Amazonia - Titan's Confession

"Now that is absolutely adorable," Titan rumbled in a quiet voice.

Their hair still damp from the bath house, Greywolf and Wysper were curled up together under the blankets, with little Paulus wrapped in his own blanket against Wysper's back. Asena was asleep on a pallet in front of the door. Her shaggy hair was damp as well, with her armor and her gear piled into a heap in a corner, and her hand on the hilt of the sword laying beside her.

The moment Titan had eased the door open, her snoring had stopped, but now it started back up again. I shook my head. "With that racket," I whispered, "it's a wonder any of them can sleep."

Titan chuckled as he eased the door closed. "The greatest wonder is how someone got Asena into the bathing pool without throwing her in."

"Wysper takes all the credit for that one," I replied as I led us down the hall towards the private room next to the kitchen. Witchlight lanterns gave the room a greenish glow as we entered, the gaps between the shuttered windows telling me that the sun was up, at least barely. "Even though she was exhausted, she cajoled Asena into the pool and made her let Dancer bind her wounds."

As I led us towards the low table, where a flagon of wine and several ceramic wine cups were scattered around its top, he asked, "What about the Celtic priestess who is the healer? Even if Greywolf and Wysper restore Asena's mana, she does not regenerate her wounds the way she used to."

I sat down on one of the cushions with my back against the wall, while Titan gathered two and placed them together. As he sat down, I replied, "Timur forbade it. He unbent enough to let Greywolf and Wysper stay here until Khingla's cremated and the khans have their counsel, but no more. I think that, after watching her fight, he's a little afraid of her." Titan chuckled again as I found the two cleanest cups and poured wine into them. "At least Osiris offered to shelter Paulus until this is over."

I gave one of the cups to Titan, his hand engulfing it. "Gratitude. I must say I am surprised at the offer. Little Paulus is the son of a deceased Ludus owner, not someone important."

We both took a drink as I shrugged. "Before you arrived, there was a rumor around the Ludus that little Paulus' father was actually someone different than Lord Paulus, someone important. Some people claimed it was Eurax."

"Eurax?" I nodded, and Titan made a disgusted sound. "He would change his own son into a girl to have carnal relations with her?"

"Remember who we're talking about." Titan gave me an unhappy nod, and I added, "Besides, it's only a rumor... and speaking of important people, has Avitohol arrived yet?"

"No," Titan said with a sigh. "I waited at the main gate until the horn sounded the dawn, then watched the funeral procession bring in Khan Khingla's body from the same tent where the Great Khan had banished Prince Timur."

"What if Avitohol comes galloping in? Will they at least let him watch?"

Titan shook his head. "Once the last mourner walked inside, Prince Timur ordered all the city gates shut until the funeral is over. As I understand their customs, lighting the funeral pyre of the dead khan is the equivalent of receiving Tengri's blessing, and they are going to take Avitohol's absence as a slap in the face."

I drank more as I turned this over in my mind. "On the way back to Bukhara, Hypam told me it was the Keeper of the Spirits who sent Avitohol on this rescue mission. She thought the Keeper wanted to force Khingla into accepting Avitohol as a man, so it would strengthen his claim as Khan of khans."

"Which went horribly wrong when the Sasnayams tried to assassinate Prince Timur." Titan didn't know the truth behind the attack, and I decided to never tell him, either. I nodded, and we drank in silence for a few moments. Then he looked at me. "There is another possibility. Yasataar is a canny woman who has the gift... or curse, of foresight, and she may have seen a future where the White Horde descended into civil war over the succession."

"You're saying she might have sent Avitohol on this mission deliberately, so he'd miss the funeral and the chance to become the Great Khan?" Titan nodded and I drained my wine cup. "Now that would be cold."

"I would call it practical." I refilled our cups as he said, "Yasataar has likely realized the White Horde is bent upon its own doom. So this way, Avitohol gets a chance to make a clean break without bloodshed, and begin a new life with the Black Dragon clan."

I gave Titan a sour smile. "You're about as cheerful as a dinner of rotgut wine and turnips. If that happens, are you going to join the Black Dragons as well?"

Titan grimaced. "I am hoping Greywolf's father will return soon, bearing a third choice."

"You could stay here with me," I said, trying to keep my voice light. "The army won't be marching until the spring... well, the Shamblers will need to leave soon, but I'll be back right after I get them settled-"

"No, Az," he said, his rumbling voice sounding sad, "I cannot remain. When Timur is confirmed as khan, or king, or whatever he proclaims himself to be, I have no choice except to leave Bukhara and never return, at least until he is dead."

