Martyr (The Martyr Trilogy) (20 page)

"Knox!"
Kuro shouted unexpectedly.  Knox trotted dutifully to the fore.  “Justin’s
training will begin with you.  Starting with the morning light, you will teach
him everything you have learned about the handling of bladed weapons.  Work him
hard.  When he is broken, work him harder.” 

“Sir!”
Knox replied with a salutatory nod. 

“You’ll
eat when we eat, sleep when we sleep,” Kuro told me.  “When the sun sets, the
evening time is yours.  I suggest you avail yourself of that time to seek the
counsel of Chaer-Ul.  In any case, don’t be out too late or you sleep under the
stars.  Once the vault is closed for the night, it stays that way.  You will
alternate training days with each one of us, as every member of my team has
unique skills to share.”  I was already not looking forward to working with Corvus. 
“That includes myself.  And I assume Jager and Kaire will want their share of
your time as well.” 

“Indeed!”
Kaire said.  “We found him first.”  A couple of people chuckled at that. 
“Besides, it will be sort of like old times, won’t it?”  I wasn’t sure exactly
what she meant, but filed it for a later conversation.

“Good
enough!” Kuro exclaimed.  “Now, everybody eat up.  Then, select your rooms and
get some rest.  Morning comes early up here.”  As per his instructions, we
feasted heartily.  I was reluctant to leave Maya’s side, but presently Kuro
ushered Corvus inside the dam for what could not be a pleasant chat.  A lot of
the tension left with them, and soon even Maya was smiling again.  We ate, and
talked about lighter things, and by the time Corvus rejoined the group there
was little he could do to dampen our mood.  In fact, he seemed just a little
less cocky than before.  That might have been the beer.  Anyway, he didn’t
offer an apology, as I hadn’t expected him to.  The night was cool, but not
cold, as darkness settled upon us, and a mist from the lake filled in the
spaces between the trees.  Nobody tried to engage me in conversation, but I was
happy enough with Maya’s company.  At some point, when everyone else seemed
sufficiently distracted, Maya took me by the hand and led me through the
shadows cast by the flickering firelight to the dam entrance. 

As
soon as the elevator door closed, Maya pulled me close and kissed me
passionately.  I held her softly, one hand cupping her head, the other
navigating the silky waves of her hair, finally finding rest in the small of
her back.  The door opened altogether too soon.  I wanted to remain as we were,
but she reached behind her back and took my hand, then reluctantly interrupted
the kiss and led me down the hallway past several identical-looking doors
before stopping at one.  “I saw this one earlier,” she said.  Her back to the
door, she kissed me once more, releasing my hand as she pushed the door open
with one foot.  She stepped backward into the room and out of the hallway’s
light, temporarily silhouetted against the dimmer light cast by the room’s
single bulb.  I hesitated, wondering if I should begin to look for a room of my
own.  Maya’s hands reached from the shadows and found mine, and interlacing the
fingers of both hands with mine she drew me in behind her, our lips reuniting. 
“You weren’t going to leave me all alone, with Magus’ assassins about, were
you?” she asked. 

“I…no,
I…of course I wouldn’t…,” then I caught the sparkle in her eye, the trace of a
smile.

“Your
place is with me, husband,” she said firmly.   I lacked the will to object.  I
entered, securing the door behind me.  The room was sparsely furnished save for
a single, large bed.  Removing only our boots, and Maya her vest, we tumbled
onto the mattress.  Maya turned to me, shared one last prolonged kiss, then
rolled away, pulling my arm over her as she did.  Curling herself into a
smaller form, I could feel that she was shuddering, though it wasn’t cold. 
“Hold me,” she said.  “Never let go.”  I did just that, and she exhaled slowly,
emitting a small, satisfied sound as she did.  My passion surrendered to her
more pressing need.  Content in a way I’d never been, and too exhausted to
dwell on the day’s startling revelations, I was soon asleep.

