Blood & Fur

Chapter Ninety: The Face of War

Blood rained from the sky, boiling and burning on the pyre.

A crimson, ghastly fire arose atop the hill to the surprise and horror of the priests who failed to light it up earlier. Its unnatural smoke arose into the shape of skulls to the dark clouds above by divine decree. The First Emperor had made his influence known, and his will clear.

The blood must flow.

Itzili roared to the sky and then charged at the armored longnecks facing us with a salivating maw. His wild advance frightened the Sapa’s beasts of war, some of which froze and bellowed in a vain attempt to intimidate my feathered tyrant. It wasn’t long before we made contact with the closest one.

Itzili leaped forward and closed his jaws on the longneck’s throat.

However armored its spine might have been, most of the animal’s neck remained exposed. My mount’s fangs sank into its warm flesh with the sharpness of knives and crushed its windpipe so tightly that the longneck couldn’t even cry out in pain.

The shock of the collision nearly threw me off Itzili’s back. The longneck’s riders, a duo of those pale men with sunken eyes, immediately crawled along the length of their mount to reach out to me. I raised my club to welcome the first fool trying to assault me.

One of the men’s mouths opened wide, and a hungry horror crawled out of it.

His true monstrous nature manifested in a blink. His jaw distended to let a monstrous white maggot thicker than my arm surge forth in place of a tongue. The insect’s disc-shaped maw revealed rows after rows of small, hook-like barbs glistening with saliva, and then lunged at my face in a nightmarish burst of speed.

The sight would have frightened most men, but I’d faced too many horrors to even flinch. I swung my obsidian club at the creature and carved its mouth in two with a single swing. Caustic, greasy yellow blood erupted from the wound and stained Itzili’s feathers. The odious smell made me struggle against the urge to puke.

Kharisiri.

Aclla wasn’t kidding about these things’ disgusting nature. The monster’s bleeding maggot tongue retreated back, while the other Kharisiri rider jumped over to Itzili. My feathered tyrant sent him flying with a swing of his tail, then pulled his longneck prey with such strength that he tore off half its throat. The beast collapsed to the side and crushed its remaining Kharisiri rider under its immense weight.

The other longnecks’ legs stomped the ground, their riders forcing them to surround Itzili and I. My feathered tyrant roared at them, while my trihorn escort charged to reinforce me and break the Sapa encirclement.

I suddenly noticed something in the air; a sweetness mixing with the odious stench of the Kharisiri and the bloody rain’s metallic tang. A thin purple haze slowly settled on the battlefield, almost imperceptible through the crimson fog. I traced its source with a glance to the mouths of some of the Sapa priests, Mother included.

What kind of spell was that?

Whatever it was, it didn’t stop Itzili from going on the offensive. My feathered tyrant lunged at the nearest longneck, bit one of its hind legs, and then pulled back. The Sapa beast swung its tail like a whip in an attempt to repel Itzili, but my mount lowered its back just enough to avoid the strike. The longneck quickly lost its balance and collapsed with a bellowing cry.

Only then did I finally fathom my familiar’s true strength and wits. I had fed Itzili my divine blood and seen his might wax with mine. No normal animal would have shown half his ferocity, let alone his reflexes and intelligence. He fought like a warrior instead of a mindless animal.

The purple haze grew a little bit thicker, and I heard a faint rustle in the blowing wind; a soft song covered by the sound of battle but which my sharp senses picked on anyway. It was slow, gentle, almost soothing.

A lullaby.

Immediately understanding the danger, I turned to glance at my escort. My Nightflowers’ mounts had slowed down, the trihorns’ legs stumbling in exhaustion. The animals struggled against the urge to fall into a deep slumber.

A sleeping spell.

Mother did say she would teach it to me in person. I supposed the Sapa using it against my troops counted as training.

I recognized it as an Ihiyotl spell, and a weak one at that. A lullaby joined with the wind, trying to lure my mind into a quagmire of heavy dreams. It worked well enough on the trihorns, who collapsed one after another, but neither the Kharisiri nor the Nightflower soldiers at my back seemed too affected. Either their unnatural vitality shielded them from the spell, or the spell worked better on animals than men.

