The Warrior Who Carried Life

by Geoff Ryman

  Strangely enough, Haliki did not interfere with these nighttime sessions. “Country Boy knows he will not be here long, and he has the wit to see he cannot fight. Broken Nose teaches him ugly warfare, which is all he is good for.”

  It was Stefile who Haliki pressed mercilessly, calling her Dirty One Dress and Chin Dribble. “Her hands are so rough from work that they draw blood. It is a mystery to me how the two ruffians make love;” and then, “Poor little thing. What a shame you do not have a man to defend you.” It was done out of malice, human and inexplicable. During the day, Haliki practised fighting men with swords. “Do not fight him,” murmured Galad. All the time she was there, Cara held her temper, nursing her secret revenge.

  Every day at sunset, Galo gro Galu came to look at her.

  “When it happens,” Cara told Galad, “tell Stefile. Tell her to leave, then, quickly. If she asked where the Galu has taken me, don’t tell her. She must get away. We have arranged a place to meet outside the City. Make sure she leaves for there, gets out of the House. Tell her also,” Cara added, “that I think of her as my wife.”

  It was in the third week of Cara’s month that the Galu came at night, instead of sunset. He wore only his purple wrapping and his coiled necklace, and he sat on the edge of the wall, an almost luminous white in the night, casting a long moonshadow across the courtyard. He applauded Cara and called out, “Oh brave, brave, well struck!” and laughed. Cara stepped forward, in her loincloth with her sword. “Good evening, Master,” she said.

  “Good evening, warrior!” He swung his pale legs back and forth like a child. “Come up and talk to me.”

  “I am too humble, Master. I must train,” replied Cara. “And besides, how am I to reach you?”

  The Son of the Family laughed again, a high musical laugh. He stood up and unwound the cloth from around his middle until he was naked, and lowered it over the edge of the wall. “Climb up,” he said, challenging, insinuating, ordering.

  “Can you hold me, Master?” Cara asked, lowering her eyes from his nakedness, which sickened her.

  “I am stronger than you think,” the Galu said, with a voice like ice.

  Cara could not look around at Galad, out of shame and fear that the Galu would see something between them. We all live only by hope, she thought to herself. Without looking back she walked to the wall, and with a gathering of sweaty stillness realised that her time had come, that she might not see Stefile again, that she herself would probably die. The Galu certainly would. She grabbed hold of the purple and scrambled up the wall, her sword, sheathed, hanging from her waist. The armour and shield, leaning against the wall, were told by her mind to follow.

  “There you are,” said the Galu, lifting her with arms like straggly bands of steel. “And here you are.” The smile was fixed and the eyes unblinking, as Cara remembered, the Galu hugged her, pressed himself against her and whispered, “Have you ever loved a man, my warrior?”

  Cara told the truth. “Yes, Master.”

  The Galu chuckled, a low ugly sound from somewhere deep in his throat. “Let’s walk,” said the Galu, slinging his purple over one shoulder. He put an arm around Cara’s waist and padded along the broken walls next to her. His skin was cold, even clammy.

  I cannot bear this, thought Cara, and longed for it to be over, longed to be hidden from sight, safe from eyes, so that she could do it quickly and escape.

  “I love night,” said the Galu. “It is so cool and quiet and still. Day is too bright and scorching. You like the night too don’t you? Isn’t it beautiful.” He stopped to look across at the temple, the ancient ziggurat, looming up in layers over the even, broken walls. “Look at my house.”

  “It is decaying,” said Cara.

  “That is why it is beautiful,” replied the Galu, and picked up a piece of broken brick with his bare and supple foot, and dropped it over the edge. “I like ruin. Listen. You can hear air move in the grass that is growing out of the walls. I like that too.” The Galu brushed the grass with his foot and then stepped back to let Cara admire his nakedness. Cara looked away, but glimpsed despite herself the blue-white, deformed, bald organs of his sex. The Galu chuckled again, that deep awful sound. “Oh! But he is embarrassed. He is modest. Well then, I must cover myself.” The Galu did so by pressing himself against Cara again. “He is so warm. It must be the sun.” The Galu smiled with his lifeless teeth and kissed Cara—she thought she would gag and she pulled her head away.

