Landfall

by Cynthia Martin ( YCYMartin@aol.com )

Category: Some angst, sex, adventure - my summer-novel homage to James Clavell and - yes - Victor Hugo

Rating: Let's say R

Pairing: Q/O, X/B

Notes: Way AU, lots of unraveling, characterwise.

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters property of Lucasfilm, LTD. No profit was made from this story.

Archive: If there is an archive, feel free.

For a long time - it was impossible to tell how long - the light remained constant, featureless and dazzling. The first hint of change came from the yielding surface beneath his feet: looking down, Xanatos realized he was walking in sand. He jumped a little as a shallow wave, winking with foam, broke over the tops of his boots. The hem of his cassock was wet and heavy.

Xanatos squinted against the glare. The light around him faded in patches, revealing contrast; he was standing in the shallows of some hot sunny place, on the margin of sand and sea. The ocean stretched away to his right, an astonishing blue laced with many reefs; to his left the white beach rolled back, almost flat, until it meet a thick line of trees. Xanatos twisted his head, suddenly apprehensive, but there was nothing behind him - only the shoreline and the sunlight and the cloudless sky. Numbness spread through him from a cold place in his stomach. The portal was gone.

It will open again in a month, he told himself. It will open again and I will go home, to Bruck and to Ves, to all my brothers and sisters.

Xanatos adjusted the strap of his leather satchel and began to walk again - south, by the feel of it. It was as good a direction as any.

As the sun reached its zenith he rounded a turn and a headland appeared, a long finger of rock with waves fretting along the base. There the beach ended. Xanatos stared up at the promontory, weighing the wisdom of a climb against a trek through the jungle.

"Ishijikikuna!?"

Xanatos whirled. Fully twelve men stood behind him - perhaps they had crept silently out of the forest or perhaps they had fallen from the sky, for all that he had heard or sensed of their approach. They stood almost shoulder to shoulder, arranged in a tight defensive line. The foremost was a squat bald human clad only in rolled trousers. He seemed utterly hairless and his expression was fierce.

"ISHIJIKIKUNA?!" he demanded again.

Xanatos raised his hands peaceably. "I am a visitor - "

With a shout, the men rushed him. Xanatos fell back an instinctive pace and then met them with a snapping turn, felling two with his feet before drawing his next breath. The men sprawled heavily and Xanatos froze, aghast. It was opening enough: the remaining ten swarmed forward and brought him down, pushing his face into the sand and pinning his limbs.

Rope bit into his wrists and ankles, but Xanatos offered no resistance as they trussed him. The men were thorough with their work and when they finally rolled him over, out of the smothering sand, he was fairly retching for air. The hairless man stared down at him impassively.

"Basic," Xanatos managed to choke. "Do you speak Basic?"

The hairless man kicked him in the jaw. Xanatos saw gold and black, and then the Lady, and then nothing.

Asagi Yojimbo's mood could not have been fouler. The journey from the Old Farm had taken two full days - two days cursing his entourage through thicket and swamp and impenetrable stands of waji, because the ill-bred, half-witted messenger sent by the headman Tuo had blurted his tale out whole, in front of witnesses.

An alien person discovered on Tuo's beach, disheveled and aggressive; a man of mysterious and sinister origin, speaking gibberish: Yojimbo had no choice but to go, and go by the speediest route. The lengthy trip by longboat, on the clean seas, was out of the question, because such a delay would certainly have been reported to Lord Tiepolo.

I am surround by vipers and spies, by false faces and whispering tongues, thought Yojimbo with bitter self pity, swatting at a biting fly. All the knives are out, now that I am lord of the Old Farm - and by all the hari when I return from this fool's errand, I am going to set my house in order.

Yojimbo smiled, thinking of the halls of his house filled with blood and screams, with brains and bowels and ineffectual pleas for mercy - the innocent, if there were any, laying their heads down with the damned. Yes, a true cleansing, once and for all!

