The Warrior Within

7

When I opened my eyes, light streamed in from the camtah’s leather curtain, and I could see that I was alone. There was a vast excitement within me, and I dressed quickly in the clean yellow imad and blue caldin near my furs, then went outside.

The sky was still grey through the trees, but the rain had stopped falling. The barbarian was nowhere in sight, and one of the seetar was gone, too. The other stood hobbled and tied to a tree, grumbling to itself in vague annoyance. There was a flying thing in the tree above it, waiting patiently for something, and another flying thing shied nervously in the air at the sight of the seetar below the tree.

The world was wonderful, and I gloried in being fully alive again. I strolled away from the camtah, reaching out to the living minds around me, feeling their emotions and experiencing them. The blindfold was gone, the earplugs were gone, and I was whole once more, free to be what I was.

The ground was still soggy underfoot, but I didn’t care. I walked on for a few minutes, then finally stopped and leaned against the trunk of a tree, feeling the clean breeze on my face, the rough bark against my back. The night before, the barbarian had said the triggering word that released me from the repressive conditioning that kept me from using my gift, from even knowing that I had it. All XenoMediators had to have the gift of full empathy the ability to read the emotions of others and also influence those emotions, but Primes were the strongest of all. Bitter misunderstandings and bruised sensibilities weren’t possible with an awakened and alerted Prime in attendance, and agreements and treaties were easily reached.

Many, many years ago, it was decided that awakened empaths, no matter how valuable they were to Central, couldn’t be allowed to move about freely on Central. Even if the government had permitted it, the population would have been too uneasy for peace to last very long. Riots would have started, and even the strongest of the Primes would have been unable to save himself from a mob that screamed for his blood. To avert such a disaster, empaths and Central government had made a pact: the empaths agreed to live half lives when on Central, and in return they received everything else that they wanted. In a carefully formulated program, the people were told from their first days of education that XM’s, and especially Primes, were giving up the equivalent of sight and hearing just to live among them and serve them. The indoctrination produced pity and awe in the people, and they all did what they could to make the lot of an empath easier.

I moved away from the tree, smoothing the back of the caldin with a quick stroke so I could squat down without dipping it in the mud. There was a small, dirty pool of water near my feet, and I could almost see myself in it.

“Why do you keep going back there?” I asked my distorted reflection. “Why don’t you live elsewhere so you can stay alive?”

My reflection didn’t answer, but it didn’t have to. I already knew that after every assignment was completed, someone came by with the counter-trigger that took my gift away from me again, along with the very memory of it. You can’t resent the loss of something you don’t know you have, something you can’t even wonder about, and you become dependent on the people who can give you your life back. We’d long since passed the need to fear the people of Central, but the government was much too fond of the leash it had on us to turn us loose again.

“What do you do so far from the camtah?” the barbarian demanded suddenly wrenching my thoughts back to the present situation. I looked up at him, cursing myself for being so deep in thought that I hadn’t felt his approach. He blazed with anger, but there was a residual of fear there, too. Had he been afraid that he’d lost his Prime?

“I felt like taking a walk.” I told him, standing straight and brushing at the caldin. “You didn’t say I couldn’t.”

“I do say so now,” he growled, staring down at me with the anger cooling a bit. “You are not to leave the camtah save with me. These woods are not safe.”

I opened my mouth to say that I would have warning of any danger, but was hit so hard with a solid wave of hunger and viciousness that I staggered as if I’d been struck physically. The barbarian took a step toward me, but I waved him away, pointing frantically in the direction that the emotion was coming from. He whirled around, sliding his mighty blade out of its sheath as he turned, bringing it up just barely in time to meet the charge of the beast I had felt.

The thing raced from the brush on four legs, but it was taller at the shoulders than the top of my head. It was a tawny gold in color, with short, bristly hair all over it, long, flexing claws on its legs, sharp, slavering teeth in its mouth. Its eyes and mind were mad with kill lust, and I backed away a few paces, trembling more from the mental onslaught than from its physical appearance. A gentle, intelligent being may be housed in the most grotesque of bodies, and it doesn’t matter in the least. The mind is the thing that counts.

