The Warrior Within

8

I woke alone again, but this time the light at the leather curtain was the palest of greys. I could hear the stirring-trees sound of heavily falling rain, underlining the annoyance I immediately felt. Didn’t that stupid planet ever have anything but rain or the threat of it?

I crawled to the leather curtain, intending to get the clean imad and caldin, but in the dim light of pre-dawn I could see that they were gone from the peg. My rain cape hung there instead, and that annoyed me, too. I went back to the furs, groped until I found the clothing Id worn the day before, and put it on.

As I went through the leather curtain, the barbarian appeared at the edge of the veranda, stepped onto it, and crouched down. He had two pieces of the meat I’d cooked the day before, and he handed me one of them with a grin.

After we have eaten, we will pack the camtah and go,” he said, pushing back the hood of his rain cape. “I would be at this night’s camping place as soon as possible so that I may take you quickly to the furs. Never again will a woman without the power have the ability to satisfy me. You are wenda without equal.”

“Is that so.” I muttered, chewing on the meat and staring at him. No men had ever touched me when I was awakened before, and it had been completely my choice. I hadn’t really known what I would feel from them, but the polite words that covered hot emotions annoyed me too much to give me an interest in trying. I had a blurred memory of the night before, and I didn’t care to feel that small again.

“You and I have a few things to discuss, barbarian.” I told him coldly “I don’t like being had. It finally came to me last night that when you agreed with Murdock McKenzie that you would be taking your ‘house-gift’ home with you, you were bluffing. You were lying to back up his threat.”

“The Murdock McKenzie had chosen you to accompany me.” He shrugged. “That he did not use a switch to obtain obedience was also his choice. In the face of that, his generosity to you, could I do other than support him?”

“Generosity?” I exploded. “He blackmails me into something I wanted no part of, and you call it generosity? But of course! You would! Well, the game is over. I’m going back to the embassy and from there I’m going home. Find another fool to do your dirty work for you!”

“I return to my people and my belongings return with me,” he answered, refusing to react to my outburst. “I will not find my people at the embassy.”

“I can manage on my own.” I said, wiping the meat grease on my fingers off on the caldin. “It will be my pleasure to tell Murdock McKenzie that you need another victim. As important as he thinks this is, he’ll find someone fast enough.”

“He has already found someone,” the barbarian returned. “And have you forgotten that you were also given to me to band as my own? I paid well for you, wenda, and shall not lose my purchase price.”

“You might as well forget that nonsense.” I snorted. “How long do you think you can fool me with it? You know as well as I do that I’m not for sale and never have been. Even you admitted that your barbaric customs don’t apply to my world. I’m a free woman and always have been!”

“But we do not now stand upon your world.” He grinned. “We stand upon mine, where the Murdock McKenzie said I might band you. I have banded you, and will take you to my people where you shall aid me. Fold the furs, wenda, so that I might place them on the seetar”

He pulled his hood back on, and went out into the rain again, leaving me to fume. If he thought I would be doing any more of his housekeeping for him, he was crazy I took the rain cape down from the peg, put it on, then slipped out of the camtah.

The barbarian had his back turned, too busy with the pack seetar to see me go. I made my way deeper into the woods, fairly sure that I knew the way back to the road. I splashed through the mud beneath the dripping trees, watching for signs of the road, listening for thoughts of predators. I picked up a few fleeting emotions, but they were too far away to worry about.

Reaching the road took longer than I thought it would, but I finally found it. I’d had one close call in the woods when something hungry had picked up my scent, but I’d done the right thing. I’d projected the feeling of being enormous, unconquerable, and very hungry too, and had pretended to turn in the direction of the predator. The thing had felt my projections clearly, and had slunk quickly away.

I walked down the center of the road, wondering what walking there was like when it wasn’t raining. The quiet hum of satisfied burrow animals came to me from both sides of the road, keeping me company. I sloshed along in the monotony of the mud, remembering every sloppy step of it to add to my hatred of Murdock McKenzie.

I had almost no warning at all. I picked up stray feelings of boredom and resigned annoyance almost at the same time that I heard the sound of hoofbeats. I looked up in surprise to see three seetarr and riders coming down the road toward me, but they were still some distance away I darted quickly off the road into the trees, hoping I hadn’t been seen, but no such luck. The feelings changed to curiosity and interest, and the rhythm of the hoofbeats increased.

I cursed myself for an idiot, and went deeper into the woods. If I’d had the sense to walk at the side of the road, I could have been into the woods before anyone had a chance to see me. Now I had to avoid the riders without getting hopelessly lost.

Suddenly I felt the curiosity searching in front of me instead of behind. I realized that the riders must have left the road farther up and had swung around to cut me off. I turned back to the road again, sweating under the rain cape.

