Jabone's Sword (2 page)

"But how . . . You loved her so much! Why would it have mattered?" He didn't understand. He had grown up here, among the Katabull where being straight made him a minority. He had grown up in the Kartik where sexuality was rarely an issue.

"Because as I have told you same-sex couples are barely accepted in my birth country. The love your madra had for me, the love I have for her was foreign, and I would not have understood then. I didn't."

"Where did this baby come from?" Jabone wanted to know.
"I'm getting to it. You know that I am not one of the tale weavers in our family. I told you it was a long story," Jena said with a smile.

"I'm sorry."

"At any rate, we got married your madra and I, and then I really didn't understand why she wouldn't . . . Well you know. A few days later she went to the front as Captain of the Guards with King Persius himself.

"I missed her terribly; every day was torture never knowing if she was alive or dead. A few months later Tragon was injured in battle but your madra had saved him and he'd been sent back to the academy to be nursed back to health. With Tarius gone he tried to poison my mind against her in an attempt to have me for himself. You see in my youth I was a very beautiful woman."

"You still are, Mother," he said.

She kissed his cheek. "You are such a good boy . . . At any rate several times the rouge almost told me that Tarius was a woman, but he was so cowardly and so afraid of her that he didn't dare.

"Finally Tarius returned home." She smiled at the memory. "She was a sight, a wild-looking beast covered in dirt and soot and dried blood and smelling like something dead that had fallen in the latrine and I had never been so glad to see anyone in my life. I started to beg her to give me something that I didn't know she couldn't. Finally feeling that she couldn't please me, and knowing that I desperately wanted a child, she enlisted the aid of the wizard Hellibolt to give a glamour potion to Tragon and fooled me by putting him into my bed . . ." Her anger must have shown in her voice because Jabone interrupted her.

"But, Mother how is that so different than what my fadra and my madra did to make me?"

"Because I didn't get to make the decision, Jabone. I didn't know that I wasn't sleeping with Tarius, and what Tarius didn't know was that I hated Tragon. What I had never told her was that Tragon had tried to force me to have sex with him while your madra was at war. I became pregnant by him and as my child grew inside me so did Tragon's resentment of your madra. One night he rode into the academy drunk and called Tarius from the house, he threatened to reveal her and take what he thought was his. Tarius threatened him right back and made plans to have him transferred to one of the Jethrik garrisons.

"She had been working day and night to try to get me to go to the Kartik with her. She told me it was to get away from the Amalite horde which she predicted would rain down upon our lands because Persius hadn't pursued the Amalites aggressively enough. But while she truly believed that and she turned out to be right, the real reason was because she figured if she could get me to the Kartik that I would accept her for who she was. How many times I have wished I had just gone with her when she wanted to go.

"Tragon hatched a plan to expose Tarius in such a way that it would be impossible for her to retaliate against him. He and Persius and a large guard contingent showed up in the dead of night. They put a spell on Tarius, and while she was unconscious they shackled her. She begged Persius not to reveal her in front of me. She begged him to let her tell me herself, because she knew I'd be traumatized. But he took a knife and cut through her shirt and the cloth that she had bound her chest with. I fainted dead away. Your madra called on the night, broke the shackles, and struck the king.

"Now Harris had no idea that she was Katabull or female, but he never hesitated in his loyalty to her and threw her sword to her and launched into battle beside her, against them. The king used me as bait to call Tarius out and at first I begged for her life, but . . ." her voice broke, and her son put his arms across her shoulder, "by the time we reached the castle I wanted her blood as much as the king and my father.

"I went to see her in her cell. We talked. She apologized to me and told me she loved me, I said hideous things to her, but I no longer wanted her blood. I was very confused."

"You know what they did to your madra and how Harris, Hellibolt and Robert rescued her. What you don't know is that my father made me marry Tragon. Here I was going through this horribly confusing time thinking that I had been betrayed by the only person I'd ever loved and that she was probably dead and trying to figure out just what the hell was going on in my head and they made me marry this man who I hated more than anyone else in the world. I don't know what I would have done if it hadn't been for your fadra. He was the only one I could talk to, the only one who had any idea at all what I was going through. Arvon took care of me through that time."

