Chapter Text
“You should add red around your eyes. It’d be fitting, what with how Hekarro made you my watcher.”
Kotallo paused in the act of sweeping white paint across his face. This was the only familiar part of applying paint, now that he had exchanged his Sky Clan pigments for Hekarro’s colors. Still, no matter how strange it felt to leave behind the bright heraldry of his home, it was nothing compared to seeing a Carja lurking behind him and not immediately attacking. He met Fashav’s eye in the polished reflection of his mirror for a bare moment before he rolled them. If he’d known that his Kulrut would’ve put him side-by-side with one of those sun-addled murderers, he’d have found a way out of Tekotteh’s plot. The lie in that thought dripped metalbite into his tone.
“Even if I wasn’t constrained to Hekarro’s colors, I’m no Desert Clan hothead.”
“You Tenakth and your color schemes.”
“You Carja and your schemes.”
Fashav snorted and held up his hands in surrender. “Can’t say I’m colored surprised that Hekarro told you to keep an eye—or both—on me during this... Embassy, is it?”
“Your clan’s words, not mine. And you aren’t colored at all. Haven’t earned the right yet.”
He could see Fashav squirm out of the corner of his eye, and had to paint the same place twice to fill the crease his self-satisfied grin left in his cheek. Ever since he’d ended up bunking with the slaver, he’d taken to annoying him at any possible opportunity.
“But I’ve apparently earned the right to be one of Hekarro’s hands in the tribe, and to go to this meeting between your tribe and mi—the Carja.”
Kotallo huffed and shrugged a shoulder. When he’d seen the Carja jump into the Arena across from him, he’d been sure that Hekarro had allowed the outlander into the Kulrut only to prove that no non-Tenakth could survive the trial. That thought, and his general perception of the pale sun-addled Easterner, had changed abruptly when he saw the Carja’s blade sunk into the same Tremmortusk he’d shot through the eye. He’d blamed his direct impertinence on his leftover bitterness towards Tekotteh when he’d questioned Hekarro on his decision-making skills regarding their Carja prisoner-turned-fucking- marshal.
“He is a marshal for the same reason all of you are—to achieve the Vision of the Ten. To unite the tribe against machines. Marshal Fashav gives us the opportunity to expand that unity from ‘tribe’ to ‘tribes.’”
“You want unity with the Carja? Chief—that is—why? Why would you want that?”
“If we are to strive for a world without want or war, we must look beyond our own, as the Ten did. This new Sun-King wishes for peace, and that, at its core, was the Vision.”
“And you believe him?”
“No. He must prove himself for my belief. This Embassy is the first step to that; it will be an exchange of resources—things that we could use for things that we do not. Marshal Fashav has proved himself to me, and will be integral in bridging the gap between our tribes. I understand if you feel the need to watch him still.”
“I didn’t expect to end up as a marshal, either, alright?” Fashav’s exasperated huff pulled Kotallo from his thoughts. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“Well, you’re in good company, then,” Kotallo snarled back, tossing his brush down.
“Oh, come off it. As if any of you wouldn’t want this position.” Fashav scoffed. His eyes caught Kotallo’s in the reflection for a moment before Kotallo hissed in frustration and snatched his spaulder hard enough for the spikes to bite into his palm. “Wait... you really didn’t? Then why did you compete?”
“The Carja aren’t the only ones who can scheme,” Kotallo muttered, rolling his shoulder to test the spaulder’s straps.
“Huh.” Fashav flopped onto his bunk, fiddling with the ties on his greaves. “Well. We’re a hell of a pair then, aren’t we?”
Kotallo grunted.
“In the spirit of the Embassy we’re dragging ourselves to tomorrow, can I propose a trade?” Fashav waited until Kotallo acknowledged him with another grunt. “I’ll teach you how to read Carja glyphs if you teach me how to interpret Tenakth grunts.”
Kotallo grunted again, unable to keep a grin tugging the freshly dried paint on his cheeks as he saw Fashav’s raised eyebrow. He made another noise as he tossed his paints at the man. “That one is amused, Carja.”
>>------>
“You’d think,” Fashav muttered, “that the second time we did this, the clans would manage to get here at the same time.”
Kotallo huffed a laugh, shifting against the broken arch to toss the masked marshal a look. “And I’d think that you’d have learned more about our clans by now. Tekotteh’s always dragging his feet; I don’t think the Sky Clan will ever manage to show up to these things on time, even at the fiftieth.”
