“Of course, I am happy you’re home and will be here for a while.”
“Then you should start acting like it. You should also not confuse my kindness and gentleness with weakness. It’s my willingness to compromise and choose my battles wisely that’s kept the felines from being exterminated, by either the creators or the Zunnuki. It’s my ability to control my feline aggressiveness and seek political solutions to our poor circumstances that’s brought our people this far.”
He grabbed November by the forearm and froze in place.
November kept walking and was jolted to a stop, almost falling backward. Once she regained her balance and stood up straight again, she looked quickly down to see Calf Stealer’s claws breaking her skin. “You’re hurting me. Please let me go.”
Calf Stealer gripped November’s arm even tighter. “I must fight daily for respect from our people because I seem to be the only feline wise enough to see we don’t have the numbers to conquer this planet.” His eyes widened and turned red. “Why do I have to fight for your respect, also?”
The anger in Calf Stealer’s eyes unnerved November. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’ve been running off to be with Sierra while I’ve been away.”
“What are you saying, Calf Stealer? What is it you’re accusing me of?”
“I allow you a great deal of latitude since you’re on the war council. I choose to treat you with the respect the position commands, both publicly and privately. Just because I tolerate your difficult tendencies with a greater amount of gentleness than they deserve doesn’t make me weak. It only makes me tolerant. It doesn’t change the fact I demand you respect me in return. I won’t let your abuse of my good nature continue.”
“Falling Leaf has a right to see her father whenever possible,” November said. “I have never been to see Night Hunter for any other reason. I swear.” She saw blood seeping from around the punctures Calf Stealer’s claws were making. “Please let me go,” she repeated, “You’re hurting me.”
Calf Stealer pulled November off the well-worn dirt trail into some tall brush. “Say that to me again. Tell me once more how you’ve been willfully disregarding my warnings to you.”
“I’m not consorting with Night Hunter, I swear. Please believe me.”
Calf Stealer threw November face down into the brush. When she hit the ground she inhaled a mouthful of the salty, sandy dirt that had once been an ocean bottom.
Calf Stealer was on November in an instant and pinned her down to the ground with a forearm between her shoulder blades. He whispered into her ear. “Tell me again you’ve been going to see Sierra after I warned you not to go near him.”
November choked and spat out the salty dirt. “Falling Leaf needs to know her father.”
“I’m her father,” Calf Stealer yelled, still next to November’s ear. He then sunk his teeth her neck.
November winced as she felt his teeth grip without breaking the skin. She cried out as she felt his hand slowly make its way down her body to her waist and then felt her uniform trousers being peeled from around her hips.
“You have nothing to prove to me, Calf Stealer. Please don’t do this. I love you and no other.”
Calf Stealer said nothing. His knees dug into November’s calves as he freed himself from his own trousers. He lifted his forearm from between her shoulders and grabbed her by the neck holding her face in the dirt.
November screamed as Calf Stealer brought his full weight down on her from behind.
Chapter 26
Calf Stealer sat in the dirt with his back turned to November. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know why I did that.” He stared into the distance.
“No need to apologize.” November was already standing. She reached down to pull up her trousers. “I know exactly why you did it, and I accept the blame for antagonizing you.”
“No. I should never have violated you in that manner,” Calf Stealer said. “I’m disgusted with myself. We aren’t animals.”
“We are what we are.” November winced at the pain that shot through her lower body when she tried to walk. “We’re bred to be warriors full of passion. I know you love me without question, but why are you always so angry with me? I’ve told you more than once Night Hunter’s arrogance no longer holds any fascination for me.”
Calf Stealer bristled as he stood and turned to face November. He made no attempt to hide his anger.
It was difficult for November to keep from laughing as she looked at Calf Stealer standing there. His expression gave her no doubt he was upset enough with her to become violent again, but his trousers were around his ankles. She somehow kept herself from giggling, but she couldn’t avoid smiling and Calf Stealer grew angrier.
“What do you find so damned amusing,” Calf Stealer said, as he reached down to pull his trousers up.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
“I’ve already embarrassed myself much more than you ever could. I lost my temper and forced myself on you like I would an insubordinate surrogate. You should have nothing but contempt for me right now.”
“I could never hate you, Calf Stealer. Why do you hate yourself? It isn’t only now. You seem to feel that way most of the time. Of all the felines, you should be the most proud of what you’ve done. You told me yourself, just now, the felines would have been exterminated if it hadn’t been for you.”
“If only they realized it,” Calf Stealer lamented. “Children don’t understand you’re giving them the chance to grow up and be adults when you take away the matches they’re playing with. They’re too busy cursing you for spoiling their fun.”
“Yes, our people remain impetuous children in your sight, don’t they? It still doesn’t explain why you’re angry with yourself, or why you lash out at me.”
“I’m tired of being looked upon with scorn for having the best interests of others at heart,” Calf Stealer said. “For you to go near Sierra after my warnings against it tells me you aren’t finished playing with matches, either.”
