CHAPTER EIGHT

The sword flashed down in a savage arc, the sun’s glow blazing from the metal as if the weapon itself was made of light.

Reza pitched himself to the right, dodging the blade, then kicked out with his left foot, his thigh like a massive piston that drove the air from Nyana-M’kher’s lungs and flung her to the ground. The few seconds of surprise his parry had given him was all he needed. Smoothly drawing the black shrekka from its holder on his left shoulder, he hurled the hand-held buzz saw and watched with satisfaction as it buried itself in the ground five centimeters from Nyana-M’kher’s head, showering her with sand from the arena’s floor.

“Enough!” called the arena’s umpire, a stocky warrior by the name of Syr-Kesh. A gesture of her hand made Reza’s victory official.

Reza collapsed on his knees into the sand next to Nyana-M’kher, who was also trying to get her breath back. She struggled to her knees, and the two of them bowed their heads to Syr-Kesh, Nyana-M’kher saluting as she did so. Then they both knelt there for the brief time that was allowed for meditation after one combat and before the next, a mental cool-down that the Kreelans considered an essential part of their routine.

Reza closed his eyes as his mind made the rounds of his body, sounding it out for damage and weakness, evaluating and relaxing each muscle in turn. Their combat had taken an unusually long time – nearly ten minutes, so evenly matched had they been – and his shoulders and legs ached fiercely from the duel. It had been the third one today for both of them, and this one had been Reza’s only win. He had lost the first match to a senior tresh in a spectacularly one-sided – and decidedly brief – engagement, and the other to a very young tresh who felled him with a lightning-swift cut to the legs that would have crippled him for life had the sword carried any edge.

In these moments, when he turned inward like this, he was amazed at how much control he was gaining over his body and his mind. With a handful of exceptions, notably in his mid-back and feet, he could flex each muscle individually, leaving those around it totally relaxed. His breathing and heart rate, too, were gradually coming under better control, and he found that he could hold his breath for nearly three minutes before he felt compelled to take a breath. Even then, he could force himself to breathe normally and keep his heart rate at a steady cadence, rather than take huge gulps of air as his heart raced to get oxygen back into his system and to his brain.

His fighting skills, while hardly impressive by Kreelan standards, had improved to the point where he was no longer the punching bag he had been when he had arrived. While he returned with Esah-Zhurah to their tiny camp each night bruised and often beaten, those who faced him in the arena treated him with respect for his cunning and tenacity, if not for his neophyte fighting skills. The days of underestimating the human, the human many of them had been convinced would simply wither away and die in those early days, were over. Reza had quickly come to understand the soul-deep importance of combat to the Kreelans, and had devoted himself to its study. He observed and mimicked the others, especially Esah-Zhurah, and invented his own tactics. He went over moves in his mind, awake and asleep, before putting them to the test in his waking hours.

And after the combat was finished for the day and they had eaten, Esah-Zhurah would lecture him for hours on the ways of her people, on the Way itself. Gradually, he came to understand that the Way was not just an ideology, a set of abstract concepts meant to structure their lives such as the laws of humankind sought to do, but it was also a physical thing. While he did not yet understand just how it worked, the Way was intertwined with their racial bloodline: when Esah-Zhurah described her people as the Children of the Empress, it was – literally – true. There was some physiological thread that bound them together in much the same way that ants or bees of a particular colony identified themselves and their functions as part of a much larger whole. But how this worked, he did not yet understand. Nor, surprisingly, did Esah-Zhurah.

“It simply is,” she had told him once. “Her will is as fundamental to us and as evident as is the air we breathe. I do not hear Her voice in my mind; I am not a telepath. But I sense in my blood that which She seeks for us, and I know my place in Her design.”

Reza had pondered those words many times since, with a vague sense of loneliness, and perhaps even jealousy, clouding his heart. For he did not know Her will, and he feared his own destiny within the strands of the web the Empress wove for Her people.

