Tales from Outer Lands Read online

  The sun was still pink and hanging over the eastern side of the sea when Rivka rose and began her journey up into the cliffs. The stillness and sweetness of the plants and rocks contrasted sharply with the boisterous city she'd wandered through the night before. Below, a gentle, blue sea flowed in even ripples, and a bird dipped in briefly to retrieve a fish.

  She thought about the woman she'd been hired to rescue. Waterweed had warned her that his ladylove didn't speak the language of Port Saltspray but that all Rivka had to do was get her safely back to him and everything would be fine. Rivka judged the idea of a combat for a woman's hand as barbaric, but she hoped that in their barbarism the cliff-dwellers would at least be fair and let her go away with her if she did, in fact, win.

  When she won. When she won. Head in the game.

  Thoughts of combat blossomed in her mind, and she encouraged them to crowd out all other preoccupations. The physical activity of hiking up the path, which was challenging while not impossibly steep, eased the flow of her thoughts and gave vitality to her memories. She relived fights of her past -- humiliations as well as triumphs, studying from each one as she walked. There was the man who had been obsessed with one of Shayna's employees and refused to leave, and the men who'd come to threaten at the urging of their sister, upset by the frequency of her husband's visits. She thought about the criminals she'd apprehended on the road, or fought off, or narrowly escaped with no more than her life, her horse, and her sword.

  It was fun and it was encouraging to think about one's victories, but Rivka knew that one can earn more of them in the future if one is willing also to examine one's defeats. Today was far too important to be afraid of analyzing her weaknesses so that she could learn from them and escape their bindings.

  As she approached the top of the cliffs, she began to see more people. Carts in the distance sold food and drink for the spectators, and women were milling about selling bits of cloth stretched out over a frame of sticks to block out the glare of the very direct sun.

  Two men overtook her on the trail, and she noted cranky tones in their voices as they spoke to each other. As they passed her, she also observed a familial resemblance.

  "Look, there it is. You happy now?"

  "I don't see why you have to be so--"

  "I don't see why you had to come up here with me and enter this thing," said the first man. "This was my idea, but you always--"

  "--yeah, but this gives us twice the chance of winning!" Rivka got the impression that the second man was the younger of the pair.

  "How does that help me get a hot piece of tail if you win?"

  "We can share!" said the younger one eagerly.

  "Ha! You got that from Mother. Share everything, she always said, but what she meant was--"

  The brothers walked out of earshot, their argument propelling them to walk faster.

  Rivka's blood grew hot and she clenched her fists at her sides, but she channeled her anger into the power she held over her body. One of the most important things Isaac had ever said to her, almost in the same breath as acknowledging their love for the first time, was that she should let her anger work for her, not distract her. She would win. She would win, and men like that would be sharing nothing but her dust.

  ***

  "Welcome, welcome, welcome!" A man with a pointed beard and elaborately curled mustache squinted into the crowd of milling warriors. From their clothing and ethnicities, it looked as though they were from all over -- but that really wasn't surprising, considering the constant stream of travelers passing through Port Saltspray. Rivka tried to stand at what looked like the end of a line, except there were at least five of them. Somehow she got to the front.

  She opened her mouth to speak when she finally reached him, but he cut her off. "No swords, please."

  "What?"

  "Hand-to-hand combat only. We're not trying to kill anyone, just raise some money." He smiled jovially, as though a young woman's bodily autonomy wasn't at stake. Rivka fantasized about drop-kicking him off the side of the cliff and almost heard his imaginary form splash into the water below. Must have been a well-timed wave.

  "And why should I feel safe placing my sword in anyone else's care?"

  "Come on, northerner!" said Mustachios wearily, waving his hand. "Look around you. You think the people who run this show want to deal with this lot, angry? Everyone will be treated fairly -- we promise."

