by Peter David
Catrine deserved better.
“Is there anyone else you’re likely to have gotten pregnant?” he growled. “You’d better tell me if there is. Clan Calhoun’s responsible for Calhoun begottens.”
“You should know,” the boy said, jutting his chin. “You’ve bragged enough about yours.”
“I live up to my obligations,” D’ndai replied, trying to look dignified. “I’ve got dozens of debt-begots, and who knows how many pleasure babes as well,” he went on, using a line he’d used to impress the men in the rebel camps. A boy clan chief with little to boast of but debt babies to war widows had to take his bravado where he could find it. “I’m a man. Men don’t go waltzing off to the Federation and leave their women and their babies to look after themselves.”
M’k’n’zy didn’t look impressed. He just looked scared. In all the years of fighting, the only time D’ndai could remember his brother looking scared was just after their father had died.
“You don’t expect me to stay here on Xenex?”
“You don’t have to make it sound like Danteri torture,” D’ndai said, reproachfully. “You’d have a woman—the finest woman on the whole planet. A home. Status. Power. A chance to build our future, the same way you built our freedom. Think about it, M’k’n’zy. Stay.”
He hadn’t realized how much he wanted his brother beside him till the words were out. M’k’n’zy was his only living family, his tactical wizard. For most of their lives he’d been D’ndai’s most pressing obligation and his most valued asset. Facing the future without him was scary as hell.
He wanted M’k’n’zy to stay.
“I can’t.” The words squirted out of M’k’n’zy like seeds from a rogan fruit. The boy’s voice cracked pitifully on the final word.
Sober and sane D’ndai might have understood that his brother had reached the end of one dream, and didn’t know where to look on Xenex for another.
D’ndai was far from sober, and almost as far from sane. All he heard was the rejection.
“I see.”
“D’ndai, I have a destiny.”
“How nice for you.”
“My future’s out there, not here.”
“Of course not. Places like Xenex are for ordinary people, like me.”
“You understand!” He grinned his cocky, trusting grin—the grin he flashed every time he came up with a new plan and handed D’ndai the mess that went with it. “I knew you would. You’re a great brother, D’ndai!”
Fratricide was too good for M’k’n’zy. It was, however, the best D’ndai could arrange. He wondered whether to cave his brother’s head in with the jug or just break his neck.
Sh’nab raised his head, recognized “critical mass,” and grabbed D’ndai’s arm. He looked at M’k’n’zy. “Don’t say another word. Just go, boy, before it’s too late.”
The hell of it was, M’k’n’zy did just that, bouncing out of the room as if he’d never known a single care. He didn’t even look back.
“I think I’ll have him tortured before he’s executed,” D’ndai said. “Slowly. It should hurt lots.”
Sh’nab stood, then caught himself as he wobbled. “Too much home-brew,” he said, then looked cannily at his leader. “We’ve both had too much.”
“I’ve just started.” D’ndai reached for the earthenware jug. Catching Sh’nab’s frown, he added, “M’k’n’zy gets visions in the Pit. Me? I never got to Search for the Allways. Da was killed right about the time I started thinking about it, and after that…Well, the Calhoun of Calhoun can’t risk himself, can he? So,” he continued, pulling the jug close, “I’ll just have to find my visions here, won’t I?”
Sh’nab pinned his arm to the table before he could pour himself another glass. The old man had lived life the hard way, and had the wiry toughness to prove it. “You still can’t risk yourself. Whether she marries or not, Catrine will need you—you’re her clan chief and always will be. Clan Calhoun needs you. Xenex needs you. You’re the Calhoun of Calhoun, and this is your destiny. You can’t hide from it in a jug.”
“I think I hate him, you know,” D’ndai said, sadly. “Damned brat. I wish I could trade destinies. He got the easy one.”
Sh’nab patted him clumsily on the shoulder, and took the glass from his fingers. “If you can’t hate your brother, who can you hate?”
D’ndai made sure to tell Sh’nab all the ways the next week stank.
“It stinks worse than a ten-day-dirty lirga sty, old man. It stinks like a dead Danteri soldier left to rot in the swamps down near Vedrine. It stinks like a latrine after a battalion with the flux has…”
“Shut up, D’ndai.”