“Time,” Syr-Kesh called, and Reza’s reflection disappeared like sea mist blown clear by the morning wind. He bowed his head once more to Syr-Kesh before getting to his feet, walking to where Esah-Zhurah stood waiting for him near the entry to the arena. Behind him, several tresh frantically raked the sand smooth for the next contest.

“You did well, my tresh,” Esah-Zhurah said as he approached, and he bowed his head to her in respect. “Much better than I expected, especially without the sword on which you have so heavily depended to this time.” Reza ignored the barb, a ritual habit of hers that never failed to annoy him, but about which he could do nothing. A part of him hated her deeply, but another part, what he often hoped was the most human part, wanted her respect, wanted her to be proud of him. “But these practice sessions are as nothing compared to the Challenge you will face in four days. Your opponents here do not show all of their skill or their strength, they do not waste their energies here, as do you, but save them for the time when they will need them most.”

“What does it matter?” he asked angrily. “I can only do my best. If I am beaten in the first match of the first Challenge, then so be it.” He shrugged out of his armor, letting Esah-Zhurah open his black shirt to apply one of the writhing living bandages to the creased welt on his shoulder. Nyana-M’kher had brought her sword down on the joint between his shoulder armor and the metal backplate, pinching a hand’s breadth of Reza’s flesh into a puckering tear that had proved incredibly painful for the rest of the extended combat. “But one day,” he said, more to himself than to her, “I will stand in the final arena with the winning sword in my hands.”

“That,” Esah-Zhurah said as she massaged the oozing mottled mass of the bandage into the wound on Reza’s shoulder, her voice tinged with sarcasm that sounded all too human, “is a day I wish not to miss.”

Reza flinched as she pressed at the wound. A shudder of revulsion swept through him as he felt the amoebic mass of tissue begin to merge with his flesh, mysteriously healing it. It would leave a sculpted scar in its wake, a trophy of his tiny victory. He knew that whatever the thing was, however it and the things like it were made – or bred – it was infinitely beyond any comparable human technique he could imagine. The scope of wounds and injuries, even diseases that it could treat was apparently limitless. But having another living thing pressed into his flesh, and knowing that it would become a part of him, a perfect symbiosis, left him yearning for the cold touch and electric hum of the instruments and analyzers, the smells of ozone and alcohol, of the little clinic of House 48.

The pain made him think of the last, and worst, time Esah-Zhurah had punished him for anything. The only thing among the countless subjects they discussed that she adamantly refused to reveal to him was if there were any males in their society, and if so, where they were. On this one subject he could get nothing out of her other than, “You shall know when the time comes, if it comes,” and the subject would be considered closed.

The one time Reza had tried to push her on it, the last time he had asked about it, she had turned on him like a lioness defending her cubs. She had beaten him so severely that he missed nearly three days of training, spending most of that time in the care of the healers as they reset the five ribs and one arm that Esah-Zhurah had broken in the course of his punishment. The healing process had been nearly as bad as the beating itself, especially when they held him down and forced his mouth open, pouring a wet mass of the undulating healing gel down his throat. It slid across his tongue like a wet oyster before pumping itself into his airway and then his lungs. In the moment before it stilled the pain of the jagged edges of the ribs tearing into his lungs and made breathing easier for him, he thought he would go mad at the thing churning within his body. Esah-Zhurah had chastised him afterward for being a coward, shaming her before the healers with his squeals of revulsion. Her words had burned themselves into his heart and mind as he lay in the infirmary for the next three days with her sitting next to him, back turned, silent. If she had heard him call her name, or felt his tentative touch, or sensed the silent tears he shed, she did not show it. Only when the elder healer had cleared him as being well and he had risen from the bed of skins had she addressed him, and then as if nothing had happened.

“There,” she said, closing his shirt. She helped him get his torso armor back on, the bandage throbbing uncomfortably. “Come. You have completed your three obligatory matches for this day, and I have something for you.”

“What?” Reza asked, his mind alert to the mischievous undertone in her voice.

“Patience,” she said, her eyes laughing at him. “You shall see.”

