Indomitus Oriens (The Fovean Chronicles) (36 page)

             
“Draw near them and find out,” Xinto said. “And don’t think I’m going to fight ten Toorians for your honor.”

             
Raven straightened. “I think there’s a male already here,” she said.

             
“What?” Glynn said, and looked into her face. The ambiguous eyes turned different colors in the twilight. “You sense him, or you see him?”

             
“I see Little Storm, in the stable,” she said. She pointed to a stall on the other end of the stable.

             
The Uman-Chi turned her head to where Raven’s outstretched finger pointed, but Raven didn’t. Once again, by the scrub grass past the far barn door, she saw the swish, the ‘not there.’ This time she saw something like a serpent’s tail, with green scales, appear for an instant in the grass.

             
Glynn sighed. “For whatever reason, your guardian protector has found us,” she said. “Let us pray he didn’t bring an Eldadorian escort with him.”

             
“I don’t see Eldadorian livery,” Xinto said. “I’m surprised to say, I think your warrior came alone.”

             
They approached the hostel. The Men in the tub went quiet as the women approached. Two started licking their lips—a bad sign.

             
“Dahara,” one said.

             
“Jumbo,” Glynn answered.

             
“Faharra mtisaa?” he said, and stood, showing that he was naked in the tub. Raven blushed and looked down.

             
“Dem zakahi,” Glynn said. “Jang daheeri, tafooza gaballa Mountain.”

             
The Man shook his head. “We saw an old Man,” he said, in thickly accented Uman. “A Volkhydran, but he calls himself ‘Jack.’”

             
“Jack?” Raven said.

             
“It is a common enough Volkhydran name,” Glynn said.

             
The dark-skinned man picked up a robe from the side of the tub and put it on. It hung on his muscular form, drenched with water, but he didn’t seem to care. He stepped out of the tub toward them.

             
“Forgive me, please,” he said. “But I cannot help to mention, I have seen you before.”

             
“You have?” Glynn asked him.

             
He nodded. “In a dream, I called you Magee—a singing woman. You sang of my destiny and then floated into the sun.”

             
Raven straightened, and Glynn sang to him:

* * *

“On Fovea, on Fovea, find a noble young and old,

A foreigner among his kind
                           

A hero, fate foretold
                                         

One who fights as does the Sun
                           

Waits in a sacred place
                                         

A guardian will bring you there

With a devil born and raised”

He nodded. “I know these words, and yet I wonder, I cannot sing this song.”

“Might I ask your name, Sirrah?” Glynn asked him.

“I am Jahunga,” he said. “I am come north from Toor, to see the people from the Silent Isle, and ask them why I dream of them.”

“If you would escort us to our male friends, then I would explain it to you,” Glynn said.

Raven found herself speechless.

Chapter Nineteen:

             
An Untoucha ble One

              The ale was warm, the meat was tough, and the vegetables were soggy. The rough stool he sat upon teetered precariously on three uneven legs, but it was the only one close to a wall, and Jerod wasn’t here to rearrange the future.

             
He sat hunched over the table—a long, wide board, rough cut and gouged from a thousand knives and forks, placed on saw horses and stained by the overflow of plates and mugs.

             
‘Why not just eat on the dirt?’ Jerod wondered, licking the sour foam from his lips.

             
“Do you like this?” an old Man pretending to be a Volkhydran asked him.

             
He called himself, ‘Jack.’ Common enough name; Jerod knew a share of Jack’s, Jehk’s, Ju’huks and other names to confuse this one with.

             
“I like it better than being sober in my hunger,” Jerod said, and stabbed at the thready beef on the wooden plate before him. “I like it less than what I got from sailors when I travelled here.”

             
Jack chewed and chewed, taking beef and vegetables in the same mouthful. An auroch with a cud made for more appetizing company.

             
He swallowed forcefully and said, “I was thinking the same thing. It isn’t good, and I don’t like beer this bitter.”

             
“Then maybe you should shut up and go to your rooms,” Jerod growled at him. He dressed in furs almost the same as Jack’s, but wasn’t as large or as tall. He felt the scar on his face twitch in irritation.

             
He’d been waiting here for days, and he’d be leaving in the morning, his time wasted by an Uman-Chi. They didn’t think of anything but themselves, and that left Jerod irritated.

             
“Maybe you should make me,” Jack returned immediately. “Or maybe I should teach you some respect for your elders.”