November put her arms around Calf Stealer’s waist. She smiled when she felt his body become rigid. “I was badly burned by the fire,” she whispered into his ear. “I have no desire to be burned again. You’re my true and only love, and you’re looked upon with much less scorn by me, and our people, than you realize.” She kissed his ear and squeezed him more firmly. “You say you’re a lone voice of reason, but you won’t listen to reason when I tell you Falling Leaf should have every opportunity to see her father.”
“Of course I won’t,” Calf Stealer replied. “I can see no reason for it. Sierra is a bad influence on her, and on you.”
“Night Hunter has lost all influence over me, but Falling Leaf must decide for herself what influence he’s to have over her. I want her to make up her mind, now; not run to him when she’s older because she has no idea what he’s like. You’ve seen how he seduces the young with his eloquent bigotries.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Falling Leaf is with you almost constantly,” November said. “It’s obvious to everyone she adores you. Do you think she feels the same about Night Hunter? I only take her to visit him now because he demands it. She doesn’t ask me to take her. I look forward to the day when she refuses to go.”
Calf Stealer softened his posture and November took the opportunity to pull his uniform tunic back out of his trousers. She worked her hands inside the tunic and ran them slowly up his belly to his chest.
“Falling Leaf will call you her father soon enough. When she does, I want there to be no doubt in her mind you truly are her father, no matter whose seed she sprang from. She must see the difference for herself.”
“Why is that so important,” Calf Stealer asked, “Don’t you think she can tell from all my doting I think of her as my own child?”
“I never had parents and neither did you. We hope it doesn’t hinder our ability to rear our young, but it most assuredly must. The oldest among
us are barely thirty years old, so we have no wisdom to draw from on this. We must follow our hearts and hope our children figure out for themselves what parents and family truly are. We have no choice but to allow them to tell us if we have fulfilled that role admirably or not by watching how they rear their own.”
“We do have an example,” Calf Stealer said. “A horrible one. We have the creators. We should have learned something from their mistakes.”
“We have the example of humans whose ability to reproduce was stolen from them. I choose to believe the men and women who reared us in the compound tried to do so as they would have their own offspring, with love and compassion. It wasn’t until they were forced to send us away from our childhood home to be trained as soldiers that we learned we were not their children, after all.”
“But we were,” Calf Stealer said. “We may not have come from the physical union of human male and female, but we were and are their children, none the less. It’s to humankind’s shame that the creators treated us as anything less and doubly so now that the Earth has reservations about claiming us as their own. Likewise, it will be to my shame if Falling Leaf ever has a reason to feel I treat her any differently than the baby Bridgette carries now.”
“That’s what I love most about you,” November replied. “Even more than how you fight for our people.”
Calf Stealer pulled November’s arms from around him and turned to face her. “We have a tragic past, an uncertain future and no culture except the one we stole from the humans and bastardized. I can’t see the feline race lasting much longer but I’ll be damned if I don’t do everything in my power to make sure we face eternity with some sort of dignity; even if half our people don’t want or appreciate my help.”
“I predict what you end up doing will not only ensure we have a future, but will somehow help us to refine and reshape our culture into one of our own. I also believe you’ll give us the opportunity to become an influence on the Earth humans who created us, as well as the ones who’ve come after.”
November threw her arms over Calf Stealer’s shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. “Always remember you have my love, Calf Stealer. No matter what you believe I’ve done, you are my one true love. I’ve known it since the day you allowed me back into your life.”
Calf Stealer once more pulled November’s arms from around him. “If I have your love, then you must also give me your respect. Visiting Sierra openly when I’m away sends a powerful message to those on the council. You’re certainly intelligent enough to understand that. To do it secretly is even more damaging to my position.”
“I explained it to you.”
“Damn you, listen to me,” Calf Stealer shouted. “Through all of this the impression of me has been that I’ve betrayed feline interests and cowered to both the colonist remnant and the Zunnuki. The separatists paint a picture of me as a collaborator, not a diplomat. If the moderates see you running to Sierra when my back is turned and then see me do nothing openly about it, I look like a weakling. They don’t see my forgiveness as tolerance of your defiance; they see it as me kowtowing to an unruly mate. They see Sierra winning. They see him taking you from me and it gives them the permission to form the opinion he is taking control of the council from me as well. Our future depends upon our people believing in my ability to lead. If you continue to defy me on this, I will put you out.”
Chapter 27
Calf Stealer and November made their way toward the rocks that allowed the presiding war council elders to look over the delegates. As they walked slowly through the felines scattered around the floor of the boxed canyon all eyes were on them.
“It’s good to see you, Calf Stealer,” Night Hunter said as he looked down from the rocks. “You’re late. I was beginning to think you might have lost your way.”
“Your concerns were unfounded, Sierra,” Calf Stealer said, refusing to refer to Night Hunter by his ceremonial name. “I come and go as I please and I’ve never been without a sense of direction.”