I was halfway back to the road when the burst of exultation told me I’d been a fool. The man stepped out in front of me, grabbing me easily when I tried to run. He had been on foot, stalking me with the patience and lack of emotion that marked the true hunter, and I’d been wasting my time worrying about the ones who came openly.

“What do you do here alone, wenda?” the man asked as I struggled against him. He was almost as big as the barbarian, but I still had to try “Why do you travel the road without a man, eh?”

“Perhaps she has run away from him to whom she belongs,” another voice put in. The other two men had ridden up to us, and were dismounting.

“If she has run away,” the third man said with an ugly grin, “we shall not displease her by returning her. She shall find much to occupy her in our company, and shall not run away again.”

“She has green eyes.” The first one laughed, holding my back up against him with my head up so the others could see my eyes. “I have never had a woman with green eyes.”

“It is not her eyes I care to see,” the third one said, stepping closer. He opened the rain cape with a single tug, then pulled it off me. They stared at me in silence, their emotions rolling.

“Five-banded,“ ‘the second man said at last. “Dark-haired, green-eyed, and five-banded. A woman for no ordinary man.”

“I, too, would keep her five-banded!” the third man snarled, fear trying to fill his mind. The rain rolled off his rain cape, but it soaked into my clothes and hair. “The one who owns her cannot be the greatest of warriors, else she would not have run away. Do you fear the wrath of one who cannot keep his woman beside him?”

“Perhaps he is but a wealthy merchant,” the first said, grabbing at the thought to calm his own fear. “Yes, a fat, wealthy merchant who has the price of such a woman, but not the ability to keep her.”

“Aye!” the third laughed, relief flooding him. “She tired of empty furs and went seeking a man. She may now rejoice that she has found three!”

“She is five-banded,” the second said quietly. “No merchant would five-band a woman, save were he warrior, too. Let us return her from whence she came.”

“No!” the third man said angrily, his blue eyes flashing at the second man. “She has fallen to us, and we shall keep her! My sword is sharp enough to answer any man, merchant or not! Has yours grown dull from lack of use, you may ride on alone! I do not care to ride with darayse!”

The second man’s jaw set and his hand moved beneath his rain cape, but he controlled the burst of anger he’d felt at the insult.

“I shall not kill you,” he told the third man coldly “I shall leave that to be done by the warrior to whom she belongs. It is his right.”

He turned to his seetar, mounted quickly, then rode away without looking back. The third man watched him go, then snorted.

“That one is wenda himself!” he said in disgust. “Should he find a woman in his furs, he would not know what to do with her. But I, my pretty do not have that lack. How are you called?”

“That does not concern you.” I answered the interest in his eyes. “Would you care to have the price of many women? A price that you yourself may set?”

“What do you say, wenda?” he asked, narrowing his eyes. “No woman would be allowed the possession of dinga.”

“Nor do I have dinga,” I answered, trying to keep the quiver out of my voice. If I had had any of their money he would have had it, and me with it. “The dinga would be given you if I were taken to the house of the offworlders. It is not distant from here, and the offworlder called Dennison would pay well for me. He has little knowledge of the value of dinga, and can easily be convinced to part with much of it.

“It is a thought,” the first man said hopefully “The offworlders are fools, and will pay many times the worth of a woman.”

“Perhaps,” the third man said, staring down at me thoughtfully. “I would know why the offworlder should wish to buy you, wenda. Have you value other than that which may be seen?”

“I have value only to the offworlder,” I said carefully, not liking the calculating turn of his thoughts. “The sooner we reach there, the sooner you may have your dinga. ”

“If the dinga is there, it shall not stray,” he said, putting his hand out to finger a strand of my dripping hair. “I shall see for myself what your worth may be, then we shall speak again of additional value. I will know what I sell before I sell it.”

“You cannot...” I started, but he pulled me toward him, the heat beginning to build in him. I could feel the first man’s desire too, and it made me frantic. They’d both use me before they decided whether or not to take me to the embassy, and they’d spend some time trying to find out why Denny would pay for me. I had no chance of escaping them, but maybe I could distract them.

As the third man slid his hand into the open side of my imad, I searched the first man’s mind and found the faint jealousy there, It was mostly envy that the other man would have me first, but it was enough. I fanned it carefully and encouraged it a little, and the first man stepped closer to us.

“Hold!” he said sharply “It was I who captured this woman. Why are you to have her first?”

“It is my right,” the third man answered coldly. “Am I not a greater warrior than you?”

I prodded a resentment, and anger flared in the first man. “I am not so poor a warrior that I may be ignored!” he snapped. “Do you think me darayse?”

