He could discover no pattern in the rocks, and that troubled him. With his training, he should be able to see the pattern in anything. He picked up one rock and placed it down again so that it formed a triangle with the two other rocks, so that there was at least one pattern amid the anarchy. But it didn't satisfy him, the triangle. It was more out of place than the irregular setup had been. Because he had formed it, he could not help but concentrate on it. Now the triangle was taking on too much importance among the other rocks. He picked up all three rocks and tossed them away, refusing to note where they fell.
The sounds coming from the Circle entered his consciousness, but he refused to look up. He did not want to see what was happening there, not even when it was Joanna who screamed in pain. Her pain gave him no satisfaction. By rights, he should want to see her writhing in agony on the ground. He should want to see her deeply tanned skin stained with her blood. He should want to see her neck broken or her limbs hanging uselessly. But those prospects were just as repulsive to him as was Joanna herself. He did want to see her dead, or even hurt.
What he would have liked would be for her to tell him that he had done something well. It was wrong, he knew, to wish for credit from anyone because after the nurturing stage came the warrior training stage; after the pattern, the pattern—and there was no praise for achievement. There was, in fact, only one achievement—the victory at the Trial of Position that waited for the few who survived the training to the end. By that time, praise was no longer necessary. Dermot had said that a kind word could alter the quickness of a warrior's response and that could mean the laser blast could catch you in the throat instead of your enemy.
A wave of surprise swept among the sibko, punctuated with gasps that were sudden enough to make Aidan finally look up.
Ellis now knelt on Joanna's chest. With terrific thrusts of her torso, Joanna was rocking Ellis while trying to squirm out from under him, but she could not dislodge him. A cruel look of triumph came into Ellis' eyes as he suddenly locked his hands together, shifted his body back along Joanna's legs. Bringing his hands down, he directed them at her head in what should have been a killing blow, or one that would at least have knocked Joanna out if it did not fracture her skull.
How she did it, Aidan was not sure, but instead of trying to avoid the blow, Joanna, whose arms were pinned, blocked it with the top of her head. In spite of the block, the force of impact of Ellis' hands against her head should have knocked her out and made it easy for him to dispose of her.
Joanna had always said she had the resources of the kind of mythic beast that, in Clan myths, came back to haunt heroes. Perhaps she did possess such power because, not only did she retain consciousness, but she took advantage of a slight shifting in Ellis' pressure on her torso to roll sideways and free one arm. She faked a backhanded punch toward his stomach, one whose weakness could not possibly have hurt Ellis. Nevertheless, in instinctive reflex, he moved to block it, and she opened her hands. Eluding his defense, and reaching above it, she grabbed the lower end of his leather tunic and pulled his close to her. In another situation, the move might have been that of a lover drawing to her the object of her sexual desire, but in this case it was the move Joanna needed to break Ellis' leverage. Artfully squirming through his legs as he struggled to regain equilibrium, she shot out the other side of his legs, rolled over, stirred up a lot of dust, and came up on the attack.
Ramming him from the rear, she knocked the already off-balance Ellis onto his face. He quickly curled up his body, however, and somersaulted to his feet, a maneuver at which Ellis had always been particularly adept. Unfortunately, Joanna anticipated it. She made no move toward him and instead scooped up a rock from the ground and hurled it at his head while she was still bent over. To Aidan the rock seemed to sail slowly toward Ellis' head, when in fact the missile was thrown with some force and speed. Later, he would remember this as the first of many moments in his life when movement around him seemed to slow down, to occur at some different speed from that of reality. There were times when he doubted that any change had occurred and attributed it to some dislocation of memory rather than time.
The rock caught Ellis, who was turning around at the moment and consequently stepped right into its path, on the side of his forehead, just above his temples. He blinked hard a couple of times after the impact, looking for a moment as though he might pass out, then he growled fiercely and charged at Joanna.
