Way Of The Clans

by Robert Thurston

  It had rained the night before and his boots seemed to sink into the muddy ground, as though it were a quicksand ready to swallow him up after he suffered the ignominy of defeat at Joanna's hands. No, he thought, it was not right to think that way. It was not the Clan way to envision defeat in any battle. Perhaps, though, it was the cadet way. From the time they fell out of their bunks in the morning until the time they were pushed back into the barracks late at night, cadets were made to feel low and inferior. Joanna and the others continually harped on the fact that only a few of them would make it to the final test, the Trial of Position that could win them promotion to warrior status and earn them a specific rank according to how successful their trial was.

  Joanna stared at him balefully for a long time, displaying contempt like her own personal banner. Then she abruptly turned and walked back to the rim, where Ellis awaited her with a bundle in his arms. Taking the bundle from him, she lay it on the ground. It was wrapped in heavy brocaded cloth whose surface depicted images of swooping falcons in bright colors and stark design. To underline the sacredness of the intriguing package, Joanna began to unwrap it with slow, deliberate motions, as if according to an ancient rite. When the corners of the cloth lay flat to the ground, Aidan still could not perceive the contents. Looking up at Ellis and receiving a nod from him, Joanna respectfully lifted two identical objects from the cloth and held them gingerly in her arms.

  The rest of the sibko had left the classroom, and with Dermot hovering nervously behind them and moving around the diameter of the circle, they watched the central actions intently. Aidan spotted Marthe staring only at him, her eyes so cool that, with the empathy they shared, he could easily see her anxiety.

  Joanna stood up. Approaching Aidan, she held the pair of objects over her head, yelling to the crowd, "You may have seen whips before, children, but none like these." She cracked both whips, and their sound was explosive. "These thongs are of the toughest leather and their handles are perfectly balanced. Not only that, but each is equipped with a guidance system that, like a missile, finds its target, even when your arm is so weakened that you can only flick out the whip feebly. A useful personal weapon when you are faced with survival on a backwater planet or when your 'Mech is down and the enemy is closing in on you. Like so." She leaned down close to the ground and, with no perceptible wrist or arm movement, sent the whip thong flying toward Aidan's feet. Before he could move out of its way, it had wrapped around both ankles and flipped him over. He landed on the ground with some impact, and the pain of it surged up his spine. Some of the members of the sibko laughed, but it was not mocking laughter, it was a laugh of relief at not being the victim of the demonstration. At one time or another, each one had been knocked over by some attack or other by a training officer, and they did not at all mind watching it happen to someone else. (More than once Aidan had wondered whether the tactics of their trainers were not intended to strike at the sibko's closeness, to dislodge them from long-held loyalties.)

  As Aidan sat up, the whip thong still wrapped around his legs, he saw the mix of terrible emotions that had come onto the faces of his sibkin. Bret's look was scornful, a judgment on Aidan's penchant for getting into trouble. Peri's was mocking, an I-hope-you-really-get-it-this-time kind of look. Endo was smug, probably thinking that he was punished in the Circle much less than Aidan or any of the others. Orilna was more withdrawn, but she already had poised her body, as she often did, into a battle pose. She would, while standing still, imitate the bodily moves of Joanna, whom she admired beyond logic. Freda, who drew punishment almost as much as Aidan, was already grimacing, ready to absorb all the pain empathically. Only Marthe's face showed much concern for Aidan's plight. She hated Falconer Joanna almost as much as he did.

  Behind the agitated group, Falconer Commander Ter Roshak stood impassively, as he usually did. He rarely participated in training but frequently observed it. Although he usually did not speak to cadets, it was said that he called in the training officers each night and gave them trenchant critical lectures laced with scorn and obscenity. Every once in a while during the training period, Aidan had looked up to see Ter Roshak staring piercingly at him, a suggestion of anger in his eyes. His strange face often seemed to take on different looks, different aspects, as mountainsides did during the changing light of day.

