by J. D. Lakey
“Lady? Do not be afraid,” Mowatt begged.
Cheobawn considered them solemnly. “You want truth? I told the truth in the city of Dunauken and the governor’s men tried to kill me. I tried to hide but the Spacers found me and locked me in a box. Forgive me if I do not trust the hearts of Lowlanders,” Che said.
“We are here, in a stolen boat, trying to keep her hidden from those who wish our Ears harm,” Tam added as further explanation.
Distar nodded. “We suspected as much. Come. Do not worry. We will hunt the wild pig and feast tonight on its flesh while you tell us your stories. Tomorrow we will help you with your boat. There is a pirate’s cove down river. You can hide your boat there. One of us will show you where it is.”
“We need to hide it from the Spacer’s sky eyes, as well all the river traffic,” Tam said.
Mowatt nodded. “We have long been accustomed to playing hide and seek with those who would take what is not rightfully theirs. So when the Spacers came down from the stars to steal away all our young men, they did not find all of them. There is a way to make a boat look like part of the riverbank.”
Che felt the weight on her heart lighten. “Do other pirates hide in the pirate cove?” she asked hopefully. Things were looking up if she was about to meet a true pirate.
The two elders looked confused but said nothing more, perhaps wondering at the strangeness of Highland witches.
Connor poked her in the ribs with his elbow. “Goofball,” he whispered. “It is called pirate’s cove because that is where they hide from the pirates. If we do this right, there will be no pirate encounters.”
“I like my version better,” Cheobawn sniffed disdainfully.
Chapter 9
The hunting party split up. Cheobawn took Tam and circled wide to put herself upwind of the sleepy boar. Megan, Alain, Connor, and the rest of the hunters from the village headed downwind. They would wait, counting down a hundred count before moving. She led Tam through the thickets, using the trails made by the wild animals who created them. Che studied the footprints, trying to understand the habits of the creatures who lived in the dense undergrowth. The pigs, both boar and sow, had rooted about the base of the clumps of whip trees, hunting for some tasty bits that grew deep in their root ball. It worked to their advantage, turning game trails into wide boulevards where a half-dozen pigs could pass shoulder to shoulder.
Tam signaled her when the hundred-count was up. Che pulled her ma-chett from its sheath and looked in the direction of the razorback. Their human scent wafted gently down wind and tickled the old pig’s nose. Che was ready for that. She climbed into its mind and told him that the smell was the smell of a female pig in her prime, fertile and receptive. Then she told him that Tam was an adolescent male bent on capturing this female for his own harem. Then she turned and ran, laughing. Tam grinned and followed her. From far away she could hear the boar squealing in rage as he gave chase.
“I have made you the target of his wrath,” Che shouted over her shoulder. “Act like you are my virile suitor.”
Tam roared. “Come back here, my fat little sow!” he shouted, racing after her.
Che giggled and dodged through the heavy undergrowth. There were animal trails all though this dense jungle. It would be easy to get lost. Keeping the piglets and the other hunting party in place in her mind, she raced away from them.
The carrion dragons, alarmed by this new game, flew down to harass the charging pig.
No! Stay up high, Cheobawn admonished them. I know what I am doing. Reluctantly, they obeyed.
She lost Tam in the maze. She had turned right and he had turned left and now both of them were running on trails that were drawing them apart with every step. She could hear him cursing somewhere off to her left when he realized she was no longer in front of him. Che stopped and spun around, hunting for him in the ambient. She started to backtrack, looking for the entrance to the trail he was on. It was too dangerous to leave him fumbling around in the scrub while a giant pig was bent on killing him.
An arm wrapped itself around her throat and jerked her off her feet. Che squeaked in surprise. The smell of unwashed human male filled her nose. “Well, well, what have we here?” a rough voice whispered against her ear. “Drop the pig-sticker.”
