Kassa had sparring practice that day. He took his spear down from the rack on the wall inside the school. Although its lethal point was sheathed and everyone wore neck guards of thick leather, it was far more exciting to practice with real spears than with plain wooden staffs, as the younger boys did.
Kassa clearly remembered the first time the sheathed tip of an opponent’s spear had swung toward his neck: A shiver had shot from his throat to his stomach as he imagined, all too vividly, the point piercing his windpipe. Death had never felt so close.
He stepped out of the darkness of the school building into the blinding sunshine, thin and autumnal despite its brilliance. “We’ll have a practice tournament today,” Muruzo announced. A big man of almost forty with broad shoulders and a loud voice, he was responsible for training the young men in the village. If any boy froze in his first encounter with a spear-wielding opponent, one gruff bellow from Muruzo was enough to break the spell.
There were eight fifteen-year-olds, including Kassa, and twelve sixteen-year-olds, including Shisheem. They broke into two teams of evenly mixed ages and lined up facing each other in two rows. Their shrill shouts echoed in the large outdoor sparring grounds.
Kassa liked spear fighting. An opponent with a long reach had the advantage when fighting with daggers, and Kassa, who was not as tall as his peers, always ended up frustrated because he could not get under his opponent’s guard. With the spear, however, height and reach did not matter as long as one had skill. In fact, Kassa’s nimbleness could give him an advantage over someone taller, as longer arms slowed down one’s swing. Moving with a speed that bemused his opponents, Kassa felt like he was dancing in space. He won his first three matches and, in the fourth, came up against Shisheem. Looking up at the older boy, he remembered what Gina had said about him the previous night.
Shisheem smiled loftily. His confidence was justified, for he surpassed all his friends with the spear. He was, after all, the son of Yuguro, the chieftain’s younger brother and one of the nine Spears. But few boys liked sparring with him, because he enjoyed toying with weaker opponents and defeating them in a flashy display of skill. Kassa especially disliked it because Shisheem always seemed to shove their difference in rank in his face. Today, however, Kassa felt strangely composed. From the moment they faced each other, he felt his mind grow calm and focused. The noises around him faded into nothingness.
Shisheem’s eyes flashed. Suddenly, with a shout that split the air, he drove his spear mercilessly at Kassa’s throat. Kassa instinctively raised his spear, deflecting the blow, and followed through, driving the point toward Shisheem’s nose. Shisheem barely managed to twist away in time and blood spurted from his ear. The smile had been wiped from his lips and his face was white with fury. Leaping back, he leveled his spear again, and it whistled along the ground to flick up into Kassa’s face. Kassa tried to turn the blow aside, but Shisheem shifted in the same direction, and the spear whipped back toward him. This time Kassa could not dodge the blow, and he felt hot pain sear his cheek.
“Hold!”
Sound returned with Muruzo’s shout, as if an invisible curtain had been torn asunder. Kassa’s friend Lalaka thumped him on the shoulder. “Good job! Nice work!” Kassa pressed his hand against his cheek and a smile touched his lips.
Shisheem was watching him. He put his hand to his ear and, when he saw blood, wiped it on his clothes. Some color returned to his pale face as he took a deep breath, then gave a twisted smile. “Well, Kassa, you’ve gotten pretty strong, haven’t you?” He tapped him lightly on the shoulder as he passed. “You’ll be a good spearman someday. Pity you weren’t born to the chieftain’s line. You’ll waste all that talent herding goats for the rest of your life.” He raised his hand to a friend and walked off toward his next match.
The excitement that had burned in Kassa but a moment before drained away.
At noon, he still had not shaken the gloom that weighed on his heart. His stomach growled with hunger as he sat on the steps, waiting for his father. He and Gina had just shared the cheese that his mother had given them for lunch, but it was nowhere near enough to keep him satisfied until supper. If only we could sell the luisha, he thought. Trying to cheer himself up, he let his imagination follow this train of thought. I’d start off by treating myself to some grilled sanga beef with spicy ganla sauce. Then I’d buy a cheese losso with plenty of yukka fruit in the filling….
Still, he knew it could never happen; luisha was just too rare and too valuable. Luisha only came to the surface once every twenty years or so, when the flute of the Mountain King sounded from beneath the mountains. That was the invitation to the king of Kanbal to enter the land below, accompanied by his nine Spears and their attendants. There the Mountain King presented the Kanbalese king with luisha as a sign of their friendship.
According to the legend Kassa had learned, the practice had begun over a thousand years ago, when a brave young man ventured into the caves and found his way to a palace under the land. There he met a beautiful maiden with whom he fell in love. But she was the daughter of the Mountain King, and the king told the young man that if he wanted to marry her, he must best the king’s son with the spear. Taking up the challenge, the young man defeated the hyohlu, the Guardian of the Darkness. The king praised the young man and let him take his daughter to the land under the sun. To make sure that both kingdoms prospered, he promised to send a gift to his daughter and her descendants every two decades. That gift was luisha.