  “Not here,” she blurted, and glanced about them.

  “Oh, my Prince is embarrassed,” hissed the Galu, taking hold of Cara’s ears so that she could not turn away again. “Where would my Prince like to go?”

  “It is said that I will not be selected. I will not be here long. I would like to see the palace?”

  “He wants to see The Most Important House. Then of course he will.” The Galu took Cara’s hand, and his fingers were like chilly claws, and he led her back and forth across the top of the maze of stone, and Cara began to dread that she would not be able to find her way out again. The honeycomb of stone seemed to cover all the world out to the horizon. She glanced back and saw her helmet and shield peering over the top of a wall as though they had eyes.

  Finally the Galu led her down a single staircase from the walls into the shadows of the inner House, kerigs around courtyards, like the Schools.

  The Palace was lit inside only by low guttering torches, and the corridors were stark. There was hardly any furniture, a carved stool, perhaps, against a wall, an old tapestry fallen and crammed dusty into a corner. The friezes had dropped in sections from the walls. Reliefs of armies of marching men were interrupted by breakage, their faces mottled by flaking paint. In one vast, dim, empty chamber were carvings of Asu Kweetar, the Most Noble Beast, winged, god-given. The gouges across the images seemed to Cara to be deliberate defacement. What kind of sacrilege was it to deface the most beautiful creature? The legends called it The Beast that Talks to God, and every child yearned to see it in the sky. What kind of sacrilege was it to reduce the Most Important House to this state? As they walked, Cara heard the fluttering of wings and the scuttling of delicate little claws. There was the hooting of an owl, and the sudden, heart-stopping swoop of bats towards and then away from Cara’s face.

  In front of the door to Galo gro Galu’s chamber an Angel stood on guard. The Angel was Haliki.

  Haliki began to laugh. “So little Dirty One Dress has something new to learn,” he said, grinning.

  “Haliki will not mock my Prince,” said the Galu, stroking the hair on the nape of Cara’s neck. “Haliki will not laugh too long, either.”

  Haliki mastered himself. “Yes Master,” he murmured, but his eyes followed Cara, glistening with amused delight.

  It does not matter about me, Cara thought, feeling the presence of the Angel Warrior behind her. If I have to die to kill the Galu, it will be worth it. She followed Galo into his bedchamber, and the door was closed behind her.

  The room smelled like an abattoir, and was dark, no windows. A single candle burned on the floor amid encrustations of wax. This room too was bare, only pillows and cloth on the floor. The Galu stood, expectant. Before she would have to do, or see more, her mind benumbed and determined, Cara drove her sword straight into the chest of Galo gro Galu, where she hoped his heart would be.

  The Galu groaned, and rolled his head, and looked at Cara with eyes that seemed to shiver.

  “Oh not so soon my love,” he cooed. “You will ruin it. Slice slowly.”

  Cara could not understand; she thought she had misheard; she thought the Galu did not yet realise he had been struck. Then the Galu stepped towards her on the sword, eyes full of yearning. Stepped forward, and then stepped back. Forward and back, forward and back. Blood welled up into his mouth, and down his chin, and he licked and swallowed it.

  “Ah! Ah!” squawked Cara, in horror, and tried to wrench the sword out of him. The Galu smiled and reached up, and took hold of the hilt, and passed it to her
. Then, like a yielding virgin, he settled down onto the pillows, and licked his fingers, and smeared the blood down his belly. He fingered the edge of the wound, gently, in delight. Cara struck at him clumsily, to make him stop, to wipe away what she was seeing. She cut him across the shoulders and face.

  “That’s it. That’s better,” said the Galu, and smiled. This time the teeth were red. “I know who you are,” he said, and gasped. “Dear, dear Daughter. I know who you are.” Darkness was spreading out evenly all around him, seeping across the cloth. “Look,” said the Galu, with a voice like the dying wind.

  There was a sudden crackling noise and the Galu groaned again—merely groaned—and writhed on his bed, and with a sound like the splitting of logs the wound in his chest broke wide open from the base of his throat to the bottom of his belly.

