Shocked gasps crackled through the work yard as men halted what they were doing. What the men knew would happen, did: Lares Taborn, taking exception to the vulgar nickname, roared and charged like an enraged bull.
Cree tensed, anticipating the forward momentum of the destructive force stampeding his way. Unfortunately, he miscalculated both the fury and the power of that force and went down under it. The wind was knocked out of his lung and his head slammed down on the ground hard enough to bring the stars down from the heavens. He felt scree from the nearby bluffs digging deep furrows into his bare back as he slid backwards under the impetus of the dark man's massive body.
"I will make you scream for mercy, you Rysalian pup!" Lares thundered.
"Ry-Chalean," Raine called out. "He's Ry-Chalean, Lares!"
"Worse yet!" the Necromanian warrior stated. "He has the traits of two inferior races in his puny body!"
The weight crushing down on Cree was more than he had anticipated; the wicked knee that wedged between his thighs to drive unmercifully into his groin brought bile to his throat. Even the removal of the ton of outraged male that rolled easily off him as he twisted to the side to gag out his agony, did nothing to relieve Cree.
"Puke on me and die, Ry-Chalean jackal!"
Cree curled up in a tight ball, clutching his battered manhood and squeezed his eyes shut to blot out the pain.
"Puny!" Lares flung at him. He came to his feet and stood with his legs straddling Cree's prone body. He spat, his spittle landing near Cree's face then he started to unbutton the fly of his work pants. "I piss on you! I am still champi— "
Without a hint of warning, Kamerone Cree flipped to his back and, with his knees still drawn up, shot his legs straight upward into the unprotected V of Lares Taborn's open legs. Cree grunted with fierce satisfaction as the dark man was for one moment impaled on the soles of Cree's dirty boots before being propelled backwards to land in a gasping heap three feet away.
Raine McGregor's mouth fell open. Neither he nor any of the other men watching could credit what they were seeing. Was that Lares bellowing in pain? Lares, who now lay on his side in the dirt, protectively covering his balls? The young Serenian nobleman shifted his stare to the Reaper as that one came unsteadily to his feet. He watched as Cree stumbled, then forced himself to straighten despite the obvious agony wracking his lower body.
"Get up, darkling!" Cree ordered in a husky rasp. "I'm not through with you, you black sonofabitch!"
Lares moaned beneath his breath as he pushed to his feet. He kept bent over for a moment until the nausea passed. He raised his head of thick coarse black hair and lifted his hand to fling his waist-length braid over his shoulder. Narrowing his cinnamon eyes, he locked his glower on the Reaper. "A mistake, that, you Ry-Chalean mongrel," he managed to say.
"We will see," came the reply.
The two men closed on one another, circling, crouched low in wrestler's stances; each looking for an opening in the defense of his opponent. Lares snaked out a sweeping arm, not so much in an attempt to sag his adversary's leg as it was in taunt; Cree made a half-hearted grab for the dark man's head, his hand sliding off. After a moment or two of testing one another in a like manner, they came together with a meaty clash of naked chests that made every man watching them wince.
Raine sat on the ground, drew his knees up into the arch of his arms, and was in awe of the spectacle unfolding. Both men were evenly matched despite the fact that Lares weighed a good forty to fifty pounds more than Rysalia's Prime Reaper. Their skills were on an even par, as was their strength. When Lares pulled Cree down on top of him and flipped the Reaper head-over-heels behind him, Raine could do no more than grunt with wonder as the Rysalian rolled to his feet, and without thought, spun around and dropped down on the dark man like a boulder.
Commandant Jahannum came out of his office and stood with his warden, Jona, to watch the spectacle. Neither man would interfere. The Commandant was amused at the prisoners rolling about in the sharp shards of the rock pile, their naked chests and backs bleeding from numerous cuts. He nodded when the Reaper lashed out with a spinning drop kick that felled the dark man as easily as blowing fluff from a dandelion.
"He may well kill the darkling, Commandant," suggested Jona.
"Does it matter?" replied the Commandant. He silently applauded the Reaper as a well-timed left hook sent the Necromanian crashing to the ground. He frowned when Taborn came back with a brutal jab to the Reaper's kidney that dropped Cree to his knees. When black blood flew from an equally brutal right cross that broke Cree's nose, the Commandant began to worry.