"Then one night Tragon came home drunk. Now I would not sleep with this man that I hated even if I wasn't still trying to sort out my feelings for Tarius. I had my own room. He knocked down the door. When I wouldn't submit to him, in fact told him that I found his touch repugnant, he beat me. I landed on my stomach with such force that I . . ." Her voice caught in her throat. "He killed my baby Jabone. Your madra had given me a sword I saw it and I grabbed it. I didn't stop to think. I jumped up and I killed him. Now at that time in the Jethrik any woman who struck anyone with a sword was put to death. I got past my stunned father and rode to Arvon and Dustan's house. Your fadra delivered my dead baby himself." She was crying hard now, and her son patted her back. "He buried my son there."

"You don't have to tell me any more," he said.

"Yes I do." Jena forced a smile and sniffled. "Your fathers saved me. They brought me here. I found your madra and all the bad times were forgotten 'til we wanted to have another baby. Now your madra, she was the Queen's Champion, the Kingdom Warlord, and the Great Leader of the Katabull people as well as leader of the pack of the Marching Night. There was never any question of who would be carrying our children, besides I very much wanted to have our children, but . . . because of the violent way my baby had died I wasn't able to get pregnant. I thought that was it, I thought it was our lot in life to be childless. I mean . . . Tarius couldn't be pregnant. It was just ridiculous, I never expected her to do it. But Tarius had always blamed herself for the death of our child. I never blamed her, I knew who was to blame and I'd already killed him.

Tarius knew I wanted a child and she knew I couldn't have you myself so she temporarily handed over her title of Great Leader to Jerrad and her kingdom responsibilities she gave to Harris and Arvon and then your madra, the Great Warlord, put herself in the very vulnerable position of being pregnant so that she could give me the greatest gift of all . . . you."

Jabone was crying now. He knelt in front of her and hugged her. She hugged him back and they both had a good cry.

She patted his back then pushed him gently away. "Come on let's go get some dinner."

They walked hand and hand back to their home.

Dustan was still cooking when they walked into the hut so they hadn't missed anything. Jabone walked up and hugged Dustan who looked over his back at Jena. Jena just smiled and mouthed the words. "I'll tell you later."

Jabone and Jena started to help Dustan with dinner. It was the way of the Katabull. Chores were neither given nor assigned. Whoever was home made the meals; everyone, including the cubs as soon as they were old enough, did their own laundry. Everyone cleaned up their own messes in the hut. And if someone was doing something you just helped unless there were already so many people doing it that you'd be in the way.

Arvon entered walking in a way that said his leg was hurting him and sat down at the table.

"Are you all right?" Dustan asked.

"Do I look all right?" Arvon resisted making a face. "My love I fear you should have married a younger man. This old body is decaying into ruin. I was doing nothing more elaborate than walking, tripped in a hole, and twisted my bad leg."

"It's nothing that a massage won't take care of. Come into our room and I'll work on it. Jena and Jabone will finish dinner."

Arvon nodded and struggled to stand up.

"Fadra . . . where is my madra?" Jabone asked.

"At council. She should be home soon," he said. He looked from his son to Jena and said to her. "You told him?"

"Yes."

"Are you all right?"

Jena smiled. "Yes, I think we're both all right."

Jabone nodded in agreement. When Arvon and Dustan had left Jabone turned to Jena. "He told me that when you had told me I would understand why you and Madra are so in love even after all these years. That I would realize that it has nothing to do with being contrary, but now I wonder how I can ever fall so much in love because I don't have any of the hardships that you've had."

Jena laughed. "You won't until you fall in love. You are just like your madra; you worry all the way up the hill about how you're going to get back down."

Jabone laughed then. "That is what Fadra said, too." He looked at Jena then. "But I am like you, too, Mother and like my fathers."

Jena smiled and kissed his cheek. "Yes you are. You are the best part of us all."

