Chapter 13
Dawn

	When I became a father, something about my perception of the world shifted.  The dangers, the pitfalls, the filth and crime around us, the destitute poverty we lived in - I’d stood strong in the face of all of it.  I was proud of how resilient and fearless I could be.  I was almost proud to be at the bottom, but knew that I’d survived it all.  I could live my life covered in brick dust, battered and scuffed, beaten down by everything around me, including my family... and know that I was tough.   
	It was everything I’d once thought my father to be, and had aspired to.  A proud laborer, with humble ambitions and an honest way of living.  I had a few dark secrets, but I was still damned impressed with myself.  Which I suppose meant I wasn’t actually being all that humble.
	But the thought of seeing my son have to endure this life scared the hell out of me.  I never told Ishaya that.  I held up the front I was supposed to, because it was the foundation of my entire life, and shaking it was too terrifying.  I pretended, even after Amon had been born, that I was proud of being a kiln worker.  That I was intent on carrying on the tradition into the next generation.  Because the alternative, a life without any kind of security or way to feed ourselves, seemed so unfathomable.  Ishaya wasn’t wrong to want more for our son.  She was just braver than I was.
	Amon was so small.  So fragile.  He was born early, and for the first month, we were afraid we’d lose him.  He wouldn’t nurse regularly, he barely ever cried, and the medicine man we brought him to said he might be blind if he survived.  His eyes were always a concern for us, even as he grew and we knew his vision was fine.
	To imagine my small, quiet, gentle son being subjected to the kind of life I’d lived was absolutely terrifying.  And suddenly, the world looked so much worse to me than it ever had before.  I could work day and night and I’d never be able to give him enough to protect him from the simple, condemning fate he’d been born into – we were poor.  We would always be poor.  I’d missed my chance at education, and even if we lived threadbare and saved our coin, we’d never really be able to afford to give him the chances in life he deserved.
	He was going to grow up to be like me.  Even if I was better to him than my father had been to me, it wouldn’t be enough.  He would have to start working the kilns when he was old enough, just so we could feed him.  He might want for more, but he’d inevitably go back to it time and again, because it’s the only skill my family can pass down.  We don’t have the luxury of searching for more out of life – hunger gets the better of us all eventually, and we come back to the one kind of work that we know, strictly so we don’t starve.
	Many people in Mataa wear collars.  Some of them are just more visible than others.  Laborers are just as trapped in their lives as the servants I used to think were beneath me.  Men like my father, and Chandan, are trapped by their addictions.  Women are constantly trapped in marriages they had no choice in, and even the upper rungs, like the hyenas and lions, are trapped in a cycle of war that will never end so long as there is land to walk on.
	I don’t know where my son is now.  I may never know.  I just hope that someday, he knows what it means to be liberated from the forces that hold us down.  If I could give him anything in the world, it would be freedom.

	Raja, Ahsan and I join some of the lionesses in Dela’s large hut later that night, to ready our weapons and drink a tea the medicine woman has cooked up for us.  It’s bitter and acidic, and I’m not really certain what it’s meant to do except burn my throat.  She insists it will fill our veins with fire, and make us fierce.  Mostly, it makes me cough.
	The mood is surprisingly calm and congenial.  Dela’s Pride, that is to say, her own group of huntresses, are all seasoned warriors.  Many of them are from war-torn areas to the south where fighting for one’s life is a daily struggle, and they’re preparing for the morning like it’s any other well-practiced ritual.
This is what my life is becoming.  I’m an escaped servant.  Until I’m either dead, or re-captured, I’ll have to live knowing that I’m hunted.
Dela herself was probably hunted, at some point.  By her Pride, or her husband, or whoever it was that she fled to this place to escape.  Maybe she took the oasis from her husband or another Pride.  It really doesn’t matter how it is they came to live here – the fact is, they’re surviving because they’ve made a family of others like themselves.  
I lost my family, just like many of these women did.  But, I’ve begun to rebuild something like it, in Ahsan... and I suppose Raja.  Maybe in time, I could find more escaped servants, join forces and do as Dela’s done.  Claim some piece of land where we can all live, or live on the road in a band, moving from place to place so we’re never cornered.  Maybe there’s life for us in our own country if we’re willing to fight for it like she is.
The Eden Pride is nowhere near as well-equipped as the guards of the Sura clan were, but each woman has at least one well-kept weapon.  Most of them use spears and bows, but two of them carry scimitars and Dela herself carries a shotel, much like mine.  Hers looks better maintained and more menacing than mine, though.  When I asked her about it a few weeks back, she told me she’d had it made for her by a traveling smith who comes through here now and again.  She let me hold it and try it out on some dying palm stalks, and the difference was pretty striking.  I’d thought the power of my swings was impaired mostly because of my lack of experience, but some of it is definitely owing to the weapon itself.
“You’re a large man, Kadar,” she tells me with a wry smile, reaching up to squeeze my bicep, like she’s admiring fruit at a market.  “You should use a larger weapon.  Put your gods-given mass to use.”
“I’m no lion,” I chuckle.  “But I have to admit, the shotel feels a little lackluster sometimes.  Not that I have much experience to compare it to.”
“You can use a spear tomorrow,” she offers.  “We have many.”
“I’m not sure a fight like this is a good time to try a new weapon,” I reason.  “And anyway, considering our enemies are using ranged weapons, it might be best to rely on the element of surprise.  I’ll prowl better without something that long catching or dragging on anything.”
“An experienced hand can glide through the grasses with a spear,” she says.  “But I see your point.  Use what is most familiar to you, for now.”  She reaches forward to adjust my hand.  “And turn your blade against the whetstone at a sharper angle.”
She guides me for a few moments, long enough that I get the hang of it, and then simply watches me from her cross-legged seat.  “Are you afraid?”  she asks me, after a long companionable silence.