“So, one could say that the sun would set in the east before that happened.”
“If one was a Carja, sure.”
“A Tenakth might say that the snow would melt on the Sheerside mountains first,” Chekkatah supplied. “I figured Keni would’ve managed to get that old frostclaw moving, but looks like we‘re going to bake for a while longer. We’ll end up as hot-headed as Regalla in no time.”
“ Please don‘t say that so loudly,” Fashav hunched further in the shadow of the arch as if trying to make himself smaller. “She wants to kill me enough as it is; try not to piss her off more, would you?”
“She won’t kill you,” Zekotto said amicably, clapping Fashav on the shoulder—not his newly-tattooed one, Kotallo noted; his clansman had always been a considerate man. “At least, not yet.”
The marshals shared a chuckle that only grew louder as Regalla glared at them.
>>------->
“Oh, that one’s new,“ Sentekka said, flipping the point of her blade towards a Carja guard. “He’s shaking so hard his feathers are wiggling.”
“Shall we play with the little bird a bit?” Kenirra grinned. “Javveh and that commander of theirs are going to compare pricks for at least another finger of the sun, anyways.”
“Ha, yes! It’s time for our Carja Marshal to fulfill his true purpose—giving us intel on the enemy.” Chekkattah paused, his grin widening. “’Carja Marshal’—bit of an oxymoron, that.”
“Just a moron,” Regalla hissed. She was uncannily good at sucking the joy out of a conversation. Fashav and Kotallo shared a shrug at her bitterness. Three years and she was still hot about this peace, and Fashav especially. Maybe it was the Desert Clan left in her.
“Kotallo, give him your best glare. Yeah, that’s the one. By the Sun, look at him sweat .” Fashav laughed, the sound muffled behind his mask. Somehow, his former clansmen still hadn’t recognized him; sure, Fashav had gained some new inky stories since he’d been captured, but he’d not changed enough to excuse that. Maybe their helmets got in the way of their vision.
“Think we can make him sweat enough to pass out?” Kotallo asked, still fixing the young soldier with his darkest stare. The man was looking everywhere but his face—the ground, the arches, straight up at the sky. He’d blind himself if he kept looking at his precious sun like that.
“Oh--oh! I’ve got an idea. Drakka, get over here.”
“Marshals, what can I do ya for?” The desert clan soldier saluted lazily, the black paint around his eyes comically tacky.
“You’ve got to keep your paint on you, with how wet it always is. Thought so. Got any red?”
“Uh, always.”
“Drink it.”
“What? Wh—ooh. Oh!” Drakka grinned, pulling out his paints and making a show of pulling out the red-stained cork on the skin. He was as messy as possible in his long pulls of the thick fluid, heroically managing not to gag in the process, and finished off the spectacle by swiping the back of his hand across his lips, spreading crimson. The Carja soldier was drenched, his skin beneath the sheen a pallor Kotallo was sure he’d never seen. He slumped back against the dark-skinned lieutenant behind him, who suffered being used as a bolster with poorly stifled amusement.
The marshals and Drakka broke out in howls of laughter that had Javveh throwing a glare in their direction. Drakka heaved halfway through his laugh, swallowing forcibly and waving off their concern.
“Anything in that paint that’s toxic?” Fashav whispered to Kotallo.
“Nothing that’ll ruin that baked lizard any more than he already is,” Kotallo replied.
That whipped up laughter again, until they were practically falling against each other.
>>----->
Kotallo had been hoping for a little bit of change at this fourth Embassy. He was rather regretting his wish now, with that debacle with Regalla not a week past.
“Look, I don’t want to be one to question the Chief, but...” Kotallo sighed, crossing his arms more tightly across his chest. It was the Desert Clan who was late this time, and he doubted Yarra’s delay was unintentional.
“But letting Regalla live was a mistake,” Fashav finished.
“Even your Sun King managed to permanently eliminate a threat; this sits ill with me,” Vintalla murmured.
“At attention!” Javveh barked. “And I’ll not hear any further insubordination from you. The Chief's choices are just that—his, and not ours to question. Let’s just get this over with.”
>>------>
“Marshal Fashav is really going back to the Carja?” Kivva asked. “...Squadleader?”
“Not your squadleader anymore, Kiv,” Kotallo murmured. “And, yes. He is.”