Tarius walked in then, grumbling incoherently, and four men walked in carrying the Katabull throne set it down and left.

"What's wrong?" Jena asked.

"The stupidity of people never ceases to amaze me, that's all," she said, shrugging it off. "Dinner smells good."

"Dustan started it, he had to try and fix Arvon's bad leg," Jena said.

"See Jabone," Tarius said. "You who long for adventure and daydream about war. See how a hundred battles have aged Arvon and me before our time?"

"If you didn't tell such wonderful stories my love he wouldn't be so enamored of war," Jena said with a smile.

Tarius seemed to notice the puffiness of Jena's eyes and frowned. "Is something wrong?"

For answer Jabone ran across the room and embraced Tarius. She held him closely, pulling the man who was half again her size into her lap, and patting his back as he cried on her shoulder. "Oh now baby . . . You aren't still upset because you aren't queer are you?"

"No Madra, I just love you . . . I love you so much."

"As I love you my son. What is all this then?" She looked at Jena for answer, thinking perhaps that some catastrophe had taken place.

"He wanted to know why I couldn't have him and I told him," Jena said.

"Oh," Tarius said, and a dark cloud covered her face. She held her son still tighter.

"I have been wishing to my shame that you weren't my madra. Now that I know the great sacrifice that you made to have me . . ."
"Jabone . . . It's true that I didn't want to be pregnant, and it's true that I did it for Jena, and when I did it, yes I thought it was a great sacrifice . . . at first. But once I felt you inside me growing moving, when I gave birth to you . . . That, my son, of all the fantastic moments and feats of my life, that was truly my finest hour. There was no sacrifice. You are my greatest accomplishment and except for your mother, my greatest love. Don't feel guilty for wishing Jena was your birth mother. Had I not done the horrible things that I did to keep her, you would have been her son, and I would have loved you no less."

"And I could not have loved you any more." Jena walked over and kissed him on the cheek.

Arvon walked back into the room followed closely by Dustan. Dustan walked back over to finish dinner and Arvon sat at his place at the table.

Jabone stood up and walked over to him, hugging him, and Arvon hugged him back. He looked at Tarius across their son's back. "So . . . Are you ever going to decide that he's too big to sit in your lap?"

Tarius smiled back. "I think it's much more likely that
he
will decide he's too big to sit in my lap."

The blond-headed youth of nineteen looked down at his much younger but larger friend of seventeen from his perch on the limb of a tree.

"I heard my fadra tell my madra that pockets of Amailites have been raiding wagons and whole villages in the Jethrik-held territories of the Amalite. That the Jethrik has sent forces in to find them and kill them out but have not found this Amalite horde."

"My madra has said nothing of it," Jabone said, pulling a face. "But she did come back from the council meeting complaining about how stupid people could be."

"They aren't going to tell us are they? Our parents want to keep us here as children forever," Tarius said in a disgusted tone. "They had all these great adventures and fought in all these great battles, but they want to chew our food for us 'til we are old and grey."

"My madra says there is nothing glorious about war, "Jabone said.

"Then tells all these wonderful stories. My fadra and madra do the same thing, but with no where close to the ability of your madra or your father Dustan," Tarius said. He pulled a face and jumped out of the tree.

"Damn . . . here comes trouble." Trouble appeared in the guise of Tarius's younger sister Ufalla. She had just turned seventeen and had just the week before gone through her sword-making ritual. Having her finger cut off had slowed her down very little and she wore her sword on her back just like they did. Tarius's younger sister was bigger than he was and colored like their mother instead of like their father which caused no end of resentment toward her from him. She looked like everyone else and she was a normal size for a Kartik which meant she was six feet tall. Tarius was only five four and had finally admitted even to himself that at nineteen he wasn't going to grow any more. He had been born premature and the Great Leader herself had saved him only by breathing her own life into him. Had it not been for the greatness of his birth and the fact that he'd been named for the Great Leader and was treated throughout the packs as a good omen he very easily could have grown up resenting the whole world. As it was he just heaped his resentment onto his sister.