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Anya was nine years old when she made her first kill. The priest notched her shoulder with the sword of the man she'd slain, and she did not cry out. She smeared the blood from the cut onto her face, where it mingled with the blood of her enemy, and she turned to face the village, holding the torch aloft.
"In the beginning, there was fire. Our people were born from the ashes," she said. She had known these words for as long as she could remember; now that she had made her first battle kill, she spoke them for the first time. Her voice was steady as she walked toward the funeral pyre.
"No goddess gave birth to us; we were born from destruction. In the earliest days, some said their god had come to wipe the earth clean. We know better. Our ancestors destroyed themselves.
Once upon a time, the people of the Earth lived in coffins made of concrete. They called them skyscrapers. They roamed their cities in metal coffins they called cars. Their feet never touched the earth; they breathed only polluted air. They could not hunt, and they built nothing with their hands. Their food came to them in metal cans and plastic boxes, for they had forgotten the secrets of the soil. And they believed this life was paradise.
Above all, they sought pleasure, and because they sought pleasure, they forgot how to fight with honor. Their armies roved the earth in metal boxes, and they rained fire from the sky with machines. They risked no lives in battle and did not gaze into the eyes of the enemies they had slain. Death had no price, and thus life had no value.
Is it any wonder they destroyed themselves?"
Now she stood before the pyre. The dead from the Ice Clan were lashed to the top of it; the bodies of Anya's clan, the Tree People, were tied to the sides. She touched the flame to the Ice Warrior she'd slain first, then she took it to the bodies of her village's dead one by one. The smell of burning flesh and hair made her want to choke, but she turned to face her people instead, the words of the sacred story on her lips.
"In the beginning, the very air burned. Ash rained from the sky. Men, women, children were reduced to nothing more than shadows imprinted on the roads. They say even now in the Lost City, if you look carefully, you can see the outline of an outstretched hand, the silhouette of a body curled against the flames.
Those who escaped were little more than shadows themselves. Their skin blistered and sloughed from their bodies. Blood poured from their mouths and hair fell from their heads. But a few of them lived. They could not make a living from the earth because there was no earth. The grass was scorched and the waters poisoned. They ate what little food survived in their plastic boxes and metal cans, and then they fell on each other. Some say these were the first Reapers, and they never lost the taste for human flesh. Still others despaired; lacking honor, they slit their wrists or swallowed medicine to make them sleep. That first winter, ice fell from the sky as thick and heavy as ash had fallen before. They hid beneath the ground, wrapped in blankets, and wept for the end of their lives.
But in the spring, a miracle came: the trees bloomed. They knew it was a sign that their lives had been spared, and this is why we celebrate the first blossoms even now."
At this, she blew out the torch and passed it to the priestess. Now Indra stepped forward, holding a silver sword. Once she had said that Anya was too small to fight. She had been wrong.
Anya took the sword from Indra's outstretched hand and held in the air. She said, "We learned again to fight with honor. We did not ask to live; we asked for a good death, better than our kinsfolk who had burned and blistered and frozen. We knew of the metal sticks our ancestors had buried in the earth. Guns, they were called. We did not touch them, for we now we knew the price of killing at a distance. Some said we should not kill at all, but they were weak. They died first. Violence is a fact of life. But remember, children, to fight with honor. Have the courage to look the enemy in her eye before you drive the spear through her heart. Do not fight with fire, for it kills the innocent as well as the guilty; it burns the trees and the rocks and the animals we depend upon for survival.
And if any among you cannot live by these rules, wipe them out, for they will destroy you."
***
The night the children fell from the sky in a metal can, the village seers claimed the end of the world.
Anya went to look at the crash site and sneered. They were old enough to be warriors, yet they wept and mewled. Two of their number were dead already, left to moulder beneath the ground. The rest would follow quickly: their camp had no order, and their scouts crashed through the forest, scattering what few animals they might have eaten.
Indra's fingers clenched around her spear. "Who are they to claim our territory for their own? I can kill them all myself."
Anya studied the camp. Indra had a point. This was their territory, claimed by the blood of their warriors. Who arrived in a foreign land and sought no permission, sent no emissary? These children were uncivilized. Yet she stilled her hand before she reached for her sword.
"It is a foolish woman who picks her fight before knowing her enemy," she said, but the fire in Indra's eyes was not quenched.
