Braxi-Azea - In Conquest Born Part 10

12.

The harsh Darian sun was at its zenith when Varik stepped into the Circle.

With a quick and scornful glance he took in his audience. None of the common public had come-there was no room for them. Three of the four quadrants were filled with Bloodletters, coming from all over the planet to witness this unusual Hyarke. Have you come for the fighting, he wondered, or because you know that this day you can watch a human die? Or both?

The fourth section glowed with the bronze and white of Dari's conquering race.

You will never have me, he thought defiantly. You will send me home or I will die, but I will never be yours.

His eyes traveled over their numbers. Azean, official, with three Directors in the seats of honor-StarControl, Security, and what? Some private enterprise, no doubt, whose only identifying mark was a red cord worn low about the forehead.

Varik laughed to himself.

He was Braxin now. There was no mistaking it. His skin might gleam darkly with the rough texture of Dari, but his stance, his kinetic arrogance, was Braxin.

Surprisingly, Azea had agreed to all his conditions-why? No matter. Soon enough the enemy would give him back his native physique and he would go home again . . . how sweet revenge would taste after all this!

The child stepped out into the Circle from the opposite side and held herself still for the inevitable examination.

What is there about this girl, he wondered, that makes them so certain of my death? For therein lies the danger- some unknown factor they're certain I can't logically determine, something StarControl considers an adequate balance to my strength and experience.

He studied her carefully. Her pale skin would have done a Braxana proud and her strange red hair, bound in thin braids which stretched down her back, gave the impression of scars, as if from a whip. Her body was lithe and cleanly muscled. He frowned slightly; she was more developed than a child would be. He had underestimated her age, evidently.

No matter.

"Kyar Anzha lyu," he began, using both names in the Darian ritual opening. "I am surprised you dare to begin this mockery of a combat." There, let the Bloodletters stir themselves over that!

Steel eyes, unblinking, were fixed on him. "I will pour your unworthy blood to the ground, Braxin. I will bring you down in front of your enemies. I will teach you fear as you have never known it."

"I will teach you the fate of a child who dreams of blood," he whispered fiercely.

"Then begin."

Anger was boiling inside him but he did not let it rule his actions. Very nicely played, he thought, biting back the rage. Refusing my name in the Hvarke. He circled her carefully, watching for the myriad tiny motions that would betray her style, trying not to reveal himself as he did so.Master of insult-what good will that art do you when these aliens drink your blood?

She attacked. It was a slow, curving stroke which offered little real threat to him; he merely stepped aside.

What is your secret, little one? What makes the Azean Empire think you can best me?

Her next attack almost nicked his ankle, perfectly timed to compliment his reflexive response. Good, he thought grimly, but not good enough. He parried it aside and returned the gesture. The tip of his ada scratched her arm and a thin stripe of blood welled forth in response.

Now, for once we can discard all this mystical nonsense- He started as her eyes glazed over, her stance changing almost imperceptibly, her balance improved. Is that it then, alien child? You know the Change? You smell the blood and it drugs you, speaks to you? Is that your secret? Do you think even that will be enough?

He should have attacked her while it happened, and a moment later he swore to himself for having failed to do so. It had been so utterly unexpected that she should undergo the Change that it took an instant for his reflexes to unfreeze, for his timing to be right again. He forced himself to attack; he failed, driving downward toward a girl who was somehow . . . different. With faster reflexes and greater strength she turned him aside.

And he knew that it had ceased to be easy.

He was wary now, like a hunter who had finally acknowledged the teeth of his prey. The advantage was still his, of that he was certain, but it seemed that the difference between them was less. And who could say what adjustments the Change would work during the course of a Hyarke, given a human subject? His speed was greater than hers, but less than it had been; her ada met his with more strength than he had a.s.sumed possible.

He tried to stop thinking, to concentrate solely on the Hyarke. But the seeds of doubt were sown within him, and slowly they took root.

What is it? He demanded silently-of her, of himself.What is it you have that has won the confidence of an Empire?

He pressed the attack with a complex maneuver which she thwarted, turning it to her own ends and almost cutting him. Again he initiated contact, coming closer, but still he was turned aside in the end. She was good. He would have to deal with that; she knew how to fight. Even that, he realized, he had not truly expected.

