Amkela lay on his back watching the two moons cross the night sky far above, waiting for one to catch the other. The roof of the doss-hall was an unfinished frame; the walls were what mattered to those who’d built it. Beside him lay other Inyentu men. None slept, not tonight. Beyond the walls the settlement was loud with drunk voices raised in song and shouts and laughter and arguments. Under the revelry came music on fast-plucked steel strings and metal horns—music alien to Amkela.

The Mountain People were celebrating a victory fifty years gone by, a victory before Amkela was born, when even his father was a child. A victory that had dried up rivers and laid steel across the Dry Wilds as tightly as it now lay around Amkela’s ankle.

He listened to the celebration and watched the sky, waiting. With a raised hand, he measured the space between the two moons: the White Bull, slow and swollen with light, and the Arrow, swift and angular. With his arm stretched out and his fingers spread wide, Amkela could cover the White Bull with a thumb and almost touch the Arrow with his little finger.

“Less than an hour,” he said.

Idani was sitting on his own battered mat beside Amkela’s, one leg tucked beneath him, the other outstretched to accommodate the chain that ran through their ankle shackles and those of the other eight men in their row of the hall.

“Scared?” Idani asked.

“Eager,” he said with a forced laugh. It was true, but so much could go wrong.

Idani sucked his teeth, seeing through Amkela’s bravado.

“Keep your head. Stay together.”

This was advice Amkela had heard repeatedly since they’d arrived at the settlement ten days ago. Before it had seemed too obvious, unnecessary. But ten days of suffering and witnessing the overseers’ cruelties had stoked a rage he struggled to control—a rage too strong for such a weak mantra as ‘keep your head’. But the rage was better than the fear, so he held on to it.

“You saw what that one-eyed overseer did yesterday?” he asked.

Idani nodded, tight with his words.

“If I could face him before we go…” said Amkela. “If the Ancestors would only put him in my hands tonight—”

“Then something has gone wrong.” Idani kissed his thumb to ward off bad luck.

Amkela returned his attention to the moons; the Arrow seemed no closer to the Bull.

“Do your people have the same stories about the moons as mine?” He needed to pull his mind from what lay ahead.

Idani shrugged. “Same names, so the same stories.”

The Mountain People saw no difference between the Inyentu, and that bound all the nations together, just as the chain joined Amkela to Idani. But their nations were as distinct as the two moons, and Amkela suspected their stories would be, too, if he could ever get his friend to speak more than a dozen words at a time.

“I wonder if the Mountain People have stories about them?”

Idani shrugged again, as if to ask what it mattered without asking anything.

The door to the doss-hall lurched open with a crash. Overseers poured in laughing, their wind-up lamps buzzing like cicadas and lighting their skin a sickly blue.

“Stand up, boys! Up!” they shouted in their language, kicking at the nearest Inyentu and sending them scrambling.

“Form up! Like you was on parade for the Dynast himself! Drop those blankets!”

Amkela got to his feet, the chains rattling as Idani and the rest of the men hurried to obey. The Mountain People chattered in their tongue, walking up and down the lines of men. They slapped arms and poked men in their bellies as if they were livestock. Amkela felt a knot of panic—they were choosing men for something. A glance up at the sky told him the moons were no closer.

The pack of overseers came down Amkela’s line, led by a burly man with one eye covered by a stained bandanna. Idani kissed his thumb.

Amkela put his gaze to the floor and wished the Ancestors didn’t take bravado so seriously.

“Look at this lazy shit.” One-eye had stopped next to Embelela, an old man who was sitting up but wasn’t on his feet yet.

“I’m getting there, boss. Quick as quick!” Embelela assured One-eye.

The overseer kicked him. “Up!” he shouted.

As the old man tried to stand, One-eye kicked him again, knocking him back down. The other overseers laughed at the game, and Embelela joined them.

“Sorry, boss.” He chuckled. “So clumsy tonight.”

“Up!” One-eye shouted, angered at the old man’s affable reaction.

