FicWad

Part Three

The exercise involving the most junior class had gone well. The four groups had been successfully led to their designated targets and had completed the maps and fiend census without incident. Only one of the groups had been forced to take on a fiend in battle and that was a minor matter which ended with no one hurt or even slightly damaged and one small very ugly creature brought back as a trophy to great boasting and celebration by the group involved.

"It worked out for you. That must make you happy." Jounne looked at the young man standing before him. The Senior Cadet Captain did not look particularly delighted with the success of his plan. "But, then again, you didn't leave all that much to chance."

"Do you want me to risk the lives of the students, sir? If so, I can easily send the next class out unarmed to prowl the lower-levels of the cave under the bridge." Nooj snarled, his fists clenched at his side. "It had not occurred to me our main task here was to decimate the candidates."

"Don't get sarcastic with me, lad. I can make your life here much less comfortable. I could remove the door from your room." The officer looked at the youth sharply, hoping to catch him off guard. He succeeded; Nooj had gone pale before a flush spread over his cheekbones.

"Did you think nobody would notice Kaith is not in her bed most nights and that there is only one other place she could be?" The Commandant smiled his most unpleasant smile. "Come, my boy, we're not stupid here. Everybody on this base knows you're sleeping with your adjutant. And nobody much cares as long as you're reasonably discreet and follow the orders you're given. At your age, some natural impulses take precedent."

Visibly regaining control of himself, the Cadet Captain fixed his gaze on the wall behind the desk. "Yessir. I shall have the outline for the second class exercise before you by the end of the week. May I go now?" He was not sure how much longer he would be able to maintain his respectful attitude.

"Not quite yet. I want to make absolutely sure you understand what you are here to learn. You are being prepared for a leader's position. When you graduate, you will be given a commission and command over some number of recruits. You must be willing to weigh the risk to your troops against the value of their mission. You are not expected to waste manpower but you are not expected to be timid in the use of it. You, of all people in this camp, ought to be able to comprehend that and I have brought this to your attention before. Do not make me do so again. Now, design the test for the next group and make sure it is more inventive than the one for the last. Dismissed." Watching the rigid back pass through the door, Jounne nodded with satisfaction. The experiment they had begun at the start of the lad's second year was bearing fruit. He was becoming more tractable, less foolishly defiant. The Crusaders would have a good candidate when he graduated from training. And that little flick of the whip could only do him good.

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"You are not to come to my room anymore." He stated the order flatly, without emphasis. "It is becoming a scandal. We will keep our trysts in the open as we did before."

Kaith was outraged by his attitude. "Since when have you given a damn for scandal? I thought you were the one who always went his own way and ignored what anybody else said."

"I prefer not the be the subject of rude jokes. It does not help morale in the corps when the Senior Captain is seen breaking the rules."

"You know there are no rules forbidding third year cadets from ..."

"I am different. I must not be seen as having weaknesses." He would not look at her, his eyes fixed on the surface of his desk. "I have to be above ..."

"Above human. What are you anyway? You think you can't be human for a little while?" Kaith fought back tears of anger.

"No. I can't. You know what's going to happen and why. I cannot permit myself distractions." He finally looked up and she was astonished by the bleakness in the dark eyes. They were like fathomless pits leading to nowhere. "I am Deathseeker and that is the totality of me. You may choose to lie with me but there can be nothing more. I am set aside and marked."

She felt suddenly breathless as though he had hit her hard just below her diaphragm. Without volition, she bent forward as though to protect herself from another blow. When she was able to focus on him, she saw he was still expressionless, his eyes still blank. The face she had so often drawn with her fingertips had become alien to her; she did not recognize him.

Nooj was perfectly aware of the effect of his words. He had selected them deliberately before he had initiated the interview. After his session with Jounne, he had realized his error. He had permitted Kaith to come too close. Never in his life had he accepted the presence of an intimate. Knowing that he was on a direct and early course for death, he had, with purpose, opted to stay aloof from the entanglements of personal relationships. His withdrawal had nothing to do with a desire to spare the emotions of those who might grow to care for him and everything to do with keeping his own vision fixed on the one purpose in his life. He had been left alive in order to die and nothing must interfere with that destiny. He was sorry for causing unhappiness to Kaith but it was for her own good. If anything else, he was impatient with her for not seeing as clearly as did he. They could still take pleasure together - they were both still young and hot-blooded. There need be no change in that. What must change was the perception she had become his weakness. If Jounne could threaten to punish him by depriving him of the girl, then he must punish himself first and the girl must be sacrificed. He could not afford to give anyone a handle to manipulate him.

"Kaith, things are becoming unduly complicated. My responsibilities have increased and I must be a model to those who are under my command. I can no longer flout the rules as I did when I was more junior. It seems one of us must abandon our pride in this matter. I can only hope you will be generous enough to let it be you. Otherwise, we must make a clean break now." He braced his knuckles on the desk and leaned forward slightly, waiting.

