Chapter Seven

"I lead this house, Priest." A deadly silkiness threaded the voice of the powerfully built, black-furred hrinn as he stepped in front of Heyoka and faced the dark-gray. "Or have you forgotten?"

Heyoka studied the newcomer over Nisk’s shoulder. It was Rakshal, the dark-gray male who had labeled him "imposter" the night before. He wondered if he would have to fight his way out. Rakshal was in his prime, no older than himself in all likelihood, and had the advantage of developing on this world, so that he was taller than Heyoka, topping a good eight feet at least, and better muscled, with a broader, denser frame. And—he wasn’t lame.

Rakshal flattened his ears and snarled. "Come closer, Dead-thing. Let us settle the truth of this ridiculous lie of yours once and for all!"

The fur bristled along Heyoka’s spine and his lips wrinkled back in a fierce display of his double rows of bone-white teeth, a savage expression he had always fought to suppress. His breathing deepened and his senses sharpened to almost unbearable clarity. He could detect the aromatic smoke from the underground room that saturated the others’ fur, the faint bloody tang of their last meal on their breath, hear the least sigh or mutter of the onlookers, feel each separate grain of gritty sand on the ground beneath his bare feet and how the evening wind riffled the individual strands of his mane.

Several older males, lean as sticks and scarred from head to toe from past fights, pushed through the circle of watching hrinn to wedge two torches deep into the sandy ground. Their black eyes seemed grimly joyful. The onlookers crowded around them, jostling for position and clawing to maintain their place. Heyoka heard the puzzling phrases mountain/over/stars and death/in/longing repeated from hrinn to hrinn.

Rakshal seized one of the torches and defiantly thrust it into the air so that the flames danced above his head. "Speak to us of Levv, Dead-thing!"

Heyoka’s breath quickened. "That is for you to tell me. I know nothing about Levv." The violent other within him raged to be set free—this foolish gray had no right to speak to him so! Everything about Rakshal, even the tone of his voice, was the deadliest sort of insult, well worth dying to avenge. The gray’s scent was more acrid now, inciting Heyoka to mayhem somehow, as though strong emotion had altered the gray’s pheromones and called up an involuntary response in himself. An unbidden growl rose in his throat.

A wave of expectancy beat at him from the watching faces. The sharp angle of their heads and the narrow focus of their gaze indicated they were waiting for him to make the proper move, to do—something. The air was thick with hrinn musk as he tried to infer the correct response. The dark-gray’s eyes glittered as he stared up at the torch flames above his head, then Heyoka understood—he was supposed to take up the remaining torch.

He set his jaw and stepped around Nisk, trying not to limp, steadied himself on his good leg before the second torch, which leaned crazily to one side, reached to—

Without warning, Nisk blocked his hand with an outstretched arm. "I invoke the right of sponsorship!"

Surprise rumbled through the watching hrinn as Heyoka wavered, then recovered his balance. The torch flickered just beyond his reach in the rapidly cooling night breeze, a fierce beacon of yellow-orange so bright, he could see the afterimage when he blinked. Blood pounded in his ears in a wild rhythm which knew nothing of soft-skinned humans or their tentative ways. "What do you mean—sponsorship?"

"Come now, Outsider." The dark-gray tossed his torch easily from hand to hand. The shadows shifted across his muzzle. "Surely even a wretched thing like yourself can appreciate the honor of being sponsored by the legendary Leader of the Mish River Males’ House." He glided closer, each lithe movement a study in hrinnti grace and strength which Heyoka’s damaged leg would never again be able to match. "But sponsorship or not, my challenge still stands."

"I accept challenge in his place, Rakshal." A deep-throated growl underlay Nisk’s words. "As sponsor, I have that right. You have been sniffing around my shadow far too long. Come ahead and fight me, if you dare!"

"No, he challenged me." The cool night breeze whipped Heyoka’s unbound mane across his face.

Nisk whirled, arm outstretched, and struck him to the ground. He sprawled at Nisk’s feet, dazed, nose pressed into the sandy soil, the dry scent of sun-baked ground overwhelming all other odors.

"That was your first lesson." Nisk breathed heavily as he stepped over Heyoka’s twitching, outstretched body and snatched up the remaining torch. "You will obey me in all things, or I will tear your throat out where you lie! There is a pattern arising here that you do not yet perceive."

