Shared by the Barbarians (14 page)

“Exactly, elder. One man of the Trestrimar, or any of the tribes, is worth fifty of their soldiers, and they know it. The general would never attack Mara and risk his most important weapon, I thought. But this revolt on Zulin must have enraged him, and there is talk that the empire is falling apart, and perhaps he wants to seize Mara as his own, or else destroy us. He uses my brothers and me as a pretext, perhaps.”

The elder shook his head. “These matters lie beyond me, Pag. You have grown very wise in your travels. You will make a fine first elder someday.”

Pag, taken aback for a moment and shaking his head in confusion at first, finally smiled at the compliment. “Thank you, elder,” he said solemnly. “I will try to live through this fight in order to make your foresight come true.”

“Do that,” said the elder. “In the meanwhile, I believe you will be summoned with me to Marafall, with your brothers. Send that sweet girl of yours to Yora.”

On Marafall, in the simple council pavilion erected by the hands of the ten founders themselves, the first elder of Mara, a man of the Kagimar, addressed the other elders of the ten tribes and the battle chieftains whom the first elder, who lived on Marafall along with a very small staff, had summoned along with them.

“Our best guess, based on the burst from Zulin, is that General Kroban’s assault ship will arrive in hours, if it is not already in orbit. I call upon Pag of the Trestrimar to address us with respect to the general’s tactics, and to provide any ideas he may have as to how to defeat them.”

Pag had had only a few minutes to collect himself since the planetary first elder’s war chief had told him that he, Pag, would give the majority of the briefing, but already his mind buzzed with the ideas he had begun to formulate already the evening before, back in the village of the Trestrimar. He had mused often on what might happen if the Trestrimar might have to fight the Vionians on Vionian terms, as an exercise in strategic thinking—a sort of mental game he liked to play in his mind, against himself. Though he felt nervous approaching the podium, he had no doubt that if anyone could save Mara from Kroban’s wrath, he was the man.

He looked out at the elders and the war chiefs, and met first Hed’s and then Kar’s eyes. Hed nodded gravely, and Kar smiled and jerked his head back in his characteristic way to say,
We’re with you, eldest.

“My brothers and I,” Pag began, “know Kroban’s way of fighting backwards and forwards. We have watched him bring the Vionian assault forces to bear in skirmishes where he did not wish to expend an EMP, and we know exactly what he will do here on Mara. He will land a thousand men with heavy blasters in the plain of Trestrin.”

“Why there?” asked the planetary first elder.

“Because he is seeking us, and he has our genetic signature. I do not know what he plans after he has us, and has, as I am sure he intends, slaughtered every man, woman, and child of the Trestrimar. You will have to make your own decisions as to whether to help us, as the law of the founders demands.”

“We are with you,” the elder said shortly. He stood from his seat on the first bench and surveyed the assembly. “Elders, hands,” he announced, the Maran way of seeking a vote. Nine hands went up instantly.

Pag felt his heart swell with pride. He nodded to the elder. “We can defeat him, and we will defeat him, I promise you. Here on Mara we do not care for the opinions of the rest of the galaxy, but I promise you, elders, that this victory could free not just Mara, but hundreds of worlds from fear and oppression.”

He surveyed their faces, battle-hardened from their own travels and from the harsh training that substituted for war here on peaceful Mara, training through which Pag and his brothers had come, that had prepared them for service as General Kroban’s own most valuable weapon. They greeted his stare with the resolve to defend their world and their way of life from the threat Pag had brought upon them, which he must now with their aid finally defeat.

After he had met each man’s eyes, he began to tell them his battle plan.

* * *

Two hours into the council, the news arrived that the general’s ship had come into orbit around the planet. By that time the elders and war chiefs had split into small planning groups around the pavilion. Pag left his own group, with the first elder of the Trestrimar and one of the war chiefs of the Kagimar, a man who had seen service against the empire in the Bridge Cluster, and went to the podium.

“We have twelve hours,” he said simply. “Kroban can attack no sooner than that, since his landing ships need to be readied from hyperspace storage. I do not think he will attack any later.”