"What is there to know? They come to a foreign land unarmed, their scouts know nothing of the forest. Yet they think to live on our land. Let me take them now." Indra did not speak of the old legends, but she did not have to. They words burned in their heads: do not trust the people who live in metal coffins.
The warriors around them stepped closer to Indra, nodding their assent. They were thinking of the legends too.
But Anya shook her head. "Death always has a price. Let them kill themselves in the woods. They are of no consequence to us." Still, the insult had to be answered; her warriors would not be content without blood. "If their scouts cross the river, kill them."
"And if they do not heed that warning?" Indra asked, her fingers still clenched around her spear.
Anya answered with a grin that bared her teeth. "Then they will all die."
She turned and swept away, leaving Lincoln behind to observe the strangers' camp. She ought to have slept peacefully that night; the children in the woods were no threat, and she had risked none of her warriors' lives. Yet the acrid smell of their metal can would not leave her nose, and she thought again and again of the priestesses' words: if any among you live without honor, wipe them out, for they will destroy you.
***
At first, it seemed that Anya's prediction would come to pass: the children from the sky would kill themselves.. They fell into ravines and wandered into traps. They slaughtered meat without knowing how to preserve it, and they harvested poisonous berries from the bushes.
Indra shook her head when she saw the children's footprints in their forest. "The other clans will think us weak for tolerating intruders in our midst."
Anya snorted. "Let them. If they attack, they will see our strength."
She ordered her scouts to make an example of intruders near the villages and the hunting grounds, and she sent Indra to the borderlands, where she could sate her bloodlust against more worthy enemies. But it was the young warriors Anya ought to have worried about. They were not tested in battle, and they longed for bloodshed. Perhaps that was why they drove the children into the maze of traps near the village. Anya frowned when she saw the dead girl pinned against the tree and thanked Lincoln for halting the attack.
"Do we toy with our prey? Is their honor in what you have done?" she asked, and they looked away. She grabbed one by the chin. "Have you forgotten that death always has a price?"
They wished to kill in battle so that they might mark their flesh with their first kill. Anya sent her second to brand them with a hot sword instead. Let them remember their shame. For the next three nights, Anya doubled the village guard and patrolled with her scouts. Lincoln reported that the children were making preparations for war. And yet they sent no warriors to avenge their fallen comarades. Anya's unease grew. What kind of people did not value the lives of their kin?
And then the fire rained from the sky. A village burned. Horses screamed in the night and children burned in their beds.
Anya paced in front of the wreckage, her fingers tight around the hilt of her sword.
"I swear to you, your children's deaths will have a price," she said, but a message came from the Commander in the night: do not attack until I arrive.
***
Anya and Indra stood before the Commander. Her gaze shifted back and forth between the two of them.
"I sense disagreement between you," she said mildly.
Indra spoke first, her words tumbling out in an angry rush. "We should have killed them when we had the chance, but this one refused to allow it." She shot Anya a poisonous glance. "Now our children burn."
"I take responsibility," Anya said quickly. "I thought they would die without our help, but I was wrong. I have already given my tent and my winter provisions to the survivors."
"Then you will sleep in my tent and share my food this winter," the Commander said.
Anya opened her mouth to protest that she deserved no such honor, but the Commander raised a hand to silence her.
"We will need good chiefs in the months ahead. Dying of frostbite does little to help our clan." She turned to Indra. "You are the oldest among us. What do you know of these people?"
"My grandmother was born in the time before the fires," Indra said. "She said there was a village in the sky whose inhabitants might yet live. It is the star that moves from the north to the south in the night."
Anya failed to suppress a derisive snort. She had heard the stories of the Sky Village too, but like most of her people, she thought it was a lie created by weaklings who longed for the old days. The Commander offered her a reproving glance before she turned back to Indra.
"And if these are the Sky People, what does that mean for us?"
Indra's jaw clenched. "We know already. Their ancestors sought to destroy the Earth, and now they think they can claim our territory for their own. They fight as their ancestors did -- at a distance, with great fires that kill the innocent as well as the guilty. We must destroy them."
The Commander nodded. "I didn't believe the story of the Sky Village until today, but I see no other explanation for the foreigners' presence here. And now you wish to fight as well, Anya?"
Anya knelt, her hand on the hilt of her sword. "Let me lead the assault, Commander. I will avenge our people, I swear it."
