Analog Science Fiction And Fact - June 2014 Read online

  Kal held his sword in "plow," arm extended from the waist. Teodorq stepped forward, brushed the fore aside and thrust in long-point. Kal retreated again, but spun and threw an understrike, which Teo parried with an "iron pinwheel." Both he and Kal reset the combat.

  "You ain't as easy as I thought you'd be," said Kal.

  Teodorq grinned. "Hadn't planned to be."

  Kal rushed him with several hacks from the left and right, but Teo voided them and shifted guards. He stepped out in the batter's stance, made a right passing step forward and settled the blade onto his upper right arm as he turned his body into a left "augur." From there, he lifted the hilt up, over, and behind his head to settle into a left-handed batter; then took a left passing step backwards, settling the blade on his left arm in a right augur as he turned. Kal blinked, unsure of how to attack, swung an overhand hack that Teo easily parried, then voided the battle space.

  The two circled each other clockwise, swords held one-handed to the side in long-point. Teo waited his chance then dashed across the circle with a wide sweeping cut. Kal blocked it with a cross strike, as expected, but Teo spun about and stood on the high ground with his back to the sun and his sword held in "sky guard" beside his head. Kal faked a rush, but Teo did not strike and the Serp took a step back.

  Each time Kal stepped into Teo's shadow, Teo shifted to put the sun back in his opponent's eyes. He wasted no time feeling sorry for the Serp. Kal had woken up that morning looking for trouble and had no complaints now that he had found it.

  They danced a few more passages, their feet skating as if on water. They would close, exchange three or four blows, then void the battle space. Now and then, voices arose from those watching from the viewing benches, commenting on this stroke or that guard, but Teo paid them no mind. Something more dramatic was needed than the moves they had learned from the yar if they were going to impress the kospathin.

  Teo swung in a horizontal slice and made a complete pirouette throwing a second stroke as he came around. Such moves were dramatic, but dangerous. One should never present one's back to a man with a long sharp sword.

  But Kal had dropped into a three-point, like a runner poised for the signal, and the blade passed harmlessly over his head. He sprang, sword extended in longpoint, and Teo backed out barely in time.

  Finally, Kal said, "Screw this shit," and charged with his sword to the sky. Teo had been waiting for this and took the blow on his aft with a Bull Guard. Kal went hard on the sword and Teo found himself in a bind. He swung Kal's fore out of line and twisted into a cut with the back edge of his sword, drawing first blood.

  This time, Kal did not back off, but swung from the opposite quarter and again put Teo in a bind. This time, Teo reached out and grabbed both swords by the blade at the point where they crossed, pulling hard and prying Rabbit-killer from an astonished Kal's hand. Because they had bound swords at the aft, the blades did not cut through Teo's thick leather gloves.

  Kal dropped to his knee and pulled a quillon dagger from his boot scabbard. He used the crossguard to catch Teo's stroke—and paused.

  For Teodorq had pulled his stroke.

  "So," Kal said. "Ya want it like that?"

  Teo smiled. "There's one song better than the two heroes who meet. Why can't we let them sing it?"

  "You ready to take that chance?"

  In answer, Teo tossed both swords aside and pulled his own dagger from his boot.

  "That's more like it," Kal said with a grin. "This is how two plainsmen fight. Face to face, close quarters." He paused again, then said, "I mean to avenge Chelwy. Blood for blood."

  Teo spread his arms. "He came on me too sudden. He had cast aside his scabbard."

  "Yeah, Chelwy was an obnoxious little twerp, but he was my kid brother. You know how that goes. Did he die well?"

  Teo remembered that Chelwy had died screaming and soiling himself. When he had tried to ambush Teo, he had never imagined himself as the slain. The last look on his face when the knife slid in had been one of vast surprise.

  "He fought well for a man so young," Teo lied. "Had he not pressed me so hard, I might not have had to kill him." In truth it had been Teo's own surprise and anger at being attacked and his own loss of control that had led to the slaying; but there was no point in confusing Kal with such details.

  "He never knew how to listen," Kal said. "Now he ain't listening to anyone anymore." Kal charged suddenly and Teo crouched into a dancer's crouch, spinning on his left leg and scything with his right. Kal fell and Teo leapt atop him. They seized each other's knife hand by the wrists.

