Talla's Fallen Temple Ch. 27

Zhair'lo awoke to the ash grey skies of a cold pre-dawn, only vaguely remembering his telepathic conversation with Talla. It was Zia, after all, whose bed he shared. Curled up behind her, he eyed her naked body over her shoulder, her slim breasts gently rising and falling with each breath.

The faint smell of sweat from the mandatory exertions of the night before tickled at his nose. Anticipating the weapons lessons ahead, he knew he wouldn't get back to sleep, so he gently extricated himself from his companion and slipped out of bed.

He wouldn't need his armour to go to breakfast, would he? No, probably not. Clothes in shirt and shorts, he slipped out the door.

For the first time, the Barrack felt like home to Zhair'lo. He had graduated, regardless of any impending lessons or rituals, from intruder to resident. Sure, he hadn't fought in any battles yet, nor even begun weapons training, but he could move around inside the Barracks at his leisure, just as he had in any of the dozens of places he'd lived before.

Hunger owned his list of priorities and the mess became his only plausible destination. The sun peeked mournfully at the horizon as he nodded his way past a quartet of guards and entered the mess. It was unusual to have the mess guarded like this and it made Zhair'lo uneasy.

Once inside, however, he noticed a small group of men, looking more grey than could be justified by the light that filtered in from the distant horizon, sitting in a dark corner of the mess. Apart from them sat another man, clothed in the same manner, but looking brighter perhaps due to the way the light struck the table he had taken for himself.

Zhair'lo knew this couldn't be all of the prisoners they'd taken and he wondered what had been done with the rest.

As he swept toward the kitchen, he watched the lone man carefully. Zhair'lo got the distinct impression from the way the larger group cast dark eyes his way that they kept away from him purpose, as if he didn't really belong.

Taking his tray, Zhair'lo made a decision. If the guards at the door wanted to stop him, they could do so and he could feign innocence.

He took a place opposite the man and, to avoid appearing aggressive, a little off to the side so they weren't staring directly at each other.

How, Zhair'lo wondered, did his people greet each other?

With a mental shrug, he spoke, "Zhair'lo."

"Is that your name?" the man heaved a sigh.

When Zhair'lo nodded, he added, "I'm Saren. Were you there yesterday?"

"Yeah."

So far so good. The Fighters standing guard at the doors ignored him.

"How you guys doing today?" Zhair'lo thought it would be a polite question.

Saren shrugged in that pathetic sort of manner Zhair'lo would forever associate with the lamest group of barbarians he could ever expect to meet. "Better fed than we would have been if you people hadn't come along."

"You all looked pretty hungry."

"You have no idea," Saren twitched an eye toward his fellows in the corner. "What'd you do with the others?"

"The others?"

"The other half of our 'tribe'," he spoke the last word with a lot more derision than Zhair'lo would have ever used to describe his own colleagues.

"You don't know where they are?"

"No, don't you?" Saren shook his head. "You guys took 'em away in the middle of the night. Haven't come back."

Zhair'lo realized Saren had no idea of Zhair'lo's lowly rank and consequently expected Zhair'lo to have some inside knowledge.

"You haven't killed them, have you?" Saren's tone turned accusatory, perhaps because of the guilty look on Zhair'lo's face.

"No, I doubt it," he quickly raised his hands, palms out, to reassure the former barbarian. "You were made a promise, after all."

"Promises are important to you people?"

"Yes," Zhair'lo replied instantly.

An image of Nadine, riding him in his bed back in the farmhouse, flashed in his mind.

"But you don't know where they went?"

"Not my area," Zhair'lo tilted his head sympathetically, "Maybe they've found jobs for your friends."

"Friends?" Saren gave another sideways look at the grey lot. "Do I look well befriended?"

"Ah ... no."

Saren returned his focus to his plate of food and carefully took another mouthful.

"You don't get along with the rest?" Zhair'lo prodded.

Saren chewed for a moment, a dark look coming over his face, "No."

They sat in silence for a while, neither looking at the other, and ate their food.

"You expecting us to do work for you?"

"What?" Zhair'lo asked.

"Use us, like slaves."

"Slaves? I - no - I mean, everyone has to do work. It's only fair."

This wasn't the first time Zhair'lo found himself in the unenviable position of having to defend a way of life he'd rather destroy. But honesty forced him to admit that Saren and his grey friends in the corner would find a far better life with the Temple.