"As you wish," the Commander said, motioning for Anya to rise. She looked toward Indra, who looked mutinous. "I have made my decision, Indra. Anya will have the chance to redeem herself. It is a chance I have given you before."
"May I go to ready my warriors, Commander?" Anya asked, but the Commander shook her head.
"There will be no attack tonight. These people fight without honor, but they are dangerous. We will learn what we can and plan our attack." She beckoned to one of her stewards. "Spread the word in the villages that anyone who brings back one of the Sky People alive will have a horse or their choice of meat from my personal stores. And make up a bed for Anya. She will share my tent tonight."
***
The Commander departed in the morning, leaving behind a spacious tent and a pile of grain and jerky for Anya. Anya had protested that she deserved no charity, but the Commander had glared at her sharply.
"Then earn it by leading your people," she said, her voice hard. "It will not do for them to see their chief sleeping on the earth."
And so Anya had made a pot of gruel that tasted like ashes in her mouth, and then she rode out to inspect her warriors. All day they sharpened swords and honed their spears, and in the evening, Lincoln appeared in her tent with tale of a truce.
Anya spat on the ground where Lincoln knelt. "If they did not wish for bloodshed, why did they not send an emissary to ask for safe passage? Why have they not sent warriors to fight fairly for a piece of our land?"
Lincoln's gaze remained on the ground. "The ways of the Sky People are different from ours. They thought themselves the last of humankind, and they did not know we had claimed this land for our own."
"And I suppose burning a village was a misunderstanding too?" Anya was glad Indra was not here to witness this blasphemy; Lincoln would be lucky to leave the tent with his head intact.
Lincoln shook his head. "I cannot explain that. I can tell you only that their leader is a healer. She will come unarmed to the bridge tomorrow if you will do the same."
"Very well," Anya said, and Lincoln looked up, startled. "Go now and tell this Clarke of the Sky People I agree to her terms."
When Lincoln was no longer visible at the end of the road, Anya commanded her best archers to be ready to depart at dawn. She was no fool; she'd smelled the stink of the Sky girl on Lincoln as soon as he entered her tent. She would go to meet the leader of the Sky People, but only to plan her war.
***
Clarke of the Sky People was no warrior. Her clothing was thin and tattered, and she carried neither weapons nor an insignia of her office. And yet she lived.
"I thought we said no weapons," Clarke whispered to her stewards. There were two of them, dressed no better than she, and none of them realized the wind carried their words.
Anya scoffed. She was a warrior. It was her birthright; she'd picked up her first sword almost as soon as she began to walk. To ask her to meet without weapons was an insult, and who was this Clarke to think she could ask a warrior to lay down her sword?
Anya's steward inclined his head toward the trees beneath the bridge. Three of the Sky People lay in the bushes, their guns poorly concealed. At least Anya carried her weapons openly; it was Clarke who lied.
"Kill them at the first sign of treachery," she said and urged her horse forward.
Clarke gazed at her with open wonderment as she rode toward the bridge. Anya did not fault her for it; she had taken her finest horse and her best armor, as befitted a meeting between leaders. Clarke's stewards stared too, and Anya bridled at their betrayal. Surely, if Clarke were their leader, if she had kept them alive, she deserved better than stewards who would stare at another chieftain with such admiration. But when she followed their gaze, she found that all three of them were looking at her horse with childish wonder.
She thought there are no horses in the village in the sky. Now she struggled to keep her curiosity from her face. She wanted to ask how they carried anything, how their village could move such great distances across the sky with no horses to share the load. Maybe Lincoln had spoken the truth: the Sky People had different ways, and their children had no warriors to teach them to fight with honor. Clarke's yellow hair glittered in the sun. Anya had heard tale of hair like this, but only in the elders' oldest stories. Would it feel different if she touched it?
She could offer them a deal, she thought as she dismounted. She would ask for hostages to ensure their good behavior. And if they would surrender those who had burned the village, they could choose to pledge subservience or fight for a piece of land.
But Clarke of the Sky People spoke only lies. She said they burned no village, and her men opened fire first.
***
On the morning of the assault, the bridge burned. Warriors flew past Anya, lifted off their feet by an invisible enemy. Heat seared her face. The screams of the wounded surrounded her, and she drew her sword, but there was no one to fight. Instead her heart raced in her chest, and for a long time, she could not name the emotion she felt because it was so unfamiliar. Finally she realized it was fear.
