IronStar (13 page)

“I fix”, she essayed in the native
language as she dropped the thing into a malodorous heap.
Gotta get past
dependency on that wristcomp
.

“Tash’ta
nago’ra
,” the young
woman said, picking up the thing almost reverently. At Kirrah’s puzzled look,
she revised it to “Tash’ta fix. Tash’ta fix and return.”
Aww, screw it, even
paranoia has its limits
, Kirrah thought,
and I’ve just passed mine
.
She stepped down into the
hot!, ohhh, my God! heavenly! Oh myyyyy!
…steaming, fragrant water. Her moan of pleasure masked the sharp intake of breath
from Slaetra at the sight of the livid bruises on Kirrah’s upper back and one
buttock, leftovers from the death of the
Arvida-Yee
, some thirteen
thousand kilometers over their heads to the north.

I could really, really get used to
this
, thought Kirrah an hour and a half later, as she took
another slice of that tangy-sweet pale blue fruit.
Perfect ending to a
perfect meal.
Wrapped in a warm, clean(
!
) soft robe, she was sitting
in the courtyard a few meters from her apartment door, the aroma of the rich,
tasty and somewhat greasy meat dish still hanging in the soft air. The sun was
just setting, and the base of the high overcast had turned a ruddy magenta,
slowly deepening toward red. Even the two visible guards blended unobtrusively
into the picture. Kirrah, Akaray, Slaetra and four other older persons, three
of them men, were reclining on low frame couches while students about Tash’ta’s
age served and carried. Kirrah couldn’t help thinking of the older adults as
teachers, and the entire courtyard as a quadrangle in some elite college. This
impression was confirmed the next morning when, under Slaetra’s focused
tutelage, Kirrah’s language lessons began in earnest.

“What is life? It is the flash
of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It
is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the
sunset.” -
 
Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior
and orator, 1890 A.D. North American First People, Terra.

Wyrakka, chief warrior of the Rith,
largest of the Wrth clans, known as ‘sharpest of the fierce’, gazed fondly over
the many, many hands of orange and yellow sparks dotting the pitch-dark plains
below him, like jewels on a black shroud-blanket. Around each blaze were thirty
of his nation’s toughest fighters, who with their commander and priest made up
the People’s basic fighting unit: a
fire
of warriors. The smallest,
slowest moon was still high in the sky, but its illumination was too feeble to
make out more than the faintest outline of the clan’s elders standing beside
him.

“Already we are so strong, we need
no concealment,” he said, in the hard-consonanted battle language of his
people. A few moments’ silence followed, as the line of a half dozen men and
women meditated on his words. Finally one dared to float another thought on the
deeply-held silence. His best lieutenant, standing to his left, hawked and spat
on the prairie grass.

“The prisoners died poorly,” she
remarked.

True enough, Wyrakka thought. The
last crop of prisoners had endured barely a single night of
testing
. The
women captives had fared poorly also, only half a dozen of the original
five-hands’-worth still survived. And such wretched, puny things they were, fit
only for abuse and, if they learned quickly, at most a half year of slavery
before the next celebration of Icecoming and the priests’ insatiable need for
sacrifices. They will
all
feed our gods, Wyrakka thought, not just these
few, but this entire nation of soft, slow, stupid farmers. They
exist
only to feed us and our gods.

The thought of those wretched women
reminded him of Tsaikka, his mate and
teka
; claw to his fang, feather to
his wing. She would be in the group of warriors around
that
campfire. He
longed to dance the deep dance in her fierce embrace, but not until victory, he
had so sworn before all. Not until his warriors pulled the last screaming,
blubbering
Talamae
out of their stupid, useless stone-and-wood boxes,
and dashed out the brains of their last squalling, undisciplined infants
against its walls. Faugh! Only then would this land be cleansed and ready for
the hordes of his people, already overflowing the fertile narrow valleys and
pressing up against the mountains of their homelands. This entire land was one
big valley, put here by his gods to feed his people, ripe for the taking.

“They will
all
die poorly,”
he whispered savagely; not so soon as to imply he resented his lieutenant’s
remark breaking the silence of his own words, nor so late as to suggest he
thought her words unworthy. Several more minutes passed in silence.

“Does Wyrakka yet know the gods’
will for our thrust south?” asked the elder two places to his right, a lean,
rangy man with one eye closed by a scar taken honorably in battle. A direct
question. Good, the elders were becoming bolder! A swift, direct answer then,
let the man deal with the ambiguity: either challenge-met-swiftly, or
taunt-returned-for-impertinence.

“Within the next slow-moon, our
blade will be at the groin of our enemies. I shall allow a hand-of-
fires
of younger warriors the joy of
testing
them first, while we old
pthaqqa’s
scour the plains with the blood of these earth-grubbers in isolated nests.
There are so
many
of them.” Calling his own experienced warriors
‘washer-women slaves’, a deadly insult in most circumstances, indicated he was
in good humor. As well he might be. Long after his body was consumed in its
funeral pyre and his spirit joined the
fire
of sky-warriors, stories
would be sung of Wyrakka’s bold vision and his leadership that transformed the
Wrth nation from legend into greatness.
This time
, he thought hungrily,
with
the help of the O’dai war engines, their walls will not protect them
.

Preliminary
Report to Lord Tsano shu’Teescha shai’Talameths’cha, King of Talam and Absolute
Ruler of the Talamae, et cetera, et cetera, in the matter of Kirrah shu’Roehl
and the boy Akaray shu’Talafoth’shuah:

Dear Tsano:

Sorry if I missed one of your
titles, it’s late and I know how you hated formality when you were my student.
I have examined the stranger with the raptor’s name, whom you sent to my small
collegium for language training and observation. After only two days (and you
know how
I
hate rushing to judgements) I can report the
following.