“Of?”  I ask, not looking up.
“Death,” she says simply.  
I stop sharpening my blade and lean back, uncertain how to answer that at first.  At length, I say, “I’m don’t want to die, obviously.  There’s probably some fear there.”
“Mmmm,” she hums thoughtfully.
“Why do you ask?”  I question, looking her in the eyes.
Her muzzle turns up in a slight smile.  “Because I have never seen you fight before,” she says.  “But I have seen defiance in your eyes.  That indomitable... outrage... is there, in each of my huntresses, as well.   If you were a lioness, I would take you in.  I would ask you to stay here in this place, and defend it.”  
“I’m nowhere near as experienced as a Pride woman,” I chuckle.  “You’ll find that out tomorrow.”
She shakes her head.  “It does not matter.  Skill with a weapon can be learned.  The will to use it, and the ferocity to defend your right to breathe free air, cannot.  Given the choice, most people would rather bow than fight to the death.”
“Everyone’s afraid to die on some level,” I sigh.  “I’m just not . . . I don’t think it’s death itself that terrifies me.  It’s the consequences of it.”
“Death is the end of consequence,” she smiles.  “At least, for you.  It is the ultimate freedom.”
“That’s exactly it,” I murmur.  “I’m afraid that I’ll leave nothing behind.  No trace I was even here, no legacy for the people I leave behind.”  I hang my head, tipping my ears back.  “Except for the mistakes I’ve made.  I’ve done nothing worthwhile with my life.  So yeah, I’m afraid to die.  I could die tomorrow, pointlessly, because I don’t bring my blade up in time or I trip over a rock.  I could accomplish nothing even in my final moments.”
“You think you need to survive a fight to win it?”  she asks, cryptically.
“Well...”  I pause, uncertain if the question’s even meant to be answered.
“Do you think anything I’ve done here,” she gestures out towards the distant camp fires flickering in the village square beyond the hut door, “will end the wars in the south?  Or protect other young children from being forced to marry, or bear children?”
“You’re at least protecting the women here,” I reason.
“One determined group of hunters could shatter all that,” she says, slicing her hand through the air.  “And I will have gathered all of these people here in one place, to be slaughtered like lambs.  I could fall tomorrow, we all could.  This place could be razed and conquered, re-taken by the clans or the lion Prides.  It will be, some day.”
I knit my brows.  “How do you go on, knowing that?”  I ask, bitterly.  “I had a son once.  The only way I could make peace with the world without living in terror was to turn my eyes away from his future.  Not think about it.  It all seemed so insurmountable.”
"I hold my head high,” she says, “by accepting that even though I can't see the light at the end of these dark days, someday, someone else will.  Change comes about slowly, sometimes so slowly, we'll never see the victories we've won within our own lifetimes.”
“That’s comforting,” I mutter.
“That doesn't mean the fight is not worth throwing ourselves into,” she says with a calm passion.  “This generation, perhaps even the next generation, may not be set free of these evils.  But every step, every increment, every small gain we make now is our legacy to the generations to come.  I know in my heart that someday, these terrible things we have been forced to endure will be a horror of the past.  And part of that, a very small part of that, will be because of me.  That’s why I keep fighting."    
“I’m sure you’ve given this speech to your girls before, but I don’t know if that makes me feel any less helpless,” I say with a wry smile.  “How do you think that far ahead?”
“By looking to the past,” she says, simply.  “You know . . . a long time ago, half of the people in this country were slaves.”
“Servitude is just slavery with a different name,” I snuff.
“Is it?”  She arches an eyebrow.  “Slaves had no rights, at all.  They could be starved, raped, beaten to death, murdered for sport.”
“All of those things still happen,” I point out.
“I know it’s hard to see it, because you were part of it,” she says, “but your life, for all of its pain and difficulty, is nowhere near as terrible as it could have been, centuries ago.  The ancient people fought for this land against feral animals and unrelenting disease and droughts.  They lived huddled in fear.  They hadn’t yet learned how to harness the rains and the monsoons to grow crops, they were entirely at the mercy of nature.  Then there were the wars with Amuresca - the Dog Lords.  And even then, in the midst of strife, we advanced.  We learned things from them, and they from us.  There were sweeping slave rebellions that joined the Dog Lords’ forces, and we forged the treaty that ended slavery.”
She points to my neck, “That collar around your neck may seem like it binds you, but what it stands for is a change.  A change that took centuries, endless lives and blood spilled, and even now, the clans struggle to work around.  Slavery was not sustainable.  You cannot build a society on inequality and subjugation.  People will fight and strain and push back against what they know in their hearts is wrong.  Hundreds of thousands of those people died, to get us where we are now.”
She reaches for me with her thin, aging paw and runs her thumb over the edge of my collar.  “They died for this.  So that you would have a chance.  It is not a symbol of binding – it is a symbol of desperation.  The clans’ desperation.  It is a last resort, to cling on to an aging labor system that they can barely uphold any more.  They have laws, and contracts, and hunters, and they live in constant fear that the Amurescans will return if they violate their treaty.”
I listen to her, considering her words.  I’d never really taken the time to think about indentured servitude as a system, from the hyena clans’ perspective.  I suppose with all the laws and restrictions, and all the trouble it takes to enforce them, it’s probably very difficult to uphold.  It was hard not to think of them as our overlords, controlling every aspect of life in these lands... but the system that bound me was not of their making, it was the work-around for a treaty they’d been forced to sign with a foreign power.  And that, I suppose, must have been a hard pill to swallow.  
“We are living in an incredible time,” Dela says.  “This age will see the death throes of slavery.  We have a chance to be a part of that, simply by being part of the fight.  The world could be entirely changed by the time your son is your age.”
“I’m afraid that I’ll never find him again,” I admit.  “I’m afraid that somewhere, he’s suffering.  Without a father to shelter and love him.”