  Great petals of flesh, thick, black, like a flower, erupted out of him. Cara watched, uncomprehending, as stems rose out of the midst of the petals, rustling, bearing on their ends three clear, crystalline globes like jelly with spiralling of gold flakes within them. The Galu was still alive. “The Secret Rose,” he whispered. A bubble of blood burst in his mouth, and he looked up at the thing with love. “Beautiful. The Secret Rose.” His eyes went staring, and then glazed.

  “No,” said Cara, rejecting. “No. No. No. No. No,” and she began to beat the sword against the stone, not knowing why, only knowing that what had happened was monstrous and wrong, only knowing from the Galu’s face that this and nothing else was what he had wanted, knowing who she was. The great black petals sifted and sighed, and bestirred themselves, reaching out, settling over him, quivering, alive, inhuman, inhuman as the Galu were inhuman, whatever they were.

  Cara backed away from it, eyes gaping, and felt her way out, opening the door.

  “Finished?” a voice asked behind her. “Was it a surprise?”

  Haliki stood behind her, grinning. Cara could not answer him. “There’s blood on your sword, Country Boy. I’m going to have to kill you.”

  Wake, Cara, wake, she told herself, and she lifted up her sword with what seemed like nightmarish slowness. Haliki laughed at her, and with a malicious grin spun his arms completely around from the elbow, like blades, in the air. Then, without a twitch of movement in his legs, he casually flung himself at her, hands outstretched, and Cara felt a flutter about her head, and she was enveloped. There was a sound like ringing metal, and crumpling pain across her chest. But she was alive.

  “Ouch!” yelped the Angel, nursing the edge of his hand. Cara’s armour hugged and protected her. The Angel’s eyes were fierce, and hard. “Magic. I would have thought you had seen Magic enough tonight.”

  And suddenly he was spinning through the air towards her, a whirligig, arms and legs moving with mindless speed and Cara danced backwards away from him, trying to follow the rolling and ducking and weaving with her sword to strike him, and suddenly there was a hard line of pain across her arm. Her own sword was buried deep within it. The Angel’s face was suddenly right against her own, with a smile like a box full of teeth, and there was suddenly a smashing and rending in the centre of her body and she felt her heart judder, and stop, and clench, and begin again. She couldn’t breathe. She thought of her sword—lift it up out of the arm, swing with it. But the sword was gone. Where was the sword? The Angel’s grinning face returned. The tips of his fingers flicked at her solar plexus.

  Cara felt like a pile of stones that had suddenly come apart, and she rolled to the floor, and seemed to lie in pieces. Her fingers felt thick and numb, and they tingled as they did in winter when she plunged them into warm water. Her legs lay sprawled and leaden. She couldn’t move. She could move nothing at all. Even her eyes could not blink and the suddenly parching air stung them and made them fill with tears. Her lungs worked, like a trembling rabbit in her chest, and hopelessness spread over her like a stain of blood.

  The Angel strutted. “I am going to enjoy this,” he said. “I am going to break each bone in you, one by one.” His braceleted foot rose over her legs, the heel pointed downward, like a spear.

  The blow did not come. Cara’s vision was blurred, but she saw him wince, heard his hiss. She saw him rotate his head, as though his neck was stiff, and he stepped back, lowering the heel flat on the floor. Then he sank to his knees.

  Through rainbow refractions of light, and the trembling of tears, Cara saw that it was Stefile astride him, with the sword burrowed deep into the back of his neck.

  Stefile learned over him, and whispered into the Angel’s ear, “For all your kindnesses, Master,” she said in a voice that was chilling with hatred. “For all your gentle words.” She gave the sword a twist within his neck and Haliki shrieked, a shrill, high keening cry like an eagle. His hands fluttered like the wings of birds caught in a net, and his tongue lolled heavily out of his mouth. She would not let him fall.

  “Know this before you die, Mister Hero,” Stefile said. “You were killed by little Dirty One Dress.” The Angel moaned in protest, unable to speak. “You were killed for all your bold talk and fancy dancing by a bondgirl of sixteen winters who has never held a sword in her life.” Then she ripped the sword out of him and pushed him, face forward, down onto the stone.