Come to think of it, I wondered if I could use the Word on myself. I doubted it, since it could only bend the will of creatures weaker than myself, but I should at least try at some point.

Whatever the case, Itzili and the enemy longnecks shrugged the sleeping spell off easily enough. The latter managed to get close enough for three of their riders to jump on top of Itzili’s back. I beheaded the closest of them with a swing and sent his head rolling onto the bloody grass. Another Kharisiri extended his odious tongue to swirl around my club, the wooden shaft snapping in two under the pressure. The third of my assailants coiled his inner maggot around my arm and squeezed with enough strength to crush bones. Mine were strong enough from Bonecrafting reinforcements to withstand the pressure, but I still felt the sting of sharp pain through my armor.

Letting go of my broken club, I grabbed the maggot-tongue and tore it in two with my bare hands. The disgusting yellow blood anointed my mount and the wounded Kharisiri’s screech of pain became music to my ears. The third Kharisiri lunged at me, his maggot-tongue’s own mouth opening to reveal a bony stinger sharper than a spear within its fanged maw. I caught it midair before it could puncture my chest.

Mother was right. They were aiming to kill, not capture.

“Foolish!” I said as my free hand grabbed the Kharisiri’s throat. With the other firmly holding the maggot-tongue, I pulled in both directions with the inhuman strength granted by my armor.

The monster barely had time to blink before I tore off its head from its shoulders.

My scarlet Tlahuiztli drank the monster’s blood like a hungry vampire. I felt its cotton and scales cling to my skin while the First Emperor’s jade mask pressed tightly upon my face. A terrible and maddening thirst seized me. My lips and throat were drier than sand.

I pulled the Kharisiri’s head over my mouth and watered it with blood.

Its body fluids carried more fat than liquid, and it smelled awful… yet I could have sworn I’d never drank something so flavorful when it touched the tip of my tongue. Such liquorous thickness, such an appetizing aftertaste.

Blood was blood.

And I craved more.

The last of the Kharisiri watched me toss away the head of his comrade with the first emotion I’d seen spread among these creatures: abject and utter fear. He tried to leap away from Itzili and flee, but my hands gripped his shoulders in an instant. My fingers were claws, my skin crimson, my teeth daggers of obsidian. I pulled him into the same vile embrace Iztacoatl forced upon me so many times, and then I bit into his neck.

My mask’s obsidian teeth sank into his flesh and my mouth gorged itself on more than blood. I tasted his fear, his pain, his soul. I saw memories of various slaughters in jungles, of golden temples hidden in mountains, of blasphemous rituals in baths of crawling maggots. I fed on his strength and life, withering his limbs and emptying his veins, making his hunger and ferocity mine. The darkness in my heart grew thicker. More, it demanded. More, more

, always more!

I felt a will tug at my chain, the whispers of ghosts from an ancient past. They were legion, but their voices failed to reach my ears; except for one, clear like water and filled with concern.

“Wake up, my son!”

Father’s voice broke through the cloud of bloodthirst obscuring my mind.

I woke from a daze of madness, the desiccated husk of my victim sliding through my fingers and onto the ground below. His body snapped in two like a twig upon hitting the earth.

What… I shook my head in an attempt to shake the evil which had possessed me. I still had the taste of the Kharisiri’s blood watering my mouth. How could this happen to me?

How could I let myself be influenced so easily after taking in two sets of embers? Had the sleeping spell somehow strengthened the hold the First Emperor could exert over me? Or was it my men’s perception influencing me?

The sensation of shaking brought me back to the present, followed by an ominous sensation of incoming destruction. I could feel the power of ancient sorcery rippling through the world’s skin of stone across the valley. I briefly mistook it for Mother’s Haunt, but this was no subtle fate-twisting and curse-binding. The primal force taking over this land was rougher, imprecise, and overwhelming.

“The mountains sing, and the stone sea shall drown all,” the wind whispered in my ear. “A trap’s jaws close upon you.”

Itzili’s roar grew higher pitched and filled with unease. The remaining longnecks entered a strange frenzy and began to disperse as their riders proved unable to force them back into the fray. Panic quickly seized my men and the priests on the hill as the very earth beneath our feet began to vibrate. Mother was already running down the hill, looking for stabler ground.