The barbarian swung his blade at the beast as it closed with him, cutting deeply into its shoulder. It screamed out its pain and turned briefly aside, then charged again in renewed rage. The wound was a serious one, but I knew from its mind that the berserk beast would not slow down until it was dead. The barbarian cut at its other shoulder then jumped aside, barely escaping the teeth and claws that hungered for his blood.

I forced calm and control over myself, then reached out toward the beast. As I’d suspected, there was a small node of fear behind the insane rage, a fear that in large part produced the rage. I touched the fear, encouraging it and causing it to grow larger, unpenning it from the beast’s denial.

The beast had scrabbled around as Tammad backed up to a tree, preparing to launch itself at him in a desperate attack. The barbarian’s sword was red with gore, his body so splattered with it that it was hard telling whether or not he was hurt. The animal took three short steps toward the man, then the fear flowed out into the beast’s mind, causing it to howl in an agony that tore at me. It stopped still with its legs spread and its head back, howling its fear and pain, and the barbarian stepped forward and swung his sword, cutting the beast’s throat and almost severing its head from its body. The howling cut off as the body collapsed, but the agony faded more slowly

The barbarian paused to look down at the dead beast, then turned away from it and walked to me. There had been no fear in him during the battle, but only, I thought, because there had been no room for it. His emotions had been filled with the need to win, the determination to win. Fear is accompanied by doubt, and there had been no doubt in him either. He carried his bloody sword in his hand, and he walked slowly to where I stood.

“Your warning was timely” he said, staring down at me speculatively. “We are fortunate that you saw the beast as it attacked. I must have been distracted indeed not to have detected it myself. A strange fazee it was, insane as they all are, yet something more. Come, we will return to the camtah.”

I went with him, walking slightly ahead as I followed the grumbling of the seetar that was clearer than any trail. We reached the camtah without further incident, but the barbarian threw his sword down on the tent’s veranda, then put his hands on my shoulders so that he could stare down into my eyes. I could feel his curiosity as if it were an itch as yet unscratched.

“There is much strangeness here,” he said, narrowing his eyes somewhat. “You have never seen a fazee before, I know, yet you made no outcry and did not run. The fazee did not behave as it should have before it died, and you returned here to the camtah as if you knew the way well. I would hear what these things mean.”

I considered telling him exactly what they meant, exactly what I was now. I would have told him, but telling that much, I would have had to tell him about my crippled life, too, and I couldn’t face the pity he would feel for me. His hands were heavy on my shoulders, but not as heavy as the weight of his pity would be.

I said, “They mean that I won’t be as much of a burden to you as you thought- Primes are Primes because of their ability, not because of someone’s arbitrary order. You should be pleased with your bargain.”

“Bargain?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “Ah, you mean with my house-gift, my belonging. No, wenda, I am not quite pleased. Take that cloth and clean my sword.”

He pointed to a piece of material sticking out of a partially open sack near the camtah, then went toward the seetar. His curiosity was still with him, but he had taken all of his emotions tightly in hand, not allowing them to rule him, and they were too mixed together for me to read easily My own emotions, though, were a different matter entirely

Wenda he’d called me! My hand went to my banded throat and I grasped the chain he’d put there. I was nothing but wenda to him, to be closed in chains and given orders!

The seetar he’d been riding had the carcass of an animal strung across its neck. He pulled the carcass down to the ground, then unsaddled the seetar rubbing it briefly before returning his attention to the carcass. He took the knife that was wedged in the back of his swordbelt, and began skinning the thing. I glanced at his bloody sword, then got the material to wipe it with. Looking at the carcass had reminded me how hungry I was, but I couldn’t ask him for food. I went back to the veranda and began to lift the sword—but it flatly refused to lift! I had to use two hands to get it off the ground, and then had to kneel down and lay it across my lap before I could begin cleaning it. It felt as if it had invisible roots anchoring it to the ground, and I wondered how the barbarian handled it so easily. The barbarian supposedly still had his eyes and attention on the carcass, but I felt his amusement and almost heard his chuckle. I ground my teeth together and rubbed at the sword.

The barbarian skinned the animal quickly then took a large bag of what looked like ordinary wood, dumped some of it on a scarred place in the front corner of the veranda, and started a fire. When the fire was going well, he cut a slab of meat from the carcass, stuck a long, sharp stick through it, and brought it over to me.

