Honor, Dreams, and Oracles

Assassination!

Kas's instincts snapped him into battle readiness. His exceptional core strength kept his lower body steady as a bronze bell while his upper body twisted out of the stabbing attack.

His arm slid across the butcher's table, and he grabbed the axe the butcher used to chop bones.

He turned his head and saw that the assassin was a woman.

She gripped a butcher's knife stiffly in both hands. When her thrust missed, she froze for a moment, as if she had no idea what to do next.

Suddenly, she raised the knife high with both hands and brought it down toward Kas's neck in an utterly resolute slash.

The attack looked swift, but to Kas it was full of openings. He easily read the knife's trajectory and raised the axe blade to block her second, clumsy attempt.

"Who are you? I don't know you."

Usually, when someone tried to assassinate him, Kas would beat them half to death before asking questions. But there was something very strange about this woman.

He glanced around and saw the crowd gathered to watch, most of them standing with their arms crossed and watching indifferently. Not one of them seemed surprised.

It wasn't normal. Even though the Reshman People were barbarians with plenty of savage, backward customs, attacking someone in the street was illegal in any society with order.

It meant that people's lives were constantly at risk. No one would want to live in such a chaotic place.

The woman's actions were strange, too. She showed signs of some combat training, but was only at the level of a tribeswoman who knew how to use a pitchfork and spear. Anyone who expected an assassin of her caliber to succeed had to be crazy.

The woman didn't answer Kas. She swung the butcher's knife wildly, slashing at his neck and head, but never broke through the axe's defenses.

"Hey, brother, what's going on? Who is she?"

Kas asked the butcher watching the commotion, but received no answer.

He turned and saw the tall man standing behind the shop. He seemed not to have noticed the commotion out front, and was completely absorbed in cleaning meat off his knife with a piece of linen.

In that instant, the woman somehow broke through the axe's defenses. Her butcher's knife grazed Kas's shoulder and sliced toward his chest.

Blood soaked through his robe—and his calm.

She really was trying to kill me!

Kas endured the pain from his shoulder to his chest and turned the axe around.

The blunt back of the axe struck the butcher's knife. The powerful blow left the woman unable to defend herself, and the weapon flew from her tightly clasped hands.

He had calmed down a little. Before the woman could crouch to retrieve the knife, he kicked it far away and growled in a low voice:

"Who are you?"

She still didn't answer. Suddenly, a commotion rose from the crowd as Kulan hurried over with the War Chief's attendants.

Kas thought it was over, but the woman's eyes hardened as she drew a long, slender dagger from her waist.

She wasn't aiming it at him. She was aiming it at herself...

Suicide was the most unacceptable thing among the Reshman People. It was considered a sign of weakness, and neither Vagha Palace in the sky nor the Lady of Death Canyon below would accept those who took their own lives.

Kas stared blankly as the woman plunged the dagger into her throat. There was no resentment or reluctance in her gray-brown eyes, only the relief of release.

Like a mother who had seen her nestling fall from the nest, she had chosen to break her own wings and follow her child to the land of the dead.

He couldn't believe it. He stepped forward and cradled the dying woman in his arms. Her pale face released a final, labored breath, and blood poured from her throat onto his bleeding wound.

He looked around and saw a smile of satisfied anticipation on every face. Even the hunting dogs, usually barking nonstop, now bowed their heads to show respect to the one who had taken her own life.

At last, Kas understood. This was an honor killing!

The woman in his arms was a blood relative of Xipel Blackheart. She had chosen to die in the same way, to accompany her kin, who was suffering eternal punishment atop Iron Peak Mountain.

He gazed at the light fading from the woman's eyes and murmured to himself:

"Foolish... This isn't revenge. You're just following the gods' will so your kin can rest in peace. But damn it, this is so foolish!"

His intense emotions sent his thoughts expanding in an instant, like the haze that came over him when he studied Sacred Number Theory. The "spirit" hidden in his heart floated into the sky, watching the Black Ember Tribe, frozen in that moment.

The woman died on a silent street. Countless eyes watched the sweet nectar well from her wound. Her bloodied dagger fell into the mud, and her soul sank with her blood into the earth, all the way to the Underworld.