             
“You want to see my sword in your guts?” Jerod pressed him and stood, his hand on the hilt of the weapon at his hip. “Curious to see what that looks like?”

             
He might not
be
Volkhydran, but the gaffer knew how to
act
Volkhydran, anyway. He stood up on the other side of the table.

             
“If you want to get kicked out of the hostel for sword fighting,” the older man said, in Uman. “If you want to fight bare-fisted, I can take you outside and beat your ass for you.”

             
“Gentlemen, please,” an Uman woman said in Uman. The hostel staff consisted entirely of Uman, and they had already started clearing plates. Eldadorian hostels had a no-swords rule, and you took your fights outside. If you tore the place up, sometimes they kept your horse as payment for the damage, and sometimes they sent you to Eldador. A good many Wolf Soldiers had gotten their start right here.

             
“With fists, then,” the Jerod said, in Uman this time. “I’m fine with fists. Want to make it interesting?”

             
“I’m going to hit you until you apologize,” the old man said. “I’m interested in that.”

             
“Two Tabaars on the gaffer,” a Scitai said, entering the room as others filed out. Jerod didn’t know him. “If you show them to me, first.”

             
“I will take that,” another Uman said, from a different board. Everyone started standing now. Plates vanished and chairs followed them—if the fight didn’t make it outside, there wouldn’t be as much to keep it going in here.

             
A waif-like Uman removed the old man’s chair as he turned and marched out of the one door to the hostel, the Scitai behind him. Jerod watched them both. The old man’s anger surprised him, but the Scitai made him suspicious. As he followed them out the door, he wondered that this might be a set up of some kind.

             
Travelers needed to watch their fates on the road, or have them made for them. Still, what threat could come from an old man and a Scitai? Most likely the Man had been a warrior once, and thought he still had fight in him.

* * *

              Outside, Melissa started when Xinto entered the hostel, and a flood of people came running out of it.

             
Among them she saw Bill and Xinto, and people were approaching Xinto and showing him their gold and silver. Men and some women were collecting around a circle, and Bill pulled some furs he was wearing over his head as he stepped into it.

             
More than a handful of naked Toorians climbed out of the communal tub, pulling on the thick white robes they wore and stepping into thonged sandals, the laces dragging behind them. Men and Uman filed from the hostel to the circle where Bill was waiting. Xinto seemed to be taking wagers from more than a dozen spectators.

             
Bill sported a big stomach covered with thick, gray and black hair. Another Man stepped into the circle opposite him. He stood smaller by a head, but Melissa saw no fat on him. The abdominals, the pectorals, the biceps looked pronounced, and all smaller than Jack’s. The younger man would have speed, but the older probably strength.

             
“I think my father is younger than you, gaffer,” the brown-eyed one said.

             
“I think he should have done to you what I am about to, and made you a better man,” Jack returned, and threw his furs behind him.

             
“What is going—is that our Mountain?” Melissa heard Glynn’s voice behind her.

             
She turned and there stood Glynn and Xinto. Glynn actually had to put her hands on Melissa’s shoulder to keep her from bolting into the ring that had formed.

             
“Ware, Raven,” she said. “This is between the males. You cannot stop it now, and you cannot change it. This is in—”

             
“If you tell me this is in the nature of Men, I will stick you,” Raven hissed at her with uncharacteristic anger. Xinto actually chuckled, like this was funny.

“
Once one Man started fighting, they
all
want to,” Xinto said to Glynn, then he turned to Melissa.

             
“She is right,” Xinto said to her. “He is an older Man, and he is finding himself, Raven. He called for this, not the other. Even if he loses, he will have fought. Do your best now, as a woman of Men would, and support him, and clean his wounds if he fails.”

             
Melissa looked down at Xinto, and she felt her brown eyes brimming.

             
“You—um—believe this?” she asked, stumbling on the language.

             
“I do.”

             
She straightened. Bill stepped from his furs, toward the younger man, and the younger came to meet him.

             
Melissa straightened. “Kick his ass!” she shouted.

             
Bill turned, surprised. He searched the crowd and found the three of them.

             
“Kick his
friggin
’ ass!” she shouted. They wouldn’t know the expletive here, but Bill would.

             
He grinned wolfishly and charged.

             
Melissa could hear her heart pound in her ears as the two Men closed.

