Ch. 3: Ishpeming

Author’s Note: This chapter is really long, and not very relevant to the overall plot, although it does introduce several recurring characters.  If you would not enjoy reading about gladitorial-style combat you can safely skim most of this.

The Ishpeming Outdoor Sporting Venue lay several miles outside Ishpeming, Michigan, in a densely forested region of the Upper Peninsula. This dome was double the size of Quar's personal enclave, and from outside looked as if dark red blood continually oozed from the apex to dribble down the invisible wall. Rriigkhan letters punched from steel occasionally scrolled from top to bottom beneath the blood.

The transports passed through this intangible barrier and lowered themselves down on a broad area paved with brick, alongside several other flying vehicles of various shapes. From the ground the dome was not visible at all; the air was noticeably cooler than in the Montana dome, and one could not see very far for all the trees, but the circle of sky above appeared to be the ordinary sky of Earth on a pleasant summer day. Stone walls and a copious amount of lilac bushes bordered this parking lot. Those lilacs did nothing to shield the humans from the pervasive funk of Rriigkhan pheromones hanging in the air.

Adjacent to the landing site stood a metro station for what humans called the hyper tube, a high-speed underground rail system joining most of the major Rriigkhan domes. Rriigkhans of both sexes, in small groups or sometimes alone, stood milling about this station or slowly making their way from it toward the rest of the grounds. Most were clothed at least from the waist down.

The metro station and the various other buildings in the area were all very old looking. Plastered walls, watered glass in the windows, clay tile shingles on the vaulted roofs. It was a bit like a campground. There were several buildings visible from the landing site, but with trees between them and lots of space to move about without feeling crowded by other people. The broad landing area narrowed into several paved paths that wound through the trees so that most of the area was shaded. Iron lanterns hung from posts along the paths.

A black-clad Venue staff member met Ray's group the moment they disembarked and lead them along a service path that went around the back of some of those buildings. This path was sunk into the Earth to partially conceal those who walked it from view of the main area, with brick retaining walls on either side about as tall as Ray's chest. Even from there, the humans were able to catch snippets of activity on the Venue grounds, hear snatches of music advance and then recede as they passed a group of performers or smell eye-watering Rriigkhan spices from afar.

***

Quar was having a very different experience, strolling along one of the main paths, her chin held high and her tail languidly swaying behind her. She was dressed in period clothing: a pair of baggy gray trousers with a low crotch and a skirtlike fold of fabric that clothed her tail at its base. The bottom of the trousers tied to her ankles with garters, On her torso she wore a garment that looked like a pair of soft round shoulder pads joined with a collar round her neck. The shoulder pads were gray also, embroidered with varicolored but predominately magenta whorls.

With every breath she took in the scents around her, familiar and new, noting the little dramas that had been playing out on the Venue grounds – a male and female who were strangers to her had both been angry, a pair of children bubbled with excitement, and so on.

She passed a group of Rriigkhan males performing chant-music of the period. They wore knee-length skirts with slits down the sides, stiff heavily beaded sashes, and through piercings on their diminutive crests lengths of ribbon had been loosely threaded so that the ribbon hung down to their shoulders. Three of the males chanted in unison, in low tones, while a fourth chanted out of step and at higher octaves. They swayed in time with their chanting, crooking their fingers sensuously at anyone who stopped to watch them. More groups of singers, dancers, and other artisans were about, mostly males, while others tended to roasting animals over outdoor fire pits.

A pack of domesticated qerna wandered the grounds. At one time they had been a competing predator species, although they were extinct in the wild and all of their aggressive behaviors had been bred or modified out of them. Three of the animals crossed the path in front of Quar. They were hulking creatures a bit bearlike in general shape, but with longer necks and tall, conical ears. Their fur patterns weren't very natural, either. Two of the group were white with ginger speckles on their flanks and limbs, while the third was tan and brown marbled. They were snuffling along the ground searching for scraps of dropped food.

There were humans about, but rarely. Some were the personal servants following their Rriigkhan masters, while others worked here at the Venue – those were dressed all in black. Mostly they'd be working inside the buildings or moving along the back paths to get where they needed to be. Whipping or floating over the foot traffic were drones. Most of these looked like tennis balls with matte green or reflective surfaces, with little divots for eyes. They filmed. They monitored the health of human combatants. In Quar's opinion, they were immersion breaking. A mirror-skinned drone had locked onto her and now followed a few feet above and behind.

On the other side of this wooded area the grounds opened onto a field dotted with old military-style canvas tents all differently colored, with the occasional tree providing shade. Several humans and Rriigkhans dressed in armor or other period clothing milled about in this area.

A semi-circular amphitheater with tiered stone ledges for seating was sunk down into the Earth among the tents, and behind that, from the point of view of any spectators, sprawled a lake. The lake was not so large that the opposite forested banks could not be seen, but it was large enough for several ancient sailing ships to glide along its surface. These ships did not belong to any one time or place, but several. Some boasted multiple masts with gaily colored sails, while other smaller ships had only the one plain square sail. There was no sandy beach, at least not here – just a sharp drop off behind the sunken stage of the amphitheater, filled in with rocks. A pier stood further along the shore.

A few big oak trees had been incorporated into the design of the amphitheater, with stone retaining walls circling their trunks, so that much of the area including the stage was shaded, while old style lanterns hung from the boughs of these trees. A pair of humans with blunted swords were sparring in the arena while a handful of others watched, both Rriigkhan and human. This was obviously not some scheduled event, just people having a bit of fun while they waited for something else to happen.

Not far from the amphitheater stood a facsimile of an old watchtower. It was a conventional, squat stone barracks plastered off-white, a tower capped with a round cupola rising from one end. A small air transport, a scooter, and a couple of ground vehicles a bit like golf shuttles with heavier tires were parked behind it. This was actually a freight station and kitchen for use by the Venue staff. If a Rriigkhan ordered food via a terminal or through a Venue drone, the order would be received by the nearest kitchen. Rriigkhans could also request a ride to elsewhere in the park.

Quar headed for the tent marked with her colors, gray and magenta, now walking a tramped down foot trail through the grass. She could already see Vern standing just outside the rolled-up entry flap, glancing about. He wore a skirt similar to those of the dancers she had seen earlier, but more plainly colored, and with trousers on underneath. His fur was mostly tan, but chocolate brown on his face and limbs, with striking golden eyes. Elaborate filigree has been shaved into the fur of his torso. That certainly did not fit the theme of the evening; it had obviously be done with modern tools.

“Your armor-bearer has gone down to the amphitheater; I have just pinged him to return. All troops are accounted for and in place at Fort Sirlas. Their equipment is being delivered presently. Nothing else worthy of your notice can be reported.” Vern stepped aside to let Quar duck into the tent. The male's voice differed from hers only insomuch as any individual's voice differed from another's. It was not higher or lower pitched.

He was about as tall as Ray. In general, Rriigkhan males and human males were of a height. His cranial plate was much smaller than hers, the edges smoothed rather than scalloped, and the prongs only short nubs. He totally lacked howrf cavities. Historically, some males had their prongs shaved down entirely, but this practice was now only fleetingly popular as fads worked their way through modern culture.

Quar's only acknowledgment that he'd spoken was a blowing of air out her nose as she stepped into the tent's spacious interior. It was very accurately furnished, with a folding camp chair and table set, and in one corner sat the massive lacquered trunk that contained her kit. Her tail snapped out with excitement when she saw it.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

From the moment he'd stepped out of the transport with the others, Ray had been put to work. He, Martine, and a groundsman that he'd not properly met yet were tasked with carrying the lumpy, awkward bags from the spare seats as they filed quickly out of the lot and into the service trenches; the transport gate folded shut again like a yawning dog rolling in her tongue and snapping her jaws, then lifted away to make room for those still taxiing in on the sky lanes.

They all wore their standard ICG-issued jumpsuit, which was already black, but at the the first sunken pavilion - more of a copper-roofed, stone-block sided cistern that had been repurposed - their ID tags with their names and any other personal belongings (Ray to turn over an unfinished origami cicada, which earned him a stern eye from the Rick watching the gate) were confiscated. New, numbered, all-black tags were issued, along with black, bill-less caps, patches to cover the ICG logos and stripes, black service gloves, and spats to smooth down the bulky, pocketed legs of the ICG pants and hide the fact that few of them had polished their boots recently. He was half-surprised that they weren't issued veils as well, though he was nodded through with his breather mask.

His tear ducts and the top of his throat were burning a bit since the middle of the flight; maybe that was from the short, maskless conversation in the grotto? He knew better than to take the mask off to rub at them.

The lot of them had their tag scanned and assigned to drones, and while Martine and the groundskeeper were both taken off to some half-sunken warehouse, Ray was paired with a man from another enclave nearly his exact height and skin coloring, who also wore a mask but couldn't stop talking. "Did you know that before this was a resistance camp, it was an iron mine? That lake was a big--"

"It was a resistance camp?" Ray asked, more surprised that 'Nelson' would mention that in present company than that old Michigan would be home to one.

"Oh, yeah." The man shook his head at Ray like he must know nothing, while they both pressed their backs to the bricks to let another server rush by fully loaded. "I guess you're not from around here. One of the biggest. One of the first to fall, too. Contagion. They didn't even need force to disarm them - just ring them off, and wait for them to surrender when they wanted medicine, or let them all die off inside. They gave the land to the Rriigkhan afterward." He pronounced the word perfectly, in the long-tongue rather than ICG Cant, and was obviously quite proud of the fact.

The way it had been taught in school, the fact that so many humans resisted the arrival with armed force had kept them confined to Earth while they underwent a probationary period and a sort of 'gentling' under Rick guidance. Which was really rich, once you got to know the Ricks.

"But the iron mine--"

"Got an order. Sorry. Be back in a sec." Ray wasn't too sorry; Nelson's excitement could have been infectious in another circumstance, but right now there was just too much new stimulation, too much activity, too much expectation. The queue of servers waiting for their orders moved at a constant forward tread; there really hadn't been time to lean. And Ray hadn't been a waiter for more than twenty years. Maybe it was a skill like riding a bike, in that eventually he'd break something.

Ray's earpiece had been chiming as he reached the front of the line; once there he was given a plasteramic tray to slip his hand under. Wide-topped glasses dangled from slots in the bottom, and a couple of bottles mag-clipped to the top, so he'd have to really be clumsy to drop anything. With a final nod to Nelson, he went rushing out from under the tent to the service tunnels. Of course, Nelson was only going to be ten seconds behind him.

Now it was his turn to go quick-stepping through the trenches, while others about his size dressed in black pressed themselves to the right wall. His earpiece acted the part of a rally navigator, blandly and smoothly intoning, 'Ahead, turn right,' in cant, keeping him in the trenches as far as it could before he was forced to jog up a half-flight of stairs among a carnival of colored tents. And of all the tents he had to be directed to, it was one gray and magenta, a color scheme that he recognized immediately. He wondered if he'd even be recognized among the sea of black-clad servants. There was no point in drawing attention to himself. As though the Ricks inside unfamiliar to him - three of them were, in fact - he stood off at the edge where they could see that the pours were fresh yet not be required to acknowledge him, and brought the glasses up one at a time to backhand the bottle as he'd been shown, holding near the bottom so even his gloved hands wouldn't near the stem while he filled each glass to be taken.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

It wasn't long before she'd taken a seat in the little camp chair – it practically disappeared under her bulk – when a familiar personal scent tickled the back of her brain, hooking her with rankling barbs of Ghijariis' I'm dominant pheromones. It was a half-second after recognition that a shadow moved over the grass before the open tent flap.

“Ghijariis, come.”

Quar's tail lay half-curled on the ground around her feet. When the other female ducked into the tent, a pleased wriggle ran from the base to the end of it. Ghijariis was already armored in black plate over her jet black fur, the pauldrons embellished with a golden fringe like a second crest on each side where shoulder guards might otherwise be. Her crest had been enameled black with golden tips. That stupid shoulder fringe was far from historically accurate, although Quar did have to admit that Ghijariis cut a striking figure. She wore no aventail or head armor yet, nor any tabard, to better display the gold-inlaid rondels and other embellishments on the front of her cuirass.

A pair of males followed her in. Her husband Foerno was a combatant himself and wore similar armor, white-and-silver instead of black. His fur was a ticked gray rather than white, though, so he was not a perfect inversion of his wife's colors. Both were equipped with longswords on their baldrics. A male that they occasionally fucked, Stahvren, accompanied them. His fur was shaved similarly to Vern's, but in blockier, bolder patterns. He wore period trousers tied with garters, like Quar.

Quar rose from her chair immediately, the two females knocking into each other shoulder to shoulder, tilting their heads so that the edges of their crests scraped together. It made a hard thwock sound like antlers connecting. Both rolled their tails as they broke away from the other, Quar circling around to stand behind her own chair.

“Tsahf, men,” Quar said, slightly tipping her head to the others. Ghijariis' infectious excitement clouded the tent and Quar's own enthusiasm surged. She would have been unable to stop the manic undulations of her tail even if she had wanted to. She found herself shifting her weight from paw to paw while her claws slid from their sheaths to press against the ground.

“You have hardly anything here!” Stahvren said with a sniff while glancing about. Another trunk with a flat top sat at the far end of the tent, but it had not been unpacked, and Quar's chair was the only one.

“Quar is strictly traditional, only authentic Expansion Period equipment allowed at base camp,” Ghijariis said, taking hold of Stahvren's shoulder and giving his body a playful little rock/hug. Vern knew he was not needed by Quar anymore and so quietly slipped out behind the three visitors. The drone which had been following Ghijariis and her entourage whizzed away to let Quar's drone handle the group.

“I'm ordering drinks if you'll allow us to stay for a while. Ghijariis enjoys your company,” Foerno said, momentarily looking far away as he interacted with a menu in AR.

By this time, Quar's armor bearer had arrived back at the tent. Seeing it was full of guests, he sat down on the grass outside the door, arms over his raised knees. He was an adult, and toned, but young enough still to be awkwardly gangly, with big hands and a big nose that he might grow into someday. He wore his brown hair short, with even shorter fades at the sides. He listened to the Rriigkhan chatter inside the tent for several minutes and when the black uniformed servant arrived, smiled politely up at the other man with a small nod of acknowledgment.

Ray's scent hooked Quar's attention first. She looked sharply up at him as he entered, eyes narrowing, but then her attention returned to her guests. The movement was slight and ambiguous enough.

Foerno was the first to accept a glass from Ray's hand, not really looking the human in the face as he did so, nor acknowledging him as he turned back toward his group with his neck bent to lap at the blackish burgundy liquid. It had filled the enclosed space with a sweet floral scent as soon as the bottle was opened.

✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧

Yep. Clearly a change of clothes wasn't a sufficient disguise. Either he'd interrupted some plotting, or his presence was a surprise, and not necessarily of the pleasant variety. As soon as Quar's eyes turned to him, his own dropped. There would be no repetition of the grotto here, not in front of her guests, and not while he was wearing venue blacks. Slightly hooded eyes, and a pleasant, perpetually closed-lipped smile behind the mask were the order of the day. Acting the part of the high-end waiter, he racked another glass to the top of the tray and poured that to the same bulge-mark in the shape of the glass, bringing it forward to meet anyone whose hand reached.

(Honestly, he was a little surprised to see the little one, the male, take a glass first. He'd made the assumption that there would be some strict pecking order maintained. Score another point in the complexity of Ricks column.)

It was the second male who reached next, though when he saw what Ray was pouring, a wet, unpleasant sound came from the back of his throat, and he flicked his claws in annoyance. "The other bottle," he said in a crisp, practiced cant. His own servants would have asked first before pouring; now a glass would be wasted, unless someone would take a second-hand pour. This one needed training. Not wishing to actively humiliate the human, he turned his back on him rather than watch while the thing figured out a way to handle the tray such that the first glass was set aside and another could be racked. It was awkward; this one needed much training.

For his part, Ray was actually quite pleased at his ability to keep the one full glass from tipping while it was outside its little nest at the center of the tray, and tipped his head with a little flourish once he had the second glass prepared. He hadn't really taken the time to look around inside the tent, and didn't expect that it would be appreciated if he did, so he lingered only long enough to see that he was dismissed.

"Leave the bottles," Stahvren said. "Both of them. We'll call for fresh glasses if needed."

Outside, waited for his earpiece to give directions back to the nearest trench entrance, but apparently directions weren't a round-trip event. While he lingered to get his bearings, he glanced over to the man in Quar's colors. "Can I get you anything? Might be a few minutes before they run me in this direction again, but they had chilled water at the serving tents."

The man held up his palm to decline and smiled again.  His was an open, honest sort of face, with genuine warmth in the easy curvature of his lips.

“Nah.  I'm the brown one's squire.”  He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “So I have fewer restrictions on my movement.  I'll grab something in a bit.  But you – sorry, but the way you were looking around just now, you seem a little lost.  New?”

"Quar? I thought you might be wearing her colors. I'm a new contract at her dome. Just here by happenstance. First time here though. Which way to the closest trench again, do you know?"

Polite, but not intending to linger - that was the plan. Making sure Quar's human footmen were hydrated was anteing into the general kitty of a bet that it would be better for her entire staff over the following days. The chances that he'd ever see the guy again were minimal. Still, didn't hurt to make friends. "I'd bet a donut they have my badge on a timer, so I probably'd better get back."

***

About a hundred yards away, another servant dressed in black was making her way round the back of a tent after making a delivery, heading for the faux-watch tower.  She was a slight Caucasian woman, her blonde hair pulled back in a bun.  A trio of adolescent Rriigkhan males about her same height played in the shade of an oak behind the tent, alternatively chasing each other around the trunk or tearing off through the grass only to return to the shade moments later, making the inarticulate whooping sounds universal to children of any race.  Although young, their crests were proportionate to the rest of their bodies.

The tents were roughly arranged in a semi-circle around the amphitheater and most with their openings facing that way.  The field lay between that tree and the watch tower, so there were not many people around to see one of the young Rriigkhans suddenly rush the woman, tackling her from behind and then leaping away when she hit the ground on her hands and knees.  She was surprised enough that she only yelped.  The youths laughed and ran around her in a circle while the woman quickly rolled onto the seat of her pants so she could get a look at her attackers, holding her hands up defensively in front of herself.

One of the children darted forward and softly slapped the top of her head before dashing out of her reach again, tail undulating wildly and laughing still.  One of his friends fell down in the grass in an exaggerated leg-kicking paroxysm of hilarity.

“Get away from me!” the woman shouted with rising panic, kicking out at the boy but coming nowhere close to striking him.

Ray took a long breath, turning his head back to the squire, but not his eyes, and when the little Ricks came back for another pass, he drew a sharp breath and nodded. "Excuse me."

When Michelle had worked at the Hardwick Studio, back when they were first starting out, it hadn't been in the best part of town. (At that age, he would have argued that the Ricks saw to it that all the worst parts of town belong to humans, but it was more complicated than that, he'd realized since. They shared a parking lot with a billiard bar and, well, even if it wasn't full of bikers, he'd lost count of how many times hotheads came out with a cue they didn't own, just looking for something to damage that cost more than the forty they'd lost at the game. He wasn't a 'meddler' by reflex, but some of the other guys that hung outside the studio had taught him by example.

Striding right past the boys like they weren't even involved, he offered a hand to the blonde, to hoist her up to her feet quickly. "Whoops! Those oaks always have the worst roots." In a lower tone, in English, he hissed, "Play it off as a joke, and they'll lose interest. You okay?"

The woman stared at Ray with her mouth open, too stunned to answer quickly, but then she nodded, pressing her mouth shut.  Her lips twitched like she couldn't decide whether to frown or smile, or like she might be about to cry.