“If he is,” she says, “he has your indomitable spirit to see him through it.  You can’t protect him from all the pain in the world.  But, you can fight it.  Change it.”
“Even in my most defiant moments,” I sigh, looking down at the weapon in my hands, “I’ve never felt like I could change the world.  For a long time, I couldn’t even change my own situation.”
“You are changing the world, simply by resisting,” she says, her golden eyes drawing mine into her gaze and holding me there.  “You are part of something larger.  Whatever you give towards it, even if it’s a death no one remembers in a grassy field... it is worth doing.  Fighting a losing battle takes much more courage.  Freedom is not enjoying a life that is already liberated.  Do you know what freedom means?”
“I don’t think I ever have,” I murmur.
She narrows her eyes.  “It means that whenever someone tries to put you beneath their heel... you say ‘no’.”

Dawn comes slowly, in the scrub lands.  The oasis is ringed by rolling dunes of patchy grass and sand, and the sky’s begun to seep from black to blue before we actually see the first rays of light.  But we don’t need a warning from the sentries to know when the attack’s begun.
The foreigners aren’t hiding their presence.  They can’t, and they don’t have to.  Their silhouettes ring the oasis along the highest rolls in the land, keeping their distance at first.  And for nearly an hour, their shots split the peace of this tranquil place, like a terrifying thunderstorm.
I stay hunkered down in the grasses with Lavanya, watching as occasionally, all around us, the grass and dirt tear up like lightning’s struck it.  Whenever we hear one of those cracks, I jump inside my skin, waiting for the errant shot that will hit us.
“What are they doing?”  I ask with a jolt, as another patch near us explodes in a shower of grass and sand.  The shots leave a deep gouge in the earth wherever they land, and seeing what they can do to earth makes me feel even worse, knowing what they must have done to Lochan’s body.  I can’t even imagine the pain.
She shakes her head.  “Keeping us pinned down, for one,” she growls.  “Other than that, I don’t know.  Maybe they’re hoping to get lucky.”
“They may have already, and we’d never know,” I say, glancing out across the grassland without raising my head too much.  “They’ve been firing for a while now, they could have hit one of the lionesses.  They’re bound to, eventually.”
“Maybe this is just sport to them,” she says angrily.  “Are those things like bows?  Can they run out of ammunition?”
“I don’t know,” I admit.  “But Ahsan insisted they aren’t magic, they’re just very powerful weapons... so probably?”
“There,” she says sharply, grabbing at my shoulder.  I try to follow her line of sight through the grasses, and vaguely make out a few distant, bobbing dark blots that might be silhouettes, moving towards the edge of the field.  They’re either moving on all fours, or crouching as they move, because no creature other than a feral would be that short, otherwise.
“They’re making their move,” Lavanya says, her whiskers shivering with anticipation.  “I hope Dela’s seen them.”
“I’m certain she has,” I say, confidently.  
“They’re cutting through the footpath we thought they’d use,” she says with a fanged smile.  “The huntresses must be hiding well, I can’t even see them and I know where they’re supposed to be.”
“They think we’ll keep our attention on the men on the hill,” I snort.  “It’s...  a plan, I suppose.  But I wouldn’t have bet my life on it.”
“Let’s move closer.”
I nod.  “Stay low.  They’re still firing.  Seems like they slowed down, though.”
“Maybe they’re finally running out,” she says hopefully.
We cut our way through the field, towards where it seems like the attack will come to a head.  The main footpath into the oasis cuts through the most uneven, rocky terrain and grass mounds, and seeing as walking through the other areas can trip and slow you down quite a lot, we guessed that for an attack they couldn’t really conceal, the direct route would probably be their first choice.
Raja chose to be with the lionesses near the footpath, since he’s better at prowling and concealing himself than I am.  Also, the man’s more than a little bloodthirsty, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer.  But considering what we’re potentially up against, his ferocity might be just what the front line needs.
I chose to take the west field, since it’s ringed by a sharp rock ridge farther out towards the dunes, and it was an unlikely attack angle for them... but it’s an excellent place to corner them.  The lionesses plan to push them my way once they clash, and Lavanya and I are to cut off their escape.  I’d rather be out here with someone I know better, but Lavanya and I are, in Dela’s words, at about the same level of combat experience.  So we’re not front-line material, we’re just the crew that mops up the stragglers.  Dela wants none of these men to escape and bring word to anyone else, and I can’t blame her for that, cold-blooded though it might sound to cut down fleeing men.
Ahsan is in the interior, with a few of the other huntresses, guarding the women and children who can’t fight.  I know what’s at stake if they get through us here.
Another shot whizzes past, clipping the grassland right in front of us and coming closer than any others have yet.  We both stop dead in our tracks and hunch, knowing we’ve been seen.  Unfortunately, that’s when the shout goes up amongst the lionesses, and the attack begins.
“Damn it!”  Lavanya snarls, raising her head just slightly.  After a hesitant wave of her hand, I follow suit.  We aren’t that far from the footpath now, so we should be able to-
I’m dumbstruck when I finally get a look at our ‘attackers’.  The lionesses have made their move, springing upon the group that was making its way through the grassland... but they aren’t what we thought.  The people the women are wrestling down in the scrub grass, and pulling their spears out of, are... collared.  And very poorly organized.
They’re armed, but only with knives and shoddy spears, some of them with shields, and they’re wearing frayed and stained clothing.  Many of them look starved or sick, or both, and they’re all wearing unchained manacles.
It’s a scene of pure chaos and confusion, the strange servants either fighting back ineffectively against the lionesses, or cowing, or trying to run.  For our part, the lionesses seem just as confused, but determined to put the invaders down all the same.
And then all at once, the quiet grassland erupts into a cacophony of thunderous noise, and three of the lionesses are struck, crumpling where they stand.  
