Warp World

by Kristene Perron

  “And those remnants of House Etiphar have been sitting in that Keep for over a hundred years now, rotting uncontested in their prison. If necessary, I’ll leverage additional troops and materials. We’ve got a technological edge on them now, and this time they won’t see it coming.”

  Fismar looked thoughtful. He turned away to stare at the alert signal and took another drink. “It could be done. Or it could go Storm-damned wrong and get everyone killed.”

  “Is getting out there and confronting the World ever safe?”

  Fismar laughed and finished his drink, then tossed the cup into a nearby recycler chute. “Karg it, you’re right.” The signal changed to a welcoming blue and Fismar nodded. “Let’s go meet the new troops.”

  “Nen’s death.”

  The five men and Ama all stood, unmoving, transfixed by the sight before them. They touched their index fingers to their left eyes, quickly, the Kenda gesture to ward off evil.

  The excursion had not taken them far. There wasn’t much of interest outside the warehouse. Abandoned stone structures, some whole, some mere piles of rubble, flanked the street. There were no people to be seen, no animals, no birds, no trees, and most notably, no sky. Far above their heads, the shield wavered and glowed an unnatural copper. It was loud, too, filling the air with a discordant vibration. Loud, and not as solid as she remembered from her time in Cathind.

  What had caught their eye, and held them entranced now, was that wall of copper sloping from sky to ground. They had walked toward it silently until they had reached a wide, dusty scar in the earth. It looked to Ama like a deep river that had been robbed of its water. On the other side of the scar, the thrum of the shield was even more intense and the wall of copper shimmered unreliably.

  This alone was enough to render even Viren speechless, but there was more.

  Beyond the copper glow, something roared, a black shadow that filled the air with fine dust and battered against the shield.

  “What is it?” asked Swinson, a lean man with gray eyes that always seemed to be looking to some distant horizon. Eyes now locked on the shield

  “It’s the Storm,” Ama said. “The shield protects them from it.”

  “The storm? Not a storm?” Viren stepped up next to her. All the men had moved closer, as if her limited knowledge of this world might protect them from its evils.

  “It’s not like the storms on our world. I don’t know much about it, only that it eats. It feeds on something called vita. Seg’s people put the vita into a well and then send it up into the Storm to keep it pacified, to stop it from growing and becoming stronger. Then they use the shields to keep the Storm out of the cities. The vita is very hard to find and I don’t think they have much left on their world.”

  Keer, the largest Kenda of the fifty, with arms as thick as most men’s thighs and a head that joined to his shoulders without a neck, crouched at the crumbling precipice and looked down. “Dead,” he said. “Water flowed here, but it’s dead now. Magic’s killed this land.”

  Ama nodded. “Dead, I know.”

  “Can’t they leave?” Swinson asked.

  “I asked that once,” Ama said.

  “And?” Prow said.

  “It takes a lot of vita to make those gates open. They have enough for some of their people to escape but, without vita, the Storm would kill any left behind.”

  “So their world’s a prison, then?” Swinson said.

  “Don’t ever say that aloud to any of Seg’s people. They’re very proud. But, yes, in a sense it is.”

  Keer tossed a clod of dirt down into the riverbed. It shattered below as he looked to Viren. “You sure about this man Eraranat, brother?”

  Viren reached up and placed a hand on Keer’s shoulder, which, against the bulk, looked like a child’s hand. “To all points of the compass.” He looked to Ama. “And what’s outside that shield, aside from the Storm?”

  “I don’t know. But his people would no more cross to that other side than ours would cross the Rift.”

  “It’s best to have a care when speaking of the Rift.”

  All heads turned to see Cerd standing to one side. They had been so entranced by the shield that a herd of greshers could have snuck up on them.

  Ama thought of the stories her father had told her about captains on their first voyage to the Spires up north. At some times during the year, the moonlight reflecting off the ice created an illusion of dancing ghosts on the water. More than one captain, dazzled by the phenomenon, had driven his boat into an ice shelf. And here she was, mesmerized and losing sight of her duties, exactly as she had been taught not to do.

