Raymond stood. “Excellent suggestion, Ada. For I desire her. She is more female than you could ever hope to be.”
Ada stood and strode to him.
He caught her wrist before her hand could land on his face.
Raymond looked into her wild black eyes.
He saw the insanity that lurked there and instantly worried for the helpless babe that would be brought into the Royal Manse.
I will protect it, he vowed to himself.
Raymond hoped that the maidservant he had chosen would be able to care for two infants. For she had one of her own that was a month gone into infancy, a suckling still, baby Olive, Raymond remembered even as his gaze locked with the cobra he had married, waiting for her strike.
It would be a dangerous dance. Raymond hoped he was man enough to keep his pace one step ahead of Ada. Guardian help them all should he pass before the child was of age to rule. Raymond kept the shiver contained with effort. The idea of Harland and Rowenna's child at the mercy of Queen Ada without his careful buffering made him ill.
“Do not lay hands on me,” Raymond said carefully, his hand closing with brutal force on her small wrist in warning.
Ada did not cower or wince at the pain but purred into his downturned face, “I do not abhor pain, my Raymond,” she whispered, her gaze held the lust of her words and he dropped her wrist as if burned.
He turned on his heel without a word and nearly ran out of the room.
Raymond made his way to the sphere tunnel to claim the child in a faraway place.
Though first he made a small detour to wash his hands. He did not wish to contaminate the newborn babe with any part of Ada.
The wee one would be his to protect, to keep.
To love.
That future child was a piece of happiness he would not relinquish to anyone.
Raymond disappeared inside the Pathway as Ada consumed her third cup of the grapes, plotting.
Always plotting.
Chapter 8
“Rowenna! Push... yes... I see the head,” Adair said, her voice breathy with anticipation, standing elbow to elbow with the midwife.
Rowenna gave a mighty grunt, part anguish, part relief, her legs shaking, the sweat beading and falling like shed tears from her forehead.
“Slow now, Rowenna. Just breathe through this next part,” Adele instructed softly.
Rowenna popped her head up off the pillow, and rolled into a graceful squat. “No. I wish for this misery... To. Be. Done!” she cried, her face a flushed red, her mother applying a damp compress but Adele shook her head.
Stubborn girl. Even in labor she takes no direction.
Instead, Rowenna reached down between her legs and felt her baby's head.
It was a tactile sensation she would never forget. It was the first thing Rowenna thought of when she saw her daughter as a young woman for the very first time. That first downy touch of her copper hair before she spilled out from Rowenna's body as a hot wailing mass of flesh and heat, love and vulnerability.
Adele caught the messy bundle and handed her to Rowenna, who now sat down on her sore posterior and gazed at her newborn daughter in awe, covered in a messy post-birth paste. Rowenna swiped her eyes clean of it, the midwife massaging the baby's chest and with a deep hitching breath she gave a piercing cry, her pink tongue trembling with the force of it.
Rowenna gave a hard laugh; that a wee one was capable of such noise? She was unprepared that love struck so hard, when a person least expected it, their guard down. As Rowenna gazed at her child, it hit her in the breastbone, painful, immediate and bittersweet. For this small bundle was here for a short time, not even a season. Rowenna held her daughter against her breast, reveling in their brief time together as she suckled there. For mere days later, she would meet with Raymond and this precious treasure would vanish into an uncertain life of the future.
Very much like Rowenna.
She pushed away her grief to savor the present.
*
Raymond knew something was wrong the moment the Pathway poured him out of its embrace, the vile transport like tiny ants stinging and biting along his skin. Everywhere they touched, he was paralyzed by the travel illness.
Something even more important greeted him.
The Red Men.
They were everywhere. Their eyes all for him.
While Raymond was vulnerably prone on the ground, keeping the warm vomit of motion sickness at bay by the slimmest thread of control, he rolled his eyes up into the face that hung over him just as the Indian nocked an arrow.
Good Guardian, I will die here before I can fulfill my obligation. And on the heels of that: Ada will be left to rule.
He began to get up but the Red Man spoke and Raymond did not understand his speech. It was as foreign as his painted face and near naked appearance.
However, Raymond intuited the issue from cadence alone. Turning in the direction where the one with the brown skin gazed, he watched a second group approach the first.
“Well hello, sphere-dweller,” a man addressed Raymond, dressed in a mix of clothes that Raymond did not recognize. He was neither Savage, with his gill-less throat and inferior size (as Raymond had begun to unconsciously think of it, the males of what they referred to as 'the Band' were gigantic male specimens). However, as Raymond continued to assess this new group he instinctively understood danger when it came calling. It was most troubling that they had the advantage of knowing from whence he hailed.
Raymond saw this group as the real threat. The Indian had not been readying his arrow for Raymond's heart. But for the hearts that beat opposite him, for there be many. Raymond did a quick tally and thought thirty was a likely total.
This was shaping up badly. At best there would be a battle, at worst he would die Outside while the babe went who-knew-where and Ada ruled his sphere.
It was an unacceptable option. He could not condemn his people to the vileness that was his wife.
Then the Band appeared and everything became terribly simple. For Rowenna held the helpless babe in her arms, her gaze meeting with Raymond's.
Hers held an emotion he did not think she easily embraced.
Surprise and on the tail of that: terror.
*
Rowenna had a small Band contingent accompany her to the Pathway. Rolland had made himself scarce, begging off because of his scouting duties as Band. Rowenna knew otherwise. He did not wish to see her hand her babe to the man he presumed had created it with her.
How much more awful it would have been had he known it was Harland, not Raymond... who was the child's father? So it was Harland and two other of the Band who flanked Rowenna.
Rowenna had not even tried to feign bravery.
No mother should have to say goodbye to their flesh and blood. This small wonder who had taken the milk from her body, slept next to her for this week past, whose aqua crystalline eyes had quietly followed Rowenna with unnerving intensity as she changed, bathed and cuddled her with soft cooing sounds that Rowenna had never imagined she would utter.
Yet... she had uttered them.
The tears soaked her tunic, Harland physically restraining himself from offering comfort. There were two pairs of eyes on their journey. He could not afford a compromise of Rowenna for any reason.
Her sadness floated away on the bite of autumn wind that lifted their hair, stinging the two men of the Band and the half-blood with the scent they had been trained to recognize.
Fragment.
Jared turned to Harland, his thoughts instantly on Beatrice, her Day to birth quite near, vulnerable at the clan without them. There was a skeleton crew of warriors at the grounds.
His eyes sought the many of the Fragment. His count put their numbers at thirty.
Theirs were three.
They could not prevail. Jared