But it was fruitless dreaming, of course, and Yojimbo knew it. His house was a thorn hedge of alliances and subtle connections, and the least shift - much less a satisfying slaughter - would send his own head rolling in the sand.

The higher one climbed, the less freedom one had, Yojimbo reflected sourly. What an injustice that was, and what a stupid waste of talent. Tension and subtlety! Compromise and expedience and shifting balances, like a game of sticks: the probability and the consequences of collapse growing exponentially with each victory. But still, it was thrilling, and every new gain brought new rewards: Yojimbo had begun as the son of a humble village headman like Tuo, and now he held the power of life and death over members of his former caste.

And I mean to use it, thought Yojimbo savagely, blinking away the sweat, as the jungle thinned at last and his runners began to beat their sticks to herald his approach. I mean to use it to the full on Tuo, and his idiot messenger, on the whole useless, ignorant village - and most particularly, on this stupid runaway slave.

The stranger was suspended by his arms, lashed to a sturdy beam and sunk to his collarbone in a pit of milky fluid. It had dried on his face and hair - he looked, to Yojimbo's eyes, exactly like the white effigies paraded and torched every year, to mark the days when lime-soaked corpses outnumbered the living on Barabi.

"Well? Is he dead?" asked Yojimbo.

Tuo touched his bald head deferentially. "No, Lord."

"And of course he is not hot." Yojimbo eyed Tuo with cool menace. "Because you would not summon me to a hot zone, would you?"

"No, Lord Asagi, no! He is not hot, the old woman said so."

"Then if he is not hot," pursued Yojimbo, "why is he in that pit?"

"We thought it best to be sure," replied Tuo stoutly.

Yojimbo held onto his temper with an effort. "Pull him out of that. Now!"

Three of Tuo's men scurried forward to comply. Tuo, however, took a step back.

"Be careful, Lord, there's something witchy about him. At first it was impossible to keep him bound - the thongs unraveled by themselves, and several of my men had to be restrained from setting him free. We had to keep knocking him on the head to get anything done."

Yojimbo spat disgustedly. Only this was wanting, he thought; no trip to the coast was ever full without some whiff of magic, superstition or stupidity injecting itself into the proceedings. Oh, how he hated coming back, to the stink of salt and fish and feces, to the gross reeking womb of his birth. This is the last time, he swore silently. By all the hari.

The stranger was hoisted from the pit, dripping white, and Yojimbo's eyes narrowed. "Look at his feet!" he exclaimed aloud, his scowling dignity forgotten. "Are you all monkeys? Look at his feet!"

A murmur ran through the onlookers, from the headman's crew to the women clustering under the thatched eaves. The stranger's feet were whole and un broken. Blind, thought Yojimbo furiously. Blind animals!

"Untie him!" he roared. "Clean him off!"

Many hands reached for the stranger, fumbling because of the burning lime.

"Did you find anything on him?" demanded Yojimbo. "Papers, a chip, anything?"

Tuo shook his head. "No, Lord. He had a bag, with a book and some rations. And a picture. Would you like to examine it?"

Yojimbo's response was profane and eloquent. More men fled to retrieve the bag. Yojimbo folded his arms and stared balefully as women emptied buckets of water over the stranger.

"You realize he might be an Aid Worker, don't you?"

Tuo started. "An Aid Worker? Lord, that is only a story, Hutt propaganda - "

"Ass, all propaganda has a germ of truth." Yojimbo watched Tuo's face, waiting for this to sink in.

"Lord..." Tuo's eyes darted to the stranger, and a sheen of sweat appeared on the crown of his smooth head. "Lord, if it is true, and we have used him so ... " Tuo's voice dropped. "Perhaps it is better to cut his throat, before he is missed."

Yojimbo pursed his lips, considering, but his reply was forestalled by the arrival of the stranger's bag. Overcoming a deeply ingrained hesitation for the benefit of his vassals, Yojimbo grasped the object boldly and dumped the contents on the sand. He squatted to peer at them.

