Storymania - The Blood-Rage by L Clayton Bennett

The Blood-Rage (7)
L Clayton Bennett

Still, her mind returned to her daughter, as if circling too; or she wondered if it was being drawn by the anger of that stiff backed woman-child who rode ahead as if she owned the land and all its secrets. Another's anger is like a magnet that draws more anger. As always, I must fight against such weaknesses in myself.

She shrugged and gripped her mu-lynx tighter between her muscular legs. The beast surged ahead to catch up with the other cats.

As she closed again with her daughter, suddenly, without warning, a day-bat took wing in front of their charging mounts. She heard the flying creature scream in anger. After it reached a height of about thirty feet, it looped back and attacked Erendria from behind.

Patra followed the movement. In one swift motion, Erendria drew her weapon and threw it backwards. The blade struck the flying predator when it was only six feet away and severed its head.

Not pausing, the dagger continued on until the elastic lanyard, attached to her daughter's wrist and the weapon, reached the limit of its extension and yanked the dagger back. Without looking, Erendria caught the knife by its handle as it flew by her right side and, in a circular motion, returned the weapon to its sheath. All had been reflex, Patra knew, for her daughter had done the maneuver a thousand times before.

She gave Erendria an approving nod, saying, "See what anger brings to even the lowest of Agon's creatures. There's a lesson in that day-bat's death."

But her daughter appeared not to have heard and, thus, ignored the warning in her mother's words. Instead, Patra watched her laugh with abandon, as if the younger woman couldn't help it or was fused with a joy that was suddenly strange. Is the laugh from the joy of the suns-light? she wondered--for the winter past had been unusually harsh, and this spring day would fill any heart with pleasure. Or . . . she wondered again, with increased concern this time, was it the kill that brought the joy?

Erendria grasped the stranger and re-balanced him. She then thrust her pelvic bone up tight against his rear.

Still watching, Patra observed silently, We gave her the adult-becoming ceremony none to soon. And then the old worries were back.

Disgusted with herself in letting old issues arise, she pressured her mount to go faster, moving up beside her weapon's-complement. Shaking off feelings of foreboding, she asked of him, "Is Rasp's camp far?"

"My guess is that it's about two more days at the steady lope we're making," he replied, smiling at her.

She could tell that he also felt good this morning, mostly, she was sure, because they were on the move again. The nomadic drive, a coercive pressure fueled by the complete freedom that such an existence gave, was strong in him.

We're like most of the warriors of Agon, always riding across the surface of this planet like aimless glide-birds, searching for what? Life? Death? The meaning of each? She felt that both were unfathomable in the time that life--that canyon of existence between the walls of pain--gave to them to think on such things.

She watched him look ahead as he breathed in deeply the clear morning air. She looked outward also, seeing with him the beautiful land once more alive with grass and the starting-growth of larger plants. They would see more of such vigorous life as they moved farther anti-poleward, toward the equator. Until then, she knew this was one of the best times of the orbit. For to witness the world coming alive after the terrible winter of Friosan's-Time was special, a declaration of life and a justification that their effort to survive the winter was not in vain.

She also knew, however, that it wasn't a time to relax, for there was always someone or something to test their strength in a fight. Because of that, she was glad Erendria was still growing stronger. The thought pleased her that her daughter may be one of the rarest of Agon's warriors, a dagger-master. To give a strong daughter to Agon was an achievement worth being proud of. She had, by this one act alone, met one of the most solemn obligations that all Agonians should make to the strength of their warrior race.

As if hearing her thoughts, Erendria's voice interrupted her reflections, coming from behind. "My stomach growls with hunger. I want to hunt. Strength must be fueled with food."

Gravestone turned his head and said, "No, you're not to risk the stranger. We'll see that you are fed."

Erendria quickly snapped, "I've been feeding myself since the tenth orbit of my birth. Don't make me dependent now. I can still hunt, even with this animal riding with me."

"He's not to be risked," Gravestone repeated. And Patra detected the strain in his voice.

