The Grace of Kings (41 page)

Dafiro Miro yawned. The road out of Zudi was still cold in the predawn darkness. He looked up at the stars and sighed.

He had no idea where they were going, only that it promised to be days of quick marching and nights spent on hard ground. The great lords never told the foot soldiers what was happening, and Dafiro was used to being sent hither and thither with no explanation. But Dafiro noticed that no messengers had been dispatched to Çaruza and King Thufi—he had made sure to befriend the couriers, knowing that they were like the antennae on an insect, the first to know anything worth knowing. Curious. Whatever Duke Garu had planned, it was to be a secret from King Thufi and General Zyndu and everyone else.

Dosa was left in charge of Zudi while all of Duke Garu's advisers came along. This would be important, that was clear.

His life was about being fed, being paid, and being bored for long stretches, interspersed with brief flashes of terror and extraordinary exertion. War was not good for anyone except those in charge.

Still, if one had to be a soldier, Duke Garu was a good lord to follow. He really seemed to make it a point not to risk his men's lives unnecessarily, and Dafiro thought this made him a better man than General Zyndu. Rat was obsessed with Zyndu's arrogant bravery and his deeds of valor, but Dafiro could see that Zyndu didn't really care about death. He wasn't afraid of anything, and that was not a virtue, as far as Dafiro was concerned.

The five hundred foot soldiers marched along the road, disguised as a merchant caravan. Always, they headed southwest. Duke Garu rode at their head on a horse, and only the gods knew where they were going.

They arrived at the port city of Canfin. Duke Garu's new adviser, the mysterious Luan Zya, went to the docks alone while the company made camp just outside the city.

Dafiro gazed at the city walls and reflected on the strange path of his life. More than a year ago, he and his brother were headed here to board a ship bound for Pan, where they had expected whips and chains and endless toil to build Emperor Mapidéré's Mausoleum. But they never made it to Canfin because their captains, Huno Krima and Zopa Shigin, changed their lives forever.

And here he was, finally. But where were they headed now?

The Imperial navy harassed ships up and down the Cocru coast, and there were few ships that dared running the blockade. But with enough money, people could be persuaded to attempt any kind of risk. Luan Zya showed the shipmasters at the docks a great deal of money.

Duke Garu's men boarded three merchant ships at night. Dafiro tried to go to sleep in the dark cargo hold. The soldiers were packed in very tightly, like dried fish or bundles of cloth, and the rocking of the ship over the waves made so many men dizzy that the smell of sickness was everywhere.

Once they were at sea, they could go up to the deck to take in fresh air in shifts. Dafiro tried to guess where they were headed by looking at the sun, the moon, and the stars. There was no land in sight, so they weren't hugging the coast. Were they headed for wild Écofi, where elephants roamed the sea of grass and much of the land was uninhabited? Was Duke Garu going to start a new settlement? Dafiro had never left the Big Island, and he wondered what he would find there.

But the sun always set to the right of the ship as they sailed ever southward.

“Land ho!”

Dafiro gazed at the dark trees on shore, the virgin forest that had never been cut down and turned into ships, houses, siege machines, and palaces.

They were at Tan Adü, the land of savage cannibals. Dafiro put his hand on the hilt of his sword. Why had Duke Garu taken them here? This was not a place for civilized men. Over the years, various Tiro states had made countless attempts to settle and subdue this island, attempts that had always failed.

The ships anchored in a shallow bay, and men were ferried ashore in small boats. Then the merchant ships pulled up their anchors, turned around, and sailed away, leaving Duke Garu and his company alone in the wild.

It was twilight, and Cogo Yelu and Mün Çakri directed the men to make camp right on the beach. Luan Zya went to the edge of the camp and took out a small hot-air lantern. He filled the hanging fuel pouch with dried grass, lit it, and launched it into the air. As the small orange flickering dot floated away into the dark sky, he followed it with his eyes until it disappeared among the stars.

Then he began to ululate, much as he had done on that long-ago day when he had tried to assassinate Emperor Mapidéré, and his cry, like the cry of a wolf, rode the winds to the dark interior of the forbidding woods.

Dafiro shivered.

