The comment lay between them like a digging thorn. Elise had never confessed her knowledge to anyone. Really—who would have lent an ear? Elise automatically stifled a sad chuckle.
Calia said no words for a time then asked, “Was it the rapes, then?”
Elise felt the heat of tears on her face, running with abandon like an unchecked stream of fire nothing could ever put out.
Calia leaned toward her intently. “Is that why you keep the warrior at arm's length? That you feel your worth is in your womb?”
Her hard voice caused Elise to raise her head and stare at this woman she did not know.
“Yes,” Elise finally hissed, pressed into reluctant admittance.
“Ah,” Calia said, and did sit up.
Elise was silent.
“Let me speak plainly.”
As though there were another way with this woman.
“From the very little I understand about Adahy, it seems he had a mate—and a child. I do not fully understand or am privy to the circumstances of their deaths. They are gone, and he does not seem to long for more children. And the Band cannot help who they cleave to, Elise.”
Elise's eyes shifted away from the penetrating stare of Calia. Her eyes were the most vital things about her. They glowed like amber dipped in gold, matching her brother Edwin's almost exactly. But where he had hair so dark brown it was a soft black, Calia's was the same shade as her eyes. The uniformity of her coloring was striking.
She blinked at Calia, tears drying on her cold cheeks. “I did not begin to manifest my… talent until I had my menses. By then, they had decided to keep me as a breeding female. Sometimes mixed-bloods do not show their blood…”
“Until after puberty,” Calia finished for her.
Elise gave an unhappy nod. “If the Fragment had known I had blood of the Band, they would have left me alone to ransom me at auction to the highest bidder. But,” she shook her head, “with my strange looks and lack of proof of my blood, I was a common woman, needed only to breed, not for monetary value.”
“So they used you,” Calia said with clear disgust dripping from her words.
Elise nodded. “You lived Outside—you know the way of it. None of the men wait until a young woman is even consenting age. They take females barely more than children.”
“I know very well.”
Elise's head whipped in Calia's direction. “How?” Her heart sped. Elise did not desire the commiseration of another abused woman. Camaraderie was one thing, but she would not wish her past on even an enemy, so horrible was it to have endured.
“You presumed I lived Outside long enough to get the lay of the land, yes?”
Elise's answer lay in her silence.
“I made it my daily task”—Calia's eyes flicked to her knotted fingers—“to rescue as many women as I could. I took many lives of the Fragment. Yet they are like the maggots that birth themselves in filth. There are more than even a determined warrior bent on vengeance can manage.” Calia wore a crooked grin.
“Yet”—her chin kicked up defiantly—“I did not leave the tender mercy of the Fragment until I was nearly ten and three.”
Elise gasped underneath her palm. “No!” She spoke through her fingers, and her words came out muffled.
“Yes.” Calia's gaze did not fall from Elise's. “I took the prick of the one who would have stolen my virginity on the eve of the auction.”
Elise gave a nervous laugh at the image which, though gruesome, held a certain appeal.
“Then two more fell to my dagger. They should have had more guards upon me.” Calia commented in a droll voice.
“I dare say.” Elise thought of a terrible question. She could not repress her giggle, and it shamed her.
Calia searched her eyes. “What—what say you? I see nothing funny in the recollection of this.” Calia frowned.
Elise leaned forward earnestly, and Calia did as well.
“What did you do with it?” Elise asked in a whisper, pointing to her own crotch, and Calia's brows shot up.
“His prick?”
Elise gave a slow horrified nod.
“I believe it smacked the next guard between the eyes as he came to investigate the sound of his comrade gurgling blood upon the ground.”
The women smiled at each other.
An unlikely friendship was borne.
*
“I am bored,” Calia said into the silence suddenly.
Elise turned her head with a sigh. “Agreed.”
“Where is Edwin?” Calia asked.
“He is where he has been for the last two hours.” Elise jerked her thumb toward the entrance.
“Yes,” Calia said in a morose tone.
“Be of cheer, Calia. We are feeling better moment by moment. The men will return with water and provisions, and we shall leave this place.”
Calia stood and shuddered. Elise jumped to her feet. Both women swayed from lack of food and lingering fever. Yet Elise knew stir-crazy when she felt it, and the cooped-up feeling was almost worse than the lethargy of whatever had sunk its teeth into their constitution.
She peeked out of the flap, spreading the natural but heavy gap of the overlapping skins.
Edwin, who was standing vigil outside the teepee, turned. He gave a tight smile upon seeing Elise, and she stomped on the flutter in her chest. Anxiety when a man looked upon her was as natural a response as breathing.
“Are you well?” he asked.
Elise gave a brief nod. “Yes, better. Calia and I would like to explore some of the tents.”
He frowned. “The dead are inside the tents, Elise.”
She gave him a schooled expression of neutrality, one that had been second nature during her lengthy time amongst the Fragment. “Yes. Mayhap we look for the provisions Adahy spoke of.”
“I have looked in each tent, and only small things remain—very little food.”
Elise shrugged and turned to see Calia coming out of the teepee in a staggering huff. “Edwin, stop being a dour taskmaster. Let us look about. You are, after all, the very reason I am Outside, freezing my arse off, with no more water in my canteen and not a crumb of food—yes?”
