The Stone Dogs (7 page)

"Level?" she asked the instructor as they faced off.

"Full contact far as yo' concerned," Margrave said. "Startin'…

now
."

Yolande dropped into fighting position, feet at right angles and knees bent. Breath in through the nose, out through the mouth. Muscles relaxed; you could make yourself faint with exhaustion in minutes if you tensed. The weight of armor, boots, and gloves was familiar; you never practiced without them, for protection's sake and because real-world fighting wasn't done in gym clothes. The teacher quartered, and Yolande responded with a pivot on her front foot.
Don't let the opponent push you back
, she reminded herself.

A kick. Straight hop-kick forward, toward her stomach. She moved into it, parrying with her left hand and swiping upward with her left elbow towards the chin… No, that was a mistake, Margrave was too tall…

The teacher's kicking leg had come down aside, leaving her in a wide horse-straddle stance. Her hands clamped down on Yolande's arm, elbow and shoulder; she hip-twisted to leave her right leg as a trip-bar and threw the student forward and down.

That was simple enough, so simple that she could think while reflex ingrained since her fifth year rucked her head down and made her throw herself
with
the motion. Time slowed as she fell.

Impact
on the shoulders. Rolling to break the hold, rolling forward curled into a ball to preserve momentum.

"Can't get up fast enough," she muttered, vocal cords following thought without conscious intervention. She was watching between her own feet as she rolled, watching the teacher's machine-fluid rush after her.
Slap
, and her forearms went down on the mat in a neat V; her body curled on top of them, its own weight coiling it back like a spring. A
hunnh
of effort, and she drove both legs back, toes curled towards her shins and heels together.

They struck, heelbones driving into the teacher's solar plexus.

That hurt
, she thought; it was like kicking a concrete-block wall, and it jarred every bone in her body down to the small of her back.
Move, move
. Margrave was folding backwards bending at the middle, moving like a stone dropped into thick honey.

Yolande let the impact stop her own body in mid air, curled her knees towards her chest and roll-bounced upright. The teacher was just straightening; the girl swung forward in a flying scissor, pumping the left knee up for momentum and then down as the right foot whipped around in a torquing circle, aimed for—

Blackness.

"
She's all right
," a voice was saying. Yolande blinked and started to shake her head. That was a mistake, and she was barely able to contain the surge of nausea that followed. Flecks of glitter drifted past her retinas, and her vision quivered as hands undid the helmet and slid her head free.

A finger peeled back one eyelid, while a hand clamped her head steady. "Good—even dilation. No concussion."

A cool cloth touched brow and cheeks: Myfwany. "Yo' were just out fo' a sec," she said, her voice anxious. Margrave removed her own practice helmet and threw it to one side, leaning forward again to probe at Yolande's neck and shoulders with expert fingers.

"Nice work. Iff'n I hadn't had the breastplate yo' might have put me out with that back-kick. "

"Sorry," Yolande mumbled, squinting against the multiple images. Margrave grinned.

"Nevah say sorry fo' doin' it right." She looked up to the circle of students. "That was the
right
move. 'Specially against superior weight an' strength. The follow-up was the problem; those-there high-jumpin' kicks don't do it, 'less'n the other side's immobilized anyways. Don't get fancy." Margrave came up on one knee, leaned over with elbow on thigh.

"Good work, Ingolfsson," she continued. "Yo' really pushed me a little. Rest easy fo' a while." To the others: "Right, pick partners an' face off. No contact."

It was full dark now on the beach, and the driftwood fire crackled, sending sparks flying up with sharp popping sounds.

The flames were blue and red and orange, a white-crimson over the bed of coals below; the smell was dry and hot. Inland the trees and shrubs rustled, shadows dark and moving against the lesser dark of the sky. The waves were breaking in a foam of cream, glittering in starlight and moonlight, surge and retreat.

The sound of them was like heartbeat in her ears, like lying beside some huge and friendly beast. Out beyond her friends were still diving and playing, flashes of white bodies otter-sleek among the water. Their voices dropped into the warm dark, no louder than the cicadas and nightbirds.

