Peter Brett - The Daylight War

‘You will not want that one,’ one of the drillmasters advised. ‘He is strong as a herd of camels, but he cannot hear the signal horns — or anything else for that matter.’

‘You were not asked,’ Abban said. ‘I remember this one. He was one of the first to answer the Deliverer’s call. What is his name?’

The drillmaster shrugged. ‘No one knows. We simply call him Earless.’

Abban made a few sharp gestures, and the giant left the line to stand with the other potentials.

There were over a thousand Kaji kha’Sharum in the capital. When the dama sang the curfew from the minarets, they had barely seen half of them. They culled from the potentials as they went, but still there were more than fifty men following them. Abban and Qeran took these into the pavilion, testing and interrogating them further until the group was narrowed to twenty, then ten, until at last they agreed upon four, including the deaf and mute giant.

Qeran argued against the giant. ‘A warrior who cannot hear the horns is a liability.’

‘In alagai’sharak , perhaps,’ Abban agreed, ‘but as the dama’ting have their tongueless eunuchs, I can make good use of a man who will never overhear anything he shouldn’t.’

They returned the next day after court, spending every moment until sundown inspecting, testing, questioning, and arguing until satisfied. Six times, Qeran threatened to quit if Abban overruled him on a particular man.

‘Go, then,’ Abban said over the seventh, a pit dog from Sandstone. He was a powerful brute, but his eyes were glassy with stupidity, and he could barely count his fingers. ‘I will not have idiot soldiers.’ The brute glared at Abban, but Earless towered behind him, arms crossed, and he thought better of speaking.

Qeran glared at him, but Abban glared right back. At last, the drillmaster shrugged. ‘Would that you had such steel when you were a boy, I could have made a man of you.’

Abban smiled and gave a slight bow. ‘It was always there, Drillmaster. Just not for battle.’

‘You have a good eye,’ Qeran offered grudgingly in the end, as he looked over his ten new recruits. ‘I can make warriors of these men.’

‘Good,’ Abban said. ‘Tomorrow we will go to the Majah khaffit’sharaj and begin again.’

It was another day to vet the Majah, a third for the Mehnding. It went more quickly after that, the tribes shrinking in size as they went down the line of pavilions in the training ground. The smallest was the Sharach with only three dozen full dal’Sharum and barely a hundred kha’Sharum .

‘We passed over hundreds of better men in the Kaji,’ Qeran noted after they had selected the best the Sharach had to offer. Like many of the older warriors, trained before Ahmann united the tribes, Qeran was fiercely loyal to his own and would prefer the majority of his recruits share his blood.

Abban nodded. ‘But the Sharach are masters of the alagai -catcher.’ Indeed, they had watched the Sharach warriors drilling with the weapons, long hollow spears with a hoop of woven steel jutting from the butt end to loop around the neck of a demon or man. A lever near the crosspiece could quickly widen or constrict the hoop. There were sharusahk forms to leverage the weapon, keeping control of the victim.

‘I can teach the weapon well enough,’ Qeran said.

‘Well enough is not good enough, Drillmaster,’ Abban said.

The drillmaster showed his teeth. ‘I taught the Deliverer himself to fight. That is not good enough?’

Abban was unimpressed. ‘You taught him much, but the dama taught him more, and it was blending the two that gave him true mastery. Ahmann studies the sharukin of all tribes now, and you will, too. You will teach these men, but you will also learn all they know. The Nanji spear and chain. The Krevakh ladder techniques. Everything. And if you are not up to the task, I will find one who is.’

‘I can learn the tricks of lesser tribes,’ Qeran growled.

‘Of course,’ Abban agreed. ‘And improve many of them, no doubt. I chose the greatest living drillmaster for a reason. You will make the least of these men more than a match for any kai’Sharum .’

Qeran seemed mollified by that. Sharum were such simple creatures. A bit of lash with a compliment at the end, and they were yours.

‘I cannot teach them the secrets of the dama that kai’Sharum learn,’ Qeran admitted.

Abban smiled. ‘Let me worry about that, Drillmaster.’

A wooden palisade had gone up around Abban’s compound by the time he and Qeran marched in the 120 kha’Sharum . The stakes were planted deeply and lashed tight to give no sign of what went on behind them, but they were carefully worn to look haphazard and weak. The wards along its length were strong, but painted with no artistry — nothing to draw attention to what might be going on behind.

It was, of course, an elaborate disguise. Once inside, Qeran gaped. Hundreds of chin slaves laboured to haul and mortar fine cut stone into the true wall — already waist-high — just inside the palisade. Others cleared rubble from the remains of the shoddy greenland homes that had previously populated the area. Great pavilions had been raised, some venting great plumes of smoke. The sounds of ringing metal, smashing stone, and shouting workers filled the compound.

‘You’re building a fortress,’ Qeran said.

‘A fortress from which we will arm and armour the forces of Sharak Ka,’ Abban said. ‘A fortress that must be protected, especially now, when it is weakest.’

For perhaps the first time since Abban had come upon him in a drunken stupor, Qeran smiled, his trained eyes dancing along the palisade and the foundation of the inner wall. ‘Leave that to me. Your kha’Sharum will be patrolling in shifts by nightfall.’

‘That will do for now, but it will not be enough,’ Abban said. ‘My agents have purchased many slaves from the auction block, and their labours have made them hard, but they are not warriors. You must train them as well.’

‘I have never been comfortable with Shar’Dama Ka’s decision to arm the chin ,’ Qeran said. ‘The Evejah tells us to disarm our enemies, not train them.’

‘Your comfort is irrelevant, Drillmaster,’ Abban said. ‘The Shar’Dama Ka has spoken. These are not enemies, they are slaves, and I do not mistreat them. They sleep in warmth with full bellies, many of them beside their own families, safe from predation.’

‘You are a fool to trust them,’ Qeran said.

Abban laughed in spite of himself, forced to stop walking and clutch his crutch for balance. He wiped a tear from his eye as he looked at Qeran, who scowled, unsure if he were the butt of the joke. ‘Trust?’ He chuckled again. ‘Drillmaster, I do not trust anyone.’

Qeran grunted at that, and they continued their tour. Abban led him to the armourer’s pavilion, where metal rang and the forges burned hot. Even with fanned vents along the walls, the air inside was stifling, thick with smoke, heat, and the steam of quenching troughs. Artisan stalls ran the length of the pavilion — forges of metal or glass, blacksmiths, grinders, woodworkers, fletchers, weavers, and warders.

Each stall was run by several women in the thick black robes of dal’ting , seemingly oblivious to the damp heat. Qeran, too, showed no sign of discomfort, though he had taken on the rhythmic breathing of a Sharum embracing pain.

Abban took a deep breath of the hot, foul air and let out a contented breath, as if tasting the finest tobacco from his hookah. It was the atmosphere of profit.

In the centre of the pavilion were neat, growing stacks of finished products: spears, shields, ladders, hooks and lines, alagai -catchers, as well as the smaller — though no less deadly — weapons Watchers concealed about their persons. Scorpion stingers by the gross, and the giant cart-driven bows to launch them.