19

I
didn’t dream this time.  In fact, it seemed to me that I had only just closed
my eyes when there came a sharp rap at the door.  I cracked the door open a
sliver to see that it was Knox, armed and in full armor save for the helmet, which
he carried under his arm.  Latching the door quietly behind me, I followed him
to the elevator.  As we reached the lobby, I saw the parts of a suit of armor
like Knox's laid out for me.  He assisted me in putting it on and securing
it properly.  I was surprised at how light it really was, and how mobile;
there was virtually no restriction to my range of motion.  I had brought
along the weapon Kuro had selected for me, and that I now fastened at my
waist.  We stepped out to a brisk morning.  There was just the
faintest premonition of dawn beginning to warm the eastern horizon. 
We walked across the top of the dam to the far shore of the lake, then called
deer and rode through a still-misty canyon which eventually opened to a massive
natural arena that dwarfed the one Maya and I had happened upon earlier. 
It was dominated by an expanse of flat, level ground, but there were also a
number of large, wooden structures apparently designed to simulate an array of
potential battlefield conditions.  The most prominent of these had
the appearance of a tower, from which two straw archers kept permanent watch.

“I
thought maybe there’d be coffee,” I said, hoping to draw Knox into
conversation, as he seemed to be all business this morning. 

Clearly
not appreciating the subtleties of my humor, he answered simply, “Your meals
will have to be earned from now on.  Adequate progress, and you eat. 
Unsatisfactory performance, and you don’t.”

So
that was the game.  Well, I was already hungry, so I wasted no more time and drew
my sword.  “Put that away!” Knox said.  I almost dropped it.  Mildly irritated,
I returned my weapon to its sheath and awaited his next order.  “You only did
two things wrong when you fought with Corvus.  You failed to stand, and you
failed to keep your sword.  Both problems stem from the same source:
stability.  Firm footing and a firm grip, balance and strength, don’t come from
your hands and feet, they come from your core.”  He indicated with both hands
the general area of his belly.  “When this is strong, your feet will remain
where you place them, your hands firmly on the hilt of your blade.”  I was
tempted to say that my core would feel a lot more stable if it had some food in
it, but didn’t.  “I am going to come at you,” he said.  “Withstand me.”

It
would have been considerate of him to give me a few seconds to mentally
prepare, to concentrate on stabilizing my core.  That obviously wasn’t his
tack.  He charged with the force of a bull, at the last moment tucking his head
and jamming his shoulder into my abdomen, and with an upward thrust sending me
temporarily skyward.  The angle of my launch was such that it was
impossible to right myself while airborne; I landed flat on my back on the
gravelly floor of the arena.  I shot him a look that I hoped
conveyed the sense of "cheap trick" as I rose and dusted
myself off.  Remarkably, the armor had absorbed most of the shock of both
impact and landing, and I felt really none the worse for it.  "What
was that intended to teach me?" I inquired.
 
"The importance of balance, first," he said.  "And second,
of readiness.  You must learn to exist in a state of constant expectation
of attack.  In the beginning, this will undoubtedly lead to a degree of
stress, as this is not a normal or comfortable place for the human mind to
dwell.  However, among those whose reality includes the constant threat of
war, it becomes second nature.  Indeed, almost every other species lives
this way, as all must find a balance between eating and avoiding
being eaten.  If you think about it all the time, it will drive you
insane with fear.  It must become instinctual, as it is
with the beast."
 
"Try me again," I said.
"Listen, I may not have the element of surprise the second time,
but in terms of pure combat ability, you're no better off than you were
two minutes ago.  Now is not the time to get cocky."
 
"Just one more time," I said.
 
Ignoring me entirely, he continued with his intended lesson.  "Now,
let's start by taking a look at your stance.  See how you..."
 