Curse her pride, Patra thought. When is she going to recognize the importance of the mindless one? Aloud she also scolded, "We're going to share the responsibilities of protecting the stranger. It's not a weakness to rely on others to feed you when it's logical to do so by the fact that you can't hunt and keep the stranger safe at the same time, regardless of what you think on that subject. We're a weapons-clan. We'll work together, and this always implies a small dependence of some kind. If the burden is too great for you, you're free to go-lonely. You know that." Sooner or later, I'll drive you out, she thought.

"I've no wish to go-lonely . . . YET," Erendria replied, and the emphasis on the last word was not lost on Patra.

"Good," Patra said. "Then I'll hunt for all of us. My stomach growls also." She winked at Gravestone and then kneed her mu-lynx into a run, thinking: Maybe my second-love can talk some sense into her if I leave them alone?

She never ceased to thrill at the powerful running-surge of a mu-lynx. What would we do without them? she wondered. And then she mind-commanded: Hunt!

The great beast leaped forward even faster, skimming over the ground, soon leaving the others far behind. As always, she observed, it did not run in a straight line but veered erratically as its scent membranes probed the air.

Gravestone watched his mate until she was gone from sight. Hunt well, second-love, he silently called after her. Her leaving always brought emptiness to his stomach, increasing, somehow, the hollowness already there.

A melancholy mood came over him then, and he wondered if to hunt, eat, roam the land, fight, raise a child, and die . . . were enough? Suddenly he thought about the time he had spent off-world. Now there had been an adventure. Strange people, strange ways, strange rules of conduct. Why didn't I stay out there and die? he wondered. But he knew the answer even as he asked it of himself: Agon, always Agon calling me back. To have my spirit stilled off-world would have been horrible, a lost warrior's soul to wander among weak strangers. Agon needs its dead as well as its living, for nothing must be taken from Agon. Agon is, and will forever be, at the center of our being.

Suddenly a squeaking sound came from his left. In a spasmodic movement, he drew his sword and killed the saber- toothed monkey that had launched itself at him from the cover of the tall grass. It fell to the ground under his mu-lynx, and the cat skittishly jumped over it. He brought his mount under control and then paused to look closely at the dead beast. Disappointed that it wasn't big enough to eat, he ignored the corpse and urged his nervous mu-lynx on, wiping his bloody sword off on the fur of the cat--it would clean itself later. The incident was then immediately dismissed from his mind. Death was a normal thing.

He looked across at his daughter and the mindless one and felt the thrill of adventure once more. This stranger will fill my life with new excitement and . . . perhaps bring me an honorable end. He laughed out loud.

"Would you like to share your amusement?" Erendria asked.

Gravestone ignored the question, keeping his attention on the stranger. "Do you think he can run?" he asked in return.

"I don't know."

"Try him. Unlike us, he has had no real exercise lately. Also, it will be a test." Gods! All life on this planet is a test.

Erendria kneed her mount to a halt; and Gravestone followed suit, maneuvering his mu-lynx so he could observe his daughter. She arced her leg around behind her and slid off the mu-lynx. She reached up, grabbed the mindless one, and pulled him off her mount. Afterwards, she stood in front of the stranger and brushed the hair out of his eyes.

As if suddenly conscience of what she had done, she commanded harshly, "Walk!"

The mindless one started walking immediately.

Quickly she caught up with the young man and grabbed his hand. Soon she began to increase their speed, walking faster and faster, pulling him along.

The stranger kept up.

She then broke her walking stride and began to trot, still pulling. "Run, run," she cried excitedly.

The mindless one fell down, his face plowing into the ground in a clumsy display.

Gravestone watched her flinch as she looked at up him. He kept his face impassive, sure that she would know what that meant.

She helped the stranger to his feet and went through the same procedure again. But this time when she broke into a trot, she drew her dagger and with the blunt end of the handle struck the stranger under his chin as soon as his walking stride broke and he threatened to topple. This kept his head up and forced a faster movement from his legs. As a result, his fast walk gradually changed into a resemblance of a trot.