Until his last step, Joanna stood her ground, a look of arrogance on her face and a scornful smile on her lips. In a sense, the fight was over. She had won. All she had to do was finish Ellis off. She could have done that with a well-timed jab at his stomach or a strike to the side of his neck. Simple procedures would have done the job.
But Joanna eschewed simple procedures.
In a move that seemed to Aidan more dancelike than warriorlike, Joanna deftly sidestepped, allowing Ellis, who apparently expected some other response, to stumble his way past her. His attempts to regain his footing would have been comic to Aidan if he had not seen, and correctly interpreted, the killing look in Joanna's eyes. Joanna had often told the sibko that feeling her own killing look, at the time when victory was certain and disposal of the defeated only a matter of routine, was the greatest intoxication a warrior could know.
Aidan had wanted to ask her if she did not also feel disgust at the results of carnage. But even if he had been allowed to speak it would have been unnecessary. A Clan warrior could not look back, could not care what thought or feeling might preoccupy his or her victim. To be warriors, they must, in fact, stop thinking about such minor details.
Joanna's killing look must have been obvious to Falconer Commander Ter Roshak, for he rushed forward from his observing station toward the combatants. But his move came too late.
Joanna rushed at Ellis. Leaping feet-first, she kicked at his backside, sending him sprawling and sliding across the ground. Joanna came down on balance and ran to Ellis' now-crawling body. He was trying to get to the rim of the Circle, which meant capitulation. It was shameful, but sometimes worth the discredit. Warriors were more concerned with the art of victory than the shame of defeat, and a disgraced warrior could always erase the memory of a loss with a convincing victory the next time around.
If Ellis could pull himself across the rim, Joanna could no longer press the attack. His fingers were stretched out, the tip of his middle finger only a centimeter away from one of the stakes that formed the rim, when Joanna landed on him. Aidan's view of the kill was partially obscured as Rena, screaming with delight, slipped in front of him. As he maneuvered for a better view, he saw the result of Joanna's assault. Descending from what seemed a great height, she landed on Ellis' back, crushing Ellis' neck with her left knee. It was probably a broken neck that killed Ellis, though Aidan never learned. It could also have been another blow. Perhaps his back had been fractured. At any rate, Roshak ordered the body taken away, and after Ellis' death had been officially announced, the rumor mill furnished many causes of death, including the idea that Joanna had ripped out his heart. Some of the sibko even seemed to believe that absurdity, despite having been witness to the actual event. It was just that Falconer Joanna seemed capable of anything.
After ordering the disposal of the body, Ter Roshak wheeled on Joanna. The emotion in his angry face, the tension in his body, seemed a complete reversal of his normal demeanor. Aidan had never seen wrath erupt so suddenly or with such full involvement of every part of the body.
"Falconer Joanna, I cannot let this pass. Ellis was a fine warrior, a—"
"I am a warrior," Joanna said softly. "Too much a warrior. There was no need to kill him."
"It would have been dishonorable not to."
"There is no dishonor in mercy."
"You would have had me maim him, paralyze him, disable—"
"You know what I mean! We have had this out before. We are not fighting a war. We do not have to—"
"How dare you criticize me publicly, old m
an? Here, in front of them!"
She gestured toward the cadets, all of whom were lined up and watching so intently that they seemed partially to form a second outer rim to the Circle. Taking quick glances to both sides, Aidan thought he could see in the stances of his sibkin a definite split between supporting Joanna and clear antagonism toward her. He tried to show neutrality. He was not sure why. He was clearly against Joanna, yet he did not want to join that faction, because a part of him considered any insubordination to be wrong for a warrior. For the first time, as he watched Joanna gather her resources and stand up to Ter Roshak, he realized that he had a grudging admiration of this officer who had provided such hell for him. But then he decided it must be one too many blows to the head, and that this feeling would pass.
Ter Roshak's anger had grown, apparently due to Joanna's defiance. He seemed to waver on his legs and his prosthetic arm gestured threateningly, as if he wished to dispatch Joanna with the same ruthlessness she had used for Ellis.
"I can say anything I want to you, in public, Falconer Joanna! The proper question should be how dare you speak to me that way in front of them?"
