The Doctor was now rapidly stitching Cal’s hand. He nodded. “I can imagine a lot of my friends would be interested. Probably the most valuable would be a gentleman I know from the Delhonne Museum. He would give the whole exercise a bit of structure.”
Cal was nodding. “Yes, that would be perfect. Maybe he’ll have some ideas about how the information about the dragons can be shared with the public. Doctor, I don’t want to lie to you. This visit may have an element of danger. We’ve got some bad people interested in these dragons. I think you’d help put an upstanding public face on the dragons. I doubt anyone would give you any trouble, but I want to be sure you know what I’m asking.”
The Doctor pulled the last stitch through Cal’s raw hand. ‘I think I understand. You boys need a go-between. You want the people with questions to have someone else to bother. And you want everyone to know you’re sharing the knowledge, so everyone will be patient. I get it. And I can think of a few people that will do well. To be honest with you, though, I’m just excited at the prospect of seeing them.” Doctor Graham gave a rare smile.
“You said it better than I could. Come by midday. I might not be there, but I’ll have someone expecting you. Bring a couple of your friends. Only people you trust of course. And then once you’ve learned enough to be satisfied, you can answer all the questions you want. Just maybe make the people wait a little bit, eh? Build a little demand? Don’t move too fast.”
The Doctor nodded, then gestured to Cal’s hand. “That should be fine. Keep it clean for a few days. Those chest wounds are shallow, shouldn’t be a problem. Just take it a little easier. We like having you around here. And of course,” the Doctor turned towards Miriam, “we always appreciate it when you bring a lovely young woman to our humble watering hole.”
When Doctor Graham had left, Cal looked at his red, freshly stitched hand. He rubbed his face and stared at the fire for a moment. Miriam looked at him expectantly.
“The Dura Mati, eh? How much do you know about the minotaur societies?” he asked.
“Only what I’ve read,” Miriam replied.
“Yeah, that won’t be right. Pretty much everything I’ve read about them is wrong. The minotaur aren’t very open with outsiders, and definitely not scholarly types. If you want to understand a minotaur, first forget about the Dura Mati. He’s something totally different at this point. Before he was the truest of all minotaur, but Aaron…changed him.
“Take the most arrogant man you know, and if you’re thinking of me you’re not even close. Then take the biggest bully you’ve ever met. Then take, I don’t know, the toughest fighter you’ve ever met, and then roll those three together. Then make the man seven feet tall and completely covered in muscle. Throw in some horns, a bull-like face, some blue coloring and fur and you’re set.
“The minotaur terrify me. They hate weakness. Their entire lives are spent stamping out weakness in themselves, in others. To value anything aside from strength is a virtual death sentence among them. The only reason the minotaur haven’t taken over this entire continent is that they can’t travel more than two miles together without killing each other over who gets the privilege to walk in front.”
“So you’ve been among them?” Miriam asked.
“Yes,” Cal said. “They have big gatherings. When they do they end up having all sort of trials, contests of strength and fighting and sport and such. The minotaur invite some of their neighbors. Aaron and I went twice with the Vylass. It is a sign of respect to be invited, but you have to walk on eggshells the entire time. The minotaur like to show off though. If you say the right things, you can get their friendly side, which might allow for a little light boasting and joking. But if you say the wrong thing, it doesn’t usually end well.
“It’s fun, in an odd way. The contests are incredible. These giants wrestling each other. Races with other minotaur throwing barrels at the runners. Some really creative stuff. They beat each other pretty bad in fights with fists or with clubs, so it can get gruesome. But there’s plenty to drink, good meat. Lots of loud, boisterous company.
“So the first time we went, I was having a great time, making lots of bets, all that. Aaron wasn’t. I don’t know that we had talked much about the minotaur before we went. I wasn’t really prepared for him to be in such a bad mood. I just let it slide without comment. Aaron has his moody moments. We watched contest after contest, drank and ate a lot. I talked a bit to some of the minotaur who like people. Most of them don’t like us but a few are interested in speaking our language. They tell us all the subtleties of the contests we’re watching.