"Why?" I snapped. "You claim you've got feelings for me, that you want us to be together, but now that things may settle down for a while, you're halfway out the gate and down the road."

"I told you in the beginning there were lines I would not cross-"

"Except you've already crossed them. Titan, you saw me changed into a Shadow Knight, but even though you kicked up a fuss, you didn't stop me."

"Because I honestly believed it would be the only time." He gave me a dark look. "Timur has made his Shadow Knight the cornerstone of his victory over the Sasnayams, and if I do not leave soon, blood is going to be shed. I would rather leave you than have it be yours."

"Titan-"

"My mind is made up. Besides, your Chaldeans will be happy to see the last of me, especially Dancer."

I gave him a confused look. "What are you talking about?"

"The night of the raid. While you as your Shadow Knight self was assembling her troops, Dancer accused me of raping you, then exploiting our relationship for my own gain."

I'm going to thrash Dancer within an inch of his life. "Look," I said in exasperation, "you were in rut and we all knew it. Lord Paulus let me decide whether to bed you or not; I accepted, and not only did I survive, but I got everything I was promised. It was my choice and I don't regret it."

"You were a slave, and slaves do not get to have a choice. Not real ones."

"Neither do most people." I stabbed my finger at his face. "Lucky for you I did agree, and had a body modified enough to withstand you. What would you have done if I'd said no? How many females would've died when you lost control and went on a rampage? Hades' hairy eyeballs, what are you going to do when the urges get too strong again and you don't have me to slake them on?"

His hands clenched into fists large as mace heads. "Do you even understand why I have those urges in the first place?"

I drained the cup and slammed it onto the table, shattering it into shards. "I have no thrice damned idea. Hel's rancid breath, I didn't even know how old you were until Asena showed up and the two of you began sharing war stories. When we were together in the arena, you told me you wanted to keep the past buried, and I understood that because we were gladiators. But now everything’s changed. How can I understand why you're so desperate to leave when you won't tell me what's wrong?" For a long moment, Titan regarded me with a brooding look.

Then he exhaled, uncurled his hands, and motioned at the ceramic shards on the table. "You broke your cup."

I glanced down at the pieces, then back up again. "Don't tell the owner, or she'll toss me out on my arse for breaking her crockery."

Titan chuckled as he used his hand to sweep the ceramic shards over to the opposite side of the table, where a corpse beetle was going after spilled wine. Then he poured wine into another cup and handed it to me. "Here," he rumbled as I took it from him. "Listening is thirsty work." He refilled his own and took a sip.

Then Titan began to speak. "Before the war of the Daemo Princes, my people were nothing like they are now. The human tribes called us ogres, and that is exactly what we were: enormous savages that ate any animal or person unlucky enough to cross our path."

"What about the Daemo?"

A smile tugged at his lips. "As I understand our history, the Daemo enraged the ogres because they tasted delicious, but then melted away with the first bite, leaving us hungry." The smile vanished. "That was the way we were until the Celestials came in force. They saw incredible potential in us, and began to do experiments, changing us in different ways until they got exactly the heavy infantry they wanted.

“Oh, deep down we were still wild ogres, but they boosted our intelligence and made us appear less threatening to their human servants, so we could fight side by side and interact with them. Most important of all, though, is the Code of Conduct they embedded into the very fiber of our bodies. The Code modified our behavior so we would obey their commands and fight in their war without question."

I crossed my legs, nomad style. "I'm not following. How could this Code change you?"

"The Code is a difficult concept to explain. You saw the manikins the mages use here, with the instructions burned into their wooden bodies that tell the manikins what to do?" I nodded, and Titan said, "The Celestials did something similar. The Code is burned into us, in a sense, as a set of instructions ordering our behavior so we could be used in the war... except unlike the manikins, our Code could be modified as circumstances changed."

I slowly nodded. "As in your hatred of Necromancers. The Daemo Princes learned to raise the dead later in the war, right? So the Celestials added necromancy as something that went against your Code."

"Exactly. They wrote the Code with enough ambiguity to let us use our judgment in certain situations, like the night of the raid. I knew the Sasnayams had planned to use necromancy first and told myself this would be the only time."

"Which was the reason you didn't interfere with me or Lys."