D’ndai grinned, glad to know he’d finally gotten past the elder’s castiron good nature. “But it does stink.”
“So does a Danteri’s crotch cloth, but it’s not something I need to hear about. Look,” he said, waving a Federation-style padd in the air, “just look at this. Please? V’rdan and G’nard have given a statement to the Argive newsies suggesting we’re provoking an intertribal feud. They spent an extra ten minutes promoting the ‘New Economic Vision.”’
“The new what?”
“Apparently it’s something G’nard has ‘seen’ while sitting in a smoke pit meditating on his left big-toe nail. ‘A vision of a New Xenex, a Xenex free of want and need and poverty and pain.”’
“Sounds nice.” D’ndai leaned his chin on the heel of his hand. “So how do we get this nice new Xenex?”
“Establish Clan G’lyndr as first among equals and make V’rdan executive of the Council of Clans—what else?”
“Of course. I should have guessed. It’s obvious once you think of it.” D’ndai pushed his own mempad across the desk. “Thallon’s terminating all prior trade agreements with Calhoun, and threatening sanctions unless ‘certain provisions are met.’Any guesses what they have in mind?”
“All hail Clan G’lyndr,” Sh’nab intoned. “V’rdan’s not playing dath-toss for kisses. He’s determined to push us out and take over the planet.”
“He sent me a private message, yesterday,” D’ndai said. “Auto-erase, and no way to prove it. If I don’t give him Catrine he’ll force a feud.”
“Then give him Catrine,” Sh’nab said. “I know, I know, she doesn’t want to marry—and you don’t want her to marry G’nard. But what’s one woman compared to the good of the clan?”
“What’s the point of the clan, if it’s not to look out for the good of the women?”
“Tell that to the world,” Sh’nab said. “To me just say, ‘I love her.’That’s what it’s really about. It’s why G’lyndr picked her, too, though damned if I understand how he knew.” He began to gather up the papers and pad. “G’lyndr were always bastards to feud with. They do love to twist the knife.”
The next afternoon a herdgirl rushed into the courtyard, shrieking. She’d found a wild harg gutted on the high plateau where the venn grazed.
The harg was Calhoun’s banner-beast. The knife left in the harg’s eye was etched with G’lyndr’s flying nighthawk.
“They’ll steal some of the herdgirls next,” Sh’nab said. “After that? Bride raids, duels, ambushes, cattle runs. Give them the woman, D’ndai.”
He couldn’t.
M’k’n’zy left, beaming up with nothing more than the clothes on his back, a battle pack he’d had for years, and a happy grin. He didn’t mention Catrine at all.
The clans began to mutter when a herd of venn was rustled during the night. They muttered louder when a fifteen-year-old girl went missing—even when she turned up safely married to a nomad boy her family detested.
Feud was in the air. Everyone was afraid.
D’ndai still couldn’t make himself give in.
He couldn’t hold firm, though, either. Not when the good of the clan was at risk.
He took to walking the town, hoping for an excuse to either kill a G’lyndr or be killed.
It would serve M’k’n’zy right if he died, h
e thought. Then the boy would learn the real cost of power: unending obligation. A mean, angry grin grew on his face as he imagined his brother called back from his precious Academy to face what D’ndai faced daily. Each beggar child, each scarred old veteran hobbling one-legged across the square in Calhoun was D’ndai’s responsibility.
Let M’k’n’zy try plotting his way out of that.
D’ndai was sitting in the sun in the public square of Calhoun, eyes closed, trying to find a way out of the mess, when he heard a reedy voice he’d heard before.
“I hear you’ve got trouble.”
“I was born to trouble,” D’ndai said. He opened his eyes and looked reproachfully at the dapper DEA agent. “Why are you pestering me, Danteri? Don’t you have better things to do?”
“Not really.” Warain settled on the low plinth the bench sat on, reached deep within his silk tunic, and pulled out a beautifully etched duraglass case. He flipped it open and offered it to D’ndai. “Have a mek tab? They’re from Serrias. Good, if you like them strong and spicy.”
D’ndai ignored the offer. “We have nothing to say to each other.”
