“You’re not planning on coming back, are you?” Eustus asked hoarsely.
“No,” Reza said. “I have no illusions about what is to come. The Mallorys, for all their courage, cannot win. They will die, and I with them. But perhaps that will be enough to spare the rest.” He glanced up at the parliament building. “Besides, there is some personal business I must attend to first that would make my future service to the Confederation… awkward.” He smiled solemnly. “I have put away the uniform of the regiment forever, my friend.” He pointed to the armored skimmer and Enya’s face peering intently through the still open door, past the two Marines who stood warily on guard. “There is the best reason of all for you to go,” he said. “Her love is true. You would be wise to ask her to be yours. Take her with you, Eustus.”
“Reza–”
“Go.” Reza’s voice turned to steel. There was no more time. “That is an order, First Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir,” Eustus rasped, standing tall and rendering his commanding officer and best friend a sharp salute.
Reza returned it as a Kreelan warrior, his left fist against his breast. He watched as Eustus clambered into the heavily loaded skimmer after the watchful Marines, the door hissing shut behind them.
As the carrier sped away, Reza went back inside, bearing the long sword that was inscribed with his name before him like a flaming torch to ward off the darkness.
* * *
“No one answers downstairs, sir,” the Territorial Army orderly said matter-of-factly.
“What?” Belisle snapped. His mind was on the brink of raving insanity after receiving report after report of vanished Mallorys and idle mines. Virtually every single worker had disappeared on him, and none had yet been found. “Don’t tell me the guards have vanished into thin air, too?”
“You may inspect their bodies, if you wish,” Reza said from an alcove in the far wall. There was no door behind him. “Yours shall join them shortly.”
Belisle whirled around at the voice as the soldier drew his pistol. It was not halfway out of its holster when a shrekka ripped through his chest. A geyser of blood followed it as it flew across the room, embedding itself in the far wall. Clutching at his savaged ribcage, the man crumpled to the floor.
“What do you want?” Belisle whined. “Money? I’ve got millions of credits in the vault in this office. I can give you anything you want! I–”
“Oh, shut up, Belisle,” Thorella’s calm voice called from the anteroom. “It only makes you look more like the coward you really are.”
Reza eyed Thorella carefully. An enemy who acted calmly in the face of seemingly overwhelming force was one not to be underestimated.
“I suppose,” Thorella went on, stepping further into the room, “that since the explosive in the basement did not go off when I pushed the button, all of your traitorous friends managed to escape?”
Reza did not favor him with an answer. Thorella was hiding something. His eyes narrowing in concentration, Reza swept the room with his senses, but could detect nothing that seemed overly threatening. Yet something was wrong…
“What does he want, Thorella?” Belisle hissed.
“He’s come here to kill us, Mr. President,” Thorella said nonchalantly.
“Yes,” Reza said as he leveled his sword at Thorella, the blade steady as the stones of the ancient Kal’ai-Il in his hands. “The world has no need for such as you. Too much blood is on your hands, and there is no one – not even the Confederation’s senior Counsel, whom you also murdered – to avenge the lives you have wrongly taken, the pain you have caused.”
“Please don’t kill me!” Belisle pleaded, his hands clasped like a repentant sinner.
Reza suddenly swung his sword in an arc that appeared as a golden ring in the office’s mild light. Belisle’s mouth continued to move for a moment as it tumbled from his neck, bright arterial blood spurting to the ceiling from the torso, creating its own gruesome fresco.
“Bravo!” Thorella applauded as Belisle’s headless body at last collapsed, still twitching, to the carpet.
“Excellent swordsmanship, as always, Captain Gard. I’m sure the General Staff will enjoy watching it.”
Reza looked up sharply, eyeing Thorella more closely. The colonel walked through a sofa as Reza might through a wall.
It was a hologram.
“Yes, that’s right, you fool,” Thorella’s image said as recognition dawned on Reza’s face. “You didn’t think that I would let you get anywhere near me, did you? Even during the interrogation, I wasn’t behind the glass. It was only a projection with an appropriate olfactory representation to fool you. And it seems to have worked quite well, eh?”
Reza’s anger threatened to boil over like a volcano, but there was nowhere to direct it. Wherever Thorella was, he was safely out of Reza’s reach. How could he have been so foolish?
Because, Reza thought savagely, cursing himself, you thought that even Thorella would have had enough courage to face you and not run away like a terrified rat. Or a cunning one.
“Well, my friend,” Thorella went on, “I’m afraid I have to go now. Your blue-skinned friends are getting a bit too close for comfort.” His smile faded. “One word of advice, Gard: die here, now, or turn your coat again and go back with the Kreelans. Because if your face is seen again in Confederation space, you’ll be arrested and charged with murdering a sovereign planetary leader, not to mention a host of other lesser offenses.” A contemplative look. “I might even be able to arrange it to have you charged with the murder of the General Counsel.” He laughed. “People will hate you so much that they’ll curse your name in their sleep. And your friends will suffer their share of society’s rightful vengeance on your treasonous life.”