She kept pulling at his hand and hitting up at his chin. Soon, as if a new path opened inside his brain, the trot smoothed out and became coordinated.

Erendria smiled and let go of his hand. He kept going in a straight line.

Gravestone guessed that she must have mind-called to her mu- lynx then, for it quickly came to her but didn't stop. She mounted it in mid-stride and then kneed it toward the stranger, pacing him.

She reached into her belt-pouch and withdrew the thin strap that used to be her old weapons-belt. Quickly, she tied a loop in one end and threw the leather circle over the stranger's head, settling it around his neck. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, she pulled him by the neck into an all-out run.

Gravestone saw the look of amazement appear on her face as she observed the speed the mindless one could sustain.

He rode up on the stranger's right side and looked down at his running form. "You did that well, daughter."

He saw her glow with pleasure from his words, and she asked, "How long at this pace?"

"Until he drops."

Erendria raised her eyebrows but said nothing.

He stripped off his diode-cloth for it was almost warm now.

It was mid-morning before the mu-lynx's ears flattened beside its head, and its run became a dash. It had sighted game.

Patra saw their quarry also and checked the tightness of her dagger's thong around her right wrist. Ah, she thought, pleased, a plains boar, big enough for us all. The thrill of the chase filled her.

She knew the boar was a relatively stupid animal and sluggish during this time of the orbit because it had just came out of hibernation. Later in the season, its knee-length height would have been more difficult to see if it could have grazed among the plentiful grass of the plains area. Yet for now, from the height advantage of a mu-lynx, it was going to be an easy kill. Her mouth watered. Boar meat is one of the delicacies of the plains if cooked slowly over a low fire.

She saw that the mu-lynx knew the hunting procedures of a human. It overtook the boar on the animal's left side so she could attack with her right hand.

When she came even with the running animal, she drew her dagger and threw it downward in one fluid motion. The blade struck the boar behind the neck, and it was instantly killed.

A second after the dagger's hit, she yanked back on the thong, and the weapon snapped back into her palm. The dead boar tumbled end-over-end in a cloud of dust behind her.

Erendria yelled across the space separating her from her father, "I'm mind-touching with mother-teacher's cat!"

"Yes," he confirmed, "so am I. Let's veer anti-spinward."

They turned their mu-lynxes slightly to the right and picked up speed.

Two hours later Erendria saw the smoke rising like a thin, gray rope for the almost cloudless sky.

"The echo of your mother's mind-call in the mu-lynx's brain was strong," Gravestone said, as they directed themselves toward the distant cooking fire attended by a solitary figure.

"I know," she agreed. "How does she do it?" Yes, how?

"Concentration and a strong will. I've known of a few young daggers who could reach as far with the echo, but they are a rare and gifted minority."

"Could you or mother-teacher teach me to accelerate my progress in this area?" God of battle! I would give anything to be more powerful in the mind-ways. To depend only on the dagger as a weapon is limiting. What will happen when I go off-world someday?

"Perhaps," Gravestone mused, stroking his chin. "The secret lies in the ability to calm your emotions and expand your inner- mind. Like all things of the mind, it takes discipline." He looked at her inquiringly.

Damn his look.

He turned his attention forward again and said, "It's all connected, you know: the mind-reach, control of the blood-rage, combat. Your main obstacle to progression is the blood-rage."

"I know," she admitted with some reluctance. Shit, she thought. Here comes another lecture.

He smiled and said, "Don't be discouraged. It's the problem of all Agonians. After all, it's what kills us in the end."

"It won't take me." I can learn from the mistakes of others.

Gravestone laughed. "I think that every Agonian that I've ever met has said the same thing at some time." He sobered and added, "They were always wrong."

"What is the answer then?" she countered and thought: There has to be an answer. I'm not going to be like the others, the fools who become too angry to live. She didn't really believe that, but to think it helped dampen the apprehension.

"The solution seems to be different for different people. Each must find the answer for themselves."

"Mother-teacher has been saying many of the same things lately. I must think more on what you both have said. I don't fully comprehend it yet, for it's philosophical and like smoke in the hand: when grabbed, it flows away."

