The Last Hour of Gann

How long that first, formal stage of battle lasted, he could not say. Shuiv’s movements became steadily more ragged as the color at his throat grew stronger. Meoraq could hear his breaths falling roughly out of rhythm, see the fires burning high in his eyes. He knew the moment that Shuiv let go and became the sword in Sheul’s hand, but he did not soon follow. So perhaps it was not for him after all, he mused, parrying the younger man’s increasingly savage lunges and thinking of the tower of fire. Or if it had been, strange that it should have been all to bring him this far to Tothax only to end him in the arena over a few rows of gruu and some bitter words. Perhaps it was Shuiv who was meant to go on. For a young Sheulteb to take victory over a veteran Sheulek of so grand a House as Uyane was certainly the start of a damned good story.

But his own breaths were coarsening now, his thoughts becoming more difficult to grasp even as they slipped through his mind. He was aware, vaguely, of that curious blankness stealing in while he pondered Shuiv and whatever fate awaited him, replacing words he knew with timeless stretches of empty heat. He stood against it for as long as he could, because the struggle was as glorious as the burning, but his world became a blackness.

He burned.

Fire. He felt it every time, but this time, disturbingly, he saw it. It spilled upwards from the heart of the black, filling his vision and searing at his soul’s flesh, brighter than it had been that night on the rooftop of Xheoth. Not beckoning. Demanding. And in that endless moment between Meoraq the man and Meoraq the Sword, there was only stillness and his heart beating and that tower of fire burning his eyes, and he said or heard or perhaps only imagined the word, “sukaga.”

It caught in him like a fishing hook, almost familiar…

And then the blackness slipped away again. Weight and substance fell back onto his bones; he staggered, catching blindly at a man’s shoulder to steady him until he could see Shuiv’s face through the flames that still coursed through him. He looked down, confused, and saw the black blade of one sabk deep in the younger man’s chest. He had no idea where the other one was.

The high judge’s hammer struck twice, invisible. Meoraq leapt back with a mindless hiss, slashing at the empty air before he could master himself. The fire rose again, but this time, he closed his eyes and made himself breathe until it cooled. Shuiv was dead and Sheul’s judgment, known to all. He was Uyane Meoraq once again; the Sword of Sheul was sheathed.

He closed his eyes, counting his breaths the way every boy born to his caste was taught, with the primary verse for the Six. A slow count, they called that. Slow and calm and even. A Sheulek must be the master of his clay and so, ‘One for the Prophet, the wide open eye…Two for his brunt and the sign of the fist…’

He couldn’t believe he was standing here. His palms ached, but apart from that slight pain, he didn’t think he’d even been scratched, although he felt worn enough that surely the battle had been a long one. Shuiv had started to burn so quickly…but not for the honest man, it seemed. And now House Arug had his widow to care for, at least until her infant had opened and Meoraq could judge it for a son or daughter and see it placed accordingly.

‘Three for Uyane, the unclad sword…Four for Mykrm, the hammer of his law…Five for Oyan of the ash-stained leaf…’

Ashes…Fire…Like the tower he had seen from Xheoth and followed to Tothax. Like the tower he had seen in the blackness of his burning, where he had never seen anything before. And the word, sukaga…a name, perhaps, but not one he immediately knew. Why was it now so maddeningly familiar?

‘Six for Thaliszar and the healing hand…’

It went on from there, but Meoraq started over at one (they only named the low castes to fill out the numbers from seven to ten; the Six were the only verses that mattered) and let his mind wander. By his third slow-count through, he was completely cool and lucid enough to really wonder what he’d done with his other sabk. He cast about for it on the floor while the high judge finished the trial’s closing prayers, then went to see if he’d left it buried in the body anywhere odd. He was careful with his brother’s body as he turned it. Shuiv’s blood was slow, his life gone, but he would not truly be dead until his funeral pyre had been consumed. While he could still feel, he deserved no less than the highest respect.

“Honored one.”

Meoraq looked up to see that the bailiff had lowered the stair and now stood before him, offering his sabk. Bloodied.

Meoraq took it and pinched the blade to clean it. “Where was this?” he asked curiously.

The bailiff bowed. “By Sheul’s judgment, through the throat of Mihuun.”

Meoraq looked up, startled, and saw that the screen wall above him had indeed been battered open. A great deal of blood stained what he could see of the narrow chamber beyond. He looked at his hand, turned it upwards, slowly flexed his fingers. Splinters.

“Having seen that, I think…Ezethu?…will not be quick to bring future disputes to his lord’s attention,” he remarked, sheathing his sabk to pick them out.

