They were an archaic weapon, well out of modern favor, but Sekadi was smaller than most. Mosuoe Oshun felt they suited her better than would a crescent blade or sword.
The young novice had chafed at the switch, declaring she would master the crescent blade whether Oshun approved or not, but the master was adamant.
It had taken time and Sekadi would never actually admit it but she soon came to see the wisdom of Oshun’s decree. Within mere weeks her clumsiness with the little blades evaporated completely in favor of the sort of deadly precision most warriors only dreamed of. Though she still trained with all the other types, the willow daggers were her favorite blades now.
Her enemy owed them a drink. Honor dictated she draw his blood as hers had been drawn– no matter what Mosuoe Nemisa might command.
“Hsaa!” she said softly and lunged for the big male.
She used Shango’s Reverse to strike at him, hoping to catch him unawares as he had caught her.
She sprang into the air, the arc of her body implying a strike at his right flank. As she reached apogee and began to descend, she twisted her torso causing her to spin at the last instant and, in theory, fooling her opponent into exposing his neck.
The big male, at first as still as stone, now rotated his sword just so–just enough to turn the willow daggers’ dark blades away from his throat. His block also somehow added torque to her spin, redirecting her momentum and sending her sprawling to the far side of the spar circle.
She landed with a thick, flat thud and, try as she might, could not rise again. The impact forced out the remainder of her wind. She would not draw another easy breath until her wounds were tended.
Through slitted eyes she watched as Mosuoe Nemisa strode gracefully towards her.
“I told you to break, novice,” came Nemisa’s reed-thin voice. “Disobedience can be costly.”
Her student coughed, spewing small golden flecks of her blood on the dark clay floor.
“He cut me,” she wanted to say. “He forced steel into my flesh. He drew blood even though this was a simple training spar. Honor requires payment for that.”
She wanted to say all that but she was having a hell of a time just drawing a breath. The best she could manage were, “Blood,” and “Honor.”
Mosuoe Nemisa smiled down at her pupil, showing the hint of her needle-sharp incisors. Her milk white hair, pulled back into a single thick braid down her back made the ridges on her forehead more prominent, her entire aspect like that of a sand hawk.
“Find Mosuoe Nkati within the hour,” she said. “Or you will soon have neither.”
The Mosuoe turned her back then and moved off towards the big male, who was again standing motionless at the center of the ring.
#
“Who is he?” said Sekadi as Mosuoe Nkati ran a healing gem over her abdomen; its magics sent a chill through her and she shivered.
“Be still, novice,” said Nkati.
“He never speaks,” she said, ignoring his ministrations.
“Speaking is over-praised,” said Nkati. “And mostly over done.”
She was too deep into her mull to note the point in his tone. He withdrew the gem and murmured a Closing Rhyme.
“He’s too old to be a student,” she said, stifling a wince as last of her wound closed. Nkati, like Mosuoe Nemisa, was terribly old, older even than Sekadi’s grandsire. He too favored the single braid of white and the robes, though his were Healer blue.
Her cousin, Lebo, often made sport of healers.
“Their only job is to cheat a warrior of his rightful place in the Hands of Olodumare,” Lebo would say. He was a thick-witted lout but he was popular for his talent with the heart cleaver.
Sekadi would have given her whole inheritance to see him make sport of Nkati or any of her teachers, cleaver or no. Then she would have happily danced at his funeral. The idea that he might find eternal bliss in the Hands of Olodumare while Nkati, as a healer, would not, was laughable.
For all their advanced age, each of the temple's Mosuoes was as lethal as basilisk venom and five times as quick. She hoped one day to be half as deadly as even this wizened little teacher.
“We are all students,” said Nkati as he returned his instruments to their cubby.
“You sound like Nemisa,” she said, hopping down from the small exam platform.
“Mosuoe Nemisa,” said Nkati, “is wise.”
#
Sekadi’s second attempt to kill the big male came between strategy class and her reporting for punitive scullery duty, the result of comments she’d made during Mosuoe Okosi’s lecture on lowland ambush scenarios.
The big male was moving through the seventy-seven battle stances in the smaller outdoor practice ring, apparently oblivious to the world around him.
Sekadi leaped out at him hoping to catch him around the throat with the garrote she’d improvised from her boot ties.
Just as she was about the bring the loop down, the big male spun away swinging one arm up into her stomach and knocking her to the ground.
Sekadi sat where she fell, wheezing, while the big male continued on with stances sixty-three thru seventy-seven, never once acknowledging her presence.
* * *
Her third attempt on the big male’s life came after scimitar drills and involved a borrowed long sword, some spark stones and a length of iron chain. It too failed and Sekadi spent a good deal of the rest of her life trying to block the incident from her mind.
After that abortive try she was ordered off the grounds until evening meal.
* * *
As she gazed down on it from her high perch, Sekadi considered the Temple of the Ochre Blade.
It stood in the lee of the mountains that grew up out of a great salt plane the locals called the Shield of Jakuta. It consisted of five large stone buildings arranged in a rough semicircle around two smaller ones set side by side.
Three of the large buildings were for