Her father appeared to understand and said, "Maybe in the training of the mindless one, you can be caught as well. For with him, you'll need all the patience you can muster. You won't be able to vent your rage on him with the dagger. If you did it would be dishonorable."

Erendria looked down at the running man. "Someday my blade will end his weakness. I found him. I have the right of his destruction."

Gravestone nodded. "You have that right when the time comes; it's necessary for the purity of Agon. But I think you will find no joy in it."

"The joy will be in the knowledge that the genetic evolution of our race will continue without his weakness polluting it." She then looked up and saw that they were now very near the fire where Patra was preparing some kind of meat. She decreased the speed of her mu-lynx gradually, while simultaneously pulling gently on the leather strap around the stranger's neck.

When he had slowed to a walk, she ordered him to stop, and he did. They were about twenty feet from Patra now.

With a heaving chest, the stranger was clearly gasping in great quantities of air, and she noticed his legs were trembling.

Obviously Patra had observed his state also, for she commented, "He looks near exhaustion. How long did he run?"

"Three hours," Erendria replied.

"As fast as he could," Gravestone added.

"So . . . we have another piece of information about him," Patra observed dryly. She turned her attention back to the cooking fire and hooked her thumb over her shoulder. "There's a creek about two hundred feet spinward, around that small hill." She then looked up at Erendria. "Water and bathe him the sweat from him. By the time you return, the meat will be ready."

Erendria dismounted, took the loop from around the stranger's neck, and said, "I was hungry six hours ago; now I'm starved. We won't be long." She then took the stranger's hand and commanded him to walk.

As she departed, she heard the dwindling voice of Gravestone say, "He ran twice as long as I would have thought possible. The mystery deepens."

And the fainter voice of Patra confided, "And I don't like it. Mysteries can be dangerous."

The walk to the creek was short. After locating a three- foot-deep pool at a bend in the small river's path, Erendria quickly stripped the shorts off the stranger and removed her own dagger, brief, and halter.

She led him by the hand into the water, and they both gasped as its icy depths embraced their legs.

Erendria noticed the stranger seemed to sense that water was something that he needed. She watched him fall to his knees then and put his head under the surface. Quickly she grabbed his hair and pulled back his head. "Damn fool," she said aloud. He started to choke.

She dragged him to where the water was deeper, only waist high, and forced him to his knees again. Slowly this time, she lowered his head until the cold liquid ran into his mouth. He gulped it down.

When it was obvious that he was sated, she made him stand and, using creek weed pulled from the bottom of the pool as a natural soap, scrubbed him clean of the dark bloodstains and sweat.

After she was finished with this, the water no longer felt so cold. She then began to wash herself, including her hair, moving quickly so as to keep her mind away from the hot feelings that the sight of the stranger gave her. Desert heat! How I hate this new weakness in myself.

Coming up from completely dunking her head for a thorough rinse, she observed the stranger staring at her. She froze for a moment and then realized he was just looking at any kind of movement . . . or was he? She shivered, not quite sure the cold water caused the movement. Curse his violet eyes, she thought.

Finished, she waded out of the pool and onto the stream's grassy bank. The wet ground there made some mud squish up between her toes. Strange, that caused a sexual feeling to flash up her legs. Suddenly nervous, she turned to look at him and found that he had also turned and was still staring at her in that deep, unfathomed way of his. Involuntarily, she covered her breasts with her hands. The hardness of her nipples surprised her.

"Walk!" she said sharply. Damn animal, she thought.

Slowly at first and then with more coordination, he made his way out of the water and to her side where he stopped without an additional command.

The thought occurred to her that he might be exercising some form of independent action. No, she shook her head, rationalizing, it must be that special intelligence potential that father-teacher had spoken of earlier. Convinced, she ignored him again and began to wring the water out of her long hair with short, nervous twists.

That done, she picked up her brief and halter, took them to the water's edge, and washed them also.

