"Freeborn! Oh, Phelan ..." She reached out toward him, then drew her hands back, aghast. "It must hurt so ..."
Phelan tried to shrug, reigniting scorched nerves all over his back. He gritted his teeth against the pain, then gasped in a breath or two. "Yeah, it does. But I'll live."
Avoiding his reflected gaze, she shook her head. "I have never seen anything so ... savage."
"I expect the Khan will sell me off now," Phelan laughed bitterly. " 'One bondsman, shop-worn. Will trade for surat or best offer.' "
Ranna's head came up, but Phelan let the mirror flop down on the pillow. "What is the matter? Why are you lashing out at me?"
Her question, phrased in a tone of confused innocence, startled him. How could she ask that after she'd slept with Vlad? Did she think I didn't know? Hell, she heard me describe the whole thing to him ... Did she think I didn't care, or that it wouldn't matter to me?
Phelan drew in a breath slowly and carefully. "Sorry. It's just that I don't like being used. I thought we were friends."
"What? We are friends." She came closer to the head of the bed, entering his peripheral vision on the right. "We are friends, Phelan."
"Friends?" Scorn steamed up from his reply. "If that's how you treat friends, I'm glad I'm not an enemy."
"What are you talking about? What did I do?"
"Cut the innocent act, Ranna! I may be a bondsman, but I'm not stupid!" Despite the pain burning on his flank, Phelan twisted around on his left side to face her. "What did you do? You were sleeping with him! Did you think I wouldn't care, or did you just not consider that in the heat of the moment?"
She stared at him, utterly uncomprehending. "How can that hurt you? What difference does it make?"
"What difference?" He shook his head. "Am I missing something here? As I recall, you and I were sleeping together."
Ranna looked at him as though he'd lost his mind. "Obviously, you are confused. You have not been able to sleep. I will visit again later."
He flopped back down on his stomach. "Don't bother. Between you and your lover, you've ripped me up enough."
"Lovers? Vlad and me?" She laughed aloud. "It's quite clear your mind is not working at all."
"You were in bed together. They saw you! What the hell would you call it?"
"We definitely are not lovers. Vlad and I were in the same sibko." Her tone challenged him to turn that into some sort of sinister accusation, then her voice faltered. "I was confused about... something ... and I went to talk with him."
"But that's not all you did, is it?"
"How can you make it sound like a crime? We were in the same sibko! We grew up together. You would say we are part of the same family." She pleaded for understanding, but her words only made Phelan shudder with rage. She saw it and tried to head it off. "I came here because I miss the time you and I spent together ..."
Phelan let out a small cry of pain. "You've done enough to me. Don't you understand? I'm not going to let you do to my insides what Vlad did to my back—at least not any more. Just go. Go away. I don't want to see you again."
He buried his face in the pillow so she couldn't see the hot tears burning in his eyes. He fought to control his sobs and thought he had until he heard the sound of crying. He tried again harder, but the sound persisted until cut off by the hiss of the closing door.
***
"Are you awake, Herr Kell?"
Phelan looked into the mirror with red-rimmed eyes and nodded at the Precentor Martial. "Forgive me for not rising to greet you properly, but ..."
"No offense taken," Focht said, looking down at the mercenary's brutalized back. "I have seen worse wounds in my time, but never on someone still alive."
The Kell Hound managed a weak smile. "If I'd known it would hurt this much, I probably would have preferred to die."
Focht acknowledged the grim jest with a nod. "Those welts look bad now, but I think the scarring will be minimal."
Phelan nodded. "You know what they said at the Nagelring."
The older man's eyes focused distantly. "Yes, I do. 'Scars are the proof man can survive his own stupidity.' " His left hand rose to adjust his eyepatch. "Those words have taken on special meaning for me in the past twenty years."
The mercenary sighed. "I hadn't thought of it that way, else I might have arranged for Vlad to give me a lash across the face to remind me of how brainless I am whenever I look in a mirror."
The Precentor Martial steepled his fingers. "Some men see such marks as proof of their own immortality and infallibility. You would be intolerable if you allowed yourself that vanity."
