The Thousand Stories by herenortherenearnorfar

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Zikiti Does Not Tell A War Story

1702/1703 SA. The animal Zikiti describes is actually a Sarkastodon. Given the timeframe of the first few epochs of the Silm (much shorter than our own) it makes sense some megafauna would manage to survive into the time of humans.

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“Tell me what the war was like.”

Alembic distilled spirits were a plague upon the kingdoms of women. Orcs did not have much want for wine but had introduced their fellow soldiers to such clever concoctions, liquids that tasted of bile and burned the tongue. In turn the men had made some adjustments, switching out bitter wormwood and poisonous wood alcohol for pomace and other pressed fruit. The end result was less immediately toxic and broadly popular. Zikiti still despised it. A cup of wine was a soldier’s right but a cup of that foul liquid made a soldier into a fool.

The southern girl had not learned that lesson quickly enough. She’d held her wine well enough, even though it flowed thick and gauchely unwatered at this celebration of failure. Then someone had pressed a goblet full of burning dawn yellow into her little hands. Stupid girl had drank the whole thing. At least Zikiti had managed to catch her, stumbling through the crowd of war-fatigued revelers. Now she clung like lichen to Zikiti’s side, sensing perhaps, that it was better to be tipsy at the side of a dull general than amid the increasingly wild men of the camp party. 

“It was a war,” Zikiti told her. “We fought it. People died. We came back home.”

Most of the army was now back within the borders of the dark lands. The All-Seeing and a small detachment had taken a detour to root out the rising banditry on the borders— waging war away from home always left you vulnerable to closer threats, but the grand marching battalions of orcs, the tribute armies of the client kingdoms, and the various hostage-commander-princes had all flocked back to the tower. And though none of them would be caught dead celebrating their defeat while their lord was present, a homecoming party was not out of the question.

It had been ten long years. Many of the younger ones— the bare faced boys from the trading towns of Harad and the eager squires of good breeding— had not been in service when the war had started. They’d marched across mountains and flatlands to a warfront established when they were children, to replace soldiers who’d grown too old or injured to fight a hundred miles from home. 

They had arrived just in time for the terrible rout. Strange how the half-men of the sea could be so much worse than the western demons. Though they were vicious warriors the glowing sorcerers of fairy did not have great armies. Few and deadly they were, and that was far more manageable than the witch-aided might of Anadûnê. 

The southern princess’ breath was hot with wine, her eyes hazy and her grip strong. “Surely there must be some stories. It was such a long campaign! What is the world like so far away? Are their artisans skillful? Are their poets half as quick?”

Zikiti remembered the fallen city before it was taken apart. How it towered high, the arches defying the laws of nature. The devices her soldiers had found as they had ransacked the fairy citadel; made of whisper thin glass and twisted metal. Chemicals that burned and spell-traps that left healthy men drowning on dry land. 

“They are artful,” she said shortly. 

“And the people? Are they really frightening?”

The world was full of magic. Zikiti knew stories of it and had encountered the might of such mastery in her days. There were the womanhawks of the peaks, the adroit dwarves of the northeastern mountains, the talking birds, the great hunters, the shamans and wizards and wisewomen. There were orcs and trolls, who were not fair, and the lavamen who lived in Far Harad, who very called half-trolls by those who did not know trolls very well for they were fine to look upon. There were the sea spirits, the forest creatures, the whirling dancers, and the spirits of wood and glen and arid wild. Everywhere there were men, of every color and shape and size; dark and pale, long and short. 

What she had seen in the godless west had frightened her all the same. The elves were too tall, in spirit if not in body, with laughing eyes and sad smiles. They simmered, heat and magic pouring off of them like steam off a cook pot until the world distorted. Their works were wicked and their eyes were pale and empty. Next to them the men were shallow, scrabbling things— except of course for those of the furthest west who towered and thundered and made no mystery of their entitlement and the enchantment laid over their wicked race.

There had been one woman— if that term even applied to an elven dame— who Zikiti still saw in her dreams. Even dying she’d been ethereal, skin glossy as black glass, eyes half-closed with pain and lashes a knuckle long. The sword buried in her shoulder was of orcish make, the barbed iron rusty beneath the vibrant blood. There was more blood under her nails and around her mouth; dark, foul stuff. Orcs had too much brimstone in the blood. 

Zikiti and her squad had not expected to encounter any survivors sweeping the mostly empty streets. This one must have dragged herself into a small home to avoid detection. The elfin maid was less surprised by their appearance than they were by hers. There were only so many places to hide in a taken city. 

She had opened one eyelid, revealing the flat tawny color of a lion’s eyes, no striation or circling. “Send me to my rest, daughter of the Sun. I have avoided returning home too long.”

Pride did not let warriors give in, and many preferred death to surrender. Not one of the inhabitants of this cursed land had laid down their swords willingly. Zikiti had sympathized with that until she had seen them in battle, specters of glinting light. Mercy should not have been offered, yet…

She wore the soft clothes of a scholar, and her face, though aged by wisdom, was also very young. With her full mouth and upturned nose she looked like in impression of a human. Like one of Zikiti’s childhood friends from the hot, green lands had been vitrified. Her slick face was twisted in agony and every breath reworked the expression, making skin that seemed smooth and heavy contort as easily as any man’s. 