“Do you hold this over the fire, turning it from side to side, until I say it is done,” he directed, taking the clean sword from my lap and replacing it in its scabbard. I took the stick with the meat, and went to the fire.

The meat stick was too wet to burn, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t smoke nicely. I coughed as I held it, squeezing my watering eyes shut, wondering if the meat would take forever to cook. My arms felt like lead by the time the barbarian called me, my stomach was knotting in cramps from the delicious smell, and I was nearly drooling. I carried the meat to him where he was still cutting up the carcass; he took it and inspected it, nodded his head, then took a bite.

“True dimral at last,” he said around the mouthful, chewing away at it. “A bit underdone, perhaps, but you will gain facility with experience.”

He squatted down and took another bite, and I could feel his contentment as well as see it. Without being able to stop it, I blurted, “But what about me?”

“You?” he asked with a surprise he didn’t feel, his eyes looking up at me. “You also have need of dimral? I hadn’t considered such. You have my permission to seek in the woods for dimral of your own.”

His tone was light and uncaring, but his mind was expectant, waiting for something to happen, and I knew what that something was. He was waiting for wenda to acknowledge him as the great warrior and hunter, to admit that she would starve without him, to beg him for something to eat. Well, a true wenda might, but despite the bands, I was still a Prime! I turned, grabbed up the knife he’d left in the carcass, and ran into the woods.

I listened hard as I ran through the bushes and between trees, both to avoid any other carnivores and to find something that would show I wasn’t helpless. In a few minutes, I caught a wisp of shy thought, lost it, then caught it again. I sent reassurance ahead of me to the shy animal, changed course slightly, and slowed down.

I rounded a tree and saw the animal I had felt, a long-legged, big-eyed innocent of a beast. It was a dusty red in color, and it had taken the reassurance I’d sent and was clinging to it, grasping it eagerly and accepting it. It came up to me without hesitation, rubbing its soft nose gently on my arm, trust and affection clear in its mind.

I held the bloody knife behind me, telling myself that I had to do it, if I didn’t, I would starve. I touched the silken neck with my fingers, feeling the pleasure the caress gave the beast, seeing the trust clear in its eyes, then laughed bitterly at myself. I could starve more easily than destroy that trust in me, die more easily than betray the confidence of a thing that was almost all emotion without defense. I let the knife slide out of my fingers and sank down into a crouch, giving myself over to hopelessness and despair.

The beast had been nuzzling me gently but suddenly it turned and ran, radiating terror. I scrabbled after the knife I’d dropped, searching for the terrible danger that had frightened the beast, finding the barbarian staring at me from beside a tree not three steps away. His mind was in calm turmoil, sharp questioning prevailing, his eyes unblinkingly on me. I knew he’d seen me fail to kill the animal, and I couldn’t stand it. He’d make me admit that I was helpless, make me beg to be protected. I got to my feet to run just as the animal had.

I’d barely taken a step before his hand was on my arm, pulling me around to face him. His blue eyes showed the disturbance he felt, and I trembled, trying to hold my own emotions in.

“The tenna did not fear you,” he said, more a statement than a question. “The tenna cannot be approached, yet you approached it. The fazee, too, was touched by something outside itself. What power do you have, woman, and why have I not seen it before?”

I didn’t answer him, but he nodded just as if I had. “The word I spoke to you. I believe it woke the power within you, did it not? That was the purpose of the word. You reach to the beasts some way, healing them or destroying them at your pleasure. Yet you could not slay where you had healed, and this I understand. Is your power over beasts alone, or may men also be touched?”

“Not as easily” I choked out, closing my eyes, but unable to close out the calm control of him. “If I couldn’t touch men, I would be of little use as a Prime.”

“Now do I understand the awe of your people,” he said slowly letting my arm go. “And why my friend Dennison spoke of you as he did. There is much yet I must learn of this. Let us return to the camtah before the dimral grows cold.”

“Your dimral,” I said as he started off wrapped in thought. “I haven’t caught mine yet.”

He turned back to look at me, and annoyance flared in him. “Enough, wenda!” he snapped. “Have you not yet learned your lesson? Bring the knife and come!”

I tried to hold his commanding eyes, tried the way I’d tried to kill the tenna—and failed just as miserably I picked up the knife and followed after him, hating myself because he let me walk behind him with a knife in my hands. He knew well enough that he had nothing to fear.

