Skye Stone fell into shadow and a brisk evening breeze cooled the heated, rock-lined paths and the surrounding buildings. Only a few scattered wet patches darkened the ground where the remnants of blood and other fluids required an extra scrubbing session to remove them from the porous stone. The Spartan home glowed with the soft light from the shifting flames of a fire in the hearth, and shadows danced on the face of the common room’s stone and plaster. Batal rounded up the oil lamps and carried them into the kitchen to make sure there was plenty of light for stitching wounds and making plans. His mother dropped the last of the needles and blades into the dish. She grabbed a copper flask off the counter, took a drink, then poured the clear spirit over the tools to ensure they were sterilized.
“Batal, please light the lamps and place them around the chair.”
He cleared his throat. “Yes, Mother,” then came out in a forced baritone that squeaked at the end, prompting a chuckle from his mother. “Why are you laughing?”
“Don’t be so sensitive. You have always feared the business end of a needle. Did you rinse out your wound?” she asked as she dried her hands, reached for the copper tray laden with shiny blades, needles, and silky thread, and walked to her son.
“Yes, the wound is clean. I am lucky to be alive.” Even Batal couldn’t hold back his nervous laughter at that. “More of a deep scratch, really.”
She held the needle with its dangling thread shinning in the light. “Did you drink the cup I gave you?”
“I did. It burns on the way down, and I feel funny. My brain is slow. I now see how it cleans your tools and needles and feeds fire, but why in the gods would the Guardians drink it?” The last few words slurred into one big one.
“You are ready, my son, but this will hurt.” Amira pinched the skin together, and the seeping wound ran clear.
Batal grunted during the first stitch but soon it fell into a painful, but peaceful rhythm, stitch after stitch. “They terrified me, Mother. I killed…‘men’ today. I almost soiled myself—felt I would run if I had a place to go. But the wall would not allow it.” He sniffed. “So afraid for you, me, and Danu. I know they are men, but not as I imagined from Father’s and Uncle Drago’s stories. There was something missing, something wrong with them.”
His mother stitched, tied off the thread, and applied a cloth damp with spirits. Batal shuttered, his teeth grinding, and lapsed into relief.
“I cried the first time I reached the top,” she replied. “My first three arrows missed the heads climbing the ladders below my feet.”
Batal leaned forward, swayed, and stared at his mother. “You fought on top of the wall?”
“I did. It was a third its current height in those days, smaller waves, less stone masons with apprentices, but I am a Spartan, I am of Skye Stone. We all fight when our time comes.” Her work finished, she pulled up a chair next to her drunken son and sat, admiring the clean, tight red line on his arm. “You would not be the first to shit themselves in battle.”
“No, no, no. I said I almost soiled myself. It was only the potential of pissing my pants, but I kept the spring at bay.” Batal leaned back and rested his head against the stone behind him, a trail of slobber running from the corner of his mouth.
“Next time, I will only give you half a cup.” Her striking smile returned, the wrinkles on her face and scalp hiding the lesions in their depths. “I will share one story of great young warriors that may help. A story that takes place when they were less than twenty and new to death, before they proved their valor and skill on the wall and in the streets of Skye Stone.”
“This is a tale I must hear, Mother. Of my father, I hope!” Batal adjusted his chair, leaned forward, and ran his arm across his drooling mouth.
She lowered the wicks on the oil lamps until only one gave light. The lone lamp and the fireplace lit her face but cast the rest of the dwelling in darkness. “The Horde came in vast numbers after a tsunami broke against our wall, just as they did today. It was as if they rode the wave itself, arriving the moment it parted the northern point. There was no time to prepare, and no time to amass the Guardians at the point of attack. The Horde scaled the wall using large crossbows that fired hooks and rope before we could respond, taking control of a piece of the wall and raining bolts down on the people below.”
Batal rubbed his hands together. “How of I never heard this tale? The Horde on the wall! What happened—”
“In time…in time,” his mother admonished. “Three of Skye Stone’s youth donned their swords and bows and jumped onto the ‘screamers’—an apt name, don’t you think, based on your reaction to riding one today?—flying up the wall toward the handful of the enemy still alive. They were shielded from the Guardians on each side by their dwindling forces, but they continued to fire their crossbows.”
“Father? One was Father! It had to be!” Batal belted.
“One was your father.” His mother took a deep breath. “Yes, one was your father. The three reached the top and gutted the Hordes’ warriors moments before the Guardians broke through from each side and finished the job.”
Batal raised his arms in the air. “Spartans!”