Edwin opened his mouth to retort, but Calia had already breezed past. He stomped after her.
Oh dear—the apples fell very close to that family tree.
Calia gave a shout of alarm upon entering the first teepee, and Elise lifted her head to look in that direction. Lifting her long skirts, Elise raced to the tent, weakness dragging upon her.
She arrived beside the tent. Calia and Edwin stood outside of it.
“Look,” Calia said, and Elise ducked her head inside the gloomy interior. At first she saw nothing.
Once her eyes adjusted, she saw much.
Several packages of a substance she was unfamiliar with were scattered about.
She had never seen any foodstuffs wrapped thus, and the words on the outside were confounding:
Trail Mix.
A mixed path? Elise puzzled at the wording.
But it did not matter at the moment. What struck her were the wounds against the men. They were not right.
Her eyes shot around. Elise had seen every wound of every type. She knew them all. Had healed them all.
And these were not from the violence of the Fragment.
“Elise?” Calia said as Elise retreated from the gap in the teepee and the sight of those mortal wounds.
“What say you?” Edwin asked and touched her shoulder.
Elise yelped and sprang away from him.
Then she spoke to them both. “This is not the work of Fragment.”
Calia and Edwin looked at each other in confusion.
“It be the Travelers. They have returned.”
“The Evil Ones?” Edwin queried.
Elise nodded. “Perhaps what they be called to Clan. I know them as Travelers.”
“What do they do?” Calia asked with a searching look.
Elise gave a painful swallo
w.
“They bring more Fragment.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Adahy
“Stop,” Adahy said quietly. The accent on top of the English made the one-syllable word sound like a slap in the too quiet of the woods.
He turned in a slow circle, his many animal-skin flasks, filled with water, swinging heavily at his hips. Adahy had not instructed Philip how to tie off his flasks and to what height, but he had battled many times and knew not to encumber his movements any lower than hip height.
Pheasant that was not plump, but would fill their empty stomachs, was strung and heavy along the backs of both men.
“Aye?” Philip answered quietly.
Adahy paused in a frustrated moment of boiling silence. He loathed his inability to be articulate in English. It mattered not that Elise complimented his swiftly gaining recall. He was impatient. As was typical.
“Woods too quiet,” Adahy spoke in a soft rumble.
Philip's eyes slimmed as he scanned the open prairie. Frigid wind lifted the wisps of hair not caught in the leather tie-back at his nape. His prominent brow furrowed.
“Aye,” he repeated. This time, the word was spoken with weighted caution.
Adahy knew this area intimately. The sounds, though quieter in winter with life sleeping, were not utterly absent.
There was a sense that he vaguely remembered from many years ago. He could not quite identify it, but it smacked of recognition.
“Get back,” Adahy struggled, then the word came to him. “Camp.”
Philip gave a tight nod, stepping back with his load of food and water. His hand flickered above the sheath of his dagger. The large stone in the hilt winked at Adahy in the low light of the sun—that orb had ridden the horizon the entire day as though not bothering to wake up against the season.
Adahy saw them the instant before Philip, and tensed.
The warriors yanked out their daggers in an athletic and practiced unsheathing.
Adahy was alert and puzzled at the same time.
They were Fragment, he was sure—yet, not.
Philip did not look at Adahy, but his quick blink told Adahy he had noticed the sameness of the men—and the otherness, as well.
“Get a load of these two, Hank.”
Adahy did not understand a word. However, he did not need to. Bodies telegraphed intent very well.
The five males spread out in front of them in a loose triangle with the male named Hank at its point.
Adahy crouched defensively, hating the load of provisions he carried. However, it would not be the first time he had fought with extra weight.
Instinctively, he knew that these new Fragment were different—and in a terrible way.
When Hank raised a strange weapon with a circle of black metal at its tip, Adahy paused.
He and Philip lifted their noses into the air, scenting hard. It was instinctive. Adahy could not identify the scent—it was new. It was also unnatural. Foreboding slid over his countenance like a cloak.
“Animals. I told you, doofus.” One of the males cackled at Adahy and Philip as their chins dropped from trying to scent the new weapon.
The other men shook their heads with smug grins.
The leader, Hank, gave a look of disdain to the one who had spoken. “Don't linger. You've been instructed to nail anything bigger than a gnat and gather samples. Don't fuck off—do it.”
Adahy heard a twig snap, and he and Philip instinctively ducked and looked.
A horrible noise cracked above their heads, as though lightning had struck a tree.
Adahy lifted his head.
Acrid smoke filled the air, singeing his delicate olfactory passages.
Adahy recoiled.
“No!” Philip bellowed and Adahy looked at what had caused Philip to break his silence.
Calia and Elise had moved in from opposite positions.
Adahy noted their weapons, and his stomach dropped. The women were walking into danger. Through every protective fiber Adahy laid claim to, admiration floated to the top.
A stone, flat and solid, shot through the head of one of the males. Brain and shattered skull blasted out the side of his temple in a spray of gore that smacked his comrade with a sound of rain hitting a bare tree.
The women advanced with silent beauty.