The image of Tor Miraborg swam through Phelan's mind. Score one for the ComStar warrior. "I learned long ago that I'm not infallible."
Focht watched him closely in the mirror. "You refer to your expulsion from the Nagelring?"
"You must know the story. You provided Ulric with a datastack on me ..."
"All that was included in the packet sent to me," the tall man said with a slight shrug, "but I didn't read it and deleted the explanation before giving it to Ulric."
"Why would you do that, Precentor? You obviously trained at the legendary Nagelring. I should think you would have relished the tale of my disgrace, just as others have." Phelan hesitated for a moment. "Or did you delete it so Ulric would find me more acceptable as a partner in crime?"
The older man smiled sagely. "I am not vain enough to want to see you suffer for the vague judgments of a Cadet Honor Board. Besides, I would have preferred that the Khan choose me as his advisor. In point of fact, I deleted that part of your record because I believed the story should not be told if you did not want to tell it."
"Thank you." Phelan closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again to meet the Precentor Martial's steel gaze. "It's a simple story, really. A friend of mine, someone I'd grown up with, graduated from the Nagelring as I entered my deuce year at the Academy. DJ—Donna Jean Connor—got a commission from the Fourteenth Lyran Guards and was posted to Ford. She was always good with book learning and regulations—exactly my opposite in that respect—and her help kept me in the Nagelring during my plebe and trey years." He swallowed hard. "I guess I was lost without her there, but the holovids she sent always anchored me and kept me on the right track.
"Well, right before that nasty blizzard on Tharkad in '48, I got word from DJ's father that she'd been killed in action on Ford. With the information he gave me, I was able to crack the Defense Department's computer and get a full report on the incident. It appears that DJ walked her lance into an area where it shouldn't have been because her Hauptmann was giving orders straight out of a textbook. The Free Worlders must have the same textbook because their aerowing took one pass at the fire lance supporting DJ's recon advance, then came back and ripped her people to pieces."
Phelan slammed his right hand against the head of his bed, then quivered when his back felt as though some creature was gnawing its way through him. His voice became hoarse with pain. "I went a little out of control, but it didn't reach a head until after the blizzard hit. The media were full of stories about snowbound folks, but the authorities had all us cadets out with 'Mechs to stop people from looting. When I heard a report of a group of school kids supposed to be trapped by an avalanche, I decided to help get them out. I rigged up the stuff needed to increase the pick-up on a Scorpion's external microphones, and then headed out northeast of Tharkad City."
The Precentor nodded. "Into the Sigfried Glacier Reserve?"
"Yeah. I got to the area where their air-bus had gone down and started the computer filtering out everything but human heartbeats and the valve pattern sounds of a Hochbaum fusion engine. Within four hours, I found them and had dug down to where they were. I shunted heat from the 'Mech's fusion engine to the outside to keep them warm, and I gave them the food I'd brought. I radioed for help because some of the kids had been badly hurt when the avalanche wrapped the hoverbus around a dolmen, but a new storm front came through and kept all medevac craf
t grounded."
Focht frowned. "Wait ... now I remember something of this story. Most of them survived, but the children and others who'd been hurt did not. The cadet rescuer wasn't named in the story, but I remember his action was criticized because he did not bring proper medical supplies and personnel with him—resulting in the deaths."
"That was it. At the Honor Board hearing, I maintained that if I had tried to obtain the supplies or a doctor, I'd never have gotten permission to make the trip, but the Board blocked that idea at the outset I got disgusted and refused to attend the trial. They punted me, but the press wasn't allowed to print much about it, out of deference to my father and the Archon." Phelan sighed. "There. Now you know the whole sordid story."
The Precentor Martial nodded. "I do not get the impression that you see the incident as a mistake at all."
The mercenary thought for a moment, then slowly shook his head. "Going out after those people wasn't a mistake. Not thinking ahead about having a doctor with me was. How I could have gotten one and still made the trip eludes me, and has ever since the incident. The rescue at Sigfried Glacier is my own personal 'La Manchia' scenario. No matter what, I can't win."
