A Warrior's Sacrifice

by Ross Winkler

  Phae stood under the falling water just outside Corwin's reach — far enough to be enticing. They shared the soap, surprised that such a banal activity could be so intimate. They didn't speak to each other while they bathed, and Phae made no advances.

  Time and sleep had dulled the edge of her pointed comments and Corwin began to feel at ease with her presence. He didn't trust her yet, not so soon after he'd rebuked her, though the simple fact that she'd helped him and asked nothing in return perhaps proved that she felt more than just sexual and caste attraction. Corwin noted his feelings with the cool head of a scientist watching a chemical reaction through a safety window.

  Kai and Chahal went next. Phae took up position next to the door as Corwin fetched their weapons and coms. He found a message waiting for him.

  At your earliest convenience I request a meeting inside my chambers.

  Oniwabanshu Mayor Yanmao

  Corwin's stomach rumbled again. His hunger could wait, best not to keep the Mayor waiting.

  Kai and Chahal joined their Voidmates, and they walked in silence, still a little stiff and sore, to their storage room. They dressed in the pragmatic clothes of their caste, the shirt plain black, cargo pants black with red stitching.

  "Yanmao wants to see us," Corwin said, buckling on his pistol and slinging his rifle over his shoulder.

  Phae made a face. "He can wait. I'm starving."

  "We need whatever information he has for us regarding," he checked back through the storage room door, "that other part of our mission."

  "It's not our mission," Phae said, pushing out into the hallway.

  The others of the Void fell in behind.

  "Our mission is to defend the Republic, always, from outside or internal aggressors," Chahal said.

  Phae mumbled something under her breath.

  "Yeah, same to you."

  Phae shot a look over her shoulder. Chahal met her eyes with her own intense gaze. For a moment a storm of conflict gathered, condensed in the hallway between the two women. Kai's shoulders stiffened. Corwin picked up his pace to intervene.

  Instead, Phae snorted a laugh, shrugged her shoulders.

  "Commander Shura; Maharatha," Yanmao said bowing as he pulled his door wide. The four Maharatha returned the bow with their own.

  "You asked to see us?" Corwin asked, leading the way into the cramped office.

  "Uh, yes, sir. I did." His eyes bounced from Corwin's to his Voidmates and back, the unasked question hanging thick between them all.

  "Say what you have to say. They can be trusted." The words surprised everyone in the room.

  Yanmao grunted, swallowed, gestured to the open blackout device on his desk. "I wanted to know if you made any progress with the," he lowered his voice to almost a whisper, despite the protection the blackout device provided, "Ashi-Kage and an Inquest."

  Corwin almost answered, but he stopped. Yanmao was a member of the Oniwabanshu, but the Ashi-Kage was an insidious thing. "We've made no progress at all. As you know, we destroyed the Quisling caravan, which was our main mission, and after some food we'll report our mission complete to the Oniwabanshu. I suspect we'll leave sometime tomorrow."

  "Oh." Yanmao's hands began kneading of their own accord as his mind played out dangerous scenarios. "You don't have anything for me? What of Auta — that man you brought back from the Quisling camp?"

  Corwin chuckled. "Auta is simply the luckiest man alive, nothing more."

  At the news, Yanmao looked more haggard than he had at the start of the meeting. He crossed to his desk drawer and fingered a bottle of liquor. "I will try to find my own proof then." He bowed. "I thank you for your dreng service." The Maharatha returned the bow and left the room.

  Once they were well clear of Yanmao and his offices, Kai cleared his throat, a sound akin to thunder. "Why didn't you mention … you know."

  "The fewer people who know, the better."

  Again the thunder as Kai said, "Hmm. You don't trust him. He is Oniwabanshu, and if you could trust anyone, it would be him."

  Corwin frowned. "Yeah, well, we four are Maharatha, and we barely trust each other."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It neared dusk as the Maharatha wandered out into the streets. The golden orb of the sun dipped behind the edge of the city's walls, the only light now cast by the ever-present ion shielding overhead. The street vendors had multiplied, and smells far beyond anything they'd ever experienced wafted out from steaming food carts or hissed and crackled over open flame. The throng of citizens that milled about the street exceeded the number of dwellings within the city's wall.

