Approx. 5,700 words
Riva hung pot-bellied and low over the Western horizon awaiting her sister moon, Roscinda, but the conjunction was still a sleepless night away.
Perriato tensed and relaxed the muscles in his buttocks, then did the same systematically for his thighs and calves, trying to relieve the stiffness in his legs as he knelt, motionless, before the unshuttered Westport, the large circular opening in the outer wall in the room at the top of Brother Tymon's Tower. This Vigil was meant to cleanse mind and spirit, to prepare him for his decision, but to Perriato it was trial by boredom. He already knew which path he was going to choose. Nothing would change his mind tonight; how could it? The spirits of his world had died when the spacers came.
The evening air wafted the fresh scents of spring to his nostrils; not the blossoms of the cultured town gardens, but the fragrant grasses and herbs from the hillside across the river. He had a sudden aching longing to be there, on the water's edge, dipping his hand in the cool water and sipping it slowly, but he was not allowed to move away from his place of Vigil during the long night hours. His head ached already and his mouth felt dry and sticky. The night hours stretched into infinity and Perriato shoved away thoughts of water and began to do as ritual demanded and ask himself why he was here.
It was a simple answer. For five years he'd worked hard to learn the required physical and mental skills. Tomorrow, with the dawn he would tell them his decision. He would be a warrior and not a priest. His choice.
They couldn't refuse him. He'd worked his way up to graduate in the top five of his year. It hadn't been easy; Perriato had been a slow starter. He smiled at the thought of his clumsiness in those early days. He'd never even held a blade before he'd been taken by the priests, but now he could wield any of the traditional Rasthan weapons as well as any student and better than most. Once he signed on as a spacer they'd train him to use the weapons and the technology that he had only seen from a distance.
Rasthan has become a primitive planet, the spacer student-master had told them. Your ancestors lost the knowledge which they brought here with them. We are not allowed to give you off-world technology, not yet, but we are allowed to recruit candidates to serve as warriors in our fleet and by their aptitude and their actions the Rasthani will be assessed.
He might have had trouble mastering weapons, initially, but Perriato had been a natural scholar. He'd not been frightened of that. Mam had taught him his letters and numbers and he'd always been a sponge for knowledge, even on the farm. Here at the seminary, he'd absorbed physics, geography, mathematics and philosphy, revelling in all the new ideas they presented. He'd even managed to become fluent in the uneasy, front-of-the-mouth language of the off-worlders and had learned to read their square, even script.
Knowledge.
His ultimate reward would be knowledge of new worlds. Spacer knowledge. He mustn't end up as one of the Brotherhood, destined to serve only on Rasthan. He thought of Tomas. Poor Tomas, who had barely made the grade. Now there was a real candidate for the priesthood. Perriato could almost see Tomas in the hooded, brown, clerical cloak. The uncharitable thoughts shamed him. He knew it was wrong to see the Spacer recruits as the successful ones and the Brotherhood as second best. The training had been the same for both so far. At the conclusion came the Vigil. From then on the young men followed their chosen path, dictated by their aptitudes and desires.
Perriato would be a spacer. He had to be....
Cramp seized the muscle of his left calf and clenched the arch of his foot into a curve. He eased the muscles as well as he could, while trying to keep the required outward calm. Don't think about the boredom. It paralysed the mind, just as the stiffness was paralysing his knees. He glanced towards Riva. Her position was unaltered. The Vigil had barely begun. He'd been told it would be difficult, though no one would tell him why. One night alone in a quiet room should present no problems; it was ridiculous to think that it might... but even as he'd dropped to his knees for the blessing, he'd begun to have doubts.
In front of Perriato was the Westport, a circular opening right at the top of the tower, twice as far across as a man was high. No one knew its original purpose. Maybe it had been built when the Rasthan first came here. According to the spacers they had come out of the sky, from halfway across the galaxy. The blocks of granite had been cut with machine-tool precision, and an intricate design had been woven into the keystone above his head. The bottom of the circle scooped down to floor level.
A man might walk right out over the sill and into the empty air. It was said that some vigil-keepers had ended upon the cobbles a thousand feet below. They must have had their reasons - a crisis of conscience perhaps...
Stupid thoughts! He shuddered.
