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Kotallo has always had the birthmark. He has a vague memory of Chaplain Gerrah saying to his mother that the mark would fade as he grew, that it won’t be an impediment to ink. He was told that when he was a baby it was a small, pale splotch on the inside of his wrist. It started changing colour and spreading when Kotallo was about four or maybe five years old By the time he was in his teens it was a bracelet encircling his left wrist, a very dark, almost green colour.
No one in the Bulwark had heard or seen of a such a mark. It wasn’t the usual kind of birthmark they were familiar with. Kotallo’s travels since becoming a marshal have taken him right across Tenakth territory. There isn’t a settlement he hasn’t visited. No one has been able to answers his questions.
The mark is changing again. His friend Fashav thinks a pattern is emerging. Kotallo is unsure. The colour is shifting almost daily. It is definitely green. Kotallo has shown his wrist to every medic he encounters. They have all said the same thing – they have no idea what is happening but they don’t think it will be fatal.
Handy.
Anyway, there’s nothing the young marshal can do. He does his best to ignore the changes, concentrate on the tasks Chief Hekarro and the High Marshal give him. Right now, he’s leading a squad of Sky Clan soldiers to Barren Light, along with the banner required to open the Embassy with the Carja. Kotallo knows he’s late. However, getting the squad and the banner was a little more difficult than he’d expected. Still, the joy of getting one over Tekotteh more than makes up for the arduous climb over the Sheersides and the high-speed march with a giant chunk of wood.
But… as they’ve got closer to Barren Light, Kotallo is feeling something odd in his wrist. He isn’t going to stop and remove his bracer to check. There isn’t time. This task is too important. The itching though – the itching is getting painful. Kotallo hopes he’ll get a chance to look at the mark before the Embassy starts.
Fashav doesn’t turn when Kotallo arrives. He’s deep in conversation with a red headed woman in a style of armour Kotallo doesn’t recognise. Kotallo is deliberately not telling Javveh how he acquired the Sky Clan banner when a burst of pain rips through his wrist. The female stranger lets out a cry of pain at the same time, grabbing her right wrist. Kotallo unbuckles his bracer and drops it to the ground. A man, whose armour matches the woman, is ripping her bracer from her arm. Kotallo glances over long enough to see that she also has a green bracelet marked on her wrist.
The atmosphere turns electric, like many shock bombs set off at once. Everyone with a twenty-pace radius starts twitching wildly. Kotallo falls to the ground convulsing. From Fashav’s shouts he thinks the woman has also collapsed. Then he feels another flash of intense pain, and darkness closes over him.
Aloy open her eyes to see Varl peering down at her anxiously. There’s something between her teeth and she tries to remove it. Her right arm - there’s something wrong with her arm…
Varl takes the object from her mouth. It’s the knife the Carja marshal gave her as a token of passage. The brave strokes back the hair from Aloy’s face.
“You were biting your tongue,” he says. “The other one was doing the same thing.”
Now Aloy can feel her tongue is sore and swollen. She tries to move her hand and arm again; it feels like she’s restrained somehow?
“So, Aloy, this is going to be a sho… difficult. No one here understands what’s happened, but the Tenakth need to start the Embassy as soon as possible.”
Varl is faking his calm. Aloy knows how much it takes to unnerve the Nora.
“What has happened?” she demands.
“Let’s get you sitting up and you can see for yourself,” Varl replies.
He puts his arm under her shoulders and helps Aloy lift her torso. She looks immediately to her arm, to her wrist. That was where the pain had started, right at that stupid birthmark.
Now it is much, much more than a birthmark. There is ivy coiled round her wrist, and there is a vine being pulled away from her. Aloy’s eyes follow the trailing ivy. The other end is coiled round the wrist of the last marshal to arrive. His eyes are closed. Fashav is bent over him, listening to his breathing.
“Who tied us together?” Aloy asks.
“No one,” Varl replies.
“That doesn’t make any sense. Plants don’t pop into existence and attach two people to each other.”
