"Are you ready, freebirth?"
"I am not a freeborn."
"Go ahead and prove it."
"I will."
Lopar lunged, but Aidan was ready for him. Like an animal, he moved to his left, then thrust the knife out in front of him. It made contact with something, with some part of Lopar's body. The man groaned. As Lopar slid past, Aidan struck again, this time connecting in what was obviously a glancing blow.
He moved away, toward where he had detected the sack. The dark form that was Lopar did not stop to reset himself, but instead turned and sprang, knife blade forward. It hit Aidan in the shoulder, but he reacted quickly. He moved backward with the thrust of the knife, and the blade did not enter deeply. His own knife-swing at Lopar was also ineffective, except that it made Lopar veer away.
Reaching down, Aidan picked up the sack. He felt by its weight that it still contained the animal heart. Good. As Lopar's dark form came toward him again, Aidan swung the sack at what he thought was the man's head. It landed firmly against the side of Lopar's skull, knocking him off his feet. As the other warrior fell, Aidan tried to stab him in the area he guessed to be the stomach. But even as Lopar was slipping to the ground, he managed unexpectedly to seize Aidan's knife arm. He gave the arm a savage twist, and the knife flew out of Aidan's hand. It bounced off the side of a nearby tree, vanishing forever into the darkness. He knew Lopar would not grant him the same privilege of searching for his weapon.
Aidan tried to back away from Lopar, who was now on the ground, but his opponent grabbed his ankles and pulled them forward. His feet flying out from under him, Aidan fell onto his back. For the first time, he cursed the dark setting he had chosen. Just when he needed to know precisely where Lopar was, he could not see a damn thing.
From the noises just beyond his feet, which Lopar had now released, Aidan surmised that his adversary was struggling to stand up. He rolled sideways and felt Lopar land on the ground beside him in a miscalculated move. Lopar's error gave Aidan a chance to get halfway up and swing the sack again. It made ineffectual contact, but from the sound of Lopar letting his breath out, Aidan guessed that it had grazed the man's face.
He knew there was no point staying in this position and trading blows with Lopar, especially when his blows were from a wet sack, while Lopar's were made with the knife Aidan's generosity had permitted him. As Aidan made one last glancing blow with the sack, he felt it come apart, letting the heart fall to the ground. The only good thing about the maneuver was that it gave him time to get to his feet and scramble to the tree with the dead animal caught in its branches.
Sensing Lopar coming up behind him, Aidan felt around for the stake and vine he had left there. He found the vine first. Turning quickly, he whipped it out at Lopar. It flicked across the other man's face, making him yelp with pain, temporarily stopping him in his tracks. Feeling around some more, Aidan found the sharpened stake leaning against the tree where he had left it. Grabbing the shaft, he wielded it like a long knife, directing it at the center of the dark form leaping toward him.
The force of his thrust with the stick was enough. The point, so carefully honed by its victim, penetrated Lopar's midsection, drawing a groan that momentarily drowned out the myriad noises of the forest. Aidan got out of the way, and Lopar fell against the tree trunk. Hearing his foe choke, Aidan sensed that he was coughing up blood. The stickiness on Aidan's bare arm was probably blood from the wound itself.
With Lopar so close to him, Aidan knew he could not relax for an instant, even though every nerve in his body felt strained to the limit. His enemy still had his knife.
As he expected, Lopar weakly jabbed the knife at him, but Aidan merely twisted the man's wrist, then heard the knife fall.
"Lopar, you asked for a fight to the death."
"That is true."
"I do not wish to kill you, and your wound may not be mortal."
"That is also true, freebirth."
"Admit I am not a freeborn."
"Never."
"You may ask the judges to release you from the hunter requirements of a fight to the death."
"Never."
"Well, then, I must kill you, even though it is not my wish."
Taking the vine in both hands, Aidan wrapped it around Lopar's neck and squeezed it tightly until Lopar went limp. Then he did something that was as brutally primitive as it was insulting to his victim and to all the other Jade Falcon warriors who had vowed to kill him. Retrieving the heart of the dead animal from the ground, Aidan took it and stuffed it into Lopar's mouth.
Carefully, almost reverently, he removed the dead animal from its place among the branches of the tree and dragged it away. At the edge of the forest, he buried it in a shallow grave, dug with Lopar's hunting knife.
34
Someone eavesdropping on the next strategy conference between Aidan and his entourage might have wondered if he had stumbled into one of the Bloodright contests instead. The group argued furiously and for some time, but in the end Aidan won his point.
"If I am to become a Bloodnamed warrior," he said, "I must do it my way. Caution may have gotten me through the Grand Melee, but it nearly finished me in the fight with Lopar. I appreciate all you have done for me, but we must plan aggressively if I am to finish this."
Though Marthe had been his most heated opponent, she finally capitulated the point. "It is true that you can only win with the abilities you have, Aidan. And your greatest may be tenacity."
* * *
When Aidan had gone, Marthe smiled at Joanna, who resisted the urge to return it. "You were right, Marthe," she said. "He needed to be pushed to find his own way. I admire your cleverness in accomplishing the goal."
Marthe laughed softly. "After the Trial of Refusal, I sensed that something had gone out of him. Call it the fighting spirit—for want of a better term. We had to help him recover it. And that we have done. Even Horse did his part."
"I merely followed your instructions, Star Captain."
Joanna was taken aback. "You mean this . . . this Mech Warrior's insults were part of the plan, too?"
Marthe shrugged and Horse would say no more on the matter to Joanna.
* * *
On the parade ground, Megasa strode proudly past Aidan. He waited until he had actually gone by to say to a member of his entourage, loudly enough for Aidan to hear, "If I fight that one, it will be an easy battle. If he hides, I will find him by his stench. If he turns and fights, I will home the missiles in on his stink."
Aidan whirled angrily, but when he spoke, his voice was cool, detached. "Perhaps you wish to fight here and now, Megasa. Forget Bloodright, forget Blood-names? "
Megasa laughed. "I have no wish to beat you so easily."
"You would not last long against me in hand-to-hand combat."
"Are you sure? You will find no big sticks or animal hearts on this parade ground."
"Then I will smother you. With my stench."
The joke relieved the tension, and Megasa's companions led him away. Aidan had longed to blast Megasa off a battlefield, but he would save it for the Trial combat. He would live to gloat over the fallen Megasa.
* * *
Kael Pershaw watched the next round of Bloodright battles from the command center, where elaborate hol-otank images of some of the individual contests were projected. He joined Joanna and the other members of Aidan's entourage, but took care to stand well away from Mech Warrior Horse, whom he despised more than most freeborns. There was a continual flare of defiance in Horse's eyes that made trueborns particularly uncomfortable around him.