  The Maharatha walked through the crowd, the individuals nodding and bowing as they stepped aside. "What is going on?" Chahal asked as a group of shirtless children ran by, chasing a yapping dog.

  "It's the Week's End celebration," Corwin said, pausing as a large horse-drawn wagon rumbled down the plasteel street. "At sundown it's too dangerous to work the fields, so the farmers and miners and lumberers come into town to drink and dance and have sex in relative safety."

  "It's madness out here," Phae said. Two drunken, sun-weathered farmers stumbled past. They hadn't touched her, but she brushed and straightened her uniform anyway.

  Corwin gazed at the city's walls, looking through them as though they were invisible. "The Quislings would be out there tonight if we hadn't killed them. They'd take the risk to sneak in close to catch the stragglers or the drunks that tried to stumble home."

  The other Maharatha were silent then, and despite the carousing on the streets, the silence between them was audible.

  Corwin's frown twisted into a sneer of disgust and self-hatred. He turned as a shorter woman with sun-bleached hair and dark, leathery skin rolled her cart across his path.

  "Watch it," Phae said, her hand sliding down to her pistol.

  "My apologies, sirs and ma'ams!" the woman said, pressing her hands together and bobbing in a series of small bows. "I didn't wish to surprise! I wanted to provide you with small tokens of gratitude for killing the Quislings."

  "I — we appreciate your offer, but we're fine," Corwin said.

  "Please, ma'ams and sirs! I made them special! Fresh from my fields." She reached into her cart, and Corwin felt a thrill of fear. Would the Ashi-Kage be so brash as to make an attempt on their lives in the open?

  Instead of a gun, the woman pulled forth four brown cakes, each wrapped in a large grape leaf. Corwin was about to decline again, but before he could, she said, "Fresh fruit pastries. Raspberries and strawberries and blueberries. Just for you. Still warm!"

  "Strawberries?" Corwin asked.

  "Yes, sir! Last year's harvest from my fields. Big and red and ripe ones!" She handed one of the cakes to Corwin.

  With more haste than caution, Corwin bit into the cake. Warm filling and familiar flavors filled his mouth, made his taste buds dance. The other Maharatha ate as well, timid at first, but with increased vigor as they discovered unexplored tastes.

  "Have you ever tasted anything so grand?" the woman asked.

  Corwin blinked. He couldn't quite believe that this grizzled farmer was the Inquest Covert Operative. The phrase she spoke seemed innocuous, something one might speak if say, you were standing at a food cart on a busy street. Maybe, he thought, that was proof of her ability. She hadn't spoken through a closed door in the dead of night or whispered from the dark shadows of an alley. It was out in the open, so overt that its obviousness made it less likely to stand out.

  "Once, when I was younger."

  She smiled a toothy grin. "Ah, a farm man! Another for you all?"

  "Please," Corwin said. The others nodded and made affirmative sounds through full mouths.

  She distributed another round, though Corwin's pastry was half the size it should have been; a micro-communicator took up the remainder of the leaf-wrapped bulk. He tipped the bundle of leaves upward to block the com's presence from view and palmed it as he pushed the pastry into his mouth.

  "Again, much tha
nks, sirs and ma'ams!" The old farmer closed up her cart and pushed it off into the crowds, shouting her wares.

  "That was fantastic," Phae said, licking filling from her fingertips. "What did she call those things?"

  "Pastries," Corwin said. "Come on," he said, jerking his head towards a bar, "we'll get some real food."

  At the entrance Corwin typed his passcode, the others waiting their turns, and shouldered open the door when it unlocked. He was assaulted by the sounds of drinking, songs, and clinking mugs. The place was beyond packed — standing room only — and filled with that same crush of Humanity that made Corwin so nervous.

  With no room near the door, Phae had to press herself in close to Corwin as she too waited for the rest of the Void to enter. He could dyzu her presence, feel her breasts and skin, her breath on his neck.