When we got back to the camp, I put the knife back into the carcass while he went toward his meat. Without stopping, I hurried to the camtah and inside, unable to watch him eat. The furs I lay down on were soft and comfortable, but they did nothing to fill the belly. Feeling miserable, I stretched out and lay still.

“What do you do in here?” the barbarian asked, poking his head and shoulders in past the leather curtain. “Come outside and eat, so we may speak further about this power you possess.”

I turned slightly in the furs so that I could look away from him. “I have nothing to eat.” I answered, feeling my stomach roll around and knot. “What questions do you have?”

“You possess too much pride for a woman,” he said, some strangely mixed emotion filling him. “I was merely returning to you the courtesy I received in your house. I did not bring you here to force you to hunt or starve, wenda, and you shall earn what you eat.”

That word again! “Stop calling me that;” I hissed furiously jerking my head back to him, then shouted, “Stop calling me that name! And take these chains off! I can’t think if I’m in chains!”

“Why do the bands disturb you so?” he asked curiously, unperturbed. “They merely show you to be a highly valued belonging. Would you prefer men to think you completely unprotected, and therefore free for the taking?”

“I don’t care what men think!” I snapped, sitting up on one elbow “I want these chains off!” Then I reached out to him, filling him with my desire to be free, forcing agreement on him.

Mechanically, woodenly, he came farther into the camtah, reaching for my ankle to free me, but then he stopped, frowned, and shook his head hard. He’d been about to do as I’d demanded, but then he drew his hand back again, and there was anger all through him.

“You will not again attempt to control me!” he ordered, cold-eyed, completely in possession of himself again. “You will wear the bands as long as you remain on this world. Too long have you been allowed to force others to your bidding. You care nothing of consequences, only of your own desires, but I shall teach you what others have not. Out of the camtah, wenda, and to your food!”

He grabbed me by the ankle and pulled me out, through the leather curtain and across the veranda to the very edge of it. I was drained by the projection I’d attempted, and I lay where he left me, astounded that he could resist me, appalled that he dragged me around, agonized in that I still wore the bands. I was a Prime, and couldn’t be treated so!

“Eat this!” he ordered, coming back to hand me a piece of the meat I’d cooked. I sat up slowly, brushed the hair out of my face, then took the meat. It was cold and slightly gritty and not cooked all the way through, but the first bite was pure ambrosia. I chewed it, savoring its taste, and the barbarian crouched down near me with the rest of it.

“I do now see more fully how you touch men,” he said around a bite of his own. “Had I not had some idea of your power, I would have been taken. I do not know if I care to have those who oppose me twisted in this manner. It is not a thing to do to a man.”

“That’s not what I’ll be doing.” I mumbled, looking only at my bit of meat. “I’ll just be seeing that they listen to your arguments with an open mind, and finding arguments for you that will convince them. Forcing agreement on them isn’t something I’m allowed to do.”

“Ah!” He stirred, satisfaction strong in him. “Then how is it you attempted thus to twist me?”

“I don’t want to be banded.” I muttered, then looked up at him. “Nobody forces you to wear chains.”

“They are free to make the attempt.” He shrugged. “But who would wish to have a warrior in wenda bands? And would you have all women go without them, so a man cannot know which belongs to another? With the bands, a man’s overfamiliarity with a woman belonging to another cannot be excused by ignorance. He either forfeits his life, or wins the woman for his own.”

“And the woman has nothing to say about it,” I returned heatedly, forgetting about the meat in my hand. “You men chain her and beat her, and hand her around as you please, and she’s helpless to stop it.”

“For what reason should she wish to stop it?” he asked mildly feeling complete conviction for the nonsense he was spouting. “A woman is rarely dissatisfied with the man who chooses her. Her father seeks carefully before he gives agreement for another to band her. Should she so dislike her father’s choice that she cannot accept him, she will not please him enough that he will band her further. A woman with a single band who has not been recently acquired may be bought for very little, all men knowing that she who does not belong with the man who possesses her may be the very one for whom he has been searching. A woman with one band may quickly acquire five with the proper man.”

“So she literally has to work her tail off for the privilege of being chained,” I summed up in disgust. “And you don’t see anything wrong with that?”