Pain made even these empty immortals approachable. And the wound did not look like a death sentence yet; the phantasms being as sturdy as they were. Zikiti had knelt by her side and examined the injury, surprised when there was give and warmth to the rent flesh. “You might still live,” she’d told the elf. “And I will not throw away a prisoner so easily.”

Truth be told, the Wise One had only taken an interest in one captive. If any others still lived, Zikiti suspected they were having a thoroughly miserable time. Intelligence was intelligence, however, and perhaps she’d be able to convince Dôlbeen or Qamar that this one could be useful. 

At that the elf’s eyes had shot open and she’d stared at Zikiti so intently. She had served the Eye Which Saw for many years, and knew what it was to have your mind bared. That gaze had been different. It had not demanded answers or pulled away at defenses. Neither was it a look of accusation. 

Instead it was an offer, to see what this ageless thing had seen and know the monstrosities it had known. It was an extended hand, threatening to drag her down into an abyss of memory. Worst of all, Zikiti thought she already knew what the elf wanted to say. Everyone knew their own hypocrisies, on some level. It was being confronted by them which was so very frightening. 

She had pulled away sharply, a motion which had half her men drawing their swords. The elfin maid had blinked, long and slow as a cat. “No. No one deserves that fate.”

Final words delivered, she’d shut her eyes. It hadn’t been a mortal wound, not based on what the other captive could tolerate. Nonetheless, she’d been dead before Zikiti could work up the bravery to cut her throat. Orc poison, mayhaps, or some new sorcery of this wretched place. 

“They are not like us,” Zikiti informed the drunken girl at her side. For all her silliness and obnoxious conviviality, she at least was human. 

“Ah, but you are not like me, and I am not like you. Is it truly so bad to be different?” Laughter laced her high voice, making Zikiti certain that the point of serious discussion was long past. 

“Yes,” she told her in the firm voice of a commanding officer. “No more questions.”

Stubborn even as she yawned and leaned against Zikiti’s shoulder, the southron girl didn’t pay any heed. “Was it a good war?”

There were no good war. Wars were long and sluggish. Battles brought the heat to your chest and the blood to your head. Wars were just a means to an end. 

Even the first war she’d ever fought, a campaign against a single foe, hadn’t been satisfying. She’d been 25 when the great lion had come to terrorize her town. Lion was not quite the correct word. It had something of a weasel about it, and something of a bear, but it was long and four legged and golden brown so they had called it a lion, for lack of any better term. It had been long as two men were tall, end to end, and when they’d finally killed it and measured it up it had weighed more than 30 talents. 

It had to be older than the world of men, a forgotten slumbering terror from the time before light and sound and speech. Its teeth were long and its very bones yellow with age. 

Though it was just one beast it had ruined them, preying on travellers and farmers, eating small children and whole oxen alike. They were not a large city, or one overpopulated with warriors. They had relied too long on their connection to the lord of the dark lands to shelter them from enemies. Diplomacy and the threat of armies did nothing against a carnivore from antiquity. Nor could they plead for help from their allies, for who would give them credit if they were so easily defeated by a dumb animal?

After the final hunting party had come back, bloodied and few in number, Zikiti had decided to act. She was not from a family of no account, for few children of slaves and plowsmen were marked by history, but neither was she of the noblest blood. What she did have were broad shoulders, a quick mind, and parents who would not miss her if she did not return. Most importantly, she had hunted lions as a young woman, when they had troubled her family’s country holdings. Experience lent her what few of the would-be heroes had; a plan.

Arsenic was not easy to come by, but not for nothing was it called the poison of kings. Kings kept it, for their own means. Her scheme had won over the monarch, and he’d given her four strong workmen, a net woven of metal, and a tin of yellow ointment. 

They’d followed stories of the monsters passing, until they had found the cave. There, Zikiti’s plan had fallen apart. None of the stories had given hint of how clever it was. How its eyes would assess the fresh ox carcass and turn aside, as no lion ever would. How it would leap at the men stood poised with the gleaming net and begin to tear them apart. 

The hunters who had come back had hinted at how thick its hide would be, handfuls of fur and fat that Zikiti had to chop away at to get to tough muscle and finally, finally, the tender nerves of the spine. It had roared and whirled furiously, trying to throw her off its back. She’d nearly put her eye out with her own blade. 

Strength of arms had saved her, and when all was said and done, it was strength of arms she was celebrated for. The Lioness of Shams, elevated until she'd finally been sent away to serve the greatest army this side of the sea, and bring her people merit as she had once brought them safety. 

It had still been alive after she’d sliced through its spinal cord. It was just the two of them, the poor men she’d recruited to her cause dead or dying. Zikiti had looked into its dark eyes and seen an age as old as stars, which knew the hands of the unkind gods who had molded them. As with the elf, the sight of those eyes had made her mouth go dry with awe. As with the elf, she had wanted to save it, though her sensible mind knew that no such remnant of the savage world could exist alongside men. What enchantment was there to the sublime to make them so alluring?

There was magic, which everyone had experienced in some manner, and then there was Power, which no one ought to find themselves face-to-face with. At least one who ruled them all kept most of his own self covered, and was alone in his attributes. At least he was willing to aid them against others of even worse kind.

“It was a war, and they are all the same,” she told the girl dozing at her side. “But I would fight that war a thousand times over again to drive such demons from our world.”

“Oh. That’s nice,” came the bleary response. 

“Truly? I do not know if hatred is what one should fight for.”