Antierra Manifesto – blog post #109

This blog post concludes “The Antierra Manifesto” – thanks for reading.

What is Antierra thinking as she stands there?  She looks up into the stands, makes the “mercy” gesture and points at the two young girls beside her.  Her gesture is greeted by spitting and cursing.  She turns to the two children and while they are looking at the approaching men wide eyed and shaking, she puts her sword through their hearts.  Then she turns to the men and utters the loudest blood-curdling shriek that place has ever heard.  I had never heard anything like it and it made me shudder.  It seems to come from some awakened beast, not of human voice. Long it echoes along the high walls and through the compounds; so loud it is, it intimidates that wild and unruly crowd to utter and cowed silence.
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Start blog post #109

She then walks alone to meet the line of men, suddenly no longer an ugly and limping old crone who is nothing but skin, bone and sinew but a tall regal figure who knows her purpose and means to complete it.  The deadly sword flashes red in the plasma lights, the blade still dripping from the blood of the dead girls, and it performs a series of lightning movements that leave a trail of utter carnage until she drops dead, not of wounds but simple heart-stopping exhaustion.  This I can vouch for as I was standing close enough for my sensors to detect her heart stop beating.  She had taken her human body to its final limits.

One of the surviving challengers shouts his cry of victory but no one in the stands picks it up.  For once that crowd is stunned by what it is seeing.  Twenty-three men lie dead and dying around the body of the Desert Beast.  Where is the victory?

The remaining men rush upon the standing group of defenders and kill them one by one, still taking heavy losses.  Only nine men remain of that last ‘rush’ to claim their victory and all of those bear some kind of cut or stab wound.  The last female to remain alive kills herself with her dagger rather than submit to rape.  A new power has arisen on T’Sing Tarleyn.

Even in death the Desert Beast scores.  Never has this place seen such devastation at the hands of a few trained fighters against what, by comparison, can only be called an army of men.

The “harvesting” and trading of female body parts carries little excitement today.  The price paid is much too high for any male to find his enjoyment therein.  The greatest price lies in the message sent to the thousands who came to see women tortured, raped and mutilated before they were even dead.  What they saw instead was a severely organized stand by twenty three female fighters, most of these untrained and certifiable crazies, and an additional twenty females with no fighting skills whatsoever, kill one hundred and ninety-one armed males. 

A sobering set of statistics for the men to mull over.  Not all males are beyond the ability to use some reasoning or exercise wonder.  Many, I would guess, are glad their number was not called.  In previous orgies the ones called were always considered the lucky ones.  Not so today.

Of note:  The scavengers carefully avoid touching the body of the fallen Desert Beast.  No one approaches to cut off any of her parts.  They know she did not die of wounds inflicted by men and having no understanding of such a concept as spontaneous death through the shut-down of body functions as in a massive coronary, they still fear her presence.  After they leave, eunuch slaves and female fighters enter the arena to remove the bodies of the women and take them to the waiting carriers.

Of note:  There is a definite reverence among eunuchs and fighters as they pick up and carry the bodies.  These fallen women are heroes to those who remain behind.  This too is new.  Whatever else the Teaching may have accomplished in the few years it has been verbalized in the fighter compounds, it has made the fighters and some male staff aware that perhaps there is such a thing as life beyond death. This Antierra asserted constantly.  That idea was basic to the Teaching. This we Cydroids cannot know as none of us have “died” the real death. Those of us who were killed, such as XBA9 at the hands of the Warmo’s inquisition, were re-grown and are alive, all the more aware for our experiences.  Perhaps what Antierra taught is a similar process.

As to the women fighters, they are proud this day.  Among them, and perhaps among the compound male staff as well, the exploits of Antierra and her magnetic way of expounding any kind of Teaching, be it in tactical, weapons handling, relationships or ethics and her more questionable ‘spacer’ stories will live long and inspire generations to come.  I say this because I have known her.  I say this because through her I, Cydroid XBA3, became more human.  I just have this wish, that I had been able to join her in those rushes in the arena, to stand by her and use my considerable strength to protect her.  Something I know would have expanded my developing consciousness.  I wish I had been able to practice that special “touch” with her I saw the women do constantly for one-another.

As I think about it, I believe I was actually in love with Antierra.  Perhaps not as humans speak of love between man and woman, but there was something about her mind I found irresistible.  I “wish” I could believe her stories about reincarnation and crossing at will through dimensional barriers from world to world so I could hope to see her again as my sisters believe they will. 