“It didn't trip over a root, stupid!” one of the children said, the one who had pushed her, swaggering right up to Ray with an exaggerated puffed-up chest and a thrashing tail.  The other two had stopped running around and were watching a little uncertainly.

"Maybe not!" Ray answered brightly, as if it were a joke they were all in on. He kept his smile tight, lips closed, and tipped his head a little as if to ask if it wasn't the funniest thing - a gesture he wasn't completely sure the Ricks shared. After a quick weighing of the possibilities, he decided to walk away, even if it meant turning his back on the little bullies, but kept a hand on the woman's shoulder bland, to ensure he stayed between her and them.

The woman tugged at Ray's hand.

“Let's get back to work,” she said, clearly attempting to act calm and nonchalant, but her voice faltered.

"Do you know your way back? I'm a little turned around myself. First time here." He refused to look back, refused to check to see if they were being followed or if anyone was watching - even the slightest bit of attention could mean being called into an escalating scene.

Back near Quar's tent, the young man had got to his feet and stood rigidly watching all of this, brows furrowed and a frown deepening on his face.  He stepped forward just as Quar called from the tent, and froze.

“Sam!  Attend me.”  Her pronunciation of his name was imperfect – a bit more of an n sound there at the end.  He hesitated, then turned to enter the tent, moving reluctantly slow.

“Oh, sure.  The nearest trench is there,” the woman said, pointing, that quaver still in her voice. “But walk me to this tower, will you?”  She stepped briskly in that direction, head slightly ducked, also refusing to look back.

The more aggressive child walked after them, matching their pace, until one of his friends darted up behind him and gave him a playful slap on the shoulder and went tearing off through the grass.  The first Rriigkhan whirled away to chase his friend, and then all three were running around beneath the shade again, completely forgetting about the servants.

"Sure - yes, as long as it's nearby." It was instinct rather than necessity that had him ducking his his head as they passed beneath a banner strung from a tree; but he took the opportunity to tilt his mask just enough for a sidelong glance past his shoulder. If there hadn't been any further jeering from the Rick kid, there wasn't likely to be; then again, he didn't know the Rick policy on tattling.

"You may want to go with the 'turned your ankle on a root' story as it is. Fewer questions that way, and you're more likely to get a few moments to catch your breath and reset while it's checked out. Then again, you'll need to develop a limp pretty quickly in that case."

The tower looked like it might have been part of the mine infrastructure once upon a time, or at least cross-iron supports inside were old enough to have blistered beneath the paint, and looked like 20th century riveting. Any old corrugated sheet medal siding had been replaced, and it was skinned not only with that lightweight aluminum alloy that Ricks favored, but with emblems and banners announcing highlights of the event in ever-shifting ink, with speakers and antennae nodes to rebroadcast all of the drone signals. Well before they reached it, they were able to slip back into the chest-height trenches; here, scars from old cartrail tracks were still visible. Trash was beginning to filter into the trenches like they were a gutter - nothing permanent like plastic. It would all decompose in the next rain, but it would leave a sludge behind, especially the brightly colored pieces. Ray stooped to pick up a few pieces before realizing it was a fool's errand.

"You're not new to this, though?" Ray asked as the trench crowded and they slowed to sidling past the outbound staff. "No mask at least."

The woman shook her head and smiled sadly, almost pityingly, at Ray – as if she found him very naive.

“I've been around long enough to know that faking an injury isn't a good idea. They have advanced medic drones on site because of how frequently injuries happen, and I don't want to get caught in a lie.” She turned to him more fully, locking eyes and saying, earnestly, “Listen, I really appreciate what you did back there. Not many would have stepped in like that. God, those vile little fuckers.”

The last was said with sudden vehemence that was just as quickly gone, replaced by dull acceptance. “Putting my kids through college with this job. Just a little longer... But I wonder what kind of world they're going to inherit.”

Smiling blandly, Ray shrugged with acceptance. "You'll have to do what you think is best. As long as you're back on your feet and feeling alright." At the base of the tower, he assumed that was the beginning of seeing him off, but stopped any momentum in the other direction before it could build. "Kids can be nasty when they have bad examples. I've seen plenty of that where I'm from. Wouldn't want it to turn into throwing rocks or something - that's where it always seems to go next."

He chuckled then, slipping his hands toward pockets that didn't exist, looking for a utility belt to hook his thumbs on, and settling for resting his hands on hips that weren't much good for the purpose. "Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Medical school. Mine just started. But you do what you gotta do, right? Just give them that chance to make the world for themselves, so they don't have to make the same choices we did. But then, when they do, you can commiserate from 20 years ahead down the path." He touched her upper arm, gave her a nod. "I'm going to get back, but you take care okay. Just gotta hang in there."

***

When Sam returned to the tent, Quar had unlatched her equipment trunk and thrown back the lid, while her three guests stood off to one side, chattering among themselves in their own language and lapping at drinks.  He recognized the “smile” in Quar's tail as she stood there with her fists on her hips, paws braced apart – Rick tails moved in up/down patterns when happy, from side to side when irritated.  She was rocking her crest very slightly as if in time to music, just another little gesture of excitement he recognized.

“What has riled your khar vitra?” Foerno asked, crinkling his nose.  He was sat upon the other flat-topped trunk at the other end of the tent.  

“A group of Rriigkhan children pushed over a servant.  The man who just came from here went over to help,” Sam said levelly as he approached Quar, raising his hands to untie the laces of the collar with held her shoulder pads on.  Quar's tail continued to tap happily away.

The two male Rriigkhan had turned as the squire approached, tilting just so, each in their own fashion, to peer after the disturbance under the shade. A dozen other faces peered, each in their own ways too - Even if they couldn't be identified by their crestline (which they could), the silhouette of a flicking tail or that particular off-balance set of the ears would be enough. Foerno's way was to go just that much more onto his toes, lifting his snout into the air so his nostrils could pick out the smell, while his eyes narrowed to lines. Stahvren, by contrast, would tilt back nearly onto his heels, just barely holding to the cloth on the tent to watch with one eye.

They were a peculiar complementary pair, those two. Not friends, exactly. Foerno was the real husband material - reliable, loyal, with an excellent head for numbers and for minding the staff. "It interfered. That's not it's place."

Stahvren was an artist in many fields, though exception in none of them. He brought a passion Foerno was thought to lack (though he would argue it was just well-managed), and was a wonderful bedmate when Foerno was more content just to tuck into a corner-hammock instead of romping. But he could confuse sentiment for empathy, or worse: philosophy. "But it was right. It is what they are trained to do, isn't it - to come to the mutual aid of their species. Weren't you only just complaining that Shierrn's fieldlings were a terrible mess because they thought of individuals instead of as a unit?"

"That's completely different, and you know it." Foerno canted his head and his crest in Quar's direction, fully expecting her to chime in at this point with the 'proper' way for them to behave.

“It is instinct, not training, and it is their worst trait as a species,” Quar agreed.  “Their dedication to one another would be admirable if they would apply this behavior in a practical way; instead they coddle one another over tiny cuts, or being pushed by a child, situations that present no actual danger.  This is what it looks like when a people are ruled entirely by instinct over logic.”

Sam said nothing to all of this.  He laid the shoulder pads aside on the camp chair, then unlaced Quar's trousers so she could step out of them.  A tensing of his facial muscles was the only visual indication of his opinion, but Quar was not even looking at his face.

“That one was one of yours,” Ghijariis said, boredly drumming her claws on the glass in her hands.  “Not very well trained.”

Now Sam had brought Quar's cuirass from the chest.  The front and back were laced together at one shoulder, and Quar helped him to hold the two halves in place while he laced the sides tightly together with thongs of hide.  Having fur as a buffer between their bodies and the steel, most Rriigkhan armor did not require padding beneath, although a hide lining was attached to the inside of the larger pieces.

“If I expected perfect service I would return to Ssaar, or Nandrevigh,” Quar snipped.  ”I came to Earth to experience a wild, untamed world.  If I encounter a wild native I won't be surprised about it.”  Nevertheless, she opened Ray's service profile and added a flag for Vern to speak to him.  If it was possible to click petulantly in AR, she did so, although it was not nearly as satisfying as stabbing one's finger into a haptic display.  He ought to at least know how to pour wine, that much was true.

"I hardly wish to argue with Quar's educated assessment of her own manling," Stahvren continued, his tail sinuating in what was a characteristic tell when he thought he was particularly clever. And though the term he used, 'manling', didn't imply human as much as it implied a male Rriigkhan still growing into his crest, cognate with 'maiden', it had been used extensively for other species generally considered terminally inferior, who were brought under the Rriigkhan protective umbrella. It was a diminutive that denoted fondness, but the connotation was usually less kind. "However, I would propose that whatever its motivations, which I make no comment on, the results of its actions were saving face for the keepers of those boys, who would have drawn attention to themselves if they needed to reprimand the humans. It was a discreet way to end the interaction. Perhaps he is better trained than his wine-handling would suggest. In that, he was atrocious, and I mean that with no disrespect to you, Quar, or your... what was his name? Viers."

Of course Stahvren knew Vern's name perfectly well, but never missed an opportunity to kick a bit of mud in his direction, the result of some old slight when they were both in the same singing circle.

“Vern,” Quar supplied, wishing Ghijariis would quiet her sub-mate. She really could not stand male prattling sometimes. She continued to move with Sam, holding the halves of her armor pieces while Sam laced them together. It was the same suit that Ray had seen in the video, every groove meticulously cleaned and every surface polished earlier that day by Sam. He himself wore a long quilted coat with Quar's repeating diamond pattern embroidered across the entirety of the chest, while the sleeves and tails of the garment remained gray.

Most of her troops wore kettle helms. Sam had asked for one as well and she had permitted it, although the khar vitra belonging to other Rriigkhans wore helmets that humans would have called grotesques: fully enclosed helmets whose visors had been sculpted into the muzzle of a Rriigkhan male. A facsimile of a male's crest adorned the skull of the helmet. Compared to examples from human history these were more beautiful, more accurate, more skillfully made, and not intentionally ugly as human-made grotesques frequently had been.

Drumming began in the distance, down by the stage. The Rriigkhans' ears all lifted as one. Ghijariis inclined her head while scrolling through the Venue's event listing in AR.

“The brackets for the warm-up matches were just posted,” Ghijariis said. “I'm fighting Hrissr! Hh hh! She'll be angry not to have a rematch with you. You're third fight, Quar, so don't rush your preparations.” Ghijariis clicked her nails at her mates and padded out, still holding her glass.

Quar grunted her acknowledgment, feeling her entire body thrum with energy and her heartbeat match the sonorous boom of the drums down in the sunken amphitheater. Sam held open the neck of her tabard so she could work her big crest into it, then went around back of her to straighten the garment and make sure it fell properly across her body before belting it. The last thing for Sam to do was to fit Quar's crest piercings with the rings that would attach to her chain veil/aventail. This was the most time consuming part of the process but he worked at it quickly, she lowering her head and tilting from side to side to allow him better access.

“Finished,” he said at last, and almost immediately she pushed him aside – not hard, not with malice, but it was enough to make him stumble out of the way – and trotted out of the tent with her tail held in an upward curve. Sam was used to this treatment and didn't visibly react to it as he retrieved her hammer from the bottom of the trunk, still in its baldric, and followed her out.

The Rriigkhan idea of entertainment was very different from what humans would expect, at least for those at the top of Rriigkhan society. There was little distinction between audience and participant; no one paid to watch a Rriigkhan perform an art. The dancers and the singers were here because they wanted to be and had paid to enter the dome the same as Quar had. (Or their entry fees had been paid by their various patrons or employers.) There would be no pumping up the crowd, no lengthy talks or introductions to pad out the events, as Quar had noticed existed in virtually all televised human sports.

Most of the Rriigkhans here tonight were involved in the event in some way, either as combatants, artists or historical reenactors, each performing their craft and watching others perform in turn. There would be a few Rriigkhans about purely to sight-see, but even those would probably be taking advantage of the dome's other amenities in addition to that.

As such, there was little fanfare when the first 1v1 matches began. Anyone who wanted to be there would be alerted via AR. There were about fifteen Rriigkhans involved in the full-scale mock battles taking place today, of which Quar was one, and perhaps two-three hundred more who would be competing in smaller competitive games throughout the day while the big battles took place further out in the wilderness of the dome. (Naval battles on the lake, melees, archery competitions, tag-team matches, and secondary versions of all of those things for males.) The other few hundred Rriigkhans were the artists and the general sight-seers.

Things would be different back on the crowded homeworlds Quar had mentioned, where few owned property at all and many Rriigkhans still had to work. But here, where only the richest Rriigkhans and their personal staff had the planet all to themselves? These domes existed for the pleasure of the elite, not to make money off the masses.

***

Four barrel-shaped drums with hide stretched over their tops had been set up off to one side of the amphitheater stage. Four Rriigkhan males drummed out a beat gradually rising in tempo only to fall again, teasing the audience with the promise of an eventual crashing crescendo. A fifth male holding cymbals wore bands of silver bells on his wrists and ankles, and the gauzy skirt he wore did nothing to hide the furry genital pouch between his legs. This was similar to a cat's sheath but larger, and with rounded swellings just below it instead of dangling testicles. Heat was not damaging to Rriigkhan sperm.

This male glided across the back of the stage in front of his drumming brothers, bells tinkling softly. They were emulating a time when entertainment did come with fanfare, and would be musically narrating the combat soon to happen on the stage.

***

"Come. Hurry." With the help of a few other black-clad servers willing to point him in the right direction (nearly everyone dressed like him seemed reasonably helpful, he'd been surprised to find), Ray had traced the warren of trenches back to the serving tent to which he was assigned. He'd gotten the sense that the paths weren't really that complicated, that they simply branched out from a few differnet nodes, and unless he took a bad turn where node-branches intersected, he'd eventually find his way back.

That, at least, would explain why everyone looked at him like he was a wet-nosed kid when he asked for directions.

Seeing the cluster of black-clothed servers beneath the tent, he'd assumed there was no big rush back to join the queue, and had perked up with so many others when the drums started beating. Rick rhythms were so often ...complicated - not really rhythms but patterned just like a voice might be, without the repetition and drive that he wsa used to, but there was no mistaking the steady, rolling thrum of those big drums. They made him want to move, to sway, to bob on his toes and slide his hips, but when he was summoned under the tent, he didn't linger.

A face he didn't recognize told him, "You don't want to be out there when it starts. It's not like basketball. Fights move."

"Right. So can we watch, though? Is there a screen or a holo?"

***

Some fights moved, but some had reason to linger in one place. What had been set up in the amphitheater in this case was clearly the latter. Hrissr stood in front of a short pedestal - really just a cylindrical length of stone, heavy enough to stay upright on uneven ground, but not impossible to kick over. Balanced atop it stood a bit of abstracted statuary, essentially the shape of leaf-spearhead, but much larger, and with a hole pierced through the center; atop the spearhead, instead of a point, was a corona-shape representing a crowned crest. The statue itself was called a 'prince', and was much more fragile than the stone beneath it. While it wouldn't shatter under a single blow or a fall, it was meant to show the damage it received. Hrissr waited, back to the pedestal but pointedly not touching it, with a long-handled bill gripped in one hand.

She nodded, tail whipping with pride as she watched scrip being punched and changing hands around her, evidently assuming the odds were in her favor.

***

“Oh yeah,” the man answered. “Their holo emitters are embedded all over the place if you know where to look, usually on table surfaces, but you can't turn them on unless you're on the access list. Lucky for us, our guy Hunter over there is one who they trust enough to give limited access.” The man Ray had been speaking to waved his hand vaguely to indicate someone at the head of the crowd within the tent.

As if on cue, a hologram three times larger than the one Ray had seen in Quar's grotto flickered into existence up ahead, projected from a refrigerated kiosk or chest on wheels that carried bottled drinks. This hologram was much more sophisticated than the playback of Quar's fight – there was no bordered area, and the images were not merely raised like the surface of a coin. No, this was true 3-dimensional imaging; if Ray were to move he would see the figures from their other sides.

It showed the amphitheater stage. Hrissr was fully rendered as was the pedestal behind her. The floor, however, faded out so that she appeared to stand on a circle of stone with nothing around it, and other background objects were also ignored. The images were spectacularly clear, but slightly brighter than real life, and obviously not full scale. Later, when the figures on the stage were moving, Ray might notice distortions like a filter momentarily popping out of place, but these happened rarely thanks to a handful of tiny scanning/imaging drones who moved with the combatants and were pretty good about keeping up, far enough into the air that they were well out of anyone's way.

***

Sam jogged to keep up with Quar as she trotted down to the stage, coming to stand on one of the raised stone ledges that half-encircled the center. The area was not very crowded, both because it was a large theater and because the Rriigkhan crowd was not nearly as dense as it might have been at a similar human event. Ghijariis' boys had sat themselves down on the raised ledge of a planter ringing an oak, Ghijariis standing beside them with her arms crossed over her chest. Foerno and Stahvren had bumped their crests together and spoke conspiratorially between themselves, perhaps making their own bets or predictions.

Quar naturally sought their familiar scents, but she stood off to one side a little; she wasn't here to socialize anymore, but to watch and await her turn. The air was thick with a mix of benign passive pheromones, and those purposely exuded by other females, which rankled when she caught whiffs of them – like a shrill sound disrupting her thoughts. It was rude to emit those scents in public, but it would always be impossible to keep them from clinging to fur or drifting out of tents. Sam stood beside her with her hammer hugged to his chest with both arms. It wasn't that she couldn't hold its weight, but it saved a bit of her strength for him to do it.

There were very few humans mixed into this crowd now. Those that remained were khar vitra only, and some Rriigkhans who had them had already dismissed their armor-bearers to return to the tents. Ghijariis and Foerno, for example, both carried her own sheathed weapons.

Ray did move, though not explicitly to get a different angle on what the holo showed. He didn't exactly recognize Hrissr from what Quar had showed him earlier in the day - Black wasn't as distinct a color as the magenta and gray were, and her weapon had changed - but seeing her sweep that bill across the ground in front of her very much brought to mind the damage done to her face earlier. Or, to some Rick's face, as far as he was concerned. He wasn't actually eager to watch, especially if it wasn't the magenta and gray he was looking for, but he was eager to know what Quar's mood would be in the coming days. Moving to get deeper beneath the tent was just a matter of finding the man he'd standing in front of before, since he seemed to know more than most.

His ID tag chimed at the edge of the tent as he went under, first to check him back in, and then with a more disappointed, declining tone. He knew that sound from training, though he hadn't heard it since - a warning. What he didn't know was how to check this new tag for the details of his warning - had he had a complaint? Did it take him too long to return? Was it about the glass he'd wasted? He could grind his teeth about it and go search out an ICG Rick who could explain it to him while deigning to fix him with a baleful gaze in lieu of rolling their eyes, but now wasn't the time. Instead, he tucked his empty tray under his arm at his side as he finished shuffling between tightly-packed bodies, found a spot to lean against a stainless-steel serving station, and kept glancing about for someone he knew while keeping half an eye on the Rick in the holo.

.The good thing about positioning himself here, too, is that he'd be one of the first to take another order out, and hopefully get that warning cleared off before the end of the night. If he was going through all the trouble of coming out to keep Vern happy, at least he didn't want to go home with a worse record than when he started.

***

What started out as describing wide circles with the blade of her bill, angling just enough for the trailing hook to etch the stone in a demonstration of control and also the space she meant to defend, turned into a complete kata without warning. The blade swept from a wide semicircle up into a glinting arc that ended above her head, so the gold worked into the metal would catch the sunlight. Hrissr posed there a moment, toes almost on claw-tip while her eyes swept through the slit across her visor, then shifted her weight back quickly to one leg while the other lifted and the bill flashed down to describe the shape of a lightning bolt: thrust to her opponent's waist, drag down to hook behind the knee, thrust again between the thighs to avoid entanglement in the greaves, and flip the blade to drag the bill along the inside of the opposite thigh.

