On the Oceans of Eternity (89 page)

He set the pillow over her face again.

The
bokken
cracked together, slid free, whirled, struck. The world shrank to a strip of brightness under the helmet, cut by the bars of the face guard under it. Swindapa circled, then halted with the oak practice sword in
chudan,
the middle position, held out below the breastbone, angled up with the point at her opponent’s throat level. She was motionless but not stiff; every muscle relaxed into a state where action could come immediately, weight borne by the bones rather than flesh, balance slightly forward on the balls of her feet but kept centered by the low stance.

That was from the book that Marian liked so well. Very true, like most of it ... although there was something repellent about that Miyamoto Musashi, an un-humanness. She could not imagine him dandling a baby, or carving a cradle on a winter’s evening, or sitting beneath a tree after the harvest drinking beer and singing with his friends. His words felt like a man with a single huge eye who did nothing but
see
just one thing.

But he saw that one thing very clearly....

Marian’s
bokken
came up to
jodan no kame,
over the head with hilt forward. Her hands stood wide-spaced on the long hilt, gripping lightly with thumb and forefinger, more firmly with ring and little fingers, delicate as a surgeon’s hold on a scalpel. Swindapa moved forward from bent knees, both feet pushing at once as the sword came up, twisting her wrists as she thrust for the face. That put the cutting edge uppermost, a strike at the vulnerable tendons of the inner wrist at the same time as the point menaced the eyes, motion smooth and fast with a
hunza
of exhaled breath.

The other’s head turned, just enough to let the point of the
bokken
slide over the enameled metal of the flared helmet. The sword came down one-handed, the fisted right hand snapping aside to put it out of danger for an instant. Then both slapped onto the hilt and she cut from the side, looping up to slice at the younger woman’s armpit. Swindapa bounced backward, in again; Marian was using minimal movements and counterattack against her partner’s youthful speed and endurance. The Fiernan felt herself grinning as she fought despite the savage concentration of effort and will; this was as beautiful as a Star-Moon dance, in its way. That was how she’d seen it that first time, watching secretly at night as Marian performed
kata
with the sword on the deck of the
Eagle.
Dancing with the silver steel beneath the Moon . . .

There was a final clatter and crash of wood on wood, on steel armor, oak blurring in fast hard whipping arcs. Marian relaxed one leg, pivoted as she fell-stepped aside and snap-kicked the other on the back of a knee. That was hard to counter, wearing the weight of the armor; Swindapa went crashing on her back. Winded, she brought the sword up just a fractional second too late. Marian’s came down in a flashing overarm stroke, left hand sliding down the back of the blade for an instant to add force, then clamping on to the hilt as the bokken came to rest across Swindapa’s throat, motionless. Swindapa rolled her eyes to the side and met her partner’s, grave and dark as she kept the crouched bent-legged posture for a further instant.

“I think that’s pretty unambiguous,” the Fiernan said.

“Sometimes I think you let me win, these days,” Marian grumbled.

“Oh, I would, except that you might get hurt in a real fight if I did that,” Swindapa said, grinning.

They knelt facing each other, laid down the blades and bent their foreheads to the ground between their hands, then sat back on their heels and emptied their minds, letting their breath go slow and deep. Marian said she used the image of a still pond to quiet her inwardness. That was hard for the Eagle People; they were always . . . busy . . . inside.

Swindapa listened to the Silent Song, the song that the stars danced to with their mother the Moon. Sometimes it was hard to hear it, but then you must try less, not more, and it came.

 

Voices murmured outside the canvas cubicle; Raupasha recognized King Kashtiliash’s. Her hearing was still very sharp.

“You did not know, my brother?” he said in that bull rumble. Then Kenneth Hollard’s voice, a murmur she couldn’t make out.

“Among the Mitanni, a ruler must be perfect in body—at least, must have the use of all their limbs and senses. I grieve, too. She has served my House well, and she was brave and very fair—such another she-hawk as my Kat’ryn, with an honor I once did not believe a woman could hold.”

Words I would much have given much to hear,
Raupasha thought.
I
have
given much for them. I have given all I have, save my life
—
and that would be
a
little thing beside the cost.
Then:
No. I did what honor required. I must not count the cost. Ah, but that is hard!

Hands touched her face, and she flinched an instant before steeling herself.

“The burn will heal faster with a light gauze covering,” Justin Clemens said gently, putting down the mirror he had been holding for his patient.

Raupasha daughter of Shuttarna let her head fall back on the pillow; it still felt odd, shorn.
So is the fleece of all my hopes shorn and lost,
she thought. The words did not hurt much, no more than the dull background ache of her face and hand and side.

Clemens’s hands were as gentle as his voice as he administered the ointment and laid the light covering on the left side of her face. The message of the mirror was burned into her, the thickened red scar tissue, the empty, sightless white eye.

“Will the healing . . . make the skin better?”

“Somewhat,” Clemens said.

She turned her head—knowing she would have to learn to do that to see, with only her right eye—and watched his face. It held a compassion that hurt like fire, but also honesty.

“The scars will become less red. but the tissue will remain thick and rigid over about a third of your face.”

Feather-light, his finger traced a line from one cheekbone across her eye to the forehead.

“Nor will the hair grow back here. I am very sorry, Princess, but all I can do is give you an ointment that will keep the damaged skin supple.”

“Thank you,” she said; he touched her shoulder once as he gathered his instruments.

“This will help you sleep,” he said, and she felt the sting of an
injection
in her arm. A curtain seemed to fall between her and the pain, as if it was still happening but to someone else.

“My thanks again,” she murmured, as he left on his rounds.

There are others who need his care more than I.
Those with no eyes at all, or faces; those lacking limbs; those with worse woundings who yet could not die—it was not altogether a blessing, the healing art of the Island folk. It could save you for a life that was worse than death.

