Kahless - Michael Jan Friedman [61]
We’ll wrestle again, eh? But this time, only one of us will walk away.”
Morath shook his head. “No, Kahless.” His voice was thin and harsh as well. “If you want to grapple, fine. But I have no more intention of killing you than I do of being killed myself.”
Days ago, Kahless would have been moved to anger.
Now, the remark only annoyed him, the way a mud gnat might annoy a minnhor calf.
“Then I’ll take my own life,” he told Morath. “That will do just as well.” He looked around. “All I need is a sharp rock … or a heavy one……
“No,” said the younger man. “I won’t allow it.” As obstinate as ever, he placed himself in his companion’s way.
Kahless eyed him. As far as he could tell, Morath meant it. Besides, there weren’t any rocks around that filled his need.
The outlaw sighed. “What do you want of me?” he asked, not for the first time. He was surprised to hear a pleading quality in his voice, a weariness that went down to his very soul. “You mentioned a price, Morath. I’ll pay it-I’ll pay anything, if you’ll only tell me what it is.”
Morath’s lips pulled back over his teeth, making him look more like a predator than ever. “Pay with your life then.”
Kahless tilted his head to look at the man. “Are you insane? I offered to end my life with my own hands. Or if it’s vengeance you want-was
The younger man shook his head. “No, not vengeance,” he insisted. “There’s been altogether too much slaughter already. What I ask for is not a death, Kahless-but a life.”
Only then did the outlaw begin to understand. To pay for what he’d done, he would have to dedicate his life to those who had perished. He would have to become what Vathraq and the others thought he was.
A rebel. A man devoted to overthrowing the tyrant Molor.
At first, he balked at the idea. The tyrant was too powerful. No one could tear him down, least of all a pack of untrained outlaws, led by a man who had lost his stomach for fighting.
On the other hand, what was the worst that could happen? He would die. And right now, he welcomed death like a brother.
“A life,” Morath repeated. It was more of a question than anything else.
The wind blew. The sun beat down. One of the starahkmey grumbled and scraped the ground with its claws, looking for food.
At last, Kahless nodded. “Fine. Whatever you say.”
“Then get on your starahk, was said the younger man, his voice flat and without emotion, “and be the renegade you let others believe you to be.”
Kahless straightened at the harshness of the retort.
“Not yet,” he said.
Morath looked at him. No doubt, he expected to have to argue some more. But it wouldn’t be necessary.
“First,” said Kahless, “I need something to eat.”
Approaching a patch of groundnuts on shaky legs, he knelt and began to wolf them down. After he had taken a couple of mouthfuls, Morath joined him. They ate more like targs than men.
Then, their bellies full for the first time in many days, they mounted their beasts and turned back toward Vathraq’s village.
At night, when Kahless was unrolling his sleeping mat, Morath began to speak. He was not a man given to long utterances, but this time he eyed the stars and spoke at length.
“My father,” he told Kahless, “was a strange man. He was raised as a devotee of the old gods. It was to them he cried out for help when my mother was giving birth to me.
“The gods, he said, promised him their assistance.
Nonetheless, my mother died. My father lashed out at his deities, calling them deceivers-and smashed all the little statues of them that stood around the house. Thereafter, he hated deceit above all else.
“Somehow, I thrived. But my father neither took another mate, nor did he conceive another child. There were only the two of us, and he raised me with an iron hand.
“When I was five years old, he almost killed me for telling a small, inconsequential lie. Shortly thereafter, while I still bore the bruises of his beating, our house was set upon by reavers-cruel Klingons who obeyed no laws, self-imposed or otherwise.
“My father fought bravely-so bravely a chill still climbs