Head high, ears pricked, the dark-gray sidled closer. "You are a fool, Nisk! That creature is outside all patterns, large or small, no matter what he looks like. His existence means nothing and I will prove it by feeding his blood to the earth, after which the pattern/in/progress will still complete itself, just as it is meant to."

"Are you saying you actually Heard that from the Voice?" Nisk asked. The wind gusted, bending the torch flames double. "I think not!"

Ears still ringing from Nisk’s blow, Heyoka pried his head off the ground and saw him step into the cleared circle, the torch held high above his head. The black-furred Leader of the males’ house appeared to have experience on his side, but Rakshal was obviously younger and stronger. The whole scene shimmered with an air of unreality in the uncertain light.

Crouching low, Rakshal circled smoothly to the left as the spectators drew back to give the pair more room. Heyoka struggled up to his hands and knees, trying not to be sick, then several males caught his arms and dragged him out of the way. He twisted to break their grip and one of them clubbed the back of his head with a fist, turning his thoughts into fog and his legs into sand. As if in a dream, he saw Nisk close with the younger male, heard the fury of their snarls and growls, saw the ivory flash of teeth and dark adamantine claws that caught the light, the garish red-orange of hrinnti blood as it splattered and soaked their fur, smelled the hot exciting richness of opened wounds.

The ear-splitting fight continued, neither male giving nor gaining any quarter. Only half-conscious, Heyoka sagged against the silently watching hrinn, aware the outcome of this fight had some meaning beyond his personal survival, but unable to sort it out. Then a new note of desperation entered Nisk’s snarls and Heyoka seemed to see a halo of blue fire crackling around the two struggling bodies. For the first time, the onlookers glanced at each other and commented in low tones.

The two torn and bloodied hrinn wrenched apart and stood glaring at each other with molten black eyes across the barren circle of ground, each still holding his torch high in the air. Blood matted their coats and the acrid odor of singed fur permeated the cool night air.

Rakshal stretched out a dark-gray arm toward Nisk, concentration outlined in every inch of his massive body. Moving slowly to his right, Nisk’s breath came in great heavy pants, but he never took his eyes off the other male. Suddenly the dark-gray lunged forward, blue fire streaming from his outstretched fingertips toward Nisk’s broad chest. For a moment, it seemed Nisk would withstand the attack, then his knees buckled, his body sagged to the ground. The torch slipped from his fingers and guttered in the sand.

The dark-gray kept his feet for another few seconds, then stumbled backwards and sat down heavily. Across the circle, Nisk’s muzzle scraped weakly across the sand, but no one moved to help him.

Still constrained by the other males, Heyoka trembled with rage. This had been his fight! The sight of Nisk’s beaten body there on the ground filled him with fury and shame at the same time, and worst of all was the whisper in the back of his mind that under these circumstances, and on this particular night, he himself would not have lasted half so long.

"Let—me—go!" He wrenched at his arms, still dizzy. "Or is it required that I watch him bleed to death in my place as well?"

The brown hrinn holding Heyoka threw him to the ground. "Outsiders!" he said with obvious contempt. "You wouldn’t know a pattern if it nipped at your heels!" He turned away.

Heyoka sprawled there for a moment, feeling every inch that had been beaten, clawed, or bruised in the last twenty or so hours. Then he pushed himself up to his feet and limped over to Nisk’s prone body. Putting a hand on one shoulder, he rolled the black male onto his back.

Nisk’s eyes slitted open and his narrow hrinnti tongue lolled to the side. "We must—leave—this place." His voice was only a harsh whisper.

Heyoka looped Nisk’s arm over his shoulder and braced his good leg until the other hrinn regained his feet. Then they limped out of the shifting circle of light cast by the torch which, even while sitting on the ground and half-conscious, Rakshal continued to hold high overhead.

The claw wounds on the creature’s damaged side and arm still possessed an angry redness and were seeping a disgusting milky fluid. Its smell had grown even worse, a terrible rankness that burned her nose. She ran a finger over its delicate skin: hot as the ground at midday and even drier than before. Of course, she had no idea of what its normal body temperature was, but such terrible heat was a sign of infection among hrinn and boded for the worst. Khea dispatched a servant back up to her quarters on the main level for the salve which the Restorer, Vexk, had left yesterday.