Elise moved with deliberately paced strides, never breaking rhythm. Her hand plucked a second stone and it was loaded and flying before the male could turn to her with the terrible weapon.
The metal weapon swung, long and lethal in its black sleekness, toward Elise, sighting her as Adahy would the pheasant he had killed today with his arrow. Adahy sprang while the females were distracting this new and unknown enemy.
Elise's next stone hit the weapon holder in the mouth. Adahy hit him square in the back a moment later. They spun together, and the weapon flew to the frozen ground.
It discharged a projectile, too fast for Adahy to track, that embedded itself in a nearby tree, bark flying.
Adahy tore the male around. The stone was lodged in the back of his throat. It had not evacuated his body but split a tunnel through his four front teeth, shattering them in a neat punch, causing a trench of soft tissue that bled even as he tried to breathe.
He would not breathe for long.
The Fragment's broken teeth hung from gristle, as his mouth tried to open and close. Adahy grunted as he twisted the male's head severely to the left, cracking the final bone the stone had missed. He dumped the male to the ground then whipped around to find Elise.
Calia's last stone became a third eye in the one male left standing, embedded and unblinking at the center of his forehead.
He stood, swaying, as Calia watched with a face devoid of expression. Then he toppled over like a great tree. His head bounced once on the frozen ground as his eyes gazed sightlessly above him.
Edwin dragged the struggling leader, Hank, to Adahy and Philip.
Adahy longed to speak better Fragment or English. Yet he could not. He looked at Elise and noticed that she seemed much better.
She ran to him, and he opened his arms to receive her.
“No do again,” he said against her hair.
Elise gave a smile of pride. Adahy admitted the stone throwing was no small skill. It was well known that women were best at it.
“Let me go, fucker!” Hank bellowed into the still air.
“Elise?” Adahy asked.
Her eyes found his, and she sighed, as though she knew what he might ask.
“You speak Fragment.”
She shook her head. “He is not the Fragment of Outside.”
Adahy's brows came together.
Philip came forward, his eyes searching hers. “What say you?”
Elise cast a glance at Hank, and he spit in her direction. Edwin casually cuffed him, and his face obligingly opened.
A slap from Band was much more than the strike from a Fragment.
“Fuck me!” Hank glowered up at the huge Band and scowled, blood cascading in ribbons down his ugly face.
“What does he say?” Calia asked, and Adahy noted she looked not much improved. But her thin body was hard and ready. A true warrior.
Adahy shrugged, and Philip sidled closer to Calia.
“The Fragment sometimes spoke thus,” Elise said slowly. “They call it cursing.”
Hank gave her a narrow look, and she met his stare without flinching. His lips rolled to reveal his unsightly smile, tightening as though he would speak no more.
Adahy knew the smile that claimed Hank's face was cruel. He had no love for the Fragment—new, old, or other.
Edwin kicked Hank in the gut, and he cried out, rolling over on his side.
Adahy gripped the loop near the rear of the weapon and got caught inside the narrowness of it.
Another discharge rang forth, so loud he felt his eardrums would burst, and everyone fell flat on the ground.
“It's a gun, you dumb fuck.”
Elise rose first, walking
to the Fragment.
Adahy sprang to his feet and ran after her.
“Is that the only word you know, Traveler?” she asked.
A slow smile curled his bloodied lips. “Wouldn't you like to know?” He spit a stream of mucous and blood to the side. It congealed instantly in the frozen environ.
Calia backed away. “He is of a crude persuasion.”
Elise glanced at Calia. “As are they all.”
“We let him live why?” Philip asked, toeing the man at his feet.
Hank moved away from the encroaching possible weapon that was Philip, his gaze traveling his tall form.
“He has a gun,” Elise said.
“Gun?” Adahy tried the word. It was easier than some of the English.
She nodded. “They are few and far between, and the bullets must be replaced once dispatched. This one is a special gun, one that can move through the Pathway.”
The pieces came together for Adahy. Pathway. That was what the people his tribesmen had rescued many years ago used to escape.
Rowenna of the Band. She had been a young woman with a small babe in her arms—Clara. And Adahy had been very young in his cycles. Ten and three? Ten and four? He was not entirely sure. Memories escaped the sharpness of recollection, becoming like the mists of the morn that dissipated as the sun burned them to nothing.
“It has been two or three years past since the Pathway has allowed more Fragment to enter.” Elise's face was sad as she recounted that fact.
“Travelers?” Philip asked, and she nodded.
“And it would have gone fine, except for the stone-chucking bitches.”
Edwin kicked Hank in the ribs and jerked him to his feet by his hair. He shrieked. “My ribs!”
“I understood that.” Philip looked at Hank. “It shall be more than your ribs if you do not speak of whence you came.”
Edwin curled his hands into mighty fists. “I will not show you civility if you do not speak of your intentions. It is obvious that your group ravaged the camp of the Red Men.”
“This is civil?” Hank laughed, spitting out more blood.
Edwin inclined his head. “Yes.”
Philip and Adahy moved closer, and Hank's eyes bounced back and forth between the three. “Okay—okay, chill out, huge fuckers.”
savage 06 - the savage dream Page 3
