“What have you done?” Aghar whispered when the battle was over. I raised an eyebrow and he sighed and lay back on the pillows.
“The Sworn Maidens' drug,” he muttered, answering his own question. “It was a brash thing to do, Telora, it could hurt you. No man has ever tried it before.”
“Well, I'm not exactly a man, am I?” I smiled and crept up to muzzle his chest. His smell filled me with love. I stopped when I saw Aghar's face. He looked like he was carrying a terrible burden, and his sadness killed whatever mood had filled the tent.
“I have betrayed her, I suppose,” I whispered. That thought had pierced my drugged mind a dozen times throughout the day. I had done it for a reason and I would do it again, but I couldn't help but think of the pain I would cause Lea.
“Yes, I suppose,” Aghar said.
I sat back, stunned. I had expected love and forgiveness but Aghar wasn't being spiteful, only stating facts. If he had shouted at me, or even been jealous of my little liaison, I could have attributed his words to anger or fear for my safety. But he lay back calmly on his rugs and stared at me as if he were trying to see through my eyes and into my brain.
“Find out how they make this drug.” He waved in my direction. “I'll put someone to work on reproducing it, but I won't give it to anyone until we see what it does to you. Try to get the Sworn girl to give you more: I can't risk my army until I know it's safe. A fortnight's test should do the trick.”
He didn't say it, but I knew I was dismissed. Aghar was too good a commander to reject a good tactic, but although he would use treason to win the war, he wouldn't tolerate the traitor in his bed. We were finished. I was surprised at how numb I felt.
I crawled back to my own tent, knowing that I was too distraught and exhausted to go back to my Maiden that night. I curled up in my pelts and tried to cry but the drug wouldn't allow me even that solace. My sadness sunk to the bottom of my gut, never again to surface. I tried to hate myself but I was too tired even for that. I felt the energetic effect of the drug fading and I realized that the difficult part of being a Sworn Maiden wasn't fighting, it was staying awake to party afterwards. That's why they valued party goers so much. It took training and self-control to stay alert after the drug wore off.
Two weeks later, Aghar decided the drug was safe, but I hadn't been able to discover how they made it. Lea shared with me regularly, but I'm not sure even she knew how Farong bodies had to be processed to extract the strengthening components.
The last couple of days we sustained heavy loses. If we were going to win the war, we had to do it now. In those last days I kept looking for Aghar in the battlefield and making excuses to go near his tent in the evening. I tried to be subtle interrogating his helpers, his lovers, but by now the whole camp knew that I had fallen out of Aghar's grace.
I wonder; if I had known what was about to happen, would I have been capable of preventing it? Sometimes, I wake in the dead of night, sweating. I sit up in bed and feel the darkness press in on me, the erratic breath of alien bodies and the musk which surrounds me wherever I go. At those times, what frightens me the most is not whether I could have stopped that madness, but weather I would have tried to stop it if I had known. Would I have done what was right, or would I have bowed my head to the inevitable as I'd done countless times before?
The strategy for that last battle was particularly complex. Whenever I caught a glimpse of him, Aghar carried a furrowed brow and spoke in urgent tones to his counsellors. I saw a runner come and go from the citadel, probably to seek council from the King. I guess it was one last attempt on Aghar's part to bring the nobles to our side.
I didn't understand the formation, but that wasn't new. I was placed in the centre of a circle with the Sworn Maidens, surrounded on three sides by eunuchs and conscripts whose numbers directed the enemy towards our central chisel.
Aghar waited until the battle was well under way before launching his plan. He had hand-picked a few dozen men, chosen from different units so that they wouldn't be missed. These men stayed back, and when the Maidens were deep in battle, they raided their camp. The girls on guard were dispatched with difficulty, but even the Sworn can't hold out five to a one. Still, one of them managed to sound the alarm. The Maidens realized what was going on and tried to get back to their camp, but they were surrounded by enemy on one side and by traitors on the others. No matter how much they pleaded, the men wouldn't let them out of the formation.