  Kal threw a leg straddle and the two rolled across the grass flailing. The watching legionnaires gathered round in a circle shouting encouragement to both fighters until a call from the herald bade them open up for the First's view.

  "Blood for blood," whispered Kal. "Ya know what I gotta do."

  Teo had entwined his legs with Kal's so that the two of them seemed almost a single organism. He nodded and relaxed his grip on Kal's knife arm slightly. The blade touched his shoulder and ran like a line of fire down his arm. The blood ran hot.

  "Break," he said to Kal; but Kal hesitated. A deeper slice would cut Teo's bicep, maiming him. It was a sore temptation to a weak man.

  Teo led him not into temptation by executing a shrug-and-roll, escaping from the hold and whipping his knife to Kal's throat simultaneously with Kal's mirror move.

  "Well, now, Rabbit," said the Serp. "Looks like a tie."

  The next day, Teodorq and Kal, along with Sammi o' th' Eagles, were brought into the great hall before the kospathin. The prince spoke in the ironman yashiq and the Wisdom translated not only into plavver but also into a passable sprock.

  "He's pretty sharp for an old man," Kal said under his breath. "Still gripes me how he was picking up the sprock while he was teaching me bo-yashiq."

  A tall yellow-haired man with pale eyes struck the floor with his staff and said something Wisdom Sharèe Mikahali translated as, "Hear now the justice of Aya Herpstone, kospathin of Cliffside Keep."

  "Proverbial is his justice," cried the sidemen lining the hall. Teodorq suspected that anyone disagreeing with that proverb had long-since ceased to line the hall, but the cry had a ceremonial sound to it, like when the shamans sang upon the ancestors and the Folk responded with ancient lines.

  "Be it known that in a display of skill and bravery, the Men of the West have engaged in a fight to the death..."

  "Hey," muttered Sammi. "Leave me out of it."

  "... And while We of Cliffside Keep admire such pointless bravery, the offense over which they quarrel touches not on the honor of Cliffside Keep, House Tiger, or the Little Father of the North, and therefore We declare it null, void, and of no merit within Our holdings or those of the Little Father and his other children. We take all such offense on Our own head in mercy, and will regard any further attempt by Karakalan Vikeramof or Theodore Nagaramof to strike at one another, either directly or through such an intermediary as Sam Iggleson, as an offense against Our Mercy and against Our Own Person, to be punished as dogs are, at one grade above the Spike."

  Teodorq wondered if that was one grade better or worse than being impaled and decided that it was better not to ask. The lord evidently had other fates in mind for them than mere entertainment. He regarded Kal and Sammi from the corners of his eyes. The Serp glowered; Sammi seemed thoughtful.

  "Further, given that they have revealed themselves as fell fighters, it is Our desire that these three men be enrolled in our Foreign Legion and sent to scout Our enemies."

  It was a subtle move, a mere flick of the eyes, but the First glanced toward the Wisdom when he said that, and that was when Teodorq decided who the real chieftain of Cliffside Keep was. The kospathin was to all appearance himself a fell fighter. His muscles came from swinging that long sword from horseback; and his scars proved he did it well, for they were bold enough that anyone less expert would have died in the fight that won them. But the clever mind rules the
hale body and, as the bowmaster calls the shots on a hunt, the chief minister aimed his lord at targets that he chose.

  After the speech, they were walked through a fearsome oath calling upon numerous gods whose natures were unclear but whose threatened retributions were not. Even Kal went a little pale at the penalties foretold. They were, after all, on these gods' turf.

  Teodorq compared the oath to the one Jamly-the-ghost had given them in the name of the Commonwealth of Suns. There had been a threat behind them too, given that he and Sammi had been "unauthorized personnel," but the words had been higher and prouder and had not been stuffed with such dire warnings as to suggest mistrust. This alone told him much of the ways of the ironmen. Despite their talk of honor, oathbreakers must be common enough among them to warrant such sureties.

  Sammi grumbled. "Too many oath," he said. "Soon one oath break another."

  "Dontcha worry, Rabbit," Kal told Teodorq that night in barracks. "I given my word, and a Serp keeps his words. But I gotta worse problem now."

  "What's that?" asked Sammi o' th' Eagles as he stashed his kit under his bed and pulled the blankets off, for he preferred to lie on the floor. Soft bed make soft man, he had explained.