Che hesitated, wondering what a pig-sticker was. This annoyed him. The arm tried to crush her throat. She dropped the ma-chett and grabbed his arm with both hands. Given a choice between the knife and breathing, she chose air. Besides, it was a terrible weapon for close-quarters combat. The man kicked it away down the game trail. Che memorized its position in case she needed to retrieve it in a hurry, already plotting her next six moves well in advance.
Holding her tightly against him, he ran his other hand down her body. He found her belt knife and relieved her of its weight. Che frowned. She would have that back from him when this game was through. He paused as his hand found the juncture of her legs. “Not a boy, then,” he hissed in surprise. “Though your short hair is a good ruse. Your elders are growing savvy, are they? What is a little morsel like you doing out here? Are you lost? Next time, make less noise. It was easy to find you. What will your parents pay for your return, I wonder?”
Che struggled in his grip, fury washing through her. His arm tightened once more over her throat.
“Feisty. I like the feisty ones. The weepers and wailers annoy me so much I cut their th . . . er . . . ransoms in half just to get rid of them. I like a fighter. I just might keep you for myself.”
Che had a vague idea of what he was talking about. It was astoundingly rude. Men had died for less, up above the Escarpment. He was not a nice man. This, obviously, was one of the Outlaws mentioned by Mowatt.
He began dragging her up a side trail. Cheobawn tried to resist, digging her heels into the ground, but the earth was slippery with dust. It was hard to find the leverage to take him down when she could not keep her feet under her.
A fist found the side of her head, making her see stars. “None of that, now. Come along like a good girl that I know you can be.” Her knees wanted to give out underneath her but the arm around her throat threatened to choke her. Forcing herself to stay conscious, she moved her hands on that arm as if to cling to it for support, while her fingers sought the pressure points in the soft parts of his wrist and elbow.
She was almost free. Just then Tam came running around a stand of whip trees, a worried look on his face, perhaps wondering why she was not answering his hunting clicks.
Tam seeing her, his worried frown turning into a mask of fury, raised his ma-chett. He had already pulled it from its sheath, his warrior instinct warning him of their danger somehow. Already anticipating this fight, his arm drew back to unleash the weapon.
Too late. Too late, the ambient wailed at her. Cheobawn’s captor tightened his hold on her throat while his other hand pulled something out of the holster that hung from his right hip. Che knew true despair as the man brought a small pulse rifle up and pointed it at Tam. He was going to kill Tam. She could feel it in his mind, the knife-edged certainty of it, the feel of the steel trigger being depressed under his forefinger, aiming with deadly accuracy at the center of Tam’s chest.
Rage flashed red across her mind. Che reacted without thinking. She thrust her feet between his ankles and hooked her toes around the back of his legs as she threw herself backward. There was only one thought on her mind. The gun and the man holding it had to go somewhere else, as far from Tam as she could take him. All she needed was a little energy, enough to fuel her leap. They fell, she and her captor, fell backwards—but they never hit the ground.
The rifle discharged, the energy bolt hitting nothing but empty sky as they kept falling, picking up speed, the icy air cutting into her bare skin. Che jammed her elbow into the man’s midsection, twisting in his hold, a hold that had convulsed around her neck, turning her vision dark.
He did not mean to harm her. It was a physical reaction to his visceral terror. He was scream
ing, but the whistle of the wind drowned it out. She looked beyond his shoulder as they slowly tumbled. They were falling from high up. Out beyond the vast expanse of Orson’s Sea, the horizon was not flat but a gentle arc that revealed the planet and the thin skin of air above it. She tried to breathe but her lungs found little of use this high up. The man did not fight her as she deadened the nerves in his arm and twisted the gun from his fist. His hands were busy elsewhere, clawing at her as if holding on to her would save him.
Che got her knees up between them and twisted free. He did not want to let her go, his fingernails clawing at her throat. Kicking away from him, she turned his tumble into a hard spin and then she watched him fall away from her.
What had she been thinking? Why here? Why had her brain brought her here when there were so many other places to drop a dead weight? The River Liff lay below her—the monster lizard hidden in its murky depths. Except for the wind whipping by at hundreds of clicks per hour, she might have been floating. It was like leaping off the Escarpment only she did not have a pair of sky hunters handy to save her this time.
