Warrior Witch

by J. D. Lakey

  “I was never like you,” Menolly said. “I could not make that mental leap that merged all the levels of the quantum universe into one whole comprehensible narrative.”

  “Err?” Cheobawn grunted. “I guess you will have to explain that.”

  Menolly looked down at her with eyes black as night. The smoke had a vise-like hold on the priestess’s mind.

  “We walk the paths of the Oneverse, you and I, and come back bearing visions. They seem like memories for me—someone else’s memories. I can keep them separate from my conscious life. I am just Menolly who has visions. You, on the other hand, came into your visions far too young. A child cannot juggle the memories of the infinite universe. With a lesser mind, your personality would have split in order to handle the information. But you, you made the memories become your own. Your sense of self was unassailable. You stood in the heart of the All Mind and made all you saw personal. Every vision changed you. Expanded who you were. Which of us was saner? I think it was you. You never questioned who you were deep down. The visions never seemed to compromise that. It just made your sense of self stronger. My Mothers knew that I had failed, cut the Black Bead out of my omeh, and sent me here to Mora so that I could guide the next attempt at producing a Black Bead. You were our last chance.”

  “Last chance to do what?” Che asked.

  Menolly laughed. “Oh, no. You cannot trick me. I will not divert your gift with conjectures of my own. You will know what you need to know when the time is right.”

  Che snarled in frustration. Her anger started to dissolved the misty place, but she remembered something important.

  “I need something,” Cheobawn said.

  “Name it,” Menolly said.

  “I need more . . . warriors. Ask the remnants of Ironheart Pack if they want to join Blackwind in exile.” Ironheart Pack was officially no more, disbanded the day the dubeh leopard killed Orin’s second, Garrick. Cheobawn was not sure what had become of them, but she had to ask. “Offer, do not demand. Send them downriver with the next Meetpoint rendezvous. I will forewarn Sam Wheelwright to expect passengers.”

  “Let me discuss this in Coven,” Menolly said, committing herself to nothing.

  “I need them. Do not hinder my plans, I beg you,” Cheobawn said, the misty place fading around her.

  She woke in the dark, tangled in her sweat-soaked sheet, in a thatched hut on the shore of the River Liff. She kicked the mountain of covers off and thought about swimming back to the boat, but the feather bed lured her back down into sleep. As she drifted off, she was comforted by the thought of Blackwind doubling in size and evening out the ratio of Fathers to Mothers.

  Chapter 12

  Cheobawn woke again around mid-morning. Groaning, she rolled out of bed. Someone had laid clean clothes—a shirt and shorts taken from the stores on the Wanderlust—on a nearby chair. The ma-chett was gone, but she still had Old Father Bhottas’ bloodstone, her belt knife, and the brass rings that she had stolen from the barge guard. After washing the sleep from her eyes, she dressed and went out into the yard. The Wanderlust was gone from the place they had moored it. She could only assume the village elders had helped Tam hide it in the pirate cove.

  The village seemed deserted except for the children playing among the racks holding fishing equipment and nets. The village fishermen had brought back their catch from an early morning fishing expedition. Other racks held small yellow-headed fish drying over low, smoky fires, and off to one side racks held pink-fleshed fish drying in the sun.

  The children noticed her and grew quiet. They retreated behind the smoky fires, cautious, but unafraid. Not afraid enough to run and hide, at least. Yet. She did not have the energy to chase after them. Why were they being so skittish all of a sudden?

  “Hey,” Cheobawn wrapped her arms around her ribs and called to them. “Where are your elders? Where did my Pack get off too?”

  The children seemed confused. Che remembered the word and tried again. “Parents. Where are your parents?”

  “Father says you are a witch and that we should not talk to you,” a young girl claimed. Che remembered her. One of their sleeping companions. Clara’s daughter. Garta’s grandchild. Jilly was her name.