"What if we don't want to work for you?"

"I - uh," Zhair'lo stammered to a stop.

The straightforward question stumped him. What did the Temple do with men - or women - who simply refused to work? Had he ever even heard of such a thing?

"It's never come up," he told Saren.

"Really?" Saren rolled his eyes. "You've never had one lazy lout that had to be kicked into doing his fair share of work?"

"Not any one I've ever known," he shrugged. "I mean, if you don't do your job properly, they say the women stop coming."

For a moment, it looked like Saren's heart had stopped.

"What?"

What had he said? For some reason the blood had drained from the man's face.

"What?" he echoed.

The two of them stared at each other in bewildered silence.

"The women stop coming? Like they stop feeding you?"

Zhair'lo stared back at him.

"The women don't feed us," Zhair'lo spoke slowly. "We feed ourselves. Except maybe here where the men and women live together."

Saren appeared completely baffled. He seemed about to assault Zhair'lo with further questions when the guards entered the mess.

"Alright, you lot," one of the Fighters called out. "Time to head back to your quarters."

Staring at Zhair'lo, Saren stood and filed out with the rest of the prisoners.

Alone, Zhair'lo finished his breakfast. Noticing that neither Saren nor any of the grey bunch in the corner had returned their trays, he collected those and returned them to the kitchen counter before leaving.

Looking up the long alley leading toward the showers, he could see the rising sun casting a pinkish yellow glow on the horizon. The bright colours washed away the dull blue-grey that had been the day's theme so far. By the time he reached the showers, both he and the entire day were considerably more cheerful, a feeling enhanced by the presence of his fellow Recruits.

"There you are!" Zia accused, yanking him under the faucet. "Get undressed and soap me up."

"Yes, ma'am."

He shucked off his shirt and shorts just in time for Zia to douse him in cold water. Not one of his fellow Recruits now crowding around him, as far as he knew, had so much as taken up the offer to talk to Sergeant Yung - never mind to quit their joint quest to join the Fighters.

"Where in the nine hells did you go?" Zia asked over her shoulder.

Zhair'lo wondered when it had become a tradition that the boys washed the girls first.

"Got hungry early," he muttered. "Couldn't get back to sleep."

"I get that," Zia admitted with a tilt of her head.

As she spread her legs so he could wash between her cheeks, a sudden glee came to her voice. "I bet they'll teach us the knife and sword, too."

She turned to face him with her arms raised as he stood up. Unashamed of her nudity, she eyed him curiously.

"You can already use a bow, though," she peered at him. "Why are you so eager?"

Lathering up her shoulders, slim breasts and hard stomach, he considered this for a moment.

"If I'm gonna fight," he pointed out, gently rubbing soap over her bald mound, "I've gotta learn where to stand and when it's safe to loose an arrow."

"Don't you know that already?"

Satisfied with the cleanliness of her genitals, Zia hit the lever again, dumping another load of cold water over her body.

"Not really," Zhair'lo replied, when he thought her ears were clear again. "I was a Hunter, remember?"

Taking the soap from his hand, Zia smirked. "You've never had to engage a whole herd of deer at once?"

"I've never seen them in a battle formation, that's for sure."

But, then again, he thought, their rather pathetic enemies hadn't been much more difficult than a herd of deer, had they?

Zhair'lo closed his eyes as Zia ferociously scrubbed at his hair.

"You ever think about getting a proper Fighter's hair cut?"

"Nah, long as it isn't past my shoulder."

The style popular among the older men, especially the Fighters, was far shorter than the way he liked his hair. Now that he thought about it, most of the women had shorter hair than he did.

Zia began working her way down his body, spending an unnecessary amount of time washing his penis.

"Nine gods," she muttered. "I want to jerk you off every time I see this thing."

"What the fuck is wrong with you, Zia?" Bree asked as she walked past them toward the towels.

"Nothing!" she protested. "He just comes so much ..."

"We have training!" Del rebuked, also having finished her hygienic obligations.

"Yeah, yeah," Zia muttered under breath, "I wasn't really going to ..."

At that point, she kicked the lever that poured a generous amount of water over his soaped up body.

Zhair'lo could say this much for Zia: she had recovered very well from whatever reticence she had experienced the previous day. He didn't understand what had bothered her, whether it had been the battle, the sight of death or the weakness of the enemy, but a night of sex and a morning shower had, by all appearances, cleared it up. Whether or not she was alright on the inside, he had no idea.

