The anger returned again when the decisions of the evaluators was announced. Aidan was awarded the win all right, but only because he had nearly killed his enemy. The win was damaged because he lost points for not disposing of the enemy when he had a bead on him and for allowing the satchel bomb to be planted on the 'Mech's surface. He regained a few points back for his heroic way of removing and disposing of the satchel. He received even more deductions for allowing the 'Mech shell to crash, however. Indeed, Aidan scored lower than anyone else in the sibko. The officer who read the report in a scathing tone noted that the 'Mech shell was no longer repairable, except for a few parts. It would be added to the scrap pile. Perhaps the little freebirth bastard would fashion another knife out of a part of it, Aidan thought bitterly.

* * *

Joanna was not any easier on him than the evaluators had been. She said: "You are strong, you are agile, you are clever, you are even intelligent, but you are slow. The only praise I can give you is for defying me. I was just about to declare your 'Mech 'blown up' when you started your final strategy. I admired your anger, but your only real ruthlessness was at the end. You should have lost. Sometime you willlose. Prepare for a life as other than a warrior. I see in your eyes that you are full of rage now. Come to the bed. Take out your rage on me. I will take out mine on you."

"What rage do you have?" Aidan asked. (He talked to her when they were alone together, and had been doing so for some months now.) "You were just an observer today. What rage can you feel?"

"Eyas, I am never without it."

In a strange way, what she requested happened. The rage left him as he and Joanna coupled in ways that were more like combat. After, though, she held him in a manner that was new. Aidan did not understand why it comforted him, but it did.

8

Falconer Commander Ter Roshak had kept a journal ever since his cadet days on Ironhold.

There are times, he wrote, weary times when my mind stops working and the boredom of this training camp seeps in to fill the empty spaces. That is when I begin to think that growing old is the worst thing that can happen to a warrior. Being a survivor is, on one hand, a mark of honor—proof that one has been a fine warrior, winning his battles and protecting his command. On the other hand, it is a badge of futility, a tinny piece of metal to wear on your chest as a sign that your time has passed. Back on Terra, a millennium or so ago, they used to say that old soldiers never die. The Clan, however, has no use for its old soldiers, except as cannon fodder for assaults against a determined enemy.

Perhaps that is what I should have done instead of joining this training command. But there is a certain stubbornness within me, a pride at having succeeded as a warrior, that does not allow me to cast my life away like that—at least not yet. I can still guide others in acquiring the abilities to fight, even blundering cadets like the current crop. I do not think I ever made the mistakes these sibkin make. Then again, maybe I did. It is hard to judge them. This is only my second group of trainees and, I suppose, the first seemed just as wide-eyed and inept at this point in their training.

Guiding the fates of half a dozen sibkos is an awesome responsibility. Sometimes I would wish to be a simple training officer, a falconer concerned only with training the surviving members of a sibko. Three years is a long time to oversee the development of warriors. Some say it is too long, that we should just put the youngsters in BattleMechs from the outset, give them minimal training, and thus balloon our forces instead of leaving them perpetually understaffed. With this, I cannot agree. As Kerensky has instructed us, we must not be wasteful in war. Not because we lack the materiel or personnel but because the violence causing the waste will spill over into the very infrastructure of our society. It was the devastation of just such uncontrolled warfare that destroyed the Star League dream three hundred years ago, and forced the formation of the Clans. Adopting such wasteful practices would destroy our own spirits and permanently end the dream.

At any rate, I remain here with younger warriors, like that darned malcontent, Falconer Joanna. Her defiance, her glares, her innuendoes all mark me as an overaged warrior whose lines and wrinkles betoken uselessness and outdated knowledge instead of wisdom and experience. This Joanna questions everything, even when she utters not a word. In her anger and scornfulness, she is like no other warrior I have ever encountered, except perhaps Ramon Mattlov.

She will be reassigned to a combat unit. That should please her. She is so desperate to earn a Bloodname that she will do anything to get it. And get it she will. She only has to finish her penance on Ironhold, exonerate herself for whatever infraction or failure sent her here in the first place. I have never consulted her codex to find out what wrong she did, but her fine service here must certainly pay for it in full. I have never written such glowing reports for an officer. Except for her killing of Ellis, a foolish eruption of anger, her service here has no mark against it. Besides, the upper echelons tend to admire victory in any kind of conflict, even when unjustified. They prefer her kind of toughness, which wins battles, to interservice ethics.

It is a pity, really, that she will leave my command. Despite her unpitying ferocity and the way she treats the cadets, she is the best training officer I have seen. And she really does hate these hopefuls. It is not just a pose for the benefit of training, a faked hatred to stir up the sibko and turn its members into good soldiers. She cannot abide any less than high skill and is not content with mere potential among the members of the sibko. Worse, she hates being here and takes her resentment out on anyone in her way. She would even take it out on me if she knew how.

I have never been one to obey the custom of not discussing the sexual part of our lives. I agree that it is of little import, and if a drug were developed to suppress such urges, I would eagerly feed it to our warriors. What need have we to couple? Procreation is not a concern, and merely amounts to the occasional birth of worthy freeborn bastards for other castes. Worthy, but abandoned and forgotten. The genetic program that supports the warrior caste has much better results than the awkward contortions and inconvenience of the physical act.

Yet when I was young enough and combative enough, I could never free myself of the urge. Even now, at an age when such moments of desire come only rarely, I am tempted to employ command privilege and order one of the women in the training cadre to my quarters for some silent intimacy. When I am in a particularly foul mood, I am even tempted to summon Joanna. May that I never succumb to the temptation, for I would not want to couple with her.

The irony, of course, is that—in spite of her hatred of the cadets, in spite of the fact that her sexual appetite exceeds the usual lusty hunger of a Clan warrior (perhaps the reason for her exile here)—she would nevertheless choose a cadet for a bed partner over me. She would come to my bed begrudgingly if I were to order her, but she would never choose me on her own. Cadets are young and to be preferred because she hates age even more than she despises incompetence.

I have read that once was a time when my age—forty-two years—was not considered excessively old. Indeed, among other castes, it still is not. But here, among warriors, I might as well be roaming a pasture, fit only to supply fertilizer for growing fields.

I am meandering again. The privilege of age—to allow one's thoughts to wander, to bid erratically for the chance to keep living. I am still alive. In that respect at least, I have won the bid.