"Sir, you claim to allow us freedom."
"Yes. I did not interfere in your battle with Ellis."
"You are not allowed to. You are not allowed to cross into the Circle during a dispute, unless invited."
Ter Roshak seemed momentarily disconcerted.
"Of course you are right," he finally said. "But it is a rule I would willingly break if it meant saving a life. If I had had any idea that you would—"
"What hypocrisy is this? You heard our bids. The battle was to the death, we both said it."
"But in an honor duel, that is figurative."
"Not in my understanding."
"Damn it, Joanna, you should not have killed him."
"That is a moral decision. By my morality, I had no choice. It is the way of the Clan. An honor duel must be fought by the arranged terms."
"It is not the way of the Clan to pursue personal vengeance."
Joanna looked ready to kill Roshak now.
"How dare you speak of personal vengeance? You, of all people? Did you not—"
Her words were stopped as Roshak hit her with the back of his false hand. The blow was hard and sent her reeling, a stream of blood coming out of the side of her mouth. She started to raise her hand, to touch the blood, then seemed to see that as a gesture of capitulation and dropped her hand abruptly. The blood reached the line of her chin and some drops fell onto her leather tunic.
For a moment, she stared at Ter Roshak, her body trembling with anger, then she composed herself and relaxed her body.
"Your orders, sir?"
"I would transfer you to another training unit, but we are already shorthanded. You are confined to your quarters until the start of the training day tomorrow. At that time, you will report to me."
"As you wish, sir."
Joanna strode right at the group of cadets, defying them to take any note of her. The sibko occupied itself with diversionary maneuvers, not one of them looking into Joanna's eyes as she passed through them.
Turning his back on the cadets, Ter Roshak loudly dismissed them. They returned to the barracks slowly, disconsolately, not speaking. In the barracks, the silence broke and most of them could not stop talking. Aidan did not join in but went to his cot instead. Looking at Marthe, his eyes invited her to join him. She shook her head no, with just the slightest, quickest movement.
Later, in the middle of the night, Aidan was summoned to the quarters of Falconer Joanna. Others, Bret the most often, had received such a summoning, but it was the first time for Aidan. He had always felt that her distaste for him as a cadet was carried into her sexual life. In fact, she rarely needed the sexual attentions of any member of the sibko, but once in a while the summoning came and had to be obeyed. Bret and the others said she always made them maintain the vow of silence the whole time. When the order came for Aidan to report to her, he considered refusing, defying her once more, treating her quarters as another Circle of Equals. However, sex—unimportant as it was, annoying physical compulsion that it also was—never seemed vital enough to put one's life on the line for, and so Aidan went to her. The night was, as Bret and the others predicted, silent. The coupling was perfunctory, athletic and combative, like most Clan sex.
The entire night with Falconer Joanna was almost silent. She spoke only twice, both times after the sessions of coupling were ended. The first time she said, "I know your codex, and I know that, a few years ago, you killed a bandit, roughly and brutally. I was surprised by that, frankly, since I see in you a constitutional weakness, the seeds of failure. Maybe I have misjudged you. Time will tell, as the old saying goes. Until then, I will watch you, push you, punish you, have you close to me on nights like this. You will be with me like this often, until you do fail or you die or you choose to leave your sibko. Perhaps you will succeed." The second time she said, "I am the only warrior left from my sibko."
Even though, as a sexual partner, Aidan was allowed to speak freely with Joanna, he refused to say anything. He even suppressed sounds during the act. She did not seem to mind that.
Before leaving her quarters, standing in the doorway, looking back at the now strangely languid Joanna, he said, "I will not fail."
He may have been mistaken, but he thought he saw the hint of a smile prodding the corners of her mouth.
"You may not," she said. As he walked out the door, she added, "But I am afraid that you will."
If she had said that he definitely would fail, her words would not have bothered him. But she said, "I am afraid that you will," and he often stopped to wonder why she had used the word, afraid. Joanna showed no concern for anyone in the sibko, for anyone anywhere, for that matter. She could not possibly have concern for his success or failure.