  "The First took Rabbit's crime on his own head. You heard it. Now I gotta kill the First. Ain't that a kick in the butt."

  Sammi grinned. "You get more in butt than kick, you try it."

  Teodorq told Sammi it would be hard to search out Iabran and Varucciyamen if they were stuck at Cliffside Keep. But he was pretty sure the starfolk's encampments did not lie back west and, while he did not doubt his ability to escape his captors even on unfamiliar ground, a good scout knew better than to dash headlong into unknown territory. There were other ways to learn how the land lay.

  Kal said, "So they're sending us to fight greens? I heard they fight with thunder and lightning."

  Teodorq sat on the edge of his bunk. "That can't be good."

  Sammi said, "We no hear of greens on the short grass."

  Teodorq smiled and crossed his legs at the ankles, coupled his hands behind his head. "Which means they're somewhere east of here. So it's just as well. We was going that way anyhow."

  Teodorq sunna Nagarajan did not believe that there was any longer a Commonwealth of Suns or that their commission meant anything; but he continued to paint the stripes across his biceps and would ask after the two starman towns whenever he encountered other men.

  (EDITOR'S NOTE: Teodorq sunna Nagarajan the Ironhand and Sammi o' th' Eagles have appeared previously in"The Journeyman: On the Short-Grass Prairie"[October 2012].)

  * * *

  The Homecoming

  J.T. Sharrah | 15335 words

  Illustrated by Abby Boeh

  1.

  The observation deck of the Mazabashi Inn was spacious, commanded a splendid view of the sea, and—to judge by the arrangement of the furniture—was a gathering place for antisocial solitaries. All of the chairs faced the same direction. They were deployed like the seats in a theater—not in conversational groupings but arrayed to accommodate an audience. The people who sat in them weren't primarily interested in each other. They were spectators who had come to see a show.

  "Never again," Escoli was saying. "It will never happen again. No doubt we'll witness other sunsets, and I'm sure they'll be lovely, but this sunset is unique. This is a fleeting moment of glory that won't be repeated—not ever, not in all of eternity. We'd be fools if we failed to celebrate it."

  Baldwin pointed to the pix-shooter that was strapped to Escoli's forearm. "So take a picture. Preserve it for posterity. What kind of a photojournalist would miss an opportunity like this?"

  Escoli made the snorting sound that was the Bukkaran equivalent of laughter. "You Terrans!" she chided. "You have no appreciation for the ephemeral. Preserve it? How? Take a snapshot of it? Ask it to smile for the camera?" She dismissed the suggestion with a flit of her f ingers. "No! Impossible! The evanescent can't be preserved. That's what makes it rare. That's why it's valuable."

  Baldwin responded to this unsought spate of information with a sigh of resignation. He didn't need Escoli to tell him that he was unenlightened. He wasn't such an ignoramus that he was ignorant of his own ignorance. Even now—after twenty years on Bukkara (closer to twenty-four by Terran reckoning)— he had learned just enough about Bukkaran psychology to know how little he knew. Their fascination with the transitory, for example. He had an intellectual grasp of it—assuming you could get a grasp on an elusive wisp of nothing-much that ceased to be as soon as it came into being—but he didn't feel it in his bones the way Bukkarans did. The most popular art form on Bukkara was the water sculpture. They were everywhere—fountains with randomized sprays that never formed the same pattern twice. Gardens, parks, plazas, arcades, atriums—no open space was complete without a water sculpture. They were deeply, profoundly meaningful to Bukkarans. Baldwin? He just thought they were kind of pretty.

  Escoli rose to her feet. "Here he comes," she said, stating the obvious as if it wasn't.

  A tall Bukkaran was approaching, his walk not so much a sequence of strides as a series of shuffles. Bukkarans didn't ordinarily pick up their feet and set them down—not unless they were running. Then they advanced in a succession of lurching bounds that covered a lot of ground very quickly indeed.

  Switching from Terran Standard to lisping Menduli, Escoli said: "Gregory Baldwin—permit me to make you acquainted with Tumanzu: my rulf hjulke." This identified Tumanzu as Escoli's first cousin: a male of the matrilineal moiety.

