Chapter Fourteen: Makani
He was going mad. Makani had seen it before; anyone who had spent time at sea knew the signs. Makani knew them even better than most. She could trace their scars on her own mind. As hard as her life had been from the moment she had been taken by the nationals, it wasn’t until her years of isolation that she felt her mind beginning to crack. She saw the marks on Anhchoi, the spiderwebbing cracks across his sanity. She had repaired her own—though there were moments deep in the night when she was alone with her heart that she wasn’t so sure. Anhchoi showed no signs he recognized the damage, or cared for anything beyond his prize.
Makani had seen it first, but now it was being whispered in every corner of the crew. Mutiny would be the inevitable result. A warchief led through the consent of his crew. The instant it was lost, that consent was found again in the bronze edges of weapons.
Makani knew this. Anhchoi knew this. But Anhchoi could see nothing beyond the idol. Skyborn, he called it, as though the label mattered even a little bit. Maybe it was a relic of an older civilization, maybe not. By any practical measure, it was merely a hunk of pretty metal. It couldn’t be for anything.
And yet, in some ways, it already was. When Anhchoi initially returned, he’d ordered the hanging cradle constructed, and that was where the object had resided since it had been lugged ashore and put in place. Then came the stone that Anhchoi used as a seat, positioned right in front, under the idol’s imperious amethyst gaze. The object gave the impression of an aerial predator swooping down on Anhchoi, prey curiously unconcerned or even unaware of the danger he was in. Sometimes, though, the warchief crawled up and over the scaffolding and onto the object itself, inspecting every inch as though it would have more answers than the ones he had already decided upon.
Then, other items began to join the lava rock around the object. First, a bronze-tipped spear, its butt-end planted in the ground. Then another. Then a spire of lava rock it would have taken three or four men to move. Then necklaces of shells and bronze started to appear on these. Then more spires and spears. Then a human skull, freshly bleached from the sun. More and more of these decorations went up when Makani realized what was happening: she was seeing the birth of a church. Organically, rising up around this thing. This object. This useless, glittering statuary.
Makani had never had much use for the religions of the nations. Each had their own, all focused around the skyborn. Each one revering a different figure, or different star. She’d never paid much attention. Her master, Anhchoi, certainly never had. He’d believed, but not enough to make more than the cursory observances. It didn’t matter to Makani, as the gods she worshiped were demonstrably real, and though the tribes of her birth dealt with them foolishly, they at least acknowledged the reality. Her faith was the true one, sharpened and honed to a razor point. Let one of these new worshipers raise a squall with the power of the skyborn. They couldn’t.
Makani couldn’t explain the object, but she didn’t have to. It didn’t require one. It wasn’t a weapon, and it wasn’t going to save them.
Which was really the problem. Makani walked past the assembling church to inspect the fortifications. They were more than any nation had ever erected on one of these tribal islands. They were also woefully inadequate. When the tribals arrived in force, their warriors would form a massive wall in front of the ma’hanu as the priest-witches used the sea itself to tear the warjunk, fortifications, and sailors to pieces. Even she could only do so much against a concentrated force of tribals.
A wooden wall now stretched across the landward side of the village, bisecting three orchards and a section of jungle that had been pushing close to several buildings. A few houses remained on the other side of the wall, forgotten and unneeded. No one would ever be living in those places again; it would be the slave pens until they were back in civilization. Then to new owners. Never again would the people of this place have to live in their rude huts.
The wall was the height of two tribals, stretched end to end, though this varied widely between posts. , Makani thought wryly. They had been formed from palm trees, harvested in clear-cut sections of jungle. Now these places on the island looked like raw wounds, baking under a punishing sun, devoid of all life. The tops of the posts had been sharpened to points, the meat of the trees pale and flaky.
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Three towers stood roughly equidistantly on the walls, each manned by two slingers. A roof of thatch kept the weather off of them, and when crouched below the wooden palisades, they’d be impossible to hit from below.
