Tain fell and dragged him down, leaving Marak’s back exposed. Marak rolled, put himself underneath and in the process gave Tain the heel of his hand under his chin with everything he had in his arm. He saw Tain dazed for a moment. Men hacked at the rolling knot of their bodies, and in one moment a machai hacked down into his back, but he had a deathlock on the gun and meant to batter Tain loose from the one weapon that equalized the odds.

“Marak!” someone shouted, a shot exploded near his ear, two shots that had not come from the pistol. In the same moment Tain butted him in the face, but he regarded neither—got his best grip on the gun and twisted, and rolled, turning Tain’s arm under him, seeing in his blurred vision that Tain could not let go the gun, but had no command of it either. He had a leverage: he had a hand free: he seized Tain’s wrist and rolled loose.

He gained his feet, soaked in blood. He faced his father, half-winded, with the contested gun in hand.

Then he saw Memnanan with a rifle, and three of his father’s men down, and the fourth wounded. The Ila sat on her chair amid all of it, in the most incredible attitude of calm.

The fourth man broke and ran. Marak stared dead-on at Tain and Tain at him. The truth he tried not to betray was that his trigger finger was too mangled to function: maintaining that stare, he changed to a two-handed grip, and Tain returned him that hell with you glare that he turned on any infraction against his authority… that old, old implication of threat and disdain for the odds.

Not beaten, not Tain. Not until he was dead. And it was on him to do it.

“Get out of here!” he yelled at Tain, last chance, last try. “Get out of here!”

He knew he was a fool when he gave Tain the chance. Tain’s expression changed to that cocksure confidence his enemies dreaded. Tain backed a step and turned.

Memnanan fired, and took Tain dead in the middle, and twice more to be sure. Tain died at his feet, and he stood there, numb.

And after that it was themselves, and the aui’it, and the red-robed Ila, who sat on her throne with her hand pressed to her side and dark blood leaking over her fingers.

The Ila looked over the corpses of Tain and three of his men, and then at him and Memnanan. “I still rule this camp,” she said.

A shot had hit her in the stomach. She was still sitting upright. She was still on her throne. The aui’it clustered around her as if they foresaw and dreaded her fall.

What was there for them to say? That the Ila was the one name that tribes and villages alike knew as authority?