Fascinated into inaction by what they saw, Jodi and Braddock watched the Kreelan phalanx converge on the mysterious figure that awaited them.
La’ana-Ti’er stepped forward from the group of warriors who had come in search of combat. Kneeling, she saluted her superior. Behind her, the other warriors kneeled as one.
“Greetings, Reza of the Desh-Ka,” she said humbly. “Honored are we that you are among us, and saddened are we that your song no longer sings in our veins.” She bowed her head. “To cross swords with you is an honor of which I am unworthy.”
Reza regarded her quietly for a moment. He was chilled by the emptiness he felt at no longer being able to hear in his heart what she and the others could, at being unable to feel the Empress’s will as a palpable sensation. Although he had possessed that ability for only a brief period, its absence now was nearly unbearable. The severed braid that had been his spiritual lifeline to the Empress throbbed like a violated nerve.
“Rise, La’ana-Ti’er,” he told her. They clasped arms in greeting, as if they had known each other their entire lives, had been comrades, friends, as if they were not about to join in a battle to kill one another. “It is Her will.” He was left to interpret Her desires from his own memories of what once was. With his banishment to this place, wherever it was, all he had left were his memories and the single, lonely melody that sang to him in the voice of his own spirit.
La’ana-Ti’er looked upon him with respectful and sympathetic eyes. She did not pity him, for pity was beyond her emotional abilities; she mourned him. “Should you perish on the field of battle this day,” she told him, “it will bring me no joy, no glory. I will fight you as I have fought all others, but I pray to Her that mine shall not be the sword to strike you down and cast you into darkness.” She dropped her eyes.
“My thanks, warrior,” he told her quietly, “and may thy Way be long and glorious.” He drew in a breath. “Let it begin.”
Jodi blinked at the sudden violence that erupted on the bridge. One moment, the Kreelans who had come to finish them off were all bowing in front of the strange man who had come to her. In the next there was nothing to see but a whirlwind of clashing swords and armor. A memory came to her from her days as a child on Terra, when a neighbor boy released a single black ant into the midst of a nest of red ones. The savagery and intensity she had seen in that tiny microcosm of violence was an echo of the bloody chaos she was witnessing now. The church reverberated with the crash of steel upon steel, the cries of blood lust and pain raising gooseflesh on her arms.
“What the hell’s going on?” Braddock whispered, his eyes glued to the binoculars. “Lord of All, they’re fighting each other!”
“Can you see him?” Jodi asked. Her eyesight was phenomenal, but the distance was just too great to make out any details in the raging rabble that had consumed the old stone bridge. All she could see was a swirling humanoid mass, with a body plummeting – hurled might be a better word, she thought – now and again from the bridge like a carelessly tossed stone. She had lost sight of the man after the first second or two as he waded into the Kreelans’ midst, his sword cutting a swath of destruction before him.
“Yeah… No… What the hell?” Braddock wiped his eyes with his hands before looking again through the binoculars. “I see him in one place, then he just seems to pop up in another. Damn, but this is weird, lieutenant.” He turned to her. “Should we go take a closer look?”
“How much ammo have we got?” she asked.
Braddock gave her a grim smile. “After we redistributed last night, three rounds per rifle and a handful of sidearm ammunition that isn’t worth shit. Everybody’s got their bayonets fixed for the rest of it.”
Jodi sighed, still concentrating on the scene being played out on the bridge. It was no worse than she expected. “Let’s do it.”
Braddock turned to the Marines now clustered behind them. “ALL RIGHT!” he boomed. “MOVE OUT!”
Twenty-two Marines and one marooned naval flight officer burst from the safety of the church’s stone walls and began to move in a snaking skirmish line toward where the unexpected battle still raged at fever pitch.
Reza paid no attention to his eyes and ears, for he had no real need of them at the moment. His spirit could sense his surroundings, sense his opponents far better. He was living in a state of semi-suspended time as the battle went on, his opponents appearing to move in slow motion, giving him time to analyze and attack with totally inhuman efficiency, his body and mind acting far outside the normal laws that governed physical existence. His fellow warriors knew that they would die at his hand, but none of them would ever have dreamed of turning their backs upon an opportunity to face a Desh-Ka in a battle to the death. It was unspeakably rare to engage in such a contest since the Empire had been born; the Empress had sought external enemies to fight, allowing Her children only to fight for honor among themselves in the Challenge, without intentionally killing one another except in the most extreme of circumstances. To face one so skilled, regardless of whether they lived or died, would bring much honor to the Empress and their Way.
Now their blood keened with the thrill of combat, and as they died, slain upon Reza’s sword, their spirits joined the host that awaited them and welcomed them into the Afterlife. By ranks they charged the warrior priest who for the briefest of times had been a part of their people, throwing themselves into his scything blade like berserkers bent upon self-destruction. Time and again they converged upon him in a ring, swords and axes and pikes raised to attack, and time and again he destroyed them. There was no sorrow in his soul for their passing, save that they would no longer know the primal power of battle, and never again could bring glory to Her name through the defeat of an able foe.
At last, it was over. His great sword still held at the ready, Reza surveyed the now-quiet scene of carnage around him. There were no more opponents to fight, no one else to kill. The bridge was slick with the blood that still poured from the dead Kreelans’ veins, blood that turned the churning white water of the river below to a ghastly crimson swirl. La’ana-Ti’er’s lifeless body lay nearby, her hand pressed to the hole in her breast, just above her heart, where Reza’s sword had found its mark.
Replacing his bloodied weapon in the scabbard on his back, he knelt next to her. He saw Esah-Zhurah’s face on the woman sprawled beside him, and a terrible realization struck him. He knew that he would see his mate’s face upon every warrior he fought, and would feel the pain of loneliness that now tore at his heart, that burned like fire in his blood, for every moment of his life. Worse, he knew that she would be enduring the same pain, and would never again sense his love, or feel his touch.
He had touched her for the last time but a short while ago, and already it seemed like an eternity.
He bowed his head and wept.
“My God,” someone whispered.
Only a few minutes after Jodi, Braddock, and the others had reached the village wall, only a hundred meters or so from the church, the battle was over. The Marines who now overlooked the scene on the bridge were not new to battle and its attendant horrors, but none of them had ever witnessed anything like this. Even Braddock, a veteran of eight years of hard campaigning ashore and on the ships of the fleet, had to look away from what he saw. Fifty warriors, perhaps more, lay dead upon the gore-soaked bridge, or were now floating downstream toward the distant Providence Sea. They had ceased to be a threat to the inhabitants of Rutan, and Braddock seriously doubted that there were any more to contend with, except maybe injured warriors who would only kill themselves to prevent capture.