by John M. Ford
Getting back on his mount, the outlaw turned it north again. It wasn’t as if he had a destination—just a direction. He would follow it until he could do so no longer.
But Morath wasn’t done with him. Kahless could tell by the shadow the man cast as he mounted his s’tarahk, and by the scraping of the animal’s claws on the hard, dry ground behind him. Morath followed him like a specter of death, unflinching in his purpose—whatever it was.
Not that it made any difference to Kahless. He was too scoured out inside to play his friend’s games, too empty of what made a Klingon a Klingon. Nothing mattered, Morath least of all.
For a total of six days and six nights, Kahless led Morath high into the hills. Twice, they were drenched to the bone by spring sleet storms, which came without warning and disappeared just as suddenly. Neither of them cared much about the discomfort.
On some days, they wrestled as they had that first time, consumed with hatred and resentment for one another; on others, they simply followed the track on their poor, tired beasts. With time, however, their wrestling matches became shorter and farther between.
After all, their only sustenance was the water they came across in streams running down from the highlands. Neither of them ate a thing. They left to their mounts the few edible plants that grew along the path.
There was no conversation either, not even as prelude to their strivings with one another. Neither of them seemed to find a value anymore in speech. On occasion, Kahless saw Morath speaking to himself. But the outlaw wasn’t much of a lip-reader, never having seen the need for it, so he couldn’t discern the sense of the other warrior’s mutterings.
Finally, on the morning of the twelfth day, in the shadow of a great rock alongside a windy mountain trail, Kahless woke with the knowledge that he could tolerate Morath’s presence no longer. One way or the other, he had to be rid of the man.
Turning, Kahless eyed his comrade, who had more than once saved his life. When he spoke it was with a voice that sounded strange and foreign to him, a voice like the sighing of the wind in a stand of river reeds.
“I will go no further, Morath. I cannot stand the thought of looking back and seeing you following me. We’ll wrestle again, eh? But this time, only one of us will walk away.”
Morath shook his head. “No, Kahless.” His voice was thin and harsh as well. “If you want to grapple, fine. But I have no more intention of killing you than I do of being killed myself.”
Days ago, Kahless would have been moved to anger. Now, the remark only annoyed him, the way a mud gnat might annoy a minn’hor calf.
“Then I’ll take my own life,” he told Morath. “That will do just as well.” He looked around. “All I need is a sharp rock…or a heavy one….”
“No,” said the younger man. “I won’t allow it.” As obstinate as ever, he placed himself in his companion’s way.
Kahless eyed him. As far as he could tell, Morath meant it. Besides, there weren’t any rocks around that filled his need.
The outlaw sighed. “What do you want of me?” he asked, not for the first time. He was surprised to hear a pleading quality in his voice, a weariness that went down to his very soul. “You mentioned a price, Morath. I’ll pay it—I’ll pay anything, if you’ll only tell me what it is.”
Morath’s lips pulled back over his teeth, making him look more like a predator than ever. “Pay with your life then.”
Kahless tilted his head to look at the man. “Are you insane? I offered to end my life with my own hands. Or if it’s vengeance you want—”
The younger man shook his head. “No, not vengeance,” he insisted. “There’s been altogether too much slaughter already. What I ask for is not a death, Kahless—but a life.”
Only then did the outlaw begin to understand. To pay for what he’d done, he would have to dedicate his life to those who had perished. He would have to become what Vathraq and the others thought he was.
A rebel. A man devoted to overthrowing the tyrant Molor.
At first, he balked at the idea. The tyrant was too powerful. No one could tear him down, least of all a pack of untrained outlaws, led by a man who had lost his stomach for fighting.
On the other hand, what was the worst that could happen? He would die. And right now, he welcomed death like a brother.
“A life,” Morath repeated. It was more of a question than anything else.
The wind blew. The sun beat down. One of the s’tarahkmey grumbled and scraped the ground with its claws, looking for food.
At last, Kahless nodded. “Fine. Whatever you say.”
“Then get on your s’tarahk,” said the younger man, his voice flat and without emotion, “and be the renegade you let others believe you to be.”
Kahless straightened at the harshness of the retort. “Not yet,” he said.
Morath looked at him. No doubt, he expected to have to argue some more. But it wouldn’t be necessary.
“First,” said Kahless, “I need something to eat.”
Approaching a patch of groundnuts on shaky legs, he knelt and began to wolf them down. After he had taken a couple of mouthfuls, Morath joined him. They ate more like targs than men.
Then, their bellies full for the first time in many days, they mounted their beasts and turned back toward Vathraq’s village.
At night, when Kahless was unrolling his sleeping mat, Morath began to speak. He was not a man given to long utterances, but this time he eyed the stars and spoke at length.
“My father,” he told Kahless, “was a strange man. He was raised as a devotee of the old gods. It was to them he cried out for help when my mother was giving birth to me.
“The gods, he said, promised him their assistance. Nonetheless, my mother died. My father lashed out at his deities, calling them deceivers—and smashed all the little statues of them that stood around the house. Thereafter, he hated deceit above all else.
“Somehow, I thrived. But my father neither took another mate, nor did he conceive another child. There were only the two of us, and he raised me with an iron hand.