With her final breath, she ordered her stubbornly beating heart to stop. Her damp lips moved with a gurgle, and a bubble rose from her throat, drifting amid the endless delusions that grew clearer as death drew near.

The tranquil street remained still. Not a single tear fell. The Blood-Ash Furnace continued to blaze, and morning dew slid down the mountain and over Blackheart's cheek. The dull, rhythmic clang of hammer against anvil kept pounding away at a soul that had long been dead.

The only ones able to move through frozen time were the children, symbols of the innocence that knew nothing of honor killings.

A boy with a rat-tail braid swung a goblin shinbone, pretending to be a valiant warrior. His face lit up with a sunny smile, and his cheerful laughter sounded like an angel guiding her toward the summit of Iron Peak Mountain, a place filled with pain and torment.

"Mom, look, Tina's so pretty. She looks like a red velvet doll."

[Plan: Honor, Dreams, and Oracles

Status: In progress

Inspiration: I know that among the Reshman People, many throw their lives away because they feel insulted. Many take their own lives after a delusional dream, and more than a few go mad after receiving an oracle.

I can't understand this meaningless, religious form of reciprocal vengeance. Her determination, their indifference, the gods' oracle...

But I need to know why. Is life really so ridiculous?]

The momentary stillness passed, and the world didn't stop turning just because an innocent person had died.

Kas gently laid the woman on the ground. His cold, still body was like a beast provoked into fury.

He suddenly turned and kicked over the butcher's table, sending its slabs of meat flying. Then he seized the greasy collar of the butcher, who was still cleaning his knives, and easily lifted the burly, two-hundred-pound man with one hand.

"The butcher's knife she had was the same kind as yours. You saw her take it and stab at my back, too. Why?"

"What do you mean? I don't know anything, sir."

The butcher held up his hands cautiously. His bewildered expression only made Kas angrier. Kas punched his coarse, sullen face, bringing his nose and mouth closer together.

Gripping the butcher by the collar, Kas growled without expression:

"You bastard knew she was carrying out an honor killing, but you still gave her that butcher's knife. You stood off to the side like you had nothing to do with it, watching me mistake her for an assassin.

If you—if all of you—"

Kas's eyes were cold, yet burned like flames as they swept over the crowd.

"If you'd said a word and told me this was an honor killing, she wouldn't have died!"

"But she was seeking death herself. It's our greatest honor! To offer ourselves to the gods."

At the sudden words from the crowd, Kas tossed the butcher aside, shoved through the throng, and dragged out the man who had spoken.

Facing that frightened face, he didn't let up his grimace. He clenched his fist.

"I can send you to the gods right now."

Kas punched the man in the face. Blood left a mottled mark across his knuckles.

"How young was she? Her clan, her husband, her family—and all of you—just watched her throw her life away?

If you have even a little conscience left, if you feel even the slightest pity for her..."

He punched the man in the face over and over, his anger never fading.

If the girl had begged for mercy at the last moment, or if the War Chief's attendants had taken her away, Kas wouldn't have been so shaken.

But she had chosen suicide... That meant this honor killing had been entirely the gods' will, with no personal grudge involved.

She had followed an oracle and tried to assassinate a warrior with her frail body. After failing, she had let go of all earthly attachments and gone alone to join her blood relative, together enduring eternal torment.

Her courage was stronger than any warrior's. But this... was too foolish!

Was the will of those damned gods, or the supposed fate of a dead man, really worth a life?

If I'd known about the honor killing, if I'd known how determined that girl was, I would have left the Black Ember Tribe at once...

But...

Kas kept punching the indifferent man in the face until his features were a bloody mess and teeth flew everywhere.

This wasn't just about him. It was about the strange, cold customs of the Reshman People, and all those bystanders who had never understood the value of life.

A hand gripped his arm, and Kulan's stern voice stopped Kas from continuing to beat the man.

"He's almost dead. He may be an outsider, but this is Black Ember Tribe territory. We won't allow people to be killed just like that.

If you pity Tina, you should go find her younger sister, Delin. Let's hope that girl isn't as stubborn and foolish as her sister."