  As Joanna pressed a button on the handle of her whip, the thongs were abruptly released from Aidan's ankles. They glided back toward Joanna, who was clearly guiding their flight. At the end of the trip, the thong straightened and slid back into the handle. "A beautiful hurting machine, eh, class? Repeat the words after me. A beautiful hurting machine."

  "A BEAUTIFUL HURTING MACHINE."

  "If you think kill, you will kill."

  "IF WE THINK KILL, WE WILL KILL."

  "If you have a boot, you crush your enemy."

  "IF WE HAVE A BOOT, WE CRUSH OUR ENEMY."

  "If you have a hand, you strangle your enemy."

  "IF WE HAVE A HAND, WE STRANGLE OUR ENEMY."

  "If you have a club, you bludgeon your attacker."

  "IF WE HAVE A CLUB, WE BLUDGEON THE ATTACKER."

  "If you have a knife, you stab your foe."

  "IF WE HAVE A KNIFE, WE STAB OUR FOE."

  "If you have a gun, you shoot it."

  "IF WE HAVE A GUN, WE SHOOT IT."

  "If you have a tank, you roll it over the opposing ranks"

  "IF WE HAVE A TANK, WE ROLL IT OVER THE OPPOSING RANKS."

  "If you have an aerofighter, you bomb them."

  "IF WE HAVE AN AEROFIGHTER, WE BOMB THEM."

  "If you have a 'Mech, you win."

  "IF WE HAVE A 'MECH, WE WIN."

  "You are always the victor."

  "WE ARE ALWAYS THE VICTOR."

  "When the blood is spilled, the bloodname is earned."

  "WHEN THE BLOOD IS SPILLED, THE BLOOD-NAME IS EARNED."

  "We are the Clan."

  "WE ARE THE CLAN."

  At the end she held the pair of whips high over her head, harsh beams of light coming off the metal studs in her falconer gloves, and Aidan was certain that her voice made the outer walls of the school building shake. If not for his intense control over his physical body, it would certainly have made him tremble.

  But he no longer feared Falconer Joanna. At first he had, but each insult, each beating, cut down fear rather than increased it. Ter Roshak, on the other hand—Ter Roshak, who had never addressed Aidan, for all the times he had stared at him—was for Aidan an object of continual fear who even terrorized his dreams.

  Turning toward Aidan, who now stood, Joanna tossed him one of the whips. She purposely made the arc so that it would fall just short of Aidan's easy reach. But he was used to her devious ways and instinctively took a step forward. With an awkward lunge that almost made him lose his balance and fall, he caught the whip by its handle. Surprised by how light it felt, he quickly learned how to position his fingers, with his thumb locating the simple controls. Setting his face in a proud grimace, he pressed the button that released the thong and watched it fly upward, toward the sky, the line of it sure, its graceful arcing a pleasure to watch. Aidan felt a slight vibration in the handle and heard its quiet hum. Flicking his wrist and making the whip snap, he felt as if he had been using this weapon for ages. Yet, it was the first time he had held a whip of any kind.

  "Look toward me, filth."

  The haziness of the air around them, which made the sun seem to fill the sky, made Joanna indistinct. Her body had no clear outline, her features the vagueness of an unfinished portrait. But the whip she was now raising was as detailed as a technical drawing in a manual. Aidan almost expected to find lines leading away from it to outlined boxes containing sentences of technical explanatory detail.

  Joanna's arm barely moved as she flicked her wrist and sent the thong of the whip flying toward him. It came so fast that he scarcely felt its physical contact as it grazed against his cheek. It stung terribly, but he used his best resources of c
ontrol to keep his face from displaying any reaction. Touching his face with the back of his hand, he felt the small cut. When he looked at the hand, he saw a trace of blood along his knuckles. Bret, who hated the sight of blood, might have blanched if similarly cut, but Aidan allowed his mouth to form a pleased smile.

  "You do a good imitation of a piece of animated garden statuary, filth. Will you fight or are you the classic coward portrayed by those monuments?"