“You may be sworn to silence. I’m not.” Warain popped a tab in his mouth and rolled it around, savoring the burn and the faint narcotic rush. “I have some information you might be interested in. That’s one nice thing about being DEA: gossip, rumor, speculation, sheer fantasy, you can hear it all if you show some interest. This particular rumor concerns Clan G’lyndr and a certain widow.”
“Leave the gossip to the market peddlers. They give it away with every basket of greens.”
“All a matter of fair trade,” Warain said. “Give a little, get a little, and thus we all prosper. I’m willing to give a lot to get a lot.”
“Stale goods. News of G’lyndr and—certain widows—is old news.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”
“I don’t deal with Danteri. I definitely don’t deal with DEA.”
“My goods have a short shelf life.”
D’ndai pushed off from the bench. “Too bad for you, then. I need no DEA rumors, fresh or otherwise.” He ambled away, determined to show no sign of interest or anger.
“She’ll be lost if you delay,” Warain said, so softly D’ndai almost didn’t hear him. “G’lyndr’s going for the kill.”
D’ndai wanted to keep moving. The best he could manage was to stand, frozen. “Lost how?”
Warain hummed softly to himself. “Fresh goods, fresh and sweet. Who will buy? I’m sorry, Calhoun. I don’t relish forcing your hand. But for Danter’s sake I can’t—no, I won’t give goods away free. Not even when a woman’s future is at stake.”
“What’s your price?”
“You know the price.”
D’ndai turned and squatted on his haunches, looking fiercely at the DEA agent. “Xenex hates Danter. If I made a deal with you I’d be destroying my own clan as well as betraying my planet. When word got out G’lyndr would make an example of me Xenex would never forget.”
“It wouldn’t be betrayal if it helped Xenex. As for V’rdan…he can’t destroy you if he can’t make a show of it. All you need is plausible deniability or a good enough excuse.” He came and crouched by D’ndai, offering the tab case again. “Come, now. No one will doubt Calhoun’s loyalty to Xenex.”
D’ndai snatched the case from Warain’s hand and took a tab. The mek burned like fire and set his blood racing. “It would have to be a damned good excuse, Danteri.”
“It would be nice to be called by name,” Warain said. “I haven’t been called anything but ‘Danteri’ for the past three months. If you deal in good faith, you’ll have all the excuse you need for the short term. Greed and pragmatism will provide for the long term.”
“I’ll deal in good faith.” It was a lie—but he suspected Warain knew that.
Warain gave a soft snort. “Sold, to the man in the Calhoun regalia!” He paused, and looked at D’ndai a bit wistfully. “Very well. You’ve sold your soul. You deserve something back for it. There’s to be a bride raid tonight. Thallon is transporting G’nard and his war boys. They’ll beam them out once they’ve accomplished a traditional snatch with the whole street watching.”
“So we move Catrine.”
“They’ll only try again. You need to beat them like your brother beat us: so completely there’s nothing left for them to do but back down.”
“Of course. How?”
Warain chuckled. “Oh, I have a few ideas.”
Warain wasn’t as clever as M’k’n’zy, but the man had his own brilliance. D’ndai quickly found himself working with the man much as he’d worked with his brother: filling in, shoring up, adding definition to a sketchy concept. It felt good—better than anything had felt since the war had been won. D’ndai felt alive and on top of things.
He and his men were beamed down to Catrine’s house late at night, long after everyone on the peaceful little street was asleep. They huddled together on the landing, peering at the black-market Federation tricorder, watching the life readings of Xenexians at rest.
D’ndai had taken part in ambushes before. He knew the creeping tension, the flick of eyes, the near-silent shift of feet as men tried to ease muscles kept still too long.
He’d wanted to tell Catrine. He’d wanted to beam her away so she’d be safe during the fighting. Warain had insisted that they needed her reaction—her shock, her rejection of G’nard, her fear. This was a battle of rumor and spin, not just of knives and phasers. What the witnesses saw on the street would matter.
Catrine’s honest reaction frightened D’ndai worse than the thought of dying in the scrimmage.
She’d never forgive him.
Sh’nab, hunched low by the stairs, pointed at the patterns on the tricorder screen. “They’re coming,” he hissed. The old man had demanded a part in the battle, saying he’d been in at the start of this mess and he intended to be in at the end. Not that D’ndai had minded. Sh’nab was old, but he was a canny fighter, and loyal.
