Warrior Witch

by J. D. Lakey

  Tam pried himself loose and, holding her by her shoulders, scowled down at her sternly. “What is this?”

  “You did not go fishing,” Che beamed at him.

  “And so what if we had?” Alain asked, coming up by Tam’s side.

  Megan and Connor joined them. “Apparently we are leaving,” Megan said dryly.

  “You might have told us last night,” Connor said, scowling.

  “I only just realized my mistake. Distar and his men will take the catch to Dunauken to sell in the fish-market and a whole lot of trouble is going to follow them home. We need to be gone by that time.”

  Tam nodded. “Connor. Go with Megan and beg for supplies from the Mothers. Alain, you help me get the camouflage netting off the boat. Meet us at the pirate’s cove in half an hour. Alain, come on. Let’s grab our stuff. I think we need to steal a ma-chett or two. Ch’che. Talk the little kids into helping you bag up as much dried fish as their Mothers will allow us to take.”

  Blackwind Pack sprinted off in two directions. Che went in search of Jilly and Susa. She found them sitting in the shade having a tea party with all their dolls. Che squatted down by the crate and picked up a small, fragile mud cup, pretending to take a sip. The girls watched her solemnly.

  “You are leaving, aren’t you?” Jilly said.

  “Yes, how did you know?”

  “We can tell,” Susa said. “Strangers never stay long here. There is nothing fun for them to do.”

  “I had fun,” Che said.

  Jilly smiled, but it was a sad smile.

  “I have a favor to ask,” Che said.

  “What?” Jilly asked warily.

  “Bad men are coming here. Soon. They want to hurt your parents. They might try to hurt you. When you see sails, I need you to take the other children and hide. Hide good. Take your belaying pins and your wooden swords. Throw the pins at anyone who tries to catch you. Hit them where it stings. Do you know those places?”

  Susa nodded. “I bumped my nose once. It made me cry.”

  Che nodded, smiling. “Exactly. Places like that. Throw the pins as hard as you can. Keep them from hurting your Mothers. Hide in the scrub until they go away or your Fathers give you the call that it is all safe.”

  “We have a safe word,” Jilly said.

  “Do you? Brilliant! But why am I surprised? I feel better already, knowing you can take care of yourselves and that your Fathers have made contingency plans for your safety.”

  “Stay. Help us fight,” Susa begged, starting to get worried.

  “The best way for me to make sure you are safe is to get as far from here as possible. The bad men are looking for me. If they think we have left, they will leave and look for us elsewhere. But I am sending something that will help fight those who would harm you.”

  “What?” Jilly asked wide-eyed.

  Che touched the scarlet lizard on her shoulder. “Like this one, only yellow. A great flock of them. Do not be afraid if they fly close. They know your heart and will not harm any who love the planet as they do.”

  “Where will you go?” Susa asked forlornly.

  Che looked down at this tiny child, trying desperately not to think of her as a pawn on Mora’s War board.

  “I must return to Dunauken eventually, but for a while longer I mean to be a pirate and sail as far and as fast as the winds will carry me. Tell you Mothers we sail south to Orson’s Sea and on to the Ten Thousand Islands. Can you remember that?”

  Jilly nodded, her eyes full of tears. “Orson’s Sea. Ten thousand Islands. I miss you already.”

  “Maybe I can come back for a visit. Or maybe someday your Fathers will allow you to come to Dunauken. Stop the nearest hedge witch and ask where the Highland witches live. Tell them your story and they will bring you to me.”

  Megan found Che standing amidst the drying racks, stuffing the stiff fillets into a canvas sack while she told the two little girls the story of her first foray.

  “We have to go, Ch’che,” Megan said softly.

  Connor called to them from the edge of the village. “Hey! Tam is waiting!”

  “But you have not finished the story,” protested Jilly.

  Che laughed. “My story doesn’t have an end yet. It will not end until I settle and stop wandering,” she said. She kissed both girls and, taking her fish, jogged after Megan.