As much as he cared about her, Zhair'lo knew it wasn't his problem, nor his place to pry. If Zia had wanted to talk, she would have said something last night between sex and unconsciousness. If she needed to say something later, she was free to do so at any time they weren't training.

Without any discussion, they other Recruits waited until Zhair'lo and Zia were dressed before heading out to the mess. By the time they arrived, other Fighters had taken up several tables and the room was nearly full. They took their meal trays quickly - Zhair'lo electing only to grab a tall tin cup of water - and sat down.

"So what do you think we learn first?" Renzi asked.

"Swords, I bet," Kit rolled his eyes. "What else?"

"The girls, too?"

"Women use bows in combat," Del paused only a moment in the precise slicing of her chunk of ham.

"You think they won't teach us anything else?" Bree put in.

"We've learned to fight with staffs, too," Zia said. "Why not swords? The fighter women definitely carry short swords."

"Might as well teach all at once, see?" Renzi said.

Zhair'lo thought back, trying to picture the Fighter women when they'd gone outside the Barracks. He was certain they hadn't carried swords while on patrol and he hadn't paid attention to how they'd armed themselves for the raid on the barbarian camp. Now that he thought about it, though, every woman had carried a short sword on her hip. In fact - he held a particular image of the Ranger Hera in his mind - some of them had carried two such swords.

"Fighting with a short sword will be different, though," he said aloud, not to anyone in particular.

"What?" Zia asked, stunned.

Shaken out of his reverie, Zhair'lo took a sip of his water.

"You could hold one in each hand, for one thing," he explained, setting his cup down. "For another, the reach would be completely different. Faster, right? But shorter."

They digested this, along with their food, and no one spoke for a while.

"So do you think we'll start learning together?" Renzi wondered. "Or are we going to have separate instructors?"

A lot of speculation followed, most of which didn't interest Zhair'lo. He wanted to learn how to use a sword, not be subjected to a lot of guesswork on the subject. He did find it odd that, in spite of their multiply upgraded strength, the Fighter women carried short swords. Was this to reduce their encumbrance, given they carried a bow and a quiver of arrows? Would a full size sword be too awkward?

He tried to picture how combat would work, with the women firing their arrows from behind the men. Then what would happen? If a large group of barbarians reached the line of men, did the women join in? Or were they accurate enough to fire their arrows into a melee?

That sounded stupid to Zhair'lo, but he didn't imagine himself an expert on the subject.

"C'mon," Zia prodded. "We're to wait for Sergeant Yung in the practice field."

The other Recruits wolfed down the remainders of their meals and quickly returned their trays. Once they exited the mess, they instinctively fell into a loose version of their proper formation. Zhair'lo was pretty sure they weren't doing it consciously. Renzi just naturally ended up on left, with Kit and Z'rus on his right. The girls fell in behind, where they belonged with bows and arrows they weren't currently carrying.

The chatter went on until they turned a corner and had a look at the practice field. At that point, all conversation ceased.

Neatly arranged in a small arc stood a set of vertical wooden logs, each about the height and size of the trunk and legs of a human body. Attached to each of the trunks, at different angles, other thinner pieces of wood poked out, clearly meant to simulate arms. Sergeant Yung and several soldiers of lower ranks waited patiently in the centre of it all.

"Form up!" the Sergeant called out.

They rushed to make their two rows directly in front of him.

"Good," he surveyed them. "Today you're going to learn how to swing a sword."

He began walking along the front of their line.

"You should expect two things by the end of this day," he stopped to stare directly at Kit. "The first is that your sword arm will be very sore."

The Sergeant began walking again until he found Zia's spot.

"The second is that you'll know how to kill someone standing as still as log."

Everyone knew better than to laugh.

"Each pair of dummies in front of you has been built to simulate an enemy soldier in a specific attack or defence posture. You will take one of the wooden swords and follow the orders given by the instructor standing nearest," the Sergeant intoned, walking between the lines. "Move now."

In the manner of soldiers doing things in the most direct and simple way possible, the eight Recruits moved forward to stand in front of the dummies nearest them. Zhair'lo and Bree found themselves facing twin, headless wooden statues which had their arms raised in the air.