“Should’ve gone back at the first of these farces.”
“Snap that rope, Pivallo,” Kotallo barked, echoed by Kivva’s admonishment. “It was Hekarro’s order, and it is a sound plan. Marshal Fashav is our best chance at lasting peace between our tribes, and lasting peace is the Vision of the Ten.”
Ram Squad settled into silence as they climbed the hill towards the field before Barren Light. It was hard not to reminisce each time he walked this path; six years ago, it had been under the cover of darkness, and he’d diverted left to scale the cliffs. Five years ago, he’d been in blade’s reach of Fashav, ready to hamstring the man if he tried to run back to his tribe. Now, as he crested the rise and caught sight of Fashav talking to a fire-haired woman, he wished his friend wasn’t preparing to leave. Hamstringing or not, the gates of Barren Light would inevitably open, and his friend would be on the other side. They could write letters, sure, but letters were nothing compared to games of strike and drunken comparisons of insults. After this Embassy, nothing would be the same.
Kotallo forced humor into his voice and a swagger into his step as he approached the marshals. He noted the two outlanders—Nora, by their garb; he hadn’t heard of one of those far Easterlings in the West since the Death-Seeker's march when his parents were still alive. The woman, fire-haired and keen-eyed, gave him an appraising once-over that made his paint feel like it was made of chillwater. She was a dangerous one, he was sure, for all the man was bigger. He approached them, curious. There'd never been outlanders at an Embassy before.
“Marshal!” Fashav called with a grin, grasping Kotallo’s forearm.
“Marshal,” he replied, squeezing back.
“Warrior!” The Nora man glanced between the two marshals as they gave him a bewildered look. “Oh, we’re not rattling off our titles? My bad.”
“Smooth, Varl. Can’t imagine why Sona didn’t have you pegged for an ambassador.”
“Has the Embassy expanded to other tribes now?” Kotallo asked. He crossed his arms to hide the chuckle the Nora man’s affronted expression tugged free.
“Not quite,” Fashav said. He gestured to the fire-haired huntress, grandiose in a way that made Kotallo think the Sundom’s proximity was affecting his friend. “This is the Savior of Meridian. She’s got a mission out West, something about saving the whole world or some other grand Savior-level responsibility. Savior, this is Marshal Kotallo.”
“Uh, it’s just... just Aloy, actually. And I wasn’t really given permission to attend; I just wanted to get past No-Man's Land.”
“She bullied her way past the gates,” the other Nora supplied helpfully.
Kotallo didn’t bother to hide his chuckle this time. Warmth flushed his chest when he saw how the Savior—Aloy—snapped her gaze at him at the noise. “You’re in good company then, Aloy the Just.”
“Wait, that’s not—” she stopped, her eyes narrowing. “You’re teasing me, aren’t you? Fucking behemoth.”
Kotallo shared a grin with Fashav as the latter said, “it’s a bit of a tradition at this point, making people uncomfortable at an Embassy. Gotta do something to pass the time, especially when somebody shows up so late.”
“Yeah, yeah. Blame Tekotteh for that, not me.”
“As always,” Fashav snorted. “So, what’d you have to do to get your Rams past his watcher’s eye?” Kotallo muttered something behind his hand as he rubbed the scar on his lip. Fashav raised an eyebrow, grinning. “Sorry, what? Didn’t catch that.”
“Goaded him to play strike with me until he got so frustrated he blacked himself out with Sky Spirits.”
Fashav positively cackled . The man’s laugh was, as always, infectious, and pulled both Kotallo and the Nora into it with him. Ten save him, but he was going to miss his stupid Carja brother. Fashav finally wiped his eye and turned his gaze to Barren Light.
“Whew. Wonder what’s taking them so long. We gave our signal and I swore I heard theirs an hour ago.”
“Stupidous Vwadever probably dropped his scrolls,” Aloy muttered. “You sure I can’t leave now? That priest holds more wind than a bellowback, and me telling him to shut up only goes so far.”
“You told a Sun Priest to shut up and got away with it?” Fashav said. By his tone, that was very uncommon. Surprising as Kotallo constantly had the urge to tell the stupid pointy-robed idiots to shut up.
Aloy shrugged a shoulder. “Being Savior has its perks. Sometimes.”
“Like the giant statue in the middle of Meridian?”
“Fuckin hell, Varl, please don’t remind me about that,” Aloy muttered, dropping her face in her hand.