Titan sighed. "More like the reason I didn't kill anyone on our side. If I cannot justify what I am doing to the Code, it attempts to compel me to destroy who or what is offending it, and while I can resist for a while..."

Bells of Hades, I'm beginning to understand why he never brought this up. "Did they put in this Code while you were in the womb, or when you were a baby?"

He gave me a sardonic smile. "A womb is not a thing any of us ever knew. We were grown in batches of one hundred at a time."

My eyes went wide. "Grown?"

"Normal births would have been too time consuming," Titan said with a shrug. "Since we were the heavy infantry, our growth was accelerated, and the moment we were deemed ready, they threw us onto the battlefield." He shook his head. "Yet it did not matter how numerous we were. There were never enough of us."

"But you survived."

"Obviously," he said with a rumbling chuckle. "I was lucky enough to be born in the last batch created, and later squired to Asena. Most of us in the last batch did survive the war. Yet, over the years, the rest have either died in battle or went feral, and had to be put down by myself and others."

A chill swept across my heart. "What do you mean, went feral?"

Titan sighed again as he stared down into his cup. "The Celestials designed us to fight, without thinking through what would happen once the war was over. When we were created, they turned off whatever it is inside us that makes you grow old, so we would always be at the peak of our fighting ability. However, they neglected to do the same with the Code."

"They didn't expect you to live long enough for that to be a problem."

He nodded. "What the last of us discovered is that the Code, in some ways, resembles a living being. If I do not feed it by performing acts it considers important, like the killing of Daemo monsters in the arena, the Code loses its grip and begins to break down and die."

I sucked in my breath. "That's why you went into rut. You hadn't been doing things the Code thought was important, and the ogre inside you began coming out."

"By the time I realized what was happening," Titan said in a quiet rumble, "it was too late to stop it. At least I was able to keep a measure of control."

"You were fighting with yourself while it was going on; I remember that part clear as day, though other parts I don't." As old, painful memories of that night resurfaced, I took a deep breath. "Now I understand why you wanted to keep this buried and not tell me the truth. At the time, I thought it was an Ogri trait, something you had to get out of your system."

Titan shook his head. "Normal Ogri never go into rut like ogres do. After the war was over, the Celestials felt guilty over what they had done to our race, and crafted wild ogres into the wise people the civilized world knows Ogri to be."

"Do the Ogri know what you actually are?"

The sardonic smile returned. "Why do you think I am forbidden to ever enter the Ogri city known as Haven? They respect me for what I did, but they also know it is just a matter of time before they will be called upon to put me down as well."

I reached out and placed my hand over his. "I understand why you kept this from me, but you shouldn't have. You should've told me all this years ago."

"I did not want to burden you with this knowledge." Draining his cup, he set it down, then laid his other hand over mine and gave it a gentle squeeze. "I loved you from the first moment I saw you. I truly believed the Shadow magic had been lost, and that by fighting alongside you after you became a Rune Knight, the Code would be strengthened inside me."

"Was it?"

Titan nods. "The Sasnayam empire wants to destroy an empire that embodies many of the ideals the Code cherishes, and until the night of the raid, the Code remained strong."

"But now it's not?"

"It has begun to weaken, and I cannot let it unravel any further."

This is your fate, Az... and no matter what you do, it won't change. Time to embrace it. "Then this is what we're going to do," I told him as I freed my hand and climbed to my feet. "Until the khans have their meeting to decide who's going to be their warlord, you and I are going down the stairs to the cellar, where the old owner had his private room, and we're going to stay there until Timur himself comes and pries me loose. Dancer will make sure we've got food and enough wine."

"But-"

"And then," my voice overriding his, "you are going to go with Asena and keep Greywolf out of trouble. Teach Wysper how to be a queen, save the Brittani, save the Empire of the East; Bells of Hades, do whatever you have to so your Code remains strong." I grabbed him by the front of his tunic and stared down into his ugly face. "But most of all, when the Sasnayam empire's finally shattered, get your arse back here and kill the Shadow Knight."

"Az-"

I shook him. "Kill her, whether I survive or not, because I can't. Even with the pain of transformation, becoming the Shadow Knight's too seductive to resist anymore. Fight the monster inside you, Titan. Because I can no longer fight mine."

I turned and walked away, glancing over my shoulder. "Oh, and one more thing. I expect to be walking bowlegged by the time you leave. Well, you coming or not?"

Titan smiled as he got to his feet.