Aidan tried to back away from Lopar, who was now on the ground, but his opponent grabbed his ankles and pulled them forward. His feet flying out from under him, Aidan fell onto his back. For the first time, he cursed the dark setting he had chosen. Just when he needed to know precisely where Lopar was, he could not see a damn thing.
From the noises just beyond his feet, which Lopar had now released, Aidan surmised that his adversary was struggling to stand up. He rolled sideways and felt Lopar land on the ground beside him in a miscalculated move. Lopar's error gave Aidan a chance to get halfway up and swing the sack again. It made ineffectual contact, but from the sound of Lopar letting his breath out, Aidan guessed that it had grazed the man's face.
He knew there was no point staying in this position and trading blows with Lopar, especially when his blows were from a wet sack, while Lopar's were made with the knife Aidan's generosity had permitted him. As Aidan made one last glancing blow with the sack, he felt it come apart, letting the heart fall to the ground. The only good thing about the maneuver was that it gave him time to get to his feet and scramble to the tree with the dead animal caught in its branches.
Sensing Lopar coming up behind him, Aidan felt around for the stake and vine he had left there. He found the vine first. Turning quickly, he whipped it out at Lopar. It flicked across the other man's face, making him yelp with pain, temporarily stopping him in his tracks. Feeling around some more, Aidan found the sharpened stake leaning against the tree where he had left it. Grabbing the shaft, he wielded it like a long knife, directing it at the center of the dark form leaping toward him.
The force of his thrust with the stick was enough. The point, so carefully honed by its victim, penetrated Lopar's midsection, drawing a groan that momentarily drowned out the myriad noises of the forest. Aidan got out of the way, and Lopar fell against the tree trunk. Hearing his foe choke, Aidan sensed that he was coughing up blood. The stickiness on Aidan's bare arm was probably blood from the wound itself.
With Lopar so close to him, Aidan knew he could not relax for an instant, even though every nerve in his body felt strained to the limit. His enemy still had his knife.
As he expected, Lopar weakly jabbed the knife at him, but Aidan merely twisted the man's wrist, then heard the knife fall.
"Lopar, you asked for a fight to the death."
"That is true."
"I do not wish to kill you, and your wound may not be mortal."
"That is also true, freebirth."
"Admit I am not a freeborn."
"Never."
"You may ask the judges to release you from the hunter requirements of a fight to the death."
"Never."
"Well, then, I must kill you, even though it is not my wish."
Taking the vine in both hands, Aidan wrapped it around Lopar's neck and squeezed it tightly until Lopar went limp. Then he did something that was as brutally primitive as it was insulting to his victim and to all the other Jade Falcon warriors who had vowed to kill him. Retrieving the heart of the dead animal from the ground, Aidan took it and stuffed it into Lopar's mouth.
Carefully, almost reverently, he removed the dead animal from its place among the branches of the tree and dragged it away. At the edge of the forest, he buried it in a shallow grave, dug with Lopar's hunting knife.
34
Someone eavesdropping on the next strategy conference between Aidan and his entourage might have wondered if he had stumbled into one of the Bloodright contests instead. The group argued furiously and for some time, but in the end Aidan won his point.
"If I am to become a Bloodnamed warrior," he said, "I must do it my way. Caution may have gotten me through the Grand Melee, but it nearly finished me in the fight with Lopar. I appreciate all you have done for me, but we must plan aggressively if I am to finish this."
Though Marthe had been his most heated opponent, she finally capitulated the point. "It is true that you can only win with the abilities you have, Aidan. And your greatest may be tenacity."
* * *
When Aidan had gone, Marthe smiled at Joanna, who resisted the urge to return it. "You were right, Marthe," she said. "He needed to be pushed to find his own way. I admire your cleverness in accomplishing the goal."
Marthe laughed softly. "After the Trial of Refusal, I sensed that something had gone out of him. Call it the fighting spirit—for want of a better term. We had to help him recover it. And that we have done. Even Horse did his part."