I recognized the signs of what was coming.

“Earthquake!” I shouted to my men as the ground itself heaved and shook. “Evacuate now! Evacuate!”

Itzili ran across the battlefield, his instinct taking over. Powerful tremors rippled across the valley and caused the longnecks to stumble and collapse. My mount’s course remained steady, but the bumps nearly threw me aside. The distant mountains seemed to drone and vibrate.

I sensed a pulse of distant sorcery, and then the ground roared.

Nature’s wrath awoke with a terrifying slowness. Part of the pyre hill collapsed under its own weight, sending stones tumbling down below and crushing a few priests too slow to escape. Rifts opened up to swallow puddles of blood and gorge themselves on crimson rain. Fissures in the earth swallowed the sleeping trihorns and my slowest soldiers into gullets of stone and cavernous tombs.

The earthquake rocked the entire valley. Hills crumbled, ponds of water rippled and overflooded, and trees collapsed. Death walked among us.

A massive rift opened up at the spot where I dueled the Kharisiri and moved toward Itzili. The very earth seemed to open its jaw and attempt to swallow us in its hunger. My feathered tyrant ran at a steady pace that took me aback. Men fell prone one after the other, but Itzili somehow managed to retain his equilibrium in spite of his size and the quakes. He ran faster than the wind, stepping over grass and soldiers, running with the boundless energy of an animal desperate to escape danger.

I dared to peek over my shoulder to look at the stony grasp of death reaching out from behind us. The rift had grown to swallow the Flower War pyre and its hill, alongside the longnecks which hadn’t managed to escape. Their roars of terror as they fell to their doom in the earth’s bowels rang louder than those of the Kharisiri, or even my own men. The very ground devoured them all under a rain of blood.

Itzili’s legs thankfully proved quicker than the rift’s hunger. The growing fissure slowed down where my mount’s course remained steady. The quake and tremors grew weaker with each passing second, though they continued to rock the valley for a time that felt like forever.

When the earth’s wrath died down and the crimson rain clouds cleared at long last, I stood atop Itzili to witness the devastation. The battlefield on which I fought was gone, drowned in mud and rifts. I knew Mother had survived the cataclysm—she weaved too many spells to just die so pointlessly—but many priests and the entire group of Nightflowers that followed me into today’s battle had perished.

A great scar of a canyon now crossed the valley.

And I knew that it had been meant to be my tomb.

The earthquake put an early end to the day of battle.

I spent the rest of the afternoon taking the reins of my army, evacuating the wounded, and relocating the survivors back to the camp. Having already faced a recent disaster in Smoke Mountain’s eruption, the Yohuachancan army managed to organize quickly once the first tremors struck and retreated in good order to safe ground. Chikal’s group had been far enough away to avoid the worst of it alongside my camp, much to my relief. My loved ones had been more scared than hurt.

All in all, this could have been far worse. We’d reached a bit less than three hundred casualties, dead and wounded included. The worst of the earthquake struck the pyre-hill and its immediate surroundings while our soldiers fought across the entire valley and our camp had been safely away. I supposed the Sapa army suffered similar losses.

Their masters hadn’t warned them of the danger to avoid alerting us.

My suspicions only grew stronger the more reports I received. I was no student of the earth’s mysteries, but I found it awfully convenient that the quake’s epicenter began right where I fought. Moreover, I was attuned enough to magic to tell that this had been no natural calamity.

The power I sensed differed from the First Emperor’s hateful grasp too. His influence might have worsened the disaster somehow, but I could tell from deep within my bones that he didn’t initiate it. The Sapa trying to cast the sleeping spell on me a few minutes before the catastrophe only strengthened my conviction.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

This earthquake had been meant to kill me.

What god or sorcery could unleash such power? I wondered as I heard reports in my war tent. According to our scouts, the main rift reached so deep that they couldn’t see the bottom. Even I cannot command such might yet.

Then again, maybe it wasn’t the work of a single caster. I recalled hearing the Sapa’s mountains sing before the disaster, like small streams coming together to flow into a mighty river. This had been the work of many voices.