Yolande laid her head on her knees and wiggled her toes over the edge of the blanket. The powdery white clung to them like frosting; she tapped her feet together and felt the grains trickle down her insteps, tickling or clinging where the skin was still damp from her swim. Looking up, the moonpath lay on the water like silver, almost painfully bright. The stars were sparse around the moon, abundant elsewhere; the lights of men were far too few to dim them. A faint glow west across the bay was Naples, and she could make out the long curve of the coast by the wide-scattered jewels that marked the towns and manors of her people. Elsewhere the shore was quiet and lightless, fields and groves and orchards.

She lay back on the striped wool and smiled, stretching her arms above her head. Stars… there was a trick to that. A mental effort, and the velvet backdrop with its glowing colored lights vanished; instead there was
depth
, an endless dark where great fires hung burning forever amid the slow-fading hydrogen roar of creation. Her lips parted, and she felt a sensation that might have been delight, or a loneliness too great to bear; she forced herself to hold the wordless moment, mind suspended in pure experience. Moisture gathered slowly around her eyes, trickling in warm salt streaks down the wind-cooled skin of her temples.

"Woof!" Mandy's voice. "I'm turnin' into a
prune
. Come on!"

Yolande started as the others dashed out of the ocean, wiping away the not-quite-tears with the back of her wrist. They ran past her to the freshwater fountain at the edge of the beach, laughing and splashing each other around the stone basin as they sluiced off the salt. The darkness closed around as they threw themselves down on the blankets about the fire; now it was a hearth, the tribe's fortress against the night. Myfwany sat cross-legged beside her, leaning back on braced palms. She was still breathing deeply from the swim; from Yolande's position her face was shadowed against the backlit dark-red curtain of her hair. The drops of water that ran down her flanks glistened with the rise and fall of her chest, changing from blood-crimson to lemon-yellow.

"You're quiet, 'Landa," she said. "Head still troublin'?"

"Mmmmm… no. Hammerin' great headache yesterday, couldn't hardly move this mornin'. Now it's just a bit stiff all ovah. No, I's just lookin' at the stars and thinkin'."

Myfwany probed at her neck, tracing the cords down to her shoulders; she shivered slightly at the touch, still cold and wet."

'S right, stiff," Myfwany said definitely. "Maybe swimmin' wasn't such a good idea. Muriel, give me a hand? Roll ovah, 'Landa."

Yolande turned onto her stomach and laid her cheek on her crossed hands, feeling a painful warmth in her stomach.

"Thanks," she muttered. Massage was usually serfs work, although everybody learned it; it was something you did for close friends, a sign that status was put aside. Two pairs of hands began to work on her, one starting on the soles of her feet, the other where the neck-muscles anchored on the base of her skull.

She felt uncomfortable for an instant, as the pressure made her aware of soreness she had been ignoring, then surrendered to the sensation.

"Y'all bein' mighty nice," she said sincerely. Myfwany snorted, and Muriel laughed and slapped her lightly on the calf.

"Yo' the one bruised the Bruiser," Mandy said. She was kneeling by a basket across the fire, rummaging within. "Never seen her move so fast; mean of her to thump yo' head, though."

"No, that's the point," Myfwany said. "Bruiser
had
to move fast, an' react automatic-like."

"Jus' so —
Veronica, watch where yo' puttin' that dirt
! I's got
scallops
in heah!"

The stocky girl had been raising the fine sand in double handfuls, letting it trickle down over her body. She laughed and bent backward from her kneeling position until her head touched the blanket behind her, a perfect bow, stretching.

" 'Salright," she said as she rose. A sigh. "Ah jus'
love
this time of year. Perfect, just cool enough fo' a fire, but not cold. Look!

There it is!"

She raised a hand. They followed the gesture, and saw a moving star crawling slowly across the southern horizon.

"That our'n or their'n?" Mandy asked. The Domination and the Alliance had both put up another dozen orbital platforms in the last few years; the rivalry was pushing development hard.

"Ours," Myfwany said, sinking back on her elbows. "Oh, ours."

Her voice became dreamy. "I wonder… How do the stars look from there?" To Yolande: "What were yo' thinkin' of, starwatcher?"

"Lots of things," Yolande said abstractedly. "How we can't see the stars, jus' the light they sent long ago. Like readin' a book, hey? An'… how far away, an' how perfect."

"Perfect?"

"There's no right or wrong with them," Yolande continued, almost singsong, whispering. "No lovin' or hatin'; they just…

are."

They were silent for long minutes, each staring upward past the fire-glow and the dancing sparks.