He followed her, and was surprised when she led him to the stable where the magtheps honked and snorted as they stomped about their enclosure. Reza’s nose quickly filled with their musky smell, a smell he had become quite accustomed to in his first few days here, when he had to sleep with the animals, chained to a post.

“What is this about?” he asked her.

“Tomorrow we begin our free time before the Challenge,” she told him. “From sunrise tomorrow to sunset the second day after that, we may do as we please.”

“So?”

She turned to him. “I wish to take you somewhere,” she told him, “and, unless you wish to run to the mountains,” she gestured to the distant peaks on the northern horizon, “you will need to learn to ride.”

Reza’s heart suddenly began to beat faster. “You will teach me this?” he asked, his voice betraying his hopefulness. How long had he been here, he wondered. A Standard year, perhaps? Two? And this would be the first time he would ride one of these fascinating animals, rather than running along behind them like a dog.

Esah-Zhurah smiled, mimicking a human, her lips parting to reveal her ivory incisors. “I will provide you an animal,” she said. “The rest will be up to you.” She paused a moment, watching Reza’s face turn from hopeful excitement to wary reservation. “It should be interesting to see one animal ride another.”

“Where is it?” he asked, forcing himself to be calm, forever wondering why he continued to hope for some kind of real respect from her, or even a little genuine warmth. Without doubt, he told himself cynically, you are the galaxy’s greatest optimist.

“Come,” she said, beckoning him to follow. She led him around the enclosure, stopping in the low-ceilinged tack room at the far side of the stable where she retrieved a riding harness and a light saddle, which she gave to Reza.

When he followed her around to the far side, he found himself standing at the gate to a large, individual enclosure that he had not seen before.

“This is the animal,” she told him, pointing into the enclosure.

A single beast stood there, a young bull that was larger than any magthep Reza had ever seen. The animal stood alone, except for the scrub rats that darted across the enclosure, searching for food. Its eyes were fixed on Esah-Zhurah and himself, and Reza could see that the animal was uneasy at their presence by the way it perked its floppy ears and nervously shifted its weight from foot to foot. The talons, grown too long on this soft ground without a trim, raised small clouds of dust from the parched soil. Its hide was dirty and unkempt, and Reza could easily make out the whitish tracks of scars that crisscrossed the massive animal’s back and withers.

“This animal has been mistreated,” he remarked coldly.

Esah-Zhurah snorted. “That is not so,” she protested. “It simply refuses to be tamed. The scars you see were left by riders when thrown from its back. It has never been beaten as punishment.”

A clear advantage over my social status, Reza told himself sourly. “If no one can ride it,” he asked, “why is it kept in the stables? Why not let it run free or kill it for meat?”

“Because,” she said, “there are those who find such challenges entertaining.”

“And those,” he finished for her, “who are entertained by watching someone as they are thrown and then trampled.”

“Here,” she said, pointedly ignoring his comment as she gave him the bridle, the leather saddle already in his other hand.

He was about to mention the fact that she had not bothered to show him how to attach the saddle and bridle, but decided against it. Both of them were relatively simple devices that he had already seen on other animals, and he was sure he could figure them out. The major problem, he thought, was going to be getting close enough to the snorting magthep to put them on. And, until that was accomplished, he did not have to consider the prospect of being thrown. He only had to worry about being trampled and then shredded to pieces by the hooked talons on the animal’s feet.

As he pondered his first move, a glint of green near his sandal caught his attention, and he saw with surprise that he was standing in a patch of yezhe’e plants, which he knew magtheps liked. Looking at the beast’s enclosure, he saw that he was standing on the edge of a green border that marked the magthep’s reach beyond the wooden bars, everything closer to the fence having already been plucked from the ground and eaten.

Gathering the saddle and bridle in one hand, he leaned down and pulled as many shoots as he could hold. Reza noted with satisfaction that the prospective food had not eluded the magthep’s wary eye. With cautious steps and flared nostrils, it moved slowly toward him.