“They baited us!”  I hear Dela shout above the din, and then she tries to yell another command to her hunters, likely to scatter, but not before there’s another volley from the ridge.  Another lioness falls, and Dela herself staggers back, blood erupting from her shoulder in a spray.  Then she falls beneath the grasses, either under her own control or because she can’t stand anymore, I don’t know.  
Lavanya screams something in a southern dialect I don’t know and springs past me before I can grab at her, making for Dela.  The two volleys that tore through her ranks were clearly from two different groups of gunners, but I heard many, many firearms going off at once each time, so I have to assume they’ve all fired by now.  I take the chance that we’ll have a brief reprieve and finally stand so I can get a better look at what’s happening.
I can smell blood everywhere in the air, and the acrid stench of those weapons, bringing back a terrible ache in my gut from the last time I saw one of them used.  I can actually see the men on the ridge, or at least some of them.  They’re moving in closer now, still just silhouettes, but I can make out at least that they’re canine.  
There are two lionesses on the ground in the footpath that I can see, and I know at least two more were struck.  That’s half their hunting party that’s out here, and even if they’re not all dead they’re not going to be able to get back to their feet and fight.
There are twice as many bodies of the servants that were sent in... whoever they were.  Most are run through by spears, but some of them look like they were caught in the hail of fire, same as the lionesses.  I’m not even certain if I should pity them, because we never got a chance to find out who they were.
“Sacrificial lambs,” a familiar, deep voice rumbles from nearby, and suddenly I’m being grabbed at by my belt and yanked back down into cover.  Another crack sounds across the clearing, this one clearly coming from near the edge of the grassland.  It doesn’t come anywhere near as close as the others to hitting me, though.
“Some of them have two of those weapons,” Raja says in a growling tone.  “I caught sight of a few of the ones coming closer, before Dela ordered us back into the brush.”
“Is she alright?”  I ask in a sharp whisper.
“Bleeding a lot, last I saw,” he says.  “Other than that, I don’t know.”
“Shit,” I growl, my knuckles tensing around the hilt of my shotel.  
Raja cranes his neck up just enough to peer to the ridge, then flattens his ears.  “They’re lining up again, and some of them are breaking off.”
“They’re going to make a real push down the path this time, and take out anyone who tries to get in their way,” I guess, quietly.  “We should-“
I’m interrupted by another sound piercing the night air, but this one isn’t a weapon . . . it’s a howl.  A strange, baying howl unlike one I’ve ever heard from a wolf before.  And it’s coming from the other side of the oasis.  A moment later, it’s returned by one of the men in the group of attackers on our side, and then there are muffled voices from his group, in a language I can’t understand.
“It’s a two-pronged attack,” I snarl, whirling around to look towards the oasis.  “Gods, there are only a few huntresses on that side.”
“And they’re probably on their way here to Dela, since she sounded the attack,” Raja says grimly.  
“You need to go to them,” I say quickly, “reinforce them.  You’re the only one fast enough.”
He looks past me, uncertainly.  “They’re coming from this side, too.  And the lionesses are scattered-“
“Run!”  I snap, gripping my shotel tightly and rising onto my haunches.  “If they get into the interior they can take hostages!  We’ll hold the footpath.”
He narrows his sky blue eyes at that and gives a curt nod, then turns on his heel and with a coiled spring of his lean, strong body, he takes off into the grasses.  I’ve seen cheetahs run before, but it still always leaves me awestruck.
Someone fires off a shot at him and misses by a mile, cutting through the grasses in his wake.  That shot sounded incredibly close, and my suspicion is confirmed when I turn to see the first of the attackers wading through the edge of the grassland near the start of the footpath.  There’s a large group of them, probably a dozen in all that have broken off from the line of gunmen on the ridge.  The light’s just starting to edge its way over the dunes and spill its golden hue down towards the oasis, and in it I catch sight of the foreigners for the first time.
What the lioness said is true.  They look vaguely like canines, but with strange muzzles and ears, and very foreign clothing.  Most of them are armed with blades in addition to the firearms they’ve been using, and they have them out as they cut their way through the grasslands towards our settlement.  There are several hyenas with them as well, although it’s impossible to tell if they’re Sura guards yet.
There are too many of them coming, and more on the hill.  And they’re obviously soldiers for hire.  Whatever experience they have, it’s probably more than mine.  It’s the plantation all over again, except this time, there are no doors to lock them behind, and I have no Guard Master to fight beside.
I look across the grasses from my position and see several of the lionesses hunkered down, readying themselves to spring, including Lavanya.  I know what they’re feeling.  We have to make a stand here, but there’s no way we’re getting through this without most of us falling to the mercenaries’ blades, or failing that, the men on the hill.
But it doesn’t matter.  We have to fight.
I know my chances of surprising anyone are slim now that the grass is lit up.  My dark armor gives me away.  But the lionesses still have a chance, and I can give them more of one if I make an obvious threat of myself.
I stalk forward, trying to feed on my fear, since I know I can’t just stop feeling it somehow.  If there is such a thing as being ‘fearless’, I’ve never known it.  I try to remember what Dela said to me.   It’s hard to find any comfort in the thought that dying here in this field somehow serves some greater purpose, but there’s a more immediate purpose right at my back... and that’s the community we’re all pledged to protect.
And the hyena I’m afraid to admit I love.
Except I did just admit it to myself, I realize.  And that thought emboldens me.  If I can finally come to terms with it in my mind, maybe I’ll have the nerve to say it to him, eventually.  It’s just one more reason to survive this, somehow.
One of the men sees me and shouts to the others with him.  Their thin blades glint in the brimming sunlight.  On the ridge, I can tell the men in reserve are readying those weapons again.  I’ll have to take the chance that they won’t fire into combat with their own men amongst us.
