As the young trainee toppled backward, Thorella snagged his left foot with the hook and yanked it toward him. Eustus hit the log with a loud crack; had he not been wearing a helmet, he probably would have fractured his skull.
Grinning like a death’s head, Thorella contemptuously kicked Eustus’s unconscious body off the log, sending him tumbling into the water below where he was retrieved by two waiting trainees who had already taken their plunge.
The sergeant major frowned slightly, but said nothing. He held his silence not because Thorella was an officer – Aquino’s power as senior enlisted man in this camp on Quantico far overshadowed the captain’s – but because he believed that a bloody nose here and there helped to toughen his trainees for the deadly fighting that awaited them among the stars: if they couldn’t handle this, they would never be able to handle combat. The captain had overstepped the bounds somewhat with Camden, but not so far that any action could really be taken against him. But Aquino would be watching. And he wished that Thorella did not appear to enjoy himself so much.
“Buddha,” Reza heard someone whisper in the silence that fell over the trainees who waited their turn with the troll who guarded the bridge. It was the first remark of a hushed torrent of resigned commentary: “This is bullshit.” “I can’t believe they’re letting this guy get away with this.” “Oh, man, we’re going to get our asses creamed.”
And, what Reza understood to be the classic epithet: “Oh, shit.”
He considered their comments, as well as what he had just seen. He himself was not overly impressed with Thorella’s method, as it was trivial gameplay in terms of his own experience. What offended him was the reasoning behind Thorella’s tactics: it was not to instruct or inspire, to make the trainees more competent in battle. Even in Reza’s first days in the kazha, while the tresh were often cruel, they did not spar with him without useful purpose. No, he thought, Thorella’s actions were born of his personal hatred and contempt for those around him. More specifically for Eustus and, as he was well aware, for himself.
Thorella made a theater of yawning and stretching before he called out, “Who’s next? Darman! Get out here. I–”
Before the young woman, who was clearly trying to mask her fright, could step up, she felt Reza’s hand on her arm, gently pushing her aside as he stepped forward.
“I request the honor to fight you, captain,” he said formally. Reza had decided that a lesson in humility was in order.
“You understand the rules, trainee?” the sergeant major said before Thorella could reply to Reza’s challenge, but it was more a statement than a question. He did not want a bloodbath on his hands, regardless of who started it. Thorella was much bigger than Reza, but he was not sure that size and the captain’s appreciable skill would make up for the unknowns that presented themselves with the younger man.
“I believe I understand Captain Thorella’s rules, Sergeant Major Aquino,” Reza replied carefully. “I shall obey them.”
Aquino’s eyebrow arched. Captain Thorella’s rules, he thought. This should be interesting. “Very well. Continue.”
“All right, you little slime-bag half-breed,” Thorella whispered under his breath. “Let’s see just what color blood you’ve got.”
Reza ignored the stick one of the other trainees offered to him.
“Take your weapon, Gard,” Thorella ordered.
“I have no need of it,” Reza replied as he stepped onto the log. He felt clumsy in his combat boots and exposed wearing the flimsy camouflage uniform rather than his armor, but he thought he would be sufficiently agile for the job at hand. He waved away the helmet one of the trainees offered him.
“This is more like it,” Thorella said, impressed, as he removed his own helmet, tossing it aside. Even if Gard was a loser, he thought, at least he knows how to go down right. But he was also eager to see how Reza would look after the unpadded grip of the metal bar had been smashed across his shoulder blade. Or the side of his exposed skull.
Reza walked about a third of the way out onto the log and stopped, his eyes never leaving Thorella. His scarred, tan face was calm, his callused hands hanging at his sides.
“Well, come on, freak,” Thorella said, his mouth a cruel smile that split the lower half of his face like a crevasse.
Reza offered him a hand gesture that he had seen used by some of the other trainees. He did not know what the extended middle finger meant, but understood that it was entirely offensive in nature.
“You arrogant little prick,” Thorella said as he made a lightning-quick thrust at Reza’s midsection. Had it connected, he probably would have broken some ribs.
But Reza had somehow disappeared, and Thorella found himself flying through space, propelled by the enormous force he had put behind his own attack. “Shit!” he hissed as he fell, face-first onto the log, scrabbling desperately for a grip before he fell into the water. The hooked and padded stick slipped from his grip and disappeared into the stream with a splash, accompanied by a series of gasps from the watching trainees.
Quickly regaining his feet, Thorella found Reza standing casually a couple meters away, behind him, watching with that stare of his. But now he also wore a slight smile – something he had relearned from Jodi – on his face.
Thorella was incensed, but he kept it well beneath the surface, in the same place he kept all the feelings that seethed within him that could not be exposed to the light of public scrutiny. “Not bad, punk,” he said amicably as he flashed a wolfish smile at the onlookers. I’m going to tear your guts out for that, he screamed to himself.
Reza said nothing as he waited.
Thorella moved forward cautiously, his body fluidly transitioning into his favorite hand-to-hand combat stance, edge-on to Reza, his arms raised to their strike/defend positions.
Aquino was growing concerned. Thorella’s stance was not one he wanted to see practiced here: the technique he was intending to use was for killing only, and was only learned and practiced under very carefully supervised conditions. Still, he hesitated to say anything. Just as much as everyone else, he was curious as to what Reza would do.
Thorella was nearly within striking range. He was not planning any feints or drawn-out sparring contests. He wanted to hurt Reza, hurt him bad, hurt him now–.
Thorella’s cruel smile vanished, to be replaced with the feral snarl of a rabid animal. He darted forward with agility amazing for so bulky a body, making a vicious thrust at Reza’s midsection with his left hand, closed in a rock-hard fist.
Reza deflected the blow without discernible effort and stepped aside, his booted feet solidly balanced on the sloping side of the log. He felt it roll slightly and compensated for it; the log was not fixed in place. A few chips of wood fell into the running water below.
In this way Reza entertained Thorella for a while, parrying the larger man’s thrusts while allowing himself to be pushed toward one end of the log, ostensibly cornered.
“Stand and fight, you bastard,” Thorella snarled. “You’ve got nowhere else to run, now.”
The fist that lashed out like a knife toward Reza’s throat would have killed or crippled him had it found its mark. Instead, it found the wall of Reza’s palm, his fingers closing around Thorella’s larger hand like a vise. The sound of the impact echoed over the streambed like a rifle shot. Thorella tried to pull away, but quickly discovered that to do so was impossible: it was as if his hand had been set in concrete with reinforcing steel around it. He had never encountered a grip so strong.