One imaginary opponent was dispatched. Of course, in a battle where she was meant to defend 'The Prince' against many, a move like that would have left her ridiculously open, even if it had been quick and efficient rather than sweeping and elegant, but for now the point of it was to establish her skill with the weapon, her mastery of the form she would employ, and ideally to improve her odds, as she'd spread her own bets in such a way as to benefit not from her victory, exactly, but from the success of those who bet for her. Not that that was anything new for Hrissr, who seemed to be as concerned with her appearance in battle (and the recording thereof!) as with the battle itself. Yes, yes - who won mattered, but the artful victories were the ones rewatched, and her fortune had been made in archiving and dissemination of media. She had a reputation.

Hrissr dispatched another 17 imaginary opponents through the length of the kata, as it demanded, and ensuring that attention remained fixed on her whle Ghijariis arrived. Then, as Ghijariis warmed her muscles, she turned her back on her to approach her khar vitra. Famously, she was neither Rriigkhan nor human, but a Thossle that Hrissr had imported with her to the planet. That meant that the Thossle remained fully enclosed on the field, and in view of humans, but she was a nimble thing in the gumdrop-shaped armor nonetheless, and wouldn't raise any eyes as she honed the edge of the bill to a fresh edge - so long as her secondary arms remained tucked inside the cavity of the armor.

Finally, Hrissr returned to her post in front of The Prince, rolled her fingers on the grip, and then tipped the blade as if to say, 'Come'.

Ghijariis slid her longsword from its sheath as she approached the stage, strutting purposefully with her chin high and shoulders back.  Her tail curved behind her in left to right undulations like an eel swimming.  Hers was a weapon with less reach and speed than Hrissr's, but better crushing power.  A human would have needed two hands to wield it.  

All through Hrissr's kata, the cymbalist had punctuated each dispatched enemy with a crash while the drumming built to a manic tempo.  Now the cymbalist had stilled; not a single bell tinkled while the drumming beat on low and steady as a heart.

Ghijariis came to a halt in front of Hrissr, well within the reach of her weapon – she would have to be, to reach The Prince.  As the attacker the first strike belonged to her, but first would come a display of her own prowess.  She thrust her blade at Hrissr's neck but flicked  it away before the point would have made contact with the other Rriigkhan's armor.  Continuing from that fluid motion, her sword curved down and away to the right.  The blade turned and made as if to slash across Hrissr's left hip before sweeping away again.  She repeated these feints several times, sometimes passing only centimeters from her opponent's armor.

If Hrissr were to parry too soon, flinching at a strike that did not even endanger The Prince, it would be an embarrassment to her.  On the other hand, waiting too long could be fatal for the statue.

Just after another sweeping feint, Ghijariis handed off the longsword from her right to her left hand, a common dazzle to show she could be just as precise with her off-hand.  With her elbow out and up she thrust her blade over Hrissr's right shoulder, angling the blade toward the left, as if to pass very near Hrissr's head.  Now, suddenly, she stepped forward, giving her the reach necessary to strike the statue on the pedestal behind Hrissr's back.  All this time Ghijariis' face had been perfectly impassive, eyes fixed only on the parts of Hrissr's body that her sword would pass near.

There wasn't any point in trying to hide her growing frustration, so Hrissr chuffed her jaw and throat to let the scent of it ebb out from under the aventail this role demanded. Let Ghijariis think it was from the taunting that she couldn't acknowledge, and that she had gained an upper hand in unsettling her opponent; admittedly, though, it was from the taunting. These strictures forced upon the games were infuriating. Yes, it may be historically accurate that the Royal Guard would remain immobile, regardless of activity, until there was a direct threat to life, but what guard would have allowed a git flailing a long-pommel about to get within the reach of her hand, rendering the reach of her bill a liability rather than an asset? Oh, how she would have enjoyed planting the butt of her weapon in Ghijariis' solar plexus before her first stroke!

Instead, even her tail had to remain still, elevated off the stone, while Ghijariis teased her.

In most circumstances, watching Ghijariis' eyes or her shoulders and neck would give the lie to her feint, but now Hrissr had to tip her helmet forward just enough to watch her feet past the bottom of her eye-slit. She could trust her enough not to commit to an attack aimed only at her, which meant watching her forward toes brace to receive her weight; when she committed, her rear claws would splay with the effort to push those extra few inches.

As soon as she saw that, the force stored in Hrissr's cross-handed grip on the pole spun the steel capped butt up clockwise, not to stop Ghijariis' blade (little chance of that) but to hurry it along its stroke before it could reach the Prince. The hooked blade, in turn, swept downward toward Ghijariis' commited ankle, as her body dropped and her weight went to the knee that came forward to add a brace the pole. If Ghijariss was so foolish as to not have anticipated it, a quick yank would pull her legs wide and possibly sever the tendons behind her ankle, but Hrissr wasn't counting on that.

No, she was relying on Ghijariis to trust to her own speed and power, to leap and reach over to knock the Prince off. And Hrissr, in turn, bet on her own ability to respond first by reangling her bill up and complete the motion as a throw, hopefully still leaving herself time to catch the Prince before he fell.

The butt of Hrissr's weapon smacked against the underside of  Ghijariis' forearm and elbow, in turn knocking her arm up so that her blade would stab too high above the Prince.  She rotated her wrist inward and down so that her longsword angled down as well.  She was no longer making a direct stab at the statue with the sharp tip of her sword, but using the flat of the blade like a paddle to smack the Prince on its side.  The blade connected with a satisfying scrape and, momentarily, she felt the weight of the statue as she flicked her wrist to give it a shove, an extension of the weapon just as the weapon was an extension of her own arm, and then the loss of that weight as the statue tumbled backwards off its pedestal.

The cymbals crashed in delayed reaction to Ghijariis' opening strike.  The drumming jumped in intensity, each drummer falling out of step with the other to produce a layered, racing, throbbing rhythm.  This would have been an annoyance to Ghijariis if every other part of the world around her had not melted to a blur of color and noise.

Ghijariis did jump, and as she did so her tail swept in an arc from behind her to the right, curving inward to club down on where she expected the bill to be near her ankle.  A Rriigkhan tail was neither prehensile nor strong like an arm, but what Ghijariis hoped was that it would be just heavy enough to kill some of Hrissr's speed, to knock the weapon just enough to foil her plans or mitigate some of the force with which she might strike Ghijariis.  Her tail was totally unarmored but for her natural fur, which was no trivial form of protection against cutting weapons.  Still, she was willing to risk a wound here if it meant achieving her goal.

With all of her weight tipped forward and her tail not free to act as the counterbalance it otherwise would have, Ghijariis fully expected to land with some awkwardness.

The drumming masked the clack of the statue hitting the stone flooring behind the pedestal.  The Prince rolled briefly on its rounded base around the fulcrum of its crest against the ground.

Risking even a touch to the Prince (or, in this case, openly allowing it) to set up an appointment for the counter was poor form; harkening back to the Moor Wars, it would have cost her her position, if not her head, to pull such a stunt with a prince who was not clay. But the sport had already damned authenticity, hadn't it? Risking the Prince and not saving him from the ground was embarrassing - there were no two ways about it, and Hrissr's ears were back against her head, her lips tight beneath the helmet. It was a clear first point for Ghijariis, and even if the Prince had not shattered and would be reset, in the eyes of many, her opponent would have already won, no matter what the points said.

The thrill, though, still buzzed inside her, sending alertness and excitement down all her nerves, through all her muscles down to her claw tensors. That moment of imbalance, when Ghijariis was out over her leg and Hrissr had lifted and swung back her bill in a wide arc. Blood still marked the stone, and described a line out into the seating; bits of fur and skin flayed from her tail tufted on the ground. It was hardly enough to hobble her, and maybe not even enough to throw her balance, but that connection of sharp blade with skin, that smell of blood and raw sinew on the air was worth a bit of shame, in her calculation.

Glancing back to her Thossle she nodded, and it ran out to replace the Prince while Ghijariis collected herself.

In acknowledgement of her competitor's first point, she adopted the second positions, legs spread with her weight shifted to the back, bill held level with the hook turned slightly downward, and the Prince once again to her back. "Shall we see if you give him more than a kiss with your blade this time? What good is an insulted Prince if you are dead after?"

Ghijariis' knees bent slightly as she landed on her paws after that small jump, sword arm flying out to help balance herself.  It wasn't a graceful maneuver but she did not totter, at least, and quickly stood to full height.  A dull pinch alerted her first that Hrissr's blade had bit through her flesh, and then the smell.  

She glanced aside and saw the wet red wound on her tail from the corner of her eye, but inspected it no further.  Blood trickled slowly down a matted clump of fur to patter on the stone.  There were no major arteries there, so although the injury smarted fiercely, Ghijariis was lucky to have gotten away with only that much.  

In fact, she was elated.  She deliberately flipped the end of her tail to show her pleasure while she took her place in front of Hrissr one again, which intensified the ache.  She need only to score again to win the best of three.

She passed the sword back to her dominant hand and held it to a low guard, the point inches from the ground near her right paw.

“We shall see if you can do better than to strike my tail.  Deal me a serious injury before you talk of dying.”

Quar watched all of this raptly, nostrils flaring to catch the scent of blood and excitement on the air.  Her ears were trapped under the chain veil attached to her crest, but they strained against the steel rings to better hear the proceedings on the stage.  Ghijariis might have won the point, but Hrissr had  conducted herself with such grace and beauty that Quar could not help but be impressed.

The drummers had returned to their steady, expectant tempo.  Ghijariis had already decided that making such a direct move on the Prince was probably not wise twice; it would be better to wear Hrissr down first, fight more conservatively to avoid another injury if she could.

This time the fight began more conventionally.  Ghijariis stood with feet apart, facing Hrissr, and slowly lifted the end of her sword from its low position to show that she was ready to begin.  As the blade rose and became parallel with the ground she whipped it up and to the left, while her fist stayed level with her ribs, intending to smack Hrissr across the muzzle – or at least to make the other Rriigkhan block high.  At the same time she shifted her weight onto her right foot, tail sweeping slightly to the left to counterbalance, because she meant to kick at Hrissr's knee.

"As you wish, Ghijariis." Hrissr's words were a hiss even before they filtered through the grill of her helmet, and they came out breathy, as though with a snicker. If she was fortunate, her opponent wasn't going to attempt another direct shot again the Prince, which she always found rather difficult to prevent, especially when was as fast with a blade as Ghijariis. But when it came to trading wounds, she felt she had the upper hand.

And after seeing the success of Ghijariis' counterfeit, she had a mind to try the same. Against plate, the edge of the sword could bite if it caught right, but the flat was less than a slap. When she saw the blade coming for her head, a snap judgment of angle gave her the hope it would land flat, so she pitched forward to meet it not with her snout, but the seam up her forehead and her crest. This close already, the bill was just a weight at the end of the staff, so she thrust it at a downward angle behind Ghija, planning to catch the edge of a stone where it would trip her ankles and send them both toppling over it.

They would both be heavy on the ground, but if Hrissr could get in on top where she could use the serrated edge of her elbow piece, it would be better than sword or bill.

Ghijariis' left paw impacted the inside of Hrissr's right knee, right at the spot where it could potentially buckle.  Now all of her weight was shifted to her right.  At the same moment her blade smashed down against Hrissr's crest – thwock! – the impact juddering up Ghijariis' arm and bouncing her sword back.  Hrissr's forward motion, the shifting of Ghijariis' weight onto her right side, and the bill hooking her ankle: all of this conspired to throw Ghijariis off-balance just enough that her innards turned to water.  There was time for her eyes to widen and her mouth to open, forming a surprised 'o', and then Hrissr shouldered into her and she was falling, unable to bring her left foot down behind herself fast enough to catch herself.

The best Ghijariis could do was to throw her weight to the side so that perhaps she could roll when she hit.  It was clumsy and inelegant but it might save her from being trapped under Hrissr's body.  She hit the ground on her right side with her elbow half-trapped beneath her, which sent another jolt on the periphery of pain through the joint and up her arm, stupidly trapping her own weapon.  Hrissr landed on top of her with a clatter of plate against plate that crushed and dented her armor in several of the weaker places.  Immediately she rocked her head up to bash whatever part of Hrissr she could reach with her own crest.

***

Quar leaned forward, tongue unconsciously darting out to lick her teeth and pull back the pheromonal tastes in the air.  Her own heart could be felt as a throb in dozens of places across her body, but particularly in her howrfs.  If only that could be her on the stage, right now!  

No one spoke.  The only sound, aside from the scraping noises of the battle, were lost in the drumming that might as well have been the collective heartbeats of the crowd.  Stahvren and Foerno both stood almost on their toes, and to glance their way would show agitated tail twitches and tightened jaws, but Quar did not look.

Ghijariis' crafty little short kick cost Hrissr the absolute coup of landing astride her, where she could have certainly forced Ghijariis to submit and won the match outright. Hrissr had a penchant for tearing open helmets and yanking jaws apart until they dislocated or tore - it was humiliating, visceral, very visible to the cameras, and easily reparable for a head wound. Whether Ghija had anticipated that or not, it wasn't going to happen this time.

The bill was torn from her hands, of course, which meant she couldn't let her opponent leave the ground. Hrissr ended up unevenly astride Ghija's hips; it's was more luck than intent that her knee came down on the wounded tail. That was her bruising knee, but trading a bit of pain for pain would be a good reminder of who had the better wound at the moment. With her left hand she pinned Ghija's wrist to keep her from reaching for the sword, and began twining with her legs to keep Ghija from working the leverage for a kick or a throw. But her right elbow... that was free. Breathing heavily, slathering through her teeth into her helmet, she crossed her arm past her chest and hammered again and again with that serrated elbow piece, trying to drive home a blow under Ghija's armpit, if she could find the opening.

Let that sap Ghija's strength and resolve, and then Hrissr could reach for the sword herself and end this.

This... this felt right. Rriigkhan had been hunters once, and not the type who made clean, respectful kills with a blaster than honored the beast. Once they had torn open bellies and feasted on still-warm livers while their hunting-sister savaged a throat. Dead meat belonged to the males, and the young back at the nest; living meat belong to the hunter. The smell of blood dilated her nostrils, glazed her eyes, and her elbow continued to bash after it was useful, after she was wasting her own strength.

Ghijariis hissed air between her teeth when the knee went down on her tail.  In some part of her brain she knew she had lost, but she would not make this easy for Hrissr.  She thrashed.  She thrashed hard.  Pinned as she was, she bucked beneath Hrissr, jolting her from side to side, but never enough to throw her.  A Rriigkhan was heavy enough, let alone in armor, and the more she thrashed the more Ghijariis felt her strength draining away.

Her arm was yanked up.  Hrissr's flared couter slammed down against the steel lip of her cuirass under her armpit, denting it inward and producing a metallic ping.  A flap of hide protected the armpit.  On the second elbow slam the serrated piece punctured this hide without touching Ghijariis.  On the next, the metal piece stabbed through the tear it had made and ripped into Ghijariis' flesh, eliciting a snarl of rage from the pinned female.

She stopped thrashing, knowing this was only draining her own energy.  She rolled her head up to knock her crest against the hand that held her wrist, but it was too easy for Hrissr to simply shove her back down by shoving her own arm against her face.  No, she had to find some other way out of this.  Her sword-arm was pinned under her body, but not that hand – it scrabbled against the ground, searching, finding nothing of use while that serrated piece of metal stabbed down again and again.

Every slash into her arm ached, but more than that, every slash sent a fresh peal of rage rolling over her, working its way up to her howrf.  The milky white organs inflated enough to peek out from the pits on her crest, hidden behind a pair of tines, oozing bitter rage and pain into the air.  Lips curled back over wet fangs and she snarled continually, a savage noise oscillating between low and lower.  The tang of her own blood lay thick in the air now; her armpit was a mush of wet, bloodied fur and mulched flesh.  Blood trickled down the barrel of her cuirass, blood and fur clung to Hrissr's elbow piece.

“Yield,” she hissed, the word garbled by her own throaty growling.

It would have been her fourth sequential loss, which would push her down in the rankings. Not that it would matter on this world, where there was no-one to fight but the same rotating pool of several hundred, but it would have been shameful. Others might say many things about Hrissr, that her form was unorthodox, that she did not comply with the spririt of the sport (as if making a 'sport' of it at all was in the spirit of it!), but they could not deny her passion. Her own limbs would be stringy and gelatin from the exertion once the frenzy passed, but she would leave nothing out of this moment, and risk letting Ghija up to topple the Prince a second time.

The desperation in that crest-bash had her cackling through slather. She could smell the mingling rage and bloodlust in the air - her own hrowf-sacs were of the grooved variety, so even fully erect they remained pressed to ruts in her crest, which meant they could lay flat under an evenly sloping half-bowl of her helmet. In her head she pictured bashing that bowl against Ghija's after the fight had gone out of her, but then the word cut through the air. Yield. It was not the demand she usually heard.

Self-trained to the word though she was - attacking again after she'd recognized it would lose her the match and probably her following online - she could not simply turn off the frenzy. Her hand completed the action it had intended earlier, reaching for the sword, and raised it high, pommel up, to smash it down into a dead-grassed gap between the bloody pavers a few inches above Ghija's shoulder. Kneeling still over Ghija, she panted, and mingled fluids dangled in thick droplets from the grill in front of her snout.

Getting up was not easy. She could ignore the pain in her leg, but knew before she put weight on her foot that it would as soon collapse as support her, so she leaned heavily on the sword. Once she had one foot under her at least, She reached for Ghija's armor and hooked a hand under breastplate on the good side, grunting as she heaved her up to a half-sitting position.  "You fall well, Sister." From her mouth, from her family line, it was no intimacy, that word; if anything, it elevated her above her station. "Will you do it for me a third time, or does the Prince get his respite?"

Ghijariis' entire body slackened when it was over, with nothing to do but lie there panting while Hrissr took her sweet time getting up.  She wanted to shove the bitch off once Hrissr's weight lifted from her hips, but that would be unchivalrous, the actions of a poor loser.

Instead she waited until she was heaved up, putting her good arm under herself for support.  She tested her range of motion in her left arm by rotating it, wincing at the sensation of warm liquid running down the inside of her armor more than from the sting of torn flesh.  That being her off-hand the damage was not so important a factor in her ability to fight a third round, but the blood loss was another matter.  She had to end this quickly before losing enough to grow faint.  She'd been pierced deeply enough that the bleeding was not going to stop on its own.

“I'll not hand you a victory so easily,” Ghijariis huffed breathlessly.  Her pheromone emissions had been as automatic as a scream, and now her howrfs receded into her crest, the keratin around those cavities slicked with thin clear fluid.

There was no graceful way to stand in armor, so Ghijariis did what she must, which was rolling over onto her hands and knees (taking most of her weight on the good arm) so that she could get a leg under herself and then, using the same sword hilt as a lever that Hrissr had used, laboriously pushed herself up.  She swayed a little as she finally stood with both feet planted apart, her tail limp on the ground both because of the cool paving and because she barely had the energy to lift it.  It was baking in that armor.  She shed heat from her panting tongue, a froth of slaver building in her jowls.  

She held her hand out to Hrissr on the ground, offering to pull her up.  She was not aware that Hrissr was having trouble with her leg.

Hrissr could stand. The knee did not want to take any sideways weight - whether it was dislocated, or something had torn inside. Stepping on that leg was a much more delicate matter. She'd gathered her pole so she wouldn't have to bend for it later, and accepted Ghijariis' hand; though she'd calculated the decision based on that small transfer of energy saved versus cost to her opponent. "Good. I would prefer to take it from you anyway."

