“Evie, listen!” Calia hissed.
“Slow your breathing. I seek your assistance in escape.”
“We cannot escape!” she wailed.
Calia silently cursed.
“You are right, you selfish girl! Listen to me and heed what I ask, or we shall die here.”
Evie looked at Calia, holding her breath and biting her bottom lip. Calia was right. If she ever wished to see Maddoc or Jonathan again, she must help herself. She nodded quickly as she exhaled. “Yes, I am ready.”
“I have a small knife in the sole of my shoe. There is a pocket at the heel.” Calia lifted her foot, grimacing from the pain of the movement. Evie's eyes widened slightly.
“What must I do?” The girl's neck moved from a hard swallow.
Calia nodded, relieved. “Pluck it out of the pocket thusly.” Calia showed her.
Evie blanched.
“I am to grab it with my toes, then stab the rope that you hang from?”
Calia frowned. “Yes, what other thing would you do with your hands bound?”
“I do not know if I can,” Evie whispered, doubt plain on her face.
“Your feet are not shod,” Calia said.
Evie wiggled her toes, which were numb from the cold. As a matter of fact, she may have but hours before they would be lost to her.
A wave of loathing for the Fragment took hold of her, and she seethed in rage.
Mind made up, she replied, “I shall try.”
Using her toes, Evie grasped the hilt of the small knife and carefully pulled it from the sheath. The glittering blade was perhaps three inches in length. She squeezed it between her toes, hanging onto it for dear life, which was exactly what hung in the balance.
Evie swung high, nicking the rope with the knife. A small V appeared in the twine.
“Do not worry for cutting me,” Calia said. “Try again.”
Evie sucked on her bottom lip. She swung again, grunting as she lifted her lower body and shot her clenched feet at the rope.
The blade bit but did not sever.
Evie swayed back, her head dipping to her chest in defeat.
She burst into tears.
Her arms were stinging, and her legs were limp. She was small in stature and had done naught but pick berries and other female tasks the women of a protected clan accomplished.
After having hung for over two hours with her hands above her head, her feet felt like ice, and her fear was a thing that ate at her sanity.
“Listen to me in this,” Calia said. “They will not kill us, but you will wish for death. For they mean to trade us, but what they do to us before will make you wish you had never lived. You can do this, Evie. Try again.” Calia kept the terror out of her voice through toughness of spirit alone.
She couldn’t let the girl know how slim their chances were. She knew another of the Fragment would soon take his chances against the hierarchy to have a taste of forbidden female flesh.
Evie must succeed.
They regarded each other in that tense, swollen moment of time.
Evie exhaled harshly, then with a sucking inhale, she tightened her body like a coiled snake and lifted her lower half one more time, snapping her legs straight out in an exaggerated strike. She forgot her terror. She forgot about possible injury to Calia.
She focused on the partially untwisted hemp of the rope and visualized catching every spun bit and punishing it with the blade. A sound of concentration burst out of her mouth as the knife kissed the rope for the fourth time.
Calia's mouth opened in surprise as three quarters of the rope was cut through.
The threads began to unravel, and Calia spun slowly to the ground. When her feet touched, she jerked the rope, and the last strands gave way. The three-foot tail fell over her shoulder, and she staggered. Pins and needles pricked her shoulders, the pain almost sending her to her knees.
“Calia! What is it?” Evie asked.
Calia shook her head, trying to overcome the disconcerting resumption of blood circulation.
She knelt beside the dead Fragment and jerked his dagger from its sheath. She took a critical look at the blade and deemed it sharp enough.
With her hands still bound, she took a running leap at Evie. Letting out a hoarse grunt, she sliced through the rope just an inch above Evie's tied hands.
The girl fell on top of Calia, and they tumbled onto the ground in a tangled pile.
The relief was short-lived as Calia became aware of footsteps headed their way.
She flipped the dagger in her hand and gazed at Evie silently, holding the blade hilt first toward the girl.
Evie took the blade and began to saw at Calia’s bindings. She worked in haste, but carefully, or she would cut the only person who could save them.
*
Adahy
Adahy stayed behind the trees, moving with practiced silence from one large trunk to the next. The scouting party who accompanied him did the same.
They were ghosts of camouflaged flesh as they misted among the great forest. Adahy stayed them with a hand and cocked his head to the right. Strange sounds filtered through the woods.
Creaking.
Grunts.
Heavy breathing.
His teeth bared, he thought of the scene he had witnessed when he put his wife out of her misery. He tried to push the images out of his mind, but it was difficult.
Onatah would never have been able to live through the death of their child. Their executions were a necessity.
When Adahy had come upon the Fragment raping his woman, his dead child having been ripped from her womb and cast aside like so much garbage, he had hesitated not.
When he came back to himself, a red tide of gore lay everywhere his eyes landed. Scalps littered the floor of Mother Earth like windblown leaves of bloodied flesh.
Adahy's heart was glad.