Reza motioned for Esah-Zhurah to open the gate. Once inside, she closed it behind him, the squeak of the wood jangling his nerves. He let out his breath quietly, forcing himself to relax as the beast came closer, its large almond-shaped eyes and their yellow irises fixed on him. He decided to leave the riding gear behind for the moment, setting the bridle and saddle down slowly so as not to startle the animal. If he could not gain its trust, he would not need them. Then he took off his gauntlets with their gleaming talons and hooked them onto his belt, hoping the touch of his bare hands might be more reassuring than the lethal weapons his fingers became when encased in the armored gloves.

Now armed only with the tempting plants, he began to slowly walk toward the magthep, calling to it quietly. “Easy, boy,” he said in Standard low enough that he knew Esah-Zhurah would not hear, and thus take offense. “Take it easy.”

Esah-Zhurah watched as Reza began to play out whatever strategy he had decided upon, and was not surprised when other tresh began to take an interest in the proceedings. They came to cling to the fence like iron filings to a magnet, eager to see the outcome of the human’s fourth combat of the day. For a moment, a streak of an unfamiliar emotion passed over her heart like a wisp of cloud before the sun: guilt. She had not told him that the scars on the animal’s back had been left not by simple riders thrown by an unruly beast, but by the best trainers in the kazha who had all tried – and failed miserably – to train the magthep, to make it a riding animal. One of them had even been killed after the animal had become enraged, tearing the helpless fallen rider to pieces. But even after that, no one had suggested that the animal be killed. It was a challenge to be conquered, a mountain to be climbed, and those were the things on which her species thrived. But the others who sought to try their hand knew the animal’s history. Reza did not.

It did not matter, she told herself firmly. The animal – Reza – would not, could not long survive in her world, among her people. His death would come soon. If not today under the magthep’s feet, then a few days hence during the Challenge, when there were few rules and death was an unfortunate, if infrequent, consequence. And if not then, her mind went on as she watched him come under the animal’s nervous shadow, there was always the Challenge of the next cycle, and the cycle after that…

Reza and the magthep had come as close as either dared for the moment, each eyeing the other warily, alert for any sudden or suspicious movement. Reza could see that the bull was a very young adult, its tiger-striped fur thick and lush under the coating of dust and grime, the hair around its wet muzzle still dark, with no sign of gray. But its size was nothing short of extraordinary, its powerful shoulders well over his head. The beast’s nostrils flared at his scent, but he saw the animal’s attention inexorably drawn toward the plants he held in his hand, their scent a powerful distraction. Carefully, slowly, Reza took one of the shoots in his free hand and extended it toward the magthep, palm up and open to avoid losing his fingers should the beast try to snatch it away.

But the animal would have none of it. Snorting furiously, it backpedaled several paces, then whirled in a circle, prancing on its taloned feet as the smaller arms on its shoulders made random clutching motions, as if instinctively grasping for the plants he held.

“Take it easy, boy,” Reza murmured, standing absolutely still. Be patient, he told himself. Take your time. “It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.” He continued to hold his arm out, the light breeze carrying the scent of the plants to the magthep. Again, it came closer.

Closer. Craning its neck so far that Reza could hear its vertebrae popping, the magthep stepped forward just close enough for its prehensile upper lip to tug the shoot out of Reza’s hand. Instantly, the plant was sucked into the animal’s mouth. It backed away again, but not as far as the first time, and not quite as fast, while it enjoyed its treat.

Slowly, Reza took another shoot in his hand, holding it out to the animal. Again, the ritual was repeated, the beast slowly coming forward to take the offering. And again. And again.

By the time the shoots in his hand were gone, the magthep no longer backed away, but stood towering over Reza, patiently waiting for its next treat as Reza spoke to it quietly, calming it with the sound of his voice. After the animal had swallowed the last of the plants, Reza held out his empty hand. The magthep leaned down, smelling the scent of the plants, and began to lick Reza’s hand, then tried to grasp it with its questing lip. As it did so, Reza slowly raised his other hand to the animal’s muzzle, and then slightly higher, stroking the front of its head very gently.

