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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 17: Slade 256
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Kondor 261
A simple somersault became far more problematic, Slade realized as he held out his blade. Not only had he to be sure where it went, as he flipped upside down, but he had to visualize and keep his wrist and hands in the right motions. Before, without a sword, his wrists and hands were a major part of getting him through the roll; with weapons in hand, it was considerably more difficult to get the push from them he needed without losing his grip.
Examining the moves in his head again, Slade nodded over at his wife who was sitting by the door to the training center. Then he dove into the roll, and came back up, and it was all good--until he lost focus, letting his sword droop as he came up and slicing open his right thigh. Dropping back to the padded mat, he gritted his teeth and grunted even as Shella shrieked. Still spinning out noises, she raced over to the room control and called for a medic quad.
Ten minutes later he was standing again with four Blue aliens, the Bilitate, leaning on each other, and Shella standing by with her hands on her mouth. They had patched him back up with their advanced medical technology. So he said, ‘well, I can try again’.
“If you’re going to try to undo our good work, we want to watch,” one of the Blue aliens said, and the others agreed. Slade looked over at them. They were not being paid to watch, but he could see morbid curiosity at work in their blue eyes. They were a non-warrior race, and Slade was one of only two Humans, and a warrior race on the Throne World Empire. In other words, it was ‘let’s watch the weirdo’ show as the aliens peered at what to their biology was an objectively insane set of behaviors.
He explained what he was going to do, since these aliens moved more slowly than Humans, and also processed visual data more slowly. To them, a fast moving Human appeared to teleport. That done, Slade dove again, and avoided the droop cut, but he moved too slowly to come fully back to his feet, and sprawled backwards onto his back. With his sword out-flung he was in no real danger, but he insisted on trying again. The third time was the charm, and he came back up smoothly.
“You moved too fast. We could not see it well.”
Slade grunted, and did it half a dozen times again, focusing on moving slowly and surely in the motion. He suffered only one nick on his arm which the medics fixed for free. The aliens thanked him for the demonstration, and for co-sponsoring the tournament as it gave them a lot of extra work fixing up all the fighters. Slade wished them well as they left. He was not remotely like them, but they were professional dedicated healers. One started to say something more than thanks but the others pushed onward, and so they went.
“You, m’lord, are a crazy man. The nice aliens think you are, and I have to say, even your wife does.”
“I’m deeply hurt. Perhaps I need a kiss to make myself feel better.” He moved toward her, and giggling she ran around the room as he pursued her. Finally, as the saying goes, he chased her until she caught him. A bit of kissing later, and he had to leave as he said.
“I’m checking out another route for the parade for the warriors in our tourney. Meeting a few of the co-sponsors for lunch afterwards.”
She waved him goodbye, and he took the lift octagon to the roof where Ystrang waited with the now repaired flying car. They lifted off and ten minutes later sat down. Ystrang stayed with the vehicle despite the security of the in-ground elevator drop to a hidden car park--just an additional means of keeping their car safe since last week’s assassination attempt.
Walking through the crowd of nearly twenty different types of aliens of multiple shades and body types, he shook his head. It had been a long, strange journey from being a car mechanic on Earth. Suddenly about half the crowd started running forward, and he was puzzled. There were no signs of distress or fear, no, it was almost like someone had advertised a Blue Light Special at Kmart. But something was off--
A sudden pain in the back of his right elbow spread burning lines up and down his biceps and triceps. He spun, and kept on spinning, reaching for his blaster, but a hard hand landed atop that. A leering Chombito, not his friend at all, stared up at him, and spoke in a low rumble.
“No, no, not a good idea. Crowd. Someone might get shot.”
It took but half a second for Slade to analyze and discard that idea. He was a very good shot. But as he tried to pull the blaster loose, the Chombito pushed down, and then Slade stumbled. Others near him yelled.
“Friends, it’s okay,” the Chombito assaillant said to the nearby crowd. “He’s a Human. Having falling down seizures in the middle of the day is perfectly normal for humans. In fact, sometimes, for no reason at all, they suddenly die.”
“Really?” asked a Chlorophyte.
“Oh yes, it's well known--at least among those who study them. Quite a wondrous race, but each race has its own flaws. Suddenly dying because of long nose snooperism is a common flaw among them.”
While this had been going on, Slade had been trying to rise from his half sprawl, or speak to deny the ridiculous lies, or draw his blaster, but nothing worked. He was almost rigid with burning pains going up and down his legs and arms until finally his right arm collapsed, and he fell to his side.