For anyone who may some day read this data, think of it this way: Antierra was a human being who was able to make even an AI see life through a new dimension.  She made me, not less Cydroid, but more human.  I felt compassion when I watched her in the arena on that day.  I felt something hurt me deeply when she slid her sword through the two girls’ hearts to kill them instantly and painlessly.  What I felt was her pain, the pain she used to activate her decisive power.  Now her sorrow and her inevitable joy are forever a part of my brain patterning or shall I dare say, my human understanding. 

Signed: Cydroid XBA3, Doctor Balomo Echinoza Cydroid Family.  Location:

Arena Fighter Compound, Hyrete, Capital of the Kingdom of Elbre, T’Sing Tarleyn, Autumn, Year 1341.

_______________________________________________

After watching and listening to this ancient holorec report I sit for a long time alone in a darkened room.  I sip on a glass of sherry and find my favourite drink insipid as I consider the implications therein. 

 It is useless to try to dismiss it as exaggeration: Cydroids, like our Androids, could not lie.  Even one touched either temporarily or permanently by ‘real’ feelings would still be incapable of this kind of fabrication.  Only if someone’s life was at stake and a story need be made up to create a chain of confusing events or a diversion  would a Cydroid “lie” – but it would not be a lie to them, just an alternate temporary reality to complete and terminate a program loop.

 Let XBA3’s words stand forever as history; as our history. There will be no changes, no apologies, from me.  What I just wrote from the memcard records is an actual event and I am concluding my report as is. I raise my tepid glass of sherry to the crumbling stone walls of this ancient keep and toast Antierra: “To the Fighters of Hyrete!”  And from the walls comes an echo of many voices in reply, the once silent voices of the women who trained, loved, fought and died alongside of their Teacher:  “To the Goddess!”

Signed: Michele Dellman

(Personal comment – not to be included in the official report.

My work of chronicler accomplished here, there remains the daunting task of trying to understand what all this means to me personally, as a woman with the remnant of a small voice, in a greater galactic and universal world once more strangling in ever-expanding webs of male-dominated religious oligarchies, plutocracies and centralized brutal military dictatorships, all and still, in the name of God, Trade and Security where women’s voices remain taboo or all too symbolic beyond the confines of home, workplace or entertainment palaces; when men by and large continue to oppress and kill our spirit, our mind, if not always our bodies.

 And I ask myself this resurgent and damning question: what, ultimately, is a woman’s purpose in the scheme of human affairs?  I realize I just shrugged as Antierra was wont to when a question asked was not giving her the logical answer she could accept and truthfully verbalize.  

Maybe the worst part of this question is that I know what she would say: “As below, so above.  You are a woman.  You exist.  You are real.  So you continue.  The goddess lives in you.”

(“M. D.”)

Antierra Manifesto – blog post #108

I must sleep now.  Tomorrow I will be empowered, one last time, to use every technique, every trick with weapons I’ve ever learned and used or can remember.  I will be free to grab an opponents weapons if I so choose and use it against him, or them.  There are no rules tomorrow.  I plan to use Tomia as a bulwark against the attacking males to protect the two young trainees for as long as we can, if the girls will let us.  At least that will give us a common purpose, apart from just tearing men apart and being torn apart by them in turn.
Tomorrow is our future.   

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Start blog post #108

Epilogue

A report from researcher and chronicler for the Supremacy,  Michele Dellman

From the reams of committee reports, council decisions, legal proceedings, including almost endless lists of supply requests, legal gambling wins and losses subject to the King’s tax and other documents found after the sack of Hyrete and which I scanned through for many days looking to satisfy my curiosity about this place I became excited when I saw the name of Antierra surface again in a set of memcards used in the antique datacoms of the period.  Most of the story has already been published but for some reason the last days, or day, of that particular female fighter had not been recovered.  After some painstaking efforts to translate this digital document, I have this to add to what I have boldly called ‘The Antierra Manifesto’ in my private collection.

 Sometime after the defeat of Heitchef Warmo in the arena, Antierra was eventually condemned to die by execution.  Through the efforts of her [lover? friend?] called Doctor Balomo Echinoza, a doctor of medicine and anthropologist from the world of Koron on assignment to Elbre, the sentence was commuted to Antierra being condemned to a fight to the death in a killing orgy in the arena of Hyrete.  Here are the reports made by one of Doctor Echinosa’s Cydroids of that fateful day.  Be warned that the following is not for the queasy.