  Chapter 15

  Connor led them down a path that was barely a path, more like a break in the trees, the ground dense with low-growing vines that wanted to trip you. Two clicks on, the trees fell away to reveal a backwater eddy just large enough for a half-dozen fishing boats or one large sloop. Someone had built a floating dock that was tied with heavy rope to the trunks of the nearby trees. The Wanderlust was moored to the end of the dock. A great mound of fish netting, tangled with sticks and leaves, lay in the shadows of the trees. Cheobawn did not have to guess how their boat had been hidden.

  Alain had the engines running as Tam wrestled with the sails. Connor tossed his baggage onto the deck and scrambled up to help his Truebrother. Megan and Che stopped to undo the mooring lines, push off, and pull up the fenders.

  Che went aft to sit beside Alain as he backed the boat out of the cove. Not wanting to distract him, Che pulled the charts out of their cubby and studied the channels that led south. She spread her palm on the map, trying to get a sense of distance.

  “We are going south, then? What are you looking for?” Alain asked her over her shoulder. Cheobawn looked up towards the prow of the boat. He had the sloop turned around and straightened out, and was heading for the deep channels in the center of the river.

  “They will be coming up behind us. Fast. It will be a race to see whose boat is faster. If we are very, very lucky, the passage to the sea with be clear and we will sail to the Ten Thousand Islands where we can watch the mating flights of the sky hunters.”

  “Who is chasing us?” Alain asked, not easily distracted by her promise of adventure.

  “Kirr called them the dregs of humanity. Men who would not think twice about beating us to death with their fists. Whatever we do, we cannot let them catch us. Do you think you could get a little more speed?”

  Alain put his face into the breeze. “The wind is against us but if we take long shallow tacks, we should get to the delta by tomorrow evening. I will make no promises.”

  Che nodded. It would have to do. It was time to trust the Luck of the planet.

  Alain pursed his lips to emit a sharp whistle. Blackwind Pack turned to look in their direction. Alain held his fingers against his chest to sign something. His crew nodded and began trimming the sails.

  They sailed all day, exhausting themselves as they tried to get every ounce of speed out of the small sloop. As the sun set, they dropped anchor out of the traffic of the river lanes. Megan made a dinner of flat-bread and re-fried suckling pig. While it was warming, Cheobawn went aft, pulled out the monocular, and swept the horizon, looking for sails or the low, sleek shape of a high-speed launch. She scanned full circle, not sure in which directions their foes would come at them first.

  Vertigo swept through her suddenly as the two carrion dragons hissed angrily from her shoulders. Che sat down hard, dropped the spyglass, and wrapped her fingers, white knuckled, around the railing. An angry swarm of yellow quills swirled above the village where Jilly and Susa lived and they had much to tell the All Mind. A great sloop sat off-shore and a handful of launches stormed the beach in front of the village. Armed men leaped out of the small boats and began rounding up what villagers they could find. The little girls had taken their mothers, Clara and Hana into the bush. Two quills crawled into their hiding place, clinging to the branches above their head, crooning softly. Cheobawn settled into their minds and borrowed their eyes. The two Mothers watched, terrified, as the burly rivermen began to question the village Fathers. Clara pressed Jilly’s face to her breast and would not let her watch what transpired around the fires burning brightly
in the village fire pits. Terrible cries filtered through the undergrowth. Cheobawn caught only impressions of shapes and emotions through the yellow quills. She recognized Mowatt’s fat belly. Surely Distar was nearby. Clara, unwilling to hear her husband’s screams, pried herself loose from Jilly’s clinging arms and went out to meet the men. Jilly watched in horror as her mother, standing over the bloodied form of her father, spoke to the bad men, telling them something. Cheobawn recognized one of them. Jonah’s man. From the warehouse. The one with the rocket tattoo. Her mother pointed down-river. Tattoo-man hit her with the back of his enormous fist. Jilly cried out as her mother fell to the ground.

  Che felt that same cry explode from her own lips. It was as if she were there, inside Jilly’s head, seeing with the little girl’s eyes. The quills, bonded with all life on the planet, caught the echo of the little girl’s emotions and broadcast it on. Clara spat blood out of her mouth and lifted her hand again, pointing south. The leader of the rivermen lifted his fist again. Furious, Cheobawn gathered the yellow quills and attacked, beating Jonah’s men with five hundred wings, driving them back into the river. Dozens of quills died from the blasts of rifles. Snarling in fury, Che released the quills, begging them to retreat. But the assault had done what she intended. The men scrambled into their boats and sped back to their sloop.

