He laughed, louder and louder, limbs jerking suddenly.
“You don’t understand what I am, and what you are now!”
Suddenly Marin recognized the clues; accelerated heartbeat racing far beyond design limits, until the great ribs jerked to it, the flaring of pupils, the flush across the other’s skin as blood-vessels expanded. Amok pill. Chemical berserkergang, deadly dangerous to a fit young man of standard Terran stock. Death to a Frystaater, certain death to one of Piet’s age. But in the seconds before that--
A wild laugh. “WE ARE THE ONES WHOSE SACRIFICE RENEWS THE LAND!”
They flowed together. What happened was too swift for conscious thought, even for Marin. All he knew was a rushing, and then he was sliding on his back across the rocky ground; little point in attempting to stand, with both his thigh-bones smashed. He could command blood to clot and pain to vanish, force shock back from his nervous system, even heal if given time, but he could not stand with the anchors of the muscle-levers snapped across.
Piet van Reenan stood with Cat’s Eye at his back. One kneecap dangled; broken shards of white stuck through the running sheet of blood along his flank; a huge flap of scalp swung free. Yet still he had the strength to heave up a boulder and advance, one ground-shuddering step at a time. Then Marin heard the great heart stop and tear.
Piet’s voice overrode it:
“WE ARE THE KINGS WHO DIE--
The rock dropped harmless from his hands, and blood poured from eyes and nose and mouth.
“--THE KINGS WHO DIE FOR THE PEOPLE.”
The sound of his falling was endless, like the toppling of a tree. Marin felt himself falling also, into darkness softer than the mother’s breast he had never known. He had time to feel the hands of his folk lifting him, and sense the moment’s waiting stillness as eye met eye before the two chieftains were borne away.
War World IV: Invasion Page 33