“In Her name,” Reza whispered, his blood a burning river of fire through his body, the power that flared within him stayed only by the knowledge that he did not know where to strike, “I shall somehow get you for this. If I die here, my spirit will reach you from beyond the Darkness, Thorella. My spirit and my vengeance shall haunt you until the day you die.”
“How thrilling,” Thorella said, amused. He looked at him as he might a steer that was being sent to the slaughter. “Good-bye, half-breed.”
Somewhere beyond the city, Reza knew, Thorella was probably lifting off in an assault shuttle, trying to join up with the incoming human fleet.
His soul burning with impotent rage, Reza fled the Parliament building and Mallory City just as the first salvoes of the Kreelan bombardment began to fall.
Thirty-Six
Seven hundred men and women stood on the Plain of Aragon in the shadow of the crystal heart’s mountain crater, watching their world burn. As Reza had foretold, the Kreelan battleships now orbiting close to the planet were devastating every human defensive position, turning the cities around them into rubble and flames.
They watched the sky glow bright orange and red as huge crimson, green, and blue bolts of energy crashed into Mallory City from the great Kreelan guns. The waiting Mallorys knew there could be no survivors.
“Surely, Sodom and Gomorra saw no greater wrath from the Lord,” someone said quietly as fire rained down from the skies.
The bombardment went on for what seemed like a long time, the ground trembling with salvo after salvo as the Kreelans pulverized the settlements. The ridge where Reza’s Marines had landed was no more than a smoldering scar in the earth; Walken’s tanks, the artillery, and the First Guards troops that had taken over from Reza’s company were gone, annihilated.
The smoke that poured from the smoking ruins of Mallory City and the Territorial Army garrisons blotted out the sun. A rain, a black rain, fell for a while and left behind an oily mist that swirled about the great plain like a funeral shroud. The Mallorys, cold and frightened, waited for whatever was to come.
“Where is he?” Markham asked. In his enormous right hand was the ax he often used to split logs as big around as a man’s chest. He figured it would kill a Kreelan just a
s well.
“I don’t know,” Ian said, shivering in the wet chill. “He said he’d come. He’ll be here.”
“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” Markham said after a while. “One hand more or less isn’t going to change things.”
“I am here,” Reza’s voice flowed from behind them. From the glow of the flames that shimmered through the mist, Reza strode toward them like a wraith in human form. The people parted before him as he made his way to the place of leadership, to the front.
“I was beginning to worry about you,” Ian said.
“Belisle is dead,” Reza told him. “Thorella escaped my hand, but justice shall someday find him.” He only half-believed the words. In the human world, people such as Thorella as often as not lived their lives through without the justice they deserved.
“I’m sorry,” Ian told him sincerely. “I know how much your Marines and Counselor Savitch must have meant to you. To see the one responsible for their deaths escape is a hard thing.”
Reza nodded in acceptance of Mallory’s condolences before pushing the matter from his mind. There was much yet to do this day. “Are your people ready as I instructed you?”
Ian nodded. “Axes, knives, picks, anything we could lay our hands on that wasn’t a gun or bomb. I don’t know what good we’ll be, but if nothing else we’re fighting with things we’ve held in our hands all our lives.”
Reza fixed him with a searching gaze. “Are they afraid to die, Ian Mallory?”
Ian looked around him. While he could not see every face among the crowd that had gathered around them, he knew all the names. And when his gaze touched them, they seemed to stand taller, their eyes brightening in the dim light. These people, some from Mallory City, some from a long distance away, many from in between, were his people, his friends. And he knew why they had come, why thousands more would have come if they could. “They didn’t come here to be cowards,” he said proudly, his heart swelling with love for the people he gladly called his own. “They came to protect what is theirs. There won’t be any Mallorys running yellow from the Plain of Aragon today.”
Reza nodded. “Then let it be done,” he said. “Form them in a line, arm’s length apart, facing as I do. Our wait shall not be long, for the enemy shall soon be with us.”
He stared into the mist as Markham bellowed his instructions across the field, Ian Mallory standing thoughtfully beside him. The Mallorys, long used to teamwork in the mines where one man or woman’s life depended on another, had already formed themselves into subunits that reacted quickly to Reza’s commands.
It was amazing, Reza thought, that such fierce warrior spirits dwelt in people who so cherished peace.
In only a few minutes they were ready, the ends of the skirmish line just visible in the mist on either side of Reza. There was no need for a modern Napoleon or Wellington this day, for there would be no maneuvering and no need for tactical genius. When the battle was joined, it would be warrior against warrior, human against Kreelan, in a battle fought with courage and ferocity that only one side could win. A battle to the death.
“They come,” Reza said, the softly spoken words carrying amazingly far. Beside him, men and women gripped their makeshift weapons tighter, adrenaline flowing through their bodies as they prepared to defend the right of their people to exist.
“Where?” Markham growled. “I don’t see–”
“There,” Ian said, nodding to their front. In the early morning mist, shadows danced in the glowing light of the rising sun, gradually taking form as the line of Kreelan warriors strode forward to meet them.
“Good Lord,” Markham whispered. He had never seen a Kreelan before, and suddenly wished he were not seeing them now.
“Are you afraid, Markham?” Reza asked him.
