by Hugo Damas
The Hunter spotted them first but that wasn’t that much of an advantage since she couldn’t keep herself hidden from people who lived in the jungle. Not if they got close enough. Still, wanting to try, she climbed up the nearest tree.
The men did happen to come close, and they did spot her in her attempted hiding spot. It had worked with the wild cat, but she supposed it had been almost a full day since the last tragedy so it was high time her luck took its periodical plummet.
Three scouts looked up at her wielding spears and bows and arrows, wearing simple cloths tied around their loins. They grunted in command. Zaniyah hissed back down with hostility.
They looked at each other, and when they did, she recognized their markings. They belonged to the tribe that had destroyed her own. There was a natural animosity towards them inside her heart that she had never outgrown. As unreasonable as it was since it was her own tribe that had caused the death of her sister. Objectively, they were all terrible.
They wielded the spears, bringing them up and ready to throw, and yelled at her to get down. In their native language.
“Get down, woman,” one said.
“You have strayed. You are ours now,” the other said, eagerly.
She tried to decide which was best. To pretend she didn’t understand them and threaten a fight, or to communicate. Much was hinging on what she decided. Zaniyah probably could not win a fight, not with the injuries she wished to keep closed and healing.
Better for them to think she was part of another tribe. The Hunter edged out her hand with the dagger and communicated. Dangerously. “Leave.”
“This is our land,” one explained.
“You are ours,” the other said, a bit frustrated.
The third was keeping quiet, but it didn’t matter. That was always the conclusion with these people, Zaniyah knew that. A led to B led to “the woman is ours.”
The Hunter felt anger bubbling up within her, thinking that maybe she could fight them. Sure, she’d open a wound, maybe gain a new one, but she could probably do it. Zaniyah could also run and bet her life in a rush through the jungle. One of those two options posed the least danger, but she wasn’t sure which.
First, though, she wanted to know where the rest of the tribe was. “This is our land, which you trespass,” she said, with a decent amount of threat. “Leave.”
They looked around, a bit confused, taking in the surroundings. One of them shook his head.
“You are in mistake. Heart of tribe is located thousand paces over there.” He pointed in the direction, and she glanced at it. That was the direction to avoid, then. “You trespass. Come down and be ours. If not, we will feed our pets your tongue. It is too active.” The word and tone of voice used indicated a much more insulting form of the word ‘active’, but it was roughly what the man meant.
It upset her most of all, for some reason. Zaniyah wasn’t one to talk at all so to be told she spoke too much was infuriating.
“Leave or die,” the Hunter spat down at them, coming to terms with the fact she really wanted them to stay right there and threaten her again.
They traded looks. The third edged his face in the direction of their village, insinuating they should go, but the other two shook their heads. Then they shrugged, and then they stabbed the ground with the spears. They casually pulled out their bows from their backs, but Zaniyah didn’t wait for them to properly knock their arrows.
The Hunter dropped down on them.
She landed into a roll feeling something cutting at her leg, but it was much shallower than the slash she cut across one of the archer’s thighs. She stood up with a back-step and a back-stab. The Hunter punctured two wounds into the man’s torso, and on the second one, she spun around him to viciously slash her dagger free of his flesh.
The man yelled but Zaniyah, having turned to use him as cover for another arrow, shoved and pushed him onto the other two.
She leaped after the body that encumbered the second archer. He wielded the arrow in his hand to try to stab, but the Hunter grabbed the arrow out of the way and swung down on the thrusting arm with her short blade.
Blood was drawn to the sound of his screaming.
Zaniyah shoved the arrow in the first one’s neck in a motion that also pushed him aside and out of her way, and then, flipping the dagger into a proper hold, she stabbed the second’s chest.
A spear point then came from his side to hit her, and she pulled away to avoid it.
He had dropped the bow and arrow and gotten the spear. The second warrior yelled in frustration, even as he bled from the two wounds she had caused him. He used very insulting slurs, blaming her for killing his friend.