From the top of the tower the far hills had been outlined against the vivid purple afterglow of the setting sun and the river which tumbled and fought its way down the valley was no more than a slippery silver eel. With the night, the view had gone into hiding, leaving the Westport as a black rim around a dark sky, dotted with pinpoints of light. He knew all the constellations. Alida, the Singer, showed to the north, as did Caliba the Sword, with Kimber, the jewel in the hilt, shining brighter than any of the other stars. Kimber was the star he'd seen from the tiny attic window of the boys' bedroom in the farm house when he was a child.
He remembered... his brother Micah...
"Are you asleep? Perri? Are you asleep?"
"Yes." Perriato's sigh was audible. He'd been just on the brink. "What do you want?"
"You know what you telled me. About men and women, and stallions and mares and all that sort of stuff? You know...?"
"I know."
"Does they like it? Men and women, I mean. Does they like doing it?" Micah, his older, but in many ways much younger, brother was half out of the covers, raised up on one elbow in the narrow bed across the room. Even in the starlight Perriato could make out the rapt expression on his bland, moon face.
"Course they do." Perriato spoke with all the authority of innocence.
"I seen 'em doing it. I seen 'em. Our Clea and Drever from Winscot."
"What?"
"I seen 'em in the wood. But they didn't see me. They looked real funny. Her with her skirt up round her middle and him with his breeches down to his knees."
"Clea?"
"Aye."
"And Drever? The big lad apprenticed to Butcher Garwhit?"
"Aye."
"And they were..."
"Doing it. Aye. Just like you said. But they wasn't enjoying it. He were, like, grunting, and she were, like, groaning. Does it hurt?"
Perriato wasn't sure. "Of course not," he said. "Go to sleep, Micah."
Clea, his big sister, and Drever. The lad with fists as big as the hams he carved. Drever the Cleaver. And her so dainty. He didn't sleep all that night. The following morning he had to feed the chickens because Clea wasn't well. He crept up to her room in the eaves of the house.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
She was red-eyed from crying. That wasn't like her at all.
"Clea?"
"What do you want?" She wiped her eyes with a rag.
"I came to see if you were all right. I fed your chickens. Only Micah said..."
"Damn the bloody chickens. Micah's a bloody half-wit. Get out." He hesitated.
"Get out!" Her voice was shrill.
He got out.
Drever the Cleaver. The image loomed in Perriato's mind. If he'd harmed her he'd be sorry.
Later that afternoon, he had an errand in town for his mother and as he walked near Garwhit's his feet slowed. From across the rutted street, Perriato watched the elderly butcher put up his shutters. There were the swish-swish sounds of scrubbing from the shop, then water swooshed out of the open doorway. Swish-swish again, then swoosh. Finally the front door closed and a few minutes later the apprentices, three of them, came round the corner from the back of the shop.
Hands like hams. Perriato felt sick. The butcher's apprentice was bigger and broader than he remembered, but Clea was hurt and..."Drever! I want a word with you."
"Well, Perriato. Don't often see you in town. Too busy with your book-learning for the likes of us." Drever swaggered to his mates. "Me and Perriato's going to be good friends."
"Don't count on it. I'm here because of Clea. Because of what you did."
The other two apprentices laughed. "Yes what did he do? Wouldn't tell us."
"We can guess though." The gesture from the smaller of the two boys was very explicit.
Perriato looked at Drever and waited for a reply. There was none. He could grow old this way. He stared Drever down and tried to shut out the image of those ham-like hands around his throat.
"Ask your sister." Was all the reply he got.
"She's not well. What have you done?"
"Here. Perriato the poet's going to have a go at Drever for filling his sister's belly."
Perriato registered the little apprentice's words with surprise. No one had said anything about her being pregnant. He hesitated, but it was too late to back down. A crowd had begun to gather in the street.
"Is he going to hit him or read him a poem?" someone asked.
"Which hurts most?"
He ignored the crowd. Not many people learned to read. Perriato was used to their jibes, but he wasn't used to using his fists. He felt sick. Imagined his nose being pounded to a bloody pulp.
Drever hadn't moved.
Perriato took a deep breath to try and quell the shakes and faced him down.
Drever the Cleaver. Hands like hams.
"I'm asking you." Perriato wished he was taller. "What have you done?"
Drever had used up his supply of words for the day. He dropped his head and charged like a bull. Perriato side-stepped and caught him a blow on his ear. It hurt his fingers but it felt good. He got a sudden surge of elation. He could do this. There was a roar from the crowd and a yell from Drever. The big apprentice was four years older and about twice the size of Perriato. He turned and charged again. This time he connected and Perriato felt all the air woosh out of his lungs. He managed to land another punch to Drever's head, but only succeeded in making the big boy mad. Drever's fist hit him like a battering ram in the ribs and again on the side of his arm. They punched, kicked and wrestled, but for every blow Perriato landed he took two in return. The last thing he saw clearly was one of the ham-hands, curled tightly into a fist, launched at his nose.