“Oh, good, he’s going to be fine now. Falling down like that is a good sign. Move along, please, he’s embarrassed by this.” Several other aliens looked down on him with concern or curiosity, but he could not get out the words of ‘call my wife’ or ‘get the blue medics’ or even ‘help’.
“I’ll just pull him off to the side, so he can recover in private.” The Chombito dragged him across the pathway to an out of the way spot nearby, and as he did he spoke calmly and low to Slade. “Should have stayed out of our way. Now I’m going to get the reward money, go to the Sauderinkum Isles for a vacation. You’d love it there. Very pleasant. I have to say I’ve never killed a human before with my poisons. I’m curious how this goes. I’d ask you what you feel, but locking up the vocal cords is one of the effects of that handmade mix I used on you.”
Slade grunted.
“I’m going to assume, for my diary, that that was something either very rude or warlike. Yes, I can see by your eyes that you hate me. You’re not begging for your life, oh, no. I have to admit, I prefer those types. I hate it when they whine and cry, ‘Oh, I have spawnlings and a spouse.’ It's so much better when the last sound one makes is defiance, don’t you think?” The Chombito poisoner chattered on, glee mixed with false courtesy in his voice as he watched Slade’s face turn more and more red.
Meanwhile, Slade was losing contact with the conversation. He had shifted into a berserk fury. That did nothing other than make him rage. So he sought for more rage. Nothing, and then again, and boiling fury entered his body. About this time the poisoner was mentioning to Slade that his eyeballs had gone red from blood, and was this normal, when Slade leapt up from the ground, and growling began biting and kicking and yanking on any body part he could find.
The Chombito tried to retreat, but Slade stayed on top of him, not letting him go for even a second. Weapons, blasters, swords, even skillful attacks were all gone from Slade’s mind. He was like an animal, but even more so than a wolf for a wolf has tactics. Slade had a mouthful of the Chombito’s nose which he spat out after ripping it free.
The fight continued until the would-be assassin was definitely not moving. Slade just stood there above his body, and screamed and howled. This went on for a bit, until he saw someone standing in the alley with her hand out toward him.
Did he recognize her? He--she was his. He stumbled toward her, and when the one ball wheel robots whirred up to near him, he had his sword out to protect her. They stopped, and then backed up.
“Slade, Slade, dearest. Come back to me.” He heard the words, and thought, Slade. Yes, that’s my name. Struggling to understand, he turned toward her with naked blade in his hand, but she did not flinch.
“Shella?”
“Yes, m’lord. I’m your wife. It’s okay now. You can put down the sword.”
“But Ragnarok--”
“Not today, darling. Ragnarok is not today. Even the gods would feast.”
Trembling, Slade slid his blade back into its sheath. He took her in his arms, and worriedly looked about at the pillar bots that were encircling him, and asked them, “Am I in trouble, then?”
“It is the judgment of the AI that you were acting in self defense against a deliberate act of attempted murder. While your techniques of biting off a nose, ripping off fingers and toes, removing a tongue and an eyeball are horrifying, so is the use of a restricted poison. Indeed, any effective method of self-defense is innately horrifying to the silicon mind that runs the planetary police bots. Therefore, you are adjudged innocent, and free to go as long as you are not likely to attack innocent citizens in a frenzy.”
“Did I hurt anyone else?”
“No, although you frightened several dozen quite badly. Our recommendation is that you offer recompense to them.”
“What is standard in such cases?”
A figure was quoted for ‘terrifying bystanders’, and Slade nodded, and doubled it. A lord gave good weregild, and many rings. The monies would be taken from his factory seconds and given to the beings who had registered their shock at such behavior to the pillarbots. Anyone who had not, well, he was not sure how to contact them without opening himself to scammers.
Ystrang and Shella explained that Ystrang had heard the cries of the crowd and then the howls as he moved closer. Once he had seen the madness in Slade’s eyes, he had turned and raced to the flying car to get Shella. Slade must have been howling his head off for at least fifteen minutes.
They took him home. There he was practically carried to the shower to clean off the Chombito’s blood and bits, and after that he fell asleep somewhere along the way to his bed. The fury, perhaps a botch, or a higher level of it, had taken almost everything out of him. He slept without dreams, other than the occasional roaring face of a wolf.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #525: Character Battles. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