  Jilly did not wait for the all clear signal. She crept out of her hiding place and went to where her mother wept silently over Distar’s still form. Cheobawn came back to herself, caught up in Tam’s arms as he wiped the wetness from her cheeks. He did not ask her why she sat here in the thickening gloom, weeping. Perhaps he knew.

  When she thought she could tell the tale without breaking down again, she told him of Jilly and Clara and the unknown fate of Distar.

  “They are coming after us, then, those men on that boat?” Tam said. “You meant for this to happen?”

  “I did not mean for . . . Yes,” Che admitted. “I underestimated the nature of wicked men. I will not do that again. We are bait. It is as Mora willed it to be. I must also remind you that we do not have permission to die. You will live, no matter what.”

  Tam snorted. “Of course. Has it ever been any other way?”

  Che sighed and hugged him. “No. No it has not,” she agreed.

  “Name these wicked men. Who are you expecting?” he asked softly.

  “Many. As many as I can get to move against us. It is not a matter of not getting caught. It is more about who we want to surrender to while the others tear themselves apart trying to reach us. This first wave of boats are dangerous. We must shake them off.”

  “You have a plan, then?” Tam asked.

  “A plan? You could call it that. Don’t get caught. Delay the inevitable for as long as possible. That is my plan.” Che put the spy glass away and frowned at her Alpha.

  “I am going to ask you something, away from Megan’s hearing,” Cheobawn said. “You do not have to answer if you feel I am nosing about in Father’s business.”

  Tam raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

  “How did you know not to go fishing this morning?”

  “Er?” he grunted. This was not the question he was prepared to answer, apparently.

  “It is not the first time I have noticed that you have anticipated my needs even before I think of them.”

  Tam looked at her blankly. Perhaps she was being unclear about what she was asking. There was a connection between Tam and herself. How else could he have found her hidden inside the bhottas’ Hunter Void, lost in the bogs above the Escarpment that day she had decided to run away? How else could he show up on the barge graveyard just at the right moment to render the guard unconscious? River displayed the same gift. How had River etched his yearning into the courtyard of his house, etched it so deep he had very nearly opened a portal between dimensions?

  Cheobawn tried to verbalize the suspicions growing in her mind. Was it only this—a suspicion that was a lingering effect of living with a Coven who played with her life like a pawn on a board game? “I have long wondered why Amabel concentrated her gifts on her human females and not the males. But then I began to realize that she had been playing god with the boy babies just as much as the girl babies. Only the male psi gift is subtle so we don’t notice it. Clever is the office of the Maker of the Living Thread.”

  Tam shook his head. “Fathers have no psi gift. This morning I decided to stay on shore because I did not like the idea of you and Megan being alone all day. I did not travel across half a planet to go have fun without you. How can you be surprised by the synchronicity of a Pack who lives, sleeps, and eats together every waking moment? You want what I want. That puts us on the same path, arm in arm.”

  Cheobawn had been watching his face for any telltale sign that he was withholding information from her. She saw no such thing.

  “Ah, of course,” she said, nodding, rising to go to dinner. “Forgive me. What was I thinking? My mistake, then. Sometimes I let my imagination get the better of me.”

  Tam hugged her and pulled her towards the steps down into the companionway. “You are just tired and hungry. The brain plays tricks, making you see things that may not be so. Do not question the gifts given to you by your own Luck.”

  The last sounded familiar. Che smiled as she recalled where she had heard it. He was quoting the writings of the First Mothers. Cheobawn snorted and let him lead her to dinner. But she could not help but watch his face, her mind busy juggling all the pieces of this game of War. Mora, Mora, she thought in dismay, What have you done? Even the Fathers of the Highreaches do not know that they have been changed. Their minds are not totally their own and it makes them react without conscious will.

  The advice she had given to Kirr was echoing in her brain. Act. Leap into the air and trust that your feet will find the exact place you need to be.