“They built you a statue in their capitol?” Kotallo wasn’t sure if he was impressed or appalled. Aloy, by the look on her face, was decidedly the latter.
“Yeah. I’m in a bit of a rush, otherwise I'd blow it up.”
“I can blow it up,” Fashav offered. “Learned terrible manners from these Tenakth here, after all.”
“If you blow it up, I’ll tell the Sun Priest to take his scroll and blow it up his ass.”
Kotallo barked a sharp laugh, the blaze in his chest blooming at the shine of Aloy’s eyes, like sunlit greenshine, as she laughed with him. “Spoken like a Tenakth.” He leaned to Fashav and whispered, over-loud, “I like her. If they plan on swapping outlanders into the West, we won out.”
Aloy’s eyebrows shot nearly to her hair, and her skin matched its color. It was always gratifying to see what his comments did to people, but this was probably his favorite reaction yet. Oh, yes. He did like this outlander. Hopefully, they’d see more of each other when she followed that mission of hers west. He wasn’t familiar with Nora customs; he’d be a bit gutted if there was something prohibiting fraternization with other tribes. Only one way to find out.
His caravan of thought cut off abruptly when one of those blasted Sun-Priests started droning from his scroll. He saw the fire-haired Nora roll her eyes the second the priest opened his mouth and found himself huffing a chuckle.
Mirth bled away as if drenched when Regalla’s voice echoed accusation and hatred into the valley. Anger turned to dread as machines lined up behind the scorned marshal, then to anguish as arrows fell in punishing volleys. He heard the Carja commander’s shout and knew what his friend would do before Fashav even moved from the spot beside him. A look, a nod, and Fashav was gone, pounding up the path after the feathered heads of his tribesmen.
“They’re not going to make it...”
The outlander was right. Rebels on bristlebacks and chargers barreled down the mountain, surrounding the Carja and cutting them off from the safety of their Sundom, not twenty steps away. He’d almost been home, he’d almost been home and—
Kotallo saw Fashav die. It was a soldier’s death, worthy of the Ten themselves. It didn’t matter. Fashav was dead. There would be no letters complaining about how silk irritated tattoos, or of missing the taste of Salt Bite food, or of finally becoming a Hawk in the Hunter’s Lodge. There’d be no stilted games of machine strike, played move-by-move by ink on parchment as if Fashav was a poltergeist channeled through his glyphs. There’d be no Tenakth-informed advisor to the Sun King, no meetings facilitated by a man bridging two tribes.
There would be no peace.
Belatedly, Kotallo realized the fiery outlander was looking at him. His gaze dropped from the sight of his friend’s body being dragged across the dirt and settled on hers, the green of her eyes burning in a way that set it the same shade as metalbite. Something passed between them, then, some sort of mutual understanding of this pain—this loss that burned like blaze when a friend died within sight but out of reach. The Nora’s bow-curve lips tightened, the fury in her face making her freckles stand out all the clearer against her cheeks.
“Hey!” She roared, spinning from him and spitting all that fury straight at Regalla. “Come down here and fight fair!”
“She will not,” he bit out. The outlander glanced at him, her lip curling to match his expression. “She’s too much a coward for that.”
“Good thing I’ve got this big-ass bow, then,” the outlander growled.
“Aloy, even you can’t make that shot,” the Nora beside her said. “Don’t waste your arrows.”
“Fuck that.” Aloy pulled her bow from her back. It was painted in a blue almost the color of the Sky Clan, beaded in an unfamiliar pattern that reminded Kotallo of the few Banuk he’d seen. The arrow she fired from the monstrous power-shot bow buried itself in the cliff directly below Regalla’s feet. “Coward! Two more steps and I can send this straight through your yellow belly!”
Regalla’s mouth moved, issuing silent orders, and the machines remaining on the cliff pounced towards them. Chekkattah saw that, saw the distraction in the archers, and bellowed a cry as he dashed forward, past the protection of the wall. Kotallo and the easterner shouted warning at the same time. It made no difference.