  “You’ve come to frighten us with your tales of the Rift, Cerd?” Viren said.

  “No, I’ve come to persuade you to return to the building and await Eraranat’s return,” Cerd said. He stared out at the shield, as captivated by the sight as the others had been.

  “Actually,” Viren said, placing his hands on his hips and taking a good look around, “we’ve only just started our walk. Fresh air, good for the constitution, as I’m sure our healer friend, I’ll-harm, would agree.”

  The other men snickered at Viren’s nickname for Elarn.

  “If the healer’s what we can expect from the people of this world, then we shouldn’t be roaming aimlessly out here,” Cerd said. He turned to Viren and folded his arms. “But there’s no point asking you to be reasonable, is there?”

  “That all depends on who’s doing the asking.” Viren took a step closer. “Run along, Cerd. I won’t be able to enjoy my stroll knowing you’re lurking on my stern.”

  “I assumed it would be that way.” Cerd looked past Viren’s shoulder. A half dozen of the older men who had fallen in with him were approaching. “There are a few different courses we can plot from here.”

  “I see only one if your face remains within fair reach of my fist.”

  “Just you and me, then? I win this, you come back; you win and you can go your way, and get you and yours killed all you like.” Cerd pulled off his shirt.

  Ama wedged herself between the two men. “That’s enough! You two can kill each other some other time. We’ve all been out here too long. Viren?”

  “Step aside, Captain.” He emphasized his words with a steely stare. “The pirate and I have business.”

  She whipped her head around to Cerd, but he was focused only on Viren.

  “Is this how you both keep your word to Brin? To Seg?” She shouted but neither man would listen. Viren moved to one side, to distance himself from Ama. Cerd raised his fists. The crowd circled.

  “I won’t let you do this out here!” Ama looked to the other men, but none stepped up to help her; some even shouted words of encouragement to their chosen opponent. Viren lunged forward.

  “I SPEAK THE NAME OF MY ANCESTORS!” Ama bellowed. Viren halted mid-stride, Cerd lowered his fists, the crowd fell silent. “I, Amadahy, claim the right of First Honor in the name of my father, Odrell, and his father, and all those of Kalder blood!”

  It was a bold move, which showed clearly on the faces of the men around her. Claiming First Honor was an old Kenda tradition, a means of settling feuds without letting them degenerate into all-out wars. It also meant that she had just declared herself a combatant.

  “You’re a woman,” Cerd said.

  “I’m your Captain.” Ama stepped forward until she was inches from Cerd’s face. “Unless you doubt Seg’s word?”

  “Not I …Captain,” Cerd said. “Why don’t you ask your pal, Viren?”

  Ama’s eyes narrowed; she added more steel to her tone. “You want to fight each other? Fine. But my claim has been issued. I have the right to honor.” She turned to address all the men. “You fight me first or you don’t fight at all.”

  Cerd’s eyes flicked to Viren, then away. Viren spread
his hands to acquiesce, with obvious dissatisfaction; the surrounding men grumbled and muttered as they stared at Ama. The immediate problem had been dealt with but it was clear the intervention had only fed the growing animosity, the tension now was confined and compressed into black stares and unspoken threats.

  And then, as if Nen himself had intervened, a boyish shout broke through the discord.

  “HEY! HEY!”

  Everyone stopped in place at the sound of young Tirnich’s voice. The men parted to let him into the circle. Slopper trotted behind him, all bug eyes and jutting teeth.

  “Look! Look what we found!” Tirnich was all but jumping up and down, oblivious to the two men who had been about to go war with each other. He held out a long coil of rope and a ball.

  “This isn’t the time,” Cerd said.

  “Yoth!” Tirnich said, undeterred. “We can set up a court. There’s some metal rings, too, that we can use as hoops. I found a compartment in the floor, there’s a bunch of stuff like this in there.”