Aclla… The ritual Aclla underwent involved her being dipped in gold dust until her very skin gained the metal’s properties. Inkarri used a stone tablet to observe me, and his tumi had been crafted from metal too. I was starting to see a common thread.

Whereas a Tlacatecolotl commanded life and death and the Nightlords controlled blood, the Sapa’s sorcery has something to do with the earth and its metal bounty.

Was that the power that allowed the Sapa to fend off foreign conquests for so long? I doubted such a display of power came without a cost; the destruction it spread among friends and foes alone made it unsuitable for conquest.

I tried to recall the earthquake’s early signs in an attempt to remember key details, but I couldn’t focus because of this accursed thirst. The pulque drink in my hand was both unfulfilling and utterly tasteless.

“This is bland, Tayatzin,” I told my advisor after setting the cup aside. “Bring me better sustenance.”

The priest studied me with clear concern and unease. “Your Divine Majesty, this is the thickest pulque we have.”

My jaw clenched on its own. I had consumed water, chocolate, pulque, and exotic drinks whose names I could not recall. All of them tasted like ashes on my tongue, and my mouth remained dry no matter how much I drank.

I knew what liquid this awful thirst truly craved, but I refused to indulge it.

“What of the Sapa?” I asked my war council.

“Their losses are slightly heavier than ours, but most of their soldiers survived the earthquake,” Amoxtli replied. “Considering the damage, we have received an offer of a one-day truce.”

Tayatzin nodded in confirmation. “I am pleased that Ayar Manco answered favorably to Lady Ingrid’s offer of a meeting with Your Divine Majesty, both to discuss the ongoing Flower War and the fate of our respective sides’ captives.”

At least this disaster had a silver lining. Having failed to kill me in the field, Inkarri and the Mallquis had probably settled on assassinating me at dinner. I wondered if the earthquake had served as a warning of some sort, or even the prelude to negotiations. ‘Leave our lands or suffer a worse fate’ would make for a formidable message.

I eyed my council. I detected the fear lurking behind their warrior confidence. A rain of blood followed by an earthquake had seemed like a startling display of divine wrath to them, and they were half right. This disaster struck too close to Smoke Mountain’s eruption, and Tayatzin recalled this morning’s ominous prophecy very well: death and darkness for all.

They weren’t looking for a warlord’s guidance, but that of a prophet. And since dusk had already fallen upon us, the ‘gods’ I spoke for would soon send a visitor. I could already sense the cold creeping on us.

“Out,” I ordered them all with a tone that broke no disobedience. “I shall consult the heavens on how to proceed.”

My generals and advisors exchanged glances, then deserted me with haste. I found myself alone in the war tent with my useless drink cup, sitting at an empty table. It didn’t take long for the candles and torches illuminating the tent to extinguish themselves one after the other; all save one that provided a measure of illumination behind my back. My seat stood surrounded by darkness.

It was my cup that bothered me the most. Its mere sight heightened my thirst and filled me with immense bitterness. For all the sunlight burning in my veins, I had become akin to what I loathed the most: a vampire thirsting for blood.

I felt stained down to my very flesh and soul.

Another sinister presence entered the tent and drew me out of my bitter mood. Two red eyes stared at me from across the table, glowing brighter than two scarlet moons. The shadows seemed to sharpen around Sugey’s figure until I could distinguish her outline. She rested her head on her fist and stared at my cup.

“You crave blood,” Sugey guessed.

It took all of my strength not to show my unease. If she thought that the First Emperor influenced me, then I could expect a sharp punishment or worse. “I have grown fed up with more mundane drinks.”

“We both know that this is more than passing fancy. I’ve heard how you fought today… felt it too.” Sugey’s smile had all the sharpness of a sacrificial dagger. “It’s the ritual, is it not? The same way young Eztli grows to fit the role she plays, so do you become the emperor you were always meant to be.”

“I have been blessed with strength, and am thankful to the goddesses for this opportunity,” I replied evasively.

“Yet you think I will punish you for it, because it might make you a threat,” Sugey said sharply. “Quite the contrary, Iztac. The weak are the food of the strong, and you stand above all other men.”