A small leather book. Yojimbo picked it up and parted the pages carefully - they were so thin as to be translucent; the ink was the heaviest thing on them. Strange characters jammed the pages in impeccable rows - a language he had never seen, realized Yojimbo, his pulse beginning to race. Judging from the layout it might have been a prayerbook, or a codice of laws. After an awed moment spent fingering the worn gilt of the edges, Yojimbo set it aside.

Several crumpled waxy papers, still stained with grease. Doubtless the only remaining evidence of travel rations - the profound fear of disease had not prevented one of the villagers from consuming the evidence. Yojimbo raised his eyes significantly to Tuo, who quailed.

The last article was a miniature painting, very similar to the art of Barabi. It rested in a sturdy leather frame and represented a boy with white hair smiling next to a man with dark hair. Both wore blue. On the boy's chest, rendered in microscopic detail, was an embroidered silver star.

"It doesn't look like him," grunted Yojimbo, jerking his chin at the stranger.

"It did before we put him in the ground," confessed Tuo.

Yojimbo rose abruptly and crossed to the prone figure. "You!" he shouted. When he received no response he jabbed two fingers into the mans ribs. "You! Wake up! Are you an Aid Worker?"

The stranger opened his eyes, which were very blue, very dark - an unusual color, thought Yojimbo excitedly. The man's white throat worked for a moment, and then he rasped out a single word.

Yojimbo bent closer. The man strained and spoke again. Yojimbo frowned, trying to place the word.

It sounded very much like the first foreign word Yojimbo had ever learned, the word his mother had taught him, the key to the lost language of the classes and of the unreachable galaxy beyond. It was hard to be certain, though - the stranger's accent was perfectly bizarre. "Again," urged Yojimbo, poking him.

"Basic, speak Basic," sighed the man, and the blue eyes closed.

"Pick him up!" screamed Yojimbo. "Give him back his clothes and put him in a room and keep him there until I contact Lord Tiepolo! And get your old woman to look at his head!"

"Lord, she will not approach him," stammered Tuo.

Asagi Yojimbo lost all patience then, and all restraint. He swore and he bellowed. He laid about with the flat of his sword, and his men did too, until his orders were executed - and if a little blood fell, or a hand, it was a good day's work all told. An Aid Worker, perhaps, finally! An envoy, probably; a ship, certainly. It was a coup, plain and simple: his future was made.

When the ruckus died down, Asagi Yojimbo sipped some milk on the headman's porch and basked in the possibilities, as he waited for the stranger to wake.

The rhythm of breaking waves filled Xanatos' dreams. They sighed under the stark desert images that trailed through his mind, an incongruous and menacing sound. Fear coursed through him, and a bitter sense of loss. He spoke Bruck's name aloud and woke, heart thundering.

He lay in a bare room on a floor of tightly woven fronds. A jug sat an arm's length away and he reached for it heedlessly, his throat on fire. He did not set it down until he had drained it and it tipped clumsily as he lay back, panting from the effort. He was frighteningly weak.

Think, he commanded himself. Remember. You were in the pit, and you were burning, the lime flaying your body and scorching your lungs, and you were giving your soul to the Lady and it was the end, the end -

Xanatos quelled the nausea that threatened to return. It hadn't been the end, clearly, and fear would not serve him now. He was alive. He was in pain but the pain was just an echo of the agony of the pit; he was whole, and someone had left him water. Who?

He was no longer naked; they had dressed him in his cassock again. It twisted under his weakened legs when he tried to stand and he fell to his hands and knees. Immediately a panel in the wall slid open. Light poured into the room and he swayed, blinking.

"Good day. You are good now?" A man stood in the doorway, legs wide and arms folded, peering down at him. "You are hurt?"

"I'm all right," whispered Xanatos automatically.

The man frowned and stepped into the room. "Sorry, say again: yes or no. You are good now?"

