The Warrior Who Carried Life

by Geoff Ryman

  Behind her, the girl gave a little cry, not of terror, but surprise. Cara could not turn; another dog was clambering up over the backs of its mates to get at her. With a sudden ringing clang, the shield, floating in the air, struck it across the head, splintering bone, then sailed, humming, back around to the girl. With a wrench, the sword came free. Cara swung backhanded at the beast that clung to her left arm, cutting open its belly. She slammed the sword down onto the backs of the dogs who held her ankles, back and forth, back and forth between them, opening gashes over their ribcages, but their mouths still gripped her. Another dog leapt.

  Cara felt her helmet eased from her head. Then suddenly it dived, with its pointed crest, ramming itself into the gullet of the dog who was leaping for her, and she understood finally that she could control it. She punched with the helmet, pushing the dog further and further back. It choked, and coughed, frothing up mingled blood and saliva. The clenching around one of her ankles loosened and she kicked her foot free.

  There was a sudden, bitter stinging across Cara’s sword arm, and something like a dark serpent wrapped itself around her wrist and held. It was the whip. At the end of its taut length was the bondmaster. The two remaining dogs, spinning in circles about themselves, wriggled back miserably to their masters. The beasts had never faced people with weapons.

  “You’ll pay for my dogs,” the bondmaster bellowed, red-faced. Cara took the sword with her ravaged left arm. “And you’ll pay for my dead workman! We’ll sweat it out of you! We’ll sweat it out of your whore!” Cara flung the sword, and it shot, whirring, through the air, and jammed itself into the bondbearer’s open mouth.

  The sword hung out of it, like a long tongue. The bondmaster, suddenly silent, stared in surprise, and let go of his whip. He gagged, trying to breathe, blood crawling out of the corners of his lips. Cara could feel, as though the sword was the tip of her fingernail, the spinal column of the man’s neck. “Hawwak do Kerig,” she murmured and pushed the sword with her mind through the cord of nerves. Very suddenly, with the cut, the bondmaster collapsed, raggedly, and rolled down the bank.

  The sword extricated itself, and sprang free and tumbled back into Cara’s hand. “Let us go,” she challenged the dogmasters. They knelt, pulling their dogs to them and stroked them, and whispered to make them less unhappy. They did not want to lose any more of them. As the stranger and the girl passed them, they did not look up. The evil eye.

  “Who will be bondmaster now?” one of them asked the other, in fear. Without a master, the workers would drift away. Who would dig the ditches then, and harvest?

  The girl was very surprised when, half a mile down the road, the warrior beside her began to weep.

  “Flesh of my flesh,” mused Cara, resting beside the great river, plucking the tip of the sword with her finger. She could indeed feel it, dully. The sword and all her armour were not made of metal at all, but something smooth and slightly pink, flecked with white.

  It was twilight, the sun gone, the sky pink and blue, and the river quiet and deep and rippled with many colours. Rice was simmering in her helmet over a small fire. The girl was coming back through the dusk, with the lace scarf beaten clean on the rocks to wash Cara’s wounds. “There’s fish in the river,” the girl announced as she climbed up the side of the bank. “We can eat fish for free.” She knelt down beside Cara, and began, with a certain playfulness to daub the arm where the dog had torn it. “You can rest on the boat,” she said. “You can rest all the way to the City from the Better Times, and heal.”

  Oh, this is strange, this is strange, thought Cara looking fondly up at her, smiling with desire. All she wanted to do was lie with the girl, pull up the rough undyed wool and feel the softness of her legs and slide herself into the warmth that was between them. All she wanted to do, as though the centre of Cara’s being had shifted down to the bottom of her loins. Even food seemed remote.

  “What is your name?” Cara asked her. Cara herself still responded to the depth and resonance of that voice.

  “Stefile. It means Three Sleeps. I don’t know why. And yours?”

  “Cal Cara Kerig,” Cara replied without thinking, and realised her mistake.

  “Dear Daughter of the Important House?” the girl repeated in amusement, and giggled.

  Cara took a deep breath, and then slowly, calmly, told Stefile all of the story that she understood herself. The girl jerked away from her at first, and fell sullen and silent, picking at the grass, and asked pained questions. “I thought,” she said, scowling, “I thought I felt something like that.”

