Tarius was everywhere, smacking this one, kicking that one, and then moving on before they had a chance to retaliate. He had climbed up a rather large man, had him in a head lock, and was getting ready to break his nose. Jabone was driving his knee into another man's ribs when a loud booming voice screamed out.
"Hold!"
Jabone kneed the guy then let him go and stopped, holding up his hands and watched as Tarius punched the guy he held in the nose then unleashed him and dropped to his feet also holding his hands up. In the Katabull Nation this signified that you were done fighting.
"Do you two not understand hold?" Derek asked as he stumbled into what was left of the room.
"Sorry sir," Jabone said. "We were trained in Simbala never to leave off a fight 'til the other combatant is disabled."
"But these aren't your enemies, Jabone."
"They acted like it," Tarius said.
"He started it," the guy who actually had said,stumbling to his feet.
Derek looked at Jabone who stared coolly back and said, "He was looking for a fight. Tarius gave him one. Then they all attacked us. The dispute has been settled."
* * *
He was indeed Tarius the Black's flesh and blood. In that moment except for his size and his obvious maleness Derek would have sworn he was her. Jabone wasn't about to apologize for his actions or those of his friend, not as long as he thought he was in the right. Derek sighed.
He looked at everyone in the room singling no one out. "We all have to work together for the best of our peoples. Our Kartik brothers have come across the sea to help us fight on our front."
"They started it," Thomas insisted,
"Did they indeed, Thomas?" Derek stared at the youth 'til he was forced to look at his feet. "I'll tell you what happened. You wanted to test them, see what they are made of. Now you know they are made of muscle and skill and action. They have been trained in the sword, all manner of weapons, and Simbala—the Kartik marshal arts. No life of privilege for these boys. Trained in dirt pits instead of the comfortable Sword Master's academy, trained not for three short years but since their birth. These are stout fighting men of honor and if you don't provoke them they will teach you all they know and do you no harm. Provoke them and," he motioned around the room, "this is what you will have. Two men kicking all hell out of twenty. Treat them as you treat each other and they will make you better fighters. Abuse them in any way and they will use their skill and their strength to beat you completely down. I want this mess cleaned up and all of you in your beds. I'm going to leave you with this. I was privileged to have one of the greatest sword teachers of all, but I despised this teacher and in the ring I decided to teach this person a lesson. After I had been beaten senseless for most of an afternoon this teacher asked me, "Do you actually want to learn anything or do you just want to continue to try to hurt me?" I attacked again, and Tarius the Black beat me senseless without breaking a sweat. As long as you keep trying to hurt these people, you will learn nothing from them and they will continue to kick your asses until you learn to do nothing so much as how to flinch." Derek stomped from the barracks.
* * *
They started to pick up the room some of them tending cuts and bloody noses and lips as they went about it. At one point Jabone bent down to right a flipped cot and almost bumped heads with the man who had started the whole fight, Thomas.
"I'm sorry," he said grudgingly.
"And I'm sorry for my friend's mouth," Jabone said with a smile. "It works faster than his brain and he has yet to learn that there is honor also in choosing not to fight."
Thomas sighed. "It seems that in the last two days everything I thought I knew has been put to the test. Today I pick on a man half my size and he kicks my ass. Yesterday bandits attack us in the woods and we'd all be dead had it not been for a girl. While we were all still trying to figure out what's happening she kills eight men and sends the rest of them running for their lives into the woods."
"Kasiria seems like a worthy opponent," Jabone said.
"My friend loves her because she reminds him of his mother," Tarius said,teasingly at his shoulder.
"Shut up runt!" Jabone spat back in Kartik.
Thomas seemed some taken aback by the fact that they were talking to him as if they hadn't just all tried to kill each other. Jabone wondered why, then he thought he knew.
"We don't hold grudges over a little fight," Jabone said. It was the Katabull's way not the Kartik, but these men didn't know that and he realized that he was doing exactly what his madra had done in dealing with these people. He was using their ignorance of his country to hide what he really was. He didn't like it, didn't like feeling like he should be ashamed of what he was and whose cub he was. "Fighting, actually wrestling, is how we work out our problems."