"Come at me!" I shouted.  My voice echoed around the granite
amphitheatre like a roar.  Knox stopped mid-sentence, cocked his head to
one side, and exploded into motion.  He was not a tall man, but solidly
built; he rushed me with the force of a freight train.  A sliver of a
second before he reached me I dropped to a low crouch, placing my center
of gravity below his.  Then, precisely at the moment of contact, I
shrugged upward into the bulk of his torso, then righted myself fully, flipping
his substantial mass up and over me so that he landed on his tailbone behind
me.  More shocked than hurt, he lifted himself slowly to his feet, took
the time to examine his armor and stretch his hamstrings before he finally
permitted his eyes to make contact with mine.  Having locked me in with
his gaze, he charged again.  This time he didn't employ the same maneuver,
nor had I expected him to.  It looked as though he intended to tackle me
outright.  As his hands prepared to grab my shoulders, I arched my back
and swung my right shoulder to my rear, placing my upper body just out of
his current path.  As I did so I took hold of his right arm firmly
with both of my hands.  Simultaneously I replanted my right foot farther
to my rear and pivoted on my left heel.  This enabled me to swing him just
far enough off his course to unbalance him.  Having done so, I released my
grip suddenly and let his momentum do the rest.  A minute later he was
brushing himself off once again.  I could see that he was slightly winded
from the exertion and did not plan to launch a third assault. 
 
"Where did you learn those moves?" he demanded.
 
"I didn't," I said.  "It just seemed like the right thing
to do."
 
"With all due respect, I have been trained in warfare all my life. 
Nobody who has had no such training just happens to best me."
 
I shrugged, said nothing.  I didn't mean it to be disrespectful, but it
probably was.  "So what now?"
 
"Well," Knox sounded a bit confounded, "You just saved us an
entire morning of training."
 
"Good.  Lunch, then?"
 
Knox's eyes narrowed as his face reddened. 
"Draw...your...weapon," he growled.  The time for joking had
passed.

My
blade was in my hand.  Knox lunged for my chest, I parried it
easily.  This was a feint; he immediately took advantage of the extended
position of my sword arm and attempted to disarm me in the manner that Corvus
had.  I was having none of that.  I held my weapon fast by the hilt
and drew it back quickly to guard my body.  He came at me with a series of
powerful blows directed at my abdomen.  It was all I could do to deflect
each strike and prepare for the next.  The attacks did not seem
particularly intent on making contact with flesh, only on keeping me on
defense, and at that they were quite effective.  He continued to press his
assault, and as I defended, I found that I could trust my arm to keep me
safe.  For a strange moment my mind detached itself from the business at
the end of my sword, and as the action commenced I was free to observe other
aspects of Knox's fighting style.  It was as though a silent narrator had
paused the scene, and was now advancing it frame by frame, pointing out key
elements of my opponent's form and holding.  I became aware that the focus
of his onslaught had shifted upward, to the area of my chest. 

So
it was that when I noticed a small twitch in the muscles of his neck,
a slight elevation of his unencumbered shoulder, I knew instinctively that the
nature of the attack was about to change.  As he landed the next blow, not
unlike the last, I pushed his sword forcibly off to the side, then swiftly
brought my blade to bear on the second, smaller blade that appeared in his
other hand, and which had already begun the motion that would bury it deep in
my abdomen.  My sword contacted his close to the hilt, and with such a shearing
force across the plane of his thrust, that his thumb was loosed and the weapon
flipped out of his grasp, burying itself in the gravel at his side.  Knox
paused, shocked by the unexpected speed and efficiency of my
defense.  When he did, I launched my offense.  But I didn't employ a
series of similar strokes as he had; rather, I tried to mix it up a bit, going
first for the legs, then for the head, now for the gut.  He managed to parry
each attack with his remaining blade, but just barely.  His response time
slowed as I refused to let up, and I could hear his breath coming in gasps
between moves.  Once I grazed his shoulder, another time sliced partway through
the leather belt that held his sheaths.  I made his blade dance, forcing it
repeatedly away from his core, keeping him feeling exposed, vulnerable. 

I
saw numerous opportunities to strike at a vital spot and end the fight, but
opted rather to prolong it, exhausting him, knowing he would realize that I
could have finished it but didn’t.  I wanted him to feel that.  It was a point
I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t have to make twice.  To earn not only his
respect, but a healthy degree of fear.  I slowed my assault to match his
wavering defense.  When he made a half-hearted downward slash I raised my foot
and stomped down hard on the tip of his descending blade, forcing the weapon
out of his anemic grasp.  Shoulders slumped, panting heavily, he made no
attempt to reclaim it.  I gave him a minute to catch his breath, then said,
“You tried to stab me.”