Phelan rotated the rectangular mirror to give him a taller view of the ComStar official. "But you didn't come here today to ask me about my schooling, did you?"
The older man smiled. "No. I have come on behalf of Khan Ulric. He would have come himself, but after hearing about Raima's visit several hours ago, he wanted someone from your own culture to explain exactly what happened between her and Vlad."
"Why don't you save it for someone who will care?" Phelan snapped.
Focht went on as though he hadn't heard the remark. "While you were on Gunzburg, you must have found the Rasalhague language and mannerisms peculiar, didn't you? You had to work to express your thoughts to those who did not have a dialect in common with you. Your German came close enough, in some cases, to make you understood, ja?"
He pulled up a chair and lowered himself into it. "I recall once, a very long time ago, when I was on Summer. The Lestrade family had instituted the practice of speaking Italian in their home, where I was a guest. I wanted a glass of water, and I wanted it cold. I told the servant I wanted it kalt, but the man did not understand me. I pantomimed cold and repeated kalt several times. When I thought he had it, I let him go on his way. Imagine my surprise when he returned with a steaming glass of hot water because the Italian word for cold is freddo, while the word for hot is caldo. He thought I was miming shivers because I was cold and that I wanted my water caldo"
"Are you trying to tell me I've somehow misinterpreted Ranna's sexual relations with Vlad? If I follow your hot/cold analogy, she'd have bedded him for my sake."
The Precentor Martial shook his head impatiently, leaning forward as he spoke. "The point is this: what you saw and reacted to as gross infidelity was not, to Ranna or the other members of the Clans, a problem worthy of your concern. In fact, your reaction borders on what these people see as clinical paranoia. They'd probably already have begun chemical therapy to help you over the problem had the Khan and I not talked."
The more the Precentor Martial spoke, the more foggy Phelan felt. "I'm running with a sensor shutdown and zero visibility here. You're making it sound like her having sex with Vlad is no more significant than a pat on the back."
Again the Precentor shook his head. "No, of course not. Intimate physical contact is a sign of affection ..."
"That's the first thing you've said that I can follow ..."
"But in this society, it does not carry with it the emotional baggage that it does in ours." Focht moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. "The Clans are an alien society, Phelan. Indeed, I often find myself wondering if they're human at all. To them, Ranna's sleeping with Vlad is just a sign of friendship."
The mercenary's brows knitted together. "You're making it sound as though the concept of love does not exist within the Clans."
"It does, but not as we know and experience it—at least not among the Clan's warrior caste. For them, esprit de corps—in a form far stronger than we would acknowledge— would be the rough equivalent of love in our society. What we might call love apparently exists, but it's the exception, not the rule."
Phelan shook his head. "Do you understand what you're saying? How do they decide who they want to marry and who they want to have children with? A society can't function that way."
"A warrior society can, Phelan, and apparently does so very well. Their children are born into a sibko ..."
The Kell Hound's head came up. "What the hell is that? Ranna used the same word as though it explained everything."
The Precentor smiled indulgently. "A sibko is a group of children born at the same time—many of them from the same families, as I understand it—who are men raised together. They are schooled and tested for the first twenty years of their lives, and those who pass the examinations continue on. When they reach their twentieth birthday, they are subjected to a final test—a true ordeal. If they pass, they become Clan Warriors.
"It should be obvious to you that people who have lived and worked together for so long will build up very close bonds. As they come of age—speaking physically here—it is only natural that they explore their sexuality with those they know best. Sexual activity between members of a sibko is considered as normal as you watching out for your sister, Caitlin."
"Yeah, but the difference is that I never slept with Caitlin!" Phelan shivered. "No wonder you have a hard time seeing these people as human. They even violate the incest taboo."
Focht frowned. "Yes and no. Incest is taboo because of the problems of inbreeding. None of these couplings are allowed to be fertile, so there is no need for that taboo. Think about it. The incest taboo is imposed by society, not by biology. And in this case, it is moot because Vlad and Ranna come from entirely different bloodlines."