Pain had a colour; dark red, shot through with black and sickly orange. How could something hurt so much and not let him pass out.
"Perri?"
"Clea?" His voice was thick and muffled. She was bending over him wiping off blood with a rag from her pocket. Where had she come from?
"Well you're a right mess, Perri. What have you been doing? What's been happening here?"
The crowd was dispersing now. No one answered.
Clea was in one of her I'm-in-charge moods. "Who did it?"
Perriato could see, through the blood on his eyelashes, Drever standing slightly shamefaced, but unmarked. Clea followed his gaze.
"You?" She looked at Drever as though she was surprised.
"He started it," Drever said.
"That's right," The little apprentice was hanging on to every word, every action, so he could retell it later. "On account of you being... of having... you know..." and he resorted to gesture again.
"What? On account of me being pregnant? You told them?" Clea went from compassionate to furious in less time than it takes to shout "Duck!" She rounded on Perriato who was just getting to his feet. "The whole town knows? You told the whole bloody town!"
She swung her right arm and cracked him across the face with a clenched fist. He heard the crunch of cartilage, felt the sick shock-wave that precedes unbearable pain. He hit the floor, conscious of his belly starting to heave and it was all he could do to roll over and vomit on to the dusty ground. When he raised himself on one elbow to look around, the crowd was dispersing and, through the tears, he saw Clea link arms with Drever and walk off with her head just a little too high for comfort.
Drever the Cleaver with hands like hams had nothing on the punch his sister could land.
* * *
The wind was beginning to rise. The Westport sang. It drew Perriato like a lodestone. He stretched his neck and tried to look down to the busy spaceport below. The landing field was just out of sight. He could see the glow from the halogens which lit the spacers' embassy. Old technology they had called it. From the nuclear age, they said. He knew that they weren't about to give the Rasthan access to anything they considered to be new technology. He craved what he did not understand.
Up here in Brother Tymon's tower, he was far enough away from their halogens and the sky was cloudless. The stars were as clear bow as they had been at home before the spacers and the priests had gathered the new acolytes. Back then he'd never even imagined that he might be a candidate for the seminary. His mother had filled his head with bogeyman stories of how the priests came and stole boys from their beds. He stared down until the halogen glare was imprinted on his retinas, then screwed up his eyes until the green and yellow shapes on the inside of his eyelids began to shift and pattern. It was his choice now. It had been his choice then...
"Perri. Perri. Quickly." His mother's voice cut shrill across the animal miasma of the barnyard. "The priests are coming. Here. Oh! Bless us all. Priests. Here."
Perriato slapped the dunkel on its fat buttocks to move it over and slipped out of the stall, pausing only to slam the wooden lid on the grain bin before he bolted for the house. Even if the sky had been on fire he would have remembered to cover the bin. You only needed to leave it open once to know what it was like to find it full of grain-crabs when you next scooped a handful out.
Mam was in a panic. "Have you got a clean shirt? Where's my green kirtle? Oh, look, they're halfway up the lane already. Where's Clea? Tell her to keep the baby quiet, else they'll have him when he's old enough. At least Drever's safe; they'll not take a married man."
Perriato tucked his shirt into his breeches. He vaguely wondered whether there was a penance for being found dirty in the presence of the clergy.
"Where's Micah?"
"Hiding upstairs. I heard the floorboards creak."
"Go fetch him down. Tell him there's nothing to be afeard of. Poor bairn. The priests'll not want such as him." Gently she smoothed Perriato's hair to one side. It was the nearest she got to a caress these days. "You're a different matter altogether, a smart lad like you. Just remember what we practised. All right?"
"Yes, Mam."
"You're a good boy, Perri. I don't want to lose you, not to them anyway. I know you'll go in your own time. Dunkel farming's not for you. Drever's much better suited. Your sister picked well there, even if she was a bit previous about it. Oh, save us all, they're here. Fetch Micah, quick."