Under the hot sun they traded blows. Time came to mean nothing, marked only by the lengthening shadows and a growing red burn which spread across the girl's shoulders. Try as he might he could not reach her. His most intimidating feints failed to draw her attention and his strongest blow could not force her to expend one bit too much energy in an overparry. Her guard seemed flawed, yet every unprotected spot he strove to reach was suddenly barred by the strength of her staff, or by the long curved scythe which threatened to trap his weapon.

He began to fear. It took time; fearing a female is not something that comes easily to a Braxin. But as the sun baked him and his blood began to flow, a little bit from the arm, a trickle from the leg there, and there . . . the small wounds were adding up, yet he could not reach her. She was always too fast, or too ready, or ... something.

Fear, claimed the ancient Braxin warriors, was a potentially creative emotion-a positive force in combat that could be twisted to a useful purpose. Fear overwhelmed Varik, and fear gave him strength. With new and desperate purpose he struck out at her again and again, in a multiple attack that fed on his fear and used it as fuel, and he forced her back with the power of his terror-born strength.

He had a moment to think, and in that time knew that he had to change his tactics. It was pointless to bleed to death from a dozen minor wounds while trying to breach such an efficient guard; he would come down hard and force a perpendicular block. He knew the making of these weapons and was certain that her slender ada could not stand up to the full impact of his own. Once it broke, or even weakened with a lengthwise fracture, the contest would be his once more.

He maneuvered her to where he wanted her, and for the first time noticed the thin line demarking the Circle's border, directly behind her. He almost laughed, hysterically, in the sudden flush of triumph. She can't cross it! he realized. To one who's been Changed, the line is like a wall of psychic force-she can't back over it, and I have the advantage!

He forced the battle closer and closer to the edge of the Circle, backing her up until she could no longer retreat. Then, feinting to draw the parry he wanted, he brought his ada down with all his strength- And she dodged.

Before the blow.

A cold sweat broke out on his forehead; his muscles strained as he recovered his position. No, he thought. No. I won't believe it.

He tried a direct cut. Again, this time smiling, she moved easily out of its intended path. Again her movement began as he planned, before he was committed.

Nor did she attack as the fear began to cripple him.

It can't be! his mind insisted-he needed desperately to believe that. He attacked blindly; her movements revealed in a thousand minute ways that she knew exactly what he intended to do as soon as he himself was aware of it.

And now the word slowly rose through his mind and came to the surface, the label he had avoided since her hunt first began.

Telepathy.

To his horror, she nodded.

No! It can't be!

~ It is. And the thought, her thought, struck terror in him to the depths of his Braxin soul as it resounded silently inside his mind.

~ I will teach you fear as you have never known it.

No!

She smiled as she circled him, as if she no longer had anything to worry about.

Did she, at that? Could he stand against such a terrible power?

He had to, he told himself. And grimly he set himself for her attack.

He was fortunate that his skills were strong, for just before his new stance was set, in that instant when a lesser man might have been caught off-balance, she struck. It took all his skill to muster an adequate defense and even that allowed a shallow cut along one leg, barely preventing a fatal one to the torso.

Inhuman creature! But he knew that Azea hardly considered such power unnatural, and he cursed his own culture, which in treating it as such had crippled his adaptability.

He was losing now, clearly and consistently. Where she had previously scratched him, now she gouged into tender, necessary muscle, and no parry he devised could keep her away. Worst of all was the growing awareness that she had been toying with him before, which cut his Braxin ego far more brutally than any blade could his body.

I will not fall to your kind! He thought it as loudly as he could and hoped she heard. He was aware of the Azeans about him, watching intently, wanting the spy for their tortures, their mental games. . . . You will never have me!

And he attacked. Not because he stood any chance of success but because he was a Braxin and was not going to die a child's toy. To his surprise she retreated before him, and red dripped from her shoulder where his ada-tip had scored.

Mindless fury! Was there indeed hope?

He gave himself over to his rage and tried not to think at all. The odds were still against him but they were not nearly so overwhelming; for each wound he sustained he was able to reach her once, where before he could not at all. The sight of her blood fed his frenzy. Is this what they feel? he wondered.Will the Circle talk to me now?

