Chapter 7: The Attraction of Small Predators
General Mahkawn lay in bed that morning in a stone shack on the isle of Bashevgo, and listened: outside roosters crowed down the street, and a few blocks farther a pig squealed as it died in the market, the sounds muted by a rain that fell to a street so cold that the droplets gave an odd tinkling when they impacted, then skittered across the frozen cobblestones.
Mahkawn closed his eyes and tried to soak in that sound. Learning sounds, tuning himself to sounds, was an old habit he’d learned when he’d lost his right eye.
Beside him, Pirazha stirred in bed, throwing her naked leg over him. She opened her eyes, raised on one elbow, and glanced out the window. “I must get up. My master will need bread.”
“No,” Mahkawn said. “Don’t go to work. Tell him that you were breeding with a Blade Kin. It is your privilege.”
As a general among the Blade Kin, it was Mahkawn’s right to select any slave he wanted to sleep with. Her master would not begrudge the time that Mahkawn spent between her legs.
“You don’t want me to have to explain this, do you? What if he sends someone to look for me? I told him last week that I slept with a Blade Kin, and he asked your name. He suspects that you have been coming around again.”
“No,” Mahkawn said. “I don’t want you to tell.” He did not need to ask if she’d given his name. She would have kept silent, lied, done anything. She could not let it be known that she was sleeping regularly with the same man.
Pirazha rubbed her face into the thick hair of Mahkawn’s chest and sighed. She ground her hips into him. “I can stay for a few more minutes.” She bit his shoulder hard enough to bruise it.
Mahkawn petted her sagging breast, ran his finger under the curves. Three of my sons have suckled from her dark nipples, he thought, and the kwea he felt from them, the beauty of his own times lying with this aging Thrall, smote him.
Breathing in, he could smell the yeast from the bakery upon her, as if she herself were bread, a staple. Pirazha’s hips were wide from giving birth, and Mahkawn stared at her face, her thin orange hair, eyes that glowed a deep gold.
Like all Neanderthals, her skin was pulled tight over the smooth bones of her skull. Her only wrinkles were thin traces, as if cobwebs lay at the corner of her eyes.
She was growing old, and Mahkawn felt pain in his own bones, the ache of his own knotted muscles, and knew he was growing old, too. One did not quickly rise from slave, to arena fighter, to Omnipotent among the Blade Kin.
One of Mahkawn’s old masters, a human general, had said it could not be done in a lifetime, certainly not by a Neanderthal. Mahkawn had thought it an odd statement, but now believed it true: Mahkawn felt as if he’d lived more than one lifetime, as if the fire that had driven him in his youth had somehow burned up many lifetimes in propelling him to these heights.
Pirazha reached up and played with his hair, ran one finger down to the nub where his right ear had been before he cut it off and gave it to his first sergeant. She smiled. “Someday, when you are old and no longer Blade Kin, you will look at me like that, and maybe then you will tell me you love me.”
Mahkawn narrowed his eyes in sudden disgust.
He grabbed her throat and squeezed, pushing his thumb up under her esophagus so that she could not scream, and he hissed. “You fool! No matter how old I become, no matter how senile, I would never say that!” Her eyes were wide, frightened. “One cannot love without becoming ruled by love! And no matter what happens, I will never be ruled. I will not become a Thrall like you! I will not be chained to a wall. I will not be chained!”
He held her throat, choking her. Pirazha tried to wriggle under his grasp, tried to shove him away with her left hand and slugged at him with her right. Her face began to purple, and Mahkawn held tight. I should kill her, strangle her now, he thought.
Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes, and he resisted the impulse to bend over, kiss those tears away. She was a Thrall, and though they shared Neanderthal ancestry, she was inferior, an animal, a creature that reveled in kwea and stupidly sought his love.
Breeding with her was a shameful thing. I should have saved my seed for an equal, he thought. Not this beast. Captain Itena or one of the other warriors.
“The body is a tool of the mind,” Mahkawn told her, “not something to be enjoyed as an end to itself!”
Pirazha’s eyes began to roll back in her head, like the eyes of a dumb cow under the slaughterer’s knife. He saw her sense of betrayal, saw her stupidity, and realized that his concepts were above her. To teach her the mind and soul of the Blade Kin would be impossible.
Mahkawn let her go.
Pirazha gasped, her naked chest heaving, and tried to push him away, to roll over onto her stomach. He slapped her face.
From the back bedroom, Mahkawn heard his sons rouse, come stumbling out of bed. Only one of the boys opened the leather flap to the doorway, Uffin, the eight-year-old. He stood, not fully awake, watching his father. A dire wolf pup followed behind the child, jumping on great clumsy feet. Pirazha told the boy, “Go away!”
Mahkawn rolled off the bed, stood naked. “No, stay.”
Uffin hesitated. “My mother told me to leave.”
“You will obey me,” Mahkawn said softly in a tone that did not allow rebuttal. “You sleep with that wolf?”
The boy nodded.
“How long have you had it?”
The boy shrugged. “A long time.”
Mahkawn realized that the boy did not know how to count. Eight weeks. It had been eight weeks since Mahkawn sent the pup. For a moment Mahkawn sat thinking, wondering about the attraction of small predators. Why did humans and Pwi like them so? Dogs, cats—among the Slave Lords, small vicious dinosaurs were popular.
Outside, someone banged Pirazha’s door, and the pup began barking. Mahkawn heard the distinct sound of a ring scratch the doorpost—a signal identifying the intruder as Blade Kin. “Open the door,” Mahkawn said, and the boy opened it as Mahkawn pulled on his black tunic.