Perriato stood out in the yard, eyeing up the party of priests surreptitiously. They weren't as he had imagined them from the tales of the bumbling local cleric who ran the shabby little school. He'd called them the lapdogs of the off-worlders. These priests didn't look like lapdogs. They were soberly, if expensively, dressed. Their manner was easy and their faces showed... What was it about their faces? They showed intelligence, liveliness, interest and, when their eyes came to rest upon Micah, they showed compassion for one who would obviously never make their grade.
The alien stranger in their midst didn't speak, but his eyes were never still. His gaze flicked from ramshackle barn to house to midden to garth and back again. He glanced at Perriato and Micah and paused briefly. Perriato had only ever glimpsed the spacers from a distance. He looked a lot like a person, except shorter and paler, with his chin bald and his hair shaved to stubble. His face was human enough, though. It looked used, lived in. His eyes pierced in a knowing sort of way. Perriato made brief eye contact. He snapped his head away, but it was too late. The damage had been done. His heart began to race.
Micah shuffled from foot to foot and whimpered under his breath. "I don't wants to go wiv 'em, Perri. Don't let 'em make me go a-prayin' or a-fightin'."
Perriato didn't have the heart to tell him that if Micah was the last boy on the planet the priests would not select him. They weren't looking for lads who had to think twice when asked their name. Instead, he stood next to Micah, still and quiet, his head hanging, his back slouched and his shoulders limp. He'd practised this for just such an occasion. His eyes were half-lidded, dull and disinterested. Mam had schooled him to act the dullardt. A cowled priest beckoned his mother over and they were deep in conversation, but Perriato couldn't hear what was being said.
She would be playing the downtrodden widow for all she was worth. Pointing out how she needed all her children to run the farm without a man about the place. That was a laugh. There hadn't been a man here since before Perriato could remember; since his father had gone off leaving the run-down farm and three children for Mam to take care of. Mam had turned it round, had started farming dunkel for the leather trade. The shed dunkel skins were worth much more than the coarse hides from dead bovines, but you needed skill to breed and rear the temperamental creatures. Mam had learned fast. She ran the business better than any man could and managed to find a bit of extra time to help Micah along too.
Out of his eye-corner, Perriato saw the spacer point him out to the priest and the priest turn and stare at him. He didn't return the look. He should be safe. Just stand and shuffle, imitate Micah.
He wondered what happened to those who were selected. The ones who walked away in acolytes' robes. There would have to be training of some sort. They didn't just turn you into a priest or a warrior overnight. Training. Education. His mind tripped over itself. When he'd felt the spacer watching him, it was as if he'd been made promises. Mathematics and science, languages, history and philosophy, geography and - dare he dream - astronomy. He looked up again. The preiest was watching him intently, so was the spacer. What must it be like to travel across infinity? There was only one way to find out.
Slowly Perriato straightened up to his full height and looked back. The spacer nodded and said something in a low babble of foreign sound. They left off talking to Mam and started to walk towards him.
* * *
The green and yellow shapes on the back of his eyelids pooled to monster proportions then formed a black pit in the centre. Perriato nearly fell into it then stepped back. The wind whipped his hair and he opened his eyes to find himself standing, clinging to the rim of the Westport with his toes over the edge of oblivion. He didn't know how he'd got there. He'd been on his knees, then... here. He took a step back and Brother Tymon's tower spun. His body almost let him down, the cramps that had started in his left leg had spread to both and he staggered. His head pounded and he had that sickly light-headedness that comes with dehydration.
Now that he was on his feet, he stretched cramped muscles and tried to ease the spasms. If anyone was watching from down below, he'd probably negated the Vigil already, so he might as well make the most of it. He paced the room, empty except for a huge tapestry hanging that depicted the first spacer ship and its crew negotiating with the priests.
He had never seen the spacer with the lived-in face again, but there had been others. He had been to their compound for lessons in their language and he had tried out some of their strange weapons and taken their aptitude tests, followed their fitness regime. He would fill out a little more yet, but already he had the body of a warrior. In his mind he'd already left Rasthan
"Look at you." Mam said when she met him in the yard on his last visit home. "How you've grown. My, you look just like your dad."
Perriato took her word for that.
A shy five year old peeped at him from behind his sister's skirts and a couple of toddlers, twins, skeltered round the yard. Clea had another babe in her arms. Mam would soon have a new generation to work the place. Maybe Drever the Cleaver hadn't been such a bad choice after all. They were a well-matched couple, him a stallion and her a brood mare; baby machines for the continuation of life as Mam knew it. But there was more to life than growing babies to work the farm. He knew that now.