Tam.
Wake up, you idiot, she thought fiercely. Perhaps the lack of oxygen was scrambling her brain. Here she was daydreaming while Tam, caught in the woods with a mad boar racing towards him, was about to die. She shoved the pulse rifle into her belt and stepped out of the world and back again. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She was falling, both here and there, not through endless sky but precariously close to the hard, hard ground. She quickly phased out of reality again. Somewhere between there and then, she sucked the energy of her fall into her body. It burned, just like the energy of the black box had burned. In the place between, the unwanted energy filled her until she glowed white hot. Time did funny things in her mind. Here, she was infinite and endless. It tempted her. She could think, in this place of silence. Figure things out.
But she had to save Tam. Now was not the moment to be experimenting with time. She finished her step, her feet taking her where her heart wanted to go.
Maybe just wishing to go to the right place was not enough. She wanted to save Tam and she wanted to kill the pig. Somehow she ended up halfway in between, rolling down the middle of the dusty trail, her hand already on the handle of her discarded ma-chett. She clutched it desperately as she rolled one last time and then slammed the blade into the dirt to stop herself from tumbling further. All the energy created by her body falling through the air translated into white lighting that arced into the ground around her. The ma-chett became a conduit through which most of the power flowed. Was it accidental or a product of her own magic, finding her weapon this way? She had no time to feel surprised. The boar squealed in rage as it raced towards Tam, meaning to kill this upstart rival. Tam seemed frozen. Maybe it was just that time had become unglued. He stood in the middle of the trail, eyes wide and fixed on his Ear, the ma-chett in his fist forgotten. Cheobawn turned her head and met the boars angry glare with one of her own. The last of the lightning crackled over her skin as she screamed a challenge.
The sudden appearance of a human child rolling down the path tangled in her own personal lightning storm was not enough to stop the boar’s forward momentum—though it tried valiantly to avoid her. It twisted frantically, but—unable to find purchase in the deep dust of the trail—it skidded and went down, a jumble of sharp hooves and sharper tusks. Che snarled, threw up a shoulder, and waited for the impact.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, she cursed inside her head. What had she gained by putting herself between Tam and the pig?
“If you can control the blade you can control the outcome,” Wissen, her old sparring teacher, always said. Why was Wissen inside her head? It was an odd jumping off point if her life was supposed to flash in front of her eyes.
Hands locked around the twine grip of the ma-chett, Che looked up into the red eyes of the enraged boar.
She very likely had just killed herself.
The smell was what lingered in her memory the longest. The fetid froth around the boar’s mouth. The sharp smell of ozone. Hot metal and burning hair.
The boar crashed into her.
They collided with mind-numbing force. Knocked aside, Che flew through the air, coming to rest on her back amid a stand of whip trees, the sharp snap as they broke under her weight like the report of one of Sam’s rifles.
When it seemed that she had not died, she opened her eyes and stared up at a sky full of hysterical carrion dragons. Somewhere close, the boar was squealing in agony. The thud of blade into flesh silenced the screams. Tam. Tam still lived and he had just put the pig out of its misery.
Calm down. I am OK.
The lizards were not convinced. Blood. Too much blood.
Che moved a little, checking to make sure she was in one piece. Her body was trying to send her mind a thousand messages and none of them were getting through. She was just numb.
Tam was there suddenly, grabbing her, patting out the smoldering fires in her clothes, shaking her, crying, saying things she could not hear over the ringing in her ears. Che remembered to breathe.
“You are cold. Why are you so cold?” Tam asked desperately.
“The air is thin up there, where you can see the world bend around the horizon, did you know that?”
“Little fool,” Tam hissed furious. “Where did you take him?”
Che sat up, trying not to cry out as the broken ends of the whip trees pulled out of her skin. Something hot dripped down her forehead and ran into her eyes. She wiped it away and stared down at her scarlet hands. It was blood. Where did the blood come from? “Am I hurt?”