  Then the idea began to amuse her. Eyes fastened hard on to Cara’s, she ran her hand along Cara’s thigh, and under the leather pleats of the skirt, over the thong that held the loincloth, to meet Cara’s physical sex. The girl giggled. “Well, there’s nothing wrong with that,” she said, smiling, and with a practised movement, pulled it free. Both she and Cara looked at it with rapt attention; Cara had been too embarrassed to look at it herself. It seemed such a small, pink and brown thing to look at, even now that it was swollen and veined, with a head and a mouth. Stefile ran her hand gently up and down it, and to Cara at least, it felt enormous. Stefile’s face pressed close to hers, forehead to forehead, eyes meeting and crossing, and they turned away, blinking, with a laugh.

  “If I hadn’t seen the magic, I wouldn’t believe you. I would think you were mad,” Stefile whispered. “Maybe you are.”

  There, on the bank, where any passing boat could have seen them, Stefile squatted over Cara, and raised her skirts, and lowered herself gently down, guiding Cara’s penis into her. With a sigh, they each lay down, or back, and didn’t care.

  Violence Begets

  In the centre of Hapira Izamu Pa—the City from the Better Times—stood the Most Important House, where the Family lived.

  The walls of the Most Important House had once been as blue and as perfect as the sky. Now the tiles were falling off in great patches, and brown scrub grass grew in the mortar between the bricks. There was no gateway through the walls of the Most Important House, no door or portal. On the ground in front of it, on a red, embroidered mat, sat the Man who Drinks Poison.

  His flesh was grey and swollen; his eyes were puffy, hooded slits, as in a mask.

  “I have come to learn how to fight,” Cara told him. The Poison Man stared back at her impassively. It seemed to Cara, that if she pressed his face with her thumb, the imprint would remain.

  “Is the girl with you?” the Poison Man croaked, in a rasping voice like the bark of a dog whose vocal cords have been cut. If he spat in an enemy’s eyes, the enemy went blind. If he touched a wound, the wounded man died.

  Cara answered yes. Hidden like a serpent’s tongue, his eyes seem to flick up and down Cara’s body, and Stefile’s also.

  “You both look strong enough,” he admitted. Both? He spat on a cube of red wax. It began to sizzle and melt, and he motioned Cara to put out her hand. Was this a test of strength, Cara wondered, a trial by poison? If so, she could not be seen to falter. The wax danced hotly on her skin, and the Poison Man pressed his ring into it. The wax cooled and hardened, bearing the ziggurat seal of the Family. “What School?” the deadly man asked her. “Shadow? Fire? Horse?”

  “I have no thoughts,” replied Cara, which was a lie. Cara knew which School she wanted, but a supplicant could not offer to join it. It was for the Poison Man to offer and for her to accept. “But I do not want to be a Man who is Baked.”

  “No,” said the man whose touch was death, and it seemed to Cara that suddenly there was something very sad in his face. “No, my beauty. We will not bake you. We will send you to the Warrior Angels.”

  Stefile gave a little cry of delight, and took Cara’s arm, and nuzzled her cheek. It was said that in Better Times, even their enemies did not have the heart to kill the Warriors who Look like Angels. The Men whose Beauty Blinds, they had also been called. The Angels rode white horses in parades and served the Family in the inner house as guards an
d decoration. That was why Cara wanted to be one of them. It would bring her closer to the beating heart of the prince she wished to murder.

  Stefile knew that. One night beside the river, she had asked herself if she wanted to go on, to exchange her old life for a brief and wild, desperate one. The answer had been yes. Since then she had travelled down the Great River and seen Hapira Izamu Pa with its vine-covered market and the giant public fountains roaring like waterfalls in this desert land. She had seen the satins and the little ebony boxes in the stalls. Now she was to live in the Most Important House, and be the woman of a Warrior Angel, and help to kill the Son of the Family. That was life enough for anyone, however short. And there was Cara too.

  Cara was like no one Stefile had ever met. Cara was kind, and educated, with the soft, smooth manner of an Important Person, as if he, or rather she, were a prince herself. A sorcerer prince on a dire mission. Stefile smiled at herself—oh dear, it was all dreams come true. Except that Cara would keep insisting that she was a woman, and act like one in ways that Stefile could never quite identify. Sometimes this made Stefile cross and confused; sometimes it made her smile.