She was too confused and dizzy to answer at first. Nothing had prepared her for this. After the misunderstandings of the past months, she had thought things were mended between them and that they might spend this final year of training in relative peace. Finally, the meaning of his statement came clear to her. "No, whatever you say. I don't want to leave you and I can't bear for you to leave me. Whatever you think we should do." There was a stammer in her voice as her tongue moved clumsily behind her teeth. She stretched her hand toward his chest but did not dare to touch him. She wondered, frantically, if he would ever let her really touch him again or if he would simply use her for the release of his tensions and the satisfying of his needs.

With a calculated gesture, he caught her wrist and drew her around the desk to him. His arm wrapped around her waist and the other hand tipped up her face. He looked at her until she closed her own eyes, then he bent to her lips and kissed her with a nearly contemptuous brutality, forcing his tongue into her mouth and taking possession as if it were his right. She responded at once, pulling his head still closer and yielding to his invasion, welcoming the onslaught. His hands roamed and explored her body, disarranging her clothes to find access to her breasts and her thighs. She moaned and melted against him.

Then there was nothing between them and he was inside her, taking her with no consideration for her readiness. He drove into her strongly, arousing her with his ferocity, his mouth still locked with hers and his hand squeezing her nipple. She was immediately moist, accepting her own plundering as she fell back across the hard surface of the desk. Gripping his hips with her knees, she met him passion for passion until they both gasped out their fulfillment and lay spent.

Nooj straightened up and began buttoning his breeches. His lips were closed into a narrow line and he seemed uncertain. "I should not have done that. It will not happen again."

Kaith twisted to recover her garments and try to put herself to rights. "I wanted it. I wanted you to do it. Don't say that. I need you."

He smiled sourly. "And it is obvious I need you as well. But I should have asked first."

"No, you don't have to ask. I will always need you and want you." She brushed her hair back and secured it with a band. "I'm still throbbing."

He raised his eyebrow and grasped her by the forearm. "Then come with me. I'm not done with you yet."

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Kaith tried with limited success to concentrate on her textbook. She was too aware of the ache in her most private areas to be able to truly interest herself in the differences among the various types of broadswords and did not see that the distinctions would be of any great importance when actually coming into contact with the weapons. It was of more immediate concern to her whether she would be able to walk with her usual swinging stride or be reduced to a painful stagger when she stood to leave the classroom.

She was reassured of her place in his life although she had a bitter feeling the exact balance had changed. He had led her from his office to the cove they had so often visited during the leisure months. There he had taken her twice more with the same urgent roughness as on the desk. He seemed to be exorcising a demon rather than making love and, when at last he lay exhausted and panting on the grass, was disinclined for either conversation or caresses. She had looked at his naked body, not daring to touch him, seeing in the smoothness of the golden skin more of the shape of a mythic hero than a living man. In a strangely remote way, she felt herself to be the vessel of a god instead of a girl becoming woman. She knew no matter what he did or said she would be there when he demanded because she had become a part of an emerging legend.

She shook her head with disgust. Why did she think like this? Where was her dignity, her pride, her self-awareness? She had not been reared to think of herself as less than a male. Then the remembered image of him formed behind her closed eyelids and she knew even more compellingly that she was his and there was no escape. Her bruised nipples pressed against her shirt and she felt the excitement stirring between her legs again.

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Bent over his own work, compiling the plans for the training exercise for the second class, Nooj was also conscious of a change in his relationship with the external world. Vaguely, he was recognizing that he was engaged in the peeling away of those things which might hinder him as he started on his final journey to meet his fate. Without rational thought, he knew he must make that last pilgrimage alone without the comfort or interference of any other companion. He had managed to stay clear of the entanglements of friendship and camaraderie with the other cadets. Only Kaith and Nepetu had been admitted through the gates of his fortress. Now, even they could not be permitted to remain. His traitor body tied him to Kaith with her warmth and her softness which drew out the poison of physical desire. She seemed to understand how things must now be between them. It was not truly honorable and it was not how he would have wished it, given a choice. But it was all that was possible now.

He dropped his head into his hands and tried to stop the buzzing thoughts which filled his mind. His chest was near to bursting with the need to scream. It was all falling apart around him and he could not stop it. There was too much out of control, too many demands. Like an animal driven to madness by biting insects, he tossed restlessly from side to side, his long braids slapping his shoulders like so many whips. If he did what he was inclined to do, what he hungered to do, he would take his dagger and slip it up under his rib cage and find peace. But that was forbidden him.

His fingers tightened on the stylus until it shattered and the pieces scattered across the desk. The sharp crack of the breaking recalled him to himself and he wrestled with his demon until, gradually, he regained control and forced himself to turn his attention once more to the task before him. - Because of the natural attrition as cadets were injured, dropped out or were killed, the second class had only twenty-nine members. He would divide them ... how? His hand fell down and sought the soft fur of the coeurl as he concentrated.

