Kahless - Michael Jan Friedman [56]
At last, exhausted in body and spirit, he and Morath fell apart from one another. As Kahless rolled on the ground, his muscles aching as if he’d wrestled a mountain instead of a man, he nonetheless found the strength to glare at Morath.
“Leave me,” he demanded. “Go back to the others and let me drown in the depths of my pain.”
His face scored and smeared with dust, Morath shook his head. “No,” he rasped. “You’ve lied. You’ve shamed yourself and all your ancestors. The blood of an entire village is on your hands, as surely as if you had put them to death yourself.”
Kahless closed his eyes against the accusation. “No,” he insisted. “Molor killed them. Molor!”
“Not Molor,” said Morath. “You!”
The outlaw couldn’t listen to any more of the man’s libels. Raising himself to his knees, he gathered one leg underneath him, then the other. Staggering over to his starahk, who had been gnawing on groundnuts by the side of the trail, he pulled himself onto the animal’s back.
Somehow, he sat up and took the reins in his hands.
“Go,” he told the s’tarahk. “Take me away from this place.”
The beast began to move, its clawed feet padding softly on the ground. But after a while, Kahless heard a second set of clawed feet behind him.
With an effort, he turned and saw a haggard-looking figure in pursuit. It was Morath, sitting astride his own s’tarahk, only his eyes showing any life. But they accused Kahless as vigorously as ever.
The outlaw turned his back on his pursuer. Let Morath dog my steps all he likes, he thought. Let him follow me day and night. If he keeps at it long enough, he can follow me to Gre’thor.
The Modern Age Alexander eyed the lanky Klingon standing not two paces away from him, armed with a wicked-looking bat’telh. A bar of light from a hole in the cavern roof fell across the Klingon’s face, throwing his knife-sharp features into stark relief.
The boy moved sideways, placing a milk-white, tapering stalagmite between them. The scrape of his feet on the stone floor echoed throughout the dark, musty space.
Chuckling to himself, the Klingon followed, shifting his weapon in his hands to allow him more reach.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” the Klingon rasped.
“I go where I please,” the boy piped up, though his heart wasn’t really in it.
Without warning, his adversary struck in a big, sweeping arc-one meant to separate Alexander’s head from his shoulders. Somehow, the boy got his bat’telh up in time to block the blow.
The cavern walls rang with the clash of their blades, just as if this had been a real place and not a holodeck recreation. Alexander’s opponent made a sound of disgust in his throat, just as if he were a real being and not an amalgam of electromagnetic fields and light projections.
Quickly, the boy moved to the other side, taking advantage of another stalagmite to buy himself some time. But, enraged by his failure to deal a mortal wound, the Klingon moved with him.
“You were lucky that time,” he growled.
“We’ll see about that,” Alexander countered.
But he knew the Klingon had a point. The boy wasn’t concentrating as hard as he should have been. He was too distracted, too concerned with events outside the program.
Even his retorts to the warrior’s taunts seemed hollow.
And usually, that was his favorite part of the exercise.
Alexander had received the program as a gift from his father on his last birthday. Of course, birthday gifts were a peculiarly human tradition, but Worf had grown up on Earth and was familiar with the practice.
“Tell me,” his father had asked, “is there anything in particular you would like? Something from Earth, perhaps?”
The boy had shaken his head. “What I want,” he’d said, “is another battelh program. I’m kind of getting tired of the one in the town square. I mean, it’s so easy once you get the hang of it.”
That seemed to have surprised his father. But it also seemed to have pleased him.
“I have just the thing,” he told Alexander.