It had been five years. Though he'd written letters twice a year, this was his first and last home leave, whatever the outcome of the Vigil. Either way he was here to say goodbye. A priest renounced all family and spacer recruits left the planet on a one-way ticket, obliged to go where they were sent. The boundless possibilities of the galaxy were within his grasp now. Of course Mam and Micah, even Clea, wouldn't understand it.
"Come on in, Perri. I've got a nice barra-loaf in the oven."
"It were always your favourite." Perriato turned at the sound of a new deep voice. Micah was grinning at his elbow, barely taller than when he left, but with a man's voice and with a stubbly growth of facial hair on his chin.
"Micah." Although Micah's slow wits had sometimes been irksome, his brother had been the one person Perriato had really missed when he'd gone with the priests.
"This is Rufe." Micah introduced him to a slim-waisted, brown-eyed girl, with a ready smile and an interesting cleavage beneath her drawstring blouse. "She looks after the dunkel now."
How like Mam to employ a woman to do the job he'd done. She always said women handled the animals better than men. More sympathy with living things, she said. All through dinner Rufe made eyes at him. The barra-loaf tasted wonderful and when he reached for a second piece her hand stretched out too and brushed against his on the plate.
"I'll have to go and do the last feed and bed the dunkel down for the night," she said, as Mam cleared the pots away. "There's two almost ready to shed and I don't want them to damage the skins if they slough during the night." She glanced in his direction, not quite catching his eyes.
"I'll come and give you a hand, just for old time's sake." Perriato followed her out to the barn. She giggled and skipped ahead. He jogged to keep up and by the time they reached the barn they were almost racing. She lifted the lid on the grain bin and scooped out double handfuls of the pale grain into each of ten shallow feed buckets then poured in a measure of polseed oil and damped it down with water. He mixed while she distributed the feeds to the patient dunkel. When he'd done the last, he picked up the lid and clamped it back tight on to the feed bin.
"You should always put the lid back on. The grain-crabs round here are vicious little beasts. Get a nip from a couple of those and your arm will swell up for a tenday."
She smiled at him, direct and open, not a shy, beneath-the-lashes kind of smile. "Come here and look. We've three dunkel in calf this year, and six more that are in season, ready for mating."
"Well done. They must like you. The most I ever got coming into season was four."
"Your mam says it's 'cos I'm ready for mating myself. They sense it." She grinned and then blushed pink, right down to her cleavage. She was pretty, not like the sophisticated town girls, but fresh and natural, like the land itself.
"See." She walked ahead of him. "We've added a new section to the barn. More stalls and an extension to the loft."
He walked around the building to admire the handiwork, Drever's and Micah's probably. She followed him. Somehow they ended up in the loft where the straw smelled clean.
"Your Mam says you're going to be a priest."
"A warrior."
"You know that already do you?"
"It hasn't been confirmed yet, but I will be. I came top of my league with a blade. I'm pretty good with all kinds of weapons." He tried not to swagger, but he was starting to feel like a bowberry-bird about to show off his tail-feathers to a willing hen.
"Ah I was wondering about that... what with you, like, going to be a priest, I... er... didn't know what was considered proper, but if you're going to be a warrior, well it stands to reason it's all right."
"What?"
She grinned at him. "I thought you was supposed to be clever." Her hand went up to the drawstring of her blouse and the cloth fell away to reveal two perfect silk-smooth breasts, rose-edged nipples just peeking out from beneath her chemise. He caught his breath and felt nature begin to take its course. In the middle of making love to her, his mind replayed Micah's words when he had been a witness to Clea and Drever's union, I seen 'em in the wood. But they didn't see me. They looked real funny. Her with her skirt up round her waist and him with his breeches down to his knees. Perriato wondered whether he looked just as ridiculous now as he'd imagined Drever to look then. He decided that he didn't care.
After the warm glow had begun to subside and the girl in his arms had begun to shuffle as if she were ready to go, he felt odd. What was he supposed to do now, pick the hay out of his clothes, go back in to the farm house and pretend nothing had happened? Rufe stretched, smiled and rubbed her hands across the slight roundness of her exposed belly before she tied her blouse and settled her skirts back down.
Perriato had sudden misgivings. "What if, you know... anything's happened?" he asked.
"Do you mean, what if I'm pregnant?"
She laughed and he felt foolish. She would have her own ways of controlling things like that. She certainly hadn't been new to it.
"I hope I am," she said, "It's just the right time of the month for me."
