Warnings - A Ship is Seen - Battle Alignment - Battle

  A horn blew.

  The sound came from a karst peak where outer sentinels stood constant watch. A neighboring peak answered; its call repeated the first. Then a third sentinel took up the warning. Soon there was a ring of sound. Horns near, rising. Ones far, collapsing on the ear. The horn blasts ricocheted between the jagged and massive cliffs that rose inside the bay. Echos poured into water-carved grottos. They fanned across the bay’s top, carried by wind and over waves to cross a sprawled village floating in the bay’s center.

  The village stirred in the agitation of sound. Broad, deeply built drums with hides pulled taut over the edges struck in the village common. Metal swords with scrimshaw grips had been gathered and rattled percussive on the wood planks that were the village streets. A melody of feet ran over the rope laced walkways anchored to the bay floor. Commands came: throw off the leather coverings; unrope the outrigger moorings; bring tourniquets; bring tinctures.

  The conch horns tightened their pattern. A handful of men standing along the dock halted to listen. Eyes closed, ears above the tumult, they counted the blasts. Long ones cut with short, rapid yowls. A man yelled out the selfsame message converted to words: “Nearly one hundred boats approach. West. Off land. War footing. Wind comes off land. Blood day.”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The conchs repeated the final long, rushing note.

  Troops of men, their eyes lusty, paused their preparation to arrange a cheer, “Blood day,” the men yelled, “Blood day.” Each man lowered his head again in eager and grim satisfaction of what was to come. Women painted the mens’ faces with carmine and their bodies with black polish embellished with white dots. Some of the painted men ceased to resemble the humble avatars of themselves. They bit the air and made extravagant contortions with their face. They screamed at those unready and shook their boats.

  Standing on the dock, a coxswain named Ta’maal took attendance. Eight places in his boat. Six bodies. In the dizzying heat and disorder he was unsure of his own count. He stepped down the rough line his boat mates made. They stood at attention, awaiting the painting of their bodies and the order to board and disembark. Ta’maal touched the shoulders of each, reciting the count to himself. Still six.

  “Who are we missing?”

  “It is Pai and Ku’mae!” Someone yelled.

  The boys chattered. Ta’maal sensed anxiety to it, which he knew was his role to curb.

  “They are coming. It is their duty, and no one has a keener sense of it than Pai and Ku’mae. Stop your chattering.”

  As he said this, Ta’maal, smaller than all the boys but no less young, worried. None of the men running to their hulls had seen them. He turned towards the sea, aiming to find the cut through the cliffs that he knew was the clearest path to open water. Ta’maal found it and peered through the channel. He hoped to see the speck of his friends coming into view and paddling hard. Instead, the view was of the obscuring heights of limestone cliffs girding the many bay entrances, the day’s opulent and wasteful daylight, and a haze that diffused the horizon’s sharp edge. Ta’maal saw no sign of them.

  “Where are they?” He asked himself, “It is their duty.”