But at least I may weep alone.
There was another murmur of voices outside, and Clemens saying something in a grudging tone.

Then the canvas door was pushed aside again, and she must be brave again. Then she saw who it was, and her hand made a fending gesture.

“No—” she said.

Kenneth Hollard came in and sat on the stool by her cot, catching the hand between hers. “Hello, Princess,” he said calmly. His eyes did not waver . . .

Well, he is a warrior. He has seen worse. But not on the face of a woman who—I
hoped—
he looked upon with the gaze of desire.

“Hello, Lord Kenn’et,” she said listlessly.

“Is the pain very bad?” he said, a trace of awkwardness in his voice. This too must be endured . . .

“No,” she said.

“You—” he cleared his throat. “You did very well. You may have saved us all.”

And I won his gratitude, when it is useless,
she thought. Then,
thrusting the bitterness away: I would have given my life for his,
she thought.
What I had to give, I gave. Let it be enough. Let him remember me
...
perhaps name a daughter for me. It is enough.

“Thank you,” she said. “My father—and my foster father—would not be ashamed of me, I hope.”

“Any man would be proud of such a daughter,” he said. Then he took a deep breath, as if steeling himself for a difficult task: “And . . . any man would be proud of such a woman.”

Her one gray eye sought his.
The medicine against pain is giving me dreams, as they warned me it might
.

“My lord?” she whispered. Then with a flash of anger her hand rose and lifted the gauze. “You saw me when I was fair—saw all of me, at the place of hot springs. Now
look
at me! I am a thing of horror—and princess no more.”

“I have seen your face,” he said. He leaned closer. “At least it isn’t the face of a coward, like mine.” She was struck wordless, and saw him force himself to go on. “Who wouldn’t speak, because he was afraid ... of politics, complications, of himself.”

“Oh,” she said. “This is a matter of honor.”

“No, it’s a matter of belated good sense,” he said harshly, and squeezed her hand. “I faced the prospect of a life without you in it, Raupasha, and as for your kingdom, that was never more than a hindrance to me.”

Now she did weep, as he bent forward to softly touch his lips to hers. “There it is, for what it’s worth. If you spit in my face, I’ll understand.” A hint of his boyish grin. “Although I’d be very disappointed.”

“Never,” she said, her free hand going up to touch her lips and then his. The IV rattled as she moved. “Never in all the world.”

 

“We’re meeting him
here
?” Arnstein said incredulously.

“Yes,” Odikweos replied, with that slight secret smile of his.

Walkeropolis had recovered with surprising speed from the
Emancipator’s
raid; the firefighting service seemed to be efficient, and they were already in the middle of so many construction projects that repairing damage just meant slowing the schedule on new buildings. He got a few glares as they rode downtown in Odikweos’s chariot, and winced a bit at one long row of bodies laid out by the sidewalk to wait the corpse-wagon. Some were very small ...

The slave market where they stopped was bustling, a huge complex of linked two-story buildings and courtyards, with doors and corridors color-coded for convenience. Ian worked his shoulders against the prickling feeling that went over them as they entered through polished oak doors and merchants bustled over to greet them.

“No, we will look ourselves. Do not trouble me more,” Odikweos said, with an imperious gesture.

This place gives me the creeps,
Ian thought.

Not least because it all seemed so
ordinary.
Sales were made in bulk and coffles marched off; men spat on their palms and slapped them together to mark a deal, as they might have for mules or sheep. Others looked at teeth or felt muscles, and some of the buyers had collars on their own necks, household stewards or workshop managers. Posters advertised skilled labor; stonemasons, bricklayers, seamstresses. Others offered to train raw slaves, and listed fees. There wasn’t even much of a smell; Walker’s hygiene regulations were in full force; otherwise, this crowded series of iron-barred pens would be a natural breeding ground for half a dozen different diseases. Fear and hopeless misery still sweated out of the dry whitewashed walls in a miasmic cloud he could taste.

It isn’t as if Walker invented slavery here,
he told himself.

That was true—every Achaean who could afford it had owned at least one to help around farm and house. In an economy without machinery, money, or a market for paid labor, it was the only alternative to doing everything yourself. And the palaces of the
wannaxakes
had imported hundreds of women from Asia Minor to make the fine cloth and perfumed oils that had been exported to pay for metals and grain. It wasn’t any excuse for this, though.

The Achaeans
hadn’t
based their whole economy on this sort of robotized forced labor. Slavery was a common institution, but societies based on slavery were rare. You had to develop elaborate control mechanisms to hold so many adult males in bondage; it just didn’t pay, usually, except to mobilize labor for new uses or new lands.

A pair of green-uniformed guards went by, shotguns over their backs and billy clubs tapping against their boots; ex-slaves themselves. Walker had made it possible—not easy, but possible—for the ambitious to get manumission; that provided a safety valve and skimmed off natural leaders.

He certainly hadn’t expected John Martins to be here; all the reports agreed that he and his wife had been kidnapped by Walker back when he hijacked the
Yare.
They found the blacksmith telling two collarless men to lead away half a dozen with the iron rings around their necks.

“Hey, Professor,” Martins said, holding out his hand. “Good to see you, man—I mean, like, it’s a bummer you got to be here, but it’s, like, maximum coolness for me.”

Arnstein ignored the outstretched hand. Martins was in his late fifties and also tall and lanky, and balding on top. That was about the only point of resemblance; the other man’s tie-dyed T-shirt and jeans and sandals, the tiny granny glasses on the end of his nose and the ponytail behind ... they’d followed very different career paths in the sixties. His to San Diego and ancient history, Martins up into the hills of northern California. The hard ropy muscle that moved under his skin showed Martins kept up the trade he’d learned there.