All five of the planet’s jump-jets spent the next hours ferrying the elders and war chiefs of the tribes closest to the village of the Trestrimar back to their villages to begin the preparations. Pag and his brothers returned home with the first elder to prepare the Trestrimar.

At Yora’s hut, Jalinda rushed out to meet them, a hopeful smile on her face. When she saw the grave looks upon her husbands’ faces, hers fell too and became solemn.

“It’s the empire, isn’t it?” she asked.

Part of Pag wanted to lie to her, to try to bring back some of her happiness, but he knew he couldn’t. “Yes,” he said.

“Because of me.”

“Not because of you,” Kar said. “Because of us. But remember that you needed your rump switched! None of this is your fault!”

To Pag’s surprise, Jalinda giggled. Kar seemed to be able to brighten the darkest day.

“We go to battle, girl,” Hed said. “You will go with Yora to the shelter.”

Jalinda’s brow grew troubled and her chin quivered. “Can’t I stay with you, sir?” she said to Pag. “I’ll hide, but… I can’t just, just go… when it’s all my fault.”

“Sweetling, listen to me,” Pag said firmly. “You will go to the shelter, and we will come for you when the battle is over.” He looked into her eyes, and saw doubt there. “I know,” he said in as reassuring a tone as he could muster, “that you think the Vionians are impossible to defeat, but remember that the reason they are thought so is that they had the barbarians of Mara fighting for them. Now we fight against them. We will win. I promise you that.”

Jalinda nodded, though Pag could see she doubted still. Their time for anything but battle preparations had gone now, though. The three brothers could only hug their bride and commit her to Yora’s care. They would travel the secret way through the forest, to the underground shelter built by Trestrin and his sons in case such a day as this should ever come.

Chapter Seventeen

Jalinda walked down the path behind Yora. It felt terribly strange to wear the fur cloak each of the women had been given from the village stores, but at least they all wore them, and her cloak made her stand out less.

“Camouflage, and protection,” Yora said when she opened the old storage locker.

“The law of the Trestrimar?” Jalinda asked.

“The law of the Trestrimar, for times of need,” Yora confirmed.

She remembered Yora telling her that the day would come when clothes seemed more shameful than nudity. That day had arrived, unless the shame truly came from having to watch her husbands, halberds on their shoulders, race away from their village and into a battle that had come to their peaceful planet because of Jalinda.

She didn’t know why she slipped away, but part of it must have lain in knowing that with the cloak, in the gathering twilight, Yora wouldn’t notice. Jalinda could escape at last.

She made her way through the forest, a few yards inside the enormous trees that stood as tall above the trees of her home world as Pag and his brothers did above the men of Vion and Sherdon. She thought as she went of the last time she had run away, the night on Zulin when she had crept through the streets so foolishly, only to be immediately captured in the tavern she had entered to see if she could find a ship to take her to a home she learned only then no longer existed.

She knew that escaping from Yora and the other women of the Trestrimar was just as foolish: she knew it. And as she remembered how she had felt on Zulin she understood just how much she loved Pag and Hed and Kar. On Zulin she had run because she
hadn’t
known that; now she ran because she did, and because she couldn’t bear to look at the women whose husbands might die—some who
would
die, Jalinda realized with a sob—because of the presence of this fair-skinned, red-haired alien among them.

She ran through the trees until the darkness fell so thickly that she worried she might run into one, and then she crept through them until she heard the terrifying sounds. Men, screaming and screaming. Nothing but that.

Jalinda sank to the forest floor, her back against a tree, covering her ears with her hands. She willed herself into sleep, too terrified to do anything but let her thoughts fly away free of the horrible question:
who was screaming?

* * *

“I have found her!” someone shouted. “She is safe!” Jalinda opened her eyes to see one of Pag’s cousins looming above her. He had a grim expression on his face, and he seemed in the morning light filtering through the trees, to be covered in something dark and viscous.

Blood. He’s covered head to toe in blood.