“Naw,” the big man said. “I’d much rather be in the pub, but I’m not afraid. If they get me, fine, but I’ll take a few myself.”
The Kreelan advance stopped. They waited.
“Markham,” Reza said, “you will wait here with the others. Ian, you must come with me, as my First.”
“What are you going to do?” Markham asked.
“We must greet them.” He turned to the big man, who was obviously uneasy about letting Ian get so close to the enemy. “Do not fear; treachery is alien to the Kreela. The greeting is part of the ritual.”
“Be careful then,” Markham said, still not pleased.
“We’ll be back, Nathaniel,” Ian told him.
While Markham issued orders for the line to hold fast, Reza and Ian set out across the no-man’s land separating the two forces, moving toward their opposite number.
As they got closer and more details of the two approaching figures, their opposites from the Kreelan line, became apparent, an uneasy feeling began to stir within Reza. There was something familiar about the leader. Something…
For just a moment, he faltered, his heart stopping with realization.
“What’s wrong, Reza,” Ian asked. “Reza?”
The two Kreelan figures continued to advance, slower now, and Ian saw that one of them had hair that was completely white, the snowy braids coiled around her upper arms like stately serpents around gleaming ebony trees. As they got closer, he could also see that her face was black below the eyes, as if she had cried in tears of ink.
Reza watched as she came to within arm’s length, but his mind refused to believe what his eyes told him. His heart had begun to beat again, but with the surge of warm blood through his limbs also came the heat of tears to his eyes as he looked upon the woman he thought he would never see again.
“Esah-Zhurah,” he whispered, unable to believe his eyes. “Is it possible?” he said in the Old Tongue, “Can it truly be you?”
For a moment, she only stood there, her deep green eyes searching his, her mind grappling with her own disbelief. “Your eyes do not deceive you, my love… my Reza.”
They reached out to one another in the greeting of warriors, of peers, clasping their arms tightly. Each was afraid that the other was only an illusion, that a mere touch would shatter the dream. But they were real. They were together.
Reza reached a hand toward her face, the armored gauntlet seemingly invisible to the nerves in his trembling fingers as they made contact with her skin. Her own arms reached for him, cupping his face in her hands, his skin where she touched him burning with a wondrous fire.
“How I have thought of you each day of my life, my love,” she said as they drew closer, the world around them fading to nothing, the Universe itself contracting into haunted, loving eyes, the touch of flesh upon flesh. “The pain of your banishment has never left me. The mourning marks have never gone away.”
“My own heart has been empty without you, Esah-Zhurah,” he whispered as her face came close to his, and his senses, denied the communion of blood that he had given up when he left, drowned themselves in her touch, her look, her scent. “I have lived each moment in hopes of someday again seeing you, touching you, one last time before Death came, but I never believed it would come to pass.” With her face so close that he could feel the heat of her body like a roiling flame, he said, “I love you.”
Their lips touched, just barely, and Reza felt the hard and terribly lonely years that had come between them melt away like soft steel in a white-hot furnace. A kiss more gentle, more passionate, there had never been.
They ran their hands along the braids of the other as their lips pressed together more firmly, their tongues greeting like the old lovers they were. Time kindly stood aside to let them enjoy this one moment that it could not, in good conscience, deny them.
As one, as if the union they had once made in spirit and blood had never been broken, Esah-Zhurah and Reza pulled themselves away from one another with no less reluctance than two planets overcoming their mutual attraction to spin away toward opposite ends of the galaxy. Shivering with the power of desires and needs that could never be satisfied, their hearts crying in anguish at the hand they knew Fate woul
d this day deal to them, they stood face to face not as lovers, but as warriors.
As enemies.
“You would defend them, Reza?” Esah-Zhurah asked, fighting to control her trembling voice.
“Yes, Esah-Zhurah,” he said unsteadily, his tongue leaden in his mouth. “Long have they lived in this place, and much have they suffered for it. According to the Legend of The One, in Her name I claim the right of Challenge.”
Esah-Zhurah surveyed the human who had accompanied Reza, noting that he had already suffered physical harm before coming to this place. But she felt no fear from him, only determination, courage. Behind him, standing silently in the swirling mist, were the others who had come to serve the Challenge. Males and females, large and small, dressed in rags and without armor to protect their fragile bodies, she sensed that they had come here with no intent to flee. Their hearts beat quickly, but with anticipation, not with fear. “You choose your companions wisely, my love,” she said. “The right is yours,” she said quietly. “I accept your Challenge.”
Reza bowed his head deeply. The sacrifice the Mallorys were about to make would not be in vain. Their people would be spared.
“In Her name,” Esah-Zhurah said, her heart filled with bitter ashes at the knowledge that Reza had come here to save the kin of these people who offered themselves up to her, that he had come here to die, “let it be done.”
With a final embrace, their hearts broken by the weight of duty and the injustice of Fate, the two separated, turning back to begin the short march to their respective lines.
“Who is she, Reza?” Ian asked uncertainly.
“She is… my wife,” Reza replied with an effort to keep his voice even. It was the closest relationship he could imagine in human terms to describe his relationship with Esah-Zhurah.
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