"Shall I stop it?" Jona asked.
"One moment more." His worry turned to anticipation as the Reaper thrust out his left leg and swept Lares from his feet. Before the dark man could react to the fall, the Reaper was up and over him, straddling him with a jagged chunk of rock that he dug into the bigger man's glistening throat.
"Do you beg quarter?" the men heard Cree asking in a grating near-whisper.
"I..." the dark man said, his breath coming in heaves of breathlessness, "beg...for...no...man!"
Cree pressed the edge of his makeshift weapon down on the windpipe of his adversary. "Then ask for quarter, fool!"
"I will not," Lares responded, his eyes widening as he saw pure rage leap into the white man's demon orbs. He braced himself for the killing blow.
"Hell!" Cree shouted and flung the rock away from him as hard as he could throw it. After one final, damning look at his opponent, he thrust himself up, dragging tired breaths into his bruised lungs. He straddled the dark man, then shocked every one there by holding out his hand to his enemy to help him up.
Lares looked from the Reaper's hand to his dirty face to the proffered hand again. Having never been beaten in a fight before, the dark man did not know how to accept defeat gracefully. He was willing to die before admitting he had lost the fray so he shook his head. "Finish it," he demanded. "I deserve death."
"Do not be a fool," Cree warned him in a low voice. "You lost the fight, you ugly sot, not the war." He jabbed his hand closer to Lares. "Take my hand."
"No."
"Is it not better to live and fight me another day than to die an ignominious death in a shithole like this? Take my hand!"
The Necromanian's eyes narrowed. "I told you no."
Cree shook his hand at Lares. "Take my gods-be-damned hand or accept defeat as it was handed to you for I will turn my back in contempt leaving no doubt my regard of you." He leaned forward, lowered his voice once more so only Lares might hear. "Reapers do not offer their hand lightly, you ugly bastard; to warrant such an honor, the man on the receiving end must be found worthy." He straightened up although he did not withdraw his hand. "I have tested you and found you worthy." He looked around them. "These men know that, else I would have slit your stinking throat and been done with it." He narrowed his own eyes. "Are you man enough to accept the compliment or not?"
Lares thought about that for a moment. His big face screwed up with the effort, then relaxed, the deep crinkles smoothing out. A lopsided grin widened his mouth. "Worthy, eh?" he asked, bringing up his own hand.
"Aye," Cree answered, slapping his hand against Lares' and gripping it with a strength that surprised his opponent. He stepped back and jerked the Necromanian to his feet, grunting with the effort of lifting so heavy a man.
The dark man in turn surprised, if not shocked, Cree by draping a companionable arm across the Reaper's dirty shoulder and drawing him close. "You are not as puny as I first thought, Ry-Chalean jackal."
No man had ever dared put an arm around the Reaper before and he damned sure did not like it. He pushed the dark man away. "Never do that again."
Lares threw back his head and roared with laughter. "Come, jackal," he said. "I think we both need a bath!"
"I WILL BE pissing blood for a week," Cree complained as he brought his knees up and sat with his arms draped across them. He leaned against the bathhouse wall.
&n
bsp; "You loosened my front teeth." Lares wiggled his central incisors with his thumb.
"Too bad. I meant to knock them out."
Lares chuckled. "You are not bad for a white man, I suppose. Do you get to spar like that often?"
Cree shook his head. "Not since I was at the Fleet Academy. We were only allowed to fight our own kind because ordinary men can not withstand the blows."
"Ordinary men. I like that." He thumped his chest. "I am not an ordinary man."
Cree snorted. "No, you are a conceited buffoon."
Lares grinned widely. "So you have not used your fists for anything other than playing with yourself then?"
"I did not say that," Cree snapped, ignoring the vulgar insult. "As a matter of fact, the last man I hit, couldn't hit back and I regret that very much."
"Why did you do it, then?" Lares didn't think much of men who picked on weaklings.
Cree stared off across the compound. "I found the prick in bed with my woman," was the terse reply.
"Ah," Lares said, understanding. "Being cuckolded makes a man do strange things I'm told."