"Well," Mandy said, her hands moving again in the basket.

"Who's fo' lemonade, and who's fo' win
e?"

"Mmmm, I'll take the wine," Yolande said.

"Lemonade first, I'm too thirsty fo' drinkin'," Myfwany said.

"That enough, 'Landa?"

"Feels nice," she replied.

Veronica and Mandy were making skewers from a pile of willow-switches, sharpening the ends and threading on pieces of scallop and shrimp wrapped in bacon; they handed the limber sticks around, with wicker platters of soft flat Arab bread, and glasses. The five girls drew closer to the fire. Yolande sat up, watching the flames. The breeze had picked up slightly, and gusts of it blew the tongues ofcolored flame toward her. She sipped at the wine as the bacon sizzled and dropped fat to pop and flare on the white coals; it was cool from the earthenware jug, rather light, slightly acidic. A southern vintage, she thought, probably from Latium.

"Strange," Muriel said, hugging her knees and leaning back, letting her head fall against Veronicas ' shoulder.

"
What?" Mandy asked.

"I was thinkin'… Here we are. In twenty-odd years our own daughters will be here, or someplace like here. Maybeso raaht here; maybeso doin' and thinkin' just what we are. Strange."

"What brought that on?" Myfwany said. She brought the skewer close, examined the seafood critically, and used a piece of the flatbread to pull it off. "Mmm, these are good."

"I was… I was thinkin' about history class. An' about the things Ma and Pa used to tell me, yo' know, those religion things." Muriel stuck the butt-end of her skewer into the sand and rolled the wine-cup between her hands. "I mean… if yo'

believes all that, the God stuff, then,"—she frowned —"then it would all look different. It would be
comin
from somewheres, and
goin
to somewheres. Like-so a story, hey? An' if yo' don't believe it, then it's… all sort of, well, it just happens."

"Iff'n yo' believes it, we're all goin' straight to hell," Veronica laughed, giving a light tug on Muriel's brown curls.

"Pass the wine, will yo', hey?" Yolande said. There was a clink of stoneware. "Thanks, Mandy. Well, the way Harris says it, it's the story of the Race; where we came from an' where we're goin'."

Muriel rested her chin on the edge of the cup. "That sort of depends, don't it? I mean, the
Race
didn't have to happen; Harris says so herself. History's a story leadin' up to us, but only on account we happened. If the Yankees killed us all off, then it'd be a story about
them,
an' we'd just be part of history,"
."

"But we did happen, an' the Yankees aren't goin' to win; we are," Myfwany said definitely.

Yolande chuckled. "So the story has an endin' and a meanin', because we're tellin' it." A pause. "Us here, too. It's… true because we make it true, eh? So we tell history like ouah own story, like we was writin' it. Like God."

The others looked at her. "Say, that's really pretty clever,"

Myfwany said.

Yolande flushed and looked down into her wine cup, continuing hastily. "Speakin' of which, what
are
we goin' to do once we've conquered the Yankees?"

Myfwany laughed. "My brothah, Billy? He likes the Yankee movies; says the girls look nice. Says he's goin' buy a dozen when we put the Yoke on them."

"Euuu, yuk,
boys
," Mandy said. "Ooops, this is overdone…"

"Ah thought yo'
liked
boys," Veronica said. She bent her head to whisper something in Muriel's ear, and the other girl giggled and worked her eyebrows.

Yolande looked at Veronica and flushed again; the Alexandrian girl was no older, but she had definite breasts, and the dark-brown hair between her legs was thick and abundant. It made her conscious of her own undeveloped form again. And…

strange about sex and things
, she mused. When yo' young, yo'

know about it an it isn't all that interesting and all of a sudden it's scary and important
.
She shook her head; at least there was a while before she had to worry about that sort of thing.
Freya's
Curse, I hate being shy!

"I do like boys," Mandy said. "At least, I sort of like the
idea
of

'em. But they still sort of yucky, too. Yo' know, my brothah Manfred, he only a year older than me, an' he's got ouah cook pregnant? Ma found him ridin' her in the pantry, an' cook's
thirty
, with a bottom a meter across an' a mustache. I mean, we're not planters, we've only got a dozen houseserfs, but Pa bought him a regular concubine when he turned thirteen, and still he goes an' does things like that." She brooded for a moment. "Yucky."