The bright yellow sunlight hurt his eye, and in the doorway stood a tall man, a narrow-faced human, gangling arms. He wore the black leather cuirass and black cape of all Mahkawn’s officers. “Jaffrey,” Mahkawn greeted.
“Omnipotent, last night I received your summons for six o’clock this morning,” Jaffrey said. “Pardon me if I have disturbed you while you bred.”
“That is quite all right. I was going to bring you here anyway. How did you know where to find me?” Mahkawn had not told anyone of his liaison with Pirazha, had in fact come to her on a whim, and he was sure no one had followed.
“It is known that you frequent this place,” Jaffrey said. “You must take more care.”
Mahkawn found it difficult to tell if humans were lying, so he studied the young soldier. The news did not bode well, for if some rival suspected that Pirazha was Mahkawn’s favorite, she’d be murdered.
It was a game among the Blade Kin. If a Neanderthal took a lover, rivals within his ranks, perhaps a junior officer like Jaffrey, would slit the lover’s throat to see how their senior officer react. Even among the Blade Kin, Neanderthals sometimes starved themselves with grief when a lover died, like common Thralls, leaving an open position for some more heartless junior officer to fill.
“The sex has been quite good with this one in the past,” Mahkawn said, pulling the cover from Pirazha, exposing her body, the flaccid breasts, the wide hips. “You really should try her.”
“I do not doubt it,” Jaffrey said, reaching down to stroke her face, “but I like them younger.” His tone was that of a man who was declining some small pastry at a banquet. He was a man without great ambition. Mahkawn did not think Jaffrey would kill Pirazha himself, but Jaffrey might sell her name to another.
“How may I serve you?” Jaffrey asked General Mahkawn.
Mahkawn pulled on his sword belt and pistol, put his cape over all. He ordered Pirazha to comb and plait his hair, then sat pensively. “The boy here, Uffin,” he nodded toward Uffin, who still stood gaping, “has a pet wolf cub, and he is eight years old today. He sleeps with the pup.”
Jaffrey looked at the child knowingly. “A wolf pup?” he said, then walked over before the boy. He reached down, patted the pup. “Tell me, does it have a name?”
Uffin nodded.
“Good dog,” Jaffrey said, patting it on the head. The dark-gray wolf licked his hand. “Do you love your pup?”
“Ayaah.”
Mahkawn pulled his knife from its sheath, tossed it toward the floor. It spun lazily as it fell, glinting in the early morning light, and landed shaft-first into the wood. “Then kill it.”
The boy stood momentarily, watching the knife. Mahkawn pulled on his boots, put on his belt.
Into the belt, he tucked a golden scourge, a solid gold bar with eight golden chains, and upon each chain was a tiny ball with a hook. He displayed it proudly, for it marked him as Favored Omnipotent and possible replacement to Lord Tantos, Minister of Retribution.
No other Neanderthal had ever earned the right of succession to a human Slave Lord.
The boy was frightened, hurt, confused. He needed to learn to become tough, if he were to become Blade Kin.
“I am Mahkawn, Omnipotent among the Brotherhood of the Black Cyclops,” Mahkawn told his son. “You will do as I tell you.”
“No, don’t ask him to do that!” Pirazha whispered at Mahkawn’s back, and she grasped his cape, supplicating.
Mahkawn pushed her hand away.
Uffin looked up, licked his lips. He shivered and tried to look away. He knelt down on the floor and buried his head in the dog’s gray fur.
Mahkawn watched. It was a ritual as old as the Blade Kin, and by law Mahkawn could say nothing more.
Uffin was mature enough to understand. He could be a Thrall, remain a slave for life, or he could free himself now by killing the thing he loved.
If I have bred true … Mahkawn thought, and he watched the boy’s hand, willing him to take the knife. A dog is nothing. You are worth more than a dog. We ask so little of you. Come now, better that I ask the life of a dog rather than the life of a friend.
Mahkawn glared at his son, stood with his back straight, muscles rigid. Under that glare, the boy inched across the floor to the knife.
He picked it up, hefted its weight. His hands were shaking and his lower lip trembled. He looked up at Mahkawn, and his eyes were full of tears. The tears did not matter—he could cry, he could curse, he could run away afterward. It only mattered that he do the deed, that he subjugate his animal feelings and show that he could harden himself, become a Blade Kin.
The boy set the knife on the floor, shoved it toward Mahkawn’s foot. “My pup didn’t do anything wrong.”
“It is not a punishment,” Mahkawn explained. “I know it has been a good pup. Just kill it.” By convention, even these few words were too much. Yet he could not give up on the boy so easily.
“No,” Uffin said, and then he sobbed and picked up the wolf pup. “When the Okansharai comes, he will kill you!” Uffin shouted, and he ran into the back room.
Mahkawn hissed through his teeth to show his displeasure, and stormed out the door, into the bright red sunrise. The freezing rain had quit falling, and the red sun shone on the frozen road, making it gleam like a river of blood.
I whelped a Thrall! He’s a Thrall, just like his mother! Mahkawn dared not speak the thought, for it was bitter. Jaffrey hurried after him.
“Omnipotent! Omnipotent!” Jaffrey called. Mahkawn stood with his back to the human. “I am sorry the boy did not pass the test.”
“No matter,” Mahkawn answered. “He has a strong back. He will make a good slave.”
“I know we leave for the Rough soon,” Jaffrey continued. “I would like permission to go to Mole Hill for two days.”
Mahkawn considered. Their mission in the Rough was to last for twelve weeks, and he estimated that it would take at least that long to sweep through the wilderness, capture what was left of the wild Pwi. If his army met any organized resistance, it could take much longer twelve weeks. “All right,” Mahkawn said, “you have two days.”
***