The fragile Outsider lay on a few worn cushions, its strange blue eyes following her every movement until she longed to swat the helpless creature for its audacity. How had it survived this long with such terrible manners? She was surprised Fitila had not killed it when she had the chance. "When you go before the Line Mother, it would be unwise to stare at her like that." Khea rolled up the soiled bandages and placed them in the passageway for the servants.

A faint scrabbling of feetclaws in the passage signalled the return of the servant with the salve. The Outsider turned its head restlessly toward the door, murmuring in its high-pitched alien babble. Khea sat back on her haunches as the servant entered the chamber and passed the small pot of herb-laced grease into her hands, then waited as though it wanted something, black eyes covertly studying her. Did it suspect she was a weakling, bound to be culled in the next gleaning? Were even the idiot servants gloating behind her back? She flattened her ears. "Dismissed!"

It pressed its face to the earthen floor and fled.

Covering her fingers with salve, she coated the claw marks with soothing aromatic medicine. Beneath her touch, the creature lay quieter, only muttering in its strange tongue from time to time.

An ear twitched as she considered summoning the Restorer again, which would cause an angry scene with the Line Mother she would have to bluff her way through. Seska would be angry at the accumulating expense, but not as much as if this apparently valuable captive died. Her ears drooped in distress. The older she got, the more hazardous the path between duty and self-preservation became.

On the day when she had finally fought her way out of the nursery up into the light of Ankt, she had stood in the warm sunshine, foolishly thinking life would be easier, that she would at last have enough to eat without fighting for every scrap, a place of her own in which to sleep, proper clothing like an adult. Those things had come to pass, but now her existence was suspended on the weak thread of the Line Mother’s approval, and she was painfully aware she lacked the strength of spirit that would let her achieve the revered rank of breeder some day. In this hold, she would always be an underling, only one step above an unnamed servant, nothing more.

Eyelids pressed tightly closed, the Outsider loosed a string of alien syllables. Khea shook herself, then covered its wounds with clean cloths. Vexk would have to be called back. Let the Line Mother take it out of her hide. She wasn’t some half-witted servant to sit and do nothing while a creature placed in her care died.

Heyoka was still walking when dawn crept across the broken terrain on either side of the river, thin and gray, colder than a flek’s heart—assuming flek had hearts. He couldn’t remember the indoctrination lectures well enough to be sure and laser rifles never left much to examine on the battlefield. He stopped on the top of a knoll overlooking the river, so weary he could hardly hold his aching head up. Because of Nisk, they had made little progress during the remaining hours of darkness. The other male had been close to passing out more than once and they had been forced to rest repeatedly.

Nisk’s hand gripped his arm. "Wait." The deposed Leader’s tattered ears swiveled, sampling the early morning sounds. His black nose quivered. "I smell the house yirn herd foraging up ahead."

Heyoka sniffed and thought he did detect some-thing hot and rank, animal-like, but had difficulty concentrating. His head still throbbed from the two stiff blows he’d taken, one at Nisk’s own hand—stupid, letting himself be caught flatfooted. His reflexes, not to mention training, should have prevented that. Despite the brace, the pain in his bad leg dragged at him. He stared through the dimness at Nisk’s blood-matted muzzle and thought of the huge shaggy yirns he had seen at the landing field. "Do you think you can ride?"

"I could ride even if I were dead." Nisk squinted at the sun just rising over the red sandstone cliffs on their right. "We have only until Ankt departs the sky this day to leave this males’ house’s territory."

"What do you mean ‘we’?" Heyoka’s nostrils flared. "I can’t leave until I find my—" He paused, unable to remember a word for friend or partner. "My—companion," he said finally, though the term in Hrinnti meant literally "one who hunts with me" and only applied to a person of the same sex.

Nisk drew himself up. Claw marks and gashes crisscrossed his battered body like roads on a map of some unknown land. "Your Outsider companion behaved in a foolish manner and so must answer for it now. If he lives, he will return to his own kind, no doubt much wiser." He swayed, then caught himself, ears drooping. "As Black/on/black, you cannot concern yourself with those outside the great purposes/in/motion anymore. You have far more important matters to which you must attend."

"My name is Heyoka!"

"That is an Outsider’s name, merely noise without meaning." Nisk rubbed his forehead wearily. "Black/on/black speaks of what you are, a condition far beyond mere naming."

"Then explain what it means."

"Not here." Nisk’s eyes closed as he tilted his nose into the morning breeze. "I will say more after we reach the mountains. Such an explanation requires time, and no interruptions."