  Stefile stood over Haliki for a moment, her breath rattling in and out of her, and she wiped her upper lip. Then, with a sudden expulsion of breath, she turned to Cara, dropped down beside her, and jammed the sword through the thick wool of her dress. Furiously, she jerked it across the bottom, cutting away a strip of cloth. Muttering peasant spells of healing, she tied the cloth across the wound in Cara’s arm. Cara was suddenly able to blink and clear her eyes.

  “Can’t move!” Cara said, choking on her tongue.

  “Oh my poor love. Where are you hurt?”

  “Get me up!” Cara cried in terror, seized by the unreasoning conviction that if she did not stand up now, at once, she never would again. “Get me up, now!” Stefile quickly felt along her legs for breakages, then unbuckled the armour at the shoulders and lifted it away. Warmth returned to Cara’s arms, and she flailed them helplessly. Across her chest, over her heart, was an enormous bruise. Stefile’s fingers rippled across her ribcage. “Get me up!” bellowed Cara. “Now!”

  “All right, all right. Sssssh!” Stefile stepped round behind Cara, and lifted her up by the arms, and dragged her back towards the wall. “Cal Cara, you’re always getting yourself cut up. And I’m always having to carry you.” She grunted with the weight and tried to pull Cara up, to prop her against the wall. Cara’s clumsy arms tried to reach round to climb up it; Stefile ducked underneath them and pushed up. There was a stinging and then an ache down Cara’s thighs, and then fire seemed to pour down all the nerves in her legs and along the bottom of her feet. Hesitantly, she made them accept some of the weight.

  “How,” Cara asked, “did you find me?”

  “The armour and the shield led me. They came back for me. The sword just came into my hand. Can you stand? Oh, Cara! I have killed the chief of the Angels! I must either be very wicked or a very powerful woman.”

  “Both,” replied Cara, with a grateful, spasmodic smile.

  “Did you kill yours?” Stefile’s face was bright and tense and expectant.

  Cara’s smile stiffened. Horror and remembrance fell over her. Unable to describe or to account for what had happened, she could only nod, yes.

  Stefile gave a little snarl of pleasure, and clenched her fists and shook her head and did a little dance, kicking with her feet. “Oh, Cara. Then we’re free! We’ve done it.”

  Cara’s eyes were haunted, and she shook her head.

  Stefile was stilled. “Why, what’s wrong?”

  Cara tried to say, but found no words. She only pointed with the sword that was somehow back in her hand, towards the room of the Galu. Scowling, Stefile turned and climbed up the steps towards it.

  “Don’t go in!” warned Cara.

  Stefile pushed the door, and it swung back across the widening darkness.
What was beyond it made a crackling noise, sharp and evil, like a rattlesnake. Stefile stepped back, hugging her stomach.

  “What is it?” she asked quietly.

  “I don’t know! But oh, Stefile, he knew who I was! He wanted it to happen, he made it happen, he loved the sword, he lay down for it, and that thing came out of him, and he called it the Secret Rose!”

  Stefile took two steps towards her, and then stopped. “The name of your cult?”

  Cara only nodded.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know!” wailed Cara, near tears.

  Stefile looked at her, wide-eyed, solemn. “We have to get away.” She strode back to the body of Haliki. “At least we have only killed one man, then. That lessens the sin.” She rolled the Angel over, knelt beside him, and closed his staring eyes. There was no libation to pour, no offerings she could make to appease Haliki’s spirit. “Don’t follow me, Mister Hero,” she warned it. “Or I will do something this terrible to you again.”

  Stefile thought very quickly of the life to which she could never return, and the life she had entered now. They had done something to the Son of the monstrous Family and killed the head of a Fighting School; the Angels knew their names and faces. Wherever they went, the fear of discovery would follow. They would have to travel to places where they were not known, where their families were not known. They would have to live any way that they could. They were outlaws. How could everything change so completely?

  “This life is mad,” she said simply. Then she gathered up her one dirty dress, and stood, and took the outstretched arm of her lover, and together they ran out into the darkness.