“There’s one minotaur that’s dominating the contests. And we ask one of the sort of guides hanging out with us who he is. He goes on this long story about the Makrah Mati, which means something like great northern king or leader. The minotaur chose their leaders by combat, so all the leaders are the biggest and strongest. And this guy is definitely the biggest and strongest. We watch him destroy everyone else in the wrestling ring. Our guide is telling us he’s their most popular Mati and he’s bringing all this pride to the Makrah tribe.”
Miriam asked, “So Mati means king? What does Dura Mati mean?”
“Dura means broken. The Makrah Mati is the Dura Mati. They changed his name. He’s the broken king. They tell us it’s not an insult, it’s just like an accurate reflection of his social status.”
Cal stared into the fire, swirling the remaining whiskey in his glass. “After we left that night, Aaron started talking again. He had tons of questions for the Vylass about the minotaur and their social structures, the games, the combat.
“He was pretty quiet over the next couple days, then he sits me down and says he’s been thinking about the minotaur and wants to run something by me. He tells me he’s frustrated that such a fighting force has fallen to this infighting, meanwhile the Chalk are getting bolder. He wants the minotaur to hold the Chalk threat at bay, but, he says, they’re too busy fighting each other for sport. They’re getting weaker and weaker by the generation. And if they continue on this path, eventually the Chalk will eliminate them and expand onto their lands. The Ashlands will grow south. I tell him that the whole premise is a little far-fetched. The minotaur may have fallen from their warrior ideal, but they are still no joke. Anyway if push comes to shove, wouldn’t we rather have the Chalk looking south instead of west? Plus we don’t even really know the Chalk are expanding. But something about the minotaur really bugged him, something about that wasted potential. His obsession with turning everything into a weapon against the Chalk.
“So he tells me he’s thinking about challenging the minotaur, in particular the Makrah Mati. He tells me he’s going to publicly call them all weaklings, then beat the Makrah Mati in the wrestling ring, killing him if he has to. By their rules of combat he’ll take over the Makrah tribe. Then he’s going to order them to start killing Chalk to prove they’re not weak, and try and reestablish some semblance of real warrior culture. So I tell him he’s fucking insane, and that’s pretty much the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”
The memory filled Cal with bitterness. He and Aaron had fought long and hard, one of the few times they didn’t see eye to eye and Cal didn’t bend to Aaron’s way of thinking. Cal thought Aaron was being a fool. Cal thought it was suicide. Furthermore, there was the question of wreaking havoc on an entire civilization’s social order if Aaron succeeded. Aaron thought Cal wasn’t dedicated to the cause of stopping the Chalk the way he was. Cal had never been a Corvale and was just playing tourist. He lacked the vision to change the world and wanted them to just be glorified mercenaries.
“We spent a lot of time apart over the next few months. I went on longer and longer trips with the Vylass while Aaron stayed in their camp and worked on his new project. He found the biggest, toughest wrestlers he could and spent most of our gold paying them for endless training sessions. He built wooden frames in various shapes and would do gymnastics on them, flips and twists. It never made sense to me until the actu
al day.
“The next gathering of the minotaur, the Vylass are all excited to see Aaron put his plan into action and probably be torn limb from limb in spectacular fashion. I almost didn’t go. The tribes weren’t gathered long before Aaron gave his speech. The best I can say about it is that it was short. He told the minotaur they had become a race of cowards, only brave enough to fight their neighbors, only measuring themselves against each other, oblivious to the dangers of the real enemy at their doorstep. They were like children. He said he’d prove their weakness by defeating their best. He didn’t have to specify the Makrah Mati. He might as well have pointed at him. Aaron went to stand in the ring. A moment later the Mati joined him.”
Cal paused, lost for a moment in the memory. The minotaur gatherings were always loud, chaotic. But Aaron’s challenge had brought silence to the assembly. The tribes were loosely grouped in circles radiating around a central ring, defined by a pentagon of painted logs laid on the stone. Aaron stood alone in the center. Cal could hear the endless blowing of the wind. The Makrah Mati approached. None of the minotaur turned to watch him. Their eyes never left Aaron, waiting for his death. Aaron was shirtless, his marked skin a mix of red and black in the light of the setting sun. He was leanly muscled, but the Mati’s muscles rippled as he walked into the ring, looking like a wave prepared to swallow Aaron.
