Paul Mcauley: Ancients of Days

She said, “You have all taken your turn at defense, and you have all taken your turn at attack. You should know that if you are to win through or stand firm, you must stay in formation. A defending rank is only as strong as its weakest member. If he falls, someone must immediately take his place. If an attacking formation breaks through a line, it must stay together.”

One of the thralls said, “They ran and we chased ‘em down, mistress. What’s wrong with that?”

Tamora stared at the man until he lowered his gaze.

She said, “There might be reserves waiting behind a turn in a corridor. If your disorganized rabble ran into them, then you’d be quickly slaughtered.”

“But there wasn’t anyone else,” the thrall mumbled, and those around him muttered in agreement.

Tamora raised her voice. “This is an exercise. When you fight for real, you can’t assume anything. That’s why you must fight as you’re told, not as you want. It’s very easy to kill one man on his own, much harder to kill him when he’s part of a formation. When you fight shoulder to shoulder, you defend those on either side of you, and they defend you. That way you don’t have to worry about the enemy getting behind your back, because to do that they’d have to get around the line. And they won’t, not in the corridors. Elsewhere, in the open, you fight in squares, as you tried yesterday.”

When Tamora paused for breath, a thrall stepped out of the front rank and said, “We’d do better, mistress, if we had proper weapons.”

“I’ll break open the armory when you’ve mastered those sticks,” Tamora said. “From what I’ve just seen, I’ve a mind to take the sticks away.”

The thrall did not back down. He was taller than the rest, if only because he was straight-backed. There were streaks of gray in his long mane. Most of the thralls possessed only one or two dim fireflies, but six hung in a neat cluster above his head, burning nearly as brightly as Tamora’s. He said, “We won’t be fighting with these sticks, so why do we practice with them?”

The thralls muttered and nudged each other, and Pandaras told Yama, “That’s what they’ve been complaining about, down in the kitchens.”

Yama felt a sudden hot anger. He strode forward and confronted the gray-maned thrall. “It is discipline, not weapons, that makes a fighting force,” he said loudly. ”Between all of you, there is not the discipline to attack a nest of rats.”

The thrall returned Yama’s glare. He said, “Beg your pardon, dominie, but we do know a bit about rat-catching.”

Some of the other thralls laughed and Yama lost the last of his temper; it was easily lost these days. “Come on,” he said. “Come on then, rat-catcher! Show me how well you fight!”

The thrall looked around at his fellows, but none were willing to support him. He said uneasily, “It’s not you I want to fight, dominie.”

“You cannot choose who to fight!” Yama asked Tamora to lend him her sword, and presented it hilt-first to the thrall. “Take this! Take it right now!”

The thrall dropped his stave and spread his empty hands. “Dominie…”

From above, Tamora said sharply, “Do as he commands or slink away like the cur you are.”

Yama thrust the hilt of the sword at the thrall until he had to take it or have it fall on his feet, “Take it! Good. Now hold it up. It is not a broom. It is a weapon. You can kill with the point or with the cutting edge, and if you do not have the taste for blood, you can render your enemy insensible with a blow to the head with the flat of the blade. However, I do not recommend you try the last against anyone less skilled than you. The man who wounded me that way lost most of his fingers when I countered his stroke. Hold it up. Keep the tip of the blade level with your eyes.”

Tamora said, “If you’re any kind of man, you must know that the higher the angle the better the thrust. Obey your master! Show him you’re a man!”

The other thralls had broken ranks and backed away, forming a rough circle around Yama and the gray-maned thrall. They laughed now, and Yama scowled at them and told them what Sergeant Rhodean had told him so many times.

“Do not mock an armed man unless you wish to fight him.” He pointed at the gray-maned thrall and thumped himself just below the breastbone. “Now thrust at me. Aim here. If you miss the heart, you might get a lung. Either way you will have killed me. Come on!”

The thrall made a tentative jab that did not carry more than halfway. Yama batted the square point of the sword aside and leaned forward and shouted in the thrall’s face.

“Come on! Kill me, or I will tear out your eyes as a lesson! Do it!”

The thrall yelled and sprang forward, swiping wildly.

Yama stepped inside the swing and caught the thrall’s arm at the elbow, pivoted in a neat half-turn and threw him from his hip. The thrall let go of the sword when he fell; Yama had it before it could ring on the marble floor and with a smooth swing laid the edge at the thrall’s throat.

For a moment, he struggled against the urge to complete the motion.

The thrall looked up at him, his yellow slitted eyes glaring behind the agitated orbits of his six fireflies. In the moment of shocked silence, Yama looked around. None of the other thralls would meet his gaze. He smiled and reversed the sword and presented it to Tamora.

She sheathed it, jumped down from the pedestal, and helped the thrall to his feet. “Bravely tried. Better than anything anyone else has done.” She looked around at the others. “I don’t mind if you hate us, but I do mind if you can’t get angry. Without anger you’ll have only fear when it comes to a fight. We can’t teach you how to get angry, but if you can manage it we can teach you how to direct your anger. Tomorrow we begin again. Now get out of my sight. Go on! Run!”

Pandaras applauded languidly as the thralls dispersed around him, their claws clicking on marble. He said, “A bold display, master. I had not thought you could play-act so well.”

Yama shrugged. Now it was over he felt self-conscious.

His head wound throbbed. He said, “I was not play-acting. I lost my temper.”

Tamora said, “Like I said, that’s what’s needed. You’re getting an edge to you, Yama. That’s good. We’ll make you into something like one of the Fierce People, eh? The thralls have been servants for thousands of generations, and we’ve been treating them like volunteers. We have been too kind. They take up arms not because they want to, but because they have been told to. Grah, they will not do anything unless they are told, and then they do what they are told and no more. They can march in perfect formation all day long without losing step, but they haven’t the heart to fight.”

Tamora was angry with herself, and so all the more unforgiving. Nothing had gone right since they had been ambushed by hired ruffians when they had arrived at the Gate of Double Glory.

She added, “We’re just a couple of caterans. We’ll do our best with what we’ve been given, but in the end it won’t matter. Indigenous Affairs will march right in and slaughter the thralls and take this place inside a day. This is a poor diversion in your search, Yama. I’m sorry for it.”

“Without this subterfuge, I would not have been able to enter the Palace without being questioned. Besides,” Yama said, “I enjoy these exercises.”

It was true. The sound of padded staves thumping on shields and the smell of chalk and sweat had brought back happy memories of all the afternoons he had spent training with Telmon and Sergeant Rhodean in the gymnasium of the peel-house. The practice fights satisfied a fierceness he had not known he had possessed.

Tamora said, “I forget how young you are, and how hopeful. We might make these poor fools believe they have the heart for a fight, but it’ll delay their deaths by no more than a minute. They know they’re going to die, and they know that their wives and children will be killed too, or put into slavery. We’ll be ransomed, but because our ransoms have already been paid into bond with the Department of Internal Harmony, we’ll be freed and given our wages, and that’ll be the end of that.”