His warrior brethren said nothing about his killing frenzy. They simply gathered his wife and child on the burial carrier, the leathers stretched taut between the two poles.
Adahy never asked why they had brought it. Though unspoken, that pregnant females were butchered, used for sport, then left to bleed out and die from their wounds was a well-known fact.
He took some small satisfaction in knowing that those males did not live to torture again.
A bird's whistle pierced Adahy's morbid reflections, and his gaze snapped to his brother, whose black eyes entreated him. Adahy clenched his teeth against the memories. They burned inside his skull, thwarting him.
He could swim in the red tide again. If another female was being abused in such a manner, he would swim in the waters of death until he drowned.
Adahy welcomed death.
Adahy stepped from behind the tree then stopped short. Two ropes hung from branches, their ends frayed.
Below the ropes were a pair of white-skinned women.
Adahy's nostrils flared when he smelled it.
The one with twin eyes of the sun was as he was.
The pleasant fire began, and it was the same as when he had met others of the same ilk those fifteen years past. Yet so different.
Her eyes met his, and she flinched. The young woman with hair so pale it looked like the wheat of the field was busy doing something behind her.
At the exact moment that Adahy became aware that the younger one was cutting the binds of the other, the elder was free and jumped to her feet.
She shoved the girl behind her, snatching the dagger and putting it out in front of her. She handled the weapon as if it were part of her body.
Adahy felt the burning inside his chest flame as the Indian warriors flanked him, spreading wide at his sides.
They might need the room if the white skins made an appearance.
Chasing Hawk gave a guttural command, and Adahy shook his head.
Chasing Hawk's brow rose in comical denial.
“She is”—Adahy struggled to come up with the briefest explanation he could afford to give—“one of the B
and.”
Chasing Hawk's eyes narrowed as he took in the telltale slits on her neck, flayed fully open and pink. Only three horse lengths separated them.
She was readying for flight, Adahy saw. He mustered up his rusty vocabulary, and as her body tensed, he spoke in a low voice of authority into the dense forest.
“Do not”—he stumbled, hunting for the word—“fly away.”
Calia straightened in surprise and lowered her dagger.
“What say you?” she asked, raking her eyes over his red skin. He was clearly of the tribe she sometimes traded with, not the same one, but of the same people. Yet Calia noted his physique—nay, his very bearing—said Band. Calia did not know how that was possible, but she understood that he was not an enemy.
The Fragment was about, and she must warn this man and his people.
Adahy opened his mouth again and took a step nearer. His chest burned, and he watched as she unconsciously put a hand to her own.
She feels it too. A frown of wonder slipped into place.
“We friend,” Adahy said. He was ashamed at his terrible recollection of the white words, but a look of encouragement from Chasing Hawk stilled his internal reproach.
When he looked at her again, a tentative smile washed over her face, changing it into something good and peaceful.
Something beautiful.
Then, with a crude battle yell, the Fragment poured in between them, and the current of filth ran high between the two women and the handful of warrior Indians.
Calia hurriedly slashed the ropes from Evie’s hands and waded into the melee.
Fragile hope to be replaced with violence.
An old mistress had come home again.
*
Philip
“Are you sure?” Maddoc asked, his words laced with his frustration, hands on his hips.
Philip nodded slowly. “Aye.” He rubbed his chest, his sense of urgency underscored by what could only be described as a fire burning behind his breastbone.
“She be just over this hill.”
Bracus scowled. Briar Rose stomped with impatience beneath him, and he gave the horse a rub on her neck until she settled.
“The scourge are about,” Bracus assessed uneasily, not from fear but in warning.
“The Fragment,” Daniel clarified.
Bracus gave a single nod.
“Well, let us tarry not,” Edwin said.
A deafening cry came to their ears. The heads of the Band swiveled toward the direction from which the battle shriek had come.
The invitation was accepted.
The Band moved toward the war.
Every man's thoughts were on the safety of the women.
*
Elise
Elise had begun to relax. They were but a mere mile from the Clan of Ohio. She recognized the milestones, which marked it easily for those who knew the way of the clan. Elise did not, but the women who traveled with her did.
When a cry of viscous intent reached her ears, Elise flinched.
She knew the tenor of the Fragment, and they were close. Too close.
The women looked fearful. Gathering their skirts, they began to run.
Elise stayed, her feet glued to the spot.
Something tingled within her.
The compulsion to heal.
Every rational thought told her to run with the others, who had become only noises in the brush as they hurried toward the safety of the clan.
Elise knew who lay injured in that battle—one who shared blood with her. For Elise had the blood of the Band running in her veins, or she could not be a Healer. It summoned her. One who shared her blood lay dying.
She was the one who could cheat death.
Trailing just behind the fleeing women, Elise understood that freedom and true safety lay just out of reach. She moved toward that heated tether where certain death awaited. The need was too strong to fight, so she accepted it, walking in the direction of the clank of metal on metal and the smell of copper.
So familiar, so abhorrent.