"So you weren't trying to actually kill us then?" a boy asked, holding a rag to his bleeding nose.
"Of course not," Jabone said calmly. "If we'd been trying to kill you, you'd all be dead."
"Of all the bloody cheek," the man with the bleeding nose said, looking like he was ready for a fight again. Thomas put a hand on the man's chest.
"Hold up there, Eric. I don't think he means to be bragging. He's just telling the truth."
"Oh," Eric said, getting very quiet.
"So you have a thing for the ice queen, huh?" Thomas laughed. "Hate to tell you this but the girl doesn't like men, if you know what I mean."
Jabone felt as if he'd been shot through with an arrow and Tarius laughed, popped him in the ribs and said in Kartik, "So you were right. She
is
just like your mother."
Jabone found his sense of humor, laughed back and said, "Good thing they separated the boys from the girls, eh?"
Ufalla woke before the sun was quite up. She'd hardly slept. The cot had been comfortable enough but she was just too excited about the whole newness of everything. They weren't home anymore, no longer under the protection and rules of their parents. What had the Great Leader told them? "There is no true adventure without danger and only those who know great risk embrace their destiny." She looked back at where Jestia lay. She was even more beautiful with the world washed away from her features in sleep and with the first lights of false dawn crawling across her face. In sleep there was no pretence and you could see someone's soul. At least that was what the Katabull believed. Though she wasn't Katabull she'd been raised amongst them and they were her non-blood kin.
Jestia's soul was as beautiful as Jestia was. Ufalla remembered the first time she'd realized that her friendship for Jestia had turned to love. They had been sharing a bed at the castle on one of their pack's visits there. Ufalla had woken early and just like now she'd seen Jestia asleep with the near-dawn light on her face and she'd longed to hold her then even as she did now.
Jabone said she should change this love she felt into something else, a stronger friendship, but her bond to Jestia was stronger than any friendship always had been and always would be. Jabone didn't know how long Ufalla had tried to turn her feelings another way or how long she had failed.
But she was good at hiding her feelings. She had learned that from her mother, the stern Kartik fighter. Elise wasn't very demonstrative. It wasn't that her mother didn't have feelings, or that she didn't occasionally show them, but she didn't have to.
I will never embrace you or my destiny because I can't take the risk that my feelings for you—unwanted—might drive you completely away from me so that I could never even be near you. Love, who needed it? Her love certainly didn't serve her
. Why did it have to be Jestia, the spoiled pampered princess who whined and willed her way through life? Why her and not a dozen other women she could have easily had? Women who wanted her.
Because none of that is who Jestia really is, this is who she really is and when I have seen her real soul how could any other woman ever compare.
When she'd talked to her mother about Jestia Elise had sighed and said, "You don't rule your heart, your heart rules you. You will find another for which your heart longs and then you will forget you loved her at all." Her mother was a practical person. She saw no hope for a relationship between Ufalla and the princess, so she didn't tell her to pursue it, just leave it alone and it would go away. It just wasn't that easy.
She's right there, always right there, so close I can touch her and so far away that I can't. The more I'm around her the more I love her, and I can't stand not to be around her. How can I continue to just pretend that I don't need her, want her? How long can I fool her and everyone else? Jabone knows. He'd never tell but he knows. He guessed and how long before other people do as well?
Jestia yawned and stretched then as if knowing she was being watched and Ufalla looked quickly away out the window at the compound.
"Ufalla," Jestia whispered in a voice filled with sleep. "How long have you been awake?"
Ufalla moved to sit on the edge of Jestia's cot. "I was too excited to sleep," she whispered.
"Too excited or too cold?" Jestia asked with a shiver. Now Ufalla thought about it she was cold.
"Both maybe," she said. They lived on a tropical island; they had been told that it was spring here just like it was back home, but if so their spring was about like a Kartik winter.
"Grab your blankets and bring them over here. We can share," Jestia said sleepily.
