The Warrior Rearmed

10

I coughed again at the strange smell that wasn’t dust and tried to force my eyes open, but I was surrounded so sharply with pain that I couldn’t do it. The strange dream I’d walked through had provided pain of its own, but purely physical pain surrounded me now, stabbing at me with skull-breaking insistence. I could hear the sound of thunder and felt the clawing of lightning that accompanied it, but that wasn’t all that was bringing me pain; I had to see what was happening, and the need quickly turned into compulsion.

Forcing my eyes open was a major feat, but once I had accomplished it I was sure I still had to be dreaming. The first thing I saw was Tammad and Dallan, tied by the wrists and suspended by the same lengths of leather that tied them, dangling like grotesque decorations from the cave ceiling, their bound feet a good distance from the floor. Their bodies were stripped of weapons and haddinn, but that doesn’t mean they were totally bare; whip marks clothed them in streaks of red, sharp and awful against the bronze of their skin. Although they were conscious, they made no sound, holding the deep, wracking flare of agony wrapped inside their minds. It was partly their agony that cut at me so strongly, that and the thunderstorm outside the open rock windows, and even through the pain and confusion I felt, I knew I had to do something. What that something consisted of I didn’t quite know, but there was something even more important that I didn’t know. I found it out, though, as soon as I tried to move.

If the men were tied vertically, the position given to me was horizontal, or at least nearly that. The awareness finally seeped through my confusion and pain that I was tied to a boulder of sorts, my head hanging back and down, my arms stretched tight and tied at the wrists beyond my head, my ankles restrained but not tightly. I could turn my head to see Tammad and Dallan hanging where someone or something had put them, and could also turn my head an equivalent amount in the opposite direction; aside from that I couldn’t move. Apprehension had taken its time reaching me, but when it came it was full-blown fear; I couldn’t think clearly through everything that was coming at me, but fear seemed very appropriate. What could have captured and hurt two l’lendaa so easily, and what was it going to do to us beyond that?

Trying to pull myself together was worse than opening my eyes had been. The more vague my thoughts and perceptions were, the less it hurt; the converse leaned on me and poked with flaming needles until I nearly gave up. I was going to have to open my mind wide to be at all effective, but that damned storm was ripping me up and throwing me away, making me shiver and sweat and hurt and cringe. I moaned and moved feebly on the jagged stone I was tied to, fighting for any corner of control I could reach, and the reason for all that madness moved into my line of sight from the right. My first thought was a hope that I was still dreaming, but unfortunately I knew I wasn’t. The man was absolutely unbelievable, both in size and in appearance; larger than Tammad and Dallan by more than a little, completely naked, and dark-haired! I know I stared with my mouth open while he stood and gazed casually at his two hanging victims, then flinched involuntarily when he turned to look at me. His mind was as cold and emotionless as the barbarian’s was usually calm, something that was reflected in his soulless green eyes. I didn’t have to probe to reach the cold lack of emotion, and that made me shiver even through my pain.

“So you have awakened,” he said in a very deep voice, obviously addressing me. “From the fear I see in your eyes, you had not thought to meet a man of our land here, in the place of these puny weaklings of darayse. It is a fortunate thing for the honor of our people that I lost my way during the last storms and took shelter in these caverns. Had I not, our honor might never have been restored. ”

“What honor do you speak of?” I whispered, fighting to get the words out over the pain I felt. “What people do you speak of? I do not know you, nor do I know your land. Why have you done this to us?”

“Do you think me blind, that you deny our common heritage?” he snorted, his cold eyes growing even colder. “Our numbers are as yet too few, yet are they large enough for me to know you as one of our own. Though you are young and have not yet attained your full growth, you are not so young that you are ignorant of our law. It is forbidden for one of our women to give herself to these pale non-men, and yet you have done so. You must all be punished, you for having broken the law, they for having dared profane one of ours. Their punishment has already been begun; yours is yet to come.”

“You are insane!” I husked, trying to put some strength and conviction into my voice. “I am not one of those you claim as your own, nor have I ever been! Should it be beyond you to believe this, do as you will with me—but you must release my companions. They are guiltless, and you cannot harm them further! ”

“Guiltless!” He snorted again, still without a trace of humor. “They have had you, have they not? They have humored and used your disgusting female urges to squirm, and have put you beneath them, have they not? You could not bear to obey the law and await your full growth before seeking manhood to ease you, therefore did you flee to those who would aid you in disobeying yet a further and greater law. As you were so eager for that which you were not yet to have, I shall now give you that which you are ill-equipped to receive.”

