Fifteen
Morning came, and the horizon shone a brilliant ruby red that would gradually lighten to the pastel magenta of full daylight. The wind was still, and probably would remain so throughout the day, keeping the ripe odors of the magthep pens away from the arenas.
But on this day, even the most malodorous emanations would not have concerned the throng that now gathered in and around the five arenas of the kazha, for today was a special day indeed.
For the first time in many cycles, the tresh would have the opportunity to face an opponent without the intercession of a judge; victory would be measured only by who survived the match. Not all of the combats were to be fought thus, only the ones in which the human was involved. But that alone served to sharpen the competition in the other combats, the other tresh battling for the honor of facing him in the arena. To kill him before the watching eyes of the Empress would be a tremendous honor, and to die by his hands would only be slightly less so. For few of the tresh who had trained with him considered him an animal any longer. He was a formidable warrior in his own right, and had even trained many of the novices.
The Empress stood now on the dais of the central arena. This arena hosted the first and last combats of the Challenge, with the other four arenas coming into play as needed. Thousands of onlookers were gathered, coming from kazhas all over the planet. Even warriors from the Fleet and the Settlements had come to see the spectacle, having received word that a human was about to fight in this, the last Challenge a warrior faced before her spiritual and societal coming of age. And as the mighty gong of the Kal’ai-Il sounded the first tone of the day, thousands watched a lone figure step onto the packed sand of the central arena to face the Empress.
Reza’s stride was controlled, precise as he ventured forward toward where the Empress stood upon the elevated stone dais. He stopped before Her and thrust the sword he held in his right hand into the sand before he knelt and bowed his head to Her. He wore not the standard matte black combat armor that had always protected him in the Challenges he had fought before this day, but glistening ceremonial armor, no less functional than its less-enchanting counterpart, that the Kreela wore on special occasions. The cobalt blue rune that signified his kazha glowed from the swirling blackness of his breastplate, and the silver metal talons of his gauntlets, polished to perfection, glittered in the sun’s growing light. His hair, drawn into the intricate braids demanded by custom, was entwined about his upper arms like coiled serpents, with enough slack to allow him full movement.
Beside him, the sword towered from the sand like a sharp-edged obelisk, the dark runes inscribed on the broad blade by Pan’ne-Sharakh’s ancient hands telling the tale of his life since coming to the Empire, of the love he and Esah-Zhurah shared. Perhaps to give his despairing soul a glimmer of hope, much of the sword’s blade still was bare, begging perhaps for the tale of their lives to continue, for more verses to be added to their own Book of Time. The golden hilt blazed like bloody fire from atop its tower of living Kreelan steel.
After checking on Esah-Zhurah one last time, giving her a final kiss as she lay sleeping, Reza had asked the priestess if he might be allowed the honor of fighting in the first combat, foregoing the normal random selections. Tesh-Dar had agreed, and now he waited for the lottery that would call forth his first opponent.
Another tone sounded from the Kal’ai-Il, and Tesh-Dar reached into the massive clay urn at the center of the dais to draw out the first name in the lottery that would begin the single-round elimination combats. Without looking at it, she passed it to the Empress.
“Korai-Nagath,” She called in a voice that commanded countless billions of souls across the stars, “enter the arena.”
A murmur of disappointment went up through the gathered crowd as the peers discovered they would have to wait for their turn at the human.
In the meantime, a warrior who stood half a head taller than Reza, and whom he had been training in swordcraft over the last cycle, entered the arena. Her pride was evident in her posture and the measured cadence of her stride. It was her third Challenge.
She knelt next to Reza, facing the Empress, and planted her sword and pike – her favorite weapons – in the sand beside her as she saluted her monarch.
The Empress nodded Her head in acknowledgment, then looked upon the assemblage. “As it has been, and so shall it always be, let the Challenge begin.”
“In Thy name, let it be so,” the throng echoed with its thousands of voices, their fists crashing against the breastplates they had worn nearly since birth.
Reza and Korai-Nagath stood and retrieved their weapons from the sand, then proceeded to opposite ends of the arena and turned to face one another.
“Begin,” the Empress commanded.
The two warriors stood for a moment, sizing up one another, trying to match their own strengths against the other’s known or suspected weaknesses. Each was heavily armed, in part because the savage battles that were fought on these sands were seldom decided by a single weapon, but also because the weapons first carried into the arena were all that could be used throughout the Challenge. Should a sword or knife break, or a shrekka miss its mark, there would be no replacement. Likewise, except for stanching the flow of blood from one’s eyes, there was no medical treatment unless the challenger wished to forfeit the match. And that was one option none of the combatants today would have accepted.
Reza had no choice in the matter.
After only a moment’s consideration, Reza hefted his sword and began a wary advance, his quarry doing likewise. She had favored her pike, as he knew she would, and was now moving forward to meet him.
Reza’s heart began to thunder in his chest, his blood liquid fire in his veins as the sword became as light as a feather in his hand. The melody that had burst forth while he was fighting the genoth was back now, and he seized upon it quickly before it could overwhelm him. He channeled the energy as he moved forward, and his eyes gleamed with the cold flames that had taken him.
Korai-Nagath suddenly whirled, releasing a shrekka directed at Reza’s chest. Rolling to the ground, Reza heard the weapon slice through the air a meter away and restrained the impulse to respond in kind. He had only three of the precious weapons, and once used, they would be gone. Korai-Nagath fought well for her stage of training, but Reza knew that she was fatally outclassed.
He spiraled in closer and closer, and only when he was within range of her pike did she realize her mistake in choosing it rather than the sword that now stood far behind her in the sand like a headstone. The pike, lethal in experienced hands and the right situation, was far too flimsy to parry the slashing attacks of Reza’s sword. With nothing left in her hands but an arm’s length of useless pole, she charged Reza with a knife in one hand and bared talons upon the other, a cry of passionate fury upon her lips.
The cry ended as Reza’s sword pierced her breastplate directly over her heart. The two held each other for a moment in a macabre embrace, the scarlet stained steel of Reza’s weapon protruding from her armored back, glistening in the gathering light before he gently laid her upon the sands. Silently, he pulled his weapon from her breast, drawing the flat of the blade across his other arm, a signal of his first kill.