She waved, urging her son to calm himself. “OK, Batal, let me finish. The three were of our family—Spartans. The Guardians surrounded them, chanting the young warriors’ names until laughter broke out among them.”
“Why laugh at the fearless men who killed the Horde warriors? Why?!” Batal cried, still not in control of his volume or balance.
“Because”—Uncle Drago’s deep voice boomed from the shadows of the doorway—“first off, one of the three is the woman who mends your wounds and tells you stories she shouldn’t. Second, they laughed because I had shit and pissed myself on the screamer halfway up the wall and continued to do so while I fought the Horde on top.”
Batal’s mother snorted between cackles, slapping her knees and throwing her head back. “Your uncle smelled far worse than any of the Horde ever could.”
“It was all part of a brilliant and cunning defense!” Drago walked in with a handful of rolled-up charts and papers and set them on the table next to his kin. “And it worked, by the gods! It worked!” He was now laughing harder than his sister.
Batal cried, tears streaming down his face, laughing so hard his recently stitched wound throbbed. “I think I may piss myself.” He stood and swallowed hard. “Or throw up. It is time for me to join Danu and sleep like the dead.”
“Yes, time for you to sleep, my nephew, and forget about this terrible nightmare that includes your uncle and his stained pants. You did well today, and I am proud of you.”
“We all are,” his Mother added. “Sleep well.”
Batal paused in the hallway. “Mother?”
“Yes?”
“You were in your youth when you brought me into Skye Stone.” He turned to face her. “Was I small? And if I was, who watched after me during this time? How—”
“On her back,” Drago stated. “Wrapped in the armor of a carrier. Today was the second time you rode the screamers to the top of the wall.”
Batal used the wall for support. “You fought the Horde with a baby on your back?”
His mother nodded. “There were only a few hundred of us then. We could not leave our children behind unattended, and the deerhounds were far less numerous than today and already with the Guardians. So yes, we fought with our children on our backs, mothers and fathers. You were quiet. You did not stir.” She stood. “You are a Spartan.”
Batal stared, taking in the small woman in front of him who continued to astound with newly told feats of bravery. “I love you, Mother.” He then belched and groaned. “Proud to be your son.” Liquid bubbled with the last word. Batal then swayed down the hallway, disappearing into the shadows.
Drago unrolled the charts and rested a small piece of iron on each end. “You have done well, Sister. He is a good young man. Much like his father, but there is a softness in him.”
“That softness you speak of is part of his strength,” Amira replied. “It’s why he survived the wave that killed everyone else outside the wall and why he found a deerhound that saved my life today. So yes, Brother, he has the warrior genes of his father and uncle”—she fixed Drago with a look of pride—“and his mother. He also has empathy. He has exactly what makes this”—she pointed toward the roof and made a circular gesture—“community of ours worth fighting for. Our only hope is for the islands to come together beyond trade, but as one people willing to fight for one another or we are all lost. The Northern Horde is growing in numbers, and based on today, their warcraft is surpassing our own—”
“You can’t tell me these mindless, half-rotting beasts are smarter than we are. They are lucky to live beyond thirty, and we have yet to see or find a single female among them. They create nothing and only seek to destroy. How can their numbers grow while living as wild animals without mothers?” Drago dropped to a stool at the table.
“And yet today we fought the Horde as they fell from the sky to land within our walls. You burned their ships and still they launched their warriors far above the Guardians. They floated into our boroughs, protected by armored wooden cocoons, killing as they descended. How many fell of our five hundred?” Amira touched Drago’s hand.
“At least fifty.” His head drooped. “By the next sun, maybe sixty. Most were townsfolk—strong fighters, of course, but their first duties were as carpenters, farmers...”
She nodded. “Then over ten percent of Skye Stone’s population. If the Horde did not make these new ships, as well as the shells they sprang from and the cloth that slowed their fall from the sky, someone or something did. We need to unite the islands, and we need the Akiro Clan.”
Drago placed his face in his hands.
“What is it, Brother?” Amira asked.
“The Horde. They targeted women with child,” he whispered. “They knew exactly where to find them. We found maps of the boroughs on the dead Horde-men. Maps for the purpose of culling our next generation.” Drago looked up. “We have spies among us.”
A knock sounded on the front door.
Amira’s head rocked back and forth. “The elders are here. We have much to discuss, much to plan and little time to do it.”
Drago moved to the front door while Amira lit the lamps and filled a large jug of wine.
He reached for the handle. “Spies come in all forms,” he reminded, then opened the door.