  Aidan shrugged. The shrug was a calculated insult, a wordless response to Joanna's words. Any hint of defiance infuriated her. She flicked out the weapon again, but this time Aidan was prepared. Acting instinctively, he brought up his whip, tabbed the button and allowed the thong to entangle with Joanna's and divert it away from its target, apparently the middle of his body. She cursed under her breath and tugged the whip backward. Because her whip was tied up with Aidan's, she was almost able to yank Aidan's whip out of his grip, but he, gaining quickly in knowledge of the whip's controls, released its contact with Joanna's and drew it back toward him. It settled about his feet in a symmetrical coil. There was no time to take another moment to learn, Aidan realized. He must attack before she did, even if he was unsure how to manipulate the weapon. Drawing up the handle so that it was virtually aimed at Joanna, he pressed the button while thrusting forward. The whip thong sailed across the gap between them. Though slightly overshot and slightly too high, it nevertheless made contact with the side of Joanna's forehead, rocking her sideways. She brought her own whip around, snapping her arm with the same fierceness as the whip's own snap. Its thong wrapped around his neck and jerked him forward. At the same time, she used her free hand to catch the thong of his whip as it descended toward her. It was an astonishing move, one Aidan could admire even while in the midst of being strangled by a narrow strip of the finest leather available to a warrior for anything other than a uniform.

  Though Joanna had obviously relaxed her grip on her whip, the pressure of the thong itself did not diminish. It slowly squeezed tighter. Aidan felt his eyes begin to bulge out. Everything around him was taking on a firmer definition, a more pronounced outline. Outside the Circle, the sibko appeared to share the same frightened expression. He sensed Marthe tensing, wanting to rush into the Circle, but the sanctity of the Circle would hold her back. Ter Roshak studied the fight intently, but his gaze was cold as ever.

  Aidan found himself consciously trying to force his tongue backward as though, in some mysterious way, it could intrude itself into his slowly closing throat and somehow reverse the impending strangulation.

  As Joanna walked toward him, her grip on the whip loose except for the tight hold her thumb kept on the control button, her eyes were icy. The offer of death was in them, with no promise of mourning. And why should she mourn? She had often said she could see a cadet die in a trial or combat within the Circle of Equals without caring one iota about the corpse's former skills, potential, or training achievements. It only took one loss, one mistake, one flaw, one irritable, murderous training officer to mark the end of a cadet or at least flush him or her out.

  Aidan was surprised by how coolly he was perceiving his situation, even as the bright sun above him seemed to be slowly going out. He tried to find some air someplace, but there was none.

  "Stop this, Joanna!" someone cried. Her eyes became fierce and it was apparent she would happily arrange the speaker's demise next. Aidan had enough presence of mind to look down at the whip handle, where she still held onto the button. The flesh around her thumbnail was very white so that the natural color of the skin around it was like a dark frame.

  At that moment, the world seemed about to blink out as Aidan began to lose his sight.

  Then the pressure stopped and he felt the thong recoil off his shoulder as it fell away. Eyes closed now, he felt his knees buckle and an overwhelming need to fall came over him. He resisted it. He could not fall at Falconer Joanna's feet. That would please her too much. Somehow, straining leg muscles, overtaxing back muscles, obtaining some strength from the sheer fantasy of the effort, he remained standing.

  As he gradually opened his eyes, he heard the speaker again and recognized the voice as Falconer Ellis': "You kill too easily, Joanna. It is not right, not for this one. This one will surpass us all."

  Ellis now stood beside Joanna, his hand on her wrist. The whip, apparently forced out of her hands by him, lay like a docile snake at his feet. It was a surprising move on his part, a violation of Circle procedure and Clan protocol. Nobody was allowed to enter the Circle during a battle, except for Falconer Commander Ter Roshak.

  The two training officers seemed to go out of focus for Aidan. He could barely concentrate on them. But he had to. If he looked away, he might lose consciousness and wind up on the ground, his body coiled as ignominiously as the fallen whip.