Beneath the armor, she was still panting. Her chest rose and fell as far as the breastplate would allow; she wanted to rip the snout open and breathe freely, but the longer they waited for the third round, the longer the acids would have to pool in her muscles. She wasn't going to beg for a longer break so her Thossle could set her leg, or she could flush her muscles; rolling her arms and back beneath the plate would have to do. Oh, how she wanted to rest the butt of her bill on the ground and put her weight on that, but that would be fatal.

Once she had her feet beneath her, Hrissr didn't take her post again in front of the Prince - she was nearly a pace out of place, but she hadn't been able to make proper use of her reach yet anyway, and this might make the difference. Keeping her weight mostly over her good leg, her hand tightened near the base of the bill, and the opposite held it more loosely, better for guiding than putting power into the thrust. "Come, then, and finish this."

Ghijariis drew her sword from the resisting ground and moved to take her place before the pedestal, though turning her body to face Hrissr rather than the Prince.  Eyes sweeping across her opponent, she realized that Hrissr was favoring that leg.  She had hardly moved from the spot they'd fallen.  It was difficult to be sure, she hid it well, but Hrissr's hips had subtly shifted to her right to carry the bulk of her weight on that side.  It was lucky for Ghija that she had so little energy for unnecessary movements – no need to still her tail from flipping in triumph.

“Certainly,” she panted, her open mouth conveying no emotion as inwardly she thrilled from a mix of endorphins and fresh excitement that prickled across every inch of skin.  The pinching sensations under her arm faded into the background of her mind while scents and lines sharpened.  She brought her sword up to a mid-guard straight in front of her, almost parallel to the ground, the palm of her left hand flat against her thigh.  She bent her right knee to lean her weight forward slightly.  Her jaws closed just enough for her to swallow her saliva and to hide her tongue, although she still visibly panted.

She began with a sideways cut toward the Prince from right to left, fully expecting Hrissr to easily block this with the pole of her weapon, but then she stepped back – and as she did so, she rotated her wrist so that her sword came up and back, almost tapping against her own left shoulder, hoping to get her blade out from under the bill and to move herself out of Hrissr's long reach.

Of course Ghija would know that her leg was weak - she felt the kick connect. She was right to read into Hrissr's hesitance to limp back to the Prince, but with any luck, she would read the wrong thing. Hrissr's eyes flicked about blackly through the eyeslit of her helmet; she didn't want her opponent to draw it out, but every moment told her a little bit more. There would be no two handed strike, and in the end, if Ghijariis did not limit her own lunge, lengthening her body out would cost her all her power... not that she needed much to topple the Prince again, and win her second point or shatter the damned thing altogether.

And of course Ghija would beat the the pole - the deflection would help her gain distance and speed. So it came as a surprise when the other Rriigkhan's arm came up to signal a second attack instead. It was too late. Hrissr had already committed. Offense was always her favorite anyway. What would Ghija's blade do with no pole to meet? She was prepared to take the most of it across her crest as, instead of lifting the pole upright to block, the bill suddenly lunged out, spike-point plunging straight for Ghijariis' throat, slender enough to puncture the armor. No feint, this, no leaving anything behind - either the other Rriigkhan would be skewered, or Hrissr would be left completely open, and so would the Prince.

Ghijariis had meant to smash her blade down on Hrissr's knuckles, to knock the pole away long enough for her to edge closer to the Prince.  If she could damage the other Rriigkhan's gauntlets or the fingers inside them it would be all the better.  Fear spiked when she saw that deadly point thrusting out but it was too late to pull her sword back to block it.  It all happened too quickly for Ghijariis to think much of anything.

The point of the bill punched through a lame of her gorget at the same moment Ghija's blade connected with the place Hrissr's fist had been, which, as she extended her arm to thrust, was now her forearm.  Ghijariis would hardly have felt the point piercing her throat because it was so slender, only a sting as if caught by a wasp, but her own sword slamming down on Hrissr's arm levered the end of the pole up, shoving, slicing through Ghijariis' flesh from inside.  The tip had embedded itself about three inches thanks to her armor blunting the force of the strike, but could still go deeper if Hrissr were to push, before the backcurved hook would catch on her gorget and allow it to push no further.

Ghijariis could feel the tearing in the fleshy muscle of her neck, feel the hot rush of blood seeping from the wound.  Hrissr had not hit the major artery in the neck so the blood did not pulse, but as soon as that spike withdrew the blood would gush.

The Rriigkhan yipped and immediately grasped at the pole where it connected to her throat with her left hand, nevermind the bleeding ruin of her armpit.  She was not so ill trained that she would drop her sword but she did yank it back as she staggered to the right, feeling suddenly weak in the knees.  Weak all over.  Her jaws dropped open, dripping slaver as she panted.  Her mind was strangely empty; it was difficult to think.

“Yield,” she breathed, the word almost indistinguishable from her pants.

"Accepted."

Despite the wave of weariness that swept over Hrissr, there was a chortle in her throat. Her vision pulsed at the periphery, silvery as her less important senses were oxygen-deprived. Even her hearing was tinny, but smell, of course, was hyper-alert. Blood - blood overwhelmed everything, and the pheromones rolling off her own howrf to fill the cavity of her helmet was a drone note she almost couldn't tune out, but behind that was a symphony of excitment, of fervor, of pride from the onlookers. It fed her. Her arm pumped in the air, shifting the bill again. She could even smell her own Thossle's joy; she would share in her master's success tonight.

Then there was another smell - human, and close. With blood in her nose, it was all she could do not to lash out, to pounce, but she ended up not even shoving back when he thrust himself in, grabbing the bill right behind the head to stabilize it, and bringing up a cutter to slice the haft.

She let it fall - the Thossle would collect it, but first she intended to stride off the stone of her own accord, which meant taking each step slow and grinding her backteeth each time her right leg took the weight.

Ghijariis' khar vitra had done this before, but not at his master's throat. And not when Ghijariis refused to lie down until the medics arrived. He said nothing - there was nothing to say that would not infuriate her, and would not meet the eyes of her males. After just a few seconds, there was a rush of air overhead, and then the ambulance settled into the airspace, stabilizing. The gurney lift dropped with a pair of Rriigkhan hanging from the suspension cables, who, practiced as they were, shouldered the armorbearer aside, applied pressure to the bill, but otherwise handled her rather roughly as they slung her up onto the gurney floor.

The armorbearer didn't even try to follow onto the gurney, not with Stahvren there as well; the two males took the available spots, while he stepped back, and then turned to make his own way on foot to the medical facilities at the edge of the dome.

Quar's shoulders lowered as she exhaled heavily, simultaneously disappointed by her friend's ugly loss and energized by the mixture of scents in the air.  She imagined those <I'm-the-winner> dominant pheromones Hrissr now exuded must be enticing to males, but to her it was full of bitter tones that repelled her even as it sparked a surge of admiration – like the sickly sweet smell of rot, it was delicious and displeasing all at once.  Ghijariis' blood, on the other hand, awakened some primal urge inside her.  It made saliva well up inside her mouth, heated roiling blood under her skin.  She could feel the throb of it in her wrists and in her temples, and a restless shiver inside her limbs that made her want to move.

She could see that the others present felt the same as their tails snapped out with excitement.  A few lifted their muzzles with creaky vibratos to applaud Hrissr as she moved slowly from the stage.  A human might find the noise similar to the purrs of an alligator.  

A pair of armored females originating from separate places in the stands approached the stage next, both flanked by human khar vitra whose faces were hidden beneath their Rriigkhan grotesques.  The servants worked at removing the pedestal and the statue from the stage before taking their places at their master's sides. This was to be a 2v2 match, apparently.  Quar found this a little insulting; at least let Rriigkhan males take the stage before humans.  Although she voted on the rules of these events, she was only one voice among many.

***

Vern found the human under one of the serving tents, watching the holo along with all the other servants.  Unsurprising.  This behavior was tolerated because hardly anyone was going to be ordering food and drinks at a time like this.  Well, the humans might get their rest, but Vern never did.

He cleared his throat as he came up behind the man.  A few nearby humans noticed Vern and discreetly moved away, suddenly finding something to do with their hands instead of watching the show.

“Ray Tanner,” he said in calm, perfectly enunciated Cant.  He stood with his back straightened and his left wrist resting on the small of his back, looking impassively at the man.  He recognized Ray's scent from back in Quar's camp tent, but otherwise they hadn't yet met.  He waited for Ray to turn before gesturing away from the servant's area.  “I must speak with you.”

During the short gap between events, all the black-clad servers roused, like a murder of crows rustling in a large oak at first morning light. There was rustling under the canopy, low-voiced speaking, a checking of badges to see if they were dinging. Several of the more technically-minded servers came forward to the projector to fiddle with it, adjust settings on a series of sliding tabs around the bottom lip to clear up the misaligned colors one one of the fields. Ray was impatient, leaning against his corner support. He would have rather been out playing the role of waiter again than just standing there. Though his ankles were crossed, one of his knees bobbed, and his crossed arms adjusted frequently. All of the people gathered in the tent left the air humid and hot, and with the mask to add to it, sweat beaded around his face again. After the dive earlier today, if he sat still for too long, he thought he'd start yawning.

He'd just straightened to see if he could sidle over toward the Rick barmaster to see if he coud get an assignment instead of waiting for one, show a little initiative, perhaps, when a familar voice surprised him.

"Ah." Twisting on a heel, he squared off with Vern, shuffling his feet to follow. Addressing the Rick was tricky, and hadn't really settled into a comfort level yet. Presumably the Rick had titles - they all seemed to - but as a human contracted through the ICG rather than a house-slave, he didn't use those, because the Ricks were 'committed to democratic expression.' Whatever that meant to them, it wasn't the same thing as it did to Ray. Bowing might have worked, but it didn't work for Ray - the idea of it sent prickles through him. But calling him by his name, even if it was one he could pronounce, was just a little too democratic for the Ricks. So Ray just ensure he had his full attention, so Vern would know he was addressing him.

"What can I do for you? Not a pump problem back home, I hope?" Behind him now, over a grassy rise, the drums and cymbals were beginning to build an anticipatory allegro again, and the other servers were quieting again when both pairs of combatants filled the holo. "There's a quieter spot back there behind the coolers?" He offered, gesturing just behind Vern, toward a row of aluminum-colored towers rising beneath the awning of the tent. No cables sprawled out from them, even though they were locally made; battery tech was one of the first Ricks offered to humanity, along with their medicine. The hum of the towers created a white noise zone that made it easier to drown out other background noise.

“No.  Nothing like that.  I'm Ghara Quar’s chief of staff, Vern.  Normally I would have met a new hire such as yourself straight away, but I was out-of-dome these past three days helping to prepare her fighting forces for the upcoming battle.”  As he spoke he moved over behind the coolers Ray had indicated, turning on his pads to face Ray.  His eyes flicked from side to side just to make certain no one was within hearing, only so Ray would not potentially be embarrassed by this, before settling his gaze on the human.

“You were flagged for poor performance.  Having received no training at all, I won't enter this into your service record.  We will go over a few basic guidelines of conduct now, during this bit of downtime.  Firstly, you may address any Rriigkhan as Ghara.  It is the equivalent of Ma'am or Sir in your culture.”  That was not entirely true, but Vern found that framing it this way made it more palatable to humans.  He did not pause to allow Ray to respond before moving to his next points, ticking them off his fingers.  

“You will not speak to Rriigkhans you are serving unless asked a direct question or you require clarification on her orders.  If you have a general question about your role, that must be brought to me, not those you are serving.

“You will be aware of your facial expressions.  For example, the showing teeth is an expression of friendliness to the human point of view, but to Rriigkhans it is an act of hostility.  There is a handbook at the Servant Quarters I will direct you to read later, but for now, keeping your expression neutral and your eyes down should suffice to avoid any breach of manners.

“You will handle beverages and comestibles as little as possible and use gloves when provided to avoid spoiling these items with your own scent.  There are many other protocols to be followed when handling food, but there isn't the time now to go over all of them.  Do you have any specific questions?  Have you any idea why you were flagged?”

Vern said all of this in a direct, matter-of-fact way, with no hint of irritation in his tone.  He was less brusque than Quar (and many other Rriigkhans) because it was his job to understand the cultural differences between their two species and to communicate in a way humans would find non-hostile.  Even after all these years he found it frustrating to prevaricate like a human.  (Why tell Ray he may address any Rriigkhan as Ghara when actually, he ought to do so?)  Still, it was his job to keep the servants obeisant, and this generation still expected to be treated something like equals even when working at scrubbing floors.  It was all a little ridiculous.

Yes, Ray nodded. They hadn't met, but Ray had been shown an image of Vern, told about him by several of the other staff so he'd know what to expect. He had the sense that he would have gotten the rundown on any Ricks on the property, no matter their role, just as a new zoo employee might learn the animals before he'd learn all the employee areas. You learn first about what's most dangerous.

The position Vern had left Ray - intentionally? naturally? - placed his back up against the slatted machine side of the coolers, so he couldn't really lean back, and even if he wasn't boxed in, if the position wasn't meant to be threatening, it still had the effect of establishing a gradient of power between them in this situation. Or maybe Ray was just a bit too sensitive to the these things at the moment. He folded his arms across his chest and nodded again for Vern to go on.

Poor performance. That was no surprised, not really. At least, it shouldn't have been. Still, color rose in his face and he could feel his ears burning. The instinct to defend himself, to sense himself as attacked and respond with a counter attack was strong; were he twenty years younger, just that might have given him ideas about walking out of the contract right that moment, costs be damned. Fatherhood had a way of quenching hot-headedness. He forced himself to listen, to keep his expression as neutral as possible and - as soon as Vern said it - to drop his gaze down a few degrees and let it stretch out toward middle distance.

"Thank you for bringing these to my attention, Ghara." That word came crisply from his mouth - not spat out, but smoothly, practiced, sinced he'd been ruminating on it since he'd learned it yesterday. He remembered quite well that it hadn't meant exactly 'Ma'am' or 'Sir' then, but he didn't dispute it.

Oh, this burned so much worse than being reprimanded. Lower his eyes. Call every Rick 'Sir'. Remove the smile, the personality, and be a competent little robot. He'd taken the intensive ICG course to get certified as correspondance out of Los Angeles, and they hadn't taught him any of these things. Really, despite the promises in the paperwork, they'd spent the entire month teaching him that if he kicked dust on the ICG, they'd fuck him three different ways before Sunday. This probably would have been covered under the 'you will experience regional differences in experience and behavior'. Why did he think probably most of his fellow graduates were getting speeches like this.

But he did remember something that was said with his classmates in the online session. Just fake it til you make it. The Rick instructor hadn't liked that, but hadn't argued it, either. If they want you to jump, you don't say 'how high?' You play the character that says 'how high', and you get paid handsomely for your acting role.

It was a very polite character that Ray had summoned to say, "Thank you for your patience in this matter. My training has been in water management, so I am still learning how to navigate these other matters. Yes, I suspect I know what I have been flagged for." At the time, he'd known he was being transgressive, talking to Quar, enlisting her help. Damnit! She hadn't seemed bothered at all when they parted, but he had to admit that he couldn't really read Ricks a tenth as well as he could humans, which wasn't that great to begin with. Notably, Vern didn't have anything to say about what to say when he was being hunted by a submerged Rick. "I shall amend my behavior. Is there any other way in which I should improve?"

He knew it wouldn't fly to suggest he should stick to water management, but hopefully after this little showing, Vern might come to that idea himself.

“Don't worry, Mr. Tanner.  I understand that you are new and I wasn't able to train you as I'd have liked...”  Vern trailed off, tilting his head as he eyed Ray thoughtfully, as if inspecting a bizarre piece of artwork that he couldn't quite wrap his mind around.  Finally his chest rose as he inhaled and he spoke again.

“There is simply too much for you to learn before you can serve food or beverages with confidence, so it would be best for you to be employed elsewhere tonight.  When these warm-up matches are over, Ghara Quar will require a porter to strike her camp.  You will do this, and assist her human armor-bearer with cleaning up if he requires it.”

Vern's tail lifted and curled inward, like a pug's, but looser.  He was pleased that he had thought of so elegant a solution to this problem.  The human couldn't muck up plain physical labor, and sending him back to Quar meant that she would see Vern had swiftly curtailed the problematic behavior.  As the humans say, it would be a win-win situation.

“Do you remember the way?  Her tent is magenta and gray.  Wait there for her return.”  He stepped aside to let Ray pass and flicked his hand in a very human shooing gesture.

"I remember the colors," Ray agreed, though that didn't exactly answer the real question. "They're very distinctive." He bounced just a little on the edge of his toes, but hadn't forgotten Vern's instructions not to smile. Though he was no actor - he never even rated as a tree in the school play - he did what he could to keep a poker face and show no particular emotion at all, or to meet Vern's gaze, pupil to pupil. Really, it was easier that way, anwyay. He could think his own thoughts without interrupting them to peer into every Rick pupil that happened to catch his. In any case, it shouldn't be too hard to find magenta and gray, and it was better than having Vern accompany him along the way.

He took a half-step away from the coolers, not quite leaving, but showing momentum in that direction. Would a Rick understand like a human that he was indicating his willingness to move on from the conversation? He suspected he should wait to be dismissed, but at least Vern might understand that he wasn't just goint to go back to sitting around. "Is there anything you'd have me do there while I'm waiting for them to return? I'd rather be doing something than just sitting around, personally."

As he did turn to got, though, he stopped and did meet Vern's eyes, though only for a moment. "Thanks."

“A good attitude, Mr. Tanner,” Vern said, nodding, a gesture which he thought made him more relatable to humans.  “Yes, gather up any unused trays or empty dishes you find in the tents and amphitheater area.  Bring them back to be washed.  Be sure to make yourself available to any Rriigkhan desiring your service, not only your employer.  Dismissed.”  As soon as he spoke the word Vern was turning from the human, his gaze far away as he checked his next tasks in AR.

***

While the fresh combatants waited for their khar vitra to carry the Prince's pedestal off the stage, Quar took a moment to check the line-up.  The match types and the combatants involved were randomly generated just before the games began to prevent too much strategizing beforehand.  Or collusion among those who cared more about the profits of their betting than their own honor.  It was rare, but it had happened.

“Lahroujel and Krist vs Quar and khar vitra,” she read aloud for Sam's benefit.  “Trial of Trust.  Fetch the shield.”  He nodded and laid her hammer down against the stone ledge, although Quar only saw that in the periphery of her vision.  He trotted off to the tent to retrieve her shield.  

Just as Hrissr had been slightly disadvantaged in her match, now it was Quar's turn to be disadvantaged in a different way.  She would be expected to keep one arm behind her back while the human guarded her with a shield in her stead.  She must trust him to block the attacks instead of flinching away from them.  This game paid homage to the tale of a Lohr khar vitra named Euvena who protected his master during an ambush in which her arm was crippled.  

It was unclear whether or not Euvena had ever been a real person.  Nevertheless, his story was an inspiring call to fulfill one's duty to the higher castes.

Inwardly she beamed with pleasure, glad to be the disadvantaged.  It made victory all the sweeter – something Hrissr could attest to just now, Quar was certain.  She watched the current match with half her mind while the rest of her thought back to the times she had met Lahroujel or Krist in battle, familiarizing herself with each female's fighting style and preferred weapons.  Her hammer was just perfect for this sort of match; Quar was glad she would not need to switch it out for something she preferred less.

By the time the 2v2 match was drawing to a close Sam stood beside her again, a round shield strapped to his left arm.  It was 1.5 foot across with a steel boss in the center and iron bands reinforcing the inside, the outside planking painted like a demonic eye if the boss were a pupil.  He'd put on his kettle helm.  She could smell his excitement – he was practically buzzing, his arms twitching and flexing while he watched the stage with a closed-lip grin.