  Ama seized on the moment. “Tirnich, that’s a great idea. Isn’t that a great idea, Viren? A nice friendly game of Yoth to work out our frustrations?”

  Viren didn’t answer at first, but then he nodded, considering. “Cerd?”

  Cerd reached for his discarded shirt. “I think we already know the teams.”

  Ama didn’t care if they killed each other once they were out of sight. As much as she hated to admit it, Cerd was correct, they were risking everyone’s safety being out here. They had been lucky to avoid Seg’s people up until now, but luck had a bad habit of running out when you needed it most.

  “Good. Back to the warehouse. We’ll set up the court and vote on a referee,” Ama said.

  The men, now distracted by a familiar pleasure, shuffled away. Viren tipped an imaginary hat to her as he departed. “Well played, Captain.”

  “What’s that?” Tirnich asked, his eyes finally drawn to the shield wall, and the black mass outside of it.

  “It’s nothing,” Ama said, and shivered. “Just the Storm.”

  Nothing. But for just a moment, standing at the shield, watching the Storm, she swore she had heard voices.

  Ama jogged up the improvised court in the warehouse, one eye on the players, one on Prow, her fellow roper. Her shoulder, though healed, was stiff and painful. She wasn’t playing at her best but this was no ordinary game of Yoth.

  The rope wasn’t made of the praffa she was used to and the ball was no more than some kind of sticky material wound into a ball and wrapped in cloth. The men had fashioned goal hoops out of metal scraps—one on each end of the playing field, inside the warehouse. The first few plays were a bit of a wash. The hard floor did not respond like grass or sand, and the rope was not heavy enough for long passes but the men adapted and soon the shouts and tackles were as raucous as any game on Kenda soil.

  Yoth was a game of agility as well as brute strength, devised by seafarers to keep them nimble while on land. Each team had seven players on the field at any given time—one goal keeper, four passers and two ropers. It was the job of the ropers to trip up, bind, or block the opposing team by tossing lengths of rope across the court to each other, while allowing their own players to move freely. The passers not only had to avoid the other players as they moved the ball across the field, but also the ropes that appeared around them at any given time.

  Brawls were not technically part of the game but were expected nonetheless, and usually encouraged.

  Today the brawl was the game.

  Viren’s team, aside from Ama, was composed mostly of those from the gutters of T’ueve. Prow and Ama as ropers; Viren, Keer, Swinson and Rikker as passers; and the square-headed Handlo as goal keeper.

  On the other side, Cerd’s players hailed from the prison cells or docks of Alisir. The exuberant Tirnich and his new friend Slopper looked comically out of place next to ex-prisoners Kype, Luds, and Soddig, but Tirnich was by far the best player and Cerd had been quick to enlist him and his younger counterpart. Rounding out Cerd’s team was the perpetually-irascible Wyan Pruitt, who had once called Ama spawner before trying to convince her to leave Seg for dead.

  One of the older Kenda the men had taken to calling Graybeard had been voted as referee. He had been neither prisoner nor con-man back on their world, and he called Malvid home, which rendered him suitably neutral to both teams.

  The game was well underway, the score hovering at even. Most of the goals on Viren’s team had been scored by Swinson, who could toss the ball across a full court and put it through the hoop without so much as grazing the sides.

  Ama watched Cerd roll to his feet and survey the field with his good eye. The other eye was almost completely swollen shut. Viren was limping, his arm hanging at his side. His shoulder had been injured, perhaps dislocated, when he had gone down in the latest scrum, but he wasn’t coming off the field just yet.

  Ahead of the rest, Wyan took a pass from Tirnich and squared off against a mountain of Keer. Anyone could see there was no contest between the two. Despite the never ending bitterness that fueled Wyan, Keer was at least ten years younger and built like a stone wall. Ama whistled twice, then twice more to urge Prow forward since there was no way Wyan could make it downfield.

  Keer barreled downfield. Wyan feinted left, then darted forward, ducked under Keer’s swiping arm and stomped his foot hard, just in front of the ankle. Keer tumbled sideways, grunting in pain as his ankle twisted. Wyan planted a boot on Keer’s back, hopped over him, and slashed forward, hurling the ball.