She put on the wet garments and her dagger and re-clothed the stranger. She stood for a moment then, finger-combing the tangles out of her hair and watching him. The soft breeze was starting to dry their bodies and clothes.

Gods, she thought, he's beautiful in a strange, alien way. And those eyes of his, so . . . direct. And, damn it, I'm getting that awful tenseness in my stomach again. Her heart started to race, and she cursed again this new feeling that brought so much confusion.

Another growl from her stomach jerked her mind back to another kind of hunger, ending this nervous pause; and she took about ten quick steps toward a path leading back to the cooking fire. Here she stopped to look to the rear.

He had turned back also, but to the creek. He was squatting near its edge, his hand in the water, dipping it in and out. Suddenly he turned and looked up at her, as if wanting to ask a question.

"Walk!" she commanded harshly and, as soon as he moved, continued, herself, along the path leading around the hill.

She almost stepped on the viper before she saw it. The snake jerked back, coiling its head for a strike; and her dagger shot down its throat a split second later. She missed not a stride.

Once again she was pleased with herself.

When they reached the cooking fire, she sat, carved off a piece of meat, and began to eat. Although she knew Gravestone and Patra missed very few of her secrets, she was relieved that neither said anything but continued eating, their faces expressionless. She kept her elbows drawn in to further hide her breasts.

After she had taken the edge off her hunger, she looked up at the tall man and said, "Sit!"

He didn't respond but stood looking at the meat and wrinkling his nose.

She reached up, grabbed his hand, and pulled downward. "Sit," she repeated.

He sat beside her cross-legged.

She carved off a large slice of meat and shoved it into his mouth, saying, "Eat."

He wolfed it down like a starved animal.

They were almost finished when Erendria caught a movement out of the corner of her eye, beyond the stranger.

Immediately Gravestone noticed her attention change, and he looked up also.

Twenty feet away, a blood-sucking lizard, half starved and moving slowly toward them, was seen. It paused to look at them through cold, reptilian eyes that were the color of sand. Its three-feet-long body twitched in indecision, but hunger prevailed; and it continued its slow stalk forward, its poisonous fangs now dripping venom in anticipation.

But Erendria and her parents were no longer looking at the deadly creature, for beyond, about a half-a-mile away on a hilltop, a figure astride a mu-lynx sat looking down at them.

"You're the one with eagle-eyes, daughter," Gravestone said. "What sex is the rider?"

"There's no way to tell," she mumbled, still chewing. "Whoever, it wears a diode-cloth."

"Strange," Patra mused, looking where the others did, while wiping grease from her chin, "why would one wear the restrictive garment when there's no need?"

"She hides from the eyes of others," Gravestone announced and bit off a mouthful of meat.

"She?" asked Erendria as she turned her gaze upon him. "So, you have heard of this one?"

"There's a rumor," he mumbled through a mouth full of meat, "that a dagger-master roams the lands near the equator. She hides her body and face because she's horrible to look upon. A group of savages tried to burn her at the stake when she was young. It's said that she's a bitter viper, deadly and cruel, one to stay away from."

Patra grimaced and said, "She should have tossed her dagger rather than live as a freak. No one would associate with such an abomination." She grimaced again. "Why does such a one want to live?"

Gravestone shrugged and said, "I don't know nor would I venture a guess. The rules of self-destruction are different for each rational." He switched his eyes back to the blood-sucker.

"Perhaps she lives to kill those who burned her," Erendria suggested, looking back at the still, distant figure and feeling a tenseness starting as if the unknown and unmoving figure was gazing only at her.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Gravestone shrugging again as he said, "As good a guess as any. But I would guess those warriors are already dead by her hand. I know of no one who has ever talked with her, only those who have seen from a distance, as we do now."

Patra said, "No matter. See? She now rides anti-poleward."

After smacking his lips, Gravestone drew his sword in a flash and chopped the blood-sucker in half--it had finally gotten to within five feet of him. He grunted and said, "We'll let her put some distance between us and then continue our journey also. The meat's gone, and we have far to go before nightfall. Let's hope that woman isn't a bad omen."

Go to part: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44