  “I am just a girl who has lost her friends,” Che said sadly, trying to look as forlorn as possible. She could feel this revelation tugging at the hearts of the innocents around her, though the sight of a flight of carrion dragons emerging from their hiding places to perch upon the tallest racks made them grow still and attentive.

  “They went off to bring back the pig that you killed. Who are you that you can kill a boar by yourself? Did you use some powerful Highlander magic?” shouted an elder boy--Darrow was his name, she remembered--from behind a stack of storage crates.

  “It was an accident. It ran into my ma-chett,” Che called back.

  All the little boys hooted in disbelief. They were not so easily won over by her humble innocence.

  “Liar!”

  “I think she is a liar.”

  “What do you expect from a thief?”

  “Yeah, thief!”

  “Did you steal that boat?”

  “If that is your boat, where is your dinghy?”

  Che smiled. Clever, they were. They had zeroed in immediately on Blackwind Pack’s predicament. Every sailboat had a smaller boat so you didn’t have to get wet swimming to shore. Che puffed up her chest and took a couple of steps further out into the yard. “We are pirates,” called Che loudly.

  The children laughed.

  “Liar!”

  “You are not pirates.”

  “Say something in pirate-ish.”

  “Pirate-ish?” muttered Che. “Like what?”

  “Hold still, you little wood-worm, or I’ll gut you where you stand,” growled Jilly. Spoken in a little girl’s high, sweet tones, it lacked any form of intimidation. Gales of laughter filled the shore.

  Another girl, the other sleeping companion—Susa by name—piped up. “Your money or your life, pond scum!” More laughter followed. They had obviously become well-practiced in the art of being a pirate.

  Che spread her feet and planted her fists on her hips. “Your money or your life, pond scum!” she said threateningly.

  Silence fell. The children were duly terrified, but only for a moment.

  “The joke is on you, pirate,” said one of the older kids. “We don’t have any money.” The other children thought this hilarious. Gales of laughter rolled over Cheobawn.

  Che smiled. “Well, neither do we. So now what is a self-respecting pirate supposed to do?”

  “You are not a very good pirate,” Susa sniffed in disappointment. “Pirates steal things. What do you want?”

  Megan had made a list. Cheobawn tried to remember what had been on it. “We could use a few vegetables.”

  “Vegetables? Vegetables!” Now all of the children were holding their sides as they laughed. “Pirates don’t steal vegetables.”

  “Eggs? Flour? Cheese?” suggested Che. “We have fish we can give you in exchange.”

  The children were relentlessly immune to her pirate-ish charm. They stood amidst rack after rack of drying fish. “Our fathers are fishermen. Good fishermen. Fish is the one thing we have plenty of.”

  “Tell you what. Teach me how to be a pirate and I will teach you how to fight like a true warrior,” Cheobawn said. She pulled her knife from its sheath.

  A hush fell over the children.

  “We are not allowed to fight with knives. We are too young,” a little boy said.

  “Are you? I knew how to throw a knife by the times I was seven. Surely some of you are at least that old.”

  “Liar!”

  “You are a girl.”

  “Girls do not fight.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Che said, waving her knife in the air. “Say that again, you, you . . . pond scum.”

  The children laughed, vastly entertained.

 
“Pirate girls are very prickly. It is best not to annoy them,” Che yelled. “Go find some sticks. I will teach you how to sword fight.”

  The children roared in delight. They all scampered over to a big pile of driftwood gathered from the shore for use as firewood and ran back with their stick weapons.

  The morning play made the time pass. The children were excellent students, mimicking every form she showed them. The wounds on her back pulled at the surrounding skin as she twisted her body about, and yet she managed to not rip the stitches out. Around mid -morning she had to admit she was exhausted. Jilly brought her a stool to sit on. Susa brought her a cup of fruit juice. The carrion dragons retreated to the top of the thatched roof and dozed in the heat. Cheobawn sipped on the drink while she watched the other children practice. Jilly and Susa sat next to her, chattering in her ear.

  A shadow moved out of the corner of her eye. Che turned her head carefully in time to see a rat, then another, slink out from under a pile of driftwood and climb the poles of the nearest drying rack.