She gladly accepted the blame, but said nothing.
The spear came, but the Hunter skillfully leaned and caused it to miss her, even if it sliced across the skin in her belly. In that very same movement, she had stepped into his reach and once again thrust her dagger into his chest. It pierced an inch in, causing a stagger, which was all she needed to flick the dagger across the throat.
The spear pulled back, and so did she. The man, writhing and gasping in mindless pain, fell down to the ground to suffer the throes of death.
The Hunter leaped back from a spear thrust, and then crouched and span around to avoid the spear throw. The third man cursed a few more times while he grabbed the spear from his friend and pierced his head, granting him relief. He did the same to the first one.
All the while, Zaniyah remained crouched, moving only to keep herself facing the third and last surviving tribesman.
“You will pay for this.” The insults and slurs were hard to translate, one would be well served in picturing every statement was followed by very mean-spirited and sexist inflections. “By my name of Thunuk.”
“What were their names?” Zaniyah asked, coating her voice in a faint growl. She was not only fighting on what motivated her hatred for what the tribe had done to her in the past, but also very much aware of what they would have done to her had they had their way.
“Yes,” Thunuk agreed with a lesser number of insults. “You should know their names. Prirk and Lork.”
“Prirk, Lork and Thunuk,” Zaniyah enunciated, sneering. “Together defeated by single woman.”
Thunuk winced, looking at her in absolute shock. That had been, she assumed, the very first time anyone had spoken to him so offensively. Let alone someone like her.
“Single hurt woman,” Zaniyah added, gesturing to her bandages.
Thunuk scowled. He postured, puffing his chest like a gorilla. He pounded on it twice too and then grabbed his spear. He whispered slurs followed by speaking them in a normal voice. It grew in loudness as they became more and more offensive and crude, followed by threats. He was crying all the while.
Apparently, not even death would grant her peace from what he was going to do with her, and even that would come very slowly.
The Hunter was kinder. She would kill him right there in that fight and leave him be. She had been nervous all day but now, in the small enclosure of space already reeking of death, with such an aura of hate few animals would dare interrupt, she was fine with taking that risk.
Since the very fundamentals of combat dictated the one with the shorter range should get as close as possible as fast as possible, she didn’t really allow Thunuk to finish with his boasting. When he was switching grips on the spear in the middle of his theatrics, the Hunter suddenly rushed him.
Thunuk cursed because of the interruption, executing an amateurish thrust to intercept her. She leaned and swiped to parry the thrust successfully, but he jumped back, and so she couldn’t get to him before another thrust came.
Zaniyah jumped to the side, making him turn and thrust a third time, and that hit a tree.
Cursing again, Thunuk pulled the spear out in a sudden motion that sent him back with an uneven step. He gave a wild half-swing with his spear, which hit her side but didn’t even cut properly, because she had gotten very close. The Hunter
reached to stab him, but the arm wasn’t long enough to follow his back-stepping, although that turned out to be fine because he tripped over something on the ground.
“Wha!”
Got you!
Her intent to kill was interrupted by a sudden roar. Her instincts went into high alert as a wild cat, bearing its natural dark green camouflage, surged from the bushes to catch her. With a yelp, the Hunter backed off, allowing the predator to lunge across them without touching her.
The tribesman stood up rather frantically, properly startled. They both faced the wildcat, turning their sides to each other. They glanced sideways, mean-spirited, equally unhappy with the alliance they had to form if they sought to survive.
Thunuk yelled and thrust at the big cat but, in response, it growled menacingly and swiped across with its paw, almost breaking the spear.
“Surround it,” Zaniyah told him.
“Shut up!” Thunuk barked.
“It attacks you first, the real threat,” Zaniyah explained. The sound logic seemed to work because Thunuk slightly stepped aside.