“When I was five years old, he almost killed me for telling a small, inconsequential lie. Shortly thereafter, while I still bore the bruises of his beating, our house was set upon by reavers—cruel Klingons who obeyed no laws, self-imposed or otherwise.
“My father fought bravely—so bravely a chill still climbs my spine when I think about it. I remember being surprised that this was the same man who had beaten me so, protecting his son and his hearth with such feverish intensity.
“And I?” Morath grunted bitterly. “I ran away and hid in the woods, afraid to fight at my father’s side—caught in the grip of wild, unreasoning terror. In the end, the reavers proved too much for Ondagh, son of Bogra. They killed him and took everything we had of value.
“Only when they were gone did I come out of hiding and see what they had done to my father. I knew that I should have fallen at his side, but I had not—and nothing could ever change that. Unable to bear my burden, I tried to run away again—this time, from my father’s ghost.
“For a long time, I wandered the wide world, looking for a way to rid myself of my guilt. One day, after many years had passed, I came upon a still, serene lake and bent to drink from it.
“Then I recoiled—for it was my father’s reflection I saw in the tranquil waters. And I realized I had been given a second chance. I would be Ondagh—not as he was, but as he could have been. I would brook no deceit, neither from man nor god. And I would never run away from anything again.”
Having said his piece, Morath unrolled his own mat and lay down on it. In a moment or two he was asleep.
Kahless looked at his friend for a long time, beginning to understand why Morath did the things he did. Then, at last, he too fell asleep.
Kahless and Morath came in sight of Vathraq’s keep twelve days after their departure. To the outlaw’s surprise, his men were still waiting for him, still eyeing the horizon.
By then, of cours
e, they had burned all the corpses, as much to deny the kraw’zamey a meal as to discourage the spread of disease. Unfortunately, that made it worse for Kahless. The mangled shapes of death held less terror for him than their empty aftermath.
The outlaw himself said nothing about the time he was gone. Morath didn’t say much either. But he did mention how sore he was from wrestling with Kahless, and pretty soon the others picked up on it.
Before long, the story became amplified. The outlaw and his friend had wrestled in the hills for twelve days and twelve nights, it was said, through heat and storm and all manner of hardship. Of course, no one could figure out why they would want to do that.
Nor did Morath disabuse them of the notion. Even for him, apparently, it was close enough to the truth.
Twenty-one: The Modern Age
Picard breathed in the cold air and observed the contingent of Klingons on the next plateau, perhaps a hundred meters below him and his companions.
Their dark hair was drawn back and tied into ponytails, in the manner of Worf’s. In the flat, gray light of predawn, their white mok’bara garb looked strangely serene against the coarse, black rock and the omnipresent tufts of hardy, red en’chula grass.
Of course, the Klingons themselves were anything but serene. Focused, yes. Entranced, perhaps. But serene? Even in the practice of so demanding a discipline, Klingon serenity was a contradiction in terms.
Anyone who doubted that had only to witness what the captain was witnessing—the ferocity with which these practitioners assailed one another, launching kick after deadly kick and blow after crushing blow, and following each with a guttural shout of exultation. Fortunately for them, none of these assaults found their targets—for as skilled as they were at attacks, they were just as skilled at avoiding them.
It was a mesmerizing spectacle, the captain mused. Like a spider of many parts weaving a continuous, flashing web. Or a particularly vicious species of bird writhing in a torturous form of flight, the reasons for which were lost in its genetic past.
Picard had seen Worf teach the mok’bara exercises to a dedicated few on the Enterprise, Beverly and Deanna among them. However, those maneuvers were to these as a jog in the woods was to the Academy marathon. Neither Beverly nor Deanna would have lasted more than a few brief seconds in so violent and rigorous a ritual.
“I am amused,” Kahless hissed.
He was careful not to speak so loudly that he’d draw the attention of the martial artists below—though with all the bellowing going on down there, such care seemed rather unnecessary.
“In my day, there was no such thing as this….” He turned to Worf. “What did you call it?”
The lieutenant scowled. “Mok’bara,” he replied.
“This Mok’baaara,” Kahless finished, butchering the word as if on purpose. He shook his head. “In my era, life itself contained all the exercise one would ever need. And if one still craved action at the end of the day, there was always the requisite afterdinner brawl.”
Worf harrumphed. Clearly, thought Picard, his officer didn’t appreciate the clone’s disparagements.
“The ritual provides more than exercise,” the lieutenant explained. “It helps one to set aside distractions—to concentrate on the advancement of one’s spirit.”
Kahless clapped him affectionately on the back. “I don’t mean to offend anyone, Worf—and certainly not my closest companions. If you want to perform pantomimes in your night clothes, I have no objections.”
Kurn looked at the clone. “With all due respect, Kahless, I can see why you were never revered as a diplomat.”
“To Gre’thor with diplomats,” Kahless spat—Gre’thor being the Klingon equivalent of Hell.
After some of his experiences with diplomatic envoys, the captain was inclined to agree. But, not for the first time since he’d embarked on this mission, he held his tongue.