Instead of the anger I expected in return, the third man grew thoughtful. “You are not darayse,” he said quietly “We have ridden together under many suns. As it matters to you, do you have the woman first.”

The first man was instantly mollified, and I was almost in shock. They weren’t going to fight over me—you only fight for something you don’t want to share. They had no qualms about sharing me, so there was no basis for argument. I might have had enough strength to force one of them away from me with my empathetic abilities, but I could never have handled two and the necessary running as well; not to mention that I didn’t want to give them even a hint as to what I was able to do. The first man pulled me to him with a big grin, taking up where the other had left off, and I struggled ineffectually, trying to think of something else.

Then I caught the flash of fear from the third man, feeling him cover it instantly and stiffen. The first man loosened his hold on me to look over his shoulder where the third man was looking, then released me altogether with a sinking feeling strong within him. I moved to one side where I could see too, and saw an icy mountain of coldly enraged barbarian. Tammad sat stiff on his seetar staring at the other two men.

I moved away farther still, and there wasn’t a single word spoken among the three men. Tammad dismounted and they all three drew their swords, the two strangers gripped in despair, but grimly determined to do what they could. First one, then the other of them slipped out of their rain capes, finding themselves appalled to see Tammad merely fold under the right side of his. They needed all the freedom of movement they could get, but he had enough as he was.

The two men separated, going against the slightly bigger barbarian from two sides. Tammad watched them with complete unconcern, waiting patiently for something. When the two men suddenly charged him, his patience changed to satisfaction and the waiting was over.

He moved with the speed that had saved him from the jaws of the fazee, and the two men never had a chance. He blocked the sword of the one on his left with his own sword, then cut viciously back toward the one on his right. The man on the right had his sword up for a downward stroke, and the barbarian’s blade opened him from side to side. His blood rushed out to join the pouring rain, and the man collapsed to join the trampled mud. He felt no surprise at his death, just a deep, wailing sadness.

The other man had staggered back a step, but by the time be raised his sword again, he stood alone in the battle. He was the one who had been the third man, and his mind cried with a fear that never reached his face.

Tammad moved at him almost casually bringing his sword down at the man’s head with no attempt at deception. The man blocked the blow with his own sword, two-handed, but it still staggered him. Another blow came and another, and each time he had to move back a step. His arms seemed to be having trouble holding the sword up, and finally they could no longer do so. The sword fell from nerveless fingers, and with numbed mind, the man slid to his knees in front of the barbarian. I didn’t understand why the core of him screamed and gibbered and shook with a sickness of fear that was worse than the fazee’s had been, a sickness that was foam-flecked and rancid blue, until I saw the barbarian raise his sword again, high, high, and bring it crashing down ....

I cringed away and quickly turned my back, but couldn’t turn away from the voiceless shriek. The man had been so afraid of dying, and his sickness soured my soul. To suffer a man’s death with him put a big question mark next to the value of the gift I’d thought so much of.

Through the trees I saw the road, and shakily prodded myself into moving toward it. Once I got back to the embassy I’d be all right. I’d bathe, and change into my own clothes, and sleep in a real bed. I was a free woman, and “No,” the barbarian said, suddenly there to take me by the hair. “We go the other way.”

He dragged me over to a small tree, forced my arms around it, then took something from his swordbelt. When he let go of me my wrists stayed together, held by something that hooked the two wrist bands to each other.

“Turn me loose!” I screamed, fighting the chains that held me. “You have no right to do this to me!”

He didn’t even bother answering. He moved around behind me, doing something I couldn’t see, and there was nothing but calm in his mind—calm and a small knot of anger that made me want to hide. The tree was hard and I was dripping wet, and I couldn’t pull loose from the bands that had been forced on me.

When he finished with whatever he had been doing, he came to get me. He separated the wrist bands again and pulled me over to his seetar where the reins of the dead man’s seetar were already attached to his saddle. He lifted me into the saddle, mounted himself, then headed us toward the road. When we reached it, we collected the second seetar no longer needed by a dead man, and turned up the road.

“I want to go back to the embassy,” I moaned, shivering against the chill. I was as wet as if I’d fallen in a river, and the barbarian’s rain cape was cold against my back. “This is kidnapping and you know it!”

“A man cannot steal what is his,” he told me in that calm, even way of his. After a minute he added, “The camtah was left without my permission.”

I knew immediately what he meant and tried to slide out of his grip and off the seetar but his arm was a sixth band around my waist. I rocked back and forth futilely, screaming and cursing in every language I knew, but it helped not at all. He was going to beat me again, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

The pack seetar was standing quietly when we reached it. The camtah had been rolled and tied onto its back, and there was nothing left of the camp, The barbarian lifted me off his seetar chained me to another tree, then went to the pack seetar. When he finally came back to unchain me, the camtah was standing again.