He noticed the big cat was indeed eyeing him more closely, and how its muscle-filled body subtly turned towards him. He cursed again and walked further around, to allow the Hunter to get behind the animal. Neither of them thought about running, it would be a moot attempt.
Zaniyah followed Thunuk’s lead and walked around the opposite side. The feline beast started waving its head around and stepping back, understanding the concept of being surrounded and not liking it one bit.
It would jump for him once it felt the inevitability of their attack. The Hunter had to kill it first because if it even wounded Thunuk, bad enough to incapacitate, she would be dead soon after. There was no way she could beat a cat like that with a dagger.
Then, abruptly, her foot hit something loose.
The Hunter looked down and recognized one of the dead bodies. She reached down to grab the bow but that ended up dooming her. The big cat suddenly rushed at her.
Zaniyah yelled back in challenge as the big cat thundered towards her. She jumped aside to avoid a lunge but it was far more agile than she was, so it easily turned and lunged again. She desperately dropped back to avoid it, but her roll hit some kind of protruding root, which stopped her from rolling back and away.
NO! The big cat jumped at her, but she reacted, kicking up at its chin. Its chest collided with her leg and his jaw snapped in the air, trying to reach her neck. NOT HERE! NO!
It was too heavy, though, and so her feet slid off the chest. Zaniyah found herself straddling the predator’s neck with her legs, stretching her body to keep the teeth from reaching her, and all while stabbing with her dagger for good measure. The dagger hit hard bone, clearly damaging the animal and making it all the angrier.
Zaniyah’s body coiled up due to the big cat trying to get at her neck, so much so she wasn’t sure her spine wouldn’t break before her neck was torn out.
The Hunter growled and pushed on her legs with everything she had, an effort that somehow met with a convenient direction of spasmodic force generated by the animal. It allowed her to successfully push it to the side.
Meanwhile, the Hunter’s main wounds had begun to throb mercilessly.
The animal whimpered in pain, which led her to notice three arrows were stuck on its back. It gave a thrashing, one of the claws cutting past her leg to leave a considerably deep cut.
Zaniyah didn’t notice because she was, at the time, stabbing at its neck with every inch of strength left in her body. And she would continue doing it until the animal stopped, no matter how much blood gushed against her.
Another arrow hit the animal and, with a final groaning gasp, the jungle beast was dead.
The moment the Hunter felt the muscle strength dying in the animal, she tumbled away to cover behind a tree. She lifted her wounded leg in reaction to the pain, and then noted it was wounded. Wincing, Zaniyah looked back to realize that she had avoided no arrows.
None had been shot at her.
“You fight like beast!” The voice yelled out from beyond her cover. She was examining her leg wound with a painful grimace, but even in that situation, she knew Thunuk had meant that as a compliment.
“Marry me!”
She threw a look back that could’ve set the tree on fire.
Zaniyah wasn’t one for words in the first place, less even those of profane or crude nature, but right there and then, she rose her voice and sharply used a few to unilaterally tell him no.
“I will be good to you,” Thunuk threw as an argument.
“Eat your own genitalia and choke on it to death.” Zaniyah offered as a rebuttal, appalled. She couldn’t believe that was happening. “You wished me dead just a breath ago.”
“I overreacted,” Thunuk said.
Zaniyah leaned out of the tree, carefully, so he could see how dumbfounded she looked. Maybe that would clue him in on how crazy he was. Also, she confirmed he had no arrows on hand.
“Do you still wish to kill me?” Thunuk asked, eagerly. “I assume not. I saved you.”
She raised an eyebrow. Her leg was hurting too much for that nonsense. Zaniyah was holding her hand over the wound, awkwardly, but the blood was just gushing past her fingers.
“And what of Prirk? Lork?” Zaniyah accused. “All the words you attacked with?”
“I overreacted,” Thunuk said again as if it justified everything. “My friends were fungus brains. I told them we best leave. They threatened your life, you fought back. Like a beast!”