“Where is the wrong?” He laughed, shaking his head. “Would a woman be happier if she were allowed to choose him to whom she will belong? I think not. Should she choose wrong, she would thereafter be unsure of herself, hesitant lest she make another mistake. Our women do not have this to plague them. They are free but for the word of him to whom they belong.”

“Some freedom.” I muttered, finishing off the last of my meat. “Free to be bartered and beaten. Hooray for liberty.”

“A woman is not beaten without cause,” he said, studying me carefully. “If a man protects her, hunts for her, clothes her, he has the right to demand obedience from her. Were he to obey her, he would be little more than her slave. But you shall learn the ways of a woman on this world, and shall grow with them. Too long have you been kept as a willful child, and it was no kindness. A child cannot truly be a woman.”

I watched wide-eyed as he stood straight again and went back to carving up the carcass. He really believed everything he’d said, and he was completely confident that he could make me believe it, too! I didn’t know what I should do, didn’t even know if I could do anything! He’d decided to save me from a life that anyone would be crazy to want to leave, and I was to have no say in the matter. I thought about my house on Central, the ease with which I’d had anything I’d wished, and felt like crying.

As the day wore on, I had little time for crying. He had me feed the seetarr while he finished with the carcass, then we went together to a stream not far away. Instead of being allowed to bathe, though, I was made to wash the muddy imad and caldin of the day before while he stood guard. The wet clothing was then taken back to camp to be spread on the roof of our camtah, and we began cooking the rest of the meat. As each piece came out of the fire, he placed it carefully on a large leaf, wrapped it up, and put it away in a sack.

I was sweating and soot-covered when we stopped to eat again, but my eyes weren’t watering. Standing upwind of the fire had helped. The sky stayed grey and threatening, but it still hadn’t rained when the last of the meat was sacked. I thought I’d be able to rest a while then, but my tormentor handed me a brush that was to be used on the seetarr I brushed seetarr until my arms ached, and was laughed at for suggesting that the barbarian do some brushing, too. The mighty warrior was too well occupied with oiling his sword to be bothered with other things.

At long last, every acre of seetar had been brushed. Again I thought I would rest, but again I was mistaken. I was taken, along with the clean imad and caldin and a good half-dozen waterskins, back to the stream. I carried the waterskins, and the barbarian carried a long, thin spear.

After washing the imad and caldin that I’d been wearing, I was finally allowed to wash myself. The water was delightfully refreshing, and the barbarian stripped himself so that he, too, could bathe. When he entered the water, he handed me his strip of brown cloth and told me to wash it for him. I had the urge to let the stream current take it, but the thought must have occurred to him, too. He watched me carefully until the cloth was safely back on the bank.

Although the barbarian had left his swordbelt on the bank, he had taken the thin spear into the water with him. He buried the blade in the streambed until he had bathed, then he waded out farther with the spear raised high. He stood very still for a long time, then suddenly moved with flashing speed, the spear went into the water, then was pulled out again with a long, fat fish flapping on the end of it. He came back to the bank to put the fish down, and grinned at me.

“We will have enough of dimral before the rains cease,” he said. “This night we dine on pantay.”

He went back out to spear two more pantay, then we left the stream. With the blood from the fazee and dimral carcass washed off him, I could see three long gashes near his left shoulderblade where the fazee must have caught him. I quietly searched his mind for the pain he must have felt and did find it, but it was so well controlled that it barely reached his consciousness. I soothed it down farther still, then withdrew.

It was nearly dark by the time the fish were ready. The barbarian had wrapped them in more of the leaf that he had, then buried them under the still glowing ashes of the fire. I sat on the veranda of the camtah, comfortably clean in body and clothing, working at my hair with the seetar brush. The bristles were too short and stiff to be really good, but it was better than nothing, and certainly better than helping the barbarian stack what the seetar would carry the next day. My imad and caldin, and the barbarian’s body cloth—called haddin -were hung up to dry on pegs on the walls of the veranda in case it rained again.

The pantay was delicious, with a delicacy of flavor, given to it by the leaf, that I’d never tasted before. I ate almost all of mine—from the leaf with my fingers—and the barbarian finished his two almost including the bones. He then produced a different-looking waterskin, and took a deep draught.

“Ah, I must remember to thank my friend Dennison for this unmentioned gift,” he said, nearly smacking his lips. “I had not thought to taste drishnak again until I had returned to my people.”