Aaron’s calm, collected look, the Dura’s dark, furious face, telling the story of the disrespect the minotaur felt to be in this ring, his anger, his pride. The scratch of the sand on the stone ring floor beneath them as they slowly began circling. Red and blue swirling slowly in a ring of fury.
“And he won.”
The Mati rushed Aaron, to sweep him up in his arms and crush him, snap his spine and bash him against the rocks until his skull burst. But Aaron slid down and to the Mati’s right, under the outstretched arm. He reached up and seized the Mati’s horn in both hands. As the Mati turned, Aaron dug a foot into his back and boosted himself up. For a moment, he was hanging on the Mati’s back. The Mati leaned backwards to try and shed Aaron, then snapped his head forward, which was what Aaron was waiting for.
The Mati had played the fight exactly as Aaron had anticipated. That predictability was why Aaron thought he had a chance to win. He had watched match after match of the same formula. The minotaur all had no originality, there was no improvising. There was no incentive for it. They valued raw strength. Their wrestling was basically a formality to place themselves in positions to pit the raw strength of the combatants against one and other. The Makrah Mati in particular was a predictable fighter. His strength had never lost him a match. But Aaron had seen him fight. He had never seen Aaron.
Aaron had timed his swing to raise his legs to the height of the Mati’s head as he was preparing to snap forward. Aaron gripped the horn as tightly as possible in both hands, then kicked as hard as he could at the horn’s thick base just as the Mati’s powerful neck muscles launched him forward. With a loud crack that echoed through the gathering, the Mati’s horn broke off in Aaron’s hands. He fell to the ground hard but quickly rolled to his feet, holding the broken horn. It looked like a giant dark tooth that had been ripped out of the gums of a monster.
The Makrah Mati raised his hand to his head in disbelief. The shock running through the crowd was palpable. The Mati roared in fury and leapt at Aaron. In his rage the Mati made the same mistake again, reaching out to crush Aaron and end the farce. Aaron dodged again to the minotaur’s right and used both hands to slam the base of the broken horn into the Mati’s side. The Mati roared and turned to Aaron, who this time opted for a straight attack. He raised the horn behind his head with both hands and slammed it into the face of the crouched minotaur. Aaron tried to duck the incoming punch from the Mati’s left but was sent sprawling as it caught him on his lowered shoulder.
Aaron ended on his back and looked up to see the Mati’s foot descending. He rolled, hearing the stomp land where his head had been moments ago. He found his feet and both fighters whirled to face the other. They began circling counterclockwise.
The Makrah Mati stopped for a moment, then shifted directions, moving slowly clockwise around the ring. Both Cal and Aaron recognized the shift as an ominous indicator. The Mati was finished dealing with his opponent by going through the routine motions. Now he was truly in the fight. He was thinking. He had started dictating the terms, refusing to be led in the dance by Aaron.
With each rotation, the Mati got closer to Aaron, aggressively downsizing the little space Aaron had to maneuver. His giant hands clenched and unclenched. Aaron tried to anticipate the pattern, attack when the Mati was least ready. If he let the Mati corner him, the fight and his life would both end quickly.
As the Mati’s fists clenched, Aaron hurled the horn at his face. The Mati was caught off guard, but managed to bat it away. He realized too late that Aaron had followed the throw by charging and launching his body into a kick. He led with both feet straight into the Mati’s right knee, which was currently bearing the bulk of his weight. The Mati was unable to shift his weight quickly enough to get out of the way. Aaron’s legs drove hard into the knee. It twisted and the Mati fell, swinging his right fist at Aaron as he went down. After delivering the full body kick, Aaron rolled out, dodging the punch, then leapt to his feet and dove on top of the Mati.
He landed on the Mati’s enormous back crossways, using the opening to drive his knee deep into the minotaur’s ribs. Aaron made a token effort to grapple onto the Mati’s neck, but then quickly rolled off towards the place the broken horn had fallen.