Fashav looks up. “That isn’t quite what happened. Vines grew from your wrists, yours and Kotallo’s, stretching out to each other. When your vine met his vine, they became one. The leaves started sprouting then.”
Aloy starts to panic. “Cut it off!” she snarls.
“We intend to,” Fashav says calmly. “But we have to start the Embassy now or we lose our chance.”
“As soon as the Embassy is over then.”
“Naturally, Aloy. No one wants to leave either of you like this for any longer than necessary.”
“Is he alright?” Aloy nods in the unconscious marshal’s direction.
“Kotallo has the constitution of a slaughterspine, he’s just lazy,” Fashav answers.
“I heard that,” a deep voice rumbles. The marshal’s eyes open and he turns his head towards Aloy.
He notices the ivy binding them almost immediately. “What in the name of the Ten?”
“A problem for after the Embassy, apparently,” Aloy says dryly.
Aloy makes eye contact with the marshal for the first time. His eyes are the colour of rare amber, framed with the blackest lashes. She feels another shock run through her body, sees his body jerk at the same time.
“Forgemaster’s piss! What is going on?!”
Any potential replies are drowned out by the horns of the Tenakth marshals, signalling their readiness for the Embassy to begin. It seems they’d been waiting only for their man to rouse.
Aloy starts manoeuvring herself to her feet. Being attached to another person makes the simplest movement complicated. She doesn’t hold back her laughter when she realises Kotallo and she are on different sides of the line. The Tenakth take their laws seriously, she thinks. Varl takes a gentle hold of her elbow and steadies her as she stands. Fashav helps Kotallo in a far rougher fashion. It’s embarrassing being tied to a stranger, and being in different territories. Aloy can’t take a step closer to him, because that would take her over the line, and she can’t take two steps back because the vine isn’t long enough. Kotallo can’t move for the same reasons.
The situation does make it easier for Aloy to not punch the Sun Priest when he produces a lengthy scroll and launches into one of his prolix speeches. She exchanges eye rolls with Kotallo.
“FASHAV!”
How do you fight when you’re tied to someone you’ve never met before?
Not as awkwardly as you might think, it turns out. Kotallo is more fortunate than Aloy, because the vine is attached to his off hand. He starts by assuming Aloy won’t be able to use her spear, that he will have to defend both of them. Fashav shoulder charges them into cover.
“I should go and help the Carja,” he says hoarsely. “But I can’t leave you two in this state.”
However, when Aloy pulls her spear, the vine lengthens, and hangs lax between them.
“This might work,” she yells over the noise of the fighting.
Kotallo nods, wondering how skilled this Aloy is. She’s going to need every scrap of it to live through this ambush. Lancers, Regalla called her troops. Launching spear and arrows alike from atop tame machines.
The Carja fall first, defenceless without their weapons. Fashav screams his anguish when the last one dies. A wall of fire prevents their escort squads from reaching the marshals who are battling overwhelming odds. Kotallo knows their chances are poor; all the same, the marshals will not give up their lives cheaply.
Kotallo and Aloy fight back to back, side by side, circling to protect the other. Fashav and Aloy’s companion are never far, because their limited mobility leaves the attached pair vulnerable. When Kotallo flings himself in front of the riderless bristleback charging at his High Marshal, it is Aloy who pulls him back before the machine’s cutting blade tears into his arm. Fashav drags Javveh to safety with seconds to spare. As one, Aloy and Kotallo drive their blades into the bristleback and it topples in a shower of sparks.
“KILL THEM ALL” comes the shout from above.
The remaining marshals have regrouped around the injured Javveh, who is still launching arrow after arrow, his powerful draw unseating rider after rider. Somehow Aloy and her companion are able to target vulnerable areas on the machines, bringing them down more quickly. They are withdrawing to cover as one, Aloy directing their attacks as if born to the battlefield.