One: to every outward appearance,
and as far as I can sense of her ath’la, she is an utterly human woman. Her
body is thinner than one might expect, and her skin paler and hands and feet
softer than anyone who does habitual physical labor. Nevertheless she is
neither lazy nor soft nor slow, and is clearly one who respects shee’thomm as
long as it is not arbitrary. Except for her apparent physical mildness, I would
guess she has been something like a soldier, both a commander of others and
under command; perhaps of a rank comparable to sana’tachk.

Two: she is a person of clean mind.
Her speed at picking up our language has been remarkable, even given the help
of that strange object-which-speaks. By the way, none of us can place any word
of her native language. But she will sit at language-class with me for an hour,
then stand respectfully watching Magister Brai’klao drone on to his class about
civics or mathematics, then wrap him with questions like a hungry irwua. By the
way I have no idea what to make of the boy’s tale of her surviving one of those
nests, nor of her killing a tso’ckhai with a blow from that odd hand instrument
she guards so closely; I must leave any military analysis to those you
doubtless have reporting on such matters. Although I will add, since I alone
may have noticed, that her strange gray outerwear has some truly remarkable
capabilities and should not be underestimated as a defensive covering. For that
matter, her undergarments, which arrived so filthy as to demand disposal,
washed easily clean to the finest and softest and
toughest
fabric any of us has ever seen. If you wish more details of the undergarments
of a strange woman, you have but to ask, oh King.

Three: (and may I say, the most
difficult part of this assignment you have given your old magister, which in
sum, more than makes up for your years of complaining about my assignments to
you!), I turn to the matter of her ath’la. Hers is a complex one, possibly
disjointed. She has been gravely injured in this area, and quite recently. Her
extensive external bruises (see attached sketch) are but ripples on an irwua-pond.
Her recovery is started; the lad Akaray told me she sang her own Deathnaming
after his, and not a short one.

Whatever reason she is among us,
she is neither cruel nor dangerously deceptive. Although she keeps much hidden,
I believe she does not intend harm to the Talamae. She understands honor, and
values courage, and I most strongly (and respectfully) suggest that Your
Lordship make no effort to separate her from the boy until they are both ready.
He seems to have a direct link to her
power-of-darkness
, which has
been awakened by her recent injury and somehow enmeshed with their two
healings-in-progress. The resulting
braid-of-three
will not break before
either of them, that much is clear.

Four: her story.
Kirrah
–
by the way, her name is not precisely the same as our large raptor the
kae’rruckh, (even though their ath’laz have somewhat in common!) and it would
be respectful to pronounce it correctly.
Kirrah
, of-father
Roehl
,
of-place
Dra’koo’nais
, a place-name which in her language seems to mean
‘star of the fierce flying lizard’. Which is a problem right there. For you
see, my Lord, I am faced with this otherwise sane, ordinary woman telling me
she comes from, and I quote, ‘the other shore of the sky’. I am quite sure her
skill with our language is not the problem, and this is exactly what she wanted
me to understand. This matter I leave to your Lordship’s doubtless better
judgement. She claims to be a representative of her government, which sounds
rather like
‘rae’gnu’um
’, and to be among us to establish something like
a trade outpost and embassy in or near our city. I suggest Your Lordship and
his doubtless wise ministers listen most closely to her claims, especially in
light of my ito’lae’mara on the matter (detailed below).

Five: the boy Akaray is a
well-mannered, energetic and intelligent young lad of six winters, and a credit
to his dead parents’ skills at
power-with
. His story is
appalling. In the raid which I’m sure your man Irshe will detail, his entire
village was slain. Every living person this child has known is gone, may Source
enfold their ath’la, and I suppose that means he has also inherited the
village’s entire land-grant in his overburdened young life-path. Your
assignment, my beloved student, which you cannot wriggle free of this time,
will be to judge him well and place him without damage to the aforementioned
braid-of-three
or his own true life-path. I wish you well in this task.

Conclusions: It is my professional
Assessment that this remarkable woman does not bear us intended harm; that she
is honorable and of a clean mind; that she is withholding a great many things
(as might be appropriate to a foreign emissary); and that she will, with
neither hesitation nor remorse, pour her entire self into the neutralization of
any perceived threat to the boy Akaray.

With all honor et cetera et cetera,

Your servant and teacher,

Slaetra shu’Urwakla shai’Talamae

Ito’lae’mara: (formally witnessed
by Brai’klao shu’Naei)

- to the query ‘most meaningful
observation?’ - the rune ‘Blessing’

- to the query ‘result of Talamae
embracing this woman?’ - the rune ‘Joy’

- my reading: ‘a blessing to behold
(examine?) and a joy as an ally’.

In retrospect I notice my second
query did not specify ‘Joy’ to whom. I used to trust these runes a lot more
than I do now, dear Tsano. Be wary.

“It’s been said power corrupts,
and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I wonder whether we’ve got that
backwards. I wonder whether it’s just that power attracts the corruptible, and
absolute power attracts the absolutely corrupt. And if
that’s
true, how
should we be choosing our leaders?” - the ‘Chadworth Chronicles’ (vol.II,
pg.90.16), diary of Roe Singh Chadworth, 23
^rd
century A.D.
post-Terran explorer and trader, co-founder of the Mercantile Doctrine.

In the afternoon of her third day
of intensive language tutoring at the ‘Stone in a River’ school, Kirrah’s
wristcomp alarm beeped in mid-lesson, letting her know that at that moment some
forty light-hours distant, a certain lonely Mark VIII-b/2230 Mailtube,
following programmed instructions laid in by one Master Chief Samuel Chuwan
Lee, Fleet Engineer Second Class, Regnum Draconis Survey Service (deceased),
had just come awake.