In Her Name: The Last War (14 page)

“For as the warriors of Her Blood well know, the Bloodsong echoes in our veins the strongest when in battle, just as it sings most clearly from the hearts of the clawless mistresses when achieving perfection in form. For this is our Way. So has it been-”

“-so shall it forever be,” the crowd replied as one.

“The warriors chosen to fight this day I have carefully matched to the strangers,” Tesh-Dar went on. “For while it is a battle to the death, we seek no advantage, for that brings Her no glory, no honor. For the Way of Her Children is not a path easily traveled, and honor is not given, but must be earned.” She paused to look closely at the strangers who stared at her, uncomprehending. “None of the strangers may leave, save the Messenger, whom I shall choose.” Looking at each of the warriors arrayed against the aliens, she added, “Should all of our sisters fall at the hands of the strangers, I shall complete what they began with my own hand.” She raised her staff a hand’s breadth and then hammered it down onto the dais, the sound reverberating like a gunshot. “In Her name,” she called to the warriors standing ready in the arena, “let it begin.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Captain McClaren listened to the speech made by the commanding warrior, although of course he couldn’t understand her. It infuriated him, because his crew had been murdered. The few of them here were walking dead now, he knew, and he couldn’t even ask her why. 

When she rapped her staff on the stone dais, he knew it must be time for the fun to begin. For with the last few words she spoke, the warriors facing his crew went from simply being wary and alert while they listened to their leader to being as tense as spring steel under a heavy load. 

The warrior opposite him was just a bit shorter than he was and probably weighed less by a good ten or more kilos, but he had no intention of underestimating her. It was abundantly clear that her people trained their entire lives for whatever skill they would have as adults. That was okay by him, because many humans did, too.

He assumed the classic boxer’s stance, hands raised up to guard his face with his arms protecting his upper body, with one leg forward, knees bent. He felt light on his feet as he began to move toward his opponent to test her skills and see what he was really up against. Adrenaline surged through his arteries, now that the fight was upon them. He almost hated to admit it to himself, but he felt oddly ready for this. He felt
good
. 

As captain, he wanted to be the one to land the first blow (or take the first hit); this was part of the “first in, last out” philosophy that had been one of the guiding principles of his style of leadership. But he refused to let himself rush in like a fool: he was too experienced for that, and while he knew he would die on these sands, he wanted to take out at least one of the enemy, one of Harkness’s “fucking alien bitches”, with him.

But the first blow wasn’t to be his: he suddenly saw Ichiro Sato rush toward his opponent, his bellow echoing across the arena as their swords crashed together.

* * *

Ichiro had stood silently, eyeing his opponent as the big warrior spoke. Unlike the other alien warriors, who were roughly similar in size (and presumably age, although that was impossible to tell) to their human counterparts, Ichiro’s was clearly smaller than himself. If he had to guess, had she been a human girl she might have been twelve or thirteen, if that. She held a sword similar to his (it seemed that the
katana’s
form was a universal constant in bladed weapons) and he had no doubt she knew how to use it far better than he did. 

Nonetheless, it was a maddening insult. He had reconciled himself to dying, but had imagined he would be cut down by a warrior like the one who had handed back his grandfather’s sword: he clearly would have been no match for someone like her, and he would have been content with that.

But this was simply too much. In the brief moment of uncertainty that took hold in the arena after the big warrior had spoken her final words, Ichiro’s indignity overrode any pretense of logic or sense. 

Whipping the gleaming
katana
above his head, holding it high with both hands, he charged his opponent, roaring his undiluted rage.

* * *

Tesh-Dar watched intently with both her physical and spiritual senses as the battle was joined. The rash young alien was the first to strike. Tesh-Dar noted with satisfaction that Li’an-Kumer, the young warrior chosen to face the human, did not kill him right away, as she easily could. Instead, she parried his spirited but foolish attack, then twirled in closer to deliver a cut that left only a minor flesh wound. The alien animal howled, more in indignation than in pain, Tesh-Dar thought, and slashed ineffectively at Li’an-Kumer with his sword. 