Zaniyah squinted at him and limped around the tree, while still leaning on it. “You are trying to trick me,” she accused.
“Do I look capable of trickery?” Thunuk shrugged, apparently aware that he looked simple-minded. His face was clean shaven and his teeth deathly white, even after all the fighting. His eyes were big, though, by far his most defining feature. She was simple-minded as well, though, there was nothing wrong with that. “Marry me,” he repeated.
“How many have you married?” Zaniyah asked, dismissively.
Thunuk grinned, edging forward. “You dislike sharing me! No problem, they can marry others. I want only you.”
The Hunter balked, unwillingly feeling awkward. What was that? What was happening? That was not the tribesmen she knew. The other two were, and he had also been, before the big cat showed up.
“You are hurt!” He exclaimed, “I carry remedy that helps.” He stepped towards her, but she brandished her dagger at him. It was bloody, still dripping with small specks of flesh, and even with patches of the cat’s dark green fur stuck on it.
“That is fine,” Thunuk said, appeasingly. “Keep your blade on my throat, I will trust you. That way, I apply remedy.”
The Hunter supposed that was as good a deal as any. Zaniyah was really upset that she would have to lie in wait some more, but the whole situation had really taken her out of her zone of comfort and predictability. She nodded, a bit out of sorts, and he smiled widely. Thunuk had a big mouth, there was no doubt about that.
He ran to one of his friends and reached inside his quiver. He retrieved something that was rolled up by leaves. Unfolding the leaves, Thunuk revealed a ceramic cup holding an ointment. Zaniyah recognized it as truly being a healing substance, but it had side-effects.
“No,” she said.
“You need it,” Thunuk said eagerly, reaching for her, but she slashed at him a bit too widely, alas revealing she would likely never win in a fight. The blood loss was too much, and with her wounds, there was very little movement she was capable of that wasn’t met with immensely acute stabs of pain.
“I know how it affects the head,” Zaniyah struggled to say, with a heavy frown. “I rather die now than sleep.”
It wasn’t sleep, per say, but it was close enough. Thunuk seemed to understand why she didn’t like the idea.
“You prefer death?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation, squinting her eyes in response. The Hunter didn’t t
rust him, especially once he took her to the village. Odds are she would be tied and punished, killed, and the amulet would be lost forever.
Thunuk regarded her awestruck. “I have never witnessed woman like you.” He looked around. “I can help you. Stay and await me.”
Zaniyah did await, she waited for him to be out of sight, and then turned and limped away. Her leg was hurting her, but amazingly, the wound on her side had not opened. The wild cat had curled her body without forcing it to stretch, so despite all the force, the bandage had held, and the wounds didn’t re-open.
It felt like they had been stretched to the very limit, though. Zaniyah rarely experienced luck, so when it came, it was like it did so with the intent of balancing the countless times that it did not show at all.
“I said wait!” Thunuk called out, from behind her.
The Hunter turned around with her dagger still in hand. Her leg wound meant she couldn’t outrun the man, so she yet considered killing him.
He came up with hands filled with petals from a flower, which she also recognized. Thunuk started grounding them between his hands, and then he opened them and moved to grab her leg.
The Hunter swiftly put the dagger to his throat, stopping him. He looked up confused, and then remembered. “Ah! The dagger on my throat. Okay.”
“It is not that,” Zaniyah told him threateningly. “You ask before touching me.”
That confused him even more. A civilized person would believe he was confused because all he wanted was to help her, but that wasn’t all of it. Thunuk was confused because he had never had to ask.
“Can I remedy your injury?” He asked, a little more concerned than expected.
“You can,” she said, making sure her reluctance came off loud and clear. Case in point, Zaniyah didn’t remove the dagger but rather inched it a bit farther so he could breathe comfortably. She sat against a tree. Thunuk crouched with his side turned to her so she wouldn’t be uncomfortable while holding her dagger to his throat.
