The Hand of Kahless
Page 42
“Wait!” Kahless shouted suddenly, as the cheers began to die down. “Stop! What in the name of our ancestors are we doing?”
The throng grew quiet, peering at him through faces caked with dirt and blood. What sort of question is that? they must have wondered.
“Are we insane?” the outlaw asked. “Just because we have triumphed in a few small skirmishes, does that make us think we can win a war? Molor is no petty despot, cowering in his keep. He is the master of all he sees, power incarnate, the hand that clutches the throat of the world entire!”
There were protests, some of them heartwarmingly savage. But Kahless had more to say. As it happened, a lot more.
“And who are we to dare this?” he bellowed. “Not soldiers, not warriors, only old men and children who have become skilled at pretending. We have learned to fool ourselves. We have learned to believe we can tear down the mightiest tree in the forest, when all we have in our hands are our fathers’ rusted d’k tahgmey!”
“No!” cried a thousand voices.
“Lies!” thundered a thousand more.
“We are warriors!” they rumbled. “Warriors!”
“For that matter,” Kahless roared, “why should we fight at all? For honor? For dignity? We have none of these things—and we deserve none! We are outlaws and worse, less than the dirt beneath the tyrant’s feet!”
“More lies!” came the thunderous reply.
“We are Klingons!” they stormed.
“Molor will fall!”
“For honor!”
“For freedom!”
And on and on, one shout building on another, until they were all one cry of rage and purpose, one savage chorus with but a single idea burning in their minds—to tear down the one who had brought them so much misery. To pry Molor loose from his empire and grind his bones to dust.
And as if in support, the skies answered them, crashing and lightning and pelting them with rain. But the rebels didn’t budge. They stood there, their hearts raised as high as their voices, and let the water from the heavens run over them and cleanse them.
Kahless smiled, but only to himself. They had needed their spirits bolstered after such a hard fought and bloody battle. And with the power he had discovered in himself, he had done what was necessary.
Molor might beat them yet. He might show them the depth of their foolishness at Qa’yarin. But it would not happen because the rebels’ courage had not been fanned to a fever pitch. If they failed, it would not be because Kahless had not done his part.
And who knew? Perhaps in ages to come, warriors would sing of the battle at Tolar’tu, and the speech a rebel had made there. Not that it mattered to Kahless if he was remembered or not.
He glanced at Morath, who was in the first rank of onlookers. The younger man remained calm and inscrutable as ever, as the rain matted his hair and streamed down his face.
Morath was truly the backbone of this rebellion. Kahless might have been its voice, its heart, but it was his friend who made it stand straight and tall and proud.
Well done, Morath told him, if only with his eyes. You have put the fire in them. You have spurred them as no one else could.
Had he been aware of the way Kahless had ennobled Shurin’s clumsiness, he would no doubt have disapproved. But he did not know, and the outlaw had no intention of telling him.
In his own way, he had kept his vow, made in the depths of weariness and madness in the hills north of Vathraq’s village. And he would continue to abide by it a little longer, until either he died or Molor did.
Then, either way, his work would be done. If the outlaw succeeded, Morath could have Molor’s empire, to do with as he wished. And if Kahless fell short, Morath could make of that what he wanted as well.
Feeling a hand on his shoulder, he turned. It was Porus, who had suffered a cut to his brow during the battle. Rain was already dripping from his chin and the end of his nose.
“Enough,” he said. “The troops are gnashing their teeth in anticipation of Qa’yarin. Right now, we have to dispose of poor Shurin.”
Kahless nodded. “You’re right. I will see to it.”
Porus waved away the suggestion. “I can do it. You have done the work of a thousand men this evening.”
The outlaw shrugged. “If you say so.”
Still standing there in the center of the square, he watched as Porus began organizing the construction of a funeral pyre. Of course, they would need a great many of them. Tolar’tu had never seen so much blood.
Nor had An’quat before it. Or Serra’nob. Or any of the other places where they had clashed with Molor’s forces.
As Morath joined him, Kahless grunted. “Once the rain stops, there will be a fire that will be seen for a hundred miles around.”
“And bodies enough to keep it going for a day and a night,” Morath added. “But that is the price of victory. Of freedom. Of honor. Nor will it compare to the flames that will rage outside the tyrant’s citadel.”
The outlaw nodded. “One way or the other.”
Thirty-one: The Modern Age
On the bridge of Kurn’s vessel, Kahless found a seat and lowered himself into it. He looked drained. Lifeless. Crushed by the reality he had hoped so fervently to deny.
Picard sighed and went to the emperor’s side. What could he say? “Are you all right?” he asked at last.
Kahless was on his feet suddenly, his anger twisting his features as he thrust them like a weapon into the captain’s face. “What do you think?” he roared.
Picard said nothing, but stood his ground. After a moment, the clone lumbered past him and stared out an observation port.
“Am I all right?” Kahless repeated, every word as sharp as a dagger. He shook his head. “I am far from all right. The conspirators were correct all along, Captain. Kahless was a fraud—and therefore, so am I.”
His fists clenched at his sides and trembled in white-knuckled rage. Then the emperor’s right hand reached up, tore at something near his neck and cast it on the deck beside him.