Or could she?
7
Using a telescope that had been removed from some service battlefield weapon, Aidan had the freeborn in his sights. He could not kill him because the single weapon he had chosen for this exercise, a medium laser in the right arm, had been phased down and at best could only cause a mild stun, enough to make his opponent dizzy but not enough to render him or her unconscious. Perhaps choosing the single weapon had been a miscalculation, Aidan thought, especially since the others had made more conventional choices—machine guns and short range missiles.
The freebirth cadet he had centered on for his segment of the battle was a bland-looking boy, his hair cut so short that, except for the light gray stubble, he would have been taken for bald. Aidan had been told that his hairstyle was the current custom among freeborn cadets who defiantly wanted to distinguish themselves from trueborns as much as trueborns did not want any association with freeborns. Perhaps because of the grayness of the stubble, the boy's face seemed unnaturally red, giving him a demonic look in spite of his average features.
Anti-freebirth curses hissed through the staticky comm-link. All the members of his sibko were contributing their own creative denunciations in deliberately chosen language. Because of the immobility of his 'Mech, he could not see any of his sibkin in their own reconstructed 'Mech shells, but his hearing perked up whenever Marthe's voice came online. He had not been able to adjust to her newfound reticence, and in the year it had taken them to get to this point in training, the distance between them seemed to have grown. Sometimes they still met in his or her bunk, but even the coupling now seemed to separate them. It had become no better, and no worse, than sex with anyone else in the sibko.
Aidan still had the boy in his sights, not that the calibration of the view was particularly accurate. He was sitting in the torso of a partially reconstructed Wasp, an obsolete pile of junk, but still suitable for exercises early in the cycle, as Joanna had told them. It was more or less complete from the head through the torso, but had no legs, and so was not maneuverable. Testing the right-arm medium laser, he had found its effective range to be about a third normal and th
e power turned down so that he could only stun rather than kill any target. He would have bid to equip the machine with an LRM rack instead of the medium-range laser, if Joanna had not discouraged him two nights ago, when he had last been with her, from adding too much weaponry to his proposed battle plan. The lowest bids got the most strategic positions on the training field, the most protection from the surrounding landscape, the better chance to win the points that would mean the awarding of a victory from the training officers from other units who were there to judge each cadet's performance.
The 'Mech also rested on an insecure foundation, a specific difficulty factor that was a part of the exercise. It was claimed that if a real 'Mech became immobile and lost its stabilizing gyros in the field, its pilot would have difficulty keeping it upright, so the swaying of this 'Mech was deliberate. If Aidan made any kind of extensive move, he felt his machine rock slightly under him.
It was frustrating not to be able to employ BattleMech maneuverability, but—according to the instructors—the sibko was a long way from stepping into genuine 'Mechs. About all the combat activity he could manage was to move the 'Mech's arms or manipulate the laser weapon. He had sent one beam that he thought was well-aimed past the boy. It sailed over his head by a few meters. Another had done no more than create an uneven singe line across the ground in front of his antagonist.
The freeborns participating in this exercise were told that they were getting anti-'Mech training, while the trueborns' purpose was anti-infantry. But it was clear to Aidan that caste distinctions would never allow freeborns to have advantageous positions against trueborns, and so could not possibly be in BattleMechs against them. The freeborns, like Aidan's sibko, were allowed their own choices of weapons. This particular one had taken a couple of potshots in Aidan's direction with a conventional rifle, but had also missed completely. They had struck the lower part of the 'Mech torso but were not strong enough to do significant damage.
Inside the 'Mech, the cockpit was quite primitive, simplified for training purposes, as Joanna had told them. The nearly bare command console contained no monitors and not much in the way of recording devices, not even a minimal computer to go with the minimal 'Mech. All the recording of Aidan's performance was being done at command level, where the trainers were measuring and judging the performance of each individual sibko member.
Way Of The Clans Page 7