It was so difficult following the twisting of his warped arguments, that for a moment I didn’t understand what he meant. My main difficulty with him was that he was insane, a pathologically disturbed personality that my mind cringed back from in pain and fear. Just as a healthy person would cringe back from touching the body of someone stricken with a flesh-rotting disease, so did my mind recoil from touching the sickness that rotted away his rationality and humanity. The storm flared and crashed outside, jarring me to my teeth; Dallan and Tammad fought inside themselves to throw off their pain and break free from their restraints, and all of it just made me dizzy and weak. When the monster started walking toward me I didn’t understand what he intended doing, and that was undoubtedly a kindness. Once he reached me and tore away most of my shortened gown with a single, savage pull, I understood more than I cared to.

Since the first day I’d met the barbarian on Central, I’d had a lot of use from the men of Rimilia, willing or otherwise, and usually otherwise. I’d called their use rape more often than I could recall, glibly tagging the actions with the entire title when all I’d known had been a small and not all that terrible corner of the reality. That dark-haired monster taught me the full meaning of the word, his mind grimly satisfied all the while, his body as uncaring about what he did as the stones of the walls around us. If I really had been an ungrown female of his people, he probably would have damaged me so badly that I might not have survived; as it was, I screamed when he forced his way into me, understanding how outrageously outsized he was only after he had done so. He brought me nothing but pain, seeking pleasure not even for himself, hurting me deliberately as a part of his twisted concept of punishment. I closed my shield tight as I screamed, fighting to keep from being overwhelmed by that savage addition to what pain I already felt, but I couldn’t block out the roars and cursing from Dallan and Tammad. They twisted where they hung, straining to break free, desperately trying to pull the monster away from me by insults and challenges. The monster ignored them as he completed his task, jarring down into me with his body, twisting and pulling at my flesh with his fingers, until he was thoroughly done and had released the strength of his need. Then he withdrew as uncaringly as he’d entered, and turned to look at his two other captives.

“You dare to attempt interference when a man disciplines a woman of his own people?” he demanded of them, his deep voice nearly a rumbling growl. “As you wished for my attention, so shall you now have it.”

He strode out of my line of vision but was back immediately carrying a heavy, braided whip of a sort I’d never seen before. The leather braiding of the whip was stained with reddish brown, and I didn’t have to wonder where the stains came from. All I wanted to do right then was curl up and hide, but I forced myself, through waves of pain, to watch what was happening. I didn’t understand how I could have opened my shield in the midst of all that was going on around me, but to my distant, confused surprised that was exactly what I had done. Watching for me involved more than just eyesight, and something in me knew that and insisted on it.

The flare of lightning and crash of thunder hid whatever sound there was as the monster released the coils of the heavy whip to snake out behind him, but they didn’t hide the various reactions coming at me. Dallan was so furious he was nearly frothing, but he hadn’t been able to free himself of the leather on his wrists, nor had he been able to ignore the pain he felt. He watched the whip with helpless rage, aching with the pain already given him, knowing there was no avoiding another dose of it. Tammad, too, was filled with rage, a towering rage so strong and wide there was room in his mind for nothing else. Pain, worry, were gone beneath the weight of it, buried and forgotten as though they had never been, as though they would never be again. His mighty body strained against the leather which bound him, unable to brace itself to pull effectively yet continuing to strain, as though will alone would part the leather. The monster looked at both of them, seeing Dallan’s fury but nothing of Tammad’s rage, and satisfaction briefly touched his mind. He had decided which of them he would hurt again first, and in his madness believed his decision logical. His muscles bunched as his arm brought the whip cracking forward, and Dallan twisted in the leather he hung by, agony exploding in his mind in the same way that the storm exploded outside. The double crash, one outer and one inner, blinded and deafened me, and when the thunder faded the monster was speaking again.

’ . . . clearly shows that you have transgressed the more,” he said to Dallan while swinging his arm back and striking again. “You dare to consider the girl yours, as though you might be worthy of a female of my people. One of ours will never belong to the pale darayse of your lands, and this you will know before you die. You will end in the agony of the lash, having learned too late how far you have overstepped yourself.”

Dallan uttered a strangled roar, half very intense pain, half insanity at the helplessness of his position. The whip continued to cut at him over and over, freeing his blood to run down his body, and I strained against the leather holding me to the stone, bathed in sweat from his pain and mine, frantically trying to get loose. I’d suddenly become convinced that if I could just put my hands over my ears, I could do whatever had to be done and everything would be all right. I felt the leather cutting into my wrists without really noticing it, panting with the unsuccessful effort to free myself, close to insanity myself. I had to get loose but I couldn’t, and then I gasped at what Tammad did. He had started himself swinging back and forth, not very far and not very fast, but suddenly he lashed out at the monster with both of his bound feet, and the small amount of arc he’d achieved helped him reach his target. The monster staggered when Tammad’s feet struck him, missing the next stroke at Dallan and almost striking himself, and outrage dominated his mind.

