Empire (19 page)

The Kreelan went very still, as if she were expecting this and wasn’t going to struggle.

Reza hesitated, his resolve suddenly cracking. What was he supposed to do? he wondered. He knew the woman’s life was his for the taking, and he had no doubt that, were their positions reversed, she would have no compunction about killing him. Esah-Zhurah had not spoken of how such things were handled, perhaps in the firm belief that if Reza ever found himself in such a situation, either she would be able to get him out of it or he would simply be killed.

And yet, here he was.

This, he thought ironically, is what in a more lucid moment Wiley had once called a “command decision.” There was no one from whom he could ask advice or consent. The burden of success or failure was on his shoulders and his alone.

The Kreelan, trembling beneath him from a kind of pain Reza hoped never to have to endure himself, waited with a patience grown through a lifetime of conditioning. Around them, the crowd of observers was deathly quiet, waiting for the contest to be resolved.

Remembering the sets of human ears hanging from the warrior’s waist, he suddenly knew the course for his vengeance. Taking a handful of the woman’s braided hair, he cut it off with the knife.

She screamed in agony, from a torrent of incomprehensible pain that Reza someday would come to understand himself. Esah-Zhurah had told him that a Kreelan’s hair was her strength, her bond to the Empress, and he knew that it was as precious to them as it had been to Samson in the Old Testament of Earth. He didn’t understand all of what Esah-Zhurah had told him, but it was enough that the Kreelans believed in the importance of their hair. And he had just deprived this warrior of a goodly portion of hers.

He left her, stepping away to where Esah-Zhurah lay bleeding. He carefully turned her over to look at her wounds. The four ugly gashes across her skull were deep, and there was a tremendous amount of blood in her hair and on the street.

“Oh, God,” he whispered in Standard, wondering if she could be bleeding to death, or if her skull had been fractured. He had no idea what to do.

Her eyes fluttered open. She tried to focus on him and opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out before she passed out again.

The stricken warrior had stopped screaming. Now she glared at him, the blood and fluid from her devastated eye seeping down her face like a smashed egg. He watched her carefully, waiting for the next attack, the one he would not be able to stop.

Her face finally locking into a frigid mask of utter hatred, the warrior got to her feet faster than Reza would have thought possible. Her claws flexed like the talons of a predatory bird as she began to move toward him.

He moved between her and Esah-Zhurah, clutching the warrior’s own knife in his hand as he made ready for a last desperate stand, his hopes of survival all but extinct.

A shadow suddenly fell over him and a huge hand with obsidian claws clutched his shoulder from behind, pushing him back down beside Esah-Zhurah with the irresistible strength of a mountain. He went perfectly still as a voice behind him, oddly familiar, spoke to the advancing warrior in the same dialect that Reza could not understand, but in a tone of unquestionable authority.

The warrior stopped. She listened intently to whomever was standing behind Reza. His opponent said nothing. She glared at him one final time and then, much to his surprise, she bowed to him, her arm across her chest. She reached around to her back and tossed him the scabbard for the knife he still held.

And then she slit her throat with her own claws.

Reza watched in horrified fascination as blood gushed from the ghastly wound and air whistled from her severed windpipe like someone blowing over the top of a bottle. The warrior stood at rigid attention until, as the flow of blood slowed to a trickle, her good eye rolled up into her head and she fell to the street, dead.

Reza vomited, but nothing came up. He simply knelt in the street, wracked with dry heaves. When he was finished, he felt the great hand on his shoulder again. Turning his face up, he looked at the woman standing over him, and his heart froze at what he saw.

Silhouetted against the slowly setting sun, standing at least a head taller than the tallest of the other warriors and with a frame whose strength could have matched any two or three of their kind, was the most powerful Kreelan he had ever seen. A great gnarled staff that Reza doubted he could have even carried was held easily in one hand. Her breast armor, a glistening black that seemed to have an infinite depth, boasted an intricate series of crystal blue runes inlaid into the metal that sparkled like diamonds in the sun. From her neckband hung several rows of silver, gold, and crystalline pendants, and the neckband itself had a cobalt blue rune at its center, a feature whose importance was evident by its uniqueness.