Still, she held her position at the foot of the bridge until the last of her wounded had passed. She held her sword over them as they limped away, hoping they might take some small solace from her promise of protection, even though she knew the Sky People had sent no warriors to finish the job. They attacked and ran and hid, and if Anya confronted them tomorrow, they would deny that they had done this. They were like the Mountain Men, a scourge to be wiped from the Earth before they began to prey on the people of the trees.
Indra marched toward her, holding her sword aloft. Anya dismounted and laid her second on a bed of ferns. The girl did not bleed, but her breath was like a death rattle.
"Your fight is not over," she said firmly. She pulled her sword from its sheath and turned to face Indra. A week ago, after the village burned, she might have conceded without a fight. Now she would live to avenge her people. And if Indra were in the way, she would die.
But Indra cast aside her sword. "My sister, we have quarreled in the past, but defeating these barbarians will require both our skills. Whatever you ask of me, I will do it."
She held out her hand, and Anya clasped it. "Then I ask your counsel, sister. The Sky People will fall beneath our swords."
***
The Sky People did fall beneath the warriors' swords. Like children, they attacked without thought, firing their weapons and killing no one. Yet they were clever, and the prisoner Murphy had some resilience after all: he did not tell them of the fires buried beneath the ground. Good warriors died that night, and they were killed from afar, without honor.
"It is better this way. What honor is there in killing an enemy who cannot defend themselves?" Indra said, gazing across the field of fire. The boy Murphy had called it a minefield.
Anya nodded. "Clarke is mine."
She slithered between the trees and shimmied up their trunks, but even high above the battlefield, she saw no trace of yellow hair. Bellamy, Clarke's lieutenant, ran back and forth between his soldiers, clearly a capable leader. But who left a man in charge of a battlefield? Anya wondered. Men did not endure the pain of monthly bleedings, and they could bear no child. Surely the Sky Children did not think that such creatures could be a woman's equal?
Clarke appeared only when her people were nearly defeated. She called for them, and they ran toward their metal coffin. But even now, with dead and wounded strewn around the field, Clarke did not say retreat. She said it's time and stared with anguish at her lieutenants who could not reach her. Anya knew then that fire was coming. Her warriors would die. She could hope only to avenge them.
She shrieked and leapt through the door, aiming herself at Clarke. Even before it clanged shut, she knew there were too many Sky People to fight. Her battle was almost over. Before she could find Clarke in the crowd, they threw themselves on her. She fell to the floor, curling her body against their punches and kicks. Not like this she thought, but she could not find her sword.
"Stop!" Clarke's voice rose above the fray.
The blows raining down on her slowed but did not stop. Clarke's voice grew louder. She shouted that Anya had no weapon, and the last of the attackers fell away. Of course, Anya thought. Clarke wanted her for a prize of her own. She pulled herself unsteadily to her feet and waited for Clarke to arm her. At last, they would fight with honor.
But Clarke only glanced at her. "Tie her up," she said and turned away. The children seized her before she marshalled the strength for even a single blow.
Their eyes turned toward the other side of the room, where the one they called Jasper toyed wiht a switch attached to brightly colored ropes. It was hard to believe that such a thing could be a weapon, but a sound like the grating of a thousand rocks filled the air. The stench of smoke and burning flesh wafted through the cracks in the door. Three hundred warriors cried out and were silenced.
When the door fell open, Anya stared at the charred bones on the scorched earth and thought of their prayer: we do not ask to live; we ask only for a good death, better than our kinsfolk who blistered and burned. Even this had been denied her warriors. She searched the ground for a stone, a sharp stick, the blade of a broken sword, anything she might use to slay the leader of the Sky People. Let them kill her honestly in combat, and in the afterlife, let her burn. Let her suffer the pain of three hundred deaths, right along with Clarke. Let Indra rise up in her place and slay the Sky People as she ought to have done on the day of their arrival. Let no one build a shrine in her honor, let no one sing a song in her memory. If they speak her name again, let them say it only to remind each other the importance of listening to the legends.
She had freed herself from her bounds when the pink fog rolled in. Mountain Men, she thought, and she did not fight the sleep that overwhelmed her. She would have no vengeance; this death was what she deserved.