Embelela was almost on his feet again when One-eye moved to shove him down.

The chain rattled, the sound stopping One-eye and pulling all the attention of the overseers to its source: Amkela. He had stepped forward, hands bunched in fists but not raised. He didn’t know what he’d been about to do, but it was going to be stupid. He knew it, and the overseers knew it.

Embelela was staring at him and gave the smallest shake of his head.

“Look at this boy.” One-eye’s gaze was bright on Amkela. “He’s got pepper in him. He’d love to swing at a connie. Wouldn’t you, boy?”

‘Connies’ meant the conscripted soldiers. Amkela didn’t know why wanting to swing at one sounded like praise from the overseer.

Another hawked and spat. “He’s hardly thicker than a switch. He’s no good.”

“Nah, he’s got fight. And he’s fresh, too.” One-eye’s smile showed yellow teeth. “Oh yeh, he’s the one. Unlock him, Chickenbone.”

A slight Inyentu scurried forward and knelt by Amkela to unlock his shackle with a bulky key. Barely more than a boy, he kept his shoulders hunched and his eyes on the ground. The overseers picked out a handful of other men from the hall to be hustled out into the night. As he left, Amkela looked back through the door. Embelela had his fingers to his chin in salute while Idani was observing the moons, hand held out to measure how much time was left.

Out in the open, the celebration was even louder. Lights moved everywhere—orange oil lanterns and the blue-white of the cicada lamps. The White Bull’s glow lay over everything. Amkela glanced up—the Arrow was still too far. But now he could see what else shared the sky with the moons: a zeppelin. It watched over the camp, sleek and brooding, its mooring lines silver threads in the Bull’s light.

The chill air made him shiver. He and the other Inyentu wore only the loose shorts of labourers. The Mountain People were in the varied brown coats of the overseers, but some wore the dark red of soldiers. Wherever there were Mountain People there were soldiers keeping them safe from the “Inyentu of the Wilds’. Amkela could see other groups of overseers and Inyentu leaving other doss-halls. All were converging on the quarry. Amkela didn’t know why and didn’t like the possibilities.

“Where go, boss?” Amkela asked a moustached overseer in exaggerated pidgin, though he was fluent in their language.

“You’re going to win us some coin, boy.”

“Not a Dynast-damned chance,” chipped in another. “He’s hardly nothing to look at.”

“He’ll surprise you,” One-eye said. “Give him some fire.”

Moustache passed Amkela a tin flask, unstopped, and Amkela took a hesitant sip. The burn of the cheap liquor made his eyes water, but he took a swig and coughed.

“That’s strong enough to burn the dark right off your hide,” said Moustache.

The Mountain People laughed.

As they approached the main quarry, the sounds of celebration intensified to a raucous mix of music and shouts. Amkela stood at the edge looking down at the festivities, awestruck. The quarry’s stepped sides were ringed with hundreds of paper lanterns of different colours while raw flame danced in braziers to warm the throngs of Mountain People. The whole of the settlement was there: guards, traders, overseers, artisans, and soldiers. Spilling across levels and churning drunkenly. The five tiers gave a measure of structure to the festival, dividing the society of the Mountain People into rough classes. The highest level was least crowded, the important folk holding court while looking down on the rest. These were the officers and the blooded traders at the settlement to do business, their revelry more dignified than the commoners crowding beneath them. The lower it went, the more Inyentu there were among the Mountain People, serving food and drinks. On the quarry floor musicians sat on stools and made their strange music. The pit had become an amphitheatre.

One-eye led them down the rough wooden stairs and ladders to the lowest level, where they elbowed their way through the crowd to the open centre. Here the musicians played and men danced ridiculously, kicking their legs out to the fast-paced strings.

“Took your time,” a bearded man said to One-eye.

“Piss off, mate. Less you wana round with me.”

—

Excerpt from THE UNWOVEN WARRIOR published by Mirari Press. Copyright © 2025 by Jon Keevy.

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