He dragged me to the camtah without a word, and I was shivering too much to speak. It was difficult to believe that I had ever been dry or warm in my entire life. Once inside the camtah, my clothes came off fast, and the barbarian gave me a small cloth to wipe myself with. It didn’t go very far, and the water still dripped from the ends of my hair even after I’d wiped it. My furs were on the floor, and I didn’t have to be told twice to get into them, but I wasn’t just left lying there. The barbarian attached something to the ankle bands that held them together, then he left the camtah.

Even with the furs it took a while to stop the violent shivering. The chill was slowly sucked out of my marrow, and by concentrating on the calm, ponderous thoughts of the seetarr I was able to submerge the memory of the deaths of the men. Seeing a man die, no matter how violently, can’t compare with feeling him die. The memory would be with me forever, but one day I might be able to cope with it.

My curiosity finally got the better of me, and I moved the furs aside to see what the bands were being held with. If I could remove it, I still had a chance to reach the embassy. My feet were stained with the memory of mud, and the ankle bands, once a bright bronze, were dull with still remaining traces of the mud. The bands themselves were held together with a bronze clip that gleamed between one link of each band. I tried to remove the clip, tried to loosen at least one side of it, but it worked on the same principle that the bands themselves did. I didn’t have the strength needed for pressing the thing open.

“Still you do not learn,” the barbarian said from the leather curtain. “There is work which must be done before you may return to your people. Before I allow you to return to your people.”

He held the dry imad and caldin, but he also held the switch. I licked my lips from a suddenly dry mouth, then took a breath.

“And how well do you think I’ll work if I’m beaten?” I asked weakly. “You’ll have to take my word about things that can’t be seen by you. If I tell you the wrong things, you’ll have no way of knowing that they’re wrong, and you won’t get what you’re after. You need me on your side, not against you.”

He sighed heavily-threw the imad and caldin to the floor, then crouched down to shake his head at me. “Wenda, this thought had not occurred to me,” he said with considerable patience. “Had I been reluctant to take your counsel, I would not have accepted you from the Murdock McKenzie. All have assured me that my cause may be won with your aid. Should this fail to occur, I will know that true counsel was not given me. You will then be rewarded by being unbanded and given away to any who would have you. Perhaps one day you may see your people again, but many men will have passed between the times. If this is what you wish, the decision is yours to make. But for the time you remain my belonging, I will have your obedience.”

He forced me to my stomach then, and the switching was terrible. He held me down with one hand and used the switch with the other, and the pain made me fill the camtah with my screams. I’d never been treated the way this man, this barbarian, was treating me, and I hated it and hated him. I lost control and let my pain and desperation flow loose, and the seetarr bellowed an accompaniment, but the barbarian refused to be touched by it and continued to beat me with calm in his mind.

Afterward, he sat and oiled his sword until I’d stopped crying, then he had me dress and fold the sleeping furs. He took the furs and my wet clothes outside while I put on the rain cape he had retrieved, then I stood by while he folded camtah. The roof braces lay flat when he pushed on them, and the whole thing rolled up into something a seetar could easily carry. The packs had been distributed among the three spare seetarr and none of them noticed the amount they had to carry.

In order to resume the journey the barbarian sat me behind him on his seetar not on the saddle but on the saddle fur, even though I would have much preferred walking. I sat astride, the caldin being full enough to permit it, and was forced to hold the barbarian around his broad waist to keep myself from falling. I cursed myself for a triple-damned fool, but couldn’t stop what touching him did to me in spite of the pain he had caused, and when the chill came back, I slid my hands beneath his rain cape to share his warmth.

We rode continuously through the day, eating in the saddle to make up for the time we’d lost that morning. When we stopped for the night, I was almost too stiff to stand, let alone walk. I’d spent the entire, almost endless, day thinking, and the conclusions I’d come to were inescapable.

I was to be trapped on that terrible planet forever. Something would go wrong with the barbarian’s plans, I would be blamed, and then I would be given away. No one would listen when I asked to be taken to the embassy and I would never see Central or my friends again. Throughout the long day I’d thought about that, and I was completely resigned to my fate. I had no chance of escaping the brute who claimed to own me, and I would never escape the ones who owned me after him. I would be lost forever.

I wasn’t able to eat that night, and even the barbarian’s touch failed to rouse me. I pictured myself at the mercy of endless brutes, and I cried with deep, hurting sobs. The barbarian was puzzled and held me to him with gentle arms, but it was no comfort. I cried until I had no more strength left, and then I slept.