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Ostensibly the reason Aloy came into the game-room where Kotallo preferred to spend the majority of his time was to update him on the movements of Regalla’s troops. Ostensibly.
But even once his holographic map was updated, she lingered beside it with him. There was something uncharacteristically distracted about her manner. She was slow to respond and hesitant. More concerningly, her eyes flickered to his left arm— or more correctly where his left arm used to be. She’d never shied away from it before, also never paid it undue attention. The change disturbed him as much as the opaque thoughts that clouded her eyes.
“Was there… something else, Commander?” Kotallo asked, tensed for an answer he would dislike; half expecting to hear her finally question his usefulness or his capabilities, maimed as he was.
“Yes,” Aloy visibly rallied herself against her hesitation and forged ahead. “I had a question about a Tenakth custom I heard about from a Veteran among the Utaru.”
“A Veteran?” Kotallo straightened up. “I heard there were still some in their number but I have never met one. I am curious. Please ask your question.”
“This Veteran found a squad of Tenakth hold up in a cave after a training mission went wrong. They had been swarmed by machines and several of them injured. The worst had acid splashed across his face and eyes.” Aloy shuddered, her eyes briefly closing as if they could block out what her own mind was showing her. Kotallo swallowed back bile rising in his throat, too easily able to recall the smell of acid burned flesh rotting off the corpses of battlefields past. The screams of the dying rang in his ears.
“I have seen such injuries. It is a terrible way to die.”
“But he didn’t die. He was blinded, but survived.”
Kotallo stiffened and his expression hardened into a tense frown. His adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed against some distasteful thought. Aloy looked up at him through her lashes, gauging his reaction.
“For a Tenakth, to survive such an injury is a worse fate,” he said at length, turning away.
“His sister would disagree.” Kotallo’s eyes flickered up to her face before quickly back down to the map as Aloy went on. “She seemed happy he was still with her, but she said if he made it back to his clan he would face a trial by combat against a machine, despite being blind. Is that true? Is that what you meant by ‘worse fate’?”
Eyes still downcast, Kotallo nodded.
“Not despite,” he explained in a tense low rumble, “but because of his blindness. Any Tenakth who is maimed faces such a trial. A Tenakth who cannot fight is better off dead. A Tenakth who would bring death to their squad by their own weakness and failure should welcome death.” He glanced up, measuring the furrow of her brow and the empathy shining in her eyes. He expected her to interrupt with some outrage or disgust. Whatever she felt she kept it shuttered behind her serious expression,... perhaps out of respect for him or simply because her curiosity was not yet sated.
“For a more minor injury the trial is a formality,” he explained as bluntly as he could. “The Commander might call for a lesser challenge, a Charger or Burrower. For more serious handicaps, they may choose a more deadly machine— the warrior on trial is even permitted to request a particular challenge— so that death may be quick… if that is desired.” He finished in a whisper, unable to meet her eyes.
“That’s… a harsh way to live.” Aloy said, her voice shaking slightly— the tight tremors of a muscle held too tight against the urge to move, to scream or fight. Kotallo glanced sidelong at her balled fists and ramrod posture. Vividly he was reminded of an old friend.
“War is harsh,” Kotallo stated, “and for the Tenakth as long as we can recall War has been the norm. I recognize the custom must sound… barbaric to an outlander.”
“I didn’t say that,” Aloy refuted quickly and vehemently.
“No,” Kotallo shook his head and a ghost of a fond smile tugged at the dark line of his mouth. “Fashav did.” Aloy leaned back and blinked, her anger overtaken by her surprise to hear the fallen Marshall’s name. “When we served together another Marshall returned to the Grove with a similar injury. His sight was not lost entirely, but badly imparied. His mother, mate, and son were called. They, along with Hekkaro and the other Marshalls, bore witness to his trial against a behemoth in the Arena. By then, I had seen Fashav in many battles already, and he did not flinch away from death or violence. He was a true Tenakth in that regard.
“But watching that trial, he trembled. I asked him if he didn’t think it was a more noble end for an honorable warrior. That Marshal had the fortune to bid his loved ones goodbye before death, a chance many do not get. Fashav said it was ‘a custom as barbaric and pointless as the Sun Ring’. He hoped, and I think Hekarro shares this hope, that one day, if the Tenakth find lasting peace, such a custom would lose its purpose and be left behind.” Kotallo looked away, down at the holographic map and the spiked wooden tokens that represented the bloody battles fought to the west. “Such a day has not come for my people, and won’t so long as Regalla and her war-mongering ilk remain.”
“Did…,” Aloy had to stop and swallow before she could ask, “did you face a trial like that after the Embassy?” Kotallo’s dark eyes were unwavering when he looked up at her.
“I did.”