Blaze boiled in Kotallo’s gut as Chekkattah’s arrow-fletched body hit the ground. Aloy flung herself forward, her Nora compatriot grabbing her belt as she did so. She still managed to grab Chetakkah’s arms and haul him behind their sheltering point. Her hands were on him in an instant, at the arrows, at his neck. She had very long fingers. What a thing to notice, now. Her eyes were on him again, all that metalbite replaced with a dullness that reminded him of the raintrance at twilight. She shook her head. Ikkoteh would hunt alone, now. He’d never done that; for as long as Kotallo could remember the two older men had hunted from Bonewhite Tear to Cliffwatch. Even after Chekkattah’d become a marshal, the partners had still gone after machines together. No longer.
No peace. Violence, then. Violence, exacting and swift and cruel. The machines were on them, and he threw himself at them, screaming in rage and firing arrow after overdrawn arrow at the riders, the chargers, towards the cliff—anything and everything he could unleash this cold burning upon. Sentakka died next, brained by the hooves of a charger after an arrow had torn through the tendons behind her knee. The Nora man brought down the charger a second too late, not even the flight of his three arrows fast enough to stop the death of the lowlander Marshal. She’d told him for years she’d been getting too old for this. He kept asking why she didn’t just become a Chaplain; Dekka was always at the Grove, anyways, and they could’ve used one in Thornmarsh. “Next year, next year, my boy. Somebody’s got to keep the lot of you Sky Clan marshals grounded.”
Kotallo threw himself into a slide as he saw the archers on the cliff raise their bows. He came to a stop next to the two Nora, pulled upright and into safety by the man’s outstretched hand. His machine-plating bracers were cold against Kotallo’s palm.
“And I thought an Embassy would be boring,” the fire-haired huntress muttered.
Kotallo barked a laugh, nearly jumping in shock at himself as he did. “They usually are.”
“I’d take boring right about now,” the other Nora said. Both outlanders were tapping that triangular ornament on their temples. “Bows are down up there, go, go!”
Kotallo had no idea how the Nora could see through the stone in front of his face, but he didn’t much care. He spun out from behind the wall, planting himself in a gap between the stone archways and firing with all the fury of a screaming clawstrider. It wasn’t enough.
Zokotto fell next to his brother, their bodies heaped nearly on top of each other, to the point where the arrow that had killed Zoko pierced his brother’s cold skin. He’d been the only one who could challenge Kotallo at strike. Ten above, he should’ve let the man win that last match.
A bristleback picked up a fallen tree and charged towards Vintalla. Her back was to the machine, her focus singularly on the cliff and the archers in range of her sharpshot bow. He cried a warning, knowing he was too late even as the bristleback began its charge. What could his hunter arrows do against that machine? What could he do but watch as another of his friends died?
A spike buried itself between the bristleback’s eyes, the initial hit staggering it and follow-up explosion toppling the machine entirely. A flash of fire sprinted past Kotallo, sliding under Vintalla’s lifted bow, until Aloy the Easterner stopped her momentum by pouring it into the spear she threw into the bristleback’s cabling.
A fresh volley of arrows cut Kotallo’s praise short. Vintalla stared at the raining death as if adhered. Aloy yelled something incomprehensible at her as she vaulted behind the dubious coverage of the bristleback carcass. Vintalla didn’t move. Kotallo set his legs to jump at his clanswoman, his head filled with the memory of Vintalla proffering her child to him—so small and pink he hardly knew what to do with it, knew even less how to handle the woman’s older child calling him “Uncle Koto.” Would he be the one to tell them, those little pink-painted children that were so dwarfed by the Bulwark’s cliffs, that their mama was dead? No. No, no!
“No!” Aloy’s voice was low for a woman, commanding in a way that had his legs seizing in the act of jumping. She’d thrown herself back over the machine, grabbing Vintalla by the hair and curling her strangely-armored body around the marshal.
“Aloy!” That was the other Nora, whose momentum froze in chillwater-swiftness as the arrows fell.
Strange humming pinging noises rang from Aloy’s armor, and Kotallo watched in rapt amazement as the arrows fell and bounced off the outlander’s armor, an inch from her skin, terminating against an undulating field of blue. That blue went suddenly red with a crack like a discharging sparker, and the last trailing arrow buried itself in the outlander’s arm.
Aloy’s scream was a hissed thing, clamped behind her teeth. Kotallo found himself running, skidding to a stop beside the two women before he even had the thought to scan the cliff and make sure another volley wasn’t already clouding the obliviously, cheerily sunny sky. It was not, thanks, he noted, to the concentrated efforts of Kenirra, Javveh, and the Nora who had all set fury in flight at the cliff, forcing the archers to duck for cover. Aloy was scrabbling at her shoulder as if to pull the arrow out, barbed head and all. Vintalla hissed at her and swatted her hand away before grabbing her knife in one hand and the arrowhead in the other, shearing the barbed tip from the shaft. She stood to pull the rest of the arrow out.
