Shattered Shields - eARC by Jennifer Brozek, Bryan Thomas Schmidt Page B

indolent, were no match for the brutal warrior caste they’d created to protect them. The great houses were so angry that they destroyed the church and killed every priest they could find. The temples were burned and the statues were smashed. The Law was written to correct the excesses of the First Caste, but it went too far. It declared there was no before and no after, so it only set in stone corruption. And thus our god was Forgotten.”
    “You claim to be of the old priesthood.” Keta didn’t know what to believe. “Why are you telling me this, Ratul?”
    “Because the Protector of the Law isn’t coming here for your pathetic rebellion. He is coming here for me. ”
    * * *
    Govind, the net mender, was at his left, and Baldev, the stone lifter, was at his right. Today they were not casteless net menders, stone lifters, or butchers, they were soldiers, and they were striking back against the house that had kept a boot on their face their entire life. Twenty more casteless were crowding against the doorway behind them, eager to begin.
    This is what it must feel like to be a whole man.
    The sound of woodcutter’s axes falling on sleeping heads was far louder than expected. The warrior’s barracks was coming to life. Men were springing from their beds— the warrior caste got actual beds —and taking up their swords.
    “Kill them all!” Keta lifted his meat cleaver and hurled himself, screaming, at the nearest rising warrior. He lashed out and caught the warrior’s wrist as he reached for his sheathed sword. The stump came back, pumping red. Keta snarled and hacked away. Steel parted flesh, opening the warrior’s neck clear to the vertebra, and he flopped back into this blankets.
    Keta had never killed a man before, but he found they died not so different than butchering a pig.
    Until they fought back.
    The warriors collected themselves far too quickly, and then their swords were slicing back and forth through the darkness. They stood shoulder to shoulder, each one knowing what to do because they’d practiced together for thousands of hours. A handful of assassins rushed them, and casteless blood splattered the walls and pumped out onto the floor as a result. Another group hit, but the warriors split the wave like a cliff rock.
    They were a wall of steel. The warrior’s backs were to a stone wall. Keta had expected this would happen. They needed to be pulled into the open, so Keta could surround and crush them with superior numbers. “Outside! Everyone run!” Keta slipped in a puddle, but then Baldev had him by the arm, hoisting him and carrying him back toward the door. “Run!”
    Of course, the warriors gave chase, because that was what a predator did when its prey fled. Even naked and barely awake, the warriors didn’t hesitate. They rushed out the door after the assassins, and right into the waiting spears and hurled rocks of a casteless mob. The pursuing warriors had not expected so many foes, and they died quickly as a result.
    There were other barracks, but they were made of wood, so they’d been set on fire. As the coughing warriors tried to come out, they were shoved back with spears. Impaled or burned, Keta didn’t care. The manner of their deaths didn’t matter. Only that they all died.
    Keta climbed on top of a barrel so that everyone could see him. He waved his bloody cleaver overhead. “Tonight we show them we are whole men. To the master’s house!” If everything had gone as planned, the master would already be dead, throat slit by a casteless pleasure woman who was part of the conspiracy, but Keta didn’t want to dampen his new army’s enthusiasm. “Onward!”
    “Drag him from his hiding place and hang him on the punishment wall!” Govind bellowed as he brandished the dead overseer’s whip.
    The mob surged toward the master’s house. Other warriors would be waiting, and these would be alert, ready, and possibly armored, but there would be no stopping the tide of blood tonight.