Bold words from a parasite leeching off her father’s strength. I simply remained quiet as Sugey waved her hand. A new cup appeared to replace the old one; an obsidian skull filled with a viscous crimson liquid laced with spice.

“Drink,” Sugey ordered me.

I hid my hesitation, knowing that obeying would carry long-term consequences. However, the risk of arousing her suspicions was too great, so I grabbed the awful cup and sipped the blood within.

I’d hoped it would taste horrible and cause me to spit it out. Its potent sweetness instead soothed my nerves and dulled the dryness within my throat. That was by far the more horrifying outcome.

“Doesn’t the blood of a warrior true quell your thirst?” Sugey asked. “It does satisfy mine.”

“It is juicy,” I replied, much to my distaste. I feared ever developing a taste for it.

“Then why do you regret its consumption? You still think too much like the man you were and not like the conqueror you’ve become.” Sugey scoffed. “The frail child we grabbed on the Night of the Scarlet Moon died many nights ago, but you will never fully shed your humanity should you continue to deny your appetite for death and violence.”

Because I do not wish to shed my humanity, oh false goddess of hypocrites. “A man ought to control the beast within.”

“True, but the burning blood shining in your veins belongs to neither,” Sugey retorted. A cup of blood materialized in her hand. “No man nor beast would warrant such destruction to kill.”

“So that was indeed an assassination attempt?” I asked, my head perking up. If Sugey had any information on the Sapa’s magic, I had to glean it all. “I had a feeling, but I could not fathom what sorcery would let our enemies open up the very earth beneath our feet.”

“This is more than a clash of civilizations, child. This is a feud between gods to decide which of us will inherit the world.” Sugey sipped from her cup. “We children of the blood have grown strong on the wealth of our kingdom while our enemies wasted away on dust and empty supplications. They hoped to bury you deep underground where you could do no harm to them, but you were protected by better masters.”

Not by you. “Why not strike at the goddess instead of her speaker?”

“Because they cannot, and because killing a messenger is a message in itself. They know we would inevitably win a war, so they hope to dissuade us by showing us how many lives it would cost us.” Sugey scoffed in disdain. “Surely you must have noticed their weakness by now.”

Their weakness? Somehow I had the feeling she wasn’t talking about their magic or military, but something deeper; an institutional flaw. I doubted she referred to the Mallquis—I wasn’t supposed to know anything about them—so I tried to recall the first time I encountered the Sapa ambassadors. They came to me clothed in rich textiles and proudly displaying their gold; the same metal in which they baked Aclla in to better present her as a treasured gift.

“They are obsessed with wealth,” I realized. “They are a greedy lot.”

“The Sapa may not use currency, but they think like merchants nonetheless,” Sugey confirmed. “They believe that we fight for gold and resources the same way they do, and that we will back down from a fight where the cost outweighs the prize.”

“While we fight for faith,” I guessed. Inkarri might have been alive since the First Emperor’s days, but the other Mallquis arose later from the Sapa people. They didn’t understand the threat ahead of them, or perhaps saw the Nightlords as rival undead rather than the existential menace which they represented.

“No, Iztac. We fight for the future, and because our victory is inevitable.” Her crimson gaze met mine. “Tell me, Iztac, when should one start raising the perfect warrior?”

My fists clenched, for I knew the answer deep within my bones. “You must begin before he is even born.”

Sugey nodded sharply. “Did you know that the turkey that mortals eat used to be so much smaller a few centuries ago? Farmers killed the sick and the frail, bred the big with the large, all until they purified these birds of their ingrained weakness. We Nightlords do the same with men. Our priests keep detailed genealogical records of our citizens, yourself included.”

I hid my disgust behind a mask of stone. I was no breeding animal meant to father children raised for slaughter, and one day, this bat would learn it to her bitter detriment.

“We can trace your lineage all the way back to the very first tribe we ruled over.” Sugey’s teeth glimmered in the last candle’s glow. “Your bloodline is relatively unremarkable by our standards. A few emperors raped your female ancestors on their First Nights here and there, and your father was born because we sacrificed your great-uncle before he could marry your grandmother in your grandfather’s place, but otherwise there is little unusual about your lineage.”

