Butler, Octavia - Survivor

“If you kill her, I’ll make your Garkohn tortures seem pleasant to you.”

“Let me pass,” said Natahk. “And she need not die.”

“I would kill her myself before I would leave her to you.”

Impasse.

Alanna fought to remain conscious, strained to hear past the roaring in her ears.

“Release her,” said Diut. “And my people will not harm you.”

“And you?”

“We fight. Defeat me, and you go free. I command it now. If you kill me, my people are to let you go.”

“Fight a Hao!”

“Did you not tell your people that I was no more than a man?”

“A man with two eyes!”

“And one arm.”

The words shocked Alanna to full consciousness. His arm? If only she could lower her head to see him.

“Broken,” commented Natahk. “But it will heal—if you live. It is no payment for an eye. I must see that you are better paid!”

Without warning, Alanna felt herself literally thrown forward. She stumbled a few steps blindly, somehow managing to keep her feet until someone caught her. She knew it was Diut when he passed her quickly to someone else.

“You shame my teaching,” she heard him mutter. “How could you have missed his other eye?”

She wondered herself. She willed her legs to support her and stood away from whoever held her. Not until then did she realize that it was Jules. The moment he saw that she was able to stand alone, he released her.

She looked around for Diut and saw him in the midst of a wide ring of Tehkohn. Just as she focused on him, he blocked a blow with his left arm, then dodged sharply backward away from a quick second blow that he could not block. His right arm, Natahk’s right eye. The two circled each other warily. They seemed to spar as though in a friendly mock duel. Diut was limping again, worse this time, and he looked as though handfuls of his fur had been torn out here and there. Natahk looked unhurt except for the eye. But the eye was important. Aside from the distracting pain, the agony, that it had to be giving, it made him nervous and overcautious. And it made him highly protective of the other eye. He could not take proper advantage of Diut’s disability while he was protecting his eye from Diut’s potentially deadly jabs.

Diut kicked sharply, using his feet where he could not use his arm. They danced, every now and then striking a blow that would have killed anyone else. It looked deceptively simple. Once Natahk went down, but was on his feet again before the clearly weary Diut could use the advantage.

Then Diut fell, knocked down by £ blow he could neither dodge nor block. Natahk tried to kick him in the face or throat, but Diut caught his foot one-handed, twisted it, threw him off balance. Natahk fell, got up limping as Diut rose.

Favoring Natahk’s blind side, Diut strove to end the fighting. He drove the Garkohn back, scattering a group of onlookers.

Abruptly, Natahk stopped running, launched himself at Diut as though at an animal. Natahk’s size alone would have made such a move enough to unnerve a lesser opponent. The two fell together, Natahk shifting his weight deliberately so that Diut could not help falling on his injured arm.

For the first time, Alanna heard Diut scream in pain. For a moment he lay still, Natahk atop him. Natahk seized him by the fur of his head, pulled the head back to expose the throat. Unexpectedly, Diut rolled, made a sound like an animal snarl as he unseated Natahk. He struck the Garkohn a heavy blow to the side of the head—the blind side. The blow was hard enough to stun anyone else, but it only slowed Natahk down for a moment. The moment was enough.

Diut stood up. Natahk had just managed to rise to his knees. He looked up at Diut just as Diut drove a hoof-hard foot into his throat. Natahk flared luminescent yellow, collapsed, and slowly faded to the mottled death yellow. The last fighting of the battle was over.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Alanna

My child, a thickly furred, deep green little girl was an instant celebrity. Curious Tehkohn came visiting as soon as Diut would let them, came looking to see how blue the child was and how different. Her dark coloring pleased them, but they said it was shaded strangely. They said the shape of her eyes was strange. They thought her hands and feet were wrong somehow. Then they looked at my hands and feet and saw where the “wrongness” would probably lead. They visited often, and I grew weary of them, weary of then-observations. Diut enjoyed their attention but I didn’t.

Sometimes I took refuge with Tahneh, taking the child with me—Tien, Diut had named her. I wanted to keep her with me as much as I could before I had to give her up to her nonfighter second-parents. She would become their charge completely for the twenty-five-day separation period that would begin as soon as she had her welcoming ceremony. After the twenty-five days, I could see her when I wanted to, when I had time, but until she was older and less vulnerable, her home would be in the protected nonfighter section of the dwelling. That was something I tried not to think about. Diut did not mention it as the days passed, but finally, Tahneh reminded me.

I had escaped my “guests,” and gone to her apartment where I could sit comfortably against a wall and nurse Tien in peace.

“You are a fighting woman,” said Tahneh quietly. “You must stop that soon.” She meant the nursing. Female fighters had to be ready to fight again as soon after giving birth as possible. Not for the first time, I resented the restrictions of my high status. I wanted to care for my child myself.

Tahneh laid a hand on my arm. “If I had ever borne a child, I would want very much to care for it myself in my own way. I don’t envy you the separation, but it must come.”

“I know.”

“He has been holding off the ceremony so that you could have more time with the child.”

I looked at her, startled. “That I didn’t know.”

The old woman whitened. “I thought not. It is a kind of gift that he’s giving you. I am not certain that it is kind. The longer you wait, the harder the separation will be.”

“Are you saying I should tell him that I’m ready?”

Tahneh flared yellow. “Not unless you are. I wanted only to tell you what I thought you might not realize.”

I looked down into Tien’s face. “I wish I was still working as an artisan.”

“If you were, you would not have had his child.”

“So. Things never fit together as they should. I will tell him.”

“You are certain that you trust Gehnahteh and Choh? You will be at ease leaving the child with them?”

“I trust them. We had our differences when I was with them, but they were kind. Certainly kinder than they had to be to a foreigner.”

“I spoke with them.” Tahneh’s body went white for several seconds. “They were overwhelmed. It was the old story proven true.”

“Old story?”

She brightened more and settled back to tell it as I had known she would. “In the time of the empire a woman, a judge, was charged by her husband with consorting with a nonfighter, an artisan. She insisted that she was innocent, but her husband had more blue and he was very jealous. The artisan, a member of his trade family, was unusually large and possessed some beauty. The husband beat a false confession out of him, then killed him. The council of judges caused the wife to be painted red all over, and given to an artisan family so that she could serve them and get her fill of such people. The artisans treated her kindly—more kindly than they were commanded to treat her. In time, the woman realized that she was pregnant. Everyone assumed that she carried the artisan’s child and plans were made to kill it when it was born. No one but the two artisans showed her any color but yellow. Her husband renounced her completely and began a liaison with another woman. Then the woman gave birth to a child too blue for anyone to dare to kill. And as the child grew, it became, clearly, a young Hao. The woman was vindicated beyond any doubt and she showed yellow to her husband and found a new man. Her child, she gave to the two artisans who had been kind. That child grew to be one of our greatest leaders.”