There was nothing unusual in the circle; they often sat together so, gathered in front of the dormitory where the adult males slept. But tonight they waited for Tral to bring them word that old Sesh was gone, devoting the hours of sunset and night to him, as the heat faded out of the stone walls of the compound and the colored band of stars stretched itself across heaven. This time of the cycle was more natural to Mrem in any case.
The Liskash had decreed that he was too old, sick and feeble to be worth feeding and so should be allowed to starve. There wasn’t enough food to share with him, so Tral, their healer, had given him a sleeping draught from which he would not wake. The circle would mourn him, remember his life and honor his passing.
And so, they sat silently waiting.
That was where Hisshah and her small group of guards found them. The arrival of the Liskash made all of the Mrem crouch, eyes down and hands flat on the ground.
Hisshah, known as the lesser goddess to the Liskash and the young goddess to the Mrem, looked them over.
At least they’re reasonably well disciplined, she thought. But how can I turn creatures so cowed and worthless into soldiers? Mrem haul weights and scrub and carry.
“Which of you speaks for all?” she asked.
“I do, young goddess,” Ranowr said.
“Come here and kneel before me,” she commanded.
When he was before her she studied him. He was taller than most Liskash, and broad and sturdy like all of his kind. He looked healthy and strong, and probably wasn’t really tubby; that was the disgusting fuzz. The steward saw to the health of the slaves. And while it was true that a weak slave was a worthless slave, you didn’t want them too frisky.
Still, if they’re to be soldiers perhaps I should increase their rations, she mused. If anything goes wrong, I can tell my mother than it is all her fault.
That thought made her hiss slightly with laughter; blame flowed downward, gain upward; so the world was. She would ask the steward; he was the expert on Mrem. But for tonight, the first night she would be eating after her long fast, she had other plans.
“Which of your fellows can you spare?” she said, with a hiss of command.
She watched Ranowr carefully for any sign he might make, but he remained motionless. Some of the others were less controlled. One toward the back, with nicks in his ears and a grizzled face, looked sharply at Ranowr. It didn’t take a deep knowledge of Mrem to know that he was older than the others.
She pounced.
“That one!”
The guards moved forward and took him by the arms. Hisshah and her party began to move away.
“He’s a good worker,” Ranowr said, still kneeling, his eyes carefully down. “Skilled in the care of bundor and hamsticorns.”
Hisshah paused and turned to look at him in disbelief. “Are you asking me to show…what is it you call it…mercy?”
The word had a rather odd contour, as if it weren’t really suited to the Liskash throat.
“Please, young goddess,” Ranowr said, lowering his whole body.
“I didn’t think it possible, but you have amused me,” she said. “I am pleased. I shall send you some meat later.” Then she turned and continued on her way.
The Mrem captive gave his companions a long last look before the guards hustled him off.
Ranowr and the others, stunned, returned to their circle.
“Fesa was a good Mrem,” Ranowr said grimly.
It was the ritual phrase that opened the mourning circle. He glanced at the departing group of Liskash with Fesa in their midst.
If the gods created us, why do they treat us so cruelly? Why do they hate us so?
Because they did. They must. Yet it made no sense to create something and then to hate it.
And we hate them.
Just being near them made his skin crawl and pelt bristle and tail stiffen and bottle out, his ears flatten themselves as if for battle. But that could be because they had so much power.
“Fesa was a good worker,” said another, bringing Ranowr’s thoughts back to the mourning circle.
“He was good with the kits,” added Krar.
Truth be told they were all good to the kits. Where any one of them might be your own, treating them all well just made sense. Still some were better at it than others and Fesa had been one of those.
“They’ll be missing him,” Ranowr agreed.
Tral entered the circle.
“Sesh will not wake,” he announced. Looking around he asked, “Where’s Fesa, he should be here, he was Sesh’s oldest friend.”
“Fesa is no more,” Ranowr said. “The young goddess took him away.”
The words were bitter on his tongue. Fesa would die a hard death tonight. And the meat Hisshah would send, if she sent it, would be from his corpse. A calculated insult. But they would burn it to ashes and scatter them in the wind. The only freedom any Mrem could hope for.
Stunned, Tral took his place in the circle.
“Sesh was a good Mrem,” Ranowr intoned.
They spent the best part of the night remembering both of them.
The practice field was hot and silent; the guards on the outer walls moved to look occasionally, and there were bleatings and hootings from the stock pens, and a little twitch of wind flicking sand into eyes.
“Watch carefully,” Hisshah said, feeling loose and confident in the familiar exercise and the welcome heat. “Overhand down-cut, angled right to left.”
She tapped the mock sword on one part of the practice post, then mimed a downward slice that would have struck the neck of an opponent. The sound was muffled, for the training weapon was wrapped in tightly woven grass rope to lessen the jar to the wrists.
“Backhand cut, angled up, right to left.”
She hit the post on the other side, where the gap between the hip-bone and the lowest rib would be-a clear target into the meat, with organs and big veins beneath. Even if it didn’t penetrate, a powerful strike there might rupture something essential; certainly it would knock the wind out of your enemy, leaving them open for a killing blow.
“Then you tie them together with their mirror-image.”
She struck, down, up, down and up, into the space where the angle of the neck would be, letting the blade’s weight carry it down past the target to loop back and up and down at a slant again, like an X.
A muffled clack as padded wooden sword struck the hard pell, then clack and clank again.
She did it again and again, faster and faster until the mock sword seemed to blur and her body as well, weight shifting from one taloned foot to another. When she was finished with her demonstration she tossed it to Ranowr.
“Now you try.”
Ranowr took the practice sword and carefully assumed the stance that Hisshah had taken. Then he swung the sword. He tried going faster and faster as she had until he struck the post square on and knocked the practice sword out of his hand, unconsciously flexing his wrist against the sting. The curved length went end-over-end into the watching group of his fellow Mrem. They dodged aside, and then one caught it and brought it.
“Pick it up,” Hisshah said, “Do it again. Control the location of the strike. You should be able to put it between one scale and the next, as hard and as fast as you can strike. Precision first, then speed, then force. Look into your enemy’s eyes, not at where your sword will strike. See that with your hands.”
The Mrem actually wasn’t bad. She’d done that much sooner during her first try at the post. But then she’d been much younger.
They were working on the small practice field between the outer and inner walls. It held two rows of ten practice posts in a field of clean raked sand and was longer than it was wide; spear and arrow-targets stood at each end. The whole was fenced with rails and it was within smell of the stables.
Hisshah walked back and forth as she watched her first student. She hated being this close to them. Their smell made her sick; a heavy, meaty scent that was suffocating. And the sight of their furred skin was loathsome unless you were hungry. Her mother couldn’t have found a more subtle punishment if she’d tried for seven rainy seasons and a day.