convinced of your own superiority you'll fight me single-handedly, as leaders do, and we can spare our troops' lives." S'jet backed away then, looking at him wild-eyed, but heard the resolve in his voice and did not waste time with protest.
           "Men," Pauran chuffed, still enthralled in some hilarity that the rest of the world missed. Abruptly she stopped and dropped into a combative stance. "I accept." Around them sher'amn, cavalry and foot soldiers alike backed away. For a moment they stood fast, every muscle still and taught, then silently glided towards each other.
           The entire affair was conducted in heartbeats: jump, slash, duck, jab, parry, riposte. Two lleiri sang one another's lament. In an instant Yoichi saw his fate - Pauran's blade skirting inside his guard, thrusting down and forward before he could parry, slicing effortlessly through his body. In the distance S'jet screamed his name and he saw her limp forward, then struggle as armed women in light green, purple, and yellow silks forced her back. Hesmenthe's sher'amn, he realized, and then the ground smashed his side. Pauran looked down at him, if not joyful then at least triumphant. She turned and walked away.
           Blood saturated the ground, pooling where he lay. As the life leaked out of young Yoichi Nama he saw figures in black killing innocent farmers, beheading Mazira. Yoichi remembered a gash washed in a mountain stream until it no longer bled - he remembered that feeling of inner tautness. In his mind's eye he remembered offering S'jet a cupped hand that welled up its own blood, remembered drinking from her hands even as he kept Hesmenthe at bay. He remembered rains quenching a firestorm, an impossible lake oasis, and finally a beaten, broken S'jet, white uniform spattered red, blood dripping from her muzzle as it now poured freely from his, fighting and screaming to come to his aid.
           In his mind there was a flame, blood-fed, flickering. Beneath the dulled pain and numbness of a dying man Yoichi still thought. "I'm not thirsty," he whispered hoarsely, then slowly, impossibly, tucked his feet under his body and stood. The crowd shrank back - a single lleiri lay embedded in his gut, and another at his feet. Pauran twisted slowly to see behind her, ears flat against her skull, as Yoichi slowly wrenched the long sher'amn sword from his belly and grasped its hilt challengingly. Eyes and ears turned to his fresh wound, to the pink flesh and dirty hide hanging loosely from it. Yoichi smiled at their simplistic overreactions: all he had really done was chosen not to bleed.
           "Your sword, Pauran," he coughed, "come get your sword." Pauran stepped back, looking all around to her disquieted sisters.
           "Well? A lleiri! Someone me give a lleiri!" No one moved except Yoichi, who heaved slowly. Pauran looked by all accounts to be ill, eyes darting back and forth like those of condemned a man who suddenly finds himself watching death walk towards him. There was little choice for Pauran, as she would not break her vows to King Nama. With a frustrated, hopeless snarl she dove for Mazira's sword that lay on the ground, but was cut down by her own blade. The deathblow left her crumpled in a heap, as well carved as any dinnertime beast. Yoichi looked up and none could meet his eye.
           "Sher'amn!" he yelled, "lay down your arms." S'jet dropped her lleiri behind him and fell to her knees. The former sher'amn of Hesmenthe looked among each other, then each lowered their weapons and knelt. All around Yoichi sher'amn laid aside their swords and bent subserviently. The king hissed in disgust.
           "You worthless who-"
           "Cavalry," Yoichi cried, interrupting him, "dismount!" The Alman'queda slipped from their perches atop the Mah'sur, as did the kings riders. Then even the thickest and slowest of the Naman royal family saw why the King had banished Yoichi; his softest request was given precedence over their strongest demands. "Soldiers, lower your swords." Without hesitation the royal Naman guardsmen, dressed in Naman royal uniform, dropped their weapons.
           For a moment the entire universe listened carefully to Yoichi, and he wisely said nothing. When the royal family began to push through his men's ranks, though, he held out a paw. "No. The people have chosen to follow me, and so now this is my kingdom. You are no longer welcome here."
           "That a son would plot the death of his own mother!" The Queen of Nama spat haughtily. Yoichi shrugged and held out a hand, pointing to the mountains.
           "Then I will give you a chance to live. Across those mountains is Re'jha, the desert of exiles, into which all outcasts go and from which I alone have returned." Then he smiled. "Beware the Alman'queda: they are my staunchest allies. They will show you the way - you need not follow them, but it is your sole chance if you want to live." The Naman royalty drew close as Yoichi waved the Alman'queda riders to herd them from Lereham's walls. S'jet limped to Yoichi's side as he stood reveling in his authority.
           "My lord, I do not think Nama is any longer an appropriate name for this province or its ruling clan," she whispered into his ear, "It would be better named Yoichi." He chuffed, then coughed a bit of blood.
           "Oh? You'd rob me of my first name for your new clan? Then, milady S'jet Yoichi, by what name would you have the world know me?" S'jet leaned her head into his neck.
           "Well, I've always found 'Hesmenthe' attractive…" she purred, and so Yoichi province was born.
          
           Generally speaking, history's time periods change over decades and centuries, with one age fading slowly into another. There are a very few exceptions, however. Most historians agree that the day from which S'jet and Lord Yoichi retired that night was the last of the last dark age in Hrasi civilization, and almost as many believe that the day they woke to in the morning was the first of the defining golden age that would eventually propel their people from swords to the stars. That, however, is another story entirely.