"I merely followed your instructions, Star Captain."
Joanna was taken aback. "You mean this . . . this Mech Warrior's insults were part of the plan, too?"
Marthe shrugged and Horse would say no more on the matter to Joanna.
* * *
On the parade ground, Megasa strode proudly past Aidan. He waited until he had actually gone by to say to a member of his entourage, loudly enough for Aidan to hear, "If I fight that one, it will be an easy battle. If he hides, I will find him by his stench. If he turns and fights, I will home the missiles in on his stink."
Aidan whirled angrily, but when he spoke, his voice was cool, detached. "Perhaps you wish to fight here and now, Megasa. Forget Bloodright, forget Blood-names? "
Megasa laughed. "I have no wish to beat you so easily."
"You would not last long against me in hand-to-hand combat."
"Are you sure? You will find no big sticks or animal hearts on this parade ground."
"Then I will smother you. With my stench."
The joke relieved the tension, and Megasa's companions led him away. Aidan had longed to blast Megasa off a battlefield, but he would save it for the Trial combat. He would live to gloat over the fallen Megasa.
* * *
Kael Pershaw watched the next round of Bloodright battles from the command center, where elaborate hol-otank images of some of the individual contests were projected. He joined Joanna and the other members of Aidan's entourage, but took care to stand well away from Mech Warrior Horse, whom he despised more than most freeborns. There was a continual flare of defiance in Horse's eyes that made trueborns particularly uncomfortable around him.
In the coin ceremony for the next contest, Aidan's coin had emerged second from the gravity funnel. As the hunter, he chose conventional BattleMechs. As venue, his adversary, a Star Captain named Jenna, had chosen a mountain range in the far north of Ironhold. At first the holotank mountains were small and the BattleMechs like the tiny toy versions with which sibko children play in their holotanks. As the two fighting machines tracked one another, however, each trying to find some terrain most favorable to his skills, the holo projections grew larger. In the vast area below the spectators, it was not long before they were viewing a pair of 'Mechs approximately one-third their normal size engaged in a hard-fought contest on rugged terrain.
At this point Jenna's strategy became obvious. Knowing that Aidan would be piloting a seventy-ton Summoner, she had chosen a lighter 'Mech, a fifty-five ton, jump-capable Stormcrow that she could use more effectively in mountainous terrain. Kael Pershaw was not sure, however, whether the Stormcrow would be successful in the long run. The ability to move about the mountain faster than the Summoner would, he thought, be enough to prolong the battle but not to win it. Still, he admired the audaciousness of the choice.
Aidan's aggressiveness would be a help rather than a hindrance in the fight with Star Captain Jenna. At one point, he could have remained in an easily defended cliffside, shooting at Jenna across a wide crevasse, the two of them exchanging LRM volleys that did about equal damage to their 'Mechs. Most other warriors would have taken that approach. What Aidan did was jump his Summoner from the cliff to a precarious icy perch above and off to one side of Jenna's Stormcrow. From here he fired his LRMs straight down, not so much at Jenna's 'Mech but at the junction between the cliff face and the ledge where she stood. As the LRM warheads battered the rock, the ground beneath the feet of Jenna's 'Mech began to show cracks. Aidan fired again. The Stormcrow seemed
to sway with the ledge beneath it, then the cracks opened further and the ledge collapsed into the crevasse, taking with it both Stormcrow and its brave pilot.
The end came so suddenly that Kael Pershaw almost did not follow it. When the Stormcrow suddenly disappeared, he silently uttered words of praise for Aidan and words of regret for Star Captain Jenna.
* * *
"You have fought three major battles," Horse said, "the Grand Melee and the two first rounds of the Bloodright. All three of your opponents are dead. Is a Bloodname worth all this, well, blood?"
"You know it is, Horse."
Horse said nothing. He had never truly understood his friend.