Report by Cydroid number XBA3 for archiving

“My name, as given to me by Antierra, is Xoba Three, normally known as Cydroid XBA3.  I am one of the male Cydroids of doctor Echinoza’s family.  I was one of the handlers who took Antierra to the arena the day of the killing orgy and thus observed the proceedings.  This is a verbal report of what took place.

First the fighters are escorted to the edge of the arena and made to stand, unarmed and naked for the crowd to curse and lust after.  Personal items are thrown at the women to fall harmlessly on the freshly raked sands and have to be collected and taken away by male eunuch slaves.  23 female fighters, mostly dikfols, including Antierra, are lined up along the wall, then another twenty females are also brought in.  The total number of females in the arena when the gates are officially closed and manned by armed guards and specially cleared fighters is exactly 43.  These must all be killed regardless of performance or how many men they kill attempting to survive.  If men stop entering the arena to fight the remaining fighters because of fear, the fighters will be decimated with lasers.  This is an execution, not a fight.  The fighting is for entertainment value and blood-letting only.  There is no official betting as on a normal fight though it is common for challengers and spectators to bet between each other as to numbers of kills.  Most of the audience is made up of street males who cannot usually afford to attend fights and the unofficial sums that pass through their hands in this unofficial betting are negligible.

In the annals, this “interactive” event is marked as an official holiday.

Each female is given a weapon at random.  Antierra gets a long double-handed  sword, undoubtedly a subtle gift from the judge for she is deadliest with this weapon.  A trumpet blows and a gate opens at the opposite end of the arena floor.  Naked men troop in.  I count exactly fifty in the first group.  They all hold various types of weapons which according to the rules of this day, must be official.  How this is determined is by lottery draw.  Each man, as he enters the arena to file in the stands is given a ticket with a number on it.  While the men of Elbre cannot read letters, much less words, they can all read numbers and work with them.  Statistics and money are very important here.  When the stands have filled, or the entrance gates are officially closed, whichever comes first, numbers are called.  Each man with a ticket number that matches the called number takes it to the judges’ tables and receives a weapon in exchange for his ticket.  He then strips and joins the group that will be let into the arena to fight the females.

Thus it appears that for the rag-tag group of dikfols who can barely defend themselves due to problems with their heads, the half dozen or so truly trained fighters and the twenty sacrificial victims of worker and sex slave categories added to the roster for additional numbers, the judges choose to allow fifty men in at one time as challengers.  I will do the human thing here and colour my report with the use of sarcasm: fair is fair after all.  Honour and bravery must always be displayed by the male heroes.

Another trumpet sounds and the fight is on.  The men rush upon the women.  Antierra has organized her group in a tight square and boxed in the less trained and most vulnerable members, the two child-women dikfols and the worker females.  Two of the workers insist on joining in the first rush and do a passable job of defending themselves.  Antierra’s fighters decimate over twenty of the rushing louts before they even realize what has happened.  The fighters grab the men’s weapons as back up and pass them behind to their charges for quick access.  The male rush ends with the score: fifty men killed.  One woman dead and three wounded, one seriously.

With just enough time for Antierra to rearrange her quadrangle, another fifty “challengers” are let in.  The bodies have been piled to the side by the eunuchs and the challengers are somewhat intimidated by the sight of their male buddies lying dead and bleeding still.  Nevertheless, loaded with brew and chakr mix they rush the defensive ring of women.  The remaining active fighters dispatch these as fast as they can, Antierra’s long sword never missing a throat, arm or torso.  She decapitates two rushers while throwing two daggers at a man who had jumped the cordon and attacked a frightened worker female.  Before the dagger got him he had killed the female.  Score on second rush: 50 males dead, five females, of which three of Antierra’s trained force.  That leaves Antierra still unscathed and three trained and clear-minded fighters, of whom one has several cuts and is bleeding profusely.

Antierra looks at her hopeless situation and forces five more dikfol trained fighters to take the point, and uses three of the worker females as partners.  The one she has named “Tomia” is still active and taking another point of the square when the third rush trumpet sounds.  The men do not run into the women’s weapons this time.  They take time to organize themselves somewhat and become more wary and dangerous.  The fighters are better armed but less sure now that except for two, the best are dead or disabled.  Antierra holds two daggers in one hand and is still using her long sword.  Tomia is armed with two of the deadly staffs fully extended.  There is no finesse here, just killing speed.  Dispatch as many men as you can as fast as you can.