He had backed her up toward the Circle's boundary again and he pressed forward, willing to bleed if that was the cost. With her back against its curve she would be limited in movement. There was a chance. It was a slight one, true, but any hope was welcome at this point, and it helped take the edge off the crippling terror and give him back the best of his skill.

Now. . . .

He moved in. A low angled blow would pin her against the curve even if she saw it coming. The gleaming blade whipped forward- And she dropped her weapon.

And grabbed his wrist.

And the world went dark.

~ Feel my hate, Braxin. Let it flow over and through you, a private thing between the two of us.

He was drowning in a sea of violence. Terror overwhelmed him. A hideous alien thing was in his mind and everything else was forgotten.

~ You have no secrets before me, no privacies. I will probe you, enter you, strip you bare. Taste my hate.

He cringed before the onslaught, feeling his humanity crumble. He struggled for the surface, but there was nothing. Her mind was opened to him; unwillingly he was drawn into it, seeing nothing there but a seething sea of violent emotion, directed toward him. Drowning, he struggled.

~ I will strip you of everything that makes you human, Braxin. Before me you have no privacy, no pride, no image. I will take the terror they conditioned into you and use it to break you down until nothing is left.

He was trying to fight her but he had spent a lifetime learning not to be able to.

His people had nothing like this, nothing but terrible legends of mutant power which frightened children and justified infanticide. He had been taught not to face it. And the teaching had been good.

~ Look at me!

Against his will he did. Her mind was not young, not in any sense of the word.

She had lived a dozen lives through the minds and eyes of tutors and had endured greater emotional trauma than most adults could survive. She was a creature of hatred and violence, and nowhere in her was there room for any gentle emotion, nor the stuff to nourish its growth. Recipient of adult instabilities, she had absorbed l.u.s.t and hatred and the need to kill but had lived in a body incapable of expressing those things-until now.

~ I will have you, she thought to him, and there was a s.e.xual undertone to the threat that froze him with horror. Suddenly he understood.

"You are Braxana," he whispered.

Through her eyes, through the eyes of the telepaths in their audience, he saw her wrench his own ada from his unfeeling hand and turn it against him. He struggled to back up from the depths, but not quickly enough. Pain exploded inside him and he observed the blow as his eyes closed in death, reflected in a thousand minds, twisting, tearing. . . .

Then there was darkness, and an ending.

Ten thousand pairs of eyes watched closely as Anzha lyu drew back from the fallen body of her opponent, trembling with exertion, and tore the barbed end of the Braxin's ada free from his torso with one swift jerk. But she seemed to lack strength now that the fighting was over; the long weapon fell from her hand even as she freed it.

No one moved as she knelt by the body of the Fallen; every spectator had, in some special way, the right to witness. Muttering ritual words she cupped her hands beneath the killing wound. Red blood poured into it-Braxin blood, she knew, for they wouldn't have bothered to adjust his biochemistry that much. Her nostrils flared as she drank in the sweet odor.

"There will be more," she whispered to no one. "I promise."

She drank deeply.

The Sharing would begin now. Two of the Bloodletters moved into the circle with the drugged oil that would sustain her life. Laun Set had demanded the right to be one of them, and now he was the first to reach out to her with a glistening hand- -and pull back suddenly with a cry, as if touching her had burned him.

There was sadness and understanding in her eyes.

"I never said I mastered it all," she said softly.

The other man reached out to her and she did not back away; like Laun Set he was unable to endure the contact.

"No," she whispered. "Touch Discipline . . . I never. . . ."

Bleeding, she swayed.

"Kyar-" Laun Set began.

"Finish the ritual for me," she murmured. "Finish it properly. See that no insult is done."

"There can be no insult, Kyar." And he added: "Blood-letter.''

She tried to speak again but the strength had left her. Her eyes shut and she fell; instinctively Laun Set reached for her, and because her consciousness flickered out as she dropped into his arms, he was able to catch and hold her.

"Finish it," he whispered to his companion, and with the concerned comprehension of a Bloodletter the other nodded.

With a brief condescension to necessary ritual Laun Set carried her out, quickly.

And the Sharing began.

13.

"I don't care who you are," the Darian said, "and I don't care what your rank is.

The answer's no."