  Except the woman you kidnapped, Rivka grouched inwardly. She remembered that she was on the job, and that she couldn't very well free the woman in the middle of a crowd this big -- especially without her dragon. Frustrated but compliant, she removed her scabbard from her waist. As she handed it over to the man with the mustache, she caught sight of the inscription. It had originally been Isaac's sword, and it still bore his name.

  In this land of fraud and crooked police, she had better take no chances. She gave her name to the man as Isaac, just in case. That way, when she came to claim her sword nobody would be able to say she was trying to claim somebody else's.

  Too bad -- she liked building up her reputation as Riv, the masked warrior -- but, she could spare Isaac's memory this libation. Especially to keep her sword safe.

  When Rivka joined the other warriors around the fence surrounding the fight grounds, she caught her first glimpse of her quarry. The woman whose hand was to be given as the prize for winning today's tournament was seated at the far end of the small field high up on a platform, flanked by enormous guards and tied to the chair with big splashy ribbons that were a grotesque attempt to make the festive out of the frightful.

  The captive was around Rivka's age, in her early twenties, and very beautiful. The one part of living as a man that Rivka hadn't mastered was the appeal of courting another woman. She was usually polite but respectfully distant to any who approached her in that regard. But she could still recognize extreme female beauty, and this woman had more than was safe for her, apparently. Her skin was glowing and a pale olive tone, somewhat like Rivka's herself, but her hair was almost black. It fell in dark waves down her shoulders.

  She looked thoroughly miserable.

  Rivka concentrated on that unhappy face. The other warriors, they were in this to consume her or to prove their worth on the field. Rivka's goal couldn't be more different. This hapless woman might be the rich fiancée of pampered nobility, not the experienced ladies who worked for Madam Shayna, but to Rivka it was the same -- her job was to keep her safe. She wasn't even working strictly for the man who had hired her. Her priorities lay with protecting the woman. So all these other warriors she had to fight today -- what were they, if not just disruptive johns or potential rapists?

  It was the same, and she could totally do this. She had done this, for over a year, and she knew what she was doing.

  Rivka looked around at her competition. Some of the men she had never seen before, but she spotted some familiar faces in the crowd. She noticed at least one of the men who had been drinking at the beer garden where she'd stopped to listen to the fiddle player the night before, and was another man definitely one of those from the brawl the officer accepting a bribe had ignored. The brothers who had passed her on the way in were off to her right, arguing over the division of some kind of meat-on-a-stick fair food they had obtained from one of the vendors.

  There was a blast of trumpets, and then someone shouted, "Silence for the invocation!"

  Rivka felt vaguely out of place as everyone else around her lowered their eyes respectfully and listened as a brass band began to play a local hymn. She knew this part of the world worshipped a pantheon of fascinatingly dysfunctional gods, at least, if the stories she'd picked up were any indication. Rivka usually didn't care, but right now, when everyone else around her was engaged in group prayer, she felt her difference rather pointedly.

  Her eyes happened to flicker over to the captive woman on the dais and noticed that she wasn't praying, either.

  Then the trumpets blared jubilantly, and the voice shou
ted again. "On with the combat!"

  "Put your hands together for 'Grant Kneecaps,' and the infamous Eustache of Red Tree Shore!" shouted someone else. More trumpets sounded, and Rivka watched the first match while peering intently over the waist-high fence.

  "Grant Kneecaps" was the man she recognized from last night's brawl, while Eustache of Red Tree Shore was someone she'd never seen before. She did her best to study both men's fighting styles, especially their strengths and weaknesses, so that she would have some idea of how to handle whichever of them she was to fight.

  Rivka was overjoyed when Kneecaps was declared the winner, because now that she'd had two chances to watch him fight, she was fairly confident she could predict his moves. She practically bounded into the ring when they called her in next -- announcing her as Isaac, which she compartmentalized gracefully into oblivion as she put up her fists.

  It didn't take her long to defeat him, with the kind of preparation she'd done. Panting, she let the man in charge hold up her hand. The crowd cheered for her, but the only one she cared about, the trapped woman, simply watched in terror.