"With all the coupling going on, how would anyone know who belonged to whom?" Though Phelan tried to make the remark more caustic, the effort at sarcasm drained him. She did seem utterly dismayed at my anger ... Could it be as he describes?
Phelan took a deep breath. "If I accept what you say is true—and I'm not sure I've bought the whole package—then Ranna's actions on Rasalhague and afterward confuse me. We were constantly together." He hesitated for a moment, then crashed on ahead. "I'm no Don Juan, but I've fallen in love a couple of times, and this had all the signs of it. It felt good ... it was good, then she goes to him. She said she wanted to talk with him. If she didn't see sleeping with him as betraying me, I have to ask why she couldn't have talked to me about whatever she discussed with him?"
The Precentor stood. "You mean you've not yet figured that out? As I said before, love is the exception, not the rule, in this society. Such strong emotions are, as you have suggested, very heady stuff ... confusing, maybe even terrifying for someone who has not learned to anticipate and cherish them." He pushed his chair back against the wall and stood. "It should be obvious to you, Phelan Kell. Ranna went to Vlad to talk about falling in love with you."
35
The Cloisters, Twycross
Tamar March, Lyran Commonwealth
10 September 3050
Dwarfed by the wind-carved red rock, Victor Steiner-Davion's BattleMech knelt on one knee at the base of the standing stones, which one explorer had dubbed the Cloisters because of the resemblance to hooded monks. A thin cable passed from the 'Mech's flank into the ground at a small, meter-square concrete box.
Inside the cockpit of his Victor, Davion studied the holographic display being relayed from his command center along the ground line to his 'Mech. The Ninth F-C had successfully deployed in the midst of the Diabolis and were moving with the high winds as they scoured the landscape. In their wake, at the site of the Ninth's landing and two other strategic points, a legion of 'Mech decoys and a considerable number of vibrabombs had been planted. The decoys had succeeded in drawing the interest of some Clan garrison tro
ops, but the violent sand storms made communication difficult except by landline, to which very few of their scouts had access.
The Kell Hounds First Regiment and the armor from the Tenth Lyran Guards had deployed below his position, in the Plain of Curtains, named after the drifting ribbons of sand that snaked constandy through the broad valley. One 'Mech company from the Tenth Lyran Guards had set up in the foothills of the Windbreak Mountains to block access to the Kell Hounds' rear area through the Great Gash to the east of the Plain of Curtains. The mercenarie's own Second Regiment warded the First Regiment's left flank by slipping into the Sharktooth Mountains to the west. The rest of the Tenth had been held in reserve to bolster the Kell Hounds First Regiment or shore up either flank, as needed.
Victor frowned as the transcripts of broken transmissions played across his secondary monitor. "Central, can't you clean up the broadcasts from the Gash? I'm not clear if the explosives needed to close the pass have been put in place. I also get the impression that some of the power armor may be active in that area. Please confirm."
Victor waited as the Comcenter's operator hunted up the information. If the garrison troops come through and accept the Kell Hounds' challenge, as expected, the Diabolis should cap the north end of the plain just after the Falcons arrive. The Diabolis will make fighting tough, but it gives us an advantage by shortening ranges and diffusing energy beams at anything but point-blank range. The infighting will be nasty, but that's what will even the odds. He glanced at his 'Mech's status report on the primary display. Good God willing and this autocannon don't jam, I think we can beat the Clansmen and take back this world.
"Kommandant, I have the information you want. The explosives have been planted to close the Gash at its deepest point. The demolition crews are ready and the vibrabombs placed nearest the explosives have been shut down to prevent a premature, sympathetic detonation of the explosives."
Yeah, once that pentaglycerine is activated, it's highly unstable. It's a good thing this weather prohibits the use of LRMs and SRMs, because a hit nearby could trigger a collapse of the whole pass. If I don't have to bring it down, I'd prefer to keep it open. "Good. Are there confirmations of armored infantry near the Gash?"
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