The bailiff bowed again. “Ezethu was first to fall beneath Sheul’s judgment, honored one.” He paused, clearly wondering if his next words were in bad taste, then lowered his voice and said, “But I think we have finally seen the last of Lord Arug.”

Pity it took a man’s life to stop a greedy lord from abusing the law, but he was so seldom called to court for good reasons.

Meoraq glanced back, then went and knelt by Shuiv again. He pressed his palm against the still chest and bent his neck in a warrior’s bow. “I will envy you, my brother, when you behold our Father’s face tonight,” he said, and looked up through the high, colored window to the heavens. “Take him, O my Father, and receive him well. He is a good man.”

The bailiff grunted approvingly. Not every victor of the arena gave respect to a fallen Sword, but Meoraq did not do it just because it was the custom. Not this time, anyway. He often felt strange in his own skin after a judgment, but this was different. The vision of the burning tower; the word, sukaga; and Shuiv, falling into God’s fires right in front of him—everything seemed braided, bound to him, impossibly heavy.

He felt a sudden restlessness, an urge to call for his pack and just leave. Never mind the exarch and never mind whoever it was that had been summoning him half the year. He knew what awaited him in the next room and there was a time when he would have been eager to go to it, but not tonight. Sheul was calling him. Meoraq wanted nothing in this world more than to answer.

But he could not answer from the arena and men were surely waiting to bear Shuiv away for his final rites, so Meoraq finished his respects. He found Shuiv’s shining sabks and broke the blades, placing the hilted halves carefully at his feet. He said the Prayer For the Fallen and the first three verses from the Book of the Sword. Then he let the bailiff lead him back into the arena hold.

3

They had cleaned away the bath and his pack, but the room was far from empty. The high judge was there, of course, with another bailiff, the court scribe, and two lesser mediators. At their center stood Lord Arug in his grossly inappropriate finery and baubles, along with the servant he had sent ru

‘A girl,’ Meoraq thought, trying to be severe, to be scornful even. Not a woman at all, but hardly more than a child, to judge by the narrowness of her build and the grey tint to her immature scales. One of the many curses laid upon House Arug. Nothing but that. Nothing worth noticing at all.

And as restless as he was to be gone, he could not stop staring at her.

“My daughter, honored one,” said Arug, bowing almost as low as the girl. “Tem.”

Meoraq flared his mouth in a

“Leave us,” he said, drawing a sabk.

Lord Arug and the mediators made their salutes and withdrew. Tem, well-coached, did not.

She bent lower, her hands trembling on the tiles, as Meoraq came toward her and did not move until he stood over her with blade in hand. “This is the blade of conquest.”

“I am a virgin of my father’s House,” she replied.

He stared at her, frowning.

In a moment, she’d realized her mistake. Her eyes flashed wide and she fumbled at her wrist, stammering out breathy apologies. Soon, she had her wristlet off—a shiny thing of woven metal wires, perhaps purchased earlier this day for just this moment—and held it out to him in a shaking hand.

He took it, feeling his spines flex and flatten outside of his control. ‘Breathe,’ he told himself, stabbing his sabk through the delicate band at the nearest exposed wooden beam in the wall. ‘She’s young. She’s nervous. She’s probably fragile. Just breathe.’

He turned around, already reaching to unhook the fastens of his loin-plate. “I am Uyane Meoraq,” he said as he swept his belt away and his cock came thrusting furiously past his armor. “House Arug stands in the shadow of my blade. I am a Sword of Sheul and I demand the right of conquest.”

Tem started to bow again, of all things, only to straighten up fast with both hands raised in frantic supplication. “No, I—Wait! I was meant to run!”

Meoraq managed not to hiss at her, but it was a near thing. Yes, she was nervous, but he was Sheulek and the fires were upon him. He had little patience for these female rituals under the best of circumstances and now that patience was all but gone.

“Run, then,” he said tersely. His toes flexed, ready for the chase, and he had to remind himself that she was no true opponent, only a girl, and easily hurt. He must be the master of his flesh even now, with his cock aching in the open air and every thought his mind could make coated in Sheul’s flame, and he must not harm her.

She rose, sending anxious glances in all directions, as if the empty arena hold were a thicket filled with obstacles that needed navigation. Her roving eye came to him, touching his cock with the weight of a living hand, and she seemed to shrink within herself. She did not run. She did not even appear to be breathing.

So be it. Meoraq strode forward and caught her by the girdle.

She screamed in his face, then clapped both hands over her snout and looked properly appalled with herself. “F-Forgive!”

He was beyond forgiving, beyond offense, beyond caring. Meoraq swung her around and put her firmly against the wall beside the beam where his sabk impaled her wristlet.