* * *
Marthe saw that what might be termed the psychological advantage was shifting to Aidan's favor. In the next battle, his opponent, perceiving that Aidan had twice survived in unusual terrain, had chosen as venue one of the many Trial fields on Ironhold. Marthe leaned against a rail to watch the holo projection of the battle. She could not stand with the rest of Aidan's entourage without revealing her true role in Aidan's Bloodname quest. Joanna and Horse viewed the battle from a section of seats in the next tier up. Arms folded, Kael Pershaw stood on the same level as Marthe, but directly across from her.
Aidan's foe, a Star Commander Grayling, had come onto the field in a Timber Wolf, a 'Mech especially popular with Clan Wolf but uncommon among Jade Falcon warriors. With the double LRM-20 racks mounted on its shoulders, the Timber Wolf looked like a beast of burden, carrying heavy loads on bowed shoulders.
The two 'Mechs kept their distance at first, firing long-range missiles at one another in a way that suggested this battle might be a prolonged one. The missiles did considerable damage, distributed evenly between both sides. Armor lay spread around both 'Mechs.
Then the Timber Wolf started to close in on the Summoner. Lumbering forward, using its large lasers now, the 'Mech was sketching lines of damage across the surface of Aidan's 'Mech.
Aidan had studied Grayling's codex, however, and knew that the man almost invariably fought by the book. To counter the Timber Wolf's plodding slowness, he started his 'Mech toward it, gradually breaking into a run straight at his foe. Then he fired off a volley of LRMs directly in front of him, letting the smoke and dust thrown off by the explosion envelop his 'Mech. Aidan was gambling that Grayling was concentrating on the visual spectrum display of the primary view screen. In the instant it would take for his opponent to track the Summoner on the secondary screen, Aidan maneuvered it to one side, suddenly emerging from the thinning cloud of smoke to come at the Timber Wolf from a different angle.
With&ut slowing down, Aidan came at the Timber Wolf, relentlessly unloading his entire supply of short-range missiles. According to the plan Aidan and his team had devised, the goal was to take out the LRM packs on each of the Wolf's shoulders.
And the strategy worked. First one blew up, then the other, followed almost immediately by the Timber Wolf itself. The observers (including Aidan, viewing from his cockpit) were relieved to see Star Captain Grayling shoot out the 'Mech in his ejection seat just before the 'Mech exploded.
"That was lucky," Kael Pershaw said as he passed Joanna at the command center door. Joanna made no reply, but she definitely agreed.
* * *
Megasa had also reached round four, but he and Aidan were not scheduled to fight one another. Not yet.
Many warriors had gathered on the various tiers to view the combats involving Aidan and Megasa. Megasa, in his Mad Dog, quickly vanquished an opponent in an Executioner. Indeed, the fight was over so soon that he was able to come to the command center in time to watch Aidan's contest.
Aidan's coin had made him hunter, while his opponent chose as venue an island in the middle of a lake. Aidan was not so concerned how or where the contest would be fought. It was more that he was so exhausted from the previous contests that he wanted to polish this one off quickly. If he was going to fight in the final Bloodright battle, he wanted to be ready for it. Joanna supplied the strategy for an island battle, basing it on a fight in which she had participated several years before.
For this fight, Aidan's Summoner was configured entirely with long-range missiles, plus a narc beacon. Marthe wondered if it might not be wise to keep some of the other armament or at least add some medium lasers, but both Joanna and Aidan wanted to go for everything.
"What if he gets in close?"
"I will risk it," Aidan said.
"He will risk it," Joanna said.
"Yeah, risk," Horse coarsely agreed.
* * *
Aidan's foe, a MechWarrior named Machiko, would be in a Hellbringer. That would not affect Aidan's strategy, which had been devised to operate against whatever type 'Mech entered the field against him.
Joanna studied the terrain, which was relatively flat for an island. She decided that Machiko had chosen it to prevent Aidan from being able to carry out any elaborate maneuvers. If Aidan kept his distance, however, the strategy for this battle was viable.