  “Someone else likes fish,” Che whispered softly. Jilly followed the direction of her stare with her own eyes. It took a moment to tell fish from rodent but when she did, she squeaked in rage and jumped to her feet.

  “Darrow!” she cried, pointing.

  Heads whipped around at her call. Galvanized into action, the boys took their play swords and began hunting rats among the racks. In no time at all, three dead rats lay in a row on the river bank.

  “Do you eat them?” Che asked Susa

  “Ick! No! They will make you sick. We save them. Distar gives a coin for every ten rats.”

  Che looked back at the pile of driftwood trying to sense the location of other rodents. She recognized them by their insatiable hunger. The rats were starving. “There are more in the wood piles. Shall I help you hunt them?”

  She sent her Ear into the ambient and located all the rats around the wood piles. Chunks of wood went flying everywhere in the boys’ enthusiasm to kill them. There were more hidden in the thatch roofs but they had no way of reaching them. Che mentioned this to Jilly.

  “That is bad. They sneak out at night and bite the babies in their cradles.”

  Cheobawn looked down at her little friend, horrified. “We must do something about that,” she said.

  Jilly’s eyes grew big. “Are you going to do magic?”

  Was she? Che stared up at the thatch above her head. She found the mind of a rat. Go way, she said. You do not belong in the houses of men.

  The rat wiggled his whiskers. Good eats. Fat humans. Fat children.

  While true, it could not be tolerated. Should she dig herself into the rat’s mind and make it come out of the hut? The children would surely beat it to death. That thought made her feel ill. But she did not want it nibbling the village children. Could she kill from a distance? Should she? How?

  She had killed people on the star-cruiser but she had been desperate. She had killed the outlaw but there again, she had been desperate. This was not like going rabbit hunting with bow and arrow. A bow and arrow would be nice right about now. But there was no need, really. She had a weapon. Her mind. She knew how to build a black hole.

  Sending her Ear into the body of the rat, she began to pull the electrical impulses of its nervous system into her own body. The rat squealed in surprise as its heart stopped. In its death throes, it lost its grip on the thatch and fell to the ground, convulsing. The other rats shifted nervously, getting ready to flee. She could not allow any to escape. As quickly as possible, one by one, she killed every rat in the village.

  Cheobawn drew in a deep breath and let go of the ambient.

  Susa and Jilly clung to each other as they stared at her in horror.

  “What did you do?” Susa asked.

  “How did you do that?” Jilly whispered.

  Che shook her head. “Gather them up. This will be our secret. The Elders do not need to know what I did. Tell Distar you caught them so you can get your coins.”

  Rising to her feet, she returned to the river bank to teach the children how to fight.

  By the time lunchtime came, Che was confident the girls could hold their own in a sparring match. The sun was directly overhead when the flight of carrion dragons bugled a warning call. Someone approached. Cheobawn stopped to watch the path leading from the orchards. Five minutes later, the elders came trudging wearily out of the bog-apple trees, followed by Blackwind Pack, all of them toting a portion of the enormous pig carcass.

  Cheobawn went to greet them.

  Megan hugged her. “You are looking better. How are your ribs?”

  Che pushed her away. “Oof. Better until you started squeezing them again. How could you go off on an adventure and leave me?”

  “I figured you had enough of that old pig,” Tam said with a grin.

  “We tried to retrieve your ma-chett but it was fused to the earth,” Connor said, half amused, half amazed.

  “The sight of it made all the elders a little skittish,” Alain said softly as he kissed the top of her head. “Try to act normal for the rest of the day. Lean on me and pretend to be still wounded.”

  That was not hard to do.

  The children had worked up an appetite and were quick to help the mothers prepare lunch. The men set up trestle tables in the shade of the overhanging willow trees behind the houses while the women pulled leftover suckling pig from their larders. Along with the remains of yesterday’s baking and a dish made of fresh vegetables from the garden garnished with an array of pickled fruits, the meal was extremely satisfying. Cheobawn did not mind so much that she had missed the feast the night before, though it would have been wonderful eating the suckling pig hot out of the oven.