  The announcer called the next fighter into the ring, and Rivka placed him after a moment of thought as one of the men who'd been getting drunk while the fiddler entertained everyone. Thoughts of the beer garden put the fiddler's song back into her mind, and its dancelike rhythm remained with her and kept her energized.

  He was an enormous man, tall and fat and muscular. To conquer him and advance, Rivka would need a different strategy. Fortunately, she'd learned more than one way to fight. No matter how large, any living thing has its vulnerable places. As they circled each other in the sand, she aimed for those places, concentrating on them alone, as she used her dexterity as her own defense.

  Rivka knew what she was doing, yet avoiding his heavy fists while she took him down took a lot out of her. When he was finally in front of her in the dirt, she was panting heavily, shoulders heaving.

  She asked for water and hoped it didn't look like weakness.

  They decided to give her a break and let the next pair fight without her. Pouring some of the water over her face after drinking carefully from inside her cloth mask, she watched the two men go at it. One of them was the younger brother from the bickering pair on the path. The other was a bald man with very dark skin and a goatee. Now, this was a fight she would have actually had fun watching from the audience -- in another universe where no woman's freedom hung in the balance, of course. They both fought elegantly and with plenty of skill. It was only because of the darker man's age, which likely meant greater experience, that his younger opponent was eventually sent back to the fence in defeat.

  Rivka watched the young man rejoin his brother behind the fence. She couldn't hear anything they said to each other over the din of the crowd cheering for the next pair, but they were scowling. She watched the next fight and committed to memory the strengths and weaknesses of each man, as before. When one of them won, a man with mutton-chop sideburns, they called up another fighter who he trounced just as quickly.

  "Isaac!" What was that? Oh, they wanted her up again.

  She faced down the man with the sideburns, still hearing the fiddle player's music in her mind. She was a machine dedicated to subduing him. He was a threat to that woman over there, no different from a violent customer or an angry, jealous lover.

  Rivka won, but that wasn't sweat on her face. Ugh. She hated the taste of blood. Well, nobody likes nosebleeds... The mask had been stained before, and it would be stained again. It could always be cleaned.

  She returned to the throng of warriors outside the fence and found two of them scuffling out of turn. Who knows what insult had initially prompted the quarrel -- now they were going at each other with fists. Guards from the tournament's organizers quickly appeared and broke up the fight, disqualifying both men. Gasps came from the spectators as one of the guards produced a knife from one of the delinquent's shoes.

  "No blades in the ring!" bellowed the man in charge as he pocketed the knife for himself. "That goes for everyone who's left! We find anything else like this, the whole thing's off!"

  The remaining contestants eyed each other uneasily.

  The older brother was up next, and she watched him defeat someone she didn't recognize. Then he fought the darker man who had eliminated his brother. Rivka watched the fight with great interest and in some instances had to remind herself to breathe. Both men fought with a skill that fascinated her. It would have been nice to learn from them, or even spar with them for fun.

  If they weren't trying to force someone into marriage.

  What was wrong with the world?

  Finally, the lighter-skinned man won on a technicality when the darker man's shoe came apart.

  "Not fair!" screamed half the crowd.

  "Sucks to be you!" jeered the other half.

  Rivka studied her own worn and tattered shoes uneasily. When she looked up again, she realized that she and the older brother were the only ones left.

  She pursed her lips beneath the mask. From the bout she'd just witnessed, neither he nor his opponent had any major flaws in their fighting style, nor were they terrifically predictable or gave easy tells to their next move.

  Well, she'd just have to move beyond fighting as her strategy, then.

  "You fight well," she said as she approached him in the center of the ring.

  He nodded sharply. "Thank you. You too. Your nose okay?"

  Even though his tone was gentle, she could tell he was trying to psych her out by referring to the patch of blood spreading across her mask. You don't know that I'm a woman, and women are used to the sight of blood. I could show you four times as much blood soon. Just hang around for about, oh, two weeks. I'll bleed on everything you love.