"I should have killed him," Cree said, "but she would never have forgiven me had I done so."
"And it means much to you for her not to think ill of you," Lares stated. "I am familiar with the predicament."
"I am not."
Lares shifted his position so he could better see the Reaper in the gathering darkness. "You are the one they call the Iceman, are you not?"
"Not to my face, they don't."
"Why do they call you this?"
Cree shrugged. "Who the hell knows? Or cares?" He thought about it for the first time in his life, and then shrugged again. "I suppose it is because I have no warmth in me. My soul is as cold as the glaciers of Chrystallus."
"You have more fire in you than most of your race. But there's warmth and then there's warmth, eh, Jackal?"
"Aye," Cree agreed, thinking of Bridget.
The dark man sensed where Cree's mind had gone by the look on his face. "Are you warm with your woman or do you treat her the way those Rysalian pigs treat their womenfolk?"
The Reaper flinched. "I have yet to find out," he admitted, surprising himself that he would say such a thing to a complete stranger.
Lares nudged his companion with a heavy shoulder. "I have a woman," he whispered. "A fine woman." He put up his hands and drew lush curves in the air. "Big breasts; small waist; superb ass; and legs that go all the way up to that shapely ass!"
Cree grinned. "And are you warm with your woman, Taborn?"
Lares put his right hand in his lap and cupped his member. "I am as hot as, and have the cutting edge of, Ionarian steel with my J'Bai!"
"Her name is J'Bai?"
The dark man shook his head. "No, Jackal, no. A J'Bai is a man's betrothed." He held up his reed necklace. "She made this for me when we were but bantlings. It is dear to me and I am never without it. I would rather die than allow it to be broken. She and I will be joined— " He stopped, his face clouding. He corrected himself. "I was to be joined with her one week before I was sent to this hellhole."
"What did you do to be sent here?"
"A small matter," Lares complained. "Only murder. I shall be here two years."
"Who did you swat?" Cree asked in the terminology of his kind.
Lares scowled. "A pesky priest of that gods-be-damned order that sent my great-grandfather here when this pest hole was called Labyrinth. They call themselves the Brotherhood of the Domination." He ground his teeth. "They are a damnably hard insect to squash, those bastards."
"Those bastards of whom you speak are a branch of the Empire, the rulers of my homeworld."
"More's the pity for you, then." Lares looked the Reaper in the eye. "And just like Necroman, the Rysalian Empire has resistance fighters who are trying to swat their own insects."
Cree tore his gaze from the big man. "Aye," he sneered. "I've the Resistance to thank for being in this pest hole as you call it. They've singled me out to torment."
Lares smiled, rubbing his hands together as though he were about to be given a juicy bit of gossip. "And what did we do to be sent here, Jackal?"
The Prime Reaper let out a long breath. "I did nothing but garner their gods-be-damned notice, is all." He jerked his head around and fixed Lares with a steely glare. "They've been trying to get my ass for the last year. Thanks to their tender mercies I spent two weeks of a living hell inside a Behavioral Modification Unit having my mind altered!" He clenched his jaw. "When I find out who is responsible for that piece of work, I'm going to strangle her."
"The Multitude," Lares mumbled.
"The Multitude?"
"You have never heard of them?"
"Aye, I have heard of them, but what have they to do with what we're talking about?"
"I believe the Resistance on both our worlds are being run by them."
"It does not matter," Cree drawled. "I am sworn to fight any and all enemies of the Empire, sorceresses or not, and the women of the Rysalian Resistance have gained my undivided attention!"
"What if your woman is one of them?"
Cree's eyes widened and he turned a fierce face to his companion. "She would not be!"
"How do you know she is not?"
"I know!"
Lares looked at him for a long moment, and then lowered his voice to a forceful whisper. "But how do you know?"
The Reaper opened his mouth to defend Bridget, and then snapped it shut. The Necromanian was right; how did he know?