Even betrayed, the Sworn didn't become traitors, and wouldn't kill their allies even to save themselves. They had to cut through the Farong to get out of that battle, and by the time they made their way to camp, their potion had been stolen and there were five hundred superhuman men charging at the Farong.
In one day, they used the monthly allowance for the whole Sworn camp. They crushed the Farong and forced them to retreat to the other side of the city. Back in their camp, for the first time since anyone could recall, Sworn Maidens were seen crying.
The citadels walls opened and even the noblings came out to congratulate us on our success.
The Maidens wouldn't enter the city. They sent Lea as an emissary and stayed in their camp.
“What have you done?” she whispered once we were inside, pressing her stiletto under my belt. I bowed my head, and she seemed to remember my defect, because she poised the stiletto on my stomach instead.
“We were going to lose!” I said.
“So what?”
I stared at her in disbelief. Her face softened and she ran her hand through my hair, but her knife didn't budge.
“I forget that this is your first war.” Was that pity on her face? “Yes, we would have lost. The Farong would have looted the city; a few people would have been killed. The city would have been up on its feet in a couple of years. It's worse when the battle drags out for months.”
I stuttered a justification.
“Poor Telora! You have been sorely used. Aghar is devious and he is well known for his schemes.”
To this day I don't know if Aghar manipulated me or not. It is a possibility that haunts me. My face must have reflected my agony.
“Come, I must show you something.”
She guided me towards the hill where the Gong stood. I watched it start to swing, gathering momentum. I was in awe of the instrument that had chimed the beat of our death and our life for the last sixty days. Lea led me up the hill.
“The Gong must be played one last time. The chime of peace releases the Sworn Maidens from their duty. The Sworn will leave the city tonight. Your men have not been careful with the potion and are sharing it around. In the morning there will be a hoard of men and noblings aching to test their strength.”
“They would never hurt you! Not after what you've done.”
She looked at me as if I were a child.
“Probably not. But the city will be sacked in the morning and the Sworn do not wish to witness. You will wish it were the Farong who were falling upon you. At least Farong have no interest in Human women.”
We had arrived at the Gong. The turret was not tall, just a two story building erected on the summit of the hill that dominated the citadel. We climbed through an outer staircase, and I wondered what kind of eminent noble lived or worked under the sacred Gong. When I got up to the top, I realized the turret was hollow and that it dug deep into the mountain. There was a narrow ridge around the central pit so that someone could stand to pull the cord but that was it. That's why the Gong had such a hollow sound and made the earth rumble so: the sound resonated deep into the hill, and spread under the earth. I looked down into the depths, but I couldn't see the end.
Lea pulled me away from the pit and pointed the borders of the city-state out for me.
“Look at that,” she said, pointing at the sea. “That is where the Sworn will go. Land is men's territory now.” I had never seen the sea before. The expanse of water sent my mind reeling.
Lea sheathed her stiletto and I felt my gut unclench. I had not realized I was so tense.
“You are free to go, Telora,” she said bitterly. “But I suggest you leave the city before nightfall. Aghar has the ear of the King and he is the hero of this war. He will not want you around to disprove his version of the story. Go anywhere you please, but not to sea. The sea belongs to the Sworn Maidens now. It is our territory, and if one of us catches you there, you will be dispatched as a traitor.”
“And you? Are you a traitor?” I brushed her hand with mine. “Come with me, Lea. Let the fighting be over. I'll take care of you.”
She shook her head and squinted against her tears. Her muscles trembled under her armour and I realized she must have gone without the drug for a long time. I felt for her and wondered if the pillage had left the Sworn completely defenceless. Surely, there were secret stashes they could rely on?
“Don't lie to yourself, Telora. You know why you came to me. Battle does strange things to people. I cannot live without the feel of the sword in my hand or the leather straps of armour biting into my shoulders. Does that make sense? Probably not. But I am Sworn and I can be nothing else.”
I nodded. I had offered my love rashly. I don't know what I would have done if she'd expected me to stay by her side.
“Where will I go?” I pleaded.
“Anywhere,” she said. “But I hear the Farong are seeking hired swords among the humans and I'm sure they'd provide the drug for you. You'd be able to take it from its source.”