She was a priestess, he knew. This much, Esah-Zhurah had taught him.

Her eyes blazed at him from beneath the ridge of bone or horn that made up her eyebrows. The ridge over her left eye and the skin of her cheek had been cut, leaving an ugly scar…

…that was the mirror image of his own.

“No,” he whispered hoarsely in the New Tongue, as the nightmare image from his childhood became the warrior priestess now standing over him. “It cannot be.”

“And yet, so it is, little one,” Tesh-Dar replied, speaking in the New Tongue so he could understand. Her eyes darted to his hand, the knife shaking in his quivering grip. “Do not raise your hand against me,” she warned, “for I will not be so charitable as the time we first met.”

Her words sank into Reza’s skull, and he realized the ridiculous futility of even attempting to attack her. The scar that marred her proud face was the result of a fluke that she had taken with good humor. To try and repeat the feat would be nothing less than suicide.

Reluctantly, he held the knife out to her, handle first.

“No,” she told him, her voice echoing her satisfaction that the young animal was not going to act foolishly. “It is yours, a prize of your first contest. Your resourcefulness and spirit have saved you yet again, child.”

Turning her attention to Esah-Zhurah, she knelt down to examine the girl’s injuries, delicately probing the gashes with her talons. Esah-Zhurah twitched, but she did not regain consciousness.

Tesh-Dar stood up, satisfied. After a moment of reflection, she leaned over and took hold of the thong on Reza’s leash, and Reza wondered how he had not tripped over it during the fight. She put it around her wrist and spoke to Reza, gesturing toward Esah-Zhurah with the staff in her other hand. “Carry her,” she ordered.

Reza knelt down and picked Esah-Zhurah up in a fireman’s carry, the blood from the wound on her head occasionally dripping down his back. Staggering under the load, he followed after the priestess as she strode down the street, occasionally tugging on his leash. The crowd respectfully parted in front of them, leaving eddies of conversation behind as they made their way out of the plaza and toward a different gate in the city wall.

They stopped just outside the gate at a corral that housed strange dinosaur-like creatures that Reza hadn’t seen before. An attendant wearing a rough leather robe brought one of the animals, already saddled and bridled, to the priestess, who smoothly mounted the snorting beast. Then she turned it about, neatly plucking Esah-Zhurah from Reza’s shoulders and laying her down across the animal’s back, just in front of the saddle. Esah-Zhurah’s head and feet dangled limply toward the ground on either side.

Tesh-Dar regarded Reza for a moment, wondering if she should let him ride with her. It was a long way to their destination.

“I will run,” he told her without being prompted, his spirits buoyed by a sense of determination, even if he were to regret it later: he had no idea how far they had to go. He had already walked for hours that morning, but he was not about to ride with the creature that had killed his parents. His day for vengeance would come, he vowed to himself. Perhaps not this day, nor the next, but it would come. Until then, he would not give her the pleasure of seeing weakness in him.

“As you wish, little one,” she said, wondering with some interest if he was up to the trek. If he were not, his carcass would feed the animals that roamed the forest. She had saved his life twice now. She would not do so a third time.

Or so she believed as she prompted her mount to a fast walk, Reza trailing along behind her like a hound following its master.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Reza sat alone under the shelter in the corral, watching the rain fall. He had no idea where he was, yesterday’s journey ending well after dark. Nor did he know how far they had traveled, although it had been far enough that he could barely move his legs, they were so sore.

Upon their arrival last night, Kreelan girls had appeared to help the priestess with Esah-Zhurah. They carried her off into the dark, the priestess following them after dismounting her animal, entrusting it to yet another of the young warriors. Almost as an afterthought she had ordered that something be done with Reza, and some of the girls brought him into this stall and chained him up in what he had come to think of as the dinosaur pen.