SWEAT RAN down Cree's face and salt trickled into his eyes, blinding him. He stopped, rested the handle of his pickax against his thigh and armed away the sweat, leaving long dirty streaks on his forehead and right cheek. Breathing raggedly from his work breaking rocks, he hunkered down on his haunches and let his head drop from the sheer exhaustion. He was hotter than he could ever remember being; tanned as deeply bonze as the three Diabolusian prisoners who were glaring at him from the entrance to the cave. It hadn't taken him long to discard his black jumpsuit that first day three weeks earlier. Aye, he thought tiredly: he was hotter than he had ever been, but in far better shape, too. He had developed muscle groups that he had not even known he possessed. His biceps were rock-hard, bulging, from the steady day-to-day application of pickax to rock. You could bounce a Serenian gold piece off his thighs, they were so tight with firm muscle tone. The thick calluses on the palms of his hands were the only drawback to the hard labor, but he had earned them; worked through the blisters that had formed, broken, ran, dug deep into the tender flesh, then formed again until there was a horny layer covering the once-soft pads of his palm heel and fingers. His chest had begun to bulge after the second week and he doubted seriously if he could even fit into the jumpsuit when it was time to leave this hellhole.
The stealthy crunch of rock nearby brought Cree's head up and set off an alarm in the back of his killer's mind. He looked behind him, saw no one, but realized there were no longer three Diabolusians glaring at him. He pushed up to his feet and reached for the pickax. The worn smoothness of the thick handle was comforting.
"On your left," he heard Raine say in a low voice as the young man sidled toward him from the other side of the garden plot where he had been pulling weeds. The young Serenian nobleman was carrying a hoe in a practiced grip; fighting for his chance to be left alone among the murderers and rapists of Helios 12 was nothing new to the handsome political prisoner.
"What the hell do they want?"
"Who knows?" Raine returned in a bored voice. "Do those dogs have to want something, Cree?"
As the three Diabolusians began moving toward the rock pile, Lares showed up as if by dark magic. Oblivious to the Necromanian's presence, the Diabolusians parted: one heading for Raine, two making their way toward Cree.
"I do love a fight," Lares said beneath his breath and smiled. The white of his teeth against the ebony of his skin looked like the gaping maw of a Viragonian. His opponent never knew what hit him.
Raine held his own against a Diabolusian knife-wielder who did his level best to skewer the Serenian. McGregor danced just out of reach of the gutting blade. A well-aimed and savage swing of the Serenian's hoe handle nearly caved in the man's chest and left him in agony, gasping for breath where he fell. Raine hawked up a gob of phlegm and spat on the man then stood back to watch Cree.
"I kill you, Iceman!" the Diabolusian hissed in broken Rysalian.
"You can try."
Lares joined Raine and draped a friendly arm over the young man's shoulder. "I like the way this Ry-Chalean jackal fights, son of the McGregor!"
"He's good. There's no doubt about that," Raine agreed, flinching as a particularly brutal uppercut caught the Diabolusian under the chin and slammed him against the wall of the Indoctrination Hut. "And he enjoys it, too."
"Men were born to fight, my child," Lares sighed dramatically. "If not for our little pissing contests, where would we be? We must size our cocks against one another else we— "
"McGregor! Taborn!"
Raine and Lares turned to find the Warden waving them to work. They thought of ignoring him, but Cree was only moments away from defeating his opponent. It was a foregone conclusion. With a look and shrug at one another, they headed to their assigned tasks. Neither of them saw Raine's adversary come slyly to his feet, his dagger clutched in his fist.
From the window of his quarters, the Commandant watched with appreciation as the Reaper crashed a powerful fist into his enemy's face to send the hapless man tumbling to the hard-packed ground; but out of the corner of his eye, he spied movement and swung his gaze that way. His eyes widened. Frantically, he rapped on the window. "Cree!" he shouted, not realizing he couldn't be heard through the thick solar reflective glass. "Cree, behind you!"
Having been absorbed with the fight up until then, Cree did not hear or see the man sneaking up on him. He had no idea of the danger he was in until it was too late. Commandant Jahannum saw the Reaper start to turn, finally sensing something was not quite right. It was at that moment— already far too late for Cree to save himself— that the wicked six-inch long serrated blade of the stiletto drove deep into the Reaper's back, barely missing the spinal cord, but slicing open Cree's right kidney, and the warrior collapsed like a broken toy.
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