She uttered those words with such cold calm and rationality that they became all the more terrifying. Yoloxochitl was mad, the Jaguar Woman oppressive, and Iztacoatl cruel, but Sugey sounded indifferent. Centuries of rape, murder, and other horrors were treated with no more levity than preparations for a battle drill.

“Yet, your father’s union with your mother yielded not one, but two Nahualli,” Sugey said. “A miracle unheard of. Somehow, these two bloodlines combined to produce children with immense potential in a way that completely blindsided our breeding program. Moreover, you have grown stronger at a rate beyond what any other man can dream of and eclipses all other past emperors. They were all mere humans, some more exceptional than others, but you? You are the pinnacle of your kind. A rare and unexpected wonder.”

My blood boiled in quiet anger. She spoke of me with pride, but the kind that an animal breeder would reserve for a prized product rather than a man. I was her petproject.

“I believe, Iztac, that you are the promised tribe’s first specimen,” Sugey said after finishing her cup. “I have only grown more convinced upon hearing of your performance on the field. I cannot tell how much of your progress is the result of your lineage or our ritual, but it is imperative that you pass on your bloodline before the year is done.”

My confusion proved stronger than my disgust. “The ‘promised tribe?’”

Sugey slouched in her chair, a flash of dreamlike whimsy passing over her bloody eyes. “I’ve had a vision since the moment we discovered the secrets of bloodline refinement: that one day there shall be only one race of men worthy of our rule, pure and imperishable like marble, with the might of beasts and a will stronger than stone; the promised tribe that will dominate over all others under our eternal rule.”

Her words caused me concern. I had always seen Sugey as the brute of the Nightlords, who cared only for violence and delegated politics to her sisters, but here I sensed hints of an intellect driven by a cruel vision of her own. She was more dangerous than I thought.

“I have found war to be the most effective crucible for tribes,” Sugey said. “War tests people. It purges the weak, yet allows the strong to rise. Only the best and the most cunning are allowed to pass on their excellence by virtue of surviving the ordeals set before them.”

She leaned closer to me, her gaze gleaming with an unsettling and brutal glow that reminded me of Xibalba’s House of Jaguars.

“Do you understand now, Iztac, why I said our victory over the Sapa is inevitable?” she asked. “We are destined to win not because of our greater discipline, our numbers, or our power, but by our very nature. Our people’s racial superiority, cultivated through centuries, is ingrained within our very blood.”

This was a gleam of madness; a very different kind of insanity than the one that once held sway over Yoloxochitl’s soul, for it was cloaked in deceitful reason and a diseased logic rather than fits of whimsy.

I could feel in my bones the greater danger that Sugey’s deranged ideal presented to the world in that, unlike Yoloxochitl’s madness, it could be shared. It could spread to lesser minds like a malady and fester into the rot of nations.

“We aren’t coming to conquer the Sapa, Iztac, but to purify them.” The calm, quiet conviction in Sugey’s voice cut sharper than any sword. “They do not understand that even should thousands or millions of our people die, those that remain will be infinitely more precious and valuable than the mediocre masses that preceded them. We will enrich the blood of following generations and spare them the burden of defects; and if we lose by some miracle, then we didn’t deserve to survive in the first place and better souls shall inherit this world. No more, no less.”

She’s far more dangerous than I thought. A zealot with a cause always fought harder than a hypocritical opportunist. But fine, Sugey. I will play by your rules.

By the end of the year, we would see which of us deserved to live.

“I know that you have come to understand your own superiority over lesser men, Iztac,” Sugey said. “Surely the thought that a lesser creature like Tlaxcala would be allowed to pass on his bloodline over yours should disgust you to your core.”

“The goddess speaks with sense, but nonetheless, victories are not only won through strength,” I replied in an attempt to change the subject. “I recall that you spared Chilam when you could have stormed it by force.”

“I did. Young Chikal’s ruthless ambition and valor swayed me, the same way they charmed you.” Sugey smirked in amusement. “Do not misunderstand my words, Iztac. I will not waste our men on doomed and pointless ventures. Wits are as valuable as brawn.”