  The children told of their morning. The women were not happy that their daughters had learned to fight. They complained to Mowatt who took Tam aside.

  Tam returned to his Pack, frowning.

  “Did you have to teach them how to use a sword?”

  “We were playing with sticks. They taught me how to be a pirate so I thought we could all have fun. Here. Let me go explain it.”

  Che leaped to her feet, holding her side as she straightened.

  Tam caught her wrist.

  “You are just going to anger them more,” Connor predicted.

  “Mowatt will understand,” Che said, pulling her wrist free and striding toward the table where the headman sat. Before she could open her mouth, he looked up and pinned her with a steely glare.

  “You may be an unnatural girl but I would thank you if you did not teach your mannish ways to the girls of the village. You have upset the women. A village cannot have peace when the women are upset.”

  Cheobawn stiffened her spine and took his reprimand as if he were Hayrald, a First Prime—her eyes down cast, heart calm. When Mowatt was done castigating her, she bowed low from the waist. “Apologies, Father. You are right. I come from a place where even the women are warriors. I did not realize that sword fighting belongs only in the Father’s House.”

  “I cannot be angry. You have brought us more meat than we have seen in a year of hunting. We are sending runners with the excess to the surrounding villages. In the meantime, try not to anger the woman more than you already have.”

  Che put her hands in her pockets, and bowed her head, wondering how she could make it right with the women. Her fingers touched the brass rings.

  “Would it be rude to give your wives a gift?” Che asked.

  “I have only one wife, unlike the heathens who live above the Escarpment,” he sniffed, a smile playing on his lips.

  Che pulled out the brass rings ornament. “I found this in a smuggler’s pocket. I think it is some form of jewelry. Perhaps your wife would like it?”

  Mowatt stared at the thing in her hand. He wanted to be offended. Che could tell by the pinched look of repugnance that washed over his face. She waited for him to yell at her again. The thought crossed his
mind. Instead, he threw back his head and roared with laughter. The other Fathers joined in after an uncomfortable pause, Distar laughing the loudest.

  “What?” Che asked. “I have done something stupid, haven’t I?”

  “Those are brass knuckles,” Mowatt said. “They are a weapon. Used by cruel men who think nothing of beating a man to death with their fists. There is a reason we never send our women across the river and why only the best fighters take our fish to market.”

  Che, horrified, dropped the rings. They lay in the dust, gleaming softly, trying to tell her about the kinds of people who dealt in death. She shuddered and kicked them away. “Again, I must apologize. I can only claim ignorance.”

  Distar picked the weapon up and put it in his waist pouch. “We will take it to market in Dunauken. Someone will buy it just for the metal alone. If you are still here, I will split the profits with you.”

  “Uh, err,” mumbled Che, bowing. “Sure. That would be kind of you.” She backed away and nearly ran back to Tam’s side. Megan had risen and was now in deep conversation with Clara, Jilly’s mother.

  “You put your foot in it, didn’t you?” Connor said, trying to suppress a laugh, as she sat down beside him.

  “More than you know,” Cheobawn agreed. “We probably should have killed that riverman on Jonah’s barge. He was more dangerous than we suspected, and now he has a grudge against us.”

  “There would have been no honor in such a death,” Tam grunted. “But we will be forewarned for the next time.”

  Alain was looking at her speculatively. “How many enemies have you made in the short time you have been loose among the Lowlanders?”

  Che scowled at him. “Except for Samwell Wheelwright and his father, every Lowlander male I have met has tried to harm me.”

  She watched as the boys digested that bit of information.

  Megan sat down, something hidden in the folds of her shirt. “What of the women? What do they think of your wanton ways?” Megan asked. Tam hissed in surprise at his Alpha Ear's unkind words. Alain punched Connor in the shoulder before he could add his opinions to the conversation.