  As in the showers, the four Maharatha had no trouble finding space. A pathway opened up to the bar, and when they arrived and ordered, the first table they turned to emptied, the previous occupants smiling and bobbing their heads. The server left the group of Wei that she'd been tending, the soldiers angry for a moment before seeing Corwin's stern frown and the red piping on his pants.

  "What can I getcha, sir?" the woman asked, rinsing a plasteel tankard in a wooden basin of sudsy, gray water.

  "Four beers, and…" he looked up where the menu should have been written on the wall, "what do you have for food?"

  "Almost anything you want, sir. Summertime. All foods aplenty."

  Corwin nodded, thinking of his favorite dish when he was a child. "Four orders of shredded chicken in a mushroom cream sauce. Sides of peas and corn. A bowl of salt and one of butter."

  The server set the four cups of beer onto the counter. They were the Republic standard-issue plasteel variety, but a slice of orange rested on each rim. "Very good, sir. I'll need to send someone down the street for the chicken."

  "That's fine." Corwin took the beer and turned back to his seat, stopped and turned to face the bar. "And a big bowl of strawberries and pitcher of cream."

  "Aye, sir. Right away."

  Corwin set the beer down in the center of the small table and took his seat with his back to the bar. Despite all they'd been through the last twenty-four hours, they had little to discuss; and even if they felt like talking to each other, the proximity of so many strangers' ears would limit the scope of their conversation to the banal.

  The food arrived in wooden bowls and troughs piled high and steaming. The three born and raised inside the big cities of the Republic didn't know what to make of it.

  Corwin's mouth watered.

  Kai poked at the creamy mushroom and chicken dish, scooping up the sauce and letting it dribble back down to splatter into the bowl. "What is this?"

  "Chicken, mushrooms, cream," Corwin said between mouthfuls of the comfort food he hadn't had for over a decade.

  "What is 'cream'?"Phae asked, sniffing at her own sporkful.

  "The fattiest part of the milk from a goat or sheep or cow."

  "You're telling us that you want us to eat animal milk, fungus, and the flesh of a bird?" Disgust twisted Phae's face as she spoke.

  "More or less," Corwin said, licking his spork.

  Chahal took a bite. Chewed. Thought. Swallowed. "The Texts speak of the diet of the First Exiles. The Humans before the invasion had ample food; all they could want and more than they needed, so much that it rotted on shelves and in their homes. Then the Choxen and Siloth came to weed out the weak, and food was not plentiful. The shelves ran empty, and they squabbled like dogs over the scraps." Her voice had taken on a chant-like cadence.

  "The First Exiles wandered, the cities unfit and dangerous to Human life. They survived on the milk and flesh of the smallest of the cleft-hoofed animals — the goat and the sheep, the wild fungus and the bird." She slurped a bit more of the cream. Her breath caught, her words a whisper, barely audible over the bar's patrons. "I eat now as the First Exiles did."

  Everyone stared at Chahal for a moment, caught off guard by her sudden reverence. She ignored them, all her attention focused on the dish before her — a dish that linked her closer to the First Exiles that she so cherished.

  "This might be standard fare out here on the periphery and back four centuries ago, but I prefer to eat what I'm used to." Phae pushed her bowl away and walked to the bar.

  Corwin shrugged and dipped his spork into Phae's abandoned dish. Kai ate his food in silence, alternating between his protein dish and the vegetables on the side.

  Phae returned not long after with a plate piled high with protein cubes the same dull gray of the plasteel that comprised the Republic's cities. She popped one into her mouth and chewed, smacked her lips, all the while keeping her eyes fixed on Chahal. The Exilist didn't seem to mind, or even notice, caught as she was in the rapture of her communion with the First Exiles.

  When Chahal didn't take the bait, Phae turned her attention elsewhere, this time to the contents of the two small bowls that Corwin now added to his vegetables. "What are those?" she asked, mouth full.

  Corwin pointed to the coarse crystals. "Salt," then to the yellow congealing liquid, "butter." He pushed the bowls closer to Phae. "Try some."

  She eyed first Corwin, then the salt, and took a pinch. After rolling it around on her finger tips, she dabbed a little onto her tongue, made a noise of approval, and sprinkled the rest onto her pile of protein.