“What— If I can ask… what machine—”
“A bristleback,” he cut her off with a clipped tone and looked away sharply. He didn’t want to see the flood of revulsion that he could predict rising to her face. He heard her gloved fingers scraping across the table as they fisted with her rage and her harsh inhale of breath was shaky.
There was anger cold as chillwater in her voice when she spoke: “Hekarro made you fight the very machine that—”
“I requested it,” He cut her off sternly. His remaining hand mirrored hers, curling into a fist on the edge of the table and muscles jumped along his arm with tension. “Hekarro would have forgone the trial until after the Kulrut if Dekka and I had not demanded it.”
“ Why? ” Aloy asked before she could stop herself.
“He did not want to be left without his Marshals, even a maimed—”
“No! Why demand it? You were still healing. You could have been killed!”
“It needed to be done. Dekka demanded because she knew no Tenakth would even speak to me— let alone respect me— until it had been done,” Kotallo answered without meeting her gaze. “I demanded it for myself, because I needed to know. When I faced such a machine again what happened at the Embassy would either cloud my mind or I would overcome it. Better that such a weakness be revealed in the Arena where only I might suffer, than in the field where the lives of others— or the lives of my Chief — would rest on my shoulders. By the grace of the Ten I prevailed.” He summed up his survival in a brisk phrase, hoping to cut off further argument. But Aloy pushed on.
“So if you’d died in that trial, you would have been ok with that? With all the people who would have mourned you needlessly?”
Kotallo laughed a short mirthless bark and shook his head.
“I can name more who would take pleasure in my death than those who would mourn me. A Marshall’s job is a thankless one more often than not. Most of those who would have cared did not return from Barren Light. I would have joined them in death, and many would say such an end would be fitting.”
“I wouldn’t. I would care if you died.”
“Had I died in that trial we would not have met at Stone Crest,” he reasoned. “You would never have known me but from a distance.”
“I would care if you died now,” Aloy amended.
“I know,” Kotallo sighed. “Your heart is boundless as the skies. It is part of the reason I pledged my life to your mission. But you don’t need to further burden your heart over my trial or that of the blinded soldier. All Tenakth know it is a possibility when we go into battle. We make our peace with it.”
“Oh,” Aloy bit her lip, seeming to remember suddenly how the whole topic came up. “He… didn’t actually—”
“Aloy.” Kotallo held up his hand quickly. “If, for whatever reason, this soldier did not return to his clan for trial— say an Utaru Veteran took him away to a new life as a farmer— as a Marshal I would be obligated to see him returned to his Commander and any who assisted his defection punished. Only if I heard about such a deserter of course.” He raised his brows at her meaningfully, and she snapped her gaping mouth shut quickly.
“Of course,” she forced a false smile and lied. “Then… well… it’s good he succumbed to his other wounds then.”
“It is,” Kotallo agreed with a nod.
“Yep,” Aloy popped the word with her lips and rocked on her heels. Truely, Kotallo had known children barely beyond their cradles who could lie more convincingly.
“And,” he added, “should I hear rumors otherwise I will tell you immediately. The Veteran may want to know a Marshal is coming so he can… arrange his story.”
Aloy smiled, wide and genuine this time. “I think that he would appreciate that,” she agreed with a nod.
“Is that all, Commander?” He tipped his head towards her.
“Yes. Thank you, Kotallo.” She nodded and turned towards the door, glancing over her shoulder with a smile for him as she went.
Kotallo let his own smile spread after she had passed. Another Tenakth might have condemned him for what he had just done. A few years ago he would have been such a Tenakth. If Aloy had come to his younger brasher self with such a story he would have demanded names and how to find them with righteous fury. It was strange to look back at a version of himself who was more whole and yet lacked so much perspective.
Sitting in Stone Crest waiting for the Outlander, he had resented his survival. Not for the first time, and certainly not the last, he had wished either the first Bristleback had crushed him properly or the second had finished the job. It wasn’t until he saw Tekotteh’s angry humiliated face on the Bulwark ruins that he found any joy in surviving. That was because of Aloy. The chance to protect Hekarro from Regalla at the Kulrut, to see the vision of Faraday that had inspired the unification of his people, to learn the reason for the Derangement that claimed more and more lives each year; all of it made him happy to be alive. There were still moments of pain when he thought dark oblivion would be preferable and moments of guilt when he thought it would be deserved. Slowly those moments were becoming the exception instead of the norm. If he had allowed the trial to claim his life— if he had requested a more vicious machine as an instrument of his own suicide— all of those chances would have been lost.
His younger, brasher self would not have understood those lost chances. He would not have been able to see that the blind soldier could find worth beyond his disability if given time and support— support the Tenakth were not ready to offer. Kotallo, who had known Aloy’s compassion and aid, understood now. He was not “whole”, but he wondered sometimes if he wasn’t also a better man (despite his loss, because of it, or completely independent of it; who could say). He hoped, one day, his people could see the same.