Finally the two losing combatants limped off the stage while the victorious Rriigkhan brandished  her mace in a short kata.  No one had been injured so seriously as to need an ambulance, but the loser was bleeding profusely from a tail wound deeper than Ghija's had been, slicking the stones with blood.  She paused at the outside of the stage long enough to have this bandaged before going on to the medical tent not far away, for lesser injuries.  The winning khar vitra's leg had been injured so he was carried out on a stretcher by other humans.  

The crowd purred approvingly as the winner took her seat, all drinking in the mix of blood and pheromones heavy in the air while they shifted restlessly.  Energy crackled between them all.

Quar took up her hammer, letting it rest over her right shoulder.  It was quite a versatile weapon, with a flat hammer head on one end, a short curved beak opposite that, and spike a few inches long at the top.  Steel langets reinforced the haft for a foot of its length, although the wooden handle was 2.5 feet long altogether, with a steel cap at the end.  It could easily be used with one or two hands.

Her tail curled off the ground as she moved unhurriedly down the steps to the stage. Sam followed close on her heels.  Every detail of her posture, from a lifted muzzle to the squareness of her shoulders, spoke of self-assurance.  A pressure in her howrfs made her want to fully extend them, to announce to all that she was the strongest, the one to admire, but she did not.  

Because she wore a veil/aventail instead of a helm her face would be more of a target, but a Rriigkhan was very adept at blocking blows to the face with one's crest, and she preferred that than to be hit in her defenseless tail.  Tails were injured frequently because they were the only body part it was not practical to completely cover.

She stepped onto blood slicked stone, leaving a paw-shaped imprint with the bottom of the leather shoe worn under the sabatons.  She moved deeper onto the stage to a dry spot, tracking blood, and allowed Sam to sidle up on her left.  She could taste that blood on the back of her tongue now, just from breathing the scent, and despite her measured movements she could feel her heart pounding away inside her breast, matching the tempo of the drums.

"Mace and buckler again," Krist bellowed from her tent, nevermind who would hear her. "Why do I always get stuck in these limited exhibitions to qualify for the melee?" Really, it was unlikely Krist was complaining about the mace in particular, even if those were the words she used. She may have recently had crafted a flexible long-shafted spear she was eager to show off, but she had won often enough in the previous years with similar berserker, tight-quarters kit. What she would not yell quite so loudly, even if she wanted the organizers to hear the disgust in her voice, was her dissatisfaction at being paired wtih Lahroujel, who was older, more thoughtful and deliberate, and styled herself as a trap-spider who spun webs for her opponents to stumble into. It was all rather froufy when spoken about, but worse in the arena, when it denied the rush of battle and imposed logic on what should have been left to intuition.

"If I took my beaked hammer in, I could crush the meatbag's shield in a single blow," she continued from the the long wooden camp bench, where she sat, gripping the planks, switching her tail, and resting her foot on the shoulder of her khar vitra, who knelt before her to wrap her pads with a bandage that would spikes inserted halfway through, giving her 'cleats' of a sort that would double with her claws for quick turns on the stone. "And it didn't let go, I could fling him off the playing field."

Her male stood behind her, off to the side to allow her tail to flick unimpeded, and slipped his hands beneath her pauldrons to squeeze and massage at her thick shoulders. "I would love to see what you could do to him with your ringed flail, if you could attack him directly." His arousal was obvious in the way his ears flicked beneath his little knobby crest, but there were too many possible reasons for the arousal to pin it on anything in particular. Krist was, after-all, very well shaped and had wholly admirable shoulders.

"Will you step outside with me so we can practice our timing?" Lahroujel's shadow fell at the edge of the canopy, and she ducked to glance beneath the scalloped blue and orange edge. She was peculiarly, lankily tall, and favored white and gold for her colors, which only made her look pretentious with her tawny dappled fur. No love was lost between the two of them, which Lahroujel only made worse by insisting on Galactic Code manners, as if they all couldn't smell exactly what they were feeling.

"I'll join you at the stones shortly," Krist snapped back, without meeting her eyes. And to punctuate the words, she flexed the muscles beneath her howrfs and let <Stay out of my way!> ebb out.

Quar scanned the faces (or rather, the colors, as many faces were obscured by helms) in the tiered seats of the theater. Her opponents had not come, so many in the audience had resumed quiet chats or gotten up to stroll around the area while they waited.

It shook Quar out of her tree to realize that none of those faces were particularly interested in her. She was too new to the scene to have a big following like Hrissr. Ghijariis was probably just getting out of surgery, Hrissr had gone away to the medic as well... Lorheyj certainly had no interest in watching her.

Her tail sagged. Her ears could not, as they were already tucked beneath the chain veil, but her shoulders slowly rose and fell with a quiet, drawn out breath. That realization... stung, just a little. Nothing could be more pathetic than misting pheromones to be received only by disinterested passersby who would find her confidence just as ugly as she found Hrissr's. A sudden stab of jealousy tightened her jaw. Ghijariis may have lost but at least she fought well and now had a pair of males to mend the wounds to her ego.

“They won't skip our match, will they? If it takes too long for the others to come?” Sam asked, anxiousness quickening his words. He turned those wide, expectant eyes on Quar. He really feared this; she could almost taste his enthusiasm to fight. It wasn't often he had the chance to be directly involved in a match.

“They will not be so long,” Quar answered in an amused tone, sweeping her sidelong gaze across her khar vitra before returning to survey the crowd for Lahroujel or Krist – the latter was a narcissistic boor, in Quar's opinion, and probably the reason for the hold-up.

And there it was. Ray's eye twitched just a little, but he masked it as a closed-lip smile that squinted his eyes and, remembering himself, looked away to smooth out his expression. At his sides, his hands didn't make fists so much as they were closed while his thumb ground into his curled index fingers as a way of funneling away the swell of anger. Make yourself available to any Rriigkhan. How very different that was from 'Make yourself available to anyone. But as Vern turned, Ray simply inclined his head, waiting a moment for Vern to leave before he headed off in the direction he thought Quar's tent to be. Better to orient himself first; he could gather trays anywhere.

His eyes scanned the other black-clad servers, and looked out to where four men were trying to stabilize an event pole whose anchor had come loose. How many of them felt the same way? Really, how different was it from the way wealth-hoarding humans had treated the rest before the arrival of the Ricks?

The thought wasn't meant to feed oxygen to burning embers of rebellion in his heart, but to smother them. If everyone else could suck it up and put in their time, so could he. It was for Oranda, after all - medical school wasn't cheap, and having a parent in the ICG bumped her forward in line. When she was done he could flip the bird to all of this and go find a post on some mining platform, maybe.

By the time he caught sight of the magenta on gray canvas, he already had two abandoned serving platters tucked under his arm.

***

Lahroujel descended the the stepped seating of the amphitheater through the crowd, requiring no special fanfare, even if the light glinting off the gold chasing on her pauldrons was nearly as blinding as pure white of her tabard. She had an elaborate two-sided tree - where only up and down distinguished roots from branches - embroidered across her chest, but it was in the same white, and only visible if one peered long enough or knew what to look for. For all her outward dismissal of acclaim, Rouj courted attention the same way she fought - subtly, deliberately, and with unhurried confidence.

Her khar vitra descended with her, and rather than forcing him to follow and navigate the deep steps, she waited for him, paced beside him, and kept an arm draped over his shoulder so that her claws could play through the thick mane of steel-gray hair he wore. She spoke to him, and he responded, both too quietly for the crowd. She already carried her own buckler, even though he probably could have managed it with her mace and the muff-gauntlet he held for her. Nobody would have seriously suggested that Lahroujel's relationships with her armorbearer was sexual (or that Lahroujel was capable of that with anyone), but for that reason it was all the more inappropriate. Scents of disapproval wafted after her as she passed, and she pretended to ignore them, as she always did.

At the edge of the stones, she turned to face her human and touch his forehead with her bare pads, before offering her hand for him to glove, allowing him to loop the lanyard of the mace and taking it in her grip. "A pleasing afternoon to you and yours, Quar," she said as she was still preparing, before making eye contact. "I look forward to an honorable test of our mettle through battle. Also, I expect Krist should be along shortly. Do you wish any assistance in stretching? I intend to put you through your paces today. If you--"

Whatever she was about to say was cut off as Krist appeared over the rise, followed a step behind and to the side by her male; like many others, she left her khar vitra at her tent. She smacked the flanges of her mace against the rim of the buckler, not in time with the male percussionists, but insisting they follow her rhythm, which was only more persuasive when pheromones, nods, and hefting of her shoulders encouraged the crowd to chuff their teeth in time with her.

Lahroujel might have been able to smell Quar's discomfort, but that was totally unintentional; she hadn't gone so far as to pulse a stronger version of that scent into the air. In theory she didn't care how anyone else lived their life. In practice...

She averted her eyes when the other Rriigkhan touched her human's smooth little forehead, her lips wrinkling in a slight and unconscious cringe of revulsion, although not enough to lift them from her teeth. Sam watched this reaction from the side and dropped his gaze to the ground, then found reason to fiddle with the shield in his hands, as if checking it over for tears on the straps.

“Tsahf,” Quar replied to Lahroujel's greeting, lifting two fingers of the hand which held the haft of the hammer across her shoulder and slightly inclining her head. A polite, formal acknowledgment between members of the same caste – perhaps a subtle push-back against Rouj's embracing of alien norms.

She raised her muzzle to see what had interrupted Lahroujel, let her tail tap in obvious annoyance on the ground, then pointedly returned her attention to the Rriigkhan before her.

“I need no assistance, but if you offer me half the challenge that your Sister-in-battle believes she is capable of, I will be pleased,” Quar said, lifting the hammer from her shoulder so that she could perform a series of testing strokes that had her arm extending in every direction, followed by lunges on each side. Her khar virtra took this as his cue to perform a few stretches of his beside her.

“Tsahf,” she repeated when Krist stepped onto the stage. The disagreeable miasma of pheromones Krist brought with her could not stop the energy crackling in every nerve through Quar's body, lightening her limbs and sharpening every perception. She tossed her hammer from one hand to the other and back again, bouncing on her toes as she did so, then placed her left against the small of her back.

“Khar vritra,” she said, and he immediately stepped behind her to tie her wrist to her belt with a throng of hide. She could easily break it, but of course she would not. She hooked her thumb into her own belt to help hold her hand in place. When he had finished he moved over to her left, the apple of his throat bobbing as he swallowed. He exuded fear; not of the other Rriigkhans, Quar assumed, but of failing his master.

'Step' wasn't the most apt term for how Krist entered the stage. She backed in, mace raised above her head, buckler rising to continue to the rhythm as she smashed the steel band around the outside against the flanges, barely recognizing her two companions in the ring (three if the human khar vritra had to be recognized), and the very moment he stepped into position she turned and swung at Quar with all her might, with a blow that was meant to pulverize ribs or wood or whatever stopped her blow.

The audience - of course, only those who were in the process of moving for better positioning on the upcoming melee event - loved the explosivity of it, and pennants blue and orange were produced to show their favor. The swing left Krist off balance, as much of herself as she'd thrown into it, but she used her own buckler to bash against Sam and push herself back, hopefully out of range of a counter-strike from Quar.

Lahroujel hadn't even closed her visor at the first clash, but the sudden sound and impact didn't seem to surprise her. With the edge of her mitten gauntlet, she slapped down the visor at her own pace, hefted the mace in her hands a few times to familarize herself with the weight of it and turn it in the direction she favored, and began stalking around the outside of the stone to position herself a third of the way around or so from Krist. Let the other younger one have the glory of those first few blows and squander her energy in the process. Lahroujel watched, the gleam of her armor and colors lost in the bright midday sunlight and the glaring contrast of the other two. When Krist came charging across to keep the human between her and Quar - using him as her own shield and hopefully infuriating Quar if he got in her way - Rouj simply circled around opposite, and chose an ideal time to swing her mace, to meet Quar's sword-side elbow at the end of a follow-through.

Quar realized Krist's intentions before Sam did and danced right a pace to avoid the blow, simultaneously jabbing at the mace with her hammer. The weapons clacked against one another at an angle that only killed some of the mace's momentum. It would have been smarter for Sam to simply do nothing as the blow would already miss Quar, but in the heat of the moment his shield-arm shot out to belatedly guard the spot where Quar had been, hunching his shoulder and ducking his head. Because he'd been standing on Quar's left and the shield was also worn on his left arm, this meant his body had turned so that he was facing Quar more than Krist.

The flanges struck the top of the shield, biting into painted wood with a resonate crack. The force of the blow knocked the shield down against Sam's own helm. If his arm had been a few inches lower the mace would have clobbered him in the head. His knees bent slightly as he absorbed the blow, and some tiny part of Quar's mind was proud that he had not stumbled.

As she pulled her arm back from that initial strike Quar shifted the hammer in her hand so that she was holding it nearer the middle of the haft and jabbed again, haft parallel to the ground, driving the point at Krist's midsection. It was not an awfully powerful strike, and although the barbed tip might dent her armor she wasn't expecting any penetration. It was more meant to get Krist away from them and let Sam recollect his wits.

Sam also bore the buckler bash with fortitude, thought it forced him to step back to catch himself from staggering.

Quar backed away from the center of the stage, turning her body so that both Krist and Lahroujel were within her view, although she knew that keeping them both in front of her would be a vain attempt – they'd go into the stands or the grass beyond the stage get behind her, if they had to. Now the scents and the noises and all bodily sensations fell away, and it was as if she saw only these two beings.

Running backward, Sam hurriedly returned to stand close Quar, on her left and slightly in front of her without impeding the movements of her weapon arm. When Krist broke into a sprint she saw, from the corner of her eye, that Rouj was indeed moving behind her, now out of sight. This left her two choices, approximately. Try to attack Krist head-on and allow herself to take the blow from behind, or trust in Sam to block any attacks in front while she dealt with the older, more predictable Rriigkhan. She adjusted her grip closer to the base of the haft to give herself better reach, which might have been seen as a preparation to strike over the top of Sam's shield.

When she judged from Lahroujel's footsteps that the other was behind her, Quar whirled clockwise, slamming the hammer out sideways at the level of her own jaw with all the might in that arm, hoping that Lahroujel had edged close enough to be within her reach, given the shorter reach of her own weapon.

While an attempt to target the human directly would not have reflected well on Krist, clearly she had every intention of going through him to get to Quar, rather than finding a path around. She swung again when she was in range, even if it meant trading another dent to her own armor, or having to duck beneath her buckler. Top-heavy as she was, her armor was designed the same way. She was quick like any healthy Rriigkhan, but her strength and the metal thickness of her breastplate and shoulders inclined her to take a few flat blows, as long as it wasn't the beak turned in her direction.

Casually, while she sidestepped, a finger came up to feel at that first solid dent Quar had left, and insure the metal was merely concave and not torn.

Whether Krist was playing to Lahroujel or the opposite wasn't clear, but in that moment they seemed to be uncharacteristically cooperating: Rouj readied her stroke, and was forced to cancel her momentum, to duck behind her buckler instead and attempt to send the glancing over her head, which was all the more difficult with her height. Precise as she tended to be, the block was well-executed in the moment, but the hammer was heavy and Quar's arm strong, so the wood split in the metal bands and Rouj was sent stumbling away, to spin beyond range and consider whether it was worth abandoning the buckler now. The mace she carried wouldn't do any better with both hands free.

But that little tangle between Quar and Rouj left Krist the opportunity to push her attack, to swing a full-armed blows from the right and then back across the left, forcing the human not so much to move to counter her, but to hold against her strength, and her obvious determination to simply shatter the shield-- and then a surprise: the third strike she telegraphed just like the other two, a wide swing across her body and parallel to the ground, but instead of finishing it, she transferred the momentum to her body in an attempt to dance around toward Quar's back while she was still engaged with Lahroujel... at least until the latter backed away again, refusing the moment of engagement that any hotblooded warrior should have taken in favor of collecting herself and reassessing.

Krist's attacks were straightforward enough; Sam jerked the shield up in time to catch the first, which slammed into the shield with jarring force. With his head ducked, he tucked his arm against the lip of his helm to prevent his arm being knocked down again and pushed forward, trying in vain to throw her off.

It was on her second strike that the wood cracked. He felt the hit down to his bone, even through the shield. The flanges dug painted splinters out of the wood when she hauled the weapon back. Hide lining on the inside of the shield prevented him from viewing the fractured plank from his end, but he understood the meaning of the sound. He risked a glance over the top of the shield, saw her drawing back her arm for another attack. He braced himself for the coming attack, feet planted apart on the stone.

Quar pushed aggressively after Lahroujel without pause. She let momentum carry the hammer around for another swing from the opposite side but narrowly missing the other Rriigkhan as she darted back out of range. She followed through with a jab, then another, forcing the other to parry or dodge without giving her time to think about it. It was the only path that made sense to her; she had one chance to disable one of the combatants, after which it would become a more even fight. If Sam kept blocking Krist's furious blows like the one she'd just heard he was likely to end up with a broken arm, but knowing one's tools also meant knowing the appropriate time to sacrifice them.

Quar and Sam were now several feet apart with their backs to one another. As soon as he realized Krist's deception his head jerked aside to note Quar's position and the fact that Krist was running past him toward Quar's back.

He sprinted at her, holding his arm tight to his body and thus the shield also, his fist against his temple and his head bowed so that them top of his kettle helm curved over the rim. He meant to throw the entirety of his weight at the Rriigkhan's side if he could.

Parry, parry, deflect, dodge - Lahroujel went on the defense with the same sort of methodical precision that she attacked, using the shank of her mace to to work the hammer. The flanges didn't stick out far enough for her to catch the hammer, and while she used what was left of her shield to space herself, she gave ground easily, retreating onto the steps of the amphitheater easily - very easily. Her claws gripped at the edges of the stone. Beneath her helmet, her breathing was regular, and her voice sounded pleased when she said "Good Touch!" as the hammer clipped the keel of her armor, momentarily tipping her balance - or had it? Her legs compressed, and the weight of her crest tipped forward, as though she were about to leap past the younger Rriigkhan sitting beneath them, torn between scrambling back and braving the edge of the fray.

Spurred on by Quar's focus on her counterpart, Krist bounded after her. Of course the khar vritra would attempt to sacrifice himself for her, to throw her off her angle; behind her own mask, she cackled with glee as she stopped short and lashed out with with a foot, using claws and cleats in an attempt to grab him near the knee and throw him off to the side. The sound of her gleeful attack on the khar vitra, though, was foolish, as it provided Quar with warning she was just behind her.

The shoe and sabaton combo that Quar wore were not ideal for climbing those steps, but at least she was not moving backward up them as Lahroujel was. She chased the other Rriigkhan to the edge of the stage, climbing up onto the lowest ledge by the time Lahroujel had made her way to the next. The thin crowd behind Rouj parted as the audience moved to left or right away from the fighters, not really out of any fear of being injured but because they had no desire to interfere.

Lahroujel stood just above her. Quar's left arm flexed but the tug against her wrist reminded her that her arm was bound. Otherwise, she'd have flung the child sitting between Lahroujel's legs out of her way – but then the child squeaked and scrambled out on her own.

As Rouj tensed for a possible jump, Quar found her perfect opening in that single moment of hesitation. An upward jab drove the hammer's spike into the Rriigkhan's right inner thigh, under her tassets and above the top of her cuisse. She had the pleasure of feeling that piercing tip puncture yielding flesh, and on the downstroke she bent to slam the haft down onto the toes of the opposite foot. It all happened too quickly to truly appreciate the sucking sensation of metal withdrawn from muscle, but an immediate, strong scent of copper flooded her senses.