They could hear G’nard’s party approaching. They weren’t trying to be silent: They wanted as many witnesses as they could get. They came howling down the street, setting off firecrackers and shouting G’lyndr battle cries.
“Wait,” D’ndai whispered. “No moves till they’ve broken in.”
A murmur came from the bedroom: Catrine, disturbed by the noise below.
G’nard was shouting something about a man’s needs and his love for a woman. The words were overblown and sappy, like something from a traveling opera.
In the bedroom feet hit the floor. Catrine was awake, now, and swearing. D’ndai heard her window open.
“Keep quiet down there or I’ll empty the piss-pot on your heads!” she shouted. “Some of us need our rest.”
“Forget rest, O beauteous dawn! You shall light my way to bed this night, or I am not G’nard of G’lyndr.”
Of course G’nard had to make sure everyone knew who he was. That was the whole idea, wasn’t it?
Catrine was silent a moment. D’ndai shivered, thinking of her fear. Then her voice rang out, clear and cutting. “G’nard the Small? I’ve heard about you.”
“Good things, I hope?”
“Tiny things,” she snapped, “and very unsatisfying. Now go away. I’m not interested in G’lyndr drunks.”
D’ndai’s men were choking back laughter. G’nard’s men and the neighbors weren’t so constrained: They roared as Catrine slammed the window closed.
G’nard must not have liked having his carefully planned little romance turned into a farce. He swore, then ordered his men on. One-two-three thuds later the door onto the street burst in. G’lyndr men tumbled into the entry.
“Now.” D’ndai stepped out onto the stairway, dagger drawn. His men pushed in behind, slithering into the hall, taking down G’lyndr liege men before they knew they had any opposition.
Above, Catrine’s door swung so hard it slammed into the wall. She shrieked: not a frightened shriek, but a ban
shee skreel of rage.
D’ndai, below, slammed the butt of his dagger into a G’lyndr chin. It was stupid, but he hoped Catrine would see him and know he was fighting for her.
“Men,” he heard her growl. “Stupid, stupid men. Aaargh!” Her voice Dopplered down the stairs. He heard something hard hit something fleshy with a meaty thud. Someone swore sharply. Given the edgy contralto note it was either Catrine or a very unhappy man suffering a very personal injury.
D’ndai felt the fight move like a tidal surge out the door and onto the street. Men were panicking—not just G’nard’s men, but D’ndai’s also.
Behind them, wielding a very large iron lantern stand, came Catrine. Her form wasn’t all it could be—though there wasn’t much precedence for lanternstand work in Xenexian military traditions. Her spirit more than made up for it. She was every frothing cannibal war goddess ever imagined.
G’nard was an experienced fighter. D’ndai saw him shift, heard him calling his men together.
D’ndai dodged a fist, sidestepped a dagger thrust, and faded back to stand beside Catrine, blocking a strike from—no, not a G’lyndr, but a neighbor who’d apparently decided it was a open-entry fracas with all targets fair play.
“We’re here to help,” he shouted to her.
“In a lirga’s eye,” she snarled. But she didn’t hit him.
Some sappy part of his brain stored the rest of the fight away in the most sentimental shadows of his mind: the one time he and Catrine were a couple.
The entire neighborhood had joined. G’nard realized he wasn’t going to win this round. He batted frantically at a combadge pinned to his tunic.
“Beam us out! Now!”
No shimmer arrived to whisk the G’lyndr men away.
The group tried to bolt but the crowd was too dense, the fighting too enthusiastic. Soon the raiding party was surrounded. They huddled by a streetlamp in the guttering light of the oil lantern. Few had any weapons left. None had much dignity.
Catrine, still clutching her lanternstand, paced forward. “You dared. You dared.” She began to raise the stand.
D’ndai blocked her arm. “We won. Let them live with the shame.” He directed his next words to G’nard, making sure he was loud enough to be heard by all present—and maybe even by people several streets away. “Calhoun protects its own. It always will. But if you give me Clan G’lyndr’s oath of truce I’ll give you safe passage out of Calhoun.”