"Yes," repeated Xanatos. "Good now."

The man nodded. He was short and lean, clad in a stiff belted mantle of gray that reached to his ankles. His feet were bare and made no sound as he crossed the room to squat near Xanatos. "Asagi Yojimbo," he said, hooking a thumb at his chest. "Lord here. You?"

"A friend."

"Sorry?"

"Friend." Xanatos pointed at himself. "I am a friend."

Yojimbo gave him a cool smile. "You are Kontei."

"Kontei," repeated Xanatos politely. "Friend. You speak Basic, sir?"

"Ah, Basic, yes - a few words. Mother taught." Yojimbo nodded proudly. Xanatos smiled back, immensely relieved.

"Bad thing, rude," continued the man, gesturing at the door. "Peasants, very stupid. Mistake."

"I see," replied Xanatos quietly. Something glittered in Yojimbo's eyes, making him uneasy. "No harm."

"Harm," said Yojimbo firmly, pointing a blunt finger at Xanatos' hands and face, which were flaming red. "Harm. Punished, all stupid peasants. Very bad."

"No, please, not on my account - "

"Sorry? Too fast."

"No harm to me - no harm to peasants, please." Xanatos leaned forward. "Mistake. No harm. Please."

Yojimbo shrugged. "Unimportant. Do not think of it. Peasants are ... " he trailed off into a series of incomprehensible phrases and Xanatos felt his head beginning to swim, from weariness and pain and the almost suffocating sense of grief that was swamping him. The thought belled in his mind, unbidden: You will never see Bruck again.

Yojimbo glanced at Xanatos sharply, noticing his pallor. He rose abruptly. "You rest now. Many questions, but rest first. Water, food, sleep."

Xanatos wanted to protest, but he felt himself sinking back and the floor seemed to roll under him like the deck of a boat. He heard Yojimbo bark a few words. Footsteps pounded outside and then the room was filling with people; gentle hands were supporting Xanatos and something cool was pressed to his stinging forehead. It felt incredibly sweet.

"Thank you," murmured Xanatos.

Yojimbo paused in the doorway. "Thank you: Yomu. Yes?"

"Yomu," whispered Xanatos, understanding him. His eyes were closing. "Yomu."

"It is nothing, Kontei," muttered Yojimbo with a smile, and departed.

Aieee, thought Yojimbo, stumping down the stairs of the little hut. At the fringes of the square peasants scattered in terror, but he paid no attention. His mind was whirling.

I can talk to him, he thought excitedly. He is going to survive. I can learn everything from him - how he ran the blockade and the quarantine, first and foremost. By the hari, think of it! A working ship and a path through those mined spacelanes, out into the galaxy, freedom at last! Freedom to trade, instead of groaning under the usurious yoke of the filthy Hutts.

Yojimbo shook his head in wonder. The man who broke the Hutt monopoly would be the savior of Barabi, not to mention the wealthiest creature alive. The power of such a man would be absolute. And a man who could trade could leave, too: he could mount an army and purchase ships and swarm off this festering planet, to smash the detested Hutts first, and then, with *their* wealth, to subordinate whole worlds, as it had been in the days of Barabi's glory.

This is the dawning, thought Yojimbo, chills racing over him. I am that man. Eleven hundred years of isolation and oppression have ended, and today the future begins. Barabi will recover its heritage. We will take up the sword again and lay waste the Hutts that have raped and humiliated us, and we will be avenged, one way or another, on the Republic that abandoned us to them.

But first things first, Yojimbo told himself. First he would have to get the ship. If the visitor would not cooperate, he would have to be persuaded. And if he could not be persuaded, surely his friends in the Republic, the Aid Workers, the people who sent him - surely they could be made to see reason for his sake.

Yojimbo grinned at his private joke, quite pleased with his wit and with the fortunes of the day. Kontei was not the Barabi word for friend. It was the Barabi word for hostage.

(to be continued)