A large fire pit stood in the middle of the carnage.
Philip strode to the spent fire, sinking to his haunches as his hand hovered over the coals. “Still hot.”
“There is fresh food inside of some of the empty dwellings,” Edwin added, spreading his palms.
“Aye,” Philip said, standing.
He walked to the grieving chief. His hand landed on Chasing Hawk's shoulder. There was an intense silence as the chief's head bowed to the empty well of his sadness while Philip of the Band offered quiet solace.
“Fragment,” was all that Philip said as he stood. Elise shuddered, knowing all of what that one word entailed.
“It is my fault,” Chasing Hawk said, in his own tongue, and Elise translated his words. Though Philip certainly did not comprehend Red Men speech, the chief's mournful comment was universally understood even without translation.
“Your numbers would have been insufficient,” Philip said in somber consolation. He scanned the surrounding area, seeming to tally the footprints. “Their number was at twenty.”
Elise stepped forward. Though she was dizzy, hungry, and thirsty, she still struggled to interpret.
The chief stared at her then repeated the number.
She nodded.
He rose.
“The women,” Chasing Hawk lamented.
“Gone,” Adahy said in Iroquois.
“And the men are dead,” Edwin stated. The men's bodies were beginning to freeze where they had been indifferently stowed inside the teepees.
The hot hand slipped out of Elise's as Calia began to slump face-first into the snow. Philip rushed to her side, halting her forward progress. He felt her neck with two large fingers. “She breathes shallowly. We must—I am sorry for your loss, but I cannot lose her,” he said frantically.
Philip scooped Calia up in his arms, carrying her to a teepee that was larger than the others, and moved inside the door flap.
Chasing Hawk removed a dagger.
“No, please,” Elise said.
Chasing Hawk turned.
Elise implored, “She is too sick. He must save her.”
“While our women be held by the white skin heathens?”
Elise searched his eyes in the beat of awkward silence, as quiet as the snow that now fell.
She understood that Chasing Hawk wished to chase the Fragment down, like the vermin they were, and rescue the few Iroquois women.
However, at present, a sick vertigo climbed like a tide of nausea and settled in her head.
She could only nod stupidly and answer, “Yes.”
Then she joined her fellow female in a dead faint.
Never feeling the arms that rescued her from the frozen claim at her feet.
*
Elise was hot—so warm she kicked out, endeavoring to throw off whatever was on top of her.
It would not budge.
Her eyes snapped open, and she found Adahy inches from her body. She gasped, struggling to get away, sleep clinging to her like the blanket of his body.
With a languid pull, his large arm reached around and scooped her back against him.
“No hurt,” he said, and she whimpered.
His intent was not the point. How many times had she awoken to a hand over her mouth and another rape to live through?
Too many times.
Had it not been the Fragment who had so often taken her when she was too young? It was they who had stolen her ability to bear children.
Her mind hissed an emphatic reply. Yes.
She did not take to waking suddenly beside a male.
It was not a casual gesture but one that preceded violence. It was all Elise knew.
CHAPTER THREE
Adahy
Adahy grunted as Elise elbowed him in the gut, and he rolled away before she lost all of her sense and went for an eye or such.
He had been with her for hours, as Philip had with Calia. The women were ill, and giving her the warmth of his warrior body had been a pragmatic choice. At least these females were not those of the sphere, who had societal notions about sleeping with males.
An odd culture, Adahy thought, giving an internal shrug.
“Unhand me!” Elise cried, and he moved away, sitting up and rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand. His stomach gave an appreciative roar, and instantly Adahy's mind was on the procuring of meat. He and Chasing Hawk would need to forage… unless supplies of dried meat were still on hand. Adahy was thinking about this when Elise swatted him on the arm.
His brows knitted together. “What problem?”
“You are sleeping with me!” she raged.
“You sick. Adahy help,” he said plainly.
Elise rolled her eyes, and though he was not yet adept at English, facial cues were easy for him to interpret.
“It—I don't want to sleep next to a male—any male.” Her voice squeezed down to a low whisper.
Adahy thought about her actions.
She had awoken in a startled fright. It was not about him per se. It was caused by her experience amongst the Fragment, he was sure. She had not expressly confessed their treatment of her, but Adahy could guess what they would have done with a female past ten and eight years. She would be too old to sell at one of their flesh auctions.
The Iroquois kept their women safe by splitting their groups to a minimal number. If the Fragment came too close, a community would simply pull up stakes and go to the next location. The Fragment were the newcomers to their land. The Iroquois and other tribesmen were the natural people and knew the land.
And the land knew them.
Adahy reached out, and Elise flinched and pulled away. He scowled, and Elise folded her arms and huffed.
“No hurt,” he said for the thousandth time. When would she know this? How many stolen kisses and intimate moments would they need to share before Elise would trust that he was not Fragment, but Iroquois?
Adahy strove for patience in all situations, for an emotional warrior lived a short life.
Elise cast her eyes to the swept floor of dirt beneath the woven and brightly colored rugs.
Many seconds of silence collected as Adahy waited for her to explain. He did not expect what she finally confessed.