It was the jinaq amulet—the one the historical Kahless had received from his lover as a sign of their betrothal. Picard looked at Worf’s brother and saw the expression of worry on his face.
If the clone was modeled after someone who never existed, Kurn seemed to say, what chance did they have? Was Gowron’s reign not doomed, no matter what they did to preserve it?
And if all they had believed in until now was a fraud, a mockery, should they even try?
It was Worf who finally provided the answer. Getting up from his pilot’s seat, he approached Kahless. For a moment, he simply regarded the emperor, as if weighing what to do next. Then he knelt, retrieved the amulet, and stood up again.
“I believe this is yours,” he said, holding the thing out in the palm of his hand.
Kahless turned to him and growled: “Leave me be, Worf.”
“I will not leave you be,” the lieutenant told him, “until you return this to the place of honor where it belongs.”
Apparently, that was not what the emperor wished to hear. With a bellow of rage and pain, Kahless lashed out and struck Worf across the face with the back of his hand. As the cabin echoed with the sharp, explosive sound of the blow, Worf took a couple of steps back.
But he didn’t fall, as the clone might have expected. Instead, he came forward like a wild targ, grabbed Kahless by the front of his robe, and pinned him against the nearest bulkhead.
“Are you out of your mind?” the emperor bellowed, his eyes bulging with outrage. “I have killed men for far less!”
“Then kill me,” Worf advised him, showing no fear. “But not before I have had my say.”
Opening his hand, he showed Kahless the amulet. The emperor bared his teeth at the sight of it, then turned his face away.
“Get it away from me!” he cried.
He tried to wriggle free from Worf’s grasp. But the lieutenant, quite a powerful individual in his own right, would not let him go.
The lieutenant thrust the amulet at the clone, who snatched it away from him. Then Worf released him and took a step back. But Kahless didn’t strike the lieutenant again, nor did he turn his back. He went on listening to what Worf had to say.
“What is important,” the lieutenant went on, in an even yet forceful tone, “is that we follow his teachings. For, at least in this case, the words are more important than the man.”
The clone stood there for a moment, the jinaq amulet in his hand, the muscles in his jaws working furiously. It looked to Picard as if he were chewing something tough, something difficult to swallow—and perhaps he was.
Worf had thrown his own words back in his face—the same words Kahless had uttered on the Enterprise. Like it or not, the clone couldn’t dismiss them out of hand. He had to consider them.
“What about the people?” Kahless asked at last. “They will shun me. They will call me a fraud—and a liar.”
“Perhaps a few of them,” said Worf. “But not all. Not the headmaster of the academy we visited, or blind Majjas. They and all the other Klingons who want a Kahless—who need a Kahless—will make the leap of faith, just as they did when they found out you were a clone.”
“I wish I could believe you,” Kahless told him.
“You must,” Worf replied. “Our people care less about the scroll’s authenticity than they do about what Kahless taught them. Only give them time and you will see I am right.”
For what seemed like a long while, the clone was silent, the jinaq amulet resting in his large, open hand. Picard wondered if Worf’s little pep talk had worked…or if Kahless was as resigned to failure as before. A moment later, he received his answer.
Closing his fingers around the amulet, the emperor held it against his chest. The glint of purpose returned to his eyes. Raising his chin, he looked at his companions.
“Very well,” he agreed. “We started this together. We will see it through together. And in the end,” he went on, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, “let our enemies beware.”
Thirty-two: The Heroic Age
Molor’s citadel bulked up huge, dark, and foreboding against the gray, brooding sky. Its battlements bristled with a thousand archers, and there were a thousand more within its gates.
Still, the road that led to this pass had been no less formidable and Kahless had traveled it without faltering. With luck, he and his men would not falter now either.
“The tyrant is within our grasp,” said Morath. His s’tarahk pawed and snuffled the ground.
The outlaw turned to him and snorted. “Or we are within his. It all depends on your perspective.”
Kahless was whole again, recovered from the wounds he had suffered at Tolar’tu. In fact, he had never felt stronger in his life. Constant strife had a way of hardening a man.
Looking back over his shoulder, the outlaw surveyed the ranks of his followers, who were nearly as numerous as Molor’s soldiers and twice as eager. A mighty siege engine constructed of sturdy black skannu trees rose up in the midst of them—a fifty-foot tall monster with a battering ram slung from its crossbar and a platform big enough for a hundred archers.
Such devices had been used in the past, when a great many lords vied for supremacy on the continent. But never had one so large and sturdy been built. Then again, no one had ever tried to take a fortress like this one.
It had been difficult to haul the towering skannu trees out of the steep valleys south of here, but they had had no other option. If they were to break the tyrant’s power, they would need the proper tools.
At least, that had been Morath’s contention. And Kahless had come to see the wisdom in it—just as he now saw the wisdom in most everything his friend said or did.
The outlaw had accomplished everything Morath had required of him. He had forged a rebellion out of countless tiny uprisings and dissatisfactions, and with it had shaken the foundations of Molor’s supremacy. But without the younger man’s part in it, the rebellion would never have lasted this long or come this far.