  The Poison Man stood up with a grunt, and took a deep breath, and pumped out of himself, ribcage flexing in and out, a series of whoops and squeals and shrieks. Both Cara’s and Stefile’s faces fell, and the Poison Man turned and, for the first time, grinned at them, pleased with himself and the noise no one else could make. “You must climb up,” he explained. There was an answering cry from the top of the wall, and a rope ladder was unfurled from it, slapping against the tiles.

  The Poison Man took out of a pouch a bar of metal that moaned at his touch like a bell. His fingers came away from it a silvery black, and before Cara could shy away, he marked a quick sign on Cara’s forehead—the hieroglyph for Angel.

  “You will not thank me for sending you to the Angels,” he said, still smiling. His bloated lower lip hung so heavily that his mouth was always open, and he had to suck the saliva back in through his teeth. “Do not be fooled by beauty. Do not be fooled by ugliness, either.” He held up an arm for them to ascend. “You have your future,” he said.

  Eager to see over the wall, Stefile climbed the ladder first. She was near the top, when suddenly a man with yellow skin and no face lurched over the parapet and reached out at her. Stefile squawked in anger and fear, and swung on the ropes. The man laughed heartily, through a mouth that was a tiny, hardened circle of burn. “Do not worry, Lady, don’t be frightened of me!”

  “I’m not,” replied Stefile, angry, and pulled herself over the parapet without his offered help.

  The Baked Man was utterly naked, rubbing his skin with a block of lard. “Where are you going, Lady? Sir?” he asked, and gave them directions, pointing a fat, flaking finger. “Follow the Row of the Eagle until it crosses the Row of the Sky.” They looked out over the Most Important House.

  It was a stark noon, the sand-coloured brick bright against the blue sky. Rows of courtyards were ranked in straight lines off into the distance, the walls between them all the same height, as bare and geometric as a honeycomb, except where they had begun to crumble. Inside the courtyards, against the walls, were buildings. Domes of brick swelled lopsidedly out of the roofs, and the vents of air duct clustered like flocks of birds. One enormous courtyard was a park, with a lake and grass and trees and grazing sheep. Above all of it, like a giant crown in layers, rose the ziggurat, where the Family were supposed to worship. It also was plain and undecorated. Here, there were no smiling, beatific portraits of kings, radiant and powerful and unpleasant, to frighten people into surrendering their grain. Here, where the Family lived, there was no need.

  The Baked Man lowered the ladder for them down the inside wall. “Duhdo duhdo genzu,” murmured Stefile as she began to climb down. “I am sorry, Sir. I was surprised.”

  “Oh! I was never beautiful to begin with.” The Baked Man could not smile, only nod, up and down, quickly.

  The first courtyard in the Row of Eagles was full of blacksmiths and bakeries and food stalls. Beyond that, through a gate marked by a pair of wings, Cara and Stefile entered the School of Spiders.

  The Men who Advance like Spiders were sliding down translucent webs from the top of high scaffoldings. They swept down low across the courtyard, screeching like birds in black, lacquered armour. They carried scythes and sliced through the heads of rows of wooden dummies.

  The Row of Eagles led through each of the Fighting Schools. In the School of Shadows, men fought in tandem with nimble, life-sized puppets, attached to their arms and legs by gleaming rods. The Shadows duplicated the movements of their masters, and could double or treble the size of an army. The bobbing heads were the peeled skulls of enemies.

  “Caro!” Stefile called, using the male form of the name, as Cara strode on. “Caro, I want to see!” She had to trot after her, holding up the dirty edge of her dress from the ground.

  “And I want to get there quickly,” Cara replied, low-voiced, and Stefile realised that even Cara, who she thought could do anything, could be anxious about what lay ahead.

  Finally the Row of the Eagle met the Row of the Sky. The pitted worn stone over the gate in the adjoining wall showed a sun and crescent moon in clouds.