  Suddenly someone grabbed his arm. His head turned sideways laboriously, as if his neck muscles had gone rusty. He looked into the badly sculptured face of Falconer Commander Ter Roshak. Glancing down, Aidan saw that his arm was being clutched by Ter Roshak's false hand. That might explain the pain that was now surging through his arm, unless of course it was simple weakness that would have suffered from the least grip. In a way, Aidan was glad it was Ter Roshak's prosthetic hand that held him. He would have had to try to wriggle out of anyone else's grip; with Ter Roshak, it was a clear impossibility so Aidan could relax in his bondage and merely wait to see what would happen next.

  What happened next was that Joanna wheeled upon Ellis, in her eyes and voice a hatred so intense that even Aidan, groggy as he was, could see that the emotion was not born at just this moment. It had been building up for some time.

  "An honor duel then, Falconer Ellis?" Joanna said. "It does not have to be."

  Ellis' response was mere ritual, the offer of an opportunity to settle a dispute without conflict. This allowed a warrior who was either under the influence of an overwhelming emotion, a bad substance, or a mistaken notion to withdraw honorably from the issue of the duel. Warriors, however, rarely took a step back, and Joanna had always made it clear that a weak act of honor was to her an act of dishonor, whatever the Clan codes said.

  "An honor duel then?" she said.

  "Honor duel," Ellis responded, nodding.

  "Mechs fully armed."

  "No. The woods, a single weapon, your choice."

  "No. No weapons. Just you and me. Here. Now. To the death."

  There was a slight hesitation on Ellis' part before he said, in a voice louder and firmer than hers, "To the death."

  "Well bargained and done."

  "Well bargained and done."

  Aidan had never heard the bidding process spoken so rapidly, concluded so easily. There had been no sense of strategy, just offers from instinct.

  "See what you have done, cadet?" Ter Roshak whispered. "Fate allows fools like you to precipitate events that end in futile catastrophe."

  Aidan wanted to protest that he had not precipitated anything, that Joanna had wrenched him out of a classroom for her sport. But it would be his head to address the Falconer Commander, especially when Ter Roshak was in such a foul mood.

  "Fool!" Ter Roshak cried. He tightened his grasp of Aidan's arm, then lifted him off the ground and hurled him away, over the line of the Circle of Equals, into the midst of his fellow sibkin, who now backed away from him as if he were suddenly diseased. Even Marthe kept her distance, her feet shuffling nervously as though she could not decide whether to direct them toward Aidan or away from him. He hated that. Before, she would never have considered away.

  6

  For a long while Aidan just sat on the ground, his gaze fixed on an odd pattern of rocks that seemed deliberately centered between his legs. Aware that no one in the sibko was allowed to comfort him, and probably did not want to, he ignored them by concentrating on getting his head cleared and on watching the rocks. His head stubbornly refused to clear, and his vision went in and out of focus. Whenever the rocks came into focus, he tried to look u
p to see what was happening around him and in the Circle of Equals, but the slightest movement of his head returned him to dizziness. The sensation was something like looking into firelight: everything became hazy and there was pain where intense illumination struck the retina. He would have tried to shake his head clear, but after doing it once, the pain it caused had nearly knocked him out completely.

  The pattern of the rocks was irregular, which fascinated Aidan. He realized that if one were to isolate any group of rocks strewn across the ground of this exceedingly rocky planet, one would find any number of irregular patterns. The regular pattern would be the exception. Nevertheless, everything else about life was in such a fixed pattern that he never, until now, thought much about irregularities. Growing up in the sibko, days and nights were arranged, schedules were kept, a regular process of regular progress was meticulously noted and recorded so that a warrior's codex, his or her lifetime in a collection of data, could be maintained. If this entire process were to be significantly violated, Aidan was certain that the Clan would devise some other pattern to replace it. Patterns were all, all was pattern. Had not Dermot said that last week? The sibko itself was a pattern, created out of patterns in a gene, itself a pattern in a cell. Their differences were minimal, their similarities praiseworthy. A sibko joke: DNA means Don't Need Anything. (The use of the forbidden contraction seemed, to childish minds, a bit of rebellion, and they loved to say it.) They did not need anything because all was planned for them. Their lives were table arrangements, utensils in the right place, at the right angles next to a perfectly arranged set of plates. Training on Ironhold merely continued the regular pattern.