  “Foul! Foul!”

  Ama heard the cries from the spectators but had given up waiting for any whistle or referee intervention. Wyan would pay for that move.

  Running along the side of the court, rope hanging loose in her left hand, she watched Tirnich toss the ball past Handlo, her team’s goalkeeper, and through the metal hoop.

  A loud whistle signaled everyone back to their places. The contingent of those cheering for Cerd’s team took a minute to settle.

  “I like him,” Viren said to Cerd, with a nod to Wyan. “Dirty bastard but smart. Wonder why he chose your side?”

  “Some prefer winning to looking clever,” Cerd said. He accepted the ball from Tirnich and tossed it back over to Viren. “Your move.”

  Viren grunted, passed the ball forward to Swinson, and plowed into Cerd, knocking him flat. The move cost him, as he landed on the injured shoulder, but he used the opportunity to elbow Cerd in the ribs while he was down.

  “Sorry, deckie, honest mistake,” he said.

  Cerd pushed off the ground and skirted sideways. “My sister hits harder than that.”

  Kype rushed toward Swinson like a runaway river barge. Kype was the biggest man on Cerd’s team, a former prisoner of the Secat who bore his three-fingered hand as a badge of honor, a mark that he had never given over to the hated Damiar.

  He charged over Swinson without slowing but now Keer loomed in front of him, a much more formidable opponent. Kype tossed the ball to Wyan, who ducked Viren and shot down the field once more.

  Ama was ready for Wyan this time. She had lingered at her team’s end of the court just for this reason. She had already tossed her rope to Prow and now it lay flat on the ground. As Wyan approached, she sent up two shrill whistles and they pulled the rope taut. Wyan’s trailing foot caught and he fell to the ground in a flurry of arms and legs.

  The ball shot from Wyan’s hand and skittered across the floor as Tirnich pursued it. Wyan rolled out of his crash, wiped off the blood from a split lip on his sleeve and shot Ama an acid stare.

  Call me spawner again and see what happens, she thought, as another whistle went up and the field was reset.

  Tirnich was scoring the bulk of the points for Cerd’s team, so Ama kept her eye fixed on him, waiting for a break in the melee to dash between the p
layers. As she hit her mark, Prow threw out; she grabbed the end of his rope and started to circle Tirnich. A moment later Wyan’s elbow smashed into to her cheek. She dropped the rope and went sprawling to the floor.

  “Foul!” Viren said.

  Ama stood, shook off the blow, dipped her head to one side as if to acquiesce, then leapt forward and tackled her opponent to the ground.

  She had only a moment of surprise on her side, but she used it well, driving her fist into Wyan’s face.

  Wyan tossed her aside. Shouts erupted from watchers. Ama kicked at Wyan as he tried to run over her. Frustrated, he launched a kick of his own at her midsection. It connected poorly but was enough to give him an opening, and he pounced.

  He was on top of her in a breath but Ama hooked her legs around his waist and cinched herself to him. She slipped his punch, grabbed him by the collar with both hands, and snapped her head into his nose. By the torrent of blood that rained on her and Wyan’s sudden howl, she knew she had broken it. She slipped out from under him and stood tall.

  This fight ripped down any remaining veneer of sportsmanship and within moments the scene on the court was not much different than a night in the Alisir Port House.

  Wyan held his sleeve in an ineffectual effort to stem the tide of blood pouring from his nose. “Nod bad,” he said, as he staggered away from Ama and the improvised field.

  There would be no winner, and it was unlikely anyone would care.

  Viren and Cerd, as Ama had expected, had given up all pretense of play and were intent on settling the score between them. Thankfully, they were both already banged up and tired enough that neither could do the other any real damage. She collected her rope and staggered off the field. Experience told her these things settled themselves in their own time. For now, she would get a drink of water, wipe the blood from her face, and give her aching shoulder a rest.