His heart began to pound faster than it had at the height of his orgasm.
She smiled and reached out to touch his face briefly. "Don't worry. There's nothing you need to do. By the time I know for sure, I'll be safely wed to Micah. At least our firstborn won't be so stupid."
"Micah? You're marrying Micah!"
"Like I said. At least the first one will have a bit of gumption."
"You cheated on him."
"You're going away. Not just leaving the farm, but leaving the family, leaving the world. That's as good as dying - at least as far as your Mam and Micah's concerned. It's not like you'll ever come back again is it?"
"You cheated on him!"
"No, I did him a favour. And your Mam too. A good strong son to help them out. Micah's a sweet person and in my position I could do a lot worse than marry into this family. I'm just doing my bit for the future generation, and you can't say you didn't enjoy it can you. You weren't exactly unwilling."
"Did Mam put you up to this?"
She didn't answer.
He was part way across the yard before he realised he couldn't walk straight back into the house. How could he look Micah in the face? He stopped and glanced back towards the barn. Rufe was framed in the lamp-lit doorway. No halogens here yet. He turned his back on her and walked out of the yard, past the bridge, and kept going. Afterwards he regretted not saying goodbye to Mam, but it was too late.
* * *
The tower room spun. Perriato sprawled on the hard floor. Rufe, Micah, Mam, Drever, Clea were all there with him, going round in his head. The Westport no longer beckoned. Memories rushed in, event upon event. He'd learned how to fight, to stand up for what he cared for, even if he knew he couldn't win. He'd learned to seek his own path, even if it wasn't the path that others sought for him, and he'd learned that he was human. Tears streamed down his cheeks. He took up his position again, kneeling in front of the Westport, just as he had begun the Vigil. This was what it was about. Self-knowledge was always the hardest lesson to learn.
He looked at the sky. Both moons had run their course and there was a faint lightening behind the tower, reflecting overhead. Soon the first rays of the sun would paint the tips of the mountains with gold. Dawn. It was nearly over. The door lock rattled as the huge key turned in it. A cowled priest entered. He was supposed to be anonymous, but Perriato thought he recognised the gentle, deep voice of Brother Yurich behind the formal words.
"Your Vigil is almost at an end. You begin a new life today."
Perriato pulled his novice's robe over his head and gave it to the priest's outstretched hand. He shivered.
The priest put a hamper on the floor and flipped open the lid. There were two sets of clothing, both uniforms, the choicehe'd been expecting.
"What is your final decision?" The deep-voiced priest was behind him.
"I made my decision five years ago. You know I did. I'm not cut out to be a priest. I don't have... the faith... that you do. I only ever wanted to be a spacer."
"Did you?"
"I wanted the knowledge."
"You can seek knowledge anywhere, in any walk of life. Make your decision." The priest left.
Perriato reached down. The priest's garb consisted of ordinary cream coloured shirt and pants and a long finely woven brown robe that covered them completely. The shipboard uniform was light grey, made from some kind of off-world fabric. He'd be proud to wear it. He took the spacer shirt and stood up, then stopped without putting it on. The long night came back again. He thought about what he had been, what he might yet be. In his mind he saw his family, Mam, Rufe, Micah, Drever, Clea, his unborn son. Warrior or priest, he would never see them again.
He moved to the Westport, stood naked on the edge and looked at the Western Mountains painted gold by the sunrise. As a spacer he might experience the wonder of life on an aquatic world or a planet with two suns, but he'd never see this world again. He might fly his own starship, command his own force, take charge of his own legion, or he might die young on some barren planet with his dreams unfulfilled and then his son, growing in Rufe's fertile belly, would indeed be his last gift to Mam and to Micah.
And what of the priests? If he joined the priesthood there would be a different kind of knowledge - but he would be living a lie.
Priest, warrior; warrior, priest... or man?
As the sun came up, the halogens in the off-worlders' compound dipped, flickered and died. Perriato saw the radiance of his own sun spill down from the mountains and light up the verdant river valley. It was beautiful. Slowly he let go of the spacer's shirt and it floated down to the cobbles below. Then he turned his back on the view, walked past the uniforms and stepped naked and free across the threshold of the doorway, into tomorrow.
THE END
-o0o-
Thank you for reading. If you've enjoyed this story and want to let me know (or if you haven't - after all, everyone's a critic) you can email me at jacey(at)jaceybedford.co.uk. Back to my main page for details of where my other stories have been published.