Hot liquid sprayed across Kotallo’s face. His head shot up. An arrowhead speared through Vintalla’s throat, pouring blood and burbled words both from the marshal. Her hand lifted for a bare moment, fingers brushing the crimson-washed tip just before she toppled forward onto the outlander.
Aloy screamed again as the dead weight of Vintalla threw her to the ground. Kotallo heard something snap, and thought the noise could equally be the arrow shaft in Aloy’s shoulder or his psyche. The outlander, even as her gritted teeth split her lip from the pain, slapped her hand to Vintalla’s neck in a vain attempt to stop the blood.
“Kotallo, behind!” Kenirra’s shout was so familiar in this fever-dream. She’d said it a hundred times in the eight years they’d fought together, from when they were in Ram Squad to when she’d won her own Kulrut a year after his. The familiarity forced him to move, and he spun on a heel, pulled his axe from his back and buried the head into the undercarriage of a rearing charger. He heaved, snapped his elbows down and rolled forward, bringing the charger and its rider over his head and away from the tangle of limbs and blood that was the outlander and his squad-sister. If the charger’s weight didn’t crush the rider to death, Kenirra’s arrow finished the job.
“Fuck, fuck!” The muffled expletives brought him back around, and he saw the outlander still underneath Vintalla. The outlander’s freckled face was painted with blood, and she spat it out as the flood from the marshal’s severed artery drowned her. She was trying to lever herself up with core strength and what little power she had in her shot left arm, unwilling to let go of the pressure she held against Vintalla’s pierced throat. Kotallo didn’t need to see the glaze in the woman’s brown eyes to know that his sister was dead. She’d laughed at him, when they were both single-yeared, as he’d fallen off the balance log. He’d hated her for it. He’d give his arm to hear her laugh again.
Kotallo banded his arm around the dead marshal’s waist and lifted her up. He took the outlander’s blood-slick hand in as gentle a grip as he could manage as she tried to follow the movement and keep that single-minded, life-saving pressure on Talla’s wound. There was no life to save. He dropped Talla’s body, turning his mind and his hands both to the next task, the next step don’t think, don’t think about this don’t think about it just get the outlander back into fighting shape don’t think about her dead eyes that look just like her daughters’.
His knees were slick with blood—Vintalla's, Chekkattah’s... there were too many bodies around him to know. Aloy’s arm was still pinned to her side by the arrow. The shaft had pierced the muscle of her deltoid, while the head had speared through her breastplate. Vintalla had removed that, but her fall onto the outlander had shoved the shaft further into the muscle of her arm, more securely pinning it to her side as the shaft caught in the toughened leather and Old World metal on her breastplate. The outlander was squirming as he assessed the damage, and he hissed at her to stay still. She muttered something back at him about trying to keep them alive, and he distantly realized that she was grasping a blast-sling between her knees and using her right arm to fire off explosive bombs and ward off any riders from charging them. The other Nora was covering their backs, and spared a second from his bowstring to throw a smoke bomb at the wall behind them, effectively covering them from enemy aim.
“I’m sorry,” Kotallo murmured in advance as he braced his right hand against the outlander’s bloody neck, pressed his knee to her elbow, and yanked the shaft from her arm. She hissed again, the sound more of a vibration against his fingers than audible. She was a tough thing, this blaze-haired huntress. He forced himself to think on that, on how sunburnt her cheeks were under the blood, on the way the blue blinked back to life around her as he freed the arrow from her armor. She tossed him a fire arrow and lifted her arm towards him again, eyes fixed on him in silent, stoic command. He gave a short nod, his gaze not wavering from hers as he pressed the blaze tip to the entry and exit wounds on opposite ends of the cap of her shoulder. He’d kept his other hand on her, and squeezed with the crumpling agony that washed across her face.
“It’s just us, now,” she said, as if to herself, as the smoke cleared and she took stock of those who remained standing against the dwindling number of rebels—Javveh, Keni, the Nora, and them. Her eyes were tired, but her jaw was set as she scooped up her Banuk bow.
