Star Trek: The Hand of Kahless (43 page)

“And that is?” the old man inquired.

“I ask that you—and your family—refrain from mentioning you even glimpsed us. After all,” said Mogh’s elder son, “one never knows whom one can trust at times like these. And as far as our enemies are concerned, we are dead.”

“Dead?” repeated Majjas. He laughed some more. “Some would say that is even
worse
than being blind.”

Kahless stood and put his goblet down on a table made for such a purpose. “I am afraid,” he said, “it is time to take our leave of you now. And if my companions are too polite to hurry out of your hall, I will bear the blame on my own shoulders.”

But he hadn’t offended their host, Picard observed. Far from it. Majjas’s grin was so wide, it looked painful.

“Don’t worry,” the old man told them. “I am not offended, Emperor. Rather, I am honored. Have a safe trip, my friends. It is a dark and dangerous road you have chosen.”

“That it is,” Kahless agreed. And without further conversation, he led the way out of Majjas’s house—leaving Picard and the others no choice but to follow.

For two days, Kahless drove his
s’tarahk
mercilessly, pausing only for the animal to munch on grass and groundnuts, and to water itself. Its rider, on the other hand, neither ate nor slept.

His mind had long ago settled into the rhythm of the beast’s progress, avoiding anything so painful as a thought. Day turned into night, night became day, and he barely noticed.

But all the while, Morath was right behind him. He stopped when Kahless stopped and went on when Kahless went on. He didn’t attempt to overtake him, or to speak with him again, only to haunt him from a distance.

At one point, just as twilight was throwing its cloak over the world, Kahless came to a fast-rushing stream. Seeing no way to go around it, he urged his
s’tarahk
to enter the water. But the beast wouldn’t move.

It dropped to its haunches, then fell over on its side, exhausted. And in the process, Kahless fell to the ground as well.

He looked back. Morath was sitting on his mount, saying nothing, making no move to come any closer. Only staring, with those dark, baleful eyes of his. But his stare was an accusation in itself.

Kahless grunted derisively. “Are you still here?” he asked.

Morath didn’t answer. He simply got down off his
s’tarahk
and let the animal approach the stream. As it drank, Kahless grunted again.

“Have it your way,” he said.

Kahless considered his mount again. The
s’tarahk
wasn’t going anywhere in its depleted condition—not for a while. The outlaw was tired too. Taking his sleeping mat off the beast’s back, he rolled into it and closed his eyes against the starlight.

It was possible that Morath would kill him while he was asleep. But Kahless didn’t care. It would be as good a death as any other, and he wanted more desperately than ever to end his suffering.

Kahless woke with first light. The sun’s rays were hot on his face and blinding to his eyes.

For a moment, staring at the
s’tarahk
grazing placidly beside him and the blanched hills all around, he didn’t know where he was or how he had gotten there. For that moment, he knew peace. Then he remembered, and his load of misery crushed him all over again.

A shadow fell over him. Turning, he saw Morath standing there. As before, the younger man accused his comrade with his eyes.

“What is it you want from me?” asked Kahless.

Morath grunted. “I want you to pay for what you’ve done.”

“Pay how?” asked the outlaw.

The other man was silent. It was as if he expected Kahless to know the answer. But Kahless knew nothing of the kind.

With an effort, he got up, his muscles sore from striving against Morath the day before, and limped over to his
s’tarahk.
The beast looked rested. That was good, because he didn’t intend to pamper it.

There was a pit in his stomach, crying out to be filled. Kahless ignored it. Dead men didn’t eat.

Getting back on his mount, the outlaw turned it north again. It wasn’t as if he had a destination—just a direction. He would follow it until he could do so no longer.

But Morath wasn’t done with him. Kahless could tell by the shadow the man cast as he mounted his
s’tarahk,
and by the scraping of the animal’s claws on the hard, dry ground behind him. Morath followed him like a specter of death, unflinching in his purpose—whatever it was.

Not that it made any difference to Kahless. He was too scoured out inside to play his friend’s games, too empty of what made a Klingon a Klingon. Nothing mattered, Morath least of all.

For a total of six days and six nights, Kahless led Morath high into the hills. Twice, they were drenched to the bone by spring sleet storms, which came without warning and disappeared just as suddenly. Neither of them cared much about the discomfort.

On some days, they wrestled as they had that first time, consumed with hatred and resentment for one another; on others, they simply followed the track on their poor, tired beasts. With time, however, their wrestling matches became shorter and farther between.

After all, their only sustenance was the water they came across in streams running down from the highlands. Neither of them ate a thing. They left to their mounts the few edible plants that grew along the path.

There was no conversation either, not even as prelude to their strivings with one another. Neither of them seemed to find a value anymore in speech. On occasion, Kahless saw Morath speaking to himself. But the outlaw wasn’t much of a lip-reader, never having seen the need for it, so he couldn’t discern the sense of the other warrior’s mutterings.

Finally, on the morning of the twelfth day, in the shadow of a great rock alongside a windy mountain trail, Kahless woke with the knowledge that he could tolerate Morath’s presence no longer. One way or the other, he had to be rid of the man.

Turning, Kahless eyed his comrade, who had more than once saved his life. When he spoke it was with a voice that sounded strange and foreign to him, a voice like the sighing of the wind in a stand of river reeds.

“I will go no further, Morath. I cannot stand the thought of looking back and seeing you following me. 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
minn’hor
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—”

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
s’tarahkmey
grumbled and scraped the ground with its claws, looking for food.

At last, Kahless nodded. “Fine. Whatever you say.”

“Then get on your
s’tarahk,
” 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 my spine when I think about it. I remember being surprised that this was the same man who had beaten me so, protecting his son and his hearth with such feverish intensity.

“And I?” Morath grunted bitterly. “I ran away and hid in the woods, afraid to fight at my father’s side—caught in the grip of wild, unreasoning terror. In the end, the reavers proved too much for Ondagh, son of Bogra. They killed him and took everything we had of value.

“Only when they were gone did I come out of hiding and see what they had done to my father. I knew that I should have fallen at his side, but I had not—and nothing could ever change that. Unable to bear my burden, I tried to run away again—this time, from my father’s ghost.

“For a long time, I wandered the wide world, looking for a way to rid myself of my guilt. One day, after many years had passed, I came upon a still, serene lake and bent to drink from it.

“Then I recoiled—for it was my father’s reflection I saw in the tranquil waters. And I realized I had been given a second chance. I would be Ondagh—not as he was, but as he could have been. I would brook no deceit, neither from man nor god. And I would never run away from anything again.”

Having said his piece, Morath unrolled his own mat and lay down on it. In a moment or two he was asleep.

Kahless looked at his friend for a long time, beginning to understand why Morath did the things he did. Then, at last, he too fell asleep.

Kahless and Morath came in sight of Vathraq’s keep twelve days after their departure. To the outlaw’s surprise, his men were still waiting for him, still eyeing the horizon.

By then, of course, they had burned all the corpses, as much to deny the
kraw’zamey
a meal as to discourage the spread of disease. Unfortunately, that made it worse for Kahless. The mangled shapes of death held less terror for him than their empty aftermath.

The outlaw himself said nothing about the time he was gone. Morath didn’t say much either. But he did mention how sore he was from wrestling with Kahless, and pretty soon the others picked up on it.

Before long, the story became amplified. The outlaw and his friend had wrestled in the hills for twelve days and twelve nights, it was said, through heat and storm and all manner of hardship. Of course, no one could figure out why they would want to do that.

Nor did Morath disabuse them of the notion. Even for him, apparently, it was close enough to the truth.