She is fury. She is flame. Despite the danger, Kotallo is entranced. Her fighting style is more acrobatic than his, yet on the fly they work out how to use their differing skills and abilities to enhance each other while still connected. Aloy uses Kotallo as a jumping board, rebounding off him to land on rebels and snap their necks with her legs. Kotallo spins and throws Aloy, and when their vine pulls her back to him, she knocks over anyone in the way, leaving them an easy kill for his blade.
When Regalla calls for her troops to rally and finish the marshals, Aloy steps out into the open. Kotallo takes up a position to her right, and slightly behind.
“Why don’t you come down and finish the job yourself?” she yells up at the cliff.
Regalla motions to the machine next to her. “I have my champion for that,” she retorts.
Aloy looks at Kotallo.
“Grudda,” he comments. “Arrogant shit. Likes to use brute force blows and then retreat behind a powered shield. No subtlety.”
“We can take him together, Marshal Kotallo.”
“It will be my pleasure, outlander Aloy.”
When Grudda falls, Aloy straddling him with her knife in his throat, Kotallo’s blade in his guts, the marshals cheer. The flames are starting to die down and some of the escorts are working to douse a path through.
“What about now, Shouty Woman?” Aloy yells as she stands up. “Come on down if you think you’re hard enough!”
Kotallo can’t help himself. His laughter roars out at the outlander’s audacity. Regalla, once the most favoured marshal, the most admired, most honourable – reduced to Shouty Woman.
Regalla glares down, working her jaw as if chewing tough meat. Then she makes another gesture over her head with her spear, and her riders draw. She is the last to leave the clifftop.
Aloy is bouncing with the fire of the fight still coursing through her veins. That was a good fight. She wouldn’t call it a win, not with this level of casualties, but it wasn’t a defeat either. That woman clearly wanted all the marshals dead, especially Fashav by the sound of it, and she had failed. The Tenakth were not stripped of their peacekeepers and lawbringers. With Fashav alive, there could still be a chance of permanent peace with the Carja. Aloy herself has free passage through Tenakth territories and she hopes fighting with them here today will have earned her the goodwill of the marshals.
However, one thing to do before she can head off into the West to continue her search. Aloy looks at Kotallo. She’s enjoyed fighting alongside him. They made a good team. With practice, they could be epic.
“You or me?” the marshal asks.
“Actually, I think we should get someone else to do it. We don’t know what will happen.”
“True.” Kotallo whistles, and Fashav turns round. “Bring your fancy Carja blade.”
“It’s been… interesting,” Aloy says as they wait for Fashav.
“Inspiring, I’d call it,” Kotallo replies. He lifts his hand and waggles the vine. “What do you think this thing is?”
“Honestly, I have no idea. I’m going to find out, Kotallo, don’t you worry.” She grins at him.
He shakes his head, smiles back. “I believe you. You can find me, or word of me at the Memorial Grove, when you know.”
Fashav orders them to sit with the vine stretched tightly between them. He raises his sword, given to him by the former Sun King and cuts down sharply into the vine. Pain crashes through Aloy, the worst she has experienced. She hears Kotallo’s hiss of agony. Fashav grabs her and drags to the side.
“The cut pieces are reaching for each other,” he gasps.
Aloy and Kotallo move further apart, closely observed by those able. The vines stop their questing for each other at about thirty paces. Aloy is scanning. The vines read as plants, perfectly ordinary plants. It takes ten minutes of separation at thirty paces. The vines wither and turn black, crumble to dust.
“I suppose that’s how far we need to keep apart then,” Aloy comments. She realises she sounded sad. She is sad. She likes Kotallo, would have liked to know him.
Kotallo nods. He has an expression Aloy interprets as regret. “Thank you for today, Aloy. Things could have gone very differently without your aid.”
“I dislike rude people, interrupting other’s conversations,” she says, trying to play it down.
“Another time, then.”
“Another time, Kotallo.”
Aloy turns and walks away to check on Varl, who is on the Carja side of the line. She doesn’t see how Kotallo watches her.