Jalinda gave a cry, and shrank away against the tree, realizing how very sore her body would be from this night on the forest floor.

Quog—Jalinda remembered his name. He was looking toward the edge of the forest, where she could see the beginning of the plain of Trestrin. She thought she could make out, perhaps five hundred yards away, on the plain, the remnants of what must have been a very large encampment. Men of Mara seemed to be going through them, destroying everything methodically, as if ridding the planet of a plague.

“Wh-what happened?” Jalinda managed to croak.

Quog turned and looked at her. “You nearly got twenty wives killed, girl. That is what happened. They went looking for you when you ran, and if they had come here the Vionians might have detected our ambush.”

“Powers… I… I’m so sorry, Quog. I… b-but… Pag? and… and Hed…and Kar?”

“Safe. We lost no man, no thanks to you.”

Jalinda began to weep in great heaving sobs of relief, burying her head in her arms. Then she heard Pag’s voice, and she lifted her eyes to see him standing next to Quog, more covered in blood than his cousin, if that were possible.

“Pag… I’m so…”

Pag cut her off. “Not nearly as sorry as you will be, Jalinda. Quog, tell the first elder that the punishment will take place at the sixth hour.”

* * *

Pag delivered Jalinda to Yora, to prepare her for the platform. She walked behind him, not even needing to see his face to know it wore an expression of quiet fury. Twice she tried to speak, as they walked, to apologize again—not to get out of the punishment, because, well, she knew she had to have it, as terrible as it would be—but to get him to tell her that he loved her even thought she had done the most awful thing anyone could ever do, or so it seemed to her right then.

But he did not even turn around at the sound of her voice, and only trudged back to the village, where the wives had already returned, and Yora waited. It seemed the word of Jalinda’s safety had been passed quickly onward, and Yora met her with an expression that to Jalinda’s grief seemed to have only sympathy in it. She fell, sobbing, into the older woman’s arms.

Then Pag spoke at last. “Jalinda, we have won, as we knew we would. General Kroban is dead. He came personally, as I thought he might, to see us executed, but we fell upon them in the night, killing their sentries silently, and then the rest of them screaming, to terrify their weak, civilized hearts and keep them in panic. Five thousand Vionians died, and not a single man of Mara. What you did, in the end, in running away, brought no harm. If it had brought harm, though, you must understand that the harm would have been the utter destruction of Mara: of your husbands, and their village, and all the villages, for the general would not have failed to make his reprisal grievous.”

Jalinda couldn’t look at him, but remained with her head against Yora’s breast, willing Pag to say something that would tell her he still loved her.

“You know what we must do, Hed and Kar and I, do you not?”

“Yes, sir,” Jalinda said softly.

“Jalinda, look at me.”

Yora turned her gently around, until she did look into his face, and now she saw the love there. Pag put out his arms, and she came into them, loving to be naked again, out of the fur and held so strongly, anointed by the blood of her husband’s enemies and not caring at all, despite all the fear she felt of the coming punishment.

“I love you, sweetling, but we must punish you so thoroughly that you will never do something like this again, and so thoroughly that the tribe will accept your penitence for the danger you brought first to so many innocent wives and then to so many brave men and women all over Mara.”

“Yes, sir,” Jalinda whispered, dropping her eyes again.

* * *

Yora led Jalinda to the room where she had stayed while preparing for her marriage. She hugged Jalinda and said, “You must wait here. The woman who will be punished must spend the hours before the platform in penitent thought.”

“Will it be… will it be like it was with Jera and Korda?” she asked, her voice sounding terribly weak to her own ears.

Yora nodded. “With three husbands, though, there will be no punishment fuckers. Your husbands will have you among them.”

“Oh, no…”

“You have not had a three-cock night, have you?” Yora asked, frowning. “It will be very hard for you, to have to be filled by all three at once, when they must punish you with their cocks. You will be sore for many days afterward.”

Jalinda looked into the older woman’s eyes and saw redoubled sympathy there, but also something else.
Envy?