I wait until they’re just within range of the lionesses, whom I’m certain they’re expecting judging by how cautiously they’re cutting their way through the foot path.  Two very large foreigners lead the pack, with pushed-in muzzles and thick jowls, and black fur that must bake in the sun during the day.  They aren’t wearing armor at all, but they both have those thin swords out.  One of them is holding a small firearm in one hand, beginning to train it on me.
I wait until he’s raised it, just as Matron Sura did, and then I dash as fast as I can back into the grasses and cut a sharp right away from where I’d been standing.  I hear the crack of thunder, but feel no pain.  So he either missed, or that tea is working and I’m invincible.  Either way, I charge.
The man meets me with a readied sword, blocking my first wild swing.  Using my weapon’s shape to its best advantage, I try to hook his blade and yank it away from him, but he turns his sword into the twist of my arm and easily frees it from me.  And then the other man up front with him, who looks similar enough that they may be kin, tries to move in and flank me from behind.  I whirl on him and slice my shotel through the air in a wide arc, letting him know he hasn’t gone unnoticed.
The remaining lioness spring from the grasses then and one of them manages to catch the man at my back off-guard, driving a spear into his torso.  The other man I’m fighting bellows something in their language, and his group begins to mob around us.  I can see Lavanya clash with one of the hyenas amongst the mercenaries on my left side, standing her ground even as her spear splinters from a blocked scimitar swing.  Unlike the others, she’s not moving, and I soon see why.  Dela is kneeling behind her, her right side covered in blood and her arm hanging limply, gripping her shotel in the other.
I can’t get past this big canine’s guard.  He blocks each of my swings with a practiced ease, waiting for his opportunity.  And eventually, he finds it.
He moves his sword under my guard with a quick stab, leveling it for my side under my armpit, where my armor’s at its weakest.  I curse and try to twist away, but not in time.  Pain lances through my body as he catches me in the ribs, how deep I don’t know, but the armor took some of it.  I try to step back, only to find they’ve begun to surround us.  Blood leaks down the inside of my armor, and I hear one of the lioness scream as two of the men mob up on her.
They say you see the ones you love and the life you’ve lived flash before your eyes before you die.  I don’t know if that’s true, but I definitely think of my son in that moment.  And, selfish though it may sound, the one thing going through my mind is – I’d been hoping that at least if I died fighting for freedom, he’d know.
Surrounded though I am, the men are still giving me a wide berth, likely because of my inexperience.  I try to keep my swings wild and unpredictable, and that’s seemed to have them all off-guard.  But the loose group of men surrounding us doesn’t entirely block my view of the grassland beyond, and that’s why I see what’s coming before they do.
It looks for all the world like the sands themselves are rising up, dead grasses and earth falling away, as this shape looms up behind the mercenaries and begins to advance on their back ranks.  A cowl of earth and clay pulls back slowly as it raises its arms and the sands fall away, revealing a blood red muzzle.  The arms shift out from under the cloak, holding blades that flicker in the sun as they catch it.  The mercenary closest to the terrifying visage realizes too late that it’s upon him, turning his head and shifting as though he intends to bring up his sword.
He never gets the chance.  The figure brings its first scimitar down cleanly across his neck, and severs it nearly completely, his body stiffening and crumpling in place almost after the fact, as though he doesn’t yet realize he’s dead.  And then it shoves past another man into their back ranks, and steel shrieks as it clashes into the next opponent.
The foreigner I’m fighting turns in shock, shouting at his men.  I seize the opportunity, gripping my shotel hard and punching it upwards like one would a short sword.  It’s not strictly meant for it, but it’s still sharp enough to do the trick... especially when the man’s bared his throat to me like he has.
I ram it up underneath his chin and his shout turns into a gurgle, which I cut off seconds later by twisting the hook at the tip of my blade and yanking it back out through.  He falls away from me, and suddenly the men surrounding me are giving me even more space.
I snarl, leaping at another one of them, catching mostly air in my first swing.  The second, he’s forced to parry.  I can hear the screams and shouts of confusion from the outer edge of the mob, and see the flurry of melee surrounding the cloaked figure who came to our aid.  The first thing I can think of is that it must be Lochan, somehow.  As impossible as I know that is.  I saw Anala behead him.
Ahsan’s words come back to me then, in a big way.
“Priestess!”  I scream over the roar of combat, shoving back the smaller canine I’m locked with.  These foreigners are smaller than me for the most part, so at the very least I can usually overpower them when we lock blades.
The figure cuts down another man in her way, and tears free her earth-caked hood.  Her face is painted in red clay and spattered with blood from the two – no, three now – men she’s killed, but I’m certain I’m right.  She gives a baying scream and drives down another of the mercenaries, who literally stumbles over the tangled grasses in his frantic hurry to escape her.  
“Your left!”  she shouts at me, and I hurriedly bring my blade up just in time, as one of the hyenas seizes on my distraction to find an opening.  I actually manage to dodge him rather than block him, which is good considering he’s using a large talwar, which he could probably easily work past my guard.  I lunge in and swing at him, but he recovers fast and he has far more reach than I do with my small weapon, so I’m soon on the defensive again.
He gives a cackling shriek suddenly and buckles a bit, grabbing at his thigh and pulling out a now blood-tipped spear.  I search the field trying to figure out where it came from, then catch sight of Lavanya, now unarmed.  I begin to call out to her, but the hyena in front of me isn’t taking the injury lying down.  Snarling, he advances on me again, shouting a, “Take care of that one!” to one of the other men near him.   I actually understand him, because he speaks in Huudari.
I try to make my way to her, but I’m desperately fending off another of the hyena’s brutal attacks, my wrist twisting painfully as I block the enormous weapon.  My shotel is nearly torn from my hand with the force of the blow, but I hold on for dear life, even as something inside me feels like it’s tearing.