The men attack viciously.  They are pushed back even more viciously.  Dikfols now smell blood and scream their hate, throwing themselves at the men, taking several down permanently before they are speared from behind.  The fighting continues until all the men are dead or dying.  Women’s bodies lie all over now.  Antierra is cut and bleeding across the forehead.  Her worker partners are all dead.  Tomia is dying.  Only one of the real fighters remains standing and eleven other women, including the small girl women who now must take their place in the defense position.  It is hard to imagine that so few women could have dispatched one hundred and fifty men and no one calls for mercy.  No, let me correct this statement.  It is not hard to imagine, it is impossible to.

A fourth trumpet sounds and another fifty men are ready to attack the remaining group of defenders.  They come, fresh and eager to maim and kill.  They want body parts.  They are the ones who will mostly survive this day, this they can see; the ones who will be royally treated for giving their friends in the stands the coveted female body parts.  They are the ones who will rape and torture the remaining living females.

What is Antierra thinking as she stands there?  She looks up into the stands, makes the “mercy” gesture and points at the two young girls beside her.  Her gesture is greeted by spitting and cursing.  She turns to the two children and while they are looking at the approaching men wide eyed and shaking, she puts her sword through their hearts.  Then she turns to the men and utters the loudest blood-curdling shriek that place has ever heard.  I had never heard anything like it and it made me shudder.  It seems to come from some awakened beast, not of human voice. Long it echoes along the high walls and through the compounds; so loud it is, it intimidates that wild and unruly crowd to utter and cowed silence.

End blog post #108

Antierra Manifesto – Blog Post #107

I watch her working her mind to find names for the other women.  She frowns deeply and certainly works hard to find fitting names.  She knows these women, a couple of whom are just small girls barely thirteen I’d wager, someone having faked their brands to expedite their sale and make a quick buck.  They likely went over the edge from sexual and other physical abuse, torture, overdosing on chakr or from having witnessed horrors their young minds could no longer absorb.  It could be all of the above.  The most dangerous part of any young fighter’s life is the trip from the crèche to the fighter arena.  I try not to imagine watching these children being set upon by males to be dismembered while still alive and their parts thrown over the walls into the crazed crowd, but the image remains nevertheless.  This is one more horror I must remember, in case the temptation to forget becomes too seductive.

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Start blog post #107

I know Tomia will give them appropriate names or titles and know the ploy will work.  Always it has.  For we are also the names we bear and the more names we use the broader become the personalities we may properly express, for each name is associated with a partial through our remembrances.  Each partial, associated with one or several past lives, carries a vital part of who we are.  These partials will be with us in the arena tomorrow and how much we will need their presence and strength then!  Goddess help these ahyas tomorrow when I no longer can!

When the servant women return to clean up after us and feed us I seek out the messenger.  She comes over but before she speaks I ask her if she desires a secret name if she hasn’t got one yet.  She indicates she has no name, just her branding. 

“I name you Angelia.”  In their tongue it’s pronounced ‘aneya.’  “It means special messenger.  Do you have message for me from goronda?” 

“Goronda say, ‘Your friend is well on planet Koron.  Now she is teaching a new course in ethics at the high academy for philosophers.  Also she is being studied, at her insistence, by medical authorities for possible cloning.  We are excited at the possibilities and everyone who knows her loves her.  The President of the Koron World Court has given her a special citizenship.  She is citizen of the entire world of Koron, not just one of its fifty-two countries.  She can freely travel to any part of the world she wishes and no one can question her as to motives.  She also expressed her undying love for the fighter Antierra to be conveyed to her whenever possible.’ 

“That is what goronda say.”

“Thank you Angelia.  You are a perfect messenger.”

“Thank you for name.  May I share with goronda?”

“Yes you may.  She will understand and help you with it.”

“I know you die tomorrow.”  There are large rolling tears on her white pinched face.  “I not know to say proper, wish you not die.  Wish you stay to teach more.”

“Listen Angelia.  No one really die.  Just body die, give much hurt but after, one alive again, free.  Maybe I return and teach you when you training for fighter.  I look different but it be me.  I make sure you know.  Take my hand, hold tight.  Touch me and take from me what is left.  You be the last fighter to take Antierra power.  Use it well, Angelia.  Be not sad.  Is good for me go away tomorrow into timeless.  I come back: this believe.  Now is good for you learn name, practice self-empowerment.”

“What means self-empowerment?”

“Ask goronda to explain.  She know you better.  She mind touch, explain with power.  She very good ahya.  Trust goronda, Angelia.  Go now, or guards punish you.”