One-handed, neither strike had the power behind it that Quar could have liked. The spike had not driven into the flesh more than an inch or two, but to create a bleeding wound was enough. She tucked her chin down as she backpedaled, expecting Lahroujel to lash out and hoping to take any blows on her crest instead of her face, her heart soaring with triumph.

***

With his leg yanked out from under him, Sam dropped like a marionette with strings cut, ass hitting the flagstone first, then his back and the lip of his helmet. The impact as enough to wrench his helmet forward on his head, over his eyes, but it had protected his skull from what could have been a very painful impact. It stunned him for a fraction of a second. His mouth worked in a breathless gasp before he finally pushed out a warning shout, though Quar had certainly heard him hit the ground first.

“Q-Quar!”

Said Rriigkhan whirled away from Lahroujel and leapt from the ledge, plates clattering when her paws hit the ground. Her jaw dropped open to lightly pant as she quickly moved back from Krist. She was giving Sam time to get himself up again, her path curving as she moved to bring herself away from the seating area – she did not want to be backed up against that. She bared her teeth while a creaky purr rose then died in the back of her throat. She said nothing; to mock would be to make an ass of herself if she lost, but she scraped her hammer against the ground in front of her with a flamboyant twist of her wrist.

Though Lahroujel's landing was not what she had planned, it was controlled - mostly. There was little she could do against an onslaught by the hammer without her shield, not as tall and lanky and slow as she was by comparison. Quar had taken her bait, but the trap had not sprung around her; even as she landed on a single leg, twisting that ankle, and the other crumpled limp beneath her, she had to admire the placement of that spike inside her leg - another centimeter higher and Quar would have ruined the tendon that kept her leg from splaying. In another second, Quar would be on her to remove her completely from the battle, forcing her to yield, but that moment didn't come.

Good. Krist had made use of the time bought for her, though doubtless she would not see it that way. Lahrouhjel's snout lifted just enought to assure herself that none of the shadows of the audience moving around her were Quar (her smell was still so strong, and trapped in the melange inside her armor). Remaining seated on the grass-overgrown step, she lifted her visor and brought her tabard to her mouth to tear off an edge, then shoved that fabric into the blood-ebbing hole Quar had left her. She would not be at full strength now - even wresting the mace from the grass where it had embedded revealed a tremble in her arm, but she beat at the armor around the pierced area, nevermind that it drove the sheared edge of the steel into her skin. What was more important was the pressure it applied to the wad of fabric beneath. A few more bangs stiffened the workings around her knee. It was only then that she even noticed the beating her other foot had taken, but nothing could be done for that, as long as it would support her for a few moments.

It was no tourniquet or splint, but for a field dressing it might buy her another minute, which would be enough. Almost she wished Quar had ruined the leg to the point she could tear it off, but that would have been more difficult getting down the stairs. Forcing herself to her feet with gritted backteeth and the use of her mace as a short crutch, she went hobbling straight over the uneven seating area toward Quar, expecting everyone else to clear the way. Perhaps Krist was clever enough to capitalize on a second distraction.

***

Krist was not too good for taunting on the other hand. She paced the opposite side of the circle, remaining out of reach and allowing Quar to chase her or stand and catch her breath. "Let's see. You have lost your shieldling and the use of an arm. I have lost a bit of breath." Behind her mask she licked away slather and huffed out her scent of pre-victory, of the inevitable upper hand at Quar. "Your hammer is strong, but you have overestimated your ability to control it without the second arm. I need only catch it once with this buckler and you will have no defense against tasting the same defeate you handed Hrissr. Perhaps you will get your new eye orange in my honor? Or, you may surrender to me now, and save yourself the several hours beneath the medic's laser which could be better used preparing for melee."

Through the narrow teardrop shapes that allowed her vision, her dark gaze flicked past Quar to the gleaming gold and white shape that came lumbering awkwardly down from the seating, making even more noise with her warcry than with her clatter. Krist snarled and dashed forward, not about to be denied the finishing blow.

"I overestimate nothing, Krist. I am serving the role allotted to me by chance, and you embarrass yourself with this blather. But I do promise you this: If I visit the medic you will be there alongside me," Quar purred with levity in the curve of her tail, though her lips curled back to flash her teeth. She probably was going to lose, but she was determined to lose well. She blew air from her nose as if to clear out Krist's obnoxious emissions.

By this time her khar vitra had rolled up onto his knees and then his feet, quickly yanking the helm back into place and adjusting the strap at his chin. He saw Lahroujel coming up behind his master, while Krist stood between Quar and himself. The human shouted his own inarticulate war cry as he broke into a sprint for Krist's back with the shield up over his shoulder, and in that same moment Quar loped toward Krist with her hammer resting on her shoulder. It was a good position to launch either an overhand attack or let her arm drop to swing from below She was willing to take a hit on her face or body if it meant getting at least one good strike on Krist's face.

This time, it was Krist's right arm Sam was angling for; he veered a little to the right because he hoped to deal her a glancing blow with the shield as he went by, then swing around to take his place by Quar's side again. If he slammed directly into Krist's back he would be killing his own momentum and remaining seperated from Quar. Now it was up to Krist: get bashed in the back or whirl around to deal with the human. Sam was prepared for either eventuality.

Through the snout of her helmet, Krist cackled in response, appreciating the fight in Quar, and the shift in her pheromones reflected that. They both knew she would come out the victor here, but it was always better when Krist could earn it by cracking bone and spilling blood. This little tete-a-tete was more to Quar's favor in terms of catching her breath, but Lahroujel wasn't the only one who could be patient and make use of that. Her tongue licked her teeth as she weighed avenues to get inside Quar's guard. Her shoulders straitened, forming an impressive aegis with the silhouette of her crest.

And then that damn shieldling. Of course she heard his war cry as a prelude to attack, a distraction, but also a rising above his station of defense. It didn't matter if the argument could be made that she'd attacked him directly. With that fool Rouj lumbering back down to the stage, she corner-stepped, turning to keep Quar in the corner of her eye while she shouldered into the shield bash to ruin his angle, and then followed up with a series of quick swings downward with the short mace, attempting to ruin the shield, to drive him back to the ground, to hammer him like a nail into the grass-ruts between the stones. "Fool!" she spat through the slather in a growly Rriigkhan, meant for Quar rather than him. "You attack, and open yourself to destruction." It wasn't anger though, but glee at the opportunity, at the chance to splatter the human shieldling and to infuriate Quar.

Lahroujel's calculations were off. She expected to take Quar's hammer for her charge, but so that Krist could issue solid blows to her ribs and hips; did the stupid brown Rriigkhan really believe she was served by delaying and facing Quar alone. But without her shield or either leg good enough to dance on the stage, Rouj was committed, closing on Quar with an underhanded swing that was less powerful, but wouldn't cost her her grip on the mace if Quar turned to block it.

The first blow against the shield stopped Sam from sprinting past because it almost knocked him off his feet. He staggered back, right leg outstretched behind himself to brace his foot against the ground. On the second thundering slam he dropped to that knee to prevent himself falling over completely, his head ducked and face screwed up around his gritted teeth. Wood cracked close to his ear; his body rocked back with the force of the blow. The mace had split the wood in a second spot. On the next strike the mace punched through one of those weakened spots and a sharp crack of pain shot down his arm despite the shield taking much of the shock. Krist ripped splintered shards of wood from the hole when she pulled the weapon back.

Quar swung her hammer up well over her head, taking the opportunity afforded by Krist's distraction to leave herself open long enough to impart real power into the swing. It was likely the only chance she'd get; Sam's shield was about to be ruined, and he himself might not be much help after this. The head of her hammer curved from right to left, the flat of it speeding toward the back of Krist's skull behind her crest, the one place a Rriigkhan seldom expected to be hit. In that moment Quar was pure animal – her fangs clenched and bared, a creaky rattle in her throat, her sacs pulsing with <FIGHT!>

At the moment of impact a flat bang and a bruising impact on her knee brought Quar's attention to Lahroujel. She yanked her hammer back to grip it closer to the langets and whirled, lashing out blindly with her hammer toward the enemy behind her. Lahroujel's mace dented her poleyn inward so that it did not hinge as easily as it ought. Her knee ached distantly from that slam. In this moment of racing blood and furious intent, it did not enter into her thoughts at all.

One more good strike would have put the shieldling down for good, and certainly had Krist been afforded the opportunity, that was the goal. With a splintered shield before her, it was only natural to go in for the finishing blow, just as rolling stones rolled downhill. The audience was with her, throat-chortling to see the human brought down who had deigned to attack one of theirs from behind instead of satisfying himself by throwing himself in front of blows. (In all fairness, outside of the lust for violence and blood, most would have agreed that it was admirable to flout the rules and bear the cost for it, in order to protect his master.) Feet stamped on pavers, fists rattled armor where it was worn, vainly trying to keep time with the better-trained males' drumming and cymbal clashes. What had started out as an overlooked side battle was drawing back viewers to the top of the rise.

But Krist had kept an eye on Quar for good reason, and ducked to bring her buckler up to absorb the blow she could not dodge. Like the others, it was reduced to splinters, the small boss smashed all the way through to compress her gauntle into her hand - without any shields in the fray, it would necessarily end soon, as designed. This was to be Krist's moment, inside Quar's swing to reduce her with a bunch of shorter, weaker strikes, but she was too jarred to do more than answer with a glancing blow meant to put distance between them.

"That was a killing blow!" Her voice, the hunch in her shoulders, the pheromones issuing out through vents along her crests all carried fury. Destroying a brain in these battles was the only unrecoverable wound, and the best protection a Rriigk had behind her crest was the hunch of her shoulders and not allowing an enemy access in the first place. Her fingers twisted the mace, bringing the widest flanges to the swing angle.

With both legs damaged, Lahroujel could not push off her pads to change direction; the head-thrust of the hammer sent her toppling back, arms wheeling in the air to get behind her before she crashed back to the stone. But this, at last, as the opening Krist took advantage of: she could not drop the buckler so used it to her advantage, smashing it up under the back of Quar's crest like a wedge, to bring the mace down a the top of Quar's spine.

“Urk!” The noise Quar made was high-pitched and involuntary when the mace slammed down on her spine with such force that black spots dappled her vision. Her left arm jerked hard enough to snap the throng which held it. She almost flailed out with that hand before remembering the rules of the game and grabbing her own belt. She'd been in the process of readying her hammer for another powerful downward bash against Lahroujel on the ground, but now she dropped to one knee, gasping, vision returning but sense fleeing. The head of her hammer thunked down against the flagstone. She could not even use it as a crutch because of the point on its top.

A red fury washed along every nerve alongside the ache radiating out to every limb from the point of impact. Her own howrfs oozed rage into the air, and that mingled cloud of angry pheromones dug with barbed fingers into her brain. With Lahroujel downed before her Quar had the chance to injure at least one of her opponents, but that was not going to happen. She flung the hammer out as she twisted her torso and shifted her weight from one knee to the other, her tail swinging behind her as a counterbalance as she turned as far as she physically could without standing up.

As this happened her khar vitra scuttle-crawled around Krist, using his right hand, his right knee and his left foot to scrabble over the stones. The man was panting, sweat rolling down his face. A ragged hole had been punched into the shield near the top, the wood splintered in yet another place. Using that one unencumbered hand he shoved himself upright so that he stood on his knees, bleary eyes jumping from Krist to Lahroujel, trying to decide which enemy he ought to face. He was now facing Quar in the space her swinging hammer had vacated a second earlier, Krist at his immediate left.

"Tangle the shieldling!" Krist shouted through the thick air inside her helmet.

Lahroujel could not ignore an actual, good faith attempt at cooperation from the fool. That both Quar and her human were on the ground now, too, served her well. She'd fallen to her back, arms now lifted in preparation to roll from the crash of the hammer that now did not come, but on the ground she was long and flexible. Twisting, a hand shot out like a cobra, claws skittering on the human's armor to grab a lip of his breastplate so she could yank him toward her and ball herself around him. The idea of dislocating his limbs into submission did not appeal to her - it seemed to have missed the point of the exhibition - but she could at least ensure his only shielding now would protect her from Quar's retaliation. Her mace as an anchor on the stone gave her a bit of extra reach; next she'd bring it around to trap the human's ruined shield, so it he didn't make a weapon of it.

Krist just laughed, rattling her throat-pouch as she stepped into Quar's swing, ensuring that she caught little more than a haft or a even Quar's fist against her fauld. In exchange she brought the edge of her buckler down on Quar's shoulder, and and followed with a blow toward her chest from the mace, pressing her point - exhuasting more than damaging, attempting to trap her hammer-arm as she battered all the way to the ground. Once she had Quar on her back and straddled her, getting another hand on the buckler would help her to collapse the gorget or work up beneath it quickly enough. In her eagerness, she got herself right up over Quar, ready to kick her flat.

Sam tried to twist away from Lahroujel, but being on his knees he simply wasn't able to move fast enough.

“Rick... bitch!” he huffed, thrashing in her embrace until he was red faced and kicking out, trying to hit her legs with his boots. His limbs banging against her armor accomplished little for himself but bruises. As he kicked he released his grip on his shield and began to work it from his arm. In the heat of the moment he had no definite plan, only knew that the bulky object on his arm wouldn't help pry himself free of Lahroujel's grip.

Quar realized her idiocy the moment she felt the haft of her hammer clank uselessly against Krist's faulds and bounce back. The blows to her shoulder rattled armor without much effect, although she heard the sharp clack of her breastplate denting inward when the mace struck her, and then her hammer was all tangled up with Krist's weapon. She knew what would come next: Krist would try to get on top of her. The moment that happened the fight would be over, just as it had been for Ghijariis. The only way out of this now would be to ensure that Krist went down first, but the beak on the back of her hammer was too short to be used reliably as a hook, and she knew she did not have the strength of arm to sweep one of Krist's legs out from under her with it. She yanked the hammer back so that she held it close to the head, and so that Krist could not trap and control it.

The growl in her throat rose to a roar and she pitched forward, wrapping her arm around Krist's thighs, clinging with that one arm with all the strength she had.

Even after realizing her mistake, Krist had little option but to keep pummeling at Quar's back and shoulders. There was no angle or leverage to use the buckler here; with more time she could have tried to slam at the same spot on Quar's spine, but time was exactly what she didn't have. The audience bellowed with excitement when they realized the reversal and saw Krist's top-heavy shape go toppling back like a felled tree. She hit the stone with a mighty, steel-rattling crash.

Lahroujel fixed her grip with Sam's movements, tightening and restraining more and more at each opportunity. She had centuries of practice over him and strength, and soon her legs were pretzeled around his, thighs outside, knees crossing over, and feet hooked behind his ankles, while one arm compressed over his and his chest, and the other twisted the mace beneath his helmet, looking to apply increasingly uncomfortable pressure or snap the leather strap that held it on. "Shh, Human," she hissed in the cant. "Know when to surrender. You will do no better service to your master if you force me to damage you."

Panic mingled with the rage that flowed out of Krist's helmet; her angry howl was punctuated with her flailing about with the mace to try to keep space between her and Quar. Her legs came up, claws bared to prevent the grapple, but that only made it easier for Quar to free her hammer.

Sam finally did stop thrashing, though his chest worked like a bellows while he panted furiously through his scrunched nose. Bitter disappointment twisted his features; the cords of his neck stood out in sharp relief from his straining. He knocked his head back against the Rriigkhan's chest to no effect. He was too pinned, he had no leverage. It was merely an act of frustration.

“I gave her her one-on-one fight, that's good enough for me,” he hissed out between clenched teeth, the corner of his lips twisting up in an ugly unhappy smile.

"Yes, you did well," Lahroujel acknowledged. Even as the human subsided, though, she did not relax. Her muscles remained tense, like a predator in long grass poised to pounce at just the right moment, but it was carefully callibrated not to cause undue pain or damage to Sam. Her own study of her khar vitra had advised her of the intensity with which they experienced pain; by his request, she had not had him modulated, and was unsure what Quar had done with hers. Battles, after all, were meant to be a joy. Pain to a human, it seemed, was a distress that could frequently mitigate that thrill. It was a curious fault.

The struggle nearby was too fast, furious, and unrhythmic for the males to narrate with drums and cymbals, so they focused on on a rhythm instead that would mirror an elevated heartrate. When they couldn't influence the battle, influencing the audience was a near second. A skyline of Rriigkhan bodies now ringed the top of the amphitheater as so many had come back to watch these final moment, but had not filtered back to the seats. Everyone knew this tempo couldn't last, not when it was grappling but both were still raining blows on each other. The pheromone cloud wafting out of the amphitheater was so thick that when human servers without masks came to deliver an order, they frequently had to blink away tears and breathe through their teeth.

***

Each blow to Quar's back jarred her. She felt them down to her bones, felt her armor crushing inward with every dent. Her cuirass and pauldrons were so banged up now that it was even easier for Krist's strikes to damage her, having no smooth curving surface to deflect strikes of the wrong angle. But then she had the satisfaction of feeling a shudder through her arm when Krist hit the ground and knew, she knew she had not won the fight, but that she would fulfill her promise. That was the only thing that mattered anymore.

She yanked her hammer back from under Krist's legs, but the movement was not a smooth one. The head bumped and scraped against the flagstone and against Krist before it came free, and in that moment of vulnerability Krist's mace battered down right on Quar's veiled snout.

The velvety fur of her face would absorb less impact than the longer insulating fur over the rest of her body. Flanges beat mail into her flesh and beneath that, bone cracked. Quar felt it as a gritty scraping sensation inside her face. The blow knocked her head down and drew a ragged cry from her lips that twisted into a snarl. Immediately, hot blood welled inside her nasal cavity and oozed from her nostrils. It was not a great quantity of blood, but she would no longer be able to breathe through her nose without inhaling liquid.

A mad struggle followed. The Rriigkhans became a tangle of limbs and scents and yowling voices, with Quar battering down on Krist with her hammer while Krist interposed her mace to prevent a crushing blow to her face like the one she had dealt to Quar. She struck out at Quar's face every time the hammer lifted. Some of these strikes Quar caught on her crest by dipping her head; others landed on her neck or muzzle until her entire head throbbed. All this while Quar tried to pin Krist's legs with her knees, but she couldn't quite do it. She was between her enemies legs and Krist kept kicking her elbow to try to throw her arm off.

The drumming jumped to a furious tempo. The cymbals punctuated every strike with a crash, faster and faster, while the audience growled or chuffed approvingly depending on their sympathies. Quar was aware of none of this. Her entire world had narrowed to the helmeted face beneath her. Her howrfs pulsed; clear fluid wept from the cavities in her crest. Blood and frothed spittle pattered down on Krist from above.

“Say the words!” she bellowed, flipping the hammer in her hand so that the beak pointed down. She did not raise it over her head, as that would leave her open, but she raised it as far as her chin -- ready to smash the beak down again.

"Never!" came Krist's reply. Fury fueled her; even on her back, this was a moment worth living for and she wouldn't cut it short. With her shorter mace, she could be more precise with her strikes, aiming for specific spots on Quar's helmet to crush it in; after her snout, she was working for her eyes next to blind her, and that would give her an unassailable edge. The blows she took in turn landed heavy, especially with gravity to aid Quar, but she underwent impact training daily; she was sure she could handle it.

And then a blow landed. The beak pierced, but didn't draw blood; still, Krist's body immediately lost muscle tone; her lifted legs slumped against Quar's thighs, and the arm holding her mace clattered to the ground above her head.

Before the audience could respond, Rouj's voice came plainly, evenly from behind her. "Concede." Releasing her grip on Sam, she lifted him off her, to put him on his feet, before sliding to a sitting position herself.