"Take a sword," the female soldier standing between the two dummies gestured at the wooden swords leaning against the trunks. "This is how an opponent will appear if he is raising a heavy sword over his head with the intention of crushing your skull. He might also be wielding a club, warhammer or axe. The important thing to realize is that even if you strike a killing blow, you still have to get out of the path of the falling weapon. Now ..."

Zhair'lo didn't miss a single word of the woman's level headed instruction. He was confident his fellow Recruits would follow their instructions with a fascination as deep as his own.

And Sergeant Yung hadn't been kidding. By the time the bells of noon rang, and Zhair'lo had rotated through all four station countless times, he could barely feel his arms.

-===================-

"Tell me what you're seeing," the Sorceress of Pussy spoke very softly.

Maksa looked up from her papers, blinking slowly, refocusing her eyes on her surroundings. The underground records room had the same appearance as always. The flagstone floors would never change and neither would the torches lighting the space from their mounts on the ends of the countless bookshelves full of genealogy scrolls. Ever present, the background to all of it, a damp, nipple-stiffening cold suffused the room, bringing a feeling that neither clothing nor fire pits could ever relieve.

The Sorceress, her elbows resting on the opposite side of Maksa's large work table, peered carefully at her disciple.

"I've been trying to understand what drives the Heroes, the Catatonic and the Enraged."

"Of this I am aware, Maksa," Pussy replied, her voice still gentle. "What do you see?"

"Nothing," Maksa waved a dismissive hand at the tallies and scratches on the sheets in front of her. "There is no pattern I can discern, from father to son, even among multiple generations, that explains where our foremothers went wrong."

"And yet you keep looking."

"It's a matter of logic, Mistress," Maksa bit her lip in frustration. "There is a pattern. I know it. I can - I can feel it."

"As you felt the pattern among the Virgins?"

"Yes. And I was right about that," Maksa seized this moment of triumph.

"Disturbingly so, yes," Pussy admitted.

Maksa inhaled.

"I feel I'm grabbing half the problem."

"Pardon?" the Sorceress raised her eyebrows.

"Have you ever tried to pick up a large box with just one hand?" Maksa flexed her fingers in the air in between the two women.

"What do you mean?"

"Mistress," Maksa looked up now, her purplish grey eyes spearing the Sorceress. "When you pick up something small, you can grab it in one hand. But as the things you want to pick up get bigger and bigger, it gets more and more and more awkward, until you just have to use the other hand to hold it comfortably."

The Sorceress, still leaning over Maksa's table, tilted her head in acknowledgement.

"I feel like I'm trying to pick up the largest box ever with just one hand."

"Frustration," Pussy pronounced, summoning all the wisdom she could into her voice.

"Yes," Maksa replied drily, looking down at her work.

It was then that it hit her.

"Mistress," she said, her eyes coming up to narrow on her superior.

"Yes?"

"When Temples have fallen, that's when we know - when we really know - which men are which?"

"We have the semen test ..."

"But really, we proved out the semen test because we've seen Temples fall and, separate from that, we've taken men away from Temples to test them?"

"Indeed."

"Madra Zen," Maksa slapped her forehead. "So what of the women?"

Pussy stood up and folded her arms. "What of the women?"

"I've been so stupid," Maksa let her voice almost go to a whine. "Oh, nine gods, that's the other hand. Is there any difference in how the women behave when a Temple falls?"

"I - how would we - they all defend the Temple, of course," Pussy indignantly raised herself up to her full height.

"Do they?" Maksa glared. "According to whom? Who measures that? If a particular woman just curled up in a ball and hid under her bed, who in the nine hells would even know?"

"Details are assigned, I'm sure of it," the Sorceress stepped back uncertainly from the table. "Under martial law, things become extraordinarily strict. I've never heard of any woman becoming Enraged and attacking another woman."

"They don't have to go that far," Maksa sighed. "But that has to be the other factor. We've been trying to breed the men for one thing: Heroism against Enraged. Meanwhile, we've been trying to breed the women for what? The ability to take upgrades? The requirement for more powerful Goddesses?"

The Sorceress appeared to be having a dizzy spell. She caught herself on the table before she fell. It occurred to her, quite suddenly, that the woman in front of her sported a frightening intellect.

"What are you saying?"

"Our breeding programs may have been working against each other. Unless we can find a way to differentiate the women from each other in terms of their contribution to the Enraged men, there's no point doing any further meddling. We could just be destroying ourselves with ignorance."