  Baldwin acknowledged the introduction and muttered an apology-in-advance for his faulty Menduli. His command of the dialect was actually fluent, but he still made occasional mistakes. He was firmly of the opinion that Menduli-speakers were endowed with an infallible defense against boredom. If nothing else, they could always contemplate the idiosyncrasies of their own irregular verbs.

  Tumanzu took the seat on Baldwin's left, settling into the embrace of the cushions hesitantly, as if testing to make sure that the chair would support his weight. Baldwin cleared his throat and inquired: "Is this your first visit to Izmir?"

  Tumanzu responded with a vacillation of his hand that meant both yes and no. "It might as well be. I have no recollection of being here before."

  "But you were?"

  "Yes. As a cub. My mother brought me with her when she came to Izmir on a business trip. Or so I'm told. I was too young to remember."

  "Let's hope that your stay will be more memorable this time. Escoli seems determined to make it so."

  Tumanzu inclined his head in Escoli's direction. "Yes. She has agreed to be my guide. It's good of her to do me this favor, and good of you to let her... what is the word? Vacation? Take a vacation?"

  "That's right. Think of it as a holiday that doesn't coincide with a holiday."

  "A leave of absence?"

  "Yes. Work is suspended for the person who's on vacation, and the people who aren't on vacation will soon need one because they have to work twice as hard to compensate for the work that isn't being done by the person who's vacationing."

  Escoli rolled her eyes. "Pay no attention to Greg," she smirked. "He's just vexed because he won't have a staff photographer at his beck and call. He doesn't want to admit that he can't get along without me."

  "I'll have to get along without you," Baldwin grumbled. "You're deserting your post. You're jumping ship."

  "The Izmir Herald isn't a ship, and—if it were—it would be in no danger of sinking." Escoli dispelled nonsense with a sweeping gesture. "Stop complaining. Paying workers not to work isn't one of our customs. A policy that foolish could only have originated on Terra. Don't blame me for taking advantage of it."

  Tumanzu had been listening to this exchange with mounting concern. "I don't want to be the cause of trouble," he said.

  Baldwin made calming motions with flattened palms. "You aren't. Escoli is quite right. As an employee of a Terran newspaper, she's entitled to a paid vacation." He sh
rugged. "Her absence will be a minor inconvenience—to me and to the other two reporters who gather news for the Herald —but we'll just have to make do with amateur photographers while our professional photographer is busy being an amateur tour guide."

  Escoli's expression was calculating. "I had no idea that my services were so indispensable," she drawled. "Remind me to ask for a raise when I return."

  Searching for a dexterous change of subject, Baldwin made the obvious choice. "We'll discuss it later," he said. He pointed. "There's the sight we came to see. Why don't we look at it?"

  The sunset was a wild extravaganza of kaleidoscopic colors. Baldwin felt as if they were watching a slow-motion film of a stained-glass window being shattered.

  Izmir was justifiably famous for its glorious sunsets. This was what observers gathered on the observation deck of the Mazabashi Inn to observe.

  To build a permanent platform from which to witness a spectacle cherished for its impermanence was typical of the Bukkarans. Like human beings, they weren't so much rational as rationalizing creatures. They frequently contradicted themselves, and would have been quick to contradict anyone who accused them of it.

  2.

  Escoli's pix-shooter wasn't really Escoli's. It didn't belong to her. It was the property of the Izmir Herald —a professional rig that had been issued to Escoli by her employer. When the shokiku—the constables—had completed their preliminary investigation, the camera was returned to the offices of the newspaper.

  Baldwin called it that—a news paper —even though it wasn't printed on paper and never had been. The Izmir Herald was actually a newscast. The text was transmitted daily and received by the Herald's subscribers on their comtotes, wristcoms, or voxviews. Be that as it may, Baldwin and his colleagues still referred to themselves as members of the "press," they used expressions like "go to press" and "stop the presses," and they spoke of "cameras," "photographers," "snapshots," and "capturing images on film"—terminology that should have been obsolete and would have been if journalists like Baldwin had abandoned it. But they hadn't. Some traditions die hard. As far as Baldwin was concerned, Escoli's digiscopic imager was a "camera," she'd used it to take "photographs," and he was, at present, examining the photographs stored in the camera's memory—the pictures Escoli had taken of her vacation.