“Moza!”  the Priestess Anala shouts, catching the attention of my opponent, whose muzzle twists into a snarl when he sees her.  He abandons his attack on me to duck one of her swings and comes up frothing with one of his own, his wide blade cutting an arc of grass around him.
“Traitor!”  he roars at her.
“Coward!”  she screams right back, fangs bared.  “Hiding behind pistols and slaves!”
“They’ll gut you and leave you for the vultures!”  he promises, clamping a hand over his leg as blood streams down it.  I see an opening when he turns to charge for her again.  I take a run for him, dropping to skid down at his feet under his guard.  The sands here are loose enough that I just barely make it, ignoring the pain in my wrist and hooking my weapon around his weakened leg.
I pull away flesh and blood with a jerk of my shotel, and it’s not much, but it’s enough on an already injured leg.  He buckles on one side and Anala drives her scimitar into his gut, armor be-damned.  
I whirl my head around in fear for Lavanya, but by the time I’ve caught sight of her again she’s got another spear in her hands and is easily keeping one of the more skittish mercenaries at bay.  It’s then I remember that Dela also had a spear, and she probably had it in the brush nearby.
“Your girls can handle the remnants,” Anala’s voice says impatiently, as she steps up beside me.  She’s holding something out to me.  “We need to get to the ridge, before they open fire again.”
I look down at the scimitar in her hands, held out to me hilt-first.  The hand-grip is wrapped in red cloth that looks achingly familiar, and I remember the distinctive pommel.
I take it from her with an acidic glare, which she returns with a far more even-tempered stare.  “Save it for them,” she says.  “We’re not done here.”
We take to the hill as the lionesses chase down the few remaining mercenaries, who at this point are mostly trying to escape.  Shots begin to sound as we prowl our way up the rocky rise to the slightly elevated ground that overlooks the grasslands.  You’d never think, walking over this beautiful terrain, that something as simple as a four-foot lift in the earth and a few rocks could make for such a deadly area for our enemies to use.  But the Dog Lords have always been good at making war.
Anala moves with a grace I can’t match, even though she’s also wearing leather armor and her fur’s covered in crumbling earth and clay.  But by the time the gunmen see me, it’s really too late for them.  None of them have blades out when we arrive, and even outnumbered four-to-one, Anala barely needs my help.  
The last man manages to raise a loaded pistol while she’s locked swords with him, and I have a moment where I realize I could simply do... nothing.  She hasn’t seen that he had a smaller firearm on him yet – most of the men up here had longer ones which they abandoned when we showed up.  I could stand back and watch him put the thing to her midsection and fire, and be spared a very difficult decision later.
But I can’t.  Even after what she did at the plantation, I can’t shake the memory of how terrible Lochan’s injury was.  The agony I saw in his face as he was dying.  No one deserves to die that way, not even one of our enemies.
And I’m not even sure she’s that anymore.
I’ve got the scimitar at my side, but I’ve also still got my shotel.  I lunge in with the weapon and briefly see alarm on Anala’s face as I wedge it between them, but then I jerk the hook around the pistol in his hand and turn it.  I’m not sure if it’s a last-ditch effort to hit someone or if he just reacts, but it goes off, deafening us all and burning my nose with that acrid stench from the weapon, and the smell of singed fur.  Mine.  He just barely missed me.
She puts him down a second later with one swift, decisive chop to the neck.  I step back, my ears ringing, my whole body shaking.  Everything goes incredibly quiet, or at least it seems that way in comparison to the frenzy of battle.  In the distance, I can hear the lionesses roaring, and judging by the return calls from the other side of the oasis, whatever attack took place there has been put down as well.  It was probably only ever meant to split our forces... the only real path of attack that could have worked was the one we knew they’d use.  The footpath.
It’s over, I realize with an intense wave of relief.  They never made it into the oasis.  Ahsan is safe.
And I’m alive.
That, more than anything, is hard to believe.  I shouldn’t be standing here.  I’m no warrior.  I’m a poorly-equipped laborer with little to no combat experience, save the occasional fistfight over the years.  But I’ve survived a revolt, breaking into a clan manor, fleeing into the desert and now fighting a well-armed group of hunters and mercenaries.  The odds that I would have come through all of this breathing seem so slim... yet here I stand.
So when I raise my weapon to the warrior priestess beside me, I’m less afraid than I’ve been in a long time.  She gives me a long, even stare, the blood spray across her face breaking up the caked clay into choppy patches.  She’s sustained a number of small injuries herself, torn places in her leather and hide alike, and I can’t know what the extent of them are beneath all the red.  Which is probably one of the points of it, in retrospect.  
Yet still, I advance on her.
“What are you doing here?”  I demand of Anala, putting as much power as I can into my voice.  I raise the scimitar in her direction, the very weapon she gave me.
Lochan’s weapon.
She slowly lifts a hand and points to the sword.  “I came to bring you that.”
“You’re the one who killed him!”  I snap.  “You work for the Sura clan!”
“Not any longer,” she states, lifting her muzzle defiantly.  “They were not worthy of my blade any more.  Perhaps they never were.”  Her ears fall for a moment and she drops her jaw, blowing out a long sigh through her nose.  “And I didn’t kill your Guard Master.  Not as I should have.  Ours would have been a beautiful battle, were it not for the Matron’s interference.  That man had a warrior’s soul.  He never showed it.  We worked together for years, and I had no idea.  I would have challenged him long ago if I’d known... but I doubt he would have given me his best, as he did in that courtyard, unless he was fighting for you.”
“He wasn’t fighting for me,” I murmur.
“I slew him because he asked me to,” she says, her words cutting deep into me.  Because I think on some level, I knew.  “He wanted to die by the blade... not the agony he was facing.”
“I’m not the one you need to answer to for what you did,” I say stonily.  “But you’re coming with me right now, to answer a whole lot of other questions.”
Her muzzle splits into a crooked grin.  “A threat?  You’ve gotten bold, jackal.  Do you think you could take me if I didn’t allow it?”
