Rhittach

“Rhittach: The Beginning

Two women slid out of their furry over-clothes. They stood, facing each other, in their skin underwear. It was stripped from the belly of the herd animals and been chewed to a fine softness by toothless old men.

A pair of cold blue eyes peered into another pair of cold blue eyes. They spoke quietly, without malice.

“For honour.”

“For pride.”

The weak, mid-day sun, hovering just above the Eastern horizon, glinted off two long, slim blades.

They fought for, perhaps, twenty seconds. So fast were their blades flashing that no human eye could follow unless they were also Chowras—the fighting women of Paya.

Undetectable to the bystanders, one of the women grunted and paused for a fraction of a second. It was enough. The other stepped back and watched the thin red line around the other’s neck grow until it was seeping blood rapidly.

The dying woman smiled gently then buckled at the knees. Her head rolled off as she hit the tundra pouring her blood, and her life, into the soft, frozen mosses.

The victor picked up the other woman’s sword and put it on one of the pack animals. Picking two herd beasts she mounted another pack animal and rode off to the South without a word or a backward glance.”

This is the opening of the story, which was written as a precursor to the ‘Adepts’ series.

The idea was to fill in the gaps about how the characters in the series became known to each other and to give an insight into how the Payan Chowras came to be as they are.

Paya is a planet in the Orion arm of the ‘Milky Way’ galaxy; this location is not stated in the story. 

The main thrust of the tale is to watch how the main protagonist, Rhittach, progresses from being a small girl on the tundra whose primary occupation was tending the herd animals for her beloved father to being a trained and eminently proficient killer.

We learn how she became an expert with a slingshot and how her humanity led her to slaughtering one of her own.

Within the story is weaved some of the other girls who appear in the ‘Adepts’; we meet Chellaba who is a vicious but motherly figure, Tammarathis who is slimmer and shorter than the rest but faster, and the, then, sickly Irrin Kheng who tries valiantly to be as good as the rest. Also present is the reviled Parranatis who shows her worth in Book 4 of the ‘Adepts’.

The story is a shade blood thirsty but takes us on a path of discovery that includes a view of their planet and the people who live there.

It is, at twenty-two and a half thousand words, a novella rather than a novel. It was condensed down to pick up the pace of the story. It is about an hour’s reading so something good for the lunchtime or the wait in the dentist’s surgery.

Then catch up with the rest of the characters in the ‘Adepts: Book 1 – Furato’.

Both books available from Amazon.

NB:

The Adepts: Book 2 – Empath

The Adepts: Book 3 – Pitch Perfect

The Adepts: Book 4 – Despair

All out soon from Iqliptic Books.

All cover illustrations by Khairul Hisham at Hishgraphics (www.hishgraphics.com)