And finally the story-telling and the singing and the sharing was over. And our enemies came.
The skies above us were black; I looked up and realised that three thousand or more Kindred warriors were flying in space-armour above us. Some were from the Valley, but most I guessed had been despatched from their barracks somewhere in the outer hull. The Ka’un had sent their finest warriors to fight us!
And the flying Kindred swooped down low upon the Great Plain, and their guns began to spit fire.
And the aerials swooped upon them, knocking them from the sky. They flew in vast flocks, hundreds of them, pecking and ripping at the motors that held the Kindred body armours aloft; and one by one the Kindred began to fall from the sky. And those that fell were trampled under the hooves of the grazers and of Fray, or torn apart by the teeth of the giant sentients, or thrashed and bitten to pieces by the angry arboreals.
Or slain by me! For my sword did the work of a hundred Maxoluns, as I cut and slashed and killed!
And as I fought, I thought of Sai-ias.
Blade at my head; duck to evade; weave; dagger in the throat; knee in the balls; on I fight!
I mourned her, and I treasured her memory, insofar as I could treasure and mourn in the midst of a furious and bloody battle with these huge and powerful Kindred warriors.
(Back! Strike! Thrust! Fuck your parents for conceiving you and die!)
Sai-ias was brave indeed. She died to save us. And what’s more, she left us a legacy; a way of love and forgiveness and respect for the rhythms of life, and it is a way I intend to respect and to follow. Just as soon as I win this fucking battle!
And thus
We slew the armies of the Kindred! And lopped off their limbs, and shattered their skulls, and broke their bones! And they slew us, or some of us; but our people were fierce beyond belief and though the Kindred had guns and armour and force fields and cannons we had weight of numbers and fighting fury and a cause that was just.
And so we crushed them. Literally in some cases. Fray trampled Kindred with her hooves; Quipu bit their throats out; Miaris, the largest of the giant sentients since Cuzco was gone, was a creature of terror and carnage.
And I slew fast and furiously, and dodged bullets, and sidestepped energy rays; for no one and nothing could defeat me on this day.
And so we fought, and won.
And when the last Kindred body dropped to the ground, a cry of fear resounded out.
For above us in the air were Cuzco, and Djamrock, and Tarroth, their great wings beating.
And at the same the waters of the lake were draining away. And when the lake bed was fully dry an army of giant sentients began to crawl and walk and trot towards us, in a long trail that led from the island of the Tower where the gateway to the outer world was located. There was Balach, and Morio, and Tamal, and Sheenam, and Goay, and Leirak, and two-headed Shseil, and the serpentines Dokdrr and Ma, and more.
And behind them walked ten bipeds dressed in red robes.
“Cuzco join us!” I screamed up, and he laughed, and then he shat, and I had to dodge out of the way of his vast turd as it crashed to earth.
“Fray,” I said, “we should attack while they are still in the lake,” and I beckoned with one arm to make my meaning clear to him.
And Fray turned to me, and there was sadness in her eyes; but she did not move.
“Quipu?” I turned to Quipu. His five heads were still; he was holding a home-made sword in one of his hands and he pointed the blade towards me.
Around me were the bloodied corpses of the Kindred and the bodies of many of our own: Zubu was dead, and so was Doriel; and Caramo also. Doalya the foolish blind aerial-she was a broken wreck. Sargan, who could drum his own body, had been eviscerated by Kindred and his brains ripped out. But Biark was alive, and so was Sahashs, and Loramas, and Thugor, and many more. But none of them moved; they all had that eerie stillness.
I was the only warrior left able to fight; my entire army had joined our enemy. And I realised that my strategy had failed; the paklas still controlled each creature’s mind, except for mine.
And so I waited, a dreary patient wait for my own inevitable doom. Waited until the ten Ka’un had walked across the dry lake and had joined me on the battlefield, while their monsters stood flanking the lake shore like statues in a Sabol temple.
And I watched as their leader-a male with a face like black parchment-walked towards me, proud and calm. He was the one I had seen before; the one who had stared so curiously at my body as I dangled naked from a hook.
“Greetings Sharrock,” he said, in my own language, without use of pakla. “I am Minos; and I am the captain of this ship.”
“You are the one who did this, aren’t you? You released me!” I said, appalled, retrospectively, at my own stupidity.
“Yes.” Minos did not smile, but he was clearly delighted at his own great joke.
“You disabled the pakla-links, temporarily.”
“I did. And it yielded us a battle most glorious.”
“What I did to the Machine Mind-”
“Achieved precisely nothing. The power to control the ‘paklas’ ”-Minos tapped his forehead with a long finger-“is here. All in here.”
I nodded; my humiliation was complete. I had played the foolish pawn in Minos’s cruel game.
And yet I did not care.
“And now you are going to kill me?” I asked.
The Ka’un drew his sword and held it aloft; the universal sign for a challenge.
I stifled a gasp at this unexpected move; and wondered if this was merely another jest; and yet a flicker of hope stirred in me.
“My name is Minos,” said the Ka’un. “And I shall fight you for this world!”
And I nodded assent; then I raised my sword and attacked him.
Above me Cuzco and Djamrock and Tarroth beat their wings in syncopation with the clang of my hull-steel sword on Minos’s far superior fusion-forged weapon. Fray and Quipu and all my comrades watched, paralysed, their bodies controlled by Ka’un. The giant sentients standing by the lake shore were silent too; and the nine other Ka’un watched impassively as Minos recklessly gambled their world on a single combat with a warrior supreme.
And as I fought, I wondered if the nine other Ka’un would honour Minos’s bargain in the event of his death. For I was alone, one warrior against an army of monsters; even if I did beat Minos, I could be slain by them with effortless ease.
And yet, I sensed that Minos was sincere. With his black old face and his tired eyes, he looked as if he would welcome the release of defeat in glorious battle.
So with hope in my heart, I struck and I stabbed and I danced, and I used all my warrior skills against this aged slender monster with the dry and withered face and the weary eyes; for I was Sharrock, and Sharrock could never, ever, be defeated!
However, after a few minutes of masterly and dazzling and heroic swordplay I realised, to my utter and abject horror, that I could not actually beat this bastard. For Minos was faster than me; and defter; and more skilful. His strokes were unerring, his grace was faultless, and he was strong. His body looked punier than mine by far; but each strike of sword on sword shook me to the core. I leaped over his blade but he leaped too and we fought in air, clashing swords wildly till we both somersaulted and landed back on grass, but his mid-air turn was faster and his fall more agile, and he struck again, and the blade cut my shoulder and blood flowed.
My injuries were not to blame, for my battle strength was on me, and I fought like a Maxolun possessed. But even so I could not compete with a devil like Minos.
And then my blade shattered and I fell to the ground helpless and Minos raised his blade as if to cleave my head.
But a female Ka’un stepped forward; and fire sparked from her fingers. And Minos drew back.
The female Ka’un looked into my eyes, and I looked into hers; and I saw nothing there but nothingness. Then she drew her sword; there were jewels on the hilt and the blade gleamed in daylight and then she passed it to me hilt uppermost; and when I held it was like caressing a soul.