  "You know, your younger brother's a pretty good fighter too," she pointed out, trying to sound casual. "I bet your mother's really proud of both of you. You should be nicer to him. I bet he looks up to you a lot."

  "Oh, is that what you think?"

  The trumpets sounded, and the fight began. And, just as Rivka had intended, her opponent began to fight badly. It wasn't that she had thrown him off his game or distracted him. The simple fact was, by evoking his little brother, she had tricked him into unconsciously seeing her as his brother's stand-in, and fighting her as if he fought against his brother's techniques. He knew his brother all too well. He didn't know anything about Rivka beyond today's arena, and she executed every technique that ran completely counter to the ones his little brother had used.

  The best part was, he didn't even know where he was going wrong. He didn't realize why his responses were off -- they just were.

  By the time he got his mind in the game, all he could do was hurt Rivka's body -- not her chances of winning. She wore her pain like a rooster wears his brilliant tail feathers, like something she could shuck off if she chose. He could kick all he wanted. She was winning. She had won.

  Rivka had forgotten about the nosebleed and, as was her habit, wiped the sweat off her face from underneath her mask. Her hand came out bloody, and this was the hand that the man in charge held up to the crowd to cheer for her. She couldn't help but laugh at the theatrical display.

  They placed a garland of woven paper around her neck and led her, panting and sweating and covered in sand, to the chair where the captive woman sat. "Meet your new husband, Isaac," said someone to her left, and someone on her right repeated again to the woman, "Isaac."

  Rivka was glad for her mask, for explaining her profound frown would have been impossible. Oh, if only irony were another warrior she could beat up in the middle of the field!

  "This is great, but can I go clean up somewhere and get my sword back?" she asked her handlers.

  Deferentially and full of respect, they led her to a mountain stream. Somebody brought back her sword while she scrubbed away at the blood and dirt. She gave them each a small bread roll from her purse. It seemed appropriate.

  Those attending h
er were joined by the man with the curled mustache. "Congratulations, young stallion from the north!"

  Stop. Talking. "Thank you, sir," said Rivka.

  "Right this way." He escorted her to a small tent, high up on the rocks. "Your bride awaits you inside."

  "I see. Can we leave soon?"

  "Whenever you like!" He was just as amiable as before. Was he thinking not at all of the humanity of the woman inside -- of her fear, her despair, her entrapment? "Is there anything I can bring you to make you more comfortable?"

  "No, please -- actually, I'd like privacy." She knew what he would think, but let him. Let it work for her. Let them get as far as they could from this place -- especially now that she had "the right."

  First thing, though, she wanted to give the woman her own choice. Money was a good thing, and she needed it to free her horse. Yet she'd rather have done all that fighting for no pay, she'd rather be forced to follow in her father's footsteps and work in the fields for a month, than accept money for bringing a woman to a man she didn't want. Most likely, the dark-haired beauty really was his fiancée and missed him terribly, and longed for their reunification, but Rivka didn't want to assume. She'd seen too much of the world. After all, plenty of women became betrothed to men for someone else's convenience.

  She squared her shoulders and stepped inside.

  The brunette shrank back several feet when she saw her, eyes blazing, and Rivka stopped moving so she wouldn't appear a threat. Now that they had privacy, Rivka was desperate for the other woman to feel safe and to trust her. She didn't have to make sure she was watching her -- those huge brown eyes, frightened but proud, were fixed squarely upon her. So Rivka carefully and deliberately took a step backward, bowed her head, and then knelt on one knee. She bowed her head again and then looked back up at the woman.

  The strings that seemed to be holding the brunette's body tense in every direction released themselves. She bowed her head slightly, returning the greeting. "Forse sei un uomo onesto. Potresti riportarmi da mia zia?" She spoke with the air of a queen, but Rivka had absolutely no idea what she was saying.