Since taking on ceremonial names, most felines had come to think of it as an affront to refer to one another by the tail of the serial number given by the creators. Some of them still called themselves by the serials, out of habit or convenience, but to use the serial during a war council meeting was an intentional insult.
“Ah, you’re wearing your feline army uniform, I see,” Night Hunter said. “From the nasty rumors going around, I feared you had abandoned us.”
“I’ve been away, but only because it served our people for me to be away.”
“Then perhaps it’s only your spouse and your ripening pram you abandoned. I assure you that you haven’t been missed.”
Night Hunter’s followers laughed. The rest of the council remained silent.
“That’s uncalled for, Night Hunter,” November said. “It’s also an untruthful insinuation of the vilest sort.”
“Is it, now,” Night Hunter asked. “Since when do you need others to speak for you, Calf Stealer?”
“I don’t participate in pointless chat with arrogant fools.” Calf Stealer looked at November and frowned. “If others choose to sully themselves on my behalf of their own free will, I’ll advise against it, but I won’t stop them.”
Falling Eagle, the presiding elder, called for order. “If salutations are complete, it’s getting late and many of us have travelled a long way.”
Night Hunter wasted no time in rising to speak. “I didn’t call this war council, but if it hadn’t been called for soon, I would have been forced to. My people are angered the rest of you so quickly surrendered to the humans from the home world.”
“And the rest of us are angered you chose to pull us into a fight we didn’t need and had no way to win,” a feline yelled from the floor. “I lost my mate and a child. I hold you responsible.”
“You can blame me for that, but it doesn’t make it my fault,” Night Hunter said. “An invasion force came upon us in the middle of the night.”
“That most certainly was your fault,” Calf Stealer said. “The humans meant us no harm. You fired upon them without provocation and then lied to the rest of us about it. You drew us into the conflict before we had a chance to sort things out and many felines died needlessly as a result.”
“You’re a fool, Calf Stealer,” Night Hunter said. “You’re also a traitor. You’re collaborating with an occupation force and selling your people out. What could the humans have promised you for your cooperation?”
“Those are serious allegations and they are unfounded,” Falling Eagle said. “If you don’t have anything constructive to offer you should be silent, Night Hunter.”
“I will be heard,” Night Hunter yelled at the top of his lungs. Angry voices from those who both agreed and disagreed with him filled the air and echoed off the walls of the natural canyon. Senior elders called for order and demanded the delegates remain silent unless given the floor.
“I will tell my delegation to be silent only after you answer our question,” Night Hunter said. “I believe we must know, before this goes any farther, why the elders insist upon ignoring evidence these humans from the home world are no more trustworthy than the creators. Black Bear told you to your faces before he died you should be wary if they ever came here. Now, over a million of them have shown up with enough firepower to obliterate every living being on this planet twenty times over and they are arrogantly walking about as if they own it.”
“Are you suggesting we were any less arrogant,” Calf Stealer asked. “We once believed the creators had a right to this planet and we narrowly avoided being guilty of assisting them in genocide.”
“This certainly is different,” Night Hunter said.
“In what way?”
“We’ve lost our innocence. We understand much more than we did at that time. It should also be obvious to even the most feeble-minded of us what the appearance of the Terrans and their roundup of the colonists means.”
“Take it upon yourself to enlighten us,�
� Calf Stealer said.
“It means unless we fight, we’re no better than prisoners in our own homes. It means when the time is right we’ll be rounded up by the Earth humans and taken to who knows where to rot in cells until we’re executed for our part in the Zunnuki massacre. We must make this gathering count for something. By assembling here, we’re making that roundup much less difficult for them. Who’s to say they aren’t watching these proceedings right now from a high altitude drone or an orbiting satellite?”
“What if they are?”
All eyes turned in the direction of Calf Stealer’s voice.
“What can you do about it? By your logic, we’re ensnared no matter what we do. We don’t have the means to go anywhere else, and if we attack them again, we give them reason to wipe us off the face of this planet. I wonder to myself why they didn’t do that to begin with. They could have flattened our settlements from orbit before they even set foot on the surface and we would never have known they were here.”
For that matter,” Calf Stealer added, “they could have wiped out the Zunnuki cities as well. Why should they bother with us if their intention is not some sort of peaceful coexistence?”
There was complete silence among the felines as Calf Stealer continued to lecture Night Hunter.
“If Terrans want this planet and its resources, they are certainly strong enough to take it by force. Instead they seek a treaty, with the Zunnuki and us. I can only assume they’re sincere in their offers to befriend and help us.”
“Maybe they’re looking to enslave us once more and the Zunnuki as well,” Night Hunter said. “Has that ever occurred to you? The creators had no problem with creating us to fight their war and then exterminating us afterward. These humans are from the same place.”
Calf Stealer turned to look at November and smiled. “So were the keepers who nurtured us and helped us free ourselves from the creators’ evil.”
War Orphans (The Terra Nova Chronicles) Page 13