“Good boy,” he whispered softly as he moved his hand around the beast’s head, scratching lightly, trying to show that he meant it no harm. Taking it very slowly, he began to run his hands through the animal’s fur, scratching and petting it, letting it get used to him. He moved his hands over its head, neck, and shoulders as high as he could reach, then across its flank and back toward the tail, always maintaining eye contact with the animal as it turned to watch him, careful not to make any sudden moves.

Sometimes the magthep would get unnerved and dart away from him, but it always came back. It was not accustomed to such attention, and it seemed to be intrigued by Reza’s smell, something it had never been exposed to before, and the taste of his skin.

The salt, Reza thought to himself. Esah-Zhurah had explained to him once about how precious salt had been in the ancient times. Reza remembered how he used to sweat in the fields, and how the white salt crusts would form in his boots around the ankles and in the wrinkles of the clothes pressed tight to his skin. Here, when the days were hot, he would sweat so much in his leatherite armor that parts of it would turn gray and then white with salt from his sweat before the armorers insisted on remaking it.

He let the magthep lick his hands with its coarse black tongue as much as it liked, pulling his hand away only when the beast became overzealous and reached out for him with its grinding teeth. Then he began to pet and scratch the magthep again.

His shoulders burning from holding them high enough to scratch or touch the animal everywhere he could, Reza made his way back once more to the magthep’s front and then down the opposite flank, choosing not to try and cross around the animal’s rear and the powerful legs. Then he started all over again.

“There,” he murmured, unconsciously switching back to the Kreelan tongue as he finished the third and last go around. He was filthy from the dust and dirt that had spilled from the beast’s coat, and his hands were dark brown with oil and grime. But when he looked up into the animal’s face, he saw that he had accomplished something. The ears seemed to be poised in a posture of attentiveness, rather than fear, and the animal’s eyes seemed to look at him with curiosity rather than mistrust. “Well,” he said to the magthep, “what now?”

For lack of any better ideas, Reza walked back to where he had left the saddle and bridle, and was pleased to hear the magthep’s quiet footsteps close behind him. It was so close, in fact, that its head was poised almost directly over Reza, the massive skull blocking the hot sun like an umbrella. Looking at the bridle, Reza considered his chances for any further success. He had never ridden any animal, let alone one of these alien creatures, and had no idea how it might behave if he tried to control it. He felt that the magthep no longer really distrusted him, but he knew that could change very quickly if he did the wrong thing at the wrong time. The scars on the animal’s back attested to its willingness and ability to rid itself of unwanted cargo, and Reza did not want to push things too fast. But how fast was that, exactly? How long should it take to turn one of these things into a riding animal? An hour? A day? A whole cycle? He just did not know.

Looking away from the animal for a moment, he saw that the fence behind him was lined with his would-be peers, three or four deep, as they watched one animal try to tame another. He saw Esah-Zhurah, her face caught in something between a grin and a sneer. She knew how badly he wanted to get away from the kazha for even a little while, to see something other than the hundreds of blue, hostile faces that greeted him each day as he learned how to fight and kill. And bringing this magthep to heel was the only way he could do it, the only way he could escape this great cage for a day or so. He felt a wave of anger boil up as he swept his eyes over his unwanted spectators, and channeled it into determination. He reached down for the bridle.

The magthep suddenly snorted and began to back away, and Reza stopped. He straightened up, the bridle still on the ground.

So, he thought with resignation, it seems we will have to do this the hard way. He knew that the beast had probably been tricked more than once into wearing the bridle, and would not fall for it again. He stepped toward the beast, palms out. It did not back away, but stood to sniff at his hands, then lick them tentatively, attuned for any trace of the hated bridle. Reza scratched the magthep’s ears, and once again, it seemed to accept him.

Moving again down the beast’s flank, Reza started to lean against its side, patting it, stroking it, then pulling on its hair, lightly at first, then harder in hopes of sensitizing the magthep to his presence. He found a particularly good spot to scratch, and the magthep elongated and twisted its neck in pleasure, its upper lip reaching out to flip at the air.