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Jounne was not dissatisfied with the proposed training exercise for the second class. They would form three groups to be led by the most proficient amongst them and set out for the cavern inside the cleft to the far east of the Calm Lands. That cave was slated to be cleaned out within the next few months by a contingent of the army anyway so that a supply depot might be located in so strategic a position which meant the exercise would not only be good practice for the cadets but would actually be useful. Once inside the entrance, the various groups would separate and each explore a section of the complex, mapping and killing as they went. At a specified time, as kept by their respective leaders, the three groups were to reassemble at the gap and march back to the main camp. It was a good, practical plan with sufficient peril to test the mettle of the youths. He noted with amusement the instruction to map the terrain. That seemed to be a fixation with Nooj. It was true that mapping was one of the duties of the regular army and the cadets should practice the skill whenever possible, but Jounne suspected the emphasis on mapping had more to do with the mania Nooj had for knowledge and less with military matters. He closed the cover of the folder and rested his chin on his steepled fingers.

Pathel had mentioned Kaith had not been missing from her own bed lately and that the girl often had traces of tears on her cheeks when he checked the beds each night. The Commandant wondered if the liaison had come undone. It would be like Nooj to break off an affair rather than permit the existence of a lever to be used against him. Jounne could have slapped himself for trying that silly threat on someone like Nooj. He had compromised the parameters of the experiment. What would that troubled young man do with the energy Kaith had helped him expend?

He considered once again his action in removing the two pages from the Crusaders' Manual. Even though Nooj would be exposed to the information when he was inducted into the elite corps next year, it had seemed prudent to keep him from reading their official position on such matters now when he was so particularly susceptible. The lad did not need any more factors pushing him in the unhealthy direction he was so set upon. There were times when Jounne questioned his own decision to make so great an effort to keep the lad on the road toward a commission. He would become a soldier in any event. Was it really so important he be a Warrior? Sometimes, it hardly seemed worthwhile to spend so much time and effort on one cadet, no matter how promising. Then he recalled the results of the tests, the responses in the seminars and the sheer charisma Nooj exuded. The others would follow him whether they liked him or not. There was an idealism, a certainty which surrounded him and drew followers like a drug. No, he would be worth it if he could be kept obedient and sane.

With a sigh, he pushed up from his desk and prepared to meet his class on Subversive Attack Theory. There were only four students in the advanced section, one of whom was Nooj. It was usually invigorating to thrust and parry with the agile minds of these few but today Jounne wished he could avoid it . He had spent quite enough of his morning hunting hidden meanings in seemingly ordinary ideas.

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When the second year cadets reassembled at the opening of the gap in the eastern wall of the cliffs which surrounded the Calm Lands, it was a far less pristine crew than had gathered there a scant six hours before. Twenty-nine persons had marched into the dark opening behind them; twenty-seven had marched out under their own power. Two of the party, a male and a female, had be helped or carried from the site by their companions. The male was missing a part of an ear and half a hand; the female had a sizable chunk gone from her right thigh and had, consequently, left much of her blood behind in the shadowy galleries. The attendant Healers had done their best and the two injured ones would survive but only a more thorough examination back at camp would show whether their careers as Warriors-to-be were ended.

Nooj looked at the bedraggled troops with a cynical eye. That should satisfy Jounne. If the exercise had not been sufficiently risky to actually kill some of the cadets at least it had damaged a few. He ran his penetrating gaze over the ones still upright. There were minor injuries on many of them, bloodstains and bruises blackening against the pallor of the exposed skin. He directed stretchers be constructed from the available wood and any dispensable-with clothing so that the two severely wounded could be carried without too much further discomfort and, forming the ambulatory into as military a group as he could manage, led them back to the training camp and his own vindication.

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Late that same night, after being generously commended by Commandant Jounne for the excellence and the success of the training expedition, Nooj sat alone on the bed in his room. The door was firmly shut as were the windows and the curtains were drawn. There was not the slightest glimmer of light, only a velvety blackness which swathed and disembodied him. He could not tell without touching if his eyes were open or not. The darkness lay against them with an almost tangible sensation. He could feel the pressure of the hard mattress against his hips and thighs as well as the warm weight of the coeurl leaning on his feet. Otherwise, he was only a mind, floating in a featureless ocean.

With deliberate decision, he placed his consciousness into a receptive mode and began to cut away those connections to life he had inadvertently permitted to grow up around the pure shining monument of his purpose. He was finally sufficiently mature to choose between those indulgences which were necessary to him and those which served only to provide comfort and pleasure which he now recognized as weaknesses. The latter he mercilessly pruned away and discarded. Tears ran down his face but he was not weeping. Some part of him was dying as a result of the autotomy but it was not a part he recognized. The Nooj who would emerge from this would be purer and stronger, one divorced from tenderness and primed to move toward his destiny like a lodestone turning to the north. He felt the subliminal shifting within his awareness, the hardening of what had been tender and felt satisfied. The time was coming and he must be ready.