By then, the assembled watchers had realized what had happened, and a chortling cry rose. Metal smacked against metal as other armed Rrigks around the rim of the amphitheater gave noise to their approval.

Quar's arm was poised over Krist's face, ready to smash her hammer down again before she registered a change in her opponent. She instead blinked stupidly down at the other Rriigkhan, chest heaving and slaver dripping past her parted jaws until Lahroujel's voice snapped her to reality.

“Accepted,” she said. A heady rush of pride swelled within her breast, seemed to sweep through her limbs and up her spine into her skull. This time she gave into the pressure, allowed her howrf sacs to inflate to the extent that they lifted a few inches from their cavities to spew <VICTORY!> She hefted her hammer into the air with both her hands as she stood up from Krist's prone body, throwing back her head and shoulders, trilling with a pleasure that undulated down her tail from base to tip. When she straightened her spine she dropped the hammer to sweep it glancingly across the flagtones, cutting a white line on the stone with the point. Slowly the drumming stalled, and even though the audience made noise, the amphitheater seemed shockingly quiet without it. The echo of it pounded on distantly in Quar's brain.

Sam was beaming with a closed-lip grin even as he wiped at his teary eyes with the back of his sleeve. To him Quar's scent organs looked like some hairy worm from a cave that had never seen the light of day, and the pheromones stung like capsaicin, but he understood the thrill of emotion that they represented. He wanted to thrust out a hand for Lahroujel to shake but he composed himself and only nodded to her before picking up his shield and trotting over to stand a few feet from Quar. His face was still red and splotchy, the hair at the back of his skull matted with sweat under his helm.

Quar stabbed the point of her hammer into the dirt between the stones so she could use it as a staff and held her hand out to Krist.

“Are you conscious?” she asked. A shadow fell across them both and a rush of wind ruffled her tail; the ambulance ship swung into the airspace overhead. An uncertainty close to fear prickled in her back-brain. The type of helmet Krist wore made it difficult to tell exactly how badly she'd been damaged. Droplets of blood plipping down on her own outstretched arm brought Quar's attention to a cut on her lip she didn't realize she'd gained, in addition to the smashed nose.

“I'll take this, Ghara,” Sam said. She released the hilt of her weapon so she could rub her gauntlet over her muzzle and look at the smear of blood on her palm. Her chain veil was like a sleeve that opened at the end of her mouth, meaning that her nose and lips could be hit at the right angle, and at some point in that struggle a flange of Krist's mace had caught her above the lip. In other places the mail links had been smashed into her face with such force that they cut her. Blood continued to dribble out of her nostrils and down her lips, dying her teeth and dripping down the fur of her chin.

A pair of Rriigkhan medics were dropping down on the lift just a few feet away.

As soon as the medics lifted her visor, Krist's eyes shot open, and her whole body jolted as though trying to complete the action she'd been caught in the middle of before. It always took a while for the realization of the lost few minutes to settle in, to accept that the match was over, but the medics were used to that, and applied pressure to her shoulders until they were sure that she wasn't a danger to herself. A few questions later, and despite her assurances that it wasn't necessary, they transferred her to a restraining board and carried her to the lift. Her male sat at the edge of the seats, claws raking through the fur at his cheeks in disbelief, until he saw her weapons abandoned and (rather than collect them himself) stalked back to the tent to yell at the armorbearer who had been left behind.

Lahroujel's human was already with her, having transferred the remains of her buckler to a strap on his back and hooked the loop of her mace at his shoulder. She leaned heavily on him, waving off the medics who offered her a ride, so they could limp together toward the nearby tent. Already her fingers were tousling his hair, and there was a glint of humor in her eye as they shared a few muttered words.

***

One of the event organizers, a friend of Vern's with spotted streaks in his fur approached Quar with a tablet as he finished tallying the results. "Be certain to log your preferences for the melee in the next quarter hour. You've accumulated enough points to have eighth choice in role.”

The work really didn't bother Ray; he hadn't been lying about that. Even being outside in the afternoon in full black and with a mask beneath the sun more often than not was preferable when had something to do, rather than just stand around. Eventually, perhaps, he may have made enough friends to want to spend time with them and watch Ricks bash each other in, but it wasn't something he sought. Collecting trays until his arms were full with three or four of them gave him plenty of opportunity to move around, to begin to understand the layout of the grounds, and to get a sense of what other Ricks were like in this part of the world.

From what he saw, Quar certainly wasn't the worst possible option. The way some of those hyenas spoke to the people wearing those colors made his lips curl - at least until he remembered himself.

He knew Quar was fighting, and knew when he heard the cheer that someone had come out victorious. So he double-stepped with the last load of trays, unloading them in another server's arms rather try to fight his way under the tent with everyone else streaming out, and hurried back to the magenta and gray to intercept Sam and make sure he knew he had an extra pair of hands to help.

Quar stood aside to let the medics do their work, turning to Lahroujel with a slight incline of her crest, then sweeping her gaze across the crowd so she could bask in their attention just a moment longer. Every fiber of her body thrummed with energy! She'd much prefer to fight again than to walk off, or to bellow, or run and jump, to move... but already the next pair of combatants were approaching the stage.

She strode from the arena with her chin high while Sam huffed and puffed up the big steps behind her, hugging her hammer to his chest. In truth she needed medical care for her nose, but to be airlifted out while her legs worked would be an embarrassment. What she needed first was to get the damned veil off her head, which was a somewhat laborious process as the rings had to be unhooked from the piercings along the edge of her crest. But there was time to deal with that; the warm up matches at the amphitheater must finish before the melee could begin.

A few minutes later saw her stepping into the blessed shade of her tent. She breathed shallowly through parted lips, occasionally licking at the flow of blood down the front of her muzzle. To see the human standing there startled her slightly because she had not been able to smell him, but Quar brushed past Ray without a word and dropped herself heavily into the camp chair, immediately letting her legs splay, one elbow resting on the tiny armrest and the other flopped over her lap. The adrenaline rush was wearing off and now she felt sapped. Her tail slapped lazily against the ground.

Sam followed right on her heels, nodding at Ray as he laid down Quar's hammer against the trunk and let the shield fall on the grass.

“Get this damned veil off me! And a cloth for this blood. Human, what are you doing skulking about in here?” Her eyes cut to Ray then forward again. She imagined her appearance must be quite grisly: although it was hard to tell because of the chainmail, the top of her nose was crushed inward, several links of mail had cut round marks into her muzzle, a shallow slash decorated the fur just above her lip, and, unknown to Quar, two prongs of her crest had been chipped while a fresh gouge had been plowed across one of the flatter planes.

Sam quickly knelt before the secondary equipment chest to rummage for a cloth.

“I have coagulants in there somewhere,” Quar added, possibly cutting off whatever Ray's answer might be.

"Vern sent me here, Ghar--"

Ray's lips pressed shut when he didn't get a chance to finish the word; it wasn't as though he wanted to say it anyway. He'd thought he'd be out of the way where he was standing, but against that particular tentpole he was now in the middle of the action, and stepped back and to another side to make himself less conspicuous... at least until Sam turned to reach that way instead. His hands had been folded in front of his waist (as though he were some damned hotel bellhop) while he kept his gaze angled off toward the ground and his lips closed, but a few glimpses of all that blood had shaken away most of his new-found servility.

God, it looked bad. It looked like they'd just pulled her out of a car accident. She must have lost badly; in any sport he'd watched, if someone came away looking like that, they'd be on their way to the lockerroom for the team doctor to treat. Yes, he could recall the conversation with Quar earlier, and he understood that she expected something like that, but the sight of her had thrown him into trauma mode, like when Oranda came running into the apartment with skinned elbows after falling off her skateboard.

"Tell me how I can help you," he said quickly, low and for Sam's ears as he squatted nearby. "Vern sent me to help with whatever you need. I can apply pressure. Use tinsnips on that chainmail. Whatever you need. Pretty bad out there today, eh?" At least Sam didn't look like someone had been using his face for a chopping block, but he'd been in that same car wreck. "Sodium Vasopressin - that's a coagulant," he noted, pointing at the partially rolled tube as he saw it go by. "I recognize that one." His gaze flitted from Sam back to Quar; the natural instinct was to flash her a smile, to send her that wordless assurance that everything would be okay soon, but he stopped himself. Instead he fixed her with a sort of expressionless stare that only lasted a moment before he dropped his eyes, gave her a quick nod, and then returned his attention to Sam for an answer.

Sam turned bemused eyes on Ray, but as he opened his mouth to speak Quar chuffed in laughter. Her tail slapped with playful force against the ground, and she raised her head a little to look at Ray from the side. She knew that humans underestimated Rriigkhan hearing – her servants had mouthed off behind her back enough times for her to be curious about it. She'd discovered that their olfactory sense was not their only weakness, although that was by far the worst.

“I won, human,” she said smugly, pleased to have shocked him. “My opponent was carried out by ambulance. Your concern is commendable, however. You will help my khar vitra remove this veil.” The last was said with a flourish of the hand.

“Ghara has to have surgery on her nose, I think,” Sam explained, smiling apologetically as he pulled a linen cloth from the trunk and picked up the medicine. He hadn't seen the hit from his position on the ground and Quar had said nothing to him. It was only his guess. “But it's not an emergency, so I have time to remove her head armor before we go to the medic's tent. Here, this isn't hard, I'll show you.”

He handed the items to Quar, who immediately squeezed out a dab of the coagulant and licked it straight up from the tube, then held her head level for the humans' benefit. The rings piercing her crest were a little like keychain rings in that the metal band looped around twice, but it was not closed nearly as tightly and would be easy to deform with a pair of pliers. They could be removed by hand. Sam stood on one side of her head, turning the rings until he got the opening lined up with the piercing and sliding them out.

While her head was more or less restrained, Quar opened the event menu in AR and flicked through her choices. There were a limited number of forts to occupy in the melee, each with its various advantages like moats or double walls. Some Rriigkhans would be defending these forts while others attacked them. Some victories would be decided solely on the battlefield if neither commander held any fort, which was preferable to some. Equal footing. She made her selections – she would like to invade Lirril Gar as her first choice – and closed the menu.

She was speaking to him, so he met her gaze, drawing a deep breath as he took in the extent of the damage. The instinctive revulsion to gore and wounds was an initial response, but after sucking a breath through his teeth and swallowing the churning in his stomach, he could pick out details, guess from the swelling at broken bones and how badly the skin was torn. He was no pre-med type, but he was curious, and spending as long as he did in the hospital, he read things on his phone. He learned. His brain was a sponge when he was open, really living, unlike the sort of dreary survival that had driven him to take an ICG contract. Granted, she was covered in fur and he never really got a precise understanding of what she looked like when she was whole, but already - without intentionally processing it - his mind was picking out ways to remove the mail from her face.

"Yeah." His agreement was with Sam, though he tore his gaze from Quar after that to help holding the trunk lid and brace the items inside so Sam could pick out what he needed. "They have amazing doctors. I have some experience with that."

He was following Sam when he stopped to blink wide eyes at Quar, then glance at Sam. "I thought that was for topical use--" His eyes checked the tube again, looking for some clue that he wasn't going to find that way. "You're not going to get blood clots or anything now, right? I'm sure you know what you're doing." The last was in answer to himself, but he wasn't sure he bought it. Either way, if they were going to the medic's tent, they would probably take care of it there. He went around to the opposite side from Sam, feeling a bit like some sort of dental assistant or nurse as he held his hand out for the rings and used the other to steady her crest, and a thumb to push the rings from the opposite side so Sam could get his fingers on them. That chainmail was going to hurt like a devil when they pulled the damaged part out of her skin.

"I heard that the big battle part is this same evening? Not rest or recovery time for the two of you? Need me to grab you something to eat, at least?"

On the Holo screen, Lirril Gar remained selected, outlined in a provisional orange while some of the Rriigkhan higher in the standings made their selections as well. It flicked to a deep, blood red when her choice was suggested, but then her starting assignment followed, a less-than optimal starting position across the stream that ran beneath the fortress, forcing them either to wade and climb or travel the long way around, and perhaps lose time to another field commander.

“I hope that my blood will clot! This drip is annoying.” Quar licked again at her bloody teeth and brought the cloth up to her muzzle to dab at the ever-trickling blood. Her face ached, but even worse than that was the clicking she could sometimes feel inside her nose – fractured bone scraping against bone, she surmised, and the constant ooze of blood that felt like gobs of warm snot pushing out of her nostrils. She wanted to blow her nose but was afraid of dislodging whatever clot might already be forming.

“Their drugs stay in the system for a shorter period than ours do, I think,” Sam added. “Just a quick fix before the medic does the rest.”

Quar's thoughts jumped ahead from this time and place to Lirril Gar. This was a warm day, had been warm and with little rain all week according to the weather charts for the region she'd been inspecting earlier. The river would not be high. The supply wagons might present a problem at the crossing, but this was not a real war, unfortunately. The engagement was only six hours long; the humans only needed to eat once during it, and that could be done before the crossing. They would simply leave behind what they no longer really needed and carry anything truly essential, like ladders. That breach of immersion annoyed her, but winning was more important than pretending that they'd be needing the rest of their supplies in days to come.

Her gauntlets were the sort with leather gloves sewn into the inside while articulated lames protected the top of her hands and fingers, with slits in the finger-tips of the gloves. Now the claws of the hand on the armrest slid from their sheaths to grip the wood, one finger scraping at it thoughtfully. Ray's questions dragged her back to the present.

“Rest! We have until whenever these qualifying matches finish to make it out to the battlefield. That is plenty of time for rest.” She braced a foot against the ground for leverage and shifted back in her chair, pulling the ring he'd been working on out of Sam's hands. His pressed lips quirked to the side and then he was back at it. “I see Vern's talk did not quell your curiosity or your chattiness.” Her tail thumped with amusement at this, and her tone was light.

“Once we leave for the battle, we aren't allowed any modern materials,” Sam added softly. “So when we're done helping Ghara, if you'd help me fill some canteens with fresh water, it'd be appreciated.” Although he phrased it as a polite suggestion, of course it really was no such thing. They both knew it. That hung unspoken between them.

Outside, the creak of wooden wheels turning over grass and a jangling of tack announced the arrival of the wagons, each one drawing up near one of the camp tents. Rriigkhans had nothing quite like horses; orantus were not native to their homeworld, and anything capable of bearing the weight of a Rriigkhan on its back was not fleet of foot, so the concept of cavalry was foreign to them. These wagons were pulled by teams of four luers, hoofed grazing animals with large black doe-eyes on petite faces. Fur like velvet covered most of the body but turned to frizzy, wispy, coarse fur on the tailless haunches, one of nature's many tricks to foil a predator lunging at the rear. Wild luer were plain tan to blend in with woods and grasses, although the domesticated ones came in a variety of colors. This team all matched, dark chocolate brown with light streaks on their legs.

From the time Quar entered this wagon with her equipment chests and whatever other camp gear she decided to take with her, the modern world would be closed to her. No accessing AR. No calling for transport out or other services. The only thing to break the illusion would be the monitoring drones, who nevertheless had some camouflage and tried their best to stay out of everyone's way.

Ray's cheeks and ears burned at Quar's words. She half-sounded like she was kidding, but he'd thought the same at the grotto, and then Vern had gone out of his way to have that little talk with him. If he kept it up there was the one possibility that he might be left to his own devices with the water systems, but it was beginning to seem even more likely that his contract would simply be voided for cause and he'd be sent back to the ICG with a strike against him. Only his first, but, still. There wasn't even a way to ask for clarification without being 'curious' and 'chatty'. His shoulders had stiffened as though expecting a blow, his teeth clenched, and he dropped his gaze and nodded.

Really, the solution wasn't to learn to silent and obsequious; it was to learn the best ways to avoid the situations in the first place. He'd have to put in his time, but if the others back home had been able to talk their way out of this service, soon he wouldn't be the new guy, either. His gaze flicked quickly to the other human - was he empathetic? Laughing? Shaking his head as if Ray should have already known? But it seemed like this was the sort of thing each human servant got to sort out on their own.

"Of course," he answered Sam, his voice soft again to match and avoid offending Quar's keen ears. "Does it need to be from a stream, or is the water at the service tent okay if they're filled in advance?"

He let Sam lift the ruined chain mesh away from Quar's face, though he watched to see how she reacted to the pain of it, and remained nearby to collect the pieces. As soon as he was dismissed, he began looping canteens over his shoulder, though the length of the straps left them clunking about his thigh rather than neatly at his hips. On the way out, he stopped, stepping aside to allow Lahroujel and her armorbearer to enter. She nodded politely as she passed, but then stopped just inside the tent, at a location chosen to occupy the limbo between entry and non-entry where she would not be imposing. Ray, in turn, had to find another way out.

"We have chosen a similar target it seems, Quar," she said in a full, evenly-measured voice, and using their home tongue rather than cant. As 'considerate' as she had a reputation for being with humans, she had a devotion to historicity that went beyond battle reinactments. "Do you have any interest in strategizing together? I'm well equipped for a direct climb; if you were willing to see my forces across the stream, I could have a few guide-ropes in place by the time of your arrival."

“Oh no, the service tent water is fine. Preferable, actually. Earth water tastes funky to them. I mean, not the water itself but maybe the microorganisms in it.” Sam reacted very little to Quar's ribbing because he knew that, from her, there was no threat in the words, but when Ray stiffened Sam's eyes dropped to study his own hands with renewed interest as they worked at their task. Like noticing a stranger stumble in public, it was embarrassing to witness someone else's humiliation. He admired Rriigkhans more than the average person, perhaps, but that didn't mean he enjoyed watching them treat humans like... well, sub-humans.

“Your governments emphatically insist we do not populate Earth's rivers with our own microflauna,” Quar sighed as the veil was lifted from her face, sticky with blood and flakes of skin and fur. It stung a little, but she wasn't stupid enough to rub at her face. She raised her hand as if to gingerly touch her nose, then realized with the gauntlets on she wouldn't be able to make sense of what she felt anyway. She ran a finger along a prong of her crest instead.

“Is my crest chipped?” she asked tartly. Sam leaned over her to make a show of inspecting it.

“Yes, Ghara, a little.”

She grunted noncommittally, though her tail flicked in mild agitation as she dropped her arm. Quar gave Ray no formal dismissal, but Sam pointed out the canteens with another friendly smile and then went about packing away stray objects in one of the chests, so it was obvious Ray was free to go.

Quar herself tensed in her chair, was ready to lift herself out of it when Lahroujel appeared. She stilled and sat upright instead, eyes narrowing. Unless Ray were to lift up an edge of the tent canvas, which could not lift very far because it was staked, he was effectively trapped for the moment.

“Your scent is agreeable to me, Lahroujel,” Quar answered in the same tongue, inviting her to enter with a curling of her fingers. “You fought admirably, and in fact there is much about your conduct I admire, but I am undecided about whether I want to split my glory with you. Is Lirril Gar your target? Or something else beyond that river?” She was a little wary of partnering with anyone – betraying an alley when their usefulness ended was entirely historically accurate – but nothing in her scent or body language would convey hostility toward the other Rriigkhan. She truly meant it when she said she admired Lahroujel. Her tail had stilled and she watched Lahroujel from a canted head, the bloodied linen cloth still in her hand.

Listening to Sam fudge his answer to Quar was both annoying and endearing. Here she was, a supposedly superior species who couldn't handle his smiling without perceiving a threat, and she needed him to protect her vanity. Her crest was chipped in the same way that she had an 'owie' on her snout. It was gouged, it was split, it looked like it had been the chopping block for an afternoon of firewood splitting. But it felt like the equivalent of a wife asking her husband if her dress made her ass look big, and the husband replying that her ass made the dress look good. Whether or not it was mutual, there was something more than just a guild contract between Sam and Quar, at least from his direction.

