But you also didn’t want to hurt Rissim or Irin by experimenting, that inner voice reminded me, the mind-tool immediately calming my upset which had begun growing. You may not have the room to get around the null’s shield, but if you hurt him will you really care?
Yes, I admitted with the calm I was being made to feel, but I’ll do it anyway. I have to do it, or he’ll just go on hurting more and more innocents.
“That’s exactly what I wanted,” Adjin’s voice came, and I looked up to see that Tammad had tossed away his swordbelt—and the null was beginning to swing the weapon toward him! Mind-tool or not, I’d run out of time, and whatever I did had to be done fast! I gathered the sensation of touching something unbearably hot, pushed it forward, then swung it around toward where the null’s emotions should have been. There was an agonizingly long wait of seconds, and then—
“Yeow!” the null screamed, flinging away the weapon he’d almost had leveled on the barbarian. Tammad’s eyes lit with delight, a growl sounded in his throat, and then he was launching himself at the man he so achingly wanted to reach.
By rights it should have been over with then and there, but I’d forgotten the reason why Secs didn’t need to carry weapons. Adjin was still shaking the pain out of his hand when Tammad reached him, but at the last second he turned and lashed out with a kick. The big barbarian grunted and bent over, the impetus of his charge wiped out, and Adjin grinned and put himself into an odd-looking semi-crouch. He wasn’t much smaller than Tammad, but it was clear his confidence came from something other than size.
The next couple of minutes made me get to my knees on the bed and clench my fists, but despite the fact that Tammad wasn’t doing at all well, I knew I couldn’t interfere. Every time it looked like the big barbarian was about to get his hands on the Sec, Adjin would lean away and land a kick, but if I tried helping by touching him again, I knew Tammad would be furious. At that point I wasn’t feeling very understanding or reasonable, but I had to admit he would have had cause to be furious. I’d lately been part of a number of confrontations myself, and with one or two of them I would have flayed anyone who tried to interfere for whatever reason. There are some battles you just have to fight for yourself, and what Tammad was then engaged in was one of those.
Despite the fact that he was losing. They’d only been going at it for a few minutes, but the barbarian was already sweating and not just from the exertion. Most of the sweat came from the pain he’d been given, and at first Adjin had really enjoyed giving it. After the first couple of kicks Tammad had learned to shift just a little before the blow landed, and Adjin hadn’t liked that. He kept on kicking at him and reaching after that, but he was no longer grinning while he did it.
The punishment went on and on, but if I was upset I would have bet Adjin was frantic. Every time the Sec kicked him now it looked like he expected the Rimilian to go down, but Tammad refused to do it. He staggered under the strength of the blow, his body streaming the sweat of agony, but the kill-look in his light eyes refused to fade and his hands refused to stop reaching for the throat they wanted. Adjin knew that if he faltered even once he was done, but all that kicking must have been very tiring. His white uniform was beginning to darken with his own sweat, but he didn’t dare stop to rest.
I was listing again all the reasons I shouldn’t interfere, my palms aching from the fingernails dug into them, when the end suddenly came. Adjin, horribly tired but forcing himself to go on, launched another kick, but one that lacked the speed the previous ones had had. Tammad, exultation in his mind, immediately grabbed the foot coming at him, something he’d done once before earlier in the fight. The first time Adjin had shifted his balance and kicked up with the foot he’d been standing on, and Tammad had been thrown back and away, having time to return to his feet but with nothing to show for his efforts.
The second time, however, was another story. Almost automatically Adjin tried using his free foot again, but the strength and speed just weren’t there. Tammad knocked the second kick away with his arm while throwing himself forward, and the two of them went down together. Adjin tried desperately to reach Tammad with his hands, but the big barbarian moved behind him and wrapped a wide arm around his throat. Adjin screamed as his body was pulled back in an arc, struggled to free himself and reach the man who held him, but it was too late. An almost soundless snap came, and his screams were ended forever.
After that there were two unmoving bodies on the floor, and I lost no time getting to the one that was still breathing. Tammad’s mind was filled with nothing but pain and exhaustion, even the sense of victory buried beneath those two, but I no longer had to worry about distracting him. I knelt on the floor and pulled his head into my lap, then reached out to him with the pain control that was healing. I also took one of his hands to hold, but as far as I know that did nothing to add to my mind’s efforts.
It took quite a few minutes, but when I felt his body and mind eased far enough that his own recuperative powers could handle it from then on, I withdrew. I opened my eyes to see a pair of blue eyes gazing up at me, a smile on the face beneath them, the hand I held now holding me as well. It’s unbelievably good to open your eyes to something like that, and I couldn’t help matching the smile I was getting.
“Have I ever told you what a really beautiful sight you are?” I asked, smoothing aside a lock of his long, blond, still-wet hair. “Especially when you come crashing through a door like that?”
“I seem to recall a time when you felt differently, wenda,” he answered, his smile changing to a grin. “It was the occasion of your very first banding, and I doubt that you would have aided me as greatly then as you did this day. Also did you aid me in withholding aid after the first of it, and I find myself greatly satisfied to see that at last you have learned the mind and heart of the l’lenda who is yours.”
“I thought it was about time I did,” I said, deciding it would be wise to refrain from adding how close I’d come to doing exactly the opposite. “It was particularly wonderful seeing you arrive like that because I never thought you would. How did you find me?”
“I followed the trail of your thoughts,” he said, his grin slipping just a little as he forced himself to sitting. “It was not your mind which I came upon when I was able to seek you, hama, it was a-trail of thoughts which showed your passage. I know of no other way to give explanation to one who has not hunted, yet was the matter clear to me and easily taken advantage of. It was a trail of longing which I followed as a hunter, and at the end of it was you—and that one.”
The gesture he made in the direction of Adjin’s body was full of the contempt and disgust he felt, this time both of the emotions tinged with the-sense of victory he hadn’t been able to feel properly earlier. I was surprised that something like what he’d done with his mind was possible, but that wasn’t what kept me from even glancing at the former null. The terror I’d felt every time I looked at or thought about Adjin was gone, more completely than his being dead would account for, despite the fact that emotions like that tend to hang on and haunt you even after the reason for them is removed. I thought about the oddity for a moment, and then suddenly I knew why it had happened. My terror had come from the very real possibility that he would kill Tammad, but I hadn’t known that. I’d thought it was personal terror I was feeling, but once he’d died the terror had done the same.
Tammad and I spent a few minutes getting ourselves and/or our possessions together, and then we left the room. I followed him through a part of the complex I’d never seen before, one that was apparently underground, the walk taking us past line after line after line of small metal doors stacked one above the other. There was also an endless amount of mechanical equipment I couldn’t identify and didn’t know the purpose of, but for some reason I didn’t like it. If Tammad hadn’t had his arm around me I would have put a near-death grip on him, and to hell with how helpless-female-like it would have been. There was something about those oblong metal doors that bothered me, and sometimes it feels good to admit just how frightened of something you are.