Petor gasped at the sudden jarring of the blow, and his momentum carried him forward. Unable to use his deadened arm to protect himself, he rolled uneasily onto one shoulder as he hit the ground.
Dean had already turned his attention to Jon, knowing that the stocky youth would follow up the initial attack. When he focused his attention, Jon was already in full flight, hoping to catch Dean off guard and drive him off balance with a shoulder charge. But Dean was aware of the move too quickly, and pivoted on his heel, turning as Jon began to pass him, using the older youth’s momentum to push him onward. Not encountering the obstruction of Dean’s body that he was expecting to block his progress, Jon was unable to check his own forward momentum, let alone compensate for the push by Dean, and so he tumbled forward, arms and legs flailing to retain balance. Despite his best efforts, he found himself tumbling into Petor as the lanky youth attempted to regain his feet. The two young men collapsed into a heap of tangled limbs for the second time in minutes.
Dean stood over them. “You guys are strong and keen, but no one’s taught you anything, have they?”
Jon looked up. “We’re just the men. We don’t get to fight like the true born warriors.”
Dean scratched his chin. “Seems pretty stupe to me. You can never have too many fighters. Would it be all right if I taught you guys how to use what you’ve got? I mean, I wouldn’t be causing trouble, would I?”
Petor shrugged as he climbed to his feet. “Gloria wouldn’t mind, I know that. Nor would any of the others, except mebbe Margia.”
Jon looked anxiously at his friend as he, too, rose to his feet. “That’s worth bearing in mind. I’ve got to work for her all the time, and you know what a bastard of a temper she’s got when she gets going.”
Dean raised an eyebrow. “She hard to work for?”
Petor shrugged. “Sometimes she’s okay but she gets these moods where nothing’s right, and then she gets really bad. She beat the fuck out of Jon once just because one of the other women got the man she wanted. She said it was because he was slacking in his work, but that’s not the case. He might be a lazy bastard for some things, but he loves the armory.”
Jon nodded, wincing at the memory of the beating. “True enough. I was so glad to be selected for the armory, ’cause I love blasters and taking them to bits to clean them. That hurt more than the beating, the fact that she said I was neglecting my work. But she’s a weird one sometimes. Not like the others.” He shook his head, biting his lip. “When she really wants something, then you’d better not get in the way.”
“I’ll remember that,” Dean murmured softly. Then, in a louder voice he added, “So let’s get wrestling. It really bugs me that you couldn’t get out of that armlock move.”
Since that morning, Dean had spent much of his time with the two young men, and had learned much about the everyday habits of the tribe from Jon and Petor, who shared in their close comradeship the habit of watching the eccentricities of the other tribe members. They also shared an obsession with the statuesque Tammy that Dean rapidly understood as he watched her with Krysty.
He also noted with interest that Jak was becoming more relaxed in the tribe. The albino’s obsession with whatever he had seen in his mat-trans vision was receding further and further into memory as the Gate’s warrior queen seemed to take a personal interest in making sure that Jak felt comfortable.
As queen of the Gate, Gloria had less of the day-to-day activities of the tribe to fulfill, leaving that to the men and to the lesser Amazons. Much of her time was spent in personal training, sparring with the other warriors to maintain her sharpness and speed, and also in trancing herself to recall the wisdom of the ancients. Despite this, she had noted from the first the way that the albino had been looking at her—at first in open disbelief that the vision of his dream had come to him, and then surreptitiously when he realized that she was becoming aware of him.