“What is it?” I asked, watching him take another swallow

“It is a wine made by my people,” he answered, then he grinned. “Would you care to taste it?”

“Why not?” I shrugged, taking the skin as he passed it to me. “I could use some wine right about now.”

I sniffed at it before drinking, and it somehow had a spicy smell. I sighed a little, annoyed at myself for thinking it would have a bouquet. Considering its source, it would need a lot of apology. I took a swallow of it—and thought my throat was on fire! I could feel it burning all the way down to my stomach, and I gasped in lungfuls of air, trying to douse the flames. The barbarian quickly took the skin from me and pounded on my back.

“Did you swallow wrong?” he asked, his voice filled with a concern he wasn’t feeling. Inside he was laughing, and he added, “May I help you in some way?”

“You’ve already done enough!” I rasped, moving away from his pounding hand. “You did that on purpose so you could laugh at me. I hate you!”

I got to my feet and ran into the darkness to escape his laughter, but the memory of it followed even into the deeper shadow of the seetarr. I stood between them near the tree they were tied to, feeling the tears run down my cheeks. The tears were partly from the still burning “wine,” but mostly from the barbarian’s amusement. I was nothing but an object of ridicule to him, a willful child of no consequence, even less than wenda. I leaned against the side of the larger of the two male seetarr, and his enormous head reached around to poke at me gently.

“The seetar seems to have more sense than I,” the barbarian said softly from behind me. “I did not know you would feel the arrow of my laughter, but that has no bearing. I should not have done what I did and I ask your pardon.”

I leaned closer to the seetar and didn’t answer him, and he moved nearer to put his hand on my shoulder.

“Drink this water,” he urged, holding a skin where I could see it. “It will help against the burning.”

“Why should you care?” I asked bitterly “What difference would it make to you if I burned up? You could always get another Prime from Murdock McKenzie, and the next one might not be the total loss that I am. It would be a better bargain all the way around.”

“You speak again of bargains,” he said, pulling me around to face him. It was too dark to see him, but his strength glowed like a mile-high beacon. “I would have you know now that you were given to me by the Murdock McKenzie, not just as a Prime, but as a woman I desired. He is more father to you than you know, wenda, and long has he searched for a man for you. He accepted my offer of payment, and now you are truly mine. There will be no others sent in your stead.”

My head was swimming, and what he said didn’t make any sense, “But I don’t understand. Why would you make an offer for me when you already thought of me as your house-gift from Sandy?”

He chuckled, then rubbed gently at my shoulders with his thumbs. “Although I have traveled between the stars but once, I have traveled many places on this planet of my birth. The custom of house-gift, no matter how well known among my own people, is not followed by other people of this world. Why, then, would I believe that it was followed by the people of another world?”

“But you insisted!” I said in outrage, feeling dizzier and dizzier. “You took me and used me, and insisted that I was your house-gift!”

“You were unbanded,” he said, and I could feel his shrug. “On a world of darayse, a man insists on what he wills, does as he pleases. None came forward to challenge my claim, but I wished to buy you in a proper manner and so spoke with the Murdock McKenzie.”

“Murdock McKenzie can’t sell me,” I said weakly, trying to stop my head from whirling. “Even if he were my father he couldn’t sell me! You don’t own me and you know it! You’re just trying to—”

I broke off because my knees refused to hold me any longer. The barbarian caught me before I hit the ground, and lifted me in his arms with a soft laugh.

“The drishnak is not for wenda,” he said. “Best you seek your furs now, for we leave with the new sun. There is still far to go before we reach my people.”

He carried me back to the camtah, and I could feel the vague thoughts of comfort from the seetarr. My own thoughts were all confusion as he helped me out of the imad and caldin. I wanted to argue with him, talk to him, tell him what I felt, but it was as though I’d dropped all of my strings and couldn’t gather them together again. He took me in his arms, and it had been so long since he’d last touched me that my body responded immediately. I tried to stop the feelings of desire I was sending to him, but it was beyond my control. His own desire filled me, shrunk me to nothing, the fierceness of it like nothing I’d ever experienced before. He blazed up like a star gone nova, and I was dwarfed and consumed to ashes. I still don’t know if I fell asleep that night or passed out.