  This courtyard was different from all the others. The walls were washed with immaculate red, and the pavement was an unmarked, blinding white. The sun over the gateway had also been painted white, and the moon yellow amid deep indigo. At the far end of the courtyard stood a kerig, a grand house, with bay trees on either side of the great carved doors. In the centre of the courtyard, a mulberry tree grew out of a tub of brick. In its shade, a man in white sat cross-legged, his eyes closed. As Cara and Stefile began to approach him, he opened his eyes, and stretched out his legs. He watched them balefully, as if in warning. It was a peculiar garment he wore, loose and spotless, that seemed to stretch with his movements. It was almost a robe, except that somewhere, just above the knee it began to be bound around his legs with white strips, so that it worked like a pair of trousers. He was barefoot and wore a bracelet around his left ankle. In his golden hair, laurel leaves were intertwined.

  Cara and Stefile turned and smiled at each other. We both like the same men, Stefile thought. She glanced between Cara and the Angel, and decided that Cara was the more beautiful.

  The Angel was middle-aged, she saw when they drew closer, and had a fierce, exacting, leonine look to him that was not warming.

  “Why do you smile?” he asked them.

  “Pride,” Cara replied.

  “Then prepare to lose it,” the Warrior Angel said, and looked away from them in something like disgust. “He sent you to be an Angel?”

  “Poison in his eyes. He thinks everything not swollen or scarred is radiant. You are better than your girl, I grant you. Your legs are thin.”

  “He was wounded, he’s been healing!” Stefile exclaimed.

  “In a fight?”

  “Yes,” Stefile replied, emphatically, angry.

  “Then he is not much of a warrior, is he?” The Angel stood away from the brick of the tub, and began to strut, still looking away from them “You might of course develop. We will not turn you away. You will stay with us for one month. At the end of that time, all of us will vote on whether you stay or go. We vote on your wife as well. If she is your wife.”

  “Why?”

  The Angel finally looked back at Cara, blinking with the self-evidence of the answer. “Because both of you must live with us.” He inspected Cara. “What is beauty?” he asked.

  “That which is pleasing,” Cara replied, meaning that he was not, despite the sleek workings of his forearms and the grandeur of his face.

  The Angel, unmoved, signalled with a grudging frown that the answer was acceptable enough. “A retreat is not pleasing. It is sometimes necessary. Then it must be done so quickly that even the enemy admires it. A blow must be beautiful. It must be quick and clean and kill at once. Armour is ugly. Swords ar
e ugly. Only the human form is beautiful. It must dance in battle, unaided. And it must win.”

  Suddenly he strode forward, eyes hard, meeting Cara’s. “Do not mistake, boy from the fields. Beauty is not womanly. It is not cowardly. It does not lose. We are the best fighters here. The other Schools know that. They fear us. They engage each other, but not us because we always kill them” He relented somewhat, relaxing, and turned away from Cara, and began to strut again. “The Men who Cut Horses are stronger, but they are brutal, merely. They are not slow, but neither are they fast. The Shadow Warriors are the ugliest; they are clumsy; we tangle them up in their metal coils. The Baked Men cannot be hurt, like the Men with Wrists of Steel, but they are not aggressive enough to win. The Poison Men come closest, but they rely on it too much; they are undertrained. We break them open like rotten fruit.” He gave a quick, joyful smile at the thought. The smile went hard and threatening as he spoke to Cara. “If you stay with us, boy from the fields with your”—he glanced at Stefile—“one-dress bondwife, we will make you nimble enough to climb up panes of glass and hang there for hours if we want you to. We will make you fast enough to run across the top of flowing rivers. You will know beauty alive when you see five arrows flying through the air towards your heart, and you catch them all.”

  “With my teeth or with my bare feet?” Cara asked, weary of all this boasting.

  “If we wish it. Yes,” replied the Angel with a hard, little smile. “You are hungry. You will eat with us, and join in the training this afternoon. Now we are washing and praying. We wash our entire bodies before we eat. I think you’d better wash too. It is a ritual. You will learn such rituals are important. My name is Haliki.”

  Stefile chortled, somewhat deliberately, at the silliness of the name. Haliki meant, literally, Sir Hero.

  Haliki looked at her, up and down. “Haliki,” he repeated. “You will not be able to do very much around here without me. Now go and wash.”