A single gate opened into the interior of the island. Makani had argued against it. Why have one at all, when it could only be used by the enemy to attack via land? If the tribals were smart, they could land on the far side of the island, where the few lookouts would take longer to register their presence. The tribals could offload as many warriors as they liked. The bosun had argued that the men would need the supplementary food from the island’s interior. A foolish, destructive argument. The sea provided as much as anyone would ever need. The land was luxury, nothing more.
They had taken the issue to Anhchoi. He’d ordered the gate build distractedly, his eyes leaving the object only for moments at a time. “The tribals are mariners. They’d never attack by land.”
Sound reasoning, and she hated going against her warchief, even in her mind, she didn’t quite believe it. The gate was a weakness, an invitation to attack. Even for the group of men she’d assigned to guard it. They could be better positioned elsewhere.
A pair of catapults, offloaded from the and placed on raised platforms, helped cover the mouth of the bay—the probable location of the tribal attack. Stacks of ammunition waited, lined by each one: saucer-shaped pots filled with sea fire. Such an arrangement would be a disaster with an inexperienced crew, but Makani trusted her men not to break them.
Newly planted pilings framed the bay, forming a funnel attackers would have to use. In time, those would grow barnacles and weeds, reclaimed by the ocean as was everything that touched it. She was sometimes surprised this very basic fact seemed to escape everyone save her. To the ocean belonged everything. Even the gods.
The warjunk waited at the mouth of the bay with the stillness of a lalani just before a killing lunge. Its skiffs were deployed around it, presently being used as fishing boats to help feed the men, but easily turned to their primary duty of landing, fighting, taking.
The men were in high spirits, laughing and drinking, occasionally making sport of one of the captives. Makani couldn’t share their joviality. They thought they were invincible. They had forgotten one thing: a warjunk wasn’t built to defend a place. There was a reason the battle at Zhao Bay had taken place in the water rather than up against the walls of the city itself. Warjunks were built to lay siege to things and in ship-to-ship battles, warjunks treated each other as villages or cities to be burned or taken.
The tribals had nothing on the water worth laying siege to. Even their greatest vessels, used to travel between islands, were nothing on the scale of a warjunk. Their largest vessels, they didn’t use to transport warriors or ma’hanu, but wasted them on spouses, children, the aged. Those would not be arriving at Mele. They would arrive in tiny boats carrying five people at most. Destroy one and there were a hundred more. Even the men and women aboard simply dove into the waves and found a new vessel. Nothing lasting, nothing powerful, nothing worth taking.
Warjunks defeated the tribals by surprising them, bottling the hordes of tiny boats into the bay and setting fire to everything possible. Then the boarding parties cleaned up any lingering resistance.
The coming battle—and there would be one—would not look like that.
A fleet, composed of as many tribes as heard the call, would sweep in on the bay side. It would be their turn to box the warjunk into the bay. Warriors would attack the sailors, but the real danger would be the ma’hanu. They would call the waves to eat the A warjunk at the bottom of a bay wasn’t a warjunk at all. It was the beginning of a reef. Something else the ocean had claimed.
Anhchoi seemed to have no real care for this. He had fought tribals on countless occasions. Any mariner had. He knew how they worked. Sack their villages, take their people, but flee before the reprisal came. Even if the warjunk defeated a counterattack through some miracle, it was always at too great a cost. They had what they needed: slaves, food, and even this foolish idol. All of it could be taken back. Song-Lao would welcome them.
But Anhchoi was caught in his obsession with the skyborn object. The formerly-occupied island had become a new home. They were going to defend it. Wait for the others to come. They’d dispatched kalao only a week ago, not long enough to get far. Makani didn’t imagine it would matter. If the kalao arrived at all, the other warchiefs would probably just laugh at Anhchoi.Their holds would be full of slaves, and they would be finding new homes in the nations. The name of Chuichan forgotten.
Anhchoi was sentimental. He had believed in Chuichan. Now he believed in this so-called skyborn relic. It wouldn’t save them.
Makani stopped at the shore, turned and looked back up the beach at her warchief. He was caressing the underside of his idol, his face in rapt wonder. Several of the men stood a respectful distance away, watching with ill-concealed amazement.
Makani, surrounded by her crew, was alone. A single island emerging from a vast and stormy sea. A sea that wanted nothing more than to devour her inch by inch.