She slips through the returning trainees and disappears. 

It is always especially quiet in the cages any night before an orgy.  Tonight seems even more so.  I can just make out the silhouette of Tomia sitting quietly.  I try to focus on her thoughts but I encounter the white noise again.  She has shut down, just waiting.  I swing my gaze around, see the two little trainees lying down.  One is crying, whether in knowledge of tomorrow’s horrors or from some other nightmare, I’ll never know.  I wish I could reach over and hold her.  We can’t even comfort one-another.  These people’s cruelty seems boundless.  Yet how many times have I encountered the same, in quality if not in quantity, on Túat Har?  The people there had the same lack of awareness of the pain they inflicted on others, including millions of non-human sentients who shared planet space with them; the same lack of empathy towards those of their world who died every day so some could become rich and be comfortable.  This is nothing new, just more of same in a concentrated bitter brew.  Indeed, that is the lesson of the stack worlds, isn’t it. 

As below, so above my teachers insisted on telling me.  Here you no longer doubt the wisdom of that saying.

I must sleep now.  Tomorrow I will be empowered, one last time, to use every technique, every trick with weapons I’ve ever learned and used or can remember.  I will be free to grab an opponents weapons if I so choose and use it against him, or them.  There are no rules tomorrow.  I plan to use Tomia as a bulwark against the attacking males to protect the two young trainees for as long as we can, if the girls will let us.  At least that will give us a common purpose, apart from just tearing men apart and being torn apart by them in turn.

Tomorrow is our future.   

 

 

 

End blog post #107

Antierra Manifesto – blog post #103

They have simple minds and I’m not really lying.  It could be the good life they all dream of sometimes.  I gain three men that way and stop my recruiting.  That’s it; we have our complement and are set.  Now it’s up to the engineers, the Cydroids and the weather.  We wait. Was it too easy? I feel serious discomfort in my mind but cannot locate the source. Maybe I’m nervous. Maybe I just want it all to be over.

End blog post #102
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Start blog post #103

While I wait Tiki and the Concubine are involved in two more fights.  They are a deadly pair.  Twice in one day they are pitted against drooks and twice they defeat them and kill them, sharp and clean.  With the many tricks I’ve taught and demonstrated plus their single-mindedness as fighters the two are simply unbeatable in any reasonably fair fight.  The day will come when they will be tested in unfair fights, especially Tiki because she is small, pretty to watch and young.  Money flows more freely where basest emotions of sexual lusts are stirred.  I have warned them not to get over-confident and to expect the unexpected, always.  Treachery is always around the corner.  It’s the way of life here, basically.

This I teach all women fighters, no longer using their pidgin in my exhortations.  I am the representative of the goddess now, and the voice of the crone from the other side:  “One day, I sense, you will enter the arena expecting the usual one-on-one fight and you will be faced with double the number of men, two on one, four on two.  You will not be permitted to protest and will have to fight for your lives.  You will get hurt in those.  If a team, one will likely be killed and the other have to finish the fight to stay alive.  Think about that.  Think about your state of mind when your partner receives the death blow.  What will your instinctive reaction be?  That is what will determine if you live or die, at that moment.  You are all excellent fighters but you are not immortal or super women.

“Train for that one eventuality now.  Train also for weapons switch.  It will be done to you.  Arena fighting, because of the many losses and the new phase of wars with Estáani, is entering a dark phase.  They are angry that less women die at the hands of challengers than used to be the case.  Ordinary challengers, the ones who did it just to show off for their friends; who made bets while under the influence of brew or chakr, are becoming rarer.  Now you mostly fight condemned men or drooks and less money is flowing through the gambling houses.  Investors are pulling out or going broke.  This means desperation and treachery.  Know your place, and your changing times.  Adapt to them quickly, I warn you.

“Now I have this to add.  When I arrived in Hyrete I was shown the legal array of weapons fighters needed to be familiar with and would be challenged by.  Of those we have consistently ignored one set because it is, well, antiquated and ridiculous.  So it was pulled out at my suggestions some years later as no one in their right mind would use it.  Who remembers this particular set?”

The women look at one another, staring especially at the oldest in the training line-up.  They all shrug negatively.