“I know.” Elise sighed and knee-walked to Adahy. His heart roared like a fire without water to dampen it.
His mouth dried instantly.
When her knees touched his, a little sound escaped. He was male, and a female whom he cared for and found attractive stood before him, her dark eyes sucking him closer.
“I am sorry. I awoke, and this large male was caging me.” Her hands fluttered around her like wounded birds, and Adahy captured one.
“I am Adahy,” he said in perfect English, and she smiled.
“I know,” she said a second time with a small shiver, wiping her brow. “I am thirsty—so thirsty, and physically defeated by this illness.”
Adahy could stand it no longer. He gathered her up and set her on his lap. Elise did not fight him, but the tension in her body was mighty.
He could feel the fever eat at her skin and brushed his lips against her cheek. “I will get water. I will feed you. No harm will come to you as long as I live.”
Elise stayed still in his arms. “Intend understand me?” she asked in broken Iroquois.
Adahy knew that what she meant was, Did you mean for me to understand that?
He chuckled.
Her face closed, and she frowned. That struck Adahy as very funny, and he laughed hard, from his belly.
It was good. It had been too long since Adahy had had tears of joy instead of sadness.
“Okay? What?” she asked.
“You speak funny.”
“Oh?” Elise huffed, pushing a strand of hair out of her face with a violent swipe. “And you do not, sir?”
He nodded. “I do not understand English.”
“Really? I had not noticed.”
He pressed his lips to her temple. “Yes, you have.”
H
e mixed the English and Iroquois together.
Her eyes widened. “I knew exactly what you said.”
He nodded. “It was my intention that you do.”
“Speak thusly—that half-English and half-Iroquois. Then all might understand.”
He shook his head. “Perhaps Daniel of the Fragment and you—but those who understand only English or Iroquois, they will not ken to it.”
Elise nodded. “Perhaps.” The deepness of her eyes caressed him as though his heart lay transparent before her vision. “But I will, Adahy.”
He cupped her chin. “Then it will be our language.” He stroked her delicate chin, finding a small scar even there. His hand dropped as though burned. “However, I find I understand you without any words, very well.” He left his eyes on hers until Elise dropped her gaze and a faint pink tinged her high cheekbones.
Adahy wrapped his arms around her head. Her heated flesh burned through his tunic.
Wordlessly, he released her and stood, stretching his fingertips to the apex of the teepee. The hides of the bison were perfect for the weatherproofing of the structure. Adahy was pleased that it stopped the winds from reaching them.
He would have dressed and braved the frigid winter in a time when they were living off the dried fruits and meat of summer's bounty and men gathered firewood and the occasional fresh meat of a starving deer.
But today a fire might alert their enemy, and there were two females with a mysterious illness that stole the health in the heat of their internal fires.
Water would cool this new stealthy enemy.
Adahy would seek it.
His arms dropped to his sides and he rotated his neck, loosening his shoulders and moving into a series of stretches that readied his body, warming it for the shock of exiting the teepee.
Elise watched all of it closely, a deep pink tinting her cheeks—not the pale of before. Her coloring troubled Adahy, and he felt himself frown.
She was pale for a female of the tribe. She was mixed—but the raven's wing of her hair was proof of tribal ancestry. None of the sphere-dwellers or those of the clan boasted the color of night for hair.
“What—what are you doing?” she asked in a breathy voice.
“I prepare to gather sustenance.”
“A fire?” Elise asked hopefully.
“No,” he stated more sharply then he intended.
She flinched at the harsh word, and he knelt before her, taking both of her slender, hot hands in his own. “The Fragment would see it as an invitation to attack again.”
His eyes searched hers.
Elise nodded. “I am cold.”
He placed his forearm against the smooth, flushed skin of her forehead.
It burned. He shook his head. “No, the fires of your body are lit.”
Elise gave a slight smile.
Adahy lifted an eyebrow in question.
“You—you speak like a poet,” she said.
“What is poet?” he asked.
“A person who manages words that flow like a river.”
Adahy smiled and nodded. “Your words are good.”
The flush that coated her cheeks that time was one of embarrassment.
Adahy frowned. Elise does not accept kindnesses easily.
Much would change. Adahy would make sure.
The flap of the teepee flipped open, and Adahy's dagger was in his hand before animal hide hit the exterior.
“Rest easy, warrior.” Philip put up an inoffensive hand, and Adahy relaxed his posture. If it had not been a male he knew, even now his knife would have found a new home inside flesh—embedded in the forehead of whoever thought to charge within.
Adahy was not a merciless killer. Yet he was not wont to dally with indecision.
Philip's face was grave. “Elise?” he asked.
Adahy sheathed his dagger and shook his head. “Sick.”
“Calia as well.”
“Has she awoken, Philip?” Elise asked, rising to her feet. Adahy could not help comparing their sizes and finding the disparity shocking.
Is that what people saw when he and Elise stood beside each another? Philip dwarfed her, yet she seemed to not be afraid of him.
It was the blood of the Band, Adahy presumed. As those in the Band had made mention of it enough.