  Did they teach that to the Little Fathers? Did they teach them to trust their unconscious instincts? No. If you had a split second to choose between going left or going right, thinking about it would hinder the magic of the act. Was it like muscle memory? All that practice on the sparring floor led to lighting-fast reflexes that required no forethought, so that—should the moment ever come where a leap-of-faith was required—it would just happen.

  Ah, Che thought. Mora, my Truemother, you have given me a weapon of incalculable power. The trick to using it is the same trick the Fathers use. How? Trust that it would be there when you need it.

  Cheobawn shuddered. All the lines of their futures were converging on one point of bloody and terrible beauty.

  Later, sometime in the middle of the night, Che woke to the flutter of tiny wings. Night flew overhead. A vision of a large sloop sailing towards her echoed in their minds.

  They are far, Night said. The flock swept in a tight spiral above their mast and then swept away again. We guard, they assured her.

  Cheobawn smiled. There would be no surprises coming at them out of the dark.

  Tam put his arm around her and pulled her close to his side. “Sleep,” he whispered. “You risk burning yourself out too soon.”

  It was good advice. She slept.

  Chapter 16

  Cheobawn took the spy glass and climbed the mast, her one remaining scarlet dragon hovering over her head, worried. The other was winging its way to Sam. She had sent a message to him at dawn. It was time to put his piece into motion in this game.

  She studied the horizon to the south through the telescope. There was something out there, hidden in the tall grasses of the marsh. The channel that led through the delta to Orson’s Sea—dredged clear, deep, and wide every year—lay directly in front of them. It was not safe, here. Imminent danger jangled at her nerves. This had the stink of Dominick’s mind about it. Who else would have the resources to take a band of men and boats and set them to lay in wait on the off-chance that their quarry decided to make a break for the open sea?

  She turned the glass to the north. The sails that
had been following them all morning were getting bigger. She was almost certain these were Jonah’s men.

  Stowing the glass in her shirt, she grabbed a rope and slid down to the deck. Tam, Connor, and Megan waited there. Once on the deck, her dragon settled on her shoulder and wrapped its tail around her neck.

  Cheobawn considered her Pack silently and then looked up into the sky overhead. The first pair of sky hunters had appeared at dawn. A second pair now hung above the place in the marshes that held the dark threat of attack, confirming her suspicions. The flock of yellow quills that had replaced the Night lizards sometime before sunrise now swept in a great circle around them—the circle so vast it covered half the distance between the threat before them and the threat coming up on their rear and would not be noticed unless you knew what to look for. The yellow quills had learned quickly to stay out of rifle range of the men with guns on the great sail boat.

  Cheobawn returned her attention to her two Alphas. “We are going to trade boats,” she said.

  “Err?” grunted Tam.

  “Jonah’s men are behind us. Their boat is large, with many sails. Which is why, even with most of a day’s head start, they have managed to catch up with us. Trying to escape to Orson’s Sea would be futile. They have all the time in the world to catch us.”

  Cheobawn turned and pointed at the mouth of the river lane marked by a dozen bright orange buoys. “Dominick’s men lie there. From the moment he learned that we had stolen the Wanderlust, he laid this trap. They have been there for more than a week, waiting, hoping that we might sail here. But this morning they know with certainty that we are coming. Information is probably the most valuable commodity on the waterfront of Dunauken, and right now the knowledge that Blackwind Pack took refuge in a fishing village on the western shore is making poor men rich. The metal-smith, the fishermen, and Jonah’s men have sold this to any who are willing to pay. But I imagine Dominick has not had to pay such fees for things he wants to know. All he need do is ask, and those who work for him or who are terrified of him tell him what he needs to know. What he knows, for certain, is that we are sailing, even now, into the arms of his men. They have learned via com that we are coming. They see us even now and are prepared to catch us with their small swift-boats. They mean to board us and take us captive. This must not happen. We will draw them in, disable their crews, and steal a swift-boat for ourselves. Jonah’s ship will arrive too late and find only Dominick’s men in disarray. If our Luck holds, maybe a quarrel will break out between Jonah and Dominick’s forces.”