The Mati, feeling Aaron going for his neck, reacted as an experienced wrestler does when a smaller opponent is attempting to lock them down. He bucked hard to throw Aaron off, relying on his greater strength. But Aaron was already gone and the Mati was left thrashing, directionless for a moment as he hurled his body off the ground with the force of all four limbs. Feeling that Aaron was not on top of him, he realized his mistake. For a critical second, the Makrah Mati hung defenseless and confused, only a few inches off the ground, but precious moments away from regaining any sort of leverage.
As his hands and knees reconnected with the ground, the Mati turned his head to locate Aaron, only to feel the brutal crunch of the base of his own severed horn drive hard into his chin. His head was thrown backwards and upwards, the base of his skull momentarily driving back hard into the thick muscles lining his spinal cord, pinching that crucial avenue shut for a moment. The Mati’s world grew black. Aaron drove the horn hard into the side of his head, laying him out flat. He then jumped on top of the Makrah Mati and pointed the business end of the broken horn into his throat.
In an uncomfortable way, Cal recalled that Aaron winning the fight had really only opened negotiations. The Makrah Mati, not fully unconscious, wanted to die rather than suffering the humiliation of defeat at the hands of a human in unarmed combat. Aaron didn’t want to kill him. That would only open the door to the next challenger. He wanted the Mati alive, but he also couldn’t allow the Mati to reenter the fight, or he would merely kill Aaron then himself. For minutes, the two fighters, locked together, maneuvered by inches on the dusty ground, Aaron driving the horn deeper, threatening death. The Mati wanted to force Aaron to kill him. Aaron yelled for him to yield repeatedly. Finally, the minotaur who led the ceremonies stepped in and declared the fight over, with hate in his eyes for both Aaron and the Makrah Mati, forever to be known as the Dura Mati.
“Aaron won,” Cal said to Miriam. “He broke the Mati’s horn and used it to subdue him. Aaron told the minotaur that he ruled the Makrah tribe and that he would be taking the Mati with him back west. He turned to the Mati and said something like ‘Don’t be ashamed. I will make a warrior of you.’ And then he told the rest of the Makrah to start killing Chalk and that he would be back to judge them. We left, quickly, as you can imagine. Aaron had multiple broken ribs and nearly collapsed. The Dura Mati was given a few days to wrap up affairs and then joined us. It gave Aaron a c
hance to hide his wounds. And it gave the Dura Mati enough time to gain his new name, see how the respect he had earned over a lifetime had been shattered in an instant, lose his wife and children, his tribe, his freedom, everything. He was now basically a slave. And his owner was an outsider that all the minotaur hated more than anyone else, thanks to Aaron’s speech.
“The Dura Mati has traveled with Aaron ever since. I don’t doubt Aaron has plans for him, and I have faith that Aaron might someday leave him unbroken, at least in a sense, but I never agreed with the whole thing and I still don’t. We argued bitterly for a long time. And then when he had an excuse, Aaron left me behind and took the Dura Mati to the Tower of Sidvale. And I served my ‘three years in purgatory’ which, I must say, does at least have good drink, and women, and gambling, and swordplay.”
Cal finished his glass and moodily stared at the fire.
The Night of Deepening Shadows
Chapter 25. A Corner Huddle
The Tannes Palace had once been an impressive structure, with two soaring towers and a few squat turrets visible over a large stone wall. It sat atop a winding street, surrounded by a murky, ceremonial moat. The exterior had grown shabby, a reflection of the dimming power of Tannes’ royal class. Only King Jacob and a handful of servants dwelled there now. Farther down the hill, the featureless government buildings which made up the Palace District sat squat and neglected.
Between a pair of unoccupied buildings at the southeastern corner of the Palace District, Aaron and Cal sat on the ground, deck of cards scattered on the flat stones before them. Every few minutes Aaron rose to his feet, walked to the street and peered out. They were waiting for Sleepy Jon.
Night of the Chalk (Spies of Dragon and Chalk Book 1) Page 18