Holding on tightly to thick hanks of the animal’s fur, Reza suddenly leaped up. Twisting his right leg over the animal’s back, he planted himself in the wide, shallow valley between its shoulders and hips. His hands curled around the longer hair further up on the animal’s neck with a grip that bled his knuckles white, anticipating the pounding he was going to get when the animal reacted.

Esah-Zhurah held her breath as Reza mounted the animal. Around her, the other tresh gasped, waiting for the beast’s savage twisting and bucking that would send the human flying.

But nothing happened.

Reza watched, wide-eyed with surprise, as the beast’s head slowly turned toward him on its graceful neck. It blinked its eyes twice as if to say, “Oh, it’s only you.” Then it turned away and began to amble toward the shelter that housed its water trough, Reza clinging to its back like a confused tickbird.

“In Her name,” Esah-Zhurah heard someone beside her whisper, an oath that was repeated many times up and down the rows of onlookers.

“How is it possible?” someone else asked, and she felt a tug at her arm. “Esah-Zhurah,” asked Amar-Khan, the most senior among the tresh of the kazha, “what trickery is this? Is it so that one animal may speak to another? How can the human do this, when our best riders and trainers have failed?”

“I…” Esah-Zhurah began, her gaze torn between the tresh’s angry eyes and the sight of Reza, scratching the magthep’s shoulders with both hands, seemingly oblivious to any danger of being thrown. “I do not know. I do not understand their Way.”

Amar-Khan let go her arm, baring her fangs in a grimace. “Their Way,” she hissed. “You give animals a great deal of credit, Esah-Zhurah. Perhaps you, too, would speak with the magtheps?”

Esah-Zhurah felt a surge of fire in her blood, and the rational thoughts of her mind boiled away as her hand sought the handle of her knife.

“Enough!”

The tresh parted before Tesh-Dar, who came to stand beside Esah-Zhurah, dismissing Amar-Khan with her eyes.

“Offense was given, Esah-Zhurah,” the priestess said quietly, “but I bid you pay it no heed. Neither Amar-Khan, nor the others – myself included – understand the life you have accepted as Her will, and you will encounter such ill-conceived notions from time to time. Your blood sings to Her, but your mind must control the fire in your veins.”

“Yes, my priestess,” Esah-Zhurah said, grateful for the older warrior’s understanding. She sheathed her weapon, feeling a chill run through her body as the fire faded from her veins.

“He again surprises me,” Tesh-Dar murmured thoughtfully, stroking the scar over her left eye as she watched Reza begin to communicate his wishes to the magthep in an as-yet uncoordinated signaling of hand and foot. “Already the beast acknowledges his commands,” she said. “And without a bridle, without a saddle.” She paused for a moment, cocking her head, as if listening. “He speaks to it.”

“I hear nothing, my priestess,” Esah-Zhurah told her. She could see Reza’s mouth moving slightly, but they were many strides away, far beyond Esah-Zhurah’s hearing. “What does he say?”

“I do not know,” Tesh-Dar replied, shrugging. “It is in the human tongue so many of them use.” She sensed Esah-Zhurah bristle at the knowledge. It was one thing about which she had been adamant: Reza was to speak only the language of the Empress. To speak any human language was to summon fast and furious punishment. “Allow him this one day to speak as he would,” Tesh-Dar suggested, commanded, sensing Esah-Zhurah’s reaction. “If he can tame such a beast with this,” she tapped her foot at the base of a mound of yezhe’e plants, “and alien words and thoughts, then he has earned such a privilege. Our own ways fared not nearly as well.”

They both looked up at the sound of the rhythmic pounding of clawed feet in time to see Reza bring the magthep to within a meter or so of the fence and stop. The beast flared its nostrils and bared its flat, grinding teeth at the Kreelans. The young human warrior sat erect on the dirty back of his mount, his hands resting on his thighs, arms shaking from the exhaustion of his intensive acquaintance with the animal. But his eyes did not waver as he looked over the crowd. His gaze lingered on Esah-Zhurah, making sure that she saw and understood the contempt in his own eyes before he sought out the priestess’s gaze. He bowed his head to her.

“This,” he said proudly, “is Goliath.”