Kotallo planted a foot on the ground and slipped his arm around the fiery huntress’ waist. He hauled them both to their feet and paused just long enough to squeeze Aloy’s hip so she’d look at him. He managed a grin, knowing that it must’ve looked feral and half-mad, but found a matching gleam in her bared teeth.
“We’ll give them hell.”
Hell. A word left over from the Old World, he knew. Hell, a place of torment unending. Hell.
Hell was watching Keni’s belly burst under a blade. Hell was seeing Javveh clutch the arrows in his chest. Hell was feeling each inch of his arm ground to meaty bits in a bristleback’s gears. Hell was the crushing weight of a machine carcass above him, squeezing and squeezing until something cracked and he breathed blood.
This, this was hell.
>>------->
Aloy kicked Grudda’s corpse. It was useless, but made her feel marginally better as Regalla turned her clawstrider’s tail and ran. Fucking coward. To orchestrate all this killing and look on like some fucking glinthawk. Aloy’d see that woman’s sneer split by her spear, she would. After she got GAIA up and running again, after she managed to keep the world itself from killing them. Priorities, Aloy. Priorities. Like Varl, who let out a pained groan as he tried to stand on the leg Grudda’d kicked.
“Stay down, Varl,” she murmured, pushing him to the tattered grass. Goddess, what a disaster. Fashav, dead, the Carja delegation, dead, all the marshals, dead. It had no bearing on her mission, she reminded herself, not with the rite of passage still stuffed in her belt. The reminder didn’t make the visions of blood and bodies fade in the forefront of her mind, didn’t drown out the sound of Marshal Kotallo’s screaming as his arm was swallowed by the bristleback he’d managed to stop with his bare hands.
“Aloy,” Varl’s voice pulled her from her grim thoughts, and she glanced up at his face; the splint she was fashioning from arrows and ropes from her ropecaster was probably too tight. “Aloy—by the All-Mother, one of them’s still alive. Go, go I can finish splinting myself. They can’t get the bristleback—just go!”
Aloy spun and felt her heart seize as she saw one of the marshals pinned beneath the bristleback pushing against it, the blue cloth on his hand stained dark with his blood. Holy shit. Aloy surged into action and sprinted for the bristleback carcass and the three Sky Clan soldiers desperately trying to move it. One of them had an arrow in his thigh, and another’s arm was bloodied from shoulder to wrist. They’d be hard pressed to lift the carcass, and by the sound of the harsh wheezing coming from the pinned marshal they needed to— Kotallo, goddess, it was Kotallo under there, moving what was left of his arm as if he was trying to use the phantom limb to push away the machine. Blood flecked his scarred lips.
She latched her pullcaster onto the machine’s back, then sprinted around it and set her feet. “Ram Squad!” she shouted, remembering Fashav’s naming of the Sky Clan squad, “On three!” She gave the count and heaved with all her might, the arrow wound in her shoulder screaming as though it was filled with blaze. The bristleback lifted inch by agonizing inch as she set her legs and pulled. Come on, come on!
“I’ve got him, I’ve got him!”
“We need to get him to a healer.”
“Where? He’ll bleed out before we make it halfway to Stone’s Echo!”
“No he will not,” Aloy growled, skidding to her knees next to the marshal. His eyes, which had just an hour ago shone with a grinning glint that made her stomach flutter with tiny stormbirds, were clenched shut and each breath was ragged and wet. She tapped her focus, first highlighting his arteries. “You, here, press just below his collarbone, there, and on the inside of his arm, there. Hold as much pressure as you can. You, take this and wash that wound, then put this on it.” She shoved a vial of garlic-imbued alcohol and dried geranium leaves at the woman soldier, then tapped at her focus again, muttering. “Hairline fractures on left ribs three through six, full break on five. Partial hemothorax... fuck. You! Get cabling off that bristleback, the hollow kind. Yes, that. Here, take this sac webbing and use a fire arrow to weld it on. Good, now suck out all the air—yes, pinch off the end. Give it here and get that armor off on his left side.” She took Fashav’s knife from its sheath and stuck it in the bottle of antiseptic, replacing it with the machine tubing immediately after, careful not to lose the tenuous vacuum the soldier had created. She should still have... yes! She still had stitches in her trauma kit. The helmeted sky clan soldier had managed to cut away the bulk of Kotallo’s leather-weave armor, exposing his side. It was already livid, and Aloy fought panic as she gnawed away at the ragged edge of her mouth. She pressed her fingers against his side, murmuring apologies as she did, until she felt an intercostal space near his collapsed lower lobe. Her Focus display still superimposed a hologram of his lungs and bones, but she still liked to go by feel sometimes. The irony was bitter in the back of her throat as she echoed what he’d said to her in the heat of the battle and whispered, “I’m sorry,” as she plunged the knife into his side.