In the morning, the camp was surrounded by hundreds of Adüan warriors. Their bowstrings taut and their spears raised over their shoulders, the bronze-skinned, blond men watched the Cocru soldiers impassively.

“Drop your weapons!” Luan Zya shouted at the tense soldiers. “Hold your hands up.”

The soldiers hesitated, but Duke Garu repeated the order. Dafiro reluctantly put down his sword and lifted his hands. He examined the hostile-looking Adüans around them. Their naked bodies and elaborate tattoos—even on their faces, which made reading their expressions difficult—frightened him. He remembered all the stories that he had heard about Tan Adü. He hadn't had breakfast yet—and he certainly didn't want to
become
breakfast.

The warriors parted their ranks to make a path, and an old fighter, who had so many tattoos that he seemed to be more ink than skin, walked through the forest of spears and arrows into the clearing.

He looked around at Duke Garu and his advisers and then at the individual soldiers. His eyes stopped when he saw Luan Zya. The ink lines on his face shifted and shimmered, and he showed his white teeth. With a start, Dafiro realized that he was smiling.

“Toru-noki, xindi shu'ulu akiia skulodoro, nomi nomi,”
he said.

“Nomi, nomi-uya, Kyzen-to,”
Luan Zya said. He was smiling too.

Then they both stepped forward, and the two put their foreheads together and grabbed each other around the shoulders.

While Chief Kyzen negotiated with Luan Zya and Kuni Garu, the men of Cocru and Tan Adü tried to get to know one another.

Mün Çakri invited one of the big Adüans, Domudin, to a wrestling bout. Everyone gathered around and placed small items on the ground as bets. It was a good match. Domudin outweighed Mün by at least forty pounds, but years of wrestling muddy pigs gave Mün an advantage in skill. After he finally pinned the bigger man to the ground and Domudin placed his hands palms up on the ground to indicate that he yielded, both sides cheered. Mün pulled Domudin up, and coconut husks filled with arrack were passed all around.

Dafiro won a sharkskin pouch that he admired and happily tied it to his belt. He felt bad for the man who lost it to him, though, and he handed two copper coins over. The man, whose name sounded like “Huluwen” to Dafiro, nodded and smiled back. Dafiro tried to get him to explain his tattoos, which the man proceeded to do by drawing on the ground.

Ah, it's all about women,
Dafiro thought as he puzzled over Hulu­wen's drawings. He took a stick and began to also draw a female figure on the ground, exaggerating the breasts and butt. The other men gathered around to appreciate Dafiro's artistry, and he basked in the Adüans' admiring looks.

For a bunch of cannibals, they aren't too bad.

It was dinnertime, and some of the Adüan women came to camp to prepare the meal. The Cocru soldiers were warned by Duke Garu to stay on their best behavior, and they gaped at the women, as tattooed as their men, without making any gesture or noise. Dafiro suddenly remembered his artwork and was relieved to find that Huluwen had already discreetly wiped all traces of it away. The two looked at each other and laughed.

There was baked wild taro. There were boars wrapped in banana leaves and roasted underground with heated stones. There were wild bird eggs and meat from sharks and whales. Little spice was used except sea salt, but the food was fresh and strange and very delicious. And everyone drank plenty of arrack.

Mün Çakri pulled Dafiro aside after dinner as the Adüans danced and some of the drunken Cocru soldiers joined them.

“Are you a good swimmer, lad?”

Dafiro nodded. Both he and Rat had spent many hours in the small river that flowed through the village of Kiesa, and they sometimes spent the idle months after harvest hiring themselves out on fishing boats along the Cocru coast. He knew his way in water.

“Good. Duke Garu is a landlubber, and so am I. I'll need you to stay close to the duke tomorrow and keep an eye on him.”

“Are we setting out to sea?”

Mün nodded, a happy twinkle in his eye. “After tomorrow, you are going to have some real stories to tell.”

“So you wish to overthrow this tyrant, the All-Chief of the Islands?” Luan Zya translated Chief Kyzen's question.

Kuni nodded.

“And you will become All-Chief in his place?”

Kuni smiled. “Probably not. The men of Dara love freedom, and we do not want one All-Chief to rule over us all. But we will probably have several Big Chiefs again, and I may end up as one of them.”