Content that the young warrior had this creature well in hand, she swept her gaze over the other combats that were developing. Some of the combatants had not yet actually closed with their opponents in these first few seconds, but were still sizing up their opposition. 

And then, as if a secret signal had been given, they all crashed together in a mass of snarling fury.

Tesh-Dar focused her attention on the one about whom she was most curious, one of the older animals whose inner strength radiated like a beacon...

* * *

For a fleeting instant as Sato charged forward, Yao Ming prepared to save the young man from his impetuosity. But there was something about the stance of the alien girl opposite him that told Yao that he need not intervene. Yet. As Yao stood, no longer in the
Wu Ji
posture, but simply standing calmly, he watched Sato’s attack in slow motion, and was content with the young alien’s reaction. She seemed happy to play with Sato for now, and that would allow Yao some time to deal with his own opponent. 

The warrior facing him wore many more of the pendants around her collar than the other aliens, which Yao assumed meant she was far more accomplished. She also had silver claws, which perhaps a third of the others had, as well; the remainder had black claws. He had no idea if this was an adornment of some sort, or if it was physiological. He had also recognized her fluid grace in step and posture as she had strode forward into the arena. All of the warriors possessed a sort of feline grace, but this one was different, more like the great warrior who now stood watching the proceedings. For in her he had seen a grace and power, quite apart from her size, like he had never seen before.

His opponent calmly stared at him, her form a mirror image of his own, radiating confident strength. Yao had considered going on the attack, and would have if he had perceived an immediate major threat to either of the midshipmen. But Sato appeared to be all right for the moment, and on Yao’s other side, Midshipman Zalenski was sparring confidently with her own opponent, armed with the alien equivalent of a saber. This gave Yao the choice of going on the offense or letting the alien do so. While
t’ai chi
could certainly be used in the attack, its roots were in defense, and he lost nothing by ceding the initiative to her. In fact, that gave him a certain advantage in his own fighting style, allowing him to use her own energy against her. 

So he stood there, relaxed, staring into the alien’s eyes as the battle was joined around him in a frenzied cacophony of curses and cries of pain, of metal striking metal, striking flesh. One second passed, then two. 

And then she attacked.

* * *

Harkness reeled from the agonizing pain in her left thigh and right breast. The simple sticks were not as glamorous, or gory, perhaps, as a sword, and not as swiftly lethal, but she had never felt such agony as she was feeling now: it felt like her flesh had been seared by white-hot metal. 

She had managed to stave off most of the blows the alien had rained down upon her since the match began, at least until the bitch had grown tired of playing around and decided to systematically attack Harkness’s right hand, breaking three of her fingers in a savage strike. Then the alien smashed both of her sticks against Harkness’s right breast, and whirled around to do the same to her left thigh as Harkness reflexively brought both hands up to try and protect her chest from another attack.

Her left leg collapsed under her, effectively paralyzed from the pain. As Harkness went down, the alien slammed her sticks down in a brutal one-two strike on the chief’s exposed shoulders. Harkness screamed as she fell face-first into the sand, her body quaking from the pain. She tried to roll over and free her left hand, which still clung desperately to one of the sticks, to defend herself, but she couldn’t. It felt as if the muscles in her shoulders had been severed with a knife, and she couldn’t move her arms. The best she could manage was to turn her head enough to spit out the sand from her mouth. 

She suddenly felt the alien slip a foot under her belly and lift, flipping her over onto her back like a turtle. The alien stared down at her impassively as she brought her weapons up to deliver the
coup de grâce
.

“Fuck you, you bitch,” Harkness spat, staring the alien in the eye. 