“The
armor,” he said between labored breaths, “would have protected you…from lethal
injury.”

“So
you planned to inflict the non-lethal kind,” I said.  “Thoughtful.”

“You
heard Kuro.  We’re not supposed to take it easy on you.  And apparently it
wasn’t necessary, was it?  I thought you hadn’t had any training.  Where the heck
did you pull those moves out of?”

“I
have no idea,” I said.  “I’ve never learned them, but it had a familiar
feeling, like skiing for the first time in the season.”  His expression
informed me that the analogy was completely lost on him.  “I mean, it was a
little trial and error at first, but it felt like something I had done before,
but had just gotten a bit rusty.”  Corrosion was something anyone in this world
could appreciate.

“Well,
whatever the reason, you obviously know how to fight,” Knox said.  “Our task,
then, is just to knock the rust off of the rest of your weapons.  But hey…don’t
feel the need to go all out in every skirmish.  You’ll wear yourself out too
quickly.”  He had removed his helmet by now, and the wet mop of hair underneath
suggested that perhaps I wasn’t the one who needed to worry about fatiguing
myself, but I didn’t say it.  “Let’s kill something and eat it.”

It
was a welcome thought, and at one point we scared up a pair of brightly-colored
pheasants, but Knox’s thrown knife fell shy of its mark.  It really wasn’t the
right tool for bird hunting.  Doog wouldn’t have missed, I was sure.  At one
point I asked, “I take it we don’t eat deer?”

Knox
looked at me judgmentally.  “I hope you’re kidding.”

“Of
course I was,” I mumbled, as my mind created the scent of roasting venison.  We
came across a patch of something like wild asparagus, and dismounted.  The
younger shoots were sweet and even tasty, but there were few of those, and the
larger ones were impossibly fibrous.

“I
think this may have to do it for now,” Knox said.  We’ll eat better back at the
base this evening.  We need to get through some more exercises before we lose
daylight.”  They might have been the most disappointing words I had ever
heard.  We headed back to the training arena.  We had only ridden for a few
minutes when the air was split by a horrific guttural bellow.  The deer froze
instantly, ears twitching this way and that, trying to determine the direction
and proximity of the sound, or rather, of whatever had produced it. 

“What
was that?” I asked Knox, my voice sounding too loud even to me. 

He
shushed me quickly and voiced only a muted, “After me!”  He veered sharply to
the right and my deer followed suit.  As we raced through the trees, I was
amazed at how little noise the deer made as they ran.  Maybe the extra pair of
legs helped distribute their weight better.  I kept expecting to hear the roar
again, closer, but it never came.  I might have actually been able to breathe a
sigh of relief if we’d heard it coming from farther away, but that didn’t
happen, either.  I didn’t have a super sense of direction, but I was fairly
sure we weren’t heading back toward the arena.  After a time I expressed my
concerns.  More anxious than annoyed, Knox replied in hushed tones, “Training
is over for the day.  We need to get to the dam.  Fast.”  We burst into a
clearing, and it was immediately apparent that the thing that stood there had
other plans for us.

It
was a massive armored feline, like the one I had seen from the chopper, up in
the mountains.  It was wider than it was high, its tough hide folded into
interlocking natural armor plates like a rhino.  It was black or almost-black,
and mostly hairless except for sparse patches of short, bristly hair in a few
places.  Its legs were huge and wide-set, ending in rows of claws that were
more reminiscent of extinct theropod than cat.  It bellowed again, and I was
momentarily deafened.  Knox shouted something at me, but it was lost to the
ringing in my ears.  Both of our deer reared up and beat the air with their
front hooves.  Knox managed to maintain his hold upon his animal when that
happened.  I was not so lucky.  I landed in some shrubbery at the base of a
large rock.  My deer bounded off through the trees.  Apparently the creature
didn’t see me fall.  It leapt to the top of the rock above me, then soared over
me in pursuit of the deer; a great, dark shape that reminded me most of a
monster truck taking a jump to clear a row of school buses.  No doubt it
weighed at least as much – the beast was enormous.  Built for strength and
stability, not speed, the deer easily outpaced it, and the creature was smart
enough to realize the chase was futile.