Kahless was just the point of a dagger, the razor edge. Morath was the one who cut and thrust with it.
Porus rode up to them, his face dirty with the dust of the road. Squinting, he scanned Molor’s defenses.
“Too bad we all could not have lived to see this,” he rumbled. Then he turned to his leader. “When do we attack?”
Kahless frowned. If it were the tyrant sitting outside these gates and someone else were within, the assault would already have begun.
“Now,” he replied.
Gesturing, he ordered his men to bring up the siege engine. With a collective grunt, they put their backs into it.
As the engine rumbled forward on massive wooden wheels, the outlaw glanced at the faces of the tyrant’s archers. Even from this distance, he could see the apprehension there, the realization that they were not as safe within their walls as they had imagined.
He laughed a hollow laugh. Vathraq’s walls hadn’t kept Molor from murdering Kellein. Why shouldn’t he return the favor?
But the engine alone would not carry them to victory. At another signal, his most agile warriors climbed the monstrous timbers of the thing, their bows slung over their backs.
When they reached the platform, they took up their positions and knelt. Of course, Molor’s archers would have an advantage over them, firing down from a greater height. But Kahless’s archers were not charged with tearing down the gates. They were only there to provide cover fire, so those below could do their job.
Faster and faster the engine rolled, heading for the great, iron-bound doors to the tyrant’s citadel. Kahless himself rode beside it, raising his bat’leth to the heavens and bellowing a challenge to the enemy.
The sense of it did not matter, only the sound itself. Hearing it, each of his warriors took up the cry, until it drowned out the rumble of the engine’s wheels with its thunder and echoed back at them from Molor’s walls.
The outlaw ignored the arrows that rained down on them, taking the mounted and those on foot alike. His place was in the lead, no matter the danger. Anything less would have been a breach of his promise to Morath.
He would sooner have died than breach that promise. And just in case he came to feel differently at some point, Morath was right beside him to remind him of it.
As they approached the gates, Kahless clenched his teeth with determination. Rocks, not just arrows, were pelting the ground all around him. Warriors died in agony and were flung from their screaming s’tarahkmey.
But this was just a taste of the carnage to come. Just the merest hint of the blood that would be spilled this day.
As if to underscore the thought, the outlaw wheeled on his s’tarahk and uttered a new command. Heeding it, the archers on the siege engine braced themselves—and those on the ground gave it one last push. Despite its terrible weight, the thing surged forward.
It couldn’t go far on its own, Kahless knew. But it didn’t have to. Molor’s iron-bound gates were only a couple of yards away.
With an earsplitting groan, the engine’s front wheels slammed into the gates. A second later, the immense battering ram swung forward. Unlike the engine itself, nothing had stopped its progress yet.
Then that changed. The ram struck the gates, sending up a whipcrack of thunder. The outlaw’s bones shuddered with the impact.
“Again!” he cried.
As his archers provided cover, his ground forces drew the ram back and then drove it forward again. The gates creaked miserably, like a mighty animal in awful pain. But they didn’t yield. At least, not yet.
A second time, the ram was drawn back and thrust forward. And a third. But it was only with the fourth blow that th
e mighty gates began to cave inward. The rebels bellowed, drawing courage from it.
The fifth stroke sounded like rocks breaking; it caved the gates in even more. And the sixth burst them open at last, giving the invaders access to what was inside.
Like yolok worms reaching for an especially luscious piece of fruit, Kahless and his warriors swarmed around and through the siege engine. After all, the thing had done its job. The rest was up to the strength of their arms and the hatred in their Klingon hearts.
The courtyard was packed tight with defenders. But they wielded long, heavy swords and axes, the kind warriors had used for hundreds of years. They were not made for infighting.
The rebels’ bat’lethmey were a different story entirely. Lighter, more versatile, they represented a huge advantage in close quarters. And Kahless had equipped fifty of his best fighters with them.
Cutting and slashing, the outlaw led the way into the citadel, with Morath barely a step behind. Nor did Kahless’s warriors disappoint him. Battering and thrusting, they followed him inch by bloody inch.
The fighting was intense, unlike anything the outlaw had seen before. But his bat’leth served him well. Like a hunting bird, it swooped and swooped again, each time plucking a life from the enemy’s midst.
Blood spilled until it was everywhere, making the ground slick beneath their feet. Warriors fell on both sides, slumped on top of one another, glutting the confines of the courtyard with their empty shells.
And still the two sides battled, matching blow with clanging blow, war cry with earsplitting war cry, neither side willing to yield. Kahless’s men fought for freedom from the tyrant, Molor’s men because they feared his wrath. But in the end, both sides suffered their share of casualties.
Nor did the outlaw wade through the struggle unscathed. By the time he came within reach of the tyrant’s keep, he was bleeding from a dozen wounds. But he was only vaguely aware of them, his heart pounding too hard for his head to keep up with it.
A year earlier, he would never have imagined this—would never have believed it possible. Yet here he was, a mighty force behind him, knocking on the tyrant’s door. With a vicious uppercut, he dispatched one defender, then skewered another one on his point. A backhanded blow sent a third warrior to the afterlife.