CHAPTER 4
Elise drew closer to the well of noise. The racket created a funnel that reminded her of the dusty violent twisting winds. They sometimes swept the prairies outside the forests because there were not sufficient mountains to halt their progress. She moved into that familiar sucking noise of war. They would not kill her, for she was female.
Elise allowed her senses to guide her. She waited for the tingle to increase and headed in the direction it led.
She came upon a woman lying on the ground. Spun gold unfurled from a creamy face in repose. Elise knew better.
The fallen warrior met her eyes across the burn of battle. Between them, swords clanged in an embrace of shrieking metal. A symphony of spilled blood entered her ears, though most who had not attended war would not recognize the soft melody.
Elise moved toward the woman, whose eyes were rounded in a face of blazing beauty. That gaze told her to stay within the borders of safety.
Elise smiled slightly at that unspoken alert and continued forward.
Adahy used both hands to grip a small dagger protruding from the body of one of the white skins. He shoved his foot against the man’s chest, twisting the knife as he pulled it out. He spun, holding his weapon at the ready.
A female.
And not just any female, but one as mixed as he.
She floated across the battlefield, and Adahy felt terror coat him like lard from a goose. It lathered his psyche in greasy tar, and he moved toward her without thought. Without pretense.
None would harm her, yet she could be killed by a wayward weapon.
As he jogged toward her, he shifted his gaze continuously, watching for enemies. His warriors sent short-tailed arrows out to make steep valleys in the chests that welcomed them.
A short sword—a typical Fragment weapon—sang past his face. Adahy jerked his dagger to where he felt it had originated, and a satisfying yell came from that direction.
He charged.
The woman saw him bearing down on her, her large eyes so black they filled her face like the smooth pebbles of the riverbed. Then her gaze shifted to a point beyond his shoulder.
The Iroquois were subtle warriors in many ways. Sometimes the need for stealth robbed them of easy communication. Adahy had become adept at facial language.
Adahy easily read the warning in her face.
He ducked, and the blade meant for his back bit into his shoulder. As with all puncture wounds, it felt as if he had been hit by a great fist made of hammered brass. Adahy punched backward with his dagger, plunging it into the gut of his attacker. With a twist, he ripped more flesh as he pulled his blade from the man’s body.
Adahy rushed forward and reached the woman just as she knelt by the white-skinned female with gills of the sea.
His instinct was to snatch her and run. Instead, he watched for precious seconds as she laid her hands on the white woman's side over the wounds. The wounded woman’s breaths came in fits and starts.
Adahy put his back to the women.
It would be a brave death if that was all the gift he could give them.
Four more of the Fragment broke from his warrior brethren and came toward him, obviously after that which he guarded.
Adahy snarled, the blood from his shoulder wound cooling in the winter air, and unsheathed his second blade. He held a dagger in each hand.
He was a rare Indian, as his brethren preferred the tomahawk. Adahy had seen his cohorts take the width of a strand of hair off white-skinned tormenters—an effective means of torture in both threat and application.
The first felt the hit of his blade in the neck. The man’s flesh opened like a terrible flower in full bloom, blood pouring from the petals.
Adahy shoved his first victim into the second attacker, who fell backward from the weight of his dying comrade.
Adahy's attention was suddenly diverted as newcomers burst into view at the top of the hill. One sat astride
a great white steed.
A searing stripe of heat opened over Adahy’s breastbone as the third Fragment took advantage of the distraction and swiped at him with a blade. Adahy instinctively caved in his chest as the strike had come, his arms whipped out wide for balance.
The Fragment turned toward the group who had dared to crest the hill. Leaving the Red Man with the women, they endeavored to slit the hamstrings of the horses.
Bracus saw their intent easily and dismounted, one hand holding his dagger. The hilt was so worn that his fingers had depressed grooves into the amber-colored pine.
He landed on the Fragment below him, his right forearm buried into into the man’s neck. He raised his left arm to strike. Before he could bring down his blade, a Red Man leapt forward and, with a deft hand on the Fragment's forehead, swept a short blade against his head and tore off the scalp of their mutual enemy.
Bracus paused, stunned. But he recovered quickly as the other Fragment began to overwhelm them with numbers. At least Bracus knew who his enemies were.
Philip scanned the vision of violence before him, searching for Calia in the mist of the chaos. His heart stopped when he realized he could not see her moving in a golden whirlwind.
He did not wish it, but unconsciously, he felt his eyes move downward.
He searched the fallen, the wounded… and the dead.
Finally, he spotted her. She lay behind a Red Man warrior. Another female hovered over her.
Philip surged through the battle with singular momentum, his mail taking the brutal swipes meant for his person. The blows slid off harmlessly.
Suddenly, a clash of strength rendered his side numb from armpit to hip. He grasped his right side, ducking and pivoting as he did.
Philip was bent low when his eyes met familiar ones.
Eyes of the Band.
He hesitated, giving his enemy an opening. The Band member stuck his blade right between the protective plates of Philip’s mail as if he had known just where to strike.
savage 05 - the savage protector Page 3
