The Darkness Before the Dawn - By Ryan Hughes Page 0,106

suddenly numb.

“I didn’t enjoy making a fool of you,” Jedra said. “I was trying to keep you from killing me, that’s all.”

“By humiliating me instead,” Sahalik said, knocking Jedra’s club from his hand. “You and your woman. You must have gotten quite a laugh when I fled from my own tent.”

Jedra remembered the tension of that night, and the tribe’s fear and anger when Sahalik didn’t return the next morning. Nobody had laughed. And if Sahalik didn’t know that…

“You didn’t go back,” Jedra said incredulously, not even reaching for his club. “You were afraid they’d laugh at you, so you just left the whole tribe to fend for themselves.”

Sahalik didn’t answer him. He swung his club at Jedra’s legs, but Jedra saw it coming and jumped back.

“You idiot!” he shouted. “They needed you. You were going to be their next chief! And you abandoned them because you were afraid they’d laugh at you? Do you know what happened after you left?”

“I don’t care,” Sahalik said, but he was lying and Jedra knew it.

“They were attacked by a cloud ray.” Jedra didn’t mention who had called it down on them. He danced around admitting that just as he’d danced away from Sahalik’s club. “Kayan and I fought it off,” he said, “but one of your warriors was nearly killed and practically everything the tribe owned was destroyed. When we left them, they looked worse than that caravan you sacked.” “You lie,” Sahalik said, swinging for Jedra’s head again, but this time Jedra ducked fast enough. He picked up his own club while he was down and brought it up between Sahalik’s legs. The elf howled and jumped back, and Jedra swung again, hitting him a solid blow in his left side.

Jedra didn’t know what had happened to him, only that the elf had made him angrier than he’d been in months. Physical pain hadn’t driven him to fight back, but Sahalik’s hypocrisy and arrogance had finally done the trick. He flailed away on his tormentor with his club, beating him on his legs and chest and even his back as the elf twisted away from his blows, and all the while he shouted, “You call me a coward? You’re the coward. You’re afraid of laughter.” He brought his club down against the elf’s left leg with his last shout, and he heard the sharp crack of the leg bone breaking.

Instantly, Jedra felt himself gripped by invisible hands. His club flew away, tumbling end over end across the practice field, and the dark presence of the psionic guards filled his mind. Sahalik sat down heavily and clutched at his leg, then he tilted his head back and screamed in rage and pain. Jedra expected the elf to get back up and batter his head to a pulp now that the psionicists held him immobile, but instead the elf motioned for them to let Jedra go. He looked up at Jedra while he waited for them to come heal his injury, and he said through clenched teeth, “I think there may be some fight in you after all. Good. If you remember what that felt like when you fight your first real battle, you may even survive it.”

“I don’t want to fight,” Jedra told him again.

“Too bad,” Sahalik said, “because you’re going to in three days.”

* * *

That night, Kayan whispered to him from her bunk in their newly rebuilt quarters, “That was stupid. Now he’ll just beat you even harder.” It was the first time she had spoken to him on her own initiative since they’d been captured. They practiced separately by day, and on their previous nights, when she and Jedra might have at least taken some comfort from snuggling close to each other, she had preferred to sulk alone on her bunk, ignoring him.

Now he wasn’t sure which was worse, but he said, “It doesn’t matter. We’ll be dead soon enough anyway.”

“Not if I have anything to do with it we won’t,” she answered. “If we can use psionics in the arena, we’ll win against anything they throw at us.”

“Unless we have to fight other psionicists,” Jedra said.

“We’ll win against them, too.”

“Yeah, that’s what you said when we went up against these guys.” Jedra nodded toward the psionicists who guarded them—just two, rather than the four that had been required to hold Kitarak. It didn’t take all four to suppress their partially trained abilities; as long as they kept Jedra and Kayan from merging, two could handle them easily. It