Sam seemed like a decent guy - really. He seemed like the sort of guy Ray would invite over for beers. That he had that kind of regard for Quar, then, made Ray more reluctant to hold Quar's behavior or against her. At least, maybe he wasn't ready to consign her to the 'bastard Rick' box. Maybe there was more subtlety to her than that.

His second attempt at departure became a balk when Rouj's human followed her inside the tent, but while he gave Sam a firm, knowing nod of greeting, Ray peeked out through the flap, and then slipped away while the possibility of exit existed. Finding his way back to the service tent wasn't any problem this time, but after a few moments of patiently waiting his turn at the edge of a non-line, he realized that the crowd of servers and liveried servants operated more like a bar, and he was going to need to elbow his way in to begin filling. This was a good time to impress Quar, and he'd always been good at cutting crowds (movies be damned - the tall guys didn't get all of the luck), so within a few seconds he'd claimed a nipple and was filling the first canteen.

***

"Thank you. Both you and your khar vitra showed commendable valiance today." She came to a stop several feet inside, far enough for the flap to close behind her and her human, but no so far as to impose on Quar's space. As with so much else she did, it seemed calculated, devoid of any kind of sponteneity. One hand clasped over the other, and her feet - now fully resorted after just these few minutes since the battle, remained still rather than digging her claws into the dirt. Even the side-to-side swing of her tail was rhythmic, metronomic.

"I would give you my assurance that I have no desire for your glory, but you are correct - if we take that hill together, we will share in the victory. However, my goal is taking and holding the Paraline Flat beyond it, and my experience has been that it's impossible - and inadvisable - to do so before Lirrill Gar is held. It would be a lesser expenditure of my energy to speed your capture of the Gar and bring my people up the scarp than it would be to push up the flat and have an uncertain battle remaining at my back. Not that I doubt your ability to take the Gar, but I question whether Zhen Mehr's troops might not make trouble for my flanks as they are driven from the Gar.”

Quar bought time before answering by wiping at her face again, quickly and discreetly checking Lahroujel's goal in AR to see that she was telling the truth. Well, she had no concrete reason to betray Quar, other than perhaps as an act of revenge for her loss earlier, but Rouj seemed the least likely person to be a sore loser.

“Everything you say is reasonable,” Quar said, standing smoothly up from her chair, its legs firmly rooted in the grass. She set a hand on her hip – tried to hook a thumb into her belt but didn't have the dexterity for it – and stood with her shoulders squared, gesturing lightly with the bloodied rag while she spoke. “A river crossing always has potential for danger, so it is to my advantage also for us to cross together. And, if I were to help you capture the Paraline Flat, this would be double the glory for both of us. If you desire that assistance, and if I and my troops are fit for battle after Lirril Gar is held."

During this conversation Sam had been busy folding up her little camp table, and now that she'd vacated it he folded up her chair as well, moving them near the entryway to be carried out in a moment.

"I would knock crests with you to seal this agreement, but I'd best not jar my nose," Quar added, her tail kinking at the thought of dripping blood on Rouj's pristinely white tabard. Her eyes flicked briefly across the other's khar vitra before settling on his master again.

The goals, insofar as they were filled out (a good 40% of them remained to filter into place), reflected Lahroujel's offer, which made sense. Whatever peculiar ethical system she adhered to, it seemed to inspire a sort of truthfulness that bordered on gullibility, in that while she was fully aware of the concept of lying, she didn't act as though willing to assume anyone else was lying until proven to do so, and didn't seem to consider it any option for herself. It left her ridiculously easy to betray, but offered little glory for doing so, and left one open to a 'righteous' response. There was Zehn Mehr, already openly betting not on her victory, but the extent of it and how quickly she could dismiss Lahroujel's forces once engaged.

Especially after seeing Lahroujel's performance that day in the amphitheater, few seemed willing to bet on her one-on-one with Zehn Mehr, if she made it that far. The only attractive quality was the long odds.

"Indeed," she agreed, with a thoughtful inclination of her head. "I would not decline such assistance, though for the benefit of my own goals, I could not agree to remain behind and hold Lirril Gar while you continued to the Paraline Flat alone. However, if you should find it necessary to do so based on other conditions - we should not expect too much in the way of support from either side of the rise, I think, and I will be leaving my own lane uncontested to join you - I would not expect you to join me on the Flat. Still, I find the most enjoyment in the cooperative achievement of established goals, rather than accruing points. I only need as many as necessary to maintain a participatory rank."

At the mention of Quar's nose, Rouj's eyes focused and she leaned in for a closer inspectoin. "Yes. Your turbinates appear to be shattered; that would make for difficult ventilation during the ascent. The light trauma tent was had no wait time while I was there, and Paahrafel was in attendance. For a male, he is quite competent at simple repairs and replacements." Her tail interrupted it's regular rhythm to flicker, which was about as close to a trill in her voice as she got. "I shall not keep you longer. My khar vitra is called 'Micah' in their tongue." His head lifted, eyes curious at his name; apparently he didn't understand the rest of her speech. "I will send him to lead my regulars on a direct path from my starting position. If you do not choose to wait for him, he will simply assist your trailing support across. With good fortune, you should find me waiting at the bottom of the scarp with a pair of climbing ropes fixed by the time of your arrival. Happy Hunting, Quar."

Since they could not knock crests, Lahroujel touched her finger pads to her crest, and then pressed them to Quar's before turning to depart.

Once again, Ray was there, canteens still wet from a hasty filling, all-blacks clinging to him where they had been soaked through. And once again, Ray had to step aside to wait while the lanky Rriigkhan ducked out from under the flap, but at least this time he had the sense to wait for her armorbearer to pass, too.

"I believe I will be waiting unless he is exceedingly tardy, which I doubt will be the case," Quar replied, ears perking with curiosity. That Lahroujel was splitting her forces was not unusual at all, though she wondered what route the other Rriigkhan would be taking.

She tipped her crest toward Lahroujel's hand to be touched, and, the moment she was out of sight Quar clapped her hands together while twisting to glance back at her khar vitra. A violent shudder of joy ran down her tail and she bounced lightly on her pads. The cloth in her hands had muffled that clap and now she tossed the balled-up thing at Sam. He jerked forward to catch it before it could land on the ground. He looked at it awkwardly for a moment, then tossed it into a corner of the tent. No time to clean it just now.

"You'll have the wagon loaded by the time I return!" Quar exclaimed, turning to the entrance just as Ray stepped through. It had been less an order and more a declaration of excitement that they would be leaving soon, which she felt Sam shared. Anticipation buzzed in every fiber of her body.

Without pause she grasped Ray's shoulder with one hand to steady him, and with the other pulled one of the canteen straps away from his body, swinging it up over her own pauldron. She might as well have been removing her coat from a rack. Then she pushed him out of her way as she ducked past him out of the tent. Her fingers had tightened so that she was pushing him in a controlled manner, not merely thrusting him aside with the flat of her palm, and leaving a smear of blood behind on his dark uniform in the process. Her lifted tail bumped against the remaining canteens with a jangle as it slithered out after her.

“Geez, sorry,” Sam said, wincing. He rubbed at his forehead above the brow with his fingertips, his expression mocking a pained grimace, as if to say Those Ricks, amiright?

***

Quar hungrily drained the entirety of one canteen with her head thrown back as she made her way to the medic's tent, letting rivulets of water trickle down the sides of her jaws. Nothing had ever tasted sweeter, even if it was mixed with hints of her own blood.

The medical facility Ghijariis and Krist had been flown to at the edge of the Event grounds was an unmistakably modern hospital. The medic near the amphitheater served minor injuries and blended in well with the setting. This was a white tent with rust-red trim on the scalloped edges of the roof, and close to the wide open entrance a pair of tables displayed the tools a doctor would have used throughout the Late Expansion Period: bone saws, incision knives, sewing needles and thread spun from gut, clay jars holding herbal remedies. The floor was strewn with hay so that blood could be absorbed and then thrown out. The “operating table” deeper inside was really nothing more than an ordinary wooden camp table, although very large to accommodate a Rriigkhan body. Wicker baskets and trunks were arranged beneath it.

The current match was ongoing so there was no one about, only a male reclining in an upholstered chair that did not quite match the feel of a camp tent. His hands were laced behind his head, ankles crossed, the glazed look of one fully immersed in some AR entertainment on his face. As Quar stepped inside the flavor of the air changed and she felt something like a static tingle over her entire body; she had entered a field that disallowed certain kinds of bacteria, and any she carried had just been pulverized inside her body.

Paahrafel's attention snapped to her immediately. His legs uncrossed and he sat upright, tilting his head thoughtfully, then rose smoothly to his paws with his hands clasped in front of his belly. He wore a shapeless gray smock with a loose but high collar and sleeves that tied at his wrists, and a cloth apron that pinned to his chest over that. The bloodstains on this apron, Quar assumed, must be purely decorative.

“A brilliant victory, Tarj. I'd been waiting for you to come. You're wanting that fixed up immediately, I know.” The term with which he addressed her might have been best translated as Marshal, a bit of play-acting. He padded over to his surgeon's table and touched the side. A panel slid away to reveal buttons that would control holo and field emitters, and almost instantly holographic shapes flickered to life in the air, the light they emitted illuminating the inside ceiling of the tent and all those grisly tools. It was a dizzying amount of objects which now hovered in the empty space beside the table. Facing Paahrafel were several haptic controls and scans of the inside of Quar's skull, though she assumed much of the important information was visible to him only in his private AR. Closer to her, suspended in the air at the level of her head, was an object which looked like it was made of translucent, faintly violet soft plastic or jelly; it was a horizontal cushion for her chin to rest upon, and attached to it were several strands of that soft material hanging down limp.

“I apologize for this glaring breach of immersion,” the male said, naked fingers jabbing at this or that button on the haptic display. “I have already scanned you; we're ready. This will take three or four minutes at most.”

Quar grunted and moved forward to place her chin upon the cushion, crossing her arms in front of her chest so that she could click her fingers against her bicep. She was still standing upright, no awkward stooping necessary. The jellylike strands lifted and clung to her face and crest like little tentacles to hold her steady. A small round drone, which was very much a real object, zoomed up from elsewhere in the room to hover just in front of her nose. A pinprick orifice on its smooth metal surface flashed with light as several little bead-sized drones were birthed from its rear.

“We're in...” Paahrafel said distantly, and she felt pressure in her nose as the field entered and enlarged, holding her open for the tiny bead drones to follow. On his end, Paahrafel was interacting with the haptics, which showed a magnified representation of the inside of her nasal passage. His fingers guided the drones to cut with lasers to get where they needed to be, press her fractured bone into shape, exude liquid bone over the cracks, administer local anesthetic and knit up any cuts they had made on the way in. A field siphoned away the extra blood and held it away from her vision, although a floating bag of blood in an invisible container would hardly have bothered Quar. At first she could feel little prickles of heat inside her face, but soon there was no sensation at all, not even any ache.

When the jelly strands fell away she lifted her head, breathed deeply for the first time in minutes – the air smelled thickly of blood and pain pheromones, even though the only visible blood spatters she could see were probably fake – and then snorted residual blood into the palm of her hand, which she then wiped on her tabard.

"As always, you'll want to check in with your personal historian after the season is over. There's always the chance of tissue rejection and scarring, however minimal, and your record-keeper will be able to identify the problematic variances while they're still small. But if you considering getting a new personal historian, I've heard through gossip that Hequiir will be opening a few slots in her library in the coming days, when the construction project on the southern continent is completed. It's something to consider - a rare opportunity."

By now, Paahrafel must have told half a dozen others the same thing; it wasn't as though he and Quar were close friends to share inside knowledge. But when it came to personal record-keeping, Hequiir was the only name of note on the planet; most others simply assigned their tasks to an AI. It was entirely likely that Hequiir had contracted Paahrafel to entice a few warhobbiests, in order to diversify her profile. Nobody wanted to the sole historian for an entire jobsite if something went wrong.

"May I see your rivals again before you," he said to her as she left, and began the process of cycling the restraints that she'd blooded before he could return to his own comfortable chair and entertainment. The round drone returned to its nesting bay to be reloaded with freshly generated microbots. "Be sure to drink more fluids!"

***

Once he was shown how the brass grommet on the canteen strap fit over a peg driven into the side of the wagon, Ray continued with the rest of them, weaving the straps through the single lashing before fitting the grommet over each peg, where the canteens could be easily retrieved, or refilled in serial by a large skin in the field. That would have mattered more if they spent several hot days in the field, instead of just a single long afternoon where someone might choose to dehydrate. That left Sam time to arrange the gear behind the cart, so that when Ray hefted it up to him, he could pack it all neatly into the wagon without getting up and down.

"No," he continued from an earlier partial answer, a fractured conversation of incomplete sentences as they both worked up a sweat to ensure the were done before Quar's return. "I mean there's something to be said for knowing what someone thinks of you, even if it's that I'm essentially a Star Wars droid. Which is kind of ironic, really." The last chest was exceptionally heavy and clanked as though full of bits of metal, so Sam had to leap down and help Ray heft it in before he threw out his back in the attempt. "But you like this. It's worth it to you? Same for me. A five year contract puts my daughter through med school? It's better than joining the army, anyway."

Lifting his head to watch Sam for an answer allowed him to spot Quar as she was leaving the medical tent. Tossing his head that way to get Sam's attention, he turned to collect the water buckets put out for the luers, so they wouldn't be underfoot when they left. "Good luck. We're all rooting for you." Which really meant nothing, and it sounded just like the sort of thing his awkward uncle would say when he was trying to be supportive of Ray's soccer team twenty-odd years ago.

“My situation is a little different,” Sam said, momentarily leaning his shoulder against the back of the wagon after the chest was hefted up. He awkwardly shifted his gaze past Ray for a second before meeting the other man's eyes. He shrugged with the other shoulder.

“Like a lot of the people who do this reenactment stuff, I only work here part time, and I'm, uh, well, I'm not a servant when I'm not here. Rriigkhans are tough bosses for sure, but it's also a lot of fun sometimes. For me it's not really a last re-” He turned in the direction of Ray's nod and trailed off when he saw Quar striding toward them. Her face was wet because she'd dumped water on herself to wash away the blood, but it would be dry quickly.

That was the last of the gear. Sam had cleaned the gore off Quar's aventail and put it in one of the chests so it was ready to go back on. Probably after they arrived, because the ride was going to be bumpy.

“Thanks,” Sam answered with an earnest smile and a finger-splaying half-wave to see Ray off. Quar broke into a lope then, and Sam instinctively flattened himself against the back off the wagon to avoid whatever her path might be. She ran along its side, rapping her gauntlets against it and spooking one of the luer, which jerked against its harness before settling down.

“Where is the driver?” she bellowed gleefully, stopping alongside a luer and running her hand over its flank. A bearded man in rough homespun clothing came jogging toward them – he'd excused himself for some refreshment at the serving tent while Sam and Ray loaded the wagon. He wasn't a really fat man, but did have a large belly that flopped over the leather belt he wore, and now it jiggled in time with his clumsy gallop.

“Sorry, sorry! We ready to go?” The driver was already clambering up into his seat. Quar ignored his question; obviously she was ready.

“Do you want me with you, Ghara?” Sam asked, leaning around the side of the wagon. Quar had already started off on foot. She might ride in the wagon in a bit, but for now she felt like being outside.

“No,” Quar said, flicking a hand at him without looking back. Sam pushed himself up on the back step and crawled over the low back of the wagon, into the shade of the canvas covering which bowed over the top of it, just as the big heavy thing creaked into motion.

A field followed the curve of the lake for some distance. There were no serving trenches out past the amphitheater area, and really no sign of human life at all. Nearly pristine wilderness stretched before them for many miles. While the Ishpeming Outdoor Sporting Venue did aim for a rustic, old world atmosphere, it was not exclusively used for Blood Era and Late Expansion war games. The lodges, forts, and small castles scattered throughout the dome belonged to many eras and could be rented by those wishing for a taste of simplicity. The Venue usually did not supply servants in those remote lodges. If desired, a Rriigkhan brought her own staff from home.

Other wagons were now departing, each trundling off to a different starting point within the grounds. Their armies had been waiting at the training and lodging facilities at the perimeter of the dome, and just about now would be arriving by air to whatever starting locations their masters had been allotted. Like Sam, many of those humans did not work for Rriigkhans full time, and only arrived a few days before the events to practice their skills. Others were permanent staff members of Rriigkhan enclaves temporarily dismissed from their regular duties in favor of this.

Before long Quar's party entered a forest, and it was at this point a pop-up asked her to relinquish control of her AR interface. From this point on there would be no communication with the outside world. Any injuries sustained, unless life threatening, must be endured until the end of the battle. She could consult no maps other than those inked on hide or paper. Quar's tail snapped out with glee as she locked herself out of AR, severing herself from the comforts of modern life. In the distance, canons boomed over the lake; all the qualifying matches had finished and the naval battle had begun. A drone followed her distantly, but its mirrored skin reflected forest. It would be difficult to pick out among the confusion of trees.

A needle-scattered path curved through the forest, the boughs so dense overhead that in some places it felt as though they moved through a tunnel. The air was cooler here. Quar lifted her nose, closed her eyes, inhaled slowly – no pheromones aside from her own (which she hardly noticed). Only the crisp tang of pine sap, the earthy scents of so many layers of detritus slowly decomposing into the soil. Beautiful, ancient scents, even if they were alien. The only voices within her hearing belonged to birds, her only companion the unremitting grind of the wheels turning over, snapping twigs, bumping on ruts on the path which in turn bumped everything held inside the wagon.

The forest opened into a large clearing where her 200 soldiers awaited their Tarj, all liveried in her colors and arranged into smaller units commanded by another human. When Quar spoke to humans like Micah in the context of the game, it was not as an equal, but it was as a commander speaking to a subordinate; she listened to their opinions and sometimes acted on them. These people were generally HEMA enthusiasts, after all, and were just as interested in winning the game as she was. Her first order of business after having her aventail reattached was a quick meeting with her sub-commanders to explain her tactics, goals, and alliance with Lahroujel, then to send out scouting parties who would meet up with her later to apprise her of enemy movements in the area.

Because a real siege was not possible, and invading a fortification without a siege was doomed from the start, the rules of this idiotic game dictated that anyone holding a fort would have a limited number of troops allowed to defend the walls. This meant that someone in Zhen Mehr's position was likely to send most of her soldiers out into the field to engage the enemy before they could reach the fort, to thin the numbers and give her that much more of an advantage when it came time to defend against the invasion.

Soon her tiny army was moving, armored luers pulling long war wagons among the troops. These were box-shaped wagons with tall hinged side panels that could be folded down to enclose the occupants. Just now they were being used entirely to cart supplies, including ladders for the invasion. Together the carts, animals and people made up one great super-organism clanking and creaking its way slowly but surely toward Lirril Gar. If she held her breath Quar could believe, for a moment, that the grotesque masks were the faces of real Rriigkhan Lohr who would fight and die for her, that she faced real peril ahead. Her howrf sacs extended fully as she moved among them with her hammer in hand and a buckler in her other fist, Sam close to her side with his own sword and shield and a brass speaking trumpet slung over his shoulder. His role was not so much her guard as it was her general aid and message runner; having more stamina and being immune to attacks from humans, she would often range ahead to scout for her own army. Not historically accurate behavior for a Tarj, but sensible within the rules of this game.

At their full extension her howrfs were long, tubular streamers which curving back over the edge of her crest, a fragile white organ pulsing bonding pheromones into the air. To a Rriigkhan male these scents would instill feelings of camaraderie for his fellow soldiers and unite them more surely than the colors they wore. The most it did for these humans was to make their eyes water under their helmets, but Quar was lost in the moment.