So she had a measure of reason and pragmatism buried deep beneath her brutality. I might have a chance to obtain some benefits.

“Ayar Manco accepted a meeting tomorrow to discuss today’s portents, tomorrow’s battles, and prisoner exchanges,” I explained. “I understand that the goddess demanded more sacrifices, but sparing a few heads would give me more leverage.”

“That meeting will be a trap at best and an ambush at worst.”

“Let them try to slay me. My enemies will leave fewer than when they came.” My bravado appeared to amuse Sugey. “This is nonetheless a rare opportunity to assess our opponents and find flaws to exploit.”

“True.” Sugey shrugged her shoulders. “Indulge them if you wish. I have already agreed to spare and release some of our captives.”

That news should have come as a relief, yet… yet my blood froze in my veins nonetheless. “You did?”

“Do you wish to see them for yourself?”

I should have said no. I had grown used enough to the Nightlords’ cruelty to know that only horrors awaited me; but I needed full understanding of my situation if I were to successfully negotiate anything with Manco. Thus I reluctantly nodded and followed the Nightlord outside the war tent.

She led me towards the area where we kept the captive, all under the escort of masked priests.

“Father’s feeble attempts to assert himself again does not concern me much,” Sugey said, though I couldn’t tell whether she meant it or simply put up a strong front. “We’ve put him in his place twice, we can do it again. Nonetheless, our men’s spirits waver after the rain and quake. They require comfort to press on.”

We reached pens filled with weeping women and restrained prisoners.

The former had been forced to sit on a muddy floor with their hands restrained. I’d never seen their terrified faces before, though I recognized the subtle Sapa traits I’d seen in Aclla and their style of clothing. I could see dozens of them, surrounded by ten times as many soldiers.

Our male prisoners were meanwhile bound and gagged to wooden spikes, naked, disarmed, and silenced. A few vainly struggled against their bindings with the energy of the desperate while others looked on with the dread of the inevitable.

“These women are the wives of some of our captives, who came to our camp weeping and begging that we spare their worthless husbands from the altar,” Sugey said with a cold, quiet voice. “I’ve decided to indulge their request, for a price: a life for a life.”

I knew what she meant the moment I saw the gathered groups of soldiers draw straws. I felt so sick I wanted to vomit.

“I’ve found that men crave a tribal form of primal kinship, the same way a pack of wolves strengthens its members’ loyalty by sharing a kill,” Sugey said with a paternal commander’s fondness. She delighted in her cruelty the same way her sisters did. “We will thus allow our men to take turns indulging themselves in the spirit of brotherhood, so they may relieve themselves from the stress of today’s cruelties. These unions will certainly result in children of pure blood who will one day become soldiers serving in our armies.”

A life for a life.

“Their husbands, of course, will be punished for their cowardice by watching the conception,” Sugey declared. “The weakest of them will no doubt be shaken and broken, but a few will find their inner fire and come back another day to present a challenge. It will keep our warriors on edge.”

I… I couldn’t stand and watch. “The Sapa are weaklings,” I said, trying to word my ways in a way that would resonate with Sugey. “This will provide us with nothing but dead weight.”

“Would you rather that I kill these happy couples?” Sugey replied, twisting my words to offer me an equally cruel alternative. “Or perhaps that our soldiers slit the women’s throat once they’re done with them? It makes no difference to me.”

She put her hands on my shoulders before I could answer, her grip colder than ice and stronger than a jaguar’s jaws.

“Try to hide it however you may, Iztac, but I can still see that weakness inside your heart; that shred of humanity that we ought to cut out of you like a tumor.” Sugey’s tone had grown softer, like a trainer disappointed in a promising student. “Hence you will watch it all in silence, because if you say another word, then I will have you participate. An emperor ought to be an example after all.”

She leaned forward to whisper in my ear.

“And when you return to your concubines, you will remember this: either you pass on your bloodline, or their own will end before this Flower War is done. A woman who cannot bear soldiers is only fit to feed the altar.” Her nails sank into my shoulders like claws. “One day, you will thank me.”

The screams and tears flooded well into the night.