Philip's lips thinned. “She has not. She is fitful, moving in and out of rest. However, water—and food will be given. Even if I must force it down her throat.”
Elise's hand fluttered to her own neck, and Philip frowned. “I do not pretend to be tender when the female I vowed to protect, who I am bound to, clings to life.” As Philip spoke, Adahy leaned forward, trying to capture and translate the words as best he could. “No, there is a time to be soft with a female and a time to save her, even if she is more stubborn then the sun rising and setting each day.”
Elise smiled. “I will stay with Calia. I am not as sick as she. You and…” Elise's gaze found Adahy, and he struggled not to wrap her in his arms. He knew it would be too much for their tenuous bond. “You and Adahy can retrieve the supplies you need.”
“What of Chasing Hawk?” Adahy asked.
“He prepares to leave.”
Adahy palmed his chin. It did not seem wise to go after the few females that had been taken. The Fragment's numbers would be large. Their men were dead, and their own scouting party was small.
Adahy remembered vividly the scene he had come upon when his own wife had been taken. The image would never leave him. It was forever etched in his memory—his soul.
He saw the Fragment raping his dying wife in the memory of his mind's eye, her womb like a cap of gore on his head as a ravenous male plunged into her broken body. He heard the cries of their infant, not yet ready to be outside the cocoon of his mate, waning to a breathy wheezing as the cold began to claim him.
Adahy would never forget her gaze as it found him over the shoulder of her rapist. Rapt. Alert.
Entreating.
As her eyes began to glaze and the attacker's scalp came off in Adahy's hand, he remedied her suffering in an efficient slash of his dagger.
He turned to his infant son too late.
The small body no longer flailed from fright and cold, in the absence of his mother's womb, a quick death fell like a shroud of silence.
Fragment came to investigate the lack of screaming and had fallen to their deaths.
The only bit of Adahy not covered in the blood of war and tragedy had been his eyeballs. Even his lashes had been stuck together with the glue of othersʼ blood.
He had wept when the fires of the pyre took his wife and son forever.
Adahy would weep no more.
He would not lose another female to the hands of the Fragment. That was why he would not join Chasing Hawk in seeking their enemy:
Adahy would never leave Elise.
“I stay,” he answered Philip. In his peripheral vision, Elise's shoulders relaxed, and Philip simply nodded.
The two men walked out of the teepee together and into the unknown.
CHAPTER FOUR
Elise
“There is no river for obtaining water,” Calia said from underneath her forearm.
Elise should have felt happier that Calia had awoken from her feverish false sleep just as the men had gone to gather water and food.
However, the disposition of Calia was an obstinate one.
Elise stifled a sigh of frustration. “If water flows, Adahy will find it,” she remarked neutrally and with a degree of loyalty and hope she had never possessed for anyone.
Being part of the Fragment since before she could recollect did not give her a point of reference for such emotions.
Calia peeked out from under her stick-like arm and studied Elise.
Elise flushed before the scrutiny.
“You find Adahy fair?” Calia asked knowingly, trying to sit up. She groaned.
Elise ignored the question. “Lie still. Wait until the men return and take respite now, while you
can. Who knows what peril awaits us in the future?”
Calia gave a snort and flopped back down against the warm blankets. They were in one of the three teepees that remained free of carnage. Only the frigid weather kept the reek of death at bay. Elise knew from experience they would not be there overly long. The Red Men were as nomadic as the Fragment.
Calia shattered her thoughts with a brief, light touch on her arm. Elise fought not to snatch her arm away from the contact. Calia ignored her reaction or was unaware of it. “It is fine if you care for the Red Warrior. He is of Band blood—we all know it, even if he does not.” She raised her eyebrows.
“He knows,” Elise answered in a low voice.
“And you? From where do you hail?”
Elise heard the dry click of her throat and longed for water. “I know not.”
Calia nodded as if that made sense, staring up at the small opening at the top of the teepee. Sticks connected in a tight joining burst through to the outside. The wind could be heard outside and buckled the sides of the teepee but did not tear it asunder.
It is beautifully constructed, Elise thought, noting the deliberate and well-spaced stitching.
“And you?” she asked boldly.
Calia met her eyes. “I have lived for many years Outside.”
Calia glanced away, then her eyes moved back to Elise's. “I was discovered by my kin in a coincidence of circumstance, and now we travel to the eastern land which borders the sea.”
Elise frowned, knowing she referred to the Band male named Edwin. The two did not appear close and Elise was too polite to ask the reason behind their lack of it.
“Ask,” Calia said in a rasp.
“You should rest,” Elise tried.
“You should talk more. Your voice—it soothes.”
Elise found her hand floating nervously at her throat. Calia watched her like a cat after a mouse. It was disconcerting.
But her eyes were wise, and in them Elise found compassion. It lay heavy upon her heart.
“How long were you with the Fragment?”
Elise lifted a shoulder. “I do not know. I remember not my birth family.”
“Aye.”
Elise looked down at her fingers.
“I cannot bear children.”
savage 06 - the savage dream Page 2