She looked over at the pig. What she saw made no sense. The boar lay impaled on her ma-chett. No. Not impaled. The blade had fused itself to the ground. The pig had hit it, edge-on, with its shoulder. Part of him had peeled away, most of a shoulder. Tam’s death blow had finished the job, cutting its skull in two.
Che looked up at Tam. He was covered with blood-splatters, but none of it was his own.
She must have been just as bloody. Tam kept running his hands over her body looking for wounds. She flinched as his fingers found the torn skin on her back. Tam cursed softly. His fingers moved around her chest and pressed too deeply at the ribs on her left side. Che could not help the moan that escaped her lips.
“Can you walk?” he asked as he pulled her to her feet, not waiting for her reply.
She cursed him but managed not to fall down.
“Where is my gun?” she asked, patting her waistband. Looking around, she spotted it a dozen feet away, half buried in a pile of dusty leaves. “Ah. Good. The first.”
“The first what?” Tam asked, picking it up and shaking the dirt out of the muzzle.
“The first gun in our arsenal. We need to find four more before we go back to Dunauken.”
Tam stopped and glared at her.
“We are going back to Dunauken?”
“Yes. I just decided. But we have to prepare first.”
“What are you thinking, Ear? Why do we need guns?”
“Oh, we need far more than that. I have had time to think. We need long knives, bladed sticks, body armor. I am building a list to send River. How long do you think it will take for you to get to be a good shot with that gun?”
Tam shrugged, wrapping his fist around the hilt. “Half a day. A week to build muscle memory. Why do we need to be armed?” He shoved the weapon into his belt and got a better hold on her.
“You said it yourself,” Che said through the pain his grip caused her. “It is time to be our true selves. No more hiding behind our silence.”
“Arming yourself is your way of finding your truth?”
“I have been thinking. If we are to be free, truly free, to live the way we want, to travel wherever we want, we must dissuade the Lowlanders from believing that we are merely children. We are Blackwind Pack. We are one. We are warriors. The domes have spent two thousand years learning how to kill when needed and teachin
g that skill to their children. The Lowlanders have only met me, a Mother. I am the All Mind of this world and they only see the softness in my heart. I have not chosen to show my other side for I have been without a Pack to be my sword hand and my shield arm.”
Tam was grinning at her, a savage smile that was all teeth.“What?” she asked. Did he think she was being silly?
“Fierce. I love you best when you are fierce.”
Che smiled back at him.
They began walking back the way they had come.
Chapter 10
The carrion dragons found Blackwind Pack in the thickets, sending Cheobawn images of Megan, Connor, and Alain up to their elbows in pig gore as they helped the villagers prepare the meat for transport. Megan looked up in alarm as they bugled their warning calls. Che let go of the lizard-sight as she emerged from the trees, the double vision of Pack making her more dizzy than she already was. She was having a hard enough time as it was trying to stay on her feet. Her Pack turned and froze at the sight of the grisly humans limping down the trail. Tam had a firm grip on Cheobawn’s elbow, trying to keep her from falling as the pain in her side made her stagger.
Blackwind Pack dropped everything and ran to aid their Alpha and their littlest Ear.
“What happened?’ Alain asked, taking Che’s other arm. Che cried out softly as the movement pulled at her side.
“Outlaws. One Father. Armed” Tam grunted.
“Is this his blood?” Connor asked in admiration.
“This is the blood of a giant boar. There is enough meat back there to feed ten villages for a week.”
“What happened to the outlaw?” Alain asked.
“I don’t know. Tell us, Cheobawn Blackwind, what did you do with the outlaw?” Tam said, acid in his voice.
“I dropped him in the River Liff.”
Alain stopped walking. Che was forced to stop. Tam sighed and turned to glare down at her. “You will have to explain this new power you have, Cheobawn. Is he still alive? Do we have one more enemy we need to hunt down and eliminate?”
