"Well, I want that, too."

"Do you? Do you really?"

"Yes!"

His response sounded overdramatic, forced, even to him.

"I cannot believe you, Aidan. If you wished that, you would not be trying to convince me the sibko must be preserved."

"But . . ."

"Please. There is no reason to continue this conversation."

He tried to force her back, push her against the wall. She pushed back just as hard and knocked him off balance. In all their time in the sibko, they had never fought physically, except in the team tussle and other play. With her forearm, she hit him in the throat, just below his Adam's apple. He was angry enough to strike back at anyone else, but not Marthe. She waited for him to finish his coughing fit, then walked away.

In the ensuing week Aidan also tried to persuade the other members of the sibko that they should restore their former group feeling, that they should not let training officers divide them. Bret did not even understand Aidan's argument. He said he thought the sibko was as close as ever. Peri claimed there had never been a feeling of closeness in the sibko, not for her at least. She had, she said, always wanted something else. Rena would not even talk to Aidan, while Tymm merely looked as dazed about the subject of the sibko as he generally did during training.

* * *

Tymm, in fact flushed out a few days later. His scores had always been the lowest of the six survivors. Aidan never knew exactly why Tymm was found unworthy, but he suspected that Tymm's tendency to get his training 'Mech's feet entangled in undergrowth and his slowness in employing his weaponry must definitely have contributed to the young man's failure. Like many of the other sibko members who were gone, Tymm did not even say goodbye. One morning the sibko survivors awoke to find Tymm's bunk empty, its bedclothes properly rolled up and secured. That was always the sign. Soon a pair of orderlies entered the barracks and took the bunk and bedclothes away. Tymm's bunk had been at the end of a row, and now only a large gap remained.

The barracks, which had once seemed so crowded, suddenly seemed cavernous. The winds of Ironhold came through old cracks in the building and created uncomfortable draughts. Aidan caught another cold, as did Rena. Issued only a rough piece of gray cloth to handle such an illness, Rena annoyed Aidan by telling him not to steal her cloth to wipe his nose. That made him furious, because his own pronounced sense of personal hygiene made him careful to use only his own little gray swatch.

Marthe became more silent than ever. Two days after Tymm's departure, she moved her bed into the gap, thus isolating herself from the other four cadets. Bret, Rena, and Peri did not mind her withdrawal as much as Aidan did. After their last conversation, however, he could no longer find a reason to speak to her himself.

"We do not have enough people left to form a team tussle," Bret said out of the blue one night.

"You will always be a child, you stupid freebirth," Rena muttered.

Hearing the reviled epithet, Bret jumped on Rena and wrestled her to the barracks floor. His eyes seemed inflamed with anger. Aidan rushed to the grappling pair and tried to lift Bret off Rena's body. Peri, reacting just as quickly, pulled Aidan away.

"Let them fight. It is too exciting to miss."

"You call fighting among ourselves exciting?"

"The way things have been lately."

She nodded her head toward Marthe, who was merely sitting on her bunk and viewing the fight as if it were an entertainment.

"This is what I tried to tell you, Peri—about the sibko and-"

"Let it rest, Aidan. It is a lost cause. What we have to do is get through it."

Bret and Rena's brawl was getting vicious. She had poked him in the eye to get him off her, then kicked him between the legs. That would have finished off most persons, but Bret, his tenacity intact, managed to plunge forward and butt Rena hard in the abdomen. As headbutts go, it did not look like much, but it had its effect on Rena, whose face contorted in pain. She doubled over.

It was a ridiculous sight, each of them bent at the waist and trying to suppress moans of pain. (That was another contribution of Falconer Joanna, the requirement not to show pain. "Think of it, eyasses. You hurt and your enemy can see it. What confidence, what an edge you are giving away.") Peri put her arm around Bret, said some soothing words, while Aidan attended to Rena. Rena's eyes were glazed.

Glancing up, it seemed to Aidan that, for the first time in a long time, the four of them were grouped together in a way reminiscent of old sibko days. He reached out and took Peri's hand, thus linking the quartet together.

From the other side of the room came a loud laugh. Marthe was amused.

"Fools," she said, her intonation mimicking, it seemed, Joanna's.

Marthe walked to the group and knelt down across from Aidan. She put her hand on Bret's shoulder and gripped Rena's arm. She smiled at Aidan. Perhaps it was his imagination, but it seemed to him like the old smile. It certainly reminded him of the two of them together before warrior training began.

"Fools," she said again and shook her head slowly from side to side.

The sibko broke up in a few minutes, and the wounds of both battlers were attended to.

That night, another sleepless one for Aidan, he wondered if they had restored the sibko's old camaraderie. It would be miraculous if it were so.

The next day showed that was not to be. Bret went back to being argumentative, Rena sullen, Peri enigmatic. And Marthe stayed in her corner of the massive barracks, aloof, uninterested in anything her fellow sibkin might do.

There was never another moment when sibko feelings reemerged. They were separate forever. It did not matter. It was not long before only three of them were left, at the edge of a broad meadow, awaiting with cadets from other sibkos their opportunity to prove themselves in a Trial of Position and become warriors of the Jade Falcon Clan.

12

I earned my Bloodname more through staying power than actual acts of heroism, wrote Falconer Commander Ter Roshak. I participated in so many battles, racked up so many kills, led a Star that seemed blessed in rarely suffering even minor casualties—all minor achievements but they added up until I was worthy to contend for a Blood-name. I even won my Trial of Bloodright by being the last one standing, being the survivor, and not through any extraordinary skills.

Because I had studied Ramon Mattlov so thoroughly, I became good at bidding during my career, but that was my only talent related to strategy. In actual warfare, strategy was not my forte. Sometimes I was lucky enough to have an adjutant who covered my weakness in that area, but mostly I just blundered into the middle of dancing 'Mechs and flying projectiles and figured out how to get out of it. I suppose tactics were my specialty. Once in the middle of a conflict, I knew what to do, almost instinctively. I barked out orders to the rest of my Star, they carried them out, and we won. I saw the enemy's strategy and countered it. If five 'Mechs were converging on three of us, I knew how to deploy my forces, use surrounding terrain, feint and thrust, make surprise jumps, hide when necessary, tromp with my 'Mech's heavy feet on enemy pilots escaped from their cockpits, and whatever else was needed to extricate my command from an engagement successfully. I turned odds against into odds for.

But now I am in danger of becoming old, losing my edge, settling like fresh dirt into the grave of my memories.

Now that I think of it, my real talent was for logistics. I know of nobody who was better at arranging for the proper supplies, scavenging for food and shelter among hostile villages, transporting troops quickly and efficiently. The logistical mind sees what is needed most immediately, next-most immediately, and so on, then goes out and gets it. A logistical mind thrust into battle becomes, perhaps, a tactical one. In battle I would take stock of the dangers in exactly the same manner I planned logistics. I decided what was the most dangerous element or factor in the battle, the next-most, and so on. Once I had that set in my mind, I worked out the necessities coolly and calmly, and perhaps that accounts for my success record.