“It was a lance and buckler.  A lance is like the staff, a kind of long spear only much more unwieldy, easily broken if a weight, such as a man’s body is thrown against it.  Basically it can only stab a challenger.  The buckler is a small round shield with a short spike sticking out of the center, with which, if you break your lance, and expect you will, you try to stab your opponent.  Idiotic?  Totally but I’m going to request this weapon be re-instated in our sets because I sense that very soon some drook from a distant town where they use this stupid weapon to kill women will demand to face one of us with it. 

Yes, it is a man’s weapon.  It is very effective against us because of our small size and light weight.  It works against our speed.  A clumsy weapon designed on Túat Har, another world, in another dimension and at another time, to be used by tall muscular fighting men called soldiers; also used by fighting men, usually slaves, called gladiators, who, as with us, fought to the death unless given mercy by the crowds.  Later the combination lance and shield was used for one-on-one combat using heavy four-footed beasts called horses who could carry a man in a heavy saddle while both man and horse were covered in steel chain link armour.  The lance rested on a stand when not in use. 

“Tomorrow we begin training with lance and buckler if I can find enough of them.  Back to your training please, women fighters of Hyrete!”  I salute them to give them that extra edge of pride.  I have thoroughly trained them in the art of the self-empowering mantra and I can see their lips moving as they repeat the old mantra against fear:

“I will not fear. Fear is the mind killer. I will face my fear. I will let it pass over me and through me. When it has gone, I will look and only I will be standing there.”*

Action processes, when engaged properly, tend to move in a reverse spiral, from slow to tight and fast as they approach the center.  Our commitment to the escape is tightening up.  The storms are all but certain now.  Great winds are arising over the desert I am told via Tieka from the on-duty Cydroid in the kitchen. We can see the sands being sucked high into the atmosphere, dulling the sun’s light.  Sand builds up in our washing and drinking troughs, on our benches and tables and even our straw we have to kick and stir before we can lay in it.  The flagstones are covered with moving, snaking sand.  On the horizon, what we can see of it, are great grey clouds with white thunderheads climbing high in the sky by late afternoon then receding in the night, only to return again the next day and climb higher each time.  So we know the prevailing winds are weakening to be replaced by a type of sirocco rising from the desert, crossing the sea and dumping its wet, oppressive sand-filled humidity upon Elbre. 

I do not envy those untrained and poorly equipped soldiers out there in their sandy dug-outs and eroding trenches attempting to defend Hyrete, the royal city; waiting for death to find them in the way of concussion bombardments or swallow them in quicksand in the sudden collapse of newly formed dunes or washed away to drown in the sand-filled waters of flash floods from rain storms sweeping the foothills to the north east. 

I get word that a confusion plan has been worked out among the Cydroids.  I really think they enjoy all this cloak and dagger stuff.  They have ‘recruited’ two of the legitimate security personnel to escape as well, using these individuals as the fall guys in what should be seen as a security breach allowing an Estáan commando force to enter the keep and steal five carriers as well as taking some thirty five captives for slave labour and sex in their offensive.  So that’s to be the official cover story.  It should leave all of us in the clear.  And that, I hope, takes care of the last detail. 

We wait, not without some anxiety.  The way I feel, you’d think I was one of those escaping.  But these are my people, these young women my children.  Long ago there was a change of energy towards me in the compound.  I became the head mother, especially to the newly arrived trainees.  I sought them out to encourage them and protected them from particularly vicious fighters to whom they were given.  I had one fighter taken out and flogged to death for abusing a trainee.  That example was needed at the time both to protect the young and to establish my authority in the cages.  Serious infractions to our own ‘rules’ were reported to me and I administered the punishment in a totally fair way.  It was done on the training ground.  I’d ask for the perpetrator to be matched against me in training, then I’d let her have at me to see who was right and who walked away in pain. 

Now I’m also the Teacher.  That’s my personal beachhead on Malefactus.  Over time, I’ve embellished our silent and sacred ‘cult’ to our goddess.  The women’s prayers, always including their chosen name, have become more personal and specific.  I’ve taught them that prayers are not begging for miracles, but for strength and patience.  For understanding when nothing makes sense.  For compassion towards one-another when one is afraid or hurt.  For courage the day a killing orgy is announced and the cages are culled for the slaughter.  I have given them something to look to, beyond their physical life and we have lived longer, had less suicides and many less executions.  Also I’ve noticed the women respond better if I use my own language, not their pidgin, and they are learning to speak more fluently. 

