Part 26 (1/2)

Alouzon watched until she was out of sight. ”Relys?”

”My lady.”

Like all the rest, Relys was unrecognizable. The thick-limbed lieutenant had become a sleek girl who looked no more than eighteen. Her eyes were hard, though, set in a face that was incongruously beautiful.

”How are you, Relys?” Alouzon spoke quietly.

She shook her head. ”I do not wish to die by my own hand. That is all that keeps me from following my comrades who now lie away from the fire.” She ran her eyes over her soft form, weighed a breast in her hand experimentally, dropped it and shook back her hair with disdain. ”So much for beauty. A pretty piece I would make on the block in Bandon, eh?”

”Don't hurt yourself, Relys.”

”I said that I would not.”

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”Your friends used their swords. You're using words. I'll warn you: it's more painful, and a lot slower.”

Relys snorted, started to walk away.

Alouzon called after her. ”I noticed that Wykla wasn't among those you named.”

”Aye,” she said, half turning. ”Wykla lives.”

”Where is . . .” She could not avoid the p.r.o.nouns forever. Nor would it do the wartroop any good to try. Gryylth had to change. Everything had to change. ”Where is she?”

Relys looked toward the fire. One of the women stirred. ”H-here, my lady,” she said.

The speaker was young, pretty, with amber hair that fell well below her shoulders. Her blue eyes were impon-derably sad. She sat huddled by the fire as though she had been beaten.

”Wykla,” said Relys. She had named the dead in the same way. ”Alouzon Dragonmaster, I go to attend my captain, who inspects the . . . lucky ones.”

Alouzon hardly heard her. Her attention was focused solely on the girl by the fire. ”Wykla,” she said softly. ”I'm sorry.” She got down from Jia and padded across the gra.s.s to her side. The others watched as she dropped to her knees and put her arms about her. ”I'm sorry.”

”My lady.” Wykla was weeping in silence, but openly, the first tears that Alouzon had seen among the wartroop. The others were impa.s.sive, their faces half blank, half stone. ”I ...”

She had to say it. The words forced themselves out. This time, though, she resolved that she would not be lying. ”Wykla, it's going to be all right. I promise. One way or another, it's going to be all right.” Whatever she had to do, wherever she had to go, she would make good her vow. It would be all right. Somehow.

Wykla listened to her, lifted her small hands as though Alouzon had offered her a cup br.i.m.m.i.n.g with a new life. But abruptly, with an inarticulate whimper, she broke down sobbing, burying her face in Alouzon's shoulder. The grief she expressed was dragged up from deep and bitter wellsprings, and it racked her body as though it 228.

might tear her apart. Crying aloud, she in turn tore unthinkingly at Alouzon's armor, and her tears mixed inseparably with her sweat as she beat herself against the thing that had happened to her.

Alouzon held her, rocking her like a child as she screamed out her pain, pus.h.i.+ng back her long hair when it threatened to choke her. She could say nothing more to Wykla. No endearments, no comforts, no further words of encouragement. The mere thought of such things was obscene, a trivialization of the fury of emotion that ripped and slashed at Wykla, that pushed her through pain, through agony, and into something that was at once both absolute nightmare and starkest reality.

Impaled upon such thorns, Wykla screamed, her cries those of a young woman faced with the unendurable. Alouzon, who had herself twice faced annihilations that were no less consummate for all their dissimilarities, knew that she could be no more than physical being, a simple presence that reminded the girl that the whole world was not white and raw, that held out the promise that the unendurable, accepted, might be endured.

Mercifully, Wykla spent herself quickly. Her cries became feeble, vague, and her grip on Alouzon's armor slackened and slipped away as her mind overloaded and sent her into an exhausted sleep.

With a sigh, Alouzon laid Wykla down on the gra.s.s, propping her head on a bundle of blankets. ”Someone get me some water so I can wash her face,” she said without looking up.

”I had hoped,” came Marrget's voice, ”that my warriors could take their defeat with dignity.”

She was too worn to become angry. ' 'It isn't a question of that.”

”Wykla was always weak.”

”Like she was in the Heath?” She looked up at the captain. Marrget stood on the far side of the fire. The angle of the light put her eyes in shadow and turned her face into a mask. Alouzon might have been conversing with a Greek tragedy. ”You call that weak? She saved .

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your a.s.s. She's got enough guts to admit that she hurts. Maybe she's stronger than you are.”

Marrget motioned to Relys. ”Bring the Dragonmaster a skin of water and a cloth.”

Relys brought them, handed them to Alouzon. Her eyes were black and hard, but their strength had turned brittle, shallow. For all her protests that she had no intention of taking her own life, Relys was slipping, just like the rest of the wartroop. Even Marrget would eventually reach her limit.

Slowly, Alouzon cleaned the salt and saliva from Wyk-la's face. The girl murmured in her sleep, and one hand plucked nervelessly at her short tunic, her smooth thighs, as though, even unconscious, she sought reconciliation with her body.

Alouzon wanted to sleep, to crawl under warm blankets in her own bed in Los Angeles and lie inert for hours, days, until Gryylth was far in the past. But nothing was ever in the past-Kent State, Dallas, Gryylth, whatever-for the past lay beneath the present, an underlayer of history and recollection that colored every thought and deed with the indelible hue of memory, whether sunlit or blood-spattered.

And the only way out was through.

' 'It's not a question of dignity anymore,'' said Alouzon. These were her friends. She would not let them die. Somehow, she had to find the right words. ”It's not a question of dignity, or honor, or valor, or anything else.'' She wrung out the cloth and stood up. ^'What we are talking about, captain, is survival.”

Marrget regarded the sleeping girl as though she stared into a mirror and saw there an overly honest reflection.

' 'How long do you think you can keep up this stiff-upper-lip c.r.a.p?'' Alouzon pressed. She allowed an edge to creep into her voice.

”I do not understand you.”

”How long are you giving yourself before you join your friends over there?''

”We ... will live.”

”Like h.e.l.l you will. Wykla let it out. She beat herself 230.

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senseless in front of you, and you didn't do a d.a.m.ned thing. You just judged her. And, you know, she's probably going to do that again and again until she fights her way through to some kind of sanity. But I think she's got a chance. You, though ...” She shook her head. ”You're so f.u.c.king petrified right now I'm surprised you don't crack in two.”

Marrget's mouth forced itself into a thin smile. ”And so what are we to do, Alouzon Dragonmaster? Weep for our lost manhood? Wail like bereaved wives? Leam to accept our status as women, and bow and simper to our menfolk? Will you teach me now to braid my hair so that I can be properly debased?”

”It doesn't have to be like that.”

”That is what women are.”