Suddenly a hulking figure swept across Harkness’s vision, and with a surprised grunt the alien warrior was literally carried away. Harkness watched in wonder as Kilmer, his face already a tattered mess, slammed her tormentor into the sands of the arena and straddled her chest. Grabbing her by the neck with one hand, he began to rhythmically pound her in the face with his other bloodied fist. The warrior frantically beat at him with the sticks, hitting him in the head, in the side of the ribs, in the legs, but he seemed impervious to what Harkness knew must have been blinding pain.

Then the warrior abandoned the sticks and used the weapons she was naturally equipped with. Snarling in fury and pain, one of her fangs snapped off by one of Kilmer’s hammer-blows, she stabbed him in the throat with the talons of her right hand, while using the left to claw at his face.

He contemptuously swatted away the hand she tried to claw him with and simply ignored the fact that he’d been stabbed. With blood streaming from his torn throat, the alien’s hand still desperately slashing and tearing, his right fist became a jackhammer against the alien’s face, battering her down to the bone. 

After a few more seconds, her hand fell away from his throat, and she stopped struggling. Whether he had strangled her or had fractured her skull, or both, it was clear that she was done. Dead.

Kilmer turned to Harkness and gave her a smile through his bloody lips. Then he slowly sank down on top of the second warrior he’d killed.

Harkness managed to crawl over to him, her own injuries seeming like trifles in comparison. “Kilmer,” she rasped, tears flowing freely down her cheeks, “you didn’t have to do that, you damn fool.”

“Couldn’t stand...to see...my chief scream,” he whispered, the sound more of a wet whistle as it passed through what was left of his throat, “except at me.”

Harkness cradled his head gently against her chest. Turning to where Kilmer’s original opponent lay still in the sand, Harkness saw that the warrior’s jaw was misshapen, no doubt smashed to splinters by one of his fists, and her face was a patchwork of bloody flesh. He must have fought like a lion to defeat her so quickly so he could help defend Harkness.

She held him tenderly the few remaining moments until he died. Then, grasping one of the sticks with her good hand, she struggled to her feet. If she was going to die, she wasn’t going to do it whimpering in the sand.

* * *

McClaren was holding his own, but that was about as much credit as he could give himself. The alien was simply a better fighter, although not by much. But in a battle to the death, it didn’t necessarily take much. He had seen Kilmer and Harkness go down, but they weren’t the first. About half a dozen others had died already, and the battle had become one of exhausted attrition. 

Most people who had never engaged in a real fight didn’t realize just how much physical stamina it required. While most of his crew, including himself, were in good shape, only a handful had the athletic conditioning for combat that the aliens clearly had. Even those who had close-combat training were simply being worn down.

McClaren dodged another open-handed strike from his opponent. Her fighting style would have been interesting if he wasn’t in a fight for his life. It was similar to boxing, but instead of using clenched fists, she struck with her hands open, using the heels of her hands instead of her knuckles. It made sense, since it would be difficult for her to clench her hands like he did: her claws would cut right into her palms. 

Regardless, her style was quite effective: the blows she’d landed felt like he’d been hit with a small sledge hammer. He had managed to give her some satisfaction in return, but she was faster than he was, and equally tough. He had snapped her head back a few times and gotten solid hits on her torso, but it felt like he was hitting a leather punching bag packed with sand and solid as a rock.

She dropped low and made a quick jab for his midsection, and he twisted his torso slightly to deflect part of the blow while lashing out with a right hook. Luck was with him this time, and he made a solid connection with her jaw. She spun away from him, blood spraying from her mouth, but it was only a momentary victory. Stepping back from him, not letting him pursue the advantage, she shook her head vigorously, regaining her bearings as she warded off his jabs. 

Then, baring her fangs in anger, she bored into him with those feline eyes and moved back into the attack, driving him back with a blinding flurry of open-handed strikes.

* * *

While Yao was anything but a sociologist, he was able to tell a great deal about the aliens’ culture from the way his opponent fought. As with many human martial arts that emphasized hand and foot strikes in the attack, the alien’s style of fighting clearly was based on the offense, at expressing aggression. Considering the humans’ experience with their hostesses thus far, that came as no surprise.