“Probably not,” I admit.  “But I doubt you’d still be here if you thought you could flee through the desert on your own.  You came with those men, didn’t you?  And their supplies and horses, I’d wager.  Which I guarantee you, the lionesses will find before you can get to them.”
Her grin doesn’t disappear, but it levels out somewhat, as understanding passes between the two of us.  “Very good, jackal,” she admits.
“It’s Kadar,” I say firmly.  
“Kadar,” she nods.  “I did not come here to fight you.  But I’ll also not be butchered, so do not give me reason to defend myself.”
“You’re severely outnumbered,” I point out.
“Do you want to find out how many of you I could take down before I’m overwhelmed?”
“No,” I sigh.  “But it’s going to be hard to convince him not to want you dead.”

“We all would have gotten out alive if it weren’t for her!”  Ahsan screams, the ferocity in his words and the growl in his voice reminding me of that night, of the creature he briefly became.  I’m honestly scared he might attack her, so I put myself between the two of them, wary of her promise about defending herself.  None of us have been able to separate her from her weapon yet, and I’ve warned quite a few of the lionesses against trying.
“The Guard Master himself asked me to end his life,” she says calmly.  “He was suffering.  I took several oaths in my service to Anala, and one of them was to give mercy to the mortally wounded.”
“He could have survived!”  he cries, shaking his head vehemently.
“Ahsan...” I sigh, reaching out for his shoulder.
He throws off my hand.  “She’s not a healer, none of us are!”  
There have been tears in his eyes since she arrived in the oasis.  I know where his mind is, and it isn’t here in the present.  “We could have tried!”  His voice goes weak on the last word, and he drags a breath through his wet nose, squeezing his eyes shut. 
I’m less concerned now that he’ll get violent, so I try again to touch him.  This time I’m not rebuked.  He allows me in close and seems to wilt, slumping against my shoulder and pushing his muzzle into my collarbone.  I tug him in against my chest, heedless of the injury to my ribs.  He notices it once he’s against me though, when some of my blood rubs off on his chest fur.
His eyes widen and he pulls back quickly, looking down at the wound.  “Kadar,” he swallows back a sob, “wh-“
“I’m fine,” I insist.  “It’s not deep.”
“That actually looks fairly serious,” the Priestess speaks up. 
“I’m fine,” I reiterate in a growl. 
“You need to be careful with deeper punctures,” she argues, tipping her ears back.  “It could become infected.”
“I don’t need your advice,” I snap, still holding Ahsan close to me.  He was just starting to calm down.
“Maybe you should listen to the woman, Kadar,” Lavanya speaks up, from where she’s crouching beside Dela and two of the other injured lionesses.  We’ve cleared out the village square save the warriors and a few of the essential people, like the medicine woman.  Dela doesn’t want our ‘prisoner’ anywhere near the non-combatants and children.  “Seems like she might know a bit more about swordplay than you do,” she says with an arched eyebrow.
“Which begs the question why we’re not killing her where she stands,” Raja hisses, voicing his opinion about murdering Anala for about the fifth time since we brought her in.  He sustained a pretty nasty gash mark across his chest, taking on the few mercenaries who’d been trying to sneak in the back, and I have a suspicion he’s not as good at handling pain as I am, because he’s been loud about it.
“All of you, quiet yourselves a moment,” Dela speaks up, her voice frail with pain.  Despite that, everyone falls silent as she slowly shifts up from where she’s reclining on a straw mat.  She’s bandaged and the medicine woman’s already seen to her, but her injury is major.  She could lose the use of her arm if it doesn’t heal properly.  
She manages to sit upright, but that’s all for now.  It’s enough for her to level her gold-eyed gaze at Anala, though.
“I was on the ground for most of that fight,” she says regrettably.  “But my huntresses tell me that this woman is the only reason we triumphed against those foreigners.  It is certain at least that you turned the tide for us.  Why?”
“Personal reasons,” Anala replies, flatly.  “I did not come here to spare you or your people.  It was simply more efficient to fight beside you.  There were too many of them for me to take alone.”
“She serves the clan that organized this raid,” I say, because I feel it bears saying.  
“Served,” she corrects me with a glare.
“Regardless,” I say.  “That means you traveled out here with them.  You knew what their orders were.  We lost a lot of lives out there because we didn’t know about that bluff with the manacled servants they forced out into the field ahead of them.”
“Those were fodder the foreigners picked up from one of the gladiator camps in the scrub lands,” she says derisively.  “They were actually free, once they bought them... they chose to sign on with the mercenaries for a chance at coin.  The Amurescans put together legions of them sometimes, promising freedom and pay for service to the merc outfit.”
“They sent them out there as a decoy, then fired on them,” I say.  “A plan I’m sure they weren’t informed of.”
“I take it you haven’t met many Amur,” Anala says dryly.  “The whole of their people could be summed up with the words ‘false promises’.”
“You’re avoiding the point,” I press.  “If you knew what they were planning, you could have warned us.  You could have attacked them sooner.  Something.”
“First off, I did not know their plan,” she states.  “I split from the raiding party two days ago and took up position in the grasslands.”
Ahsan gives me a look.  I reach over and stroke his mane, whispering, “I’ll never doubt your nose again.”  
“I needed to make sure you were the ones from the plantation,” she continues.  “Although when I discovered that brothel once housed the Guard Master’s kin, I knew it was likely you were the ones who attacked it.  Also, Lord Sachsen’s source had a good description of the jackal.”
“Lord Sachsen?”  Ahsan jolts at the mention of the man’s name.  I vaguely remember it from somewhere, but it’s hard to put my finger on exactly where.