Now eighteen of my children are heading out into the unknown to attempt the building of some kind of normal life they have never experienced.  They and their men hitching rides in the open on flimsy carriers are the seeds of a new culture, the hope of Malefactus.  Much hinges on the success of this venture, and taken one part at a time, it is a simple plan.  But put all those pieces together to happen simultaneously and you have a complex structure that can collapse on itself from the outset.  I’ve never been one to overlook possibility of trouble.  Life has not been so easy on me that I can afford to do that.  But at this stage, what can I do but join in the women’s prayer and offer mine to our ‘goddess’ in hope?

* Bene Geseritt mantra against fear – Dune, by Frank Herbert

End blog post #103

Antierra Manifesto – blog post #97

We wait.  I bow while they eye me openly, trying to gauge my body, my most likely opening moves.  I’m after all the undefeated Desert Beast with an impressive record of kills.  They know not to take anything for granted.  Plus in their stupidity they forfeited their right to see me handle the rapier.  Second advantage goes to me; they already have first: two against one.  A set of drums roll and echoes across the keep and a score of trumpets blare the start of the game.

End blog post #96
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Start blog post #97

First order of business is to discover their moves.  I back out of their instant trap which I expected and parry two thrusts at my midriff.  Back more, parry again, back, parry and turn to slash at an exposed arm.  Blood.  Good, first cut is mine.  I get a third advantage now.  Back again, circle slowly, warily, drawing them in to see when they combine for a killing stroke or to throw a dagger.  I have to move so neither of them can get behind me.  And I have to plan my own disabling blow against either of them.  Nothing for it but to continue backing away, thus angering the crowd. 

Time for my ‘sand dance’ as I call it.  I move my feet rhythmically, sliding them through the warm sand, feeling it, feeling the firmer stone under it, finding footing for a deadly crouch.  Using the bionic ankle I shovel sand into piles while keeping them distracted with rapid slashes of the rapier, not meant to cut but to sting when contacting bare skin.  I land several such and I get a couple also.  It hurts, no doubt of that but I remember the floggings I watched and this I need to experience, for those victims who died in front of my eyes.  I continue to make a space for later footing then step away from my little constructs.  It works.  One of them steps on one of the piles of sand and staggers.  I was already on the move and thrust the rapier in his groin deep enough to send him doubling over.  He’ll be out of commission long enough for me to tire the other.  Maybe even permanently.

So to the other one.  No more erection.  Too bad, lost my target.  I am on the move now, attacking with all my power, forcing him to give ground away from my cleared space.  Push, push, watching to see if he’s going to go for the dagger throw.  He knows better, too soon.  He knows I’m still much too fast to give him the split second needed to draw and throw.  He continues to give ground to my relentless assault.  I prick him several times and watch him wince each time.  He feels my sting now and he’s sweating profusely.  I am making him work to save his drook hide.  Push, push, until my feet are on the firmer spot I worked for earlier.  Now I hold my position and mock him with several meaningless rapier whirls.  His eyes follow the blade thinking I’ve got some hidden killer move in those motions.  That’s what I want, to create confusion.  Let him imagine non-existent killer moves: worth it to me, even if it wastes precious energy. 

‘Yes drook, use that stunted imagination to see the Desert Beast ready to set her fangs in your soft flesh.’  I use the mind touch on him just enough to goad his rising fear.  I can feel it and can almost hear him pleading to his partner to return to the fight.  It’s of little consequence now because even if he does he’ll only get killed.  I can see from the corner of my eye that the groin stab was totally disabling.  It was deep enough to accomplish what I desired. 

A great calm comes over me as the noise of the crowd recedes behind my head again.  I’m back in the Warmo fight, at the end, when his defeat is inevitable. What are these drooks but left-overs from that black day?  Remnants, rags, of a once proud entity.  Dregs of male humanity lost in a world created from their own uncontrolled lusts.  Lost in their own evil and still falling, unable to check their velocity, like a ship without its drive burning through the atmosphere to crash in flames, all aboard fried with it. 

And I’m here to remind them of this fact, not to kill them.  I have to talk to them, or at least one of them before it’s all over.  Dangerous but something I sense critically necessary.  I must disable, not kill.  That means playing cat to the mice I’ve cornered in the granary.  This is not my idea, so who’s in my mind?  The Avatari, Al’Tara.  I sense her, know her.  But they said they’d not help me here, what’s going on?  Ah, of course.  I’m incarnating her, them.  I’ve reached another level of understanding and can talk to my higher self.  Can give myself advice.  Not so alone anymore.

