He flared yellow, made a choked sound of pain, threw her to the ground with stunning force.
For a moment, the scene was frozen. Natahk, his body glowing yellow with pain, stood silent, hands to face; and Alanna only half conscious on the ground. Alanna was dimly aware of people gathering. Someone took hold of her shoulders to drag her away from Natahk. At that instant, Natahk came to life. He swept up Alanna’s rescuer much as Diut had lifted a Garkohn earlier, and threw him at the surrounding Tehkohn.
Clearly, he could still see. Alanna tried to focus on him. Yes, he could still see. Out of one eye.
He dragged her to her feet by her hair and one arm. The arm he twisted agonizingly behind her. The hair he looped around his hand and used to pull her head back so far that she almost forgot the pain of her arm. Apparently, this stopped the advancing Tehkohn.
“I thought so,” said Natahk. “Now who will keep me from the gate? Who will cause me to kill the wife of the Tehkohn Hao?”
Pain made it difficult for her to think. The extreme angle of her head made speech almost impossible. She felt herself dragged toward the gate, heard Natahk’s command.
“Open it! And if there are Tehkohn outside, clear me a path through them.”
She heard someone open the gates, but for what seemed a long time, Natahk did not move with her. She felt herself losing consciousness. Her eyes refused to focus and her head throbbed. She thought she heard Missionary voices—Jules and Neila calling. Others shouting. Then she heard another voice, quite close. Diut.
“If you kill her, I’ll make your Garkohn tortures seem pleasant to you.”
“Let me pass,” said Natahk. “And she need not die.”
“I would kill her myself before I would leave her to you.”
Impasse.
Alanna fought to remain conscious, strained to hear past the roaring in her ears.
“Release her,” said Diut. “And my people will not harm you.”
“And you?”
“We fight. Defeat me, and you go free. I command it now. If you kill me, my people are to let you go.”
“Fight a Hao!”
“Did you not tell your people that I was no more than a man?”
“A man with two eyes!”
“And one arm.”
The words shocked Alanna to full consciousness. His arm? If only she could lower her head to see him.
“Broken,” commented Natahk. “But it will heal—if you live. It is no payment for an eye. I must see that you are better paid!”
Without warning, Alanna felt herself literally thrown forward. She stumbled a few steps blindly, somehow managing to keep her feet until someone caught her. She knew it was Diut when he passed her quickly to someone else.
“You shame my teaching,” she heard him mutter. “How could you have missed his other eye?”
She wondered herself. She willed her legs to support her and stood away from whoever held her. Not until then did she realize that it was Jules. The moment he saw that she was able to stand alone, he released her.
She looked around for Diut and saw him in the midst of a wide ring of Tehkohn. Just as she focused on him, he blocked a blow with his left arm, then dodged sharply backward away from a quick second blow that he could not block. His right arm, Natahk’s right eye. The two circled each other warily. They seemed to spar as though in a friendly mock duel. Diut was limping again, worse this time, and he looked as though handfuls of his fur had been torn out here and there. Natahk looked unhurt except for the eye. But the eye was important. Aside from the distracting pain, the agony, that it had to be giving, it made him nervous and overcautious. And it made him highly protective of the other eye. He could not take proper advantage of Diut’s disability while he was protecting his eye from Diut’s potentially deadly jabs.
Diut kicked sharply, using his feet where he could not use his arm. They danced, every now and then striking a blow that would have killed anyone else. It looked deceptively simple. Once Natahk went down, but was on his feet again before the clearly weary Diut could use the advantage.
Then Diut fell, knocked down by £ blow he could neither dodge nor block. Natahk tried to kick him in the face or throat, but Diut caught his foot one-handed, twisted it, threw him off balance. Natahk fell, got up limping as Diut rose.
Favoring Natahk’s blind side, Diut strove to end the fighting. He drove the Garkohn back, scattering a group of onlookers.
Abruptly, Natahk stopped running, launched himself at Diut as though at an animal. Natahk’s size alone would have made such a move enough to unnerve a lesser opponent. The two fell together, Natahk shifting his weight deliberately so that Diut could not help falling on his injured arm.
For the first time, Alanna heard Diut scream in pain. For a moment he lay still, Natahk atop him. Natahk seized him by the fur of his head, pulled the head back to expose the throat. Unexpectedly, Diut rolled, made a sound like an animal snarl as he unseated Natahk. He struck the Garkohn a heavy blow to the side of the head—the blind side. The blow was hard enough to stun anyone else, but it only slowed Natahk down for a moment. The moment was enough.
Diut stood up. Natahk had just managed to rise to his knees. He looked up at Diut just as Diut drove a hoof-hard foot into his throat. Natahk flared luminescent yellow, collapsed, and slowly faded to the mottled death yellow. The last fighting of the battle was over.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Alanna
My child, a thickly furred, deep green little girl was an instant celebrity. Curious Tehkohn came visiting as soon as Diut would let them, came looking to see how blue the child was and how different. Her dark coloring pleased them, but they said it was shaded strangely. They said the shape of her eyes was strange. They thought her hands and feet were wrong somehow. Then they looked at my hands and feet and saw where the “wrongness” would probably lead. They visited often, and I grew weary of them, weary of then-observations. Diut enjoyed their attention but I didn’t.
Sometimes I took refuge with Tahneh, taking the child with me—Tien, Diut had named her. I wanted to keep her with me as much as I could before I had to give her up to her nonfighter second-parents. She would become their charge completely for the twenty-five-day separation period that would begin as soon as she had her welcoming ceremony. After the twenty-five days, I could see her when I wanted to, when I had time, but until she was older and less vulnerable, her home would be in the protected nonfighter section of the dwelling. That was something I tried not to think about. Diut did not mention it as the days passed, but finally, Tahneh reminded me.
I had escaped my “guests,” and gone to her apartment where I could sit comfortably against a wall and nurse Tien in peace.
“You are a fighting woman,” said Tahneh quietly. “You must stop that soon.” She meant the nursing. Female fighters had to be ready to fight again as soon after giving birth as possible. Not for the first time, I resented the restrictions of my high status. I wanted to care for my child myself.
Tahneh laid a hand on my arm. “If I had ever borne a child, I would want very much to care for it myself in my own way. I don’t envy you the separation, but it must come.”
“I know.”
“He has been holding off the ceremony so that you could have more time with the child.”
I looked at her, startled. “That I didn’t know.”
The old woman whitened. “I thought not. It is a kind of gift that he’s giving you. I am not certain that it is kind. The longer you wait, the harder the separation will be.”
“Are you saying I should tell him that I’m ready?”
Tahneh flared yellow. “Not unless you are. I wanted only to tell you what I thought you might not realize.”
I looked down into Tien’s face. “I wish I was still working as an artisan.”
“If you were, you would not have had his child.”