"I can’t go to the mountains." He tried to focus on the murmuring river, instead of the ghastly wounds and burns Nisk had incurred in his place. "I’m going to Vvok to take back my companion." He walked down the knoll to the bank.

Nisk followed, ears flattened. "A hrinn has but two legs, duty and honor. Even though you were raised among Outsiders, those qualities should be etched into your soul. It is not necessary to be told of them."

Heyoka flicked an ear as something long and black scrabbled away from him over the sand, then slid into the water’s green current. The water was smooth as newly molded plas, glimmering in the gray light of dawn. The dankness of wet sand filled his nostrils. He squatted on the sand and palmed the cool water in his cupped hands. Duty and honor. His duty lay to Mitsu who had come to this primitive place because of him. And honor? Whatever Nisk made of that word, it was bound to be something altogether different than a human would have meant.

But, of course, he was no more human than Nisk was.

"Are you content to be nothing more than an unknowing beast?" Nisk demanded. "Something greater than yourself is at work here. I believe the Voice spoke for your life many seasons ago, sparing you and setting something sacred in motion, a pattern/in/progress. This one is like a great storm, gathering on the horizon, full of the sky fire that bites. Nothing like it has ever been seen before, and you stand at its center. If I had let Rakshal kill you, it would have spun apart."

"Slavers, creatures who believe people can be owned like a yirn or a set of robes, stole me from this planet," Heyoka said, using the Standard word for "slavers" because none existed in Hrinnti. He limped angrily along the river bank. "I would not call that being spared."

Nisk loomed behind his shoulder, breathing heavily. "A deep ravine up ahead leads to the high land above us, and so to Vvok." His voice had gone low and strained. "Rain cascades down it in the wet season, but it is dry now. You should be able to climb it without much trouble."

Heyoka turned back to him. "Then you understand I must go."

"My understanding is not necessary." Nisk faced the rising sun. "If you believe your obligation to the Outsider outweighs your duty to me, you must go to Vvok." He stretched a blood-matted arm above his head, then winced. "I will wait here until you are finished."

"That’s ridiculous!" Fur bristled across his shoulders and he flattened his ears with suspicion. "You’ve admitted you only have until sunset to leave this area, or they will kill you, and I have no idea how long it will take me to find my companion, or even if I can."

"Honor forbids that I save myself and leave you to face Rakshal’s wrath." Nisk straightened a fold of his tattered, blood-soaked green robes and sat down heavily. "I have made you my responsibility, therefore it is my duty to wait."

Cold fury snaked down his spine. He felt the presence of his savage other again, eager to fight, to punish Nisk’s superior attitude and establish dominance over him. Blood pounded in Heyoka’s ears, the rich wet scent of the river sharpened, along with the drier sun-baked odor of the nearby desert hardpan. He swallowed and looked away from Nisk’s eyes, which seemed to help. "I will not let you wait."

"How will you stop me, youngling?"

Now! the other whispered in the back of his mind. Leap at his throat. Slash the soft hollow beneath his jaws with your teeth. Taste his blood! He shuddered. "They will kill you."

"Perhaps," Nisk said calmly. "It is possible this pattern will be served by my death."

"If you will not go on alone, then come with me." Heyoka found himself pacing up and down the sand, his aching leg dragging. "Help me find my companion."

"That concerns Vvok." Nisk’s eyes narrowed. "A female matter. I realize you are extremely ignorant for a male of your status, but surely even up in the sky, in the house of Ankt, males do not interfere in the business of females."

Heyoka’s jaw tightened. "What if I just kill you here then and save Rakshal the trouble? Would that satisfy your honor?"

Nisk’s lips wrinkled back from his teeth. "That is one way to end the obligations of sponsorship."

Heyoka stared at him as he stood in the shadow of the sandstone cliffs, painfully aware of the males’ house just a few miles back upriver and the red sun edging ever higher in the sky like a great eye. "I can’t just leave you here to die."

"Of course not." Nisk lurched back onto his feet and looked up at the sun, sand sticking to the blood matted in his black fur. "After we catch the yirn, you and I will cross the river together." Turning, he hobbled downriver.

Heyoka grimaced, then followed. As soon as he lured the stubborn old male into the hills, he would lose him and return for Mitsu. There seemed no other way at the moment.