He had already gauged his chances of breaking his chains and given up any thoughts of escape as hopeless. He was not too worried about water, as the troughs for the animals were full (although rather foul smelling). But food would soon become a problem. As would the vermin that had infested his scalp, he thought in frustration as he forced himself not to scratch the incessant itches that now plagued his head.

He watched as the strange animals –
magtheps
, they were called – nibbled at the coarse grain that had been dumped in their food troughs. Somewhat larger than a Terran horse, they had shaggy dark brown hair with black tiger stripes. Two powerful hind legs could propel the beasts at an impressive run, as he had observed from his rather unique vantage point the evening before, and each hind foot carried a set of talons that seemed obligatory for every species on this accursed planet. The front legs, diminutive in size, seemed well adapted for holding onto the fruit or leaves these creatures might have eaten in the wild. But despite their athletic build, their heads were nothing but homely, having short, droopy ears and incredibly large eyes set close over what looked like a beak with lips, and two wide nostrils on either side.

The beasts seemed almost to regard him as one of their own – something for which he was very thankful, considering their size and strength – and were nothing but gentle and reserved in their disposition toward him.

Sighing as he scratched one of the curious beasts behind an ear, he turned toward the morning sky and wondered what lay beyond it, in the depths of space. He fantasized that a human fleet was even now on its way here…

Then he sighed with resignation. There would be no Confederation Marines coming to his rescue. No Navy battlewagons were coming to save young Reza Gard from his blue-skinned alien captors. He was alone and would have to fend for himself. As it so often seemed he had.

He looked at the knife, the trophy from the warrior he had defeated. Only this morning, when there had been plenty of time to look at it, had he discovered that it was human-made: a Marine combat knife. Itself a grim reminder of his plight, it was the only physical link he had left to his own people. Everything else he had ever had, even the little silver cross that had been a gift from Nicole, had been taken from him. The knife’s edge, while not as advanced as Kreelan blades, was nonetheless a testimony to human craftsmanship. It was razor sharp, exquisitely tailored for the act of killing another living being.

And that is what he had to look forward to, he knew. This race lived and died by a code of conduct based on the glorification of mortal combat, and he had to adapt to that code and make it work for him if he wanted to survive.

* * *

He awoke the next morning to the familiar smell of cooked meat, and opened his eyes to see a plate, a real china plate, sitting centimeters from his nose. It was loaded with properly cooked meat, fresh fruit, and the wheat cakes he had come to detest but forced himself to eat anyway. Esah-Zhurah, sitting next to him and watching him with her feline eyes, held a cup of ale for him.

Reza saw that the wounds on her face were all but healed.

“That is impossible,” he breathed. He reached out a hand to touch her face, to make sure it was real. “How can your wounds be healed already?”

“Our healers make short work of such trifles,” she said blandly, pushing his questing hand away.

Reza shook his head. Such a feat was well beyond anything he had ever read about for human medicine.

“How do you feel?” he asked, curious about her condition.

“Well enough,” she said, bowing her head to him slightly in acknowledgment.

She looked into his eyes, her own glinting in the morning sun. “You must have fought well, human,” she said, “for the priestess to take such an interest in you.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, grabbing one of the tangy fruits and biting into it eagerly to satisfy his loudly-complaining stomach.

“Tesh-Dar, the priestess of this
kazha
, this school of the Way, has adopted you into the ranks of her pupils.” She paused. “It is something for which there is no precedent. You should be very honored.”

Reza glared at her. “How can I honor the one who killed my parents, who helped destroy my homeworld, who attacked yet another world to bring me here?” He broke a piece from the cake he held in his hands, half of it crumbling in his angry grip. “Maybe if I had not been so terrified,” he muttered bitterly, “I could have rammed my father’s knife into her brain instead of just cutting her face.”