“You dare!” he hissed, jerking around to the barbarian, who still swung slowly back and forth. “For that it will be you who is the first to die!”

With that his arm went back and then came forward again, sending the lash against Tammad with all his strength, immediately drawing more blood among the lines already there. The new touch of the whip joining the older streaks was more than the barbarian could stand; despite the iron control he had always shown, despite the denial he was still working for, the pain touched him and reached him and hurt him! That was the point that near insanity became true insanity for me.

The feel of the stone beneath my back and the clasp of leather on my wrists, the raging of the storm outside and the groaning in Dallan’s semi-conscious mind, the pain and fear I felt and the terrible desperation—all faded into shadows as though a curtain had been dropped. The dark-haired monster stood spotlighted in my attention, and attention was the least of what I wanted to give him. My mind opened wide and flowed into his, thrusting aside preferences and prejudices and inclinations alike, searching for the core and essence of him. It was like wading thigh deep through dark slime and twisting putrescence, but his insanity no longer repelled me. I knew there would be a large store of buried fear lying untapped and nearly forgotten, and the monster staggered physically when I reached it, forgetting the whip in his hand as his mind began to fight mine. He seemed to know what I was after and was frantic to keep me from it, but he had no more chance against me mentally than I had against him physically. I released the fears he couldn’t face, letting them flood his mind, and then I began to help them.

The monster screamed as his face paled, fear of everything in the world covering him like a second skin. His whip fell forgotten to the stone of the floor as he went to his knees, his mind surprisingly fighting back harder than it had. The phantoms surrounding and possessing him bowed his head and caused his fists to clench, closing his eyes as he continued to scream and fight. I’d been supporting his fears and keeping them free of his restraint, but rather than trying to resuppress them he was actually conquering them, just as he obviously would have if he’d faced them sooner. If I allowed him to go on much longer he’d win and be free of the fears entirely, and that would also free him to take up where he had so recently left off with that whip. That was the last thing I would allow, no matter the pity I might have felt for him under other circumstances.

Personal fears really are personal, things that others, learning of them, might well laugh at; to the individual involved, the last thing those fears are is laughable. The single footstep in the darkness which immediately becomes the nightmare ghoul you were just reading about; the total lack of light below the last step of a stair which might be a bottomless pit instead; the small, dark, distant cloud, which might be a hungry swarm of ravening insects heading right for you; the squeak of a rodent, the click of a lock, the leap of a flame, the smell of salt water, the reek of stale air. To people with deeply buried terror experiences, these are all real, possible happenings which engender the pounding pulse and thumping heart, the shivering limbs and weakened bowels, the pumping lungs and dizzied mind. The monster kneeling on the stone was nearly to the point of besting all his fears when I gave him my lot, amplified by my power and driven in unceasingly, wave after wave of fear without name, terror and horror I left him to put a face on. The chill-tingle-up-the-spine fear, the semi-paralyzed quaking fear, the breathless-need-to-scream fear. all of it full volume and roaring in. Behind the shadow curtain containing all distractions, I became aware of the increasing violence of the thunderstorm outside, but although the curtain rattled and shook I couldn’t afford to let it distract me. The monster had to be slain, and I was the only one left to do it.

The dark-haired hunter-turned-victim was down on his side on the stone, mewling and cringing and gasping for breath, but still trying to fight inside. His mind darted around looking for a corner of the fear to grasp even as it searched for a place to hide, crying and crawling but still trying to resist. I couldn’t afford to wonder how much strength I had left, any more than I could afford to ease up on the way I was pressing him; if I did, the battle was lost. Hand-away-from-fire fear, and falling-into-nothingness, fear, and attacked-without-warning fear, strengthened and rolling in one after the other, followed by claustrophobia fear and acrophobia fear and xenophobia fear. A shadow-curtain-failing fear snuck in before I realized it, my own fear transmitting itself to him even while I admitted deep down that it was more a certainty than a fear. The shadow curtain was fading even as I fought to deny it, and I knew damned well what was on the other side. Dallan’s pain and Tammad’s rage, the monster’s suffering—and the thunderstorm. Emotion and pain as large and heavy as the mountain around us, and if I closed my shield to protect myself, the monster would break free. I heard a whimpering noise and I knew I made it, felt the pain of stone scrapes on my flesh, became aware of leather digging excruciatingly into my wrists and ankles, saw the shadow curtain flickering madly. In another minute I was going to lose it, the protection of the curtain, the battle I fought, the very fabric of my entire existence. Terror gripped me so strongly that I knew I would die of it, and when the curtain collapsed all I could do in the blinding explosion was scream hysterically with pain. I heard myself scream, and thought I heard an echo of that scream, and then there was nothing else.