  She went back for another, and Corwin said, "A little goes a long way."

  "I'll be the judge of that." She took a larger pinch than she'd at first intended.

  The strawberries arrived. Corwin gobbled down the remainder of his vegetables. The fruits were each about the size of his thumb, plump, firm, with the deep red of ripeness. With deft fingers he took one, plucked the leaves and stem off, and popped it into his mouth. It was sweet, the flavors deep, tasting of the sun and the earth on which it grew. He smiled.

  The other Maharatha, who had by now finished their own food, looked on with a mix of envy and reserve.

  Corwin slid the bowl into the center of the table. "Go ahead. We can get more."

  Kai took one and ate it, stem and all; Phae followed Corwin's lead and first removed the stem, then sprinkled a little salt on top.

  Chahal took one and held it close to her eyes for study. "And they pulled forth red fruits from the vines at the mountain's foot and ate until their mouths and tongues and hands were stained and their bellies filled. They gathered all that remained to sustain them in their journey." She placed the strawberry into her mouth and chewed, each bite a silent homage.

  "Do you have some religious quote for every piece of food we're going to eat?" Phae asked, reaching for another berry.

  "The finding, preparation, and consumption of food was a major focus for the First Exiles. Their directions, first inscribed on something called 'paper', then transmitted orally, helped ensure the continued survival of the Humans during and in the four centuries following the Siloth invasion."

  Phae snorted, but Kai looked thoughtful. "How is it," he began, his low bass rumble easy to hear even over the bar's din, "that Corwin eats the same foods — or even knows of them."

  For a moment, everyone blinked at each other and then looked at Corwin.

  He shrugged. "We ate what we ate because we grew and produced our own foods. There were some Quislings that traded for the Choxen protein, but my family saw it as a waste."

  A sly smile slid up the side of Phae's mouth. "You know, Chahal, I wonder. Corwin's family lived on the fringes, every day one of survival, eating and living as the First Exiles lived. Corwin is more Exilist than you."

  The table was silent.

  Instead of growing angry, Chahal looked thoughtful. She stared at Corwin for a long time before answering. "The path of the First Exiles was one of brimstone and death. They were tested by the twin flames of famine and war, the weak culled from the strong. How old was your family?

  Corwin shrugged, nervous under Chahal's intense glare
. "My family told stories of a time before constant war and struggle."

  "Your family was old," Kai said. "They predated the Republic."

  Chahal's eyes hardened. "I don't know what to make of it."

  Corwin threw himself back into the conversation before Phae could instigate Chahal further. "They're just stories, and the food is just a coincidence. We used what we had, and goats were hardier than sheep and smaller than cattle. Besides, there are only so many ways that one can combine ingredients."

  Phae snorted and turned back to her beer, lifting the orange slice into the air with two fingers. She wiggled it like a fish. "What is this thing? I've never seen anything so orange except the Laborer Caste's road cleanup uniforms."

  "It's in the citrus family; an orange," Corwin said, squeezing his into his beer and swirling. "At least a slice from one."

  Chahal sucked in a breath, taking her slice and nibbling on the orange flesh. "The citrus, the mango, and the banana they counted among the most longed-for of fruits, for the mountains were too cold and the yield too small to sustain them."

  Phae rolled her eyes. She bit into the fruit and made a surprised noise. "Hey! That's really good." She took a pinch of salt, sprinkled it on the orange, and bit it; her face reflected her poor choice. She forced it down anyway — for any other action would be jendr — and chased it with a large swig of beer. The others, more cautious, followed Corwin's example and enjoyed the orange crushed into the yeasty wheat beer.

  They finished their beer, each of them sliding a little farther down in their chairs as exhaustion and comfort set in. Kai yawned, shook his head, and stood, saying, "I'll req the next round."

  A commotion stopped him and turned everyone's attention towards the front door. A man had entered from the street, and he spoke with hurried words and sharp gestures to anyone listening. A murmur passed through the crowded room, each person passing the news on to the next. The Maharatha were on their feet, rifles in hand, eyes scanning the crowd.