             
Bill was bigger, but older and slower. The other seemed to be a Volkhydran with a terrible scar on his face, and just looked mean, like a killer or a judge. He fought stripped to his leggings, his feet and chest bare, revealing the dimple between his hipbone and his abs. The waning light gave his skin a ruddy hue, tight over a hard body, marked here and there with scars less severe than the one on his face.

Before meeting Bill, this would have been ‘her type,’ rugged and gorgeous, mean and handsome, the kind of man who would love her and hurt her at the same time.

Bill let him close.
The younger man moved deliberately, his face unexpressive, his almost beautiful brown eyes focused on measuring the distance between them, trying to get Bill to strike first.

             
Bill didn’t fall for it. He held his fists before him—no karate or kung fu or anything else—a bare-knuckle fighting stance to hold the other at bay. The males, and a few women, who gathered to watch started shouting for action.

             
Finally, the smaller man did some sort of head-bob, then ducked under Bill’s fists to deliver a punch, another, and another into Bill’s exposed abdomen. Graceful as a dancer, he skipped away from Bill and then ducked back in, under his guard, jabbing away while Bill swung on air again and then again.

             
Bill’s belly shook but it didn’t seem to faze him. A half-smile twisted his beard when the younger man made a third attempt. Just as the other man’s fist touched him, Bill hammered down into the side of his face with a meaty left, moving him to line up with Bill’s right. He took the younger Man straight between the eyes with a heavy right, the ‘thud’ resounded through the suddenly silent crowd.

             
The younger Man stepped back and shook his head to clear it, a look of surprise seeming out of place alongside the scar. Bill followed up with a swing at the jaw. The younger ducked at the last moment, then caught Bill for one, two, three to the ribs with a firm right fist, holding Bill’s arms at bay with his left.

             
Or so he thought. Bill reached a long arm out past the younger man, and wrapped up his head and one arm under his own. Now the younger man’s face was pressed to Bill’s flabby stomach, his arm pinned, and Bill started pounding the back and kidneys with his free right hand.

             
Melissa saw the stress on Bill’s face, the sweat streaming into his eyes, his beard, running like a river down his belly. The blows were telling but the other’s body was hard—his knees might be shaking, but he dug his toes into the ground, trying either to break free or to bowl the older man over.

             
The crowd roared its appreciation.

             
Finally a hand came up, and Bill gave a shout as the other man turned the fight dirty.

             
“Oooo,” Xinto winced. She heard other sympathy groans, even from the women. Bill gave something like a roar and, changing his grip; he reached out and took a fist full of the back of the other man’s pants.

             
Melissa couldn’t help thinking, ‘Kind of stupid to give him a wedgie,’ before she realized Bill now had the man by the back of the neck as well. With another roar, Bill raised the struggling man over his head, took a step forward and slammed him like a rag doll onto the ground.

             
The younger Man moved to get a foot underneath him, and Bill lumbered forward to kick him in the ribs, flipping him onto his back. The younger Man looked up wild-eyed, not knowing what had happened, and Bill seated the instep of his boot on the other’s neck.

             
“Had—had—had,” he panted, and squatted down, getting his wind, putting his elbows on his knee, his weight on the Man’s neck.

             
“Had enough,” he asked finally.

             
“Uck, uck,” the younger gasped. He reached for the boot, tried to punch the leg, but found nothing. He arched his back, his abs straining as he tried to reach for purchase with his feet. His face had turned purple when he finally slapped the ground three times, counting himself out.

             
The crowd cheered. Bill stepped off of him and magnanimously reached down his hand to the younger. That one rubbed his throat for a moment, looked grudgingly up at Bill, and finally took the extended hand.

             
Glynn gave Melissa a gentle push in the back. “Go,” she said.

             
She turned. “What?”

             
Xinto intervened. “Run to your champion,” he said, “throw your arms around him and give him a victor’s kiss. It is what a woman of Men would do.”

             
Melissa didn’t need to be told twice. She hiked up the front of her skirts and ran to her sweating guardian protector. Not even giving him time to let go of the other man’s forearm, she threw her arms around his bull neck, lifted up her heels and rammed her tongue into his mouth, tasting his sweat and his hair and some dust from the ring, and every bit of Bill that she could swallow.

             
He swung her, and despite herself she felt like a little girl—a very excited little girl, at that.

             
He broke the kiss and she looked into his eyes, feeling his breath on her face, the stink of beer and the sweet smell of victory. “My hero,” she swooned for him.