The disabled challenger has returned.  He’s holding his fist to his side and his pallor is terrible to behold.  I can feel sorry for him even in this.  He holds his rapier steady enough and is trying to cover for his friend.  He knows he’s facing his death now and all trace of mockery or bravado is gone.  He lunges at me, hoping to give me a jab or cut that will slow me down.  I easily parry even as I handle his partner.  I draw my dagger with my right hand.  What these poor drooks don’t know is I’m fairly ambidextrous but my right hand is my strong arm when it comes to throwing while the left is the strongest gripping hand. 

With rapier in left, dagger in right, bionics fully functional I go on the attack again.  Left to parry, right to feint.  I force the weaker one to come at me again, leaving a tantalizing opening.  He takes it, no choice in the matter as he’s weakening.  I block, stabbing in his right arm this time, the rapier cutting clean through the muscle then out in one move.  That’s it for that one.  He collapses in the sand and I kick his sword away from him, sand in his face and move on to the other one who is now pressing me in a desperate attempt to take advantage of his friend’s last efforts.

The fight is not over, not by a long shot.  Actually it is now swinging in his favour since he realizes he has no support while I’m certainly tiring.  We’re one on one, as it is supposed to be and he becomes more self-reliant.  He’s got his dagger out too now and the question in our minds is who throws first?  Who commits?  We move slowly around, facing each other, looking for that one opening the professional knows will inevitably come.  I back away from him to test him.  He does not take the bait and backs away from me in turn.  Tit for tat.  I turn my body sideways, keeping the rapier pointed in his direction, weighing my chances for a dagger throw.  Not good, he’s still too fast and would block it, taking away my back up weapon.  I walk backward through the sand, feeling its warmth between my toes.  I smell male sweat in the air coming from the stands and realize the crowd is almost silent.  They sense the tension between the challenger and I.  While we measure each other again they wait.  The disabling of the other one put a serious dent in their exuberance.

My challenger turns slowly to keep his eyes on me as I continue to walk backward around him.  I don’t want to press him yet – his dagger makes me nervous.  It looks very deadly in his hand.  I am fully aware that he knows when and how to throw, that’s what I read in his mind.  I have to come up with a feint to get him to commit himself.  I move slowly back to the place where I’d created the sand pile and cleared some stone for footing.  I repeat the process to regain the firm surface.  Now what?  I pretend to stagger on the piled up sand and that does the trick.  In one lightning move he has thrown his dagger.  The only way to block the direct throw is with my right arm.  I take the dagger through the lower arm and deflect it just as it penetrates through.  Gritting my teeth I set my mind above the agony, jump back, throw my dagger back in its sheath and rip his out of my arm.  The blood is pouring out now, not fast enough to cause immediate death but still a dangerous cut.

I pretend to be seriously disabled, holding his dagger under my upper arm and bringing the rapier into play slowly.  He commits himself to the death blow too soon.  I drop the rapier in the sand, grab the dagger with my left and whip it in a sharp throwing arc, letting go just as it enters his lung.  Tearing the other dagger out of its sheath I jump in the sudden opening he makes and drive it in his heart.  I retrieve my rapier and go to inspect the other challenger who has rolled on his side and is moaning pitifully.  Before I beseech the crowd for mercy I bend down and speak to him.

“Listen, I did not want to kill you.  I don’t want to kill you.  Most of us are not men killers but you force us to do this.  Why?  You must ask why.  You are going to die now even if the crowd gives mercy because that cut in your groin cannot be repaired and you know it, being a trained fighter.  Before you die, I want you to realize this: we women are intelligent people.  We know what you are doing to us.  We know things are supposed to be different.  We also know that we have a great friend in the goddess who has awakened and is going to help us get out of this horror you have put us in.  Understand this drook.  We do not want to hate you, hurt you or kill you.  We defend ourselves.  Ask then, why must you hate us, hurt us and kill us?  Wouldn’t you rather be lying down somewhere soft with a young woman’s arms wrapped around you after making love instead of lying here bleeding to death from a woman’s weapon?  Ask the goddess to forgive you and ask me the same thing, now.”

He emits the death rattle once, recovers and says, “I ask forgiveness…”  I reply immediately “And I grant it.  You will remember when you awaken.”  I don’t think he hears me but still I got a confession, of sorts.  I cannot let the crowd know he’s already dead.  I stand and give the “mercy” signal, raising one arm straight up, fingers splayed and wait.  The cry of disgust and anger is unanimous: “Kill!”  So I thrust my rapier in the body, turn and walk away to the exit to be escorted as usual by my handlers.

End blog post #97