Ufalla started to tell her all the reasons that was a bad idea and then . . . Well, the chance to be that close to Jestia just drove any form of logic from Ufalla's mind. She grabbed her bedding, slung it on Jestia, and then crawled under the covers with her, her back to Jestia and hugging the edge of the cot so as not to actually touch her.
Jestia crawled up to her back and wrapped herself around Ufalla, making her stiffen and then just relax into the feel of it. "You're as cold as a toad," Jestia said.
Blessed be the Nameless One my heart feels like it's going to burst in my chest. What does she think she's doing?
"Have you ever been so cold in all your life?" Jestia asked in a whisper right in her ear.
"No," she croaked back, thinking that she was anything but cold now.
"I thought Tarius was exaggerating—you know just trying to scare us so we wouldn't go—but if this is their spring I hope we aren't still here for winter."
"She
was
trying to scare us, but I think she was telling the truth about everything."
"Gods Ufalla," Jestia whispered even lower, "what are we doing here? What am I doing here?"
"Do you wish you hadn't come?"
"I don't know. I think so. I'm just so cold and . . . Well I just had the most awful nightmare I've ever had in my whole life."
Which explained why she had talked Ufalla into her bed and was clinging to her. There was no hidden desire in Jestia just a need to be comforted, to feel safe. It was the reason a child crawled into their parents' bed at night, not the reason Ufalla had been so eager to help "warm" Jestia. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"I'm a witch," Jestia whispered even lower.
"Yeah?"
"So a witch never repeats a bad dream or it will come true."
"Oh. Well I didn't know," Ufalla whispered back, taking exception to the "how stupid are you?" tone in Jestia's voice. Then Jestia's hand was under her shirt, rubbing her side near her hip and she was about to climb out of her skin trying to decide whether she wanted her to stop or not. Finally she said, "Ah, Jestia, either make love to me or quit petting me."
Jestia stopped with a snicker. "Sorry, your skin was just soft and warm and I forgot your peculiar persuasions for a minute." Yet as she said it she lay her head against Ufalla's shoulder and a few minutes later she was asleep.
Ufalla sighed and just enjoyed the moment.
She's using me, for warmth, for comfort. She's playing me, just like she does every man who comes near her. Except she doesn't have to worry about me getting carried away and doing anything she doesn't want and she knows it. I've messed around and become one of her toys. She's a witch. Who knows but that she has bespelled me and made me love her just so that I'd gladly take an arrow for her?
* * *
Kasiria woke up and stretched. There was a moment of disorientation while she remembered where she was. She got out of bed; it was already warming up. When she looked over she noticed both her bunk mates were in the same bed and wasn't really very surprised. She smiled and got dressed. As a soldier she slept in most of her clothes, but armor and belts and boots still had to be put on.
She made so much noise getting her boots on that she woke Jestia up and she looked at her through a slanted eye. "It's not what you think, we were just cold." Her voice made the bigger woman stir and then Jestia let out a yelp as Ufalla turned, wrapped herself around Jestia's waist and tugged her close, burying her face in Jestia's cleavage. Jestia said something in Kartik and then shoved at her big friend who woke completely up but still didn't seem to be in any big hurry to unhand her. "Hounds, Ufalla, I'm not one of your hut-dwelling whores to be woman handled . . . "
"Don't flatter yourself, Jestia," Ufalla said, letting go of Jestia and getting out of bed. She looked at Kasiria and smiled. "I just garb any whore that happens to be in bed with me first thing in the morning."
Jestia pulled the covers tightly around her and snapped back something in Kartik. Kasiria decided she was definitely going to have to make a real effort to learn their language or she was just always going to be out of the loop.
Ufalla had also slept mostly in her clothes and was busy slipping on her minimal armor, belts and boots. Of the three of them only Jestia was sleeping in bed clothes.
"The horn will blow soon," Kasiria said.
"You hear that, Jestia? Get up and get dressed," Ufalla ordered, which caused another hissed comment in Kartik from Jestia. "Our new friend asked us to speak her language in her presence."