Abruptly, he noticed the first brazen rays of the sun sneaking over the cliffs to his right. He turned to Worf, who’d mentioned earlier that the ritual would end when dawn touched the plateau.
“Lieutenant?” said Picard, by way of a reminder.
Worf glanced at the cliffs and nodded. “We should start down now.”
Without further ceremony, he retreated from the edge of their rocky plateau and made his way across it toward a steep, winding path. By following this path, the captain knew, they would end up exactly where they wanted to be—and with any luck, see just whom they wished to see.
Their descent took them around a natural column of crags and boulders, one of many that seemed to punctuate the landscape. Though Picard’s interests leaned more toward archaeology than geology, he resolved to learn someday what sort of forces created these structures.
As the sky continued to lighten above them, they came to the end of the path and gathered in a hollow. By peering through a cleft in the rocks, they could see the slope just below the mok’bara practitioners’ plateau. To be sure, it was a gentler way down than the one they’d just taken—but more importantly, it narrowed to a point right near the cleft.
They’d barely arrived when the martial artists began to descend. It was remarkable how calm they seemed, after the effort they’d put into their ritual just a few moments earlier.
The Klingons were conversing quietly, nodding, even smiling at one another. It seemed to the captain they’d come from a sewing bee instead of a potentially lethal combat.
“Which one is Godar?” Kahless asked softly.
“He is the last of them,” Kurn replied. “As always. You see him? The tall, wizened-looking one with the simple chin-beard?”
“Ah, that one,” said Kahless, craning his head to get a better angle. “And you believe he can be trusted?”
Worf s brother grunted. “I believe so, yes.”
“You seem to trust a great many people,” the clone commented.
“Like you,” Kurn told him, “I have no choice.”
In moments, most of the mok’bara practitioners had passed the cleft on their way down from the plateau. None of them seemed to notice Picard and his companions. But after what had happened in Tolar’tu, that was little assurance in the captain’s eyes.
As Kurn had indicated, Godar was the last of them. He too appeared unaware of the quartet that had traveled so far to speak with him. That is, until Kurn croaked his name.
At first, the man seemed confused as to who might have called him. Then he happened to glance in the direction of their hiding place.
Under similar circumstances, Picard thought, he himself might have cried out in surprise—or bolted, fearing an ambush. But Godar did neither of these things. Still invigorated by his exercises, he simply altered his stance a bit, ready to take on whatever awaited him.
“Who is it?” he rasped, darting a sideways look at his fellow practitioners, who seemed not to have missed him—at least not yet. “Speak quickly—and give me a reason not to warn the others.”
“It’s me,” Worf’s brother whispered. “It’s Kurn, son of Mogh.”
Immediately, Godar’s expression changed. He became more curious than wary. “Come forward, so I can see it is really you,” he demanded.
Worf’s brother complied with Godar’s wishes. As the hollow filled with sunlight, the man saw the truth of the matter—and grinned.
“Kurn,” he said. “You Miravian slime devil!”
Reaching in, he grasped Kurn’s arm in a handclasp reserved for brothers and close allies. “What in the name of Fek’lhr are you doing on Ter’jas Mor?” He squinted. “And who the blazes is in there with you?”
Kurn moved aside, so the older man could get a better look into the hollow. “You will find,” he explained, “that I travel in unusual company.”
As Godar spotted Worf and then Picard, his elderly brow creased with curiosity. And when he realized that Kahless was with them, the crease became a deep, dark furrow in the center of his forehead.
“Unusual company indeed,” the man murmured. He
turned back to Kurn. “And how does this involve me, son of Mogh?”
As he did at Majjas’s house, Worf’s brother explained what was going on. However, he left out Majjas’s name, referring to the blind man simply as “an expert in armaments.”
The mok’bara practitioner nodded. “And since I was once the master of the defense armory on this world, you believe I can tell you who might have stolen the bomb.”
Worf shrugged. “If anyone knows the people who worked there, it would be you. If you were pressed to come up with a name…”
Godar didn’t respond right away. Finally, after what seemed like a long time, he came up with not one name but two—and a bit of information to back up his suspicions.
“Mind you,” he told them, “I don’t know for a fact that they’re guilty. I’m only guessing.”
Kurn snorted. “A guess from Godar, son of Gudag, is better than a certainty from anyone else. I thank you, my friend—and I trust you will keep the matter of our survival a secret.”
The mok’bara practitioner laughed softly. “I haven’t lived this long by betraying my friends, Kurn. Your secret is safe with me.” He gazed downslope again. “But if I don’t hurry, my companions will wonder what kept me so long. Follow the path of honor, Son of Mogh.”
And with that, he was gone. Picard looked at Kurn. “I assume we’ll be paying our bombing suspects a visit.”
Kurn nodded. “You assume correctly.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” asked Kahless.
“We’re not,” Worf’s brother replied.
Pulling up his sleeve to expose the remote control band on his forearm, he tapped in the necessary information. Then he activated the link to his vessel’s transporter system.
The captain felt a brief thrill, something like a low-voltage electrical current, running through him—the earmark of Klingon transporter technology. A moment later, he was back on Kurn’s ship—though with what they knew now, he was certain he wouldn’t stay there very long.