Lea grabbed the cord and gave it a tug. The vibration threw me to my knees. She loomed over me, smiling until the tremor passed. I realized I'd understood nothing of war. Armies were bought and sold, citadels were sacked by their own soldiers and the Farong paid their enemy to fight by their side. There was no pride in winning a battle where gold was pitted against gold. All that was left was the honour that binds fighters together, the very code I had betrayed.
“You can still choose honour,” she said. She looked happy. I didn't understand.
“Join me, Telora. I'm no longer welcome in the Sworn. Maybe we can be better lovers in death than we were in life, eh?”
She jumped into the pit before I could stop her. She made no sound as she fell and I didn't hear her hit the ground. That was her due for sharing the drug with me. She was judge and witness at her own trial and she executed her own sentence.
I sat under the Gong for a while, considering her offer, but I was not a warrior at heart. Like a true traitor, I lacked the moral code to carry out my punishment.
I retraced my steps down to the city. Already I could see the signs Lea had warned me against. The men were drinking. Around me, chairs flew through windows and men guffawed, seeing how their fists broke through oak doors and crushed marble slabs to dust.
A runner came up to me and coughed a message, holding his side from lack of breath.
“Where have you been? Aghar's been looking for you. The King wants to meet you. The Sworn Maiden are leaving and Aghar wants to chase after them but the King says he can't stop the celebrations to put together a pursuit force.”
I looked at the youth in front of me. He hadn't been particularly important in the battlefield, but already he was running messages for Aghar. He was beautiful, in a frail wilted way. Vaguely, I wondered if this was the man who had taken my place. I was surprised at how little I cared.
I shook my head and headed for the city gates. The Farong would be camped to the South, I knew, regrouping and making mating arrangements for the coming year. Their rut should be over by now. If I was lucky, they might not kill me on sight.
Sara Genge is a doctor in Madrid, Spain. She writes speculative fiction aided and abetted by a coven of friends and female relatives. Her fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Helix SF, Cosmos Magazine and others, including translations into three languages. She has two stories forthcoming in Asimov's and contributes microfiction regularly to
www.dailycabal.com
. Her own blog is
http://artemisin.blogspot.com
.
* * *
by Nir Yaniv
(translated from the Hebrew by Lavie Tidhar)
In Which Both a Bulldozer & an Elevator Are Instruments of an Epic
Quest
Those were days both terrible and awesome, days wonderful and cursed, days of creation and blossom. Those were days of great heroes and of deeds deserving of songs: those were days where right could not longer be told from wrong.
The people of previous generations, now no more than dim memories of creation, could never have imagined those days: not in dreams, not in pain, not in the wildest of ways. If only because the people of the present generation had done so—in dreams, and in nightmares and woe.
When the blue man raised his gaze he saw, in the light of a sun that was yet to rise, three giant apes on top of the Empire State Building. Two of them were the hazy sons of King Kong. The third, a chimpanzee with a sailor's hat, chewed loudly on bananas and hit his two accomplices with the giant skins. The bananas passed through them without causing any harm. The building itself, gigantic and grey, was located unflatteringly on Tel Aviv's beachfront skyline. It was already leaning dangerously to one side.
That was where he had to go.
He held tightly on to the bulldozer's wheel and pressed on the gas. The engine roared and a plume of smoke rose from the chimney behind him. No one had manufactured bulldozers for more than ten years, and this one, too, was only a piece of dream-fluff one of his neighbours had agreed to dream for him in exchange for a nine-course gourmet meal. He was an expert in meal-dreaming, but there were many like him. Far too many. On the other hand, people like his neighbour, who dreamed heavy engineering equipment, hadn't interested anyone in years. There were better ways now, and dreamers with far more finesse.
And much stronger. Horrifyingly strong, sometimes, but not enough. Not for his purpose.
One of those dreamers provided the blue man with the contents of his backpack, in exchange for a special flavour, one he had searched for for years. The taste of a delicacy the dreamer's grandmother had used to prepare for him before she died, many years before the whole dreaming phenomenon had started. A year or two before, there was a fad for retro-dreaming, but it had already disappeared, and its practitioners were rare.