Kotallo howled in pain, but managed to stay still as she squeezed the hollow machine tubing and fed it into the hole she’d made in his side. The pressure difference must have still been just enough; the sac began to fill with blood as it evacuated Kotallo’s pleural space. “Got to stitch it in place, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she murmured that and more nothings as she worked. With the help of the helmeted soldier, she got Kotallo half-upright and wound bandage linen around and around his ribs, just tight enough to keep everything in place and the entry wound for the tube in his chest covered. Her Focus reported that his lung had reinflated, and he hadn’t developed a pneumothorax after the pressure change. Good.
“My... arm,” Kotallo grated. That was good, too. Talking meant breathing.
“I know, getting there. It’s next.”
“It’s--gone. Stop. Leave it, leave me. Without my arm I... Leave me.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Aloy snarled. She took Kotallo’s chin in her hand and pulled his face towards her, the wet slick of antiseptic and blood on her fingers pulling the paint from his skin. His eyes were dark pools of pain and resignation, and she poured all her fire into them. “Don’t you say that. Don’t you dare. You’re going to survive this.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not letting anybody else die today!”
“He means, why survive at all, like this?” the masked soldier said roughly. “Don’t look at me like that. You don’t know our ways, outlander. He’s not of use to the tribe like this.”
“The fuck he isn’t!” She could feel Kotallo’s jaw clench against her fingers. She whipped her gaze back to him, already tapping her focus for information on his vitals and what to do next. “The fuck you aren’t. You’ll survive this, and you’ll see. This isn’t the end. Not of you, not of your worth. Survive.”
Rost had said that to her when her world had exploded. As she looked at the blaze tipping the end of the arrow she drew from her quiver, she saw that explosion again, that conflagration that had swallowed all she’d ever known—her victory, her work, her hopes, her father. Survive. Aloy kept her hand on Kotallo’s face, sliding up to his cheek instead of his chin, as she brought the blaze towards the mangled remains of his arm. The blood had clotted a little, but if the Tenakth pressing on his arteries let up, he’d still bleed to death. She met his eyes and saw his understanding in them. Survive. The blaze-tipped arrow boiled Kotallo’s blood and burned his flesh until the smell of it stuck to the back of Aloy’s throat. The muscles of his jaw spasmed under her hand as he clenched his teeth to hold in his scream. The effort pulled his body upright as he reflexively curled around the blazing pain that must be all his body felt from what was left of his arm. The movement brought their heads together, pressed his forehead against her temple so tightly her Focus bit into her skin and her ear rang with his screams. She pressed right back, pulled him closer with her free hand and tried desperately to offer something grounding as she fused his flesh. Survive. He smelled like blood and winter, chalk and clay, and, above all, burnt skin. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, so sorry...” Survive. Please, please survive.
Kotallo’s cries cut off abruptly and his weight became dead and limp against her. She forced herself to keep her eyes on her work—just the underside of his arm left, almost done almost done, as she slipped her fingers down to his neck to feel the beat of life pulsing in his clammy skin. She dropped the arrow and called for the antiseptic and a cloth. She got only the bottle; they didn’t have a cloth, apparently. They’d run out trying to stop the bleeding. Fuck, fuck. Aloy sloshed the antiseptic over the shiny skin on Kotallo’s stump, oddly mesmerized by the way his tattoos distorted. She needed something to cover it, if only to bind it to help with the pain.
She shifted Kotallo’s weight to one of his soldiers and took the scarf from around her neck. The bright blue fabric was sweaty, sure, but she’d at least managed to clean it while she waited for the embassy to start. She cut away the worst of the blood and sweat from it, then wound what was left tightly around Kotallo’s stump. Once she’d made sure it was secure, she finally pushed herself to her feet. The Sky Clan soldiers told her they’d take him back to Hekarro, and promised to get him checked along the way. Aloy nodded tiredly as she stumbled back over to Varl. The last thing she saw of the Tenakth as they disappeared behind the hill was the contrast of her bright scarf against the greys of Kotallo.