“He is determined to find you all,” she says, her eyes narrowing.  “As the Sura Clan’s Spymaster, it’s his duty.  You wreaked havoc on their stronghold plantation, that’s extremely embarrassing.  If he doesn’t get things cleaned up soon, the other clans will think the Sura weak.  But his fervor goes beyond that.  I think he has a personal interest in one of you.”
“This is my fault,” Ahsan slumps beside me, “oh gods...”
My memory jogs, finally.  “Oh, hell,” I sigh.  “Was he the asshole I punched in the garden?”
Ahsan nods, mutely.
“The one who wanted to buy you?”  My hackles raise at the mere memory.  I hated the idea before, but given the changes between he and I over the last month, it’s especially sickening for me to think about it now.
“I’m not even certain if he wants you re-captured or dead,” Anala says.  “His orders to us were to bring you in alive if we could.  I think he’s under a lot of pressure from the clan, in addition to whatever his personal grievance with you is.  He’s doing what he does best – putting money towards handling a problem.  He hired the mercenaries because he couldn’t get together enough of the remaining clan hunters fast enough.  I knew joining the raiding party was the only way I’d find my way to you.”  She gives a fanged smile at that.  “And I knew you would fight like demons, as you did on the plantation.  I was not disappointed.”
“Why are you here?”  Ahsan asks again, in a more demanding tone.
“You’ve become the center of a maelstrom,” the Priestess replies, still vaguely smiling.  “I joined the Sura clan’s ranks because they are a large, powerful clan, with many enemies.  But I went years there without seeing serious combat... until you all attacked the manor.  Were it not for the Matron’s cowardly interference, I would have enjoyed one of the most difficult battles of my short life.  I may have even lost.”
The intensity and the... excitement... with which she makes that statement makes me feel extremely uncomfortable, like when you’ve suddenly realized the person you’re talking to isn’t entirely right in the head.
“She stole that from me,” she says, her good humor dropping all at once.  “I would have sought vengeance, but you butchered her before I had the chance.”  She doesn’t sound the least bit upset when she says that, just vaguely disappointed.  “So I have decided the cowardice and the disrespect they’ve shown Anala must be repaid by the clan as a whole.”
More than a few ears go up at her statement, including Ahsan’s.  Raja is the one to speak up first, though.  “Wait, you...” he leans forward from where he’s sitting, “...you’re going to take down the entire clan?”
“I’m no fool,” she says, “and I’m no goddess.  I am but one of her arms.  Anala gives me strength, but she also gave me a mind.  I know I cannot do it alone.”
“You’re insane,” I state, flatly.  “The plantation was one stronghold.  They must have dozens, spread across the desert.  Not to mention other clans they’re allied with.  We have enough trouble with them, without intentionally antagonizing them further.”
“They’ll never stop coming after you,” she says darkly.  “I saw the way you fought at the manor.  You’re inexperienced, but focused and cunning,” she says to me, then looks to Ahsan and flashes her canines.  “And you are fierce.  You fight like a feral, like the children of Bahadur.  You’ve not realized your potential, and you never will if they hunt you down and silence your storm now.  I want to see you rage.  I want to help you fight them.  I want the battle I was denied!”
“I want you all to leave.”
The words are softly-spoken, but firm, and come from Dela Eden.  All heads turn towards her.  She sighs softly, pain in her every feature.  “I am sorry, Kadar.  Ahsan, Raja... you as well, little Lavanya.”  She looks to the lioness, whose ears tip back.  “I almost never reject those in need, but... this goes beyond angry husbands and clan hunters.  It is more than we can handle.  Today made that abundantly clear.”
“I understand,” I tell her softly.  “You’ve protected us long enough.”
“If it were merely my hunters and I whose lives are at stake...” she trails off.  “But, I must think of the others here.  I lost nearly half of my Pride today,” her voice is tinged with sadness.  They’re still bringing in all the bodies from the grassland.  “We have done all we can for you.  We fought, many fell, and we made a stand.  But I cannot put my people at the center of your maelstrom.  I urge you to continue your fight... but take it far away from here.”
The clearing falls silent.  I can tell by the look in her eyes that she came to this decision with a lot of difficulty.  Knowing how she feels about fighting back against tyranny, I’m sure she feels terrible that she’s unable to do more for us.  But the people here need their defenders.  They don’t need a war.
“If we can just take a few rations,” I ask, “we’ll be gone by morning.”
She nods.  “Of course.”
I look to Anala.  “And you can... join us, if you really wish to.  Strictly because I want to be certain you leave here.  I don’t think we owe each other anything at this point.  Let’s part on neutral terms, while we’re still all alive to do so.”
“I know which stronghold they’ve hidden him away in,” Anala says, lifting her muzzle and sweeping her eyes across us.
I pause, and feel Ahsan stiffen from beside me, and Raja stir from my left.  I feel a wave of bad nostalgia wash over me, the memories from the plantation fresh enough to chill me, even now.  Still, I ask, “Who?”
“The Sura Clan’s Liberator,” she says.  “He is who you were looking for in the manor, wasn’t he?”
She’s partially right, but I don’t want to tell her that.  Unfortunately, Raja has no stopper on his mouth.  “Where the hell is he?!”  he demands, standing up and bristling.
She puts up a hand.  “Before you try to beat it out of me, consider what you’d be losing.”
“I’m not frightened of you,” Raja sneers.
“An ally, fool,” she replies evenly.  “Is your rage more important to you than your freedom?  Ask yourself: what is it you want most in the world right now?  How hard would you be willing to fight for it?  Do you really want to give up on your only chance?”
“You don’t care about our freedom,” Ahsan says.  “You’re just a fanatic.”
Her eyes find mine at that, and bore into me.  “What about you, Jackal?”  she asks.  “What is most important to you?  What do you wish to do with your life now that it is yours to direct?”
My breath hitches, and I know the answer at once.
“I want to find my son,” I say.  “And if he’s been sold into this life... I want to cut the collar from his neck.  No matter what it takes.”