As soon as he saw the signal to begin, Aidan executed a ground-skimming jump right at the Hellbringer. Machiko meanwhile took the opportunity to chip away at the Summoner's armor with her medium laser and a PPC.
As soon as he was close enough, Aidan fired his narc missile beacon launcher at the Hellbringer. The specialized missile struck the other 'Mech and attached itself. His mission successful, Aidan jumped back to his original point near the shore of the island. He was conscious of the water lapping gently at his heels as he fired volley after volley at the Hellbringer, each missile homing in on the song that the narc beacon sang to it.
As Aidan had hoped, the battle was soon over. Machiko's Hellbringer was so shredded by the missiles that it was not long before it was rendered completely helpless.
* * *
Watching from the command center Megasa did not hide his disgust. When the miniature figure of Ma-chiko ejected from her 'Mech, her form seemed to come close to him, and he leaned over the railing as though to catch the holographic projection in his hand.
"It is now up to me to remove this stench from our Clan," he said loudly as he turned to leave the command center.
"Do you believe Aidan can beat him?" Horse asked Joanna.
"In truth?"
"Yes."
"In truth, I did not think he would get this far."
* * *
Three days later, Aidan took a long time going to sleep after the prebattle briefing by his entourage. He lay in his bunk, endlessly fingering and moving the codex bracelet on his wrist. Wishing he could read the future in the past, he finally drifted off into a fitful sleep.
35
All the ritual words had been spoken by the Oath-master and the two participants. The coins had gone down the gravity funnel and come out again. Megasa was to be the hunter, meaning Aidan had choice of venue.
Awaiting Megasa's words, Aidan once again felt the sheer hatred emanating from the Jade Falcon warriors packed into the hall. How could so many despise him so? Inside, he was no different from the days before he had made his claim to seek a Bloodname, but sometimes he could not help but wonder if his fellow Jade Falcons might be justified in their enmity against him. Had he truly nullified his right to a Bloodname by accepting that second Trial and by posing as a freeborn?
Fortunately for Aidan, these moments of self-doubt never lasted long. He was a Clan warrior, trueborn and deserving. If he had not proven that by getting this far in the Trial of Bloodright, what had he proven?
Megasa turned to face the audience. "I realize that it is unorthodox for me to speak now of any matter except my choices as hunter," he boomed in a voice that easily reached the last row of the assembly, "but there is an issue of importance to this final Bloodname contest that must be emphasized. Important not only for myself, but for all Clan Jade Falcon. This warrior has dishonored us, and I will not permit him to further tarnish the glory of our Clan." The words drew a roar of approval from the crowd, while they made Aidan wond
er if the Oathmaster could not simply scrap all the ritual and let him and Megasa slug it out here and now.
"The Pryde Bloodname is an honorable one," Megasa boomed on. "Even when we have not yet won the right to bear the Pryde name, those of us who share the bloodline venerate our heritage. Generations of our Bloodnamed warriors have fought and often died gloriously in battle. They did not die so that our line could be tainted by a warrior who, in spite of his true birth, is more freeborn than true. On the planet Hector, several fine warriors in my Star were killed in a fierce battle with the Hell's Horses Clan. To avenge their death, we wiped out the entire Cluster to which those Hell's Horses warriors belonged. That is what it means to be a Jade Falcon warrior.
"Why else would the Bloodnames of our Clan be so widely respected? Why else would the other Clans so often attempt to seize the Jade Falcon gene legacies? It is because we, of all the Clans, produce the finest warriors. We cannot condone anything that brings us shame instead of esteem. Let us not allow this warrior to disgrace us any longer."
With a nod of his head, Megasa finished his speech and turned back to the Oathmaster. Even though public displays were forbidden during the Bloodright ritual, a clamorous cheer went up in the vast audience. Risa Pryde's hand immediately shot up to quiet it, but Megasa had made his point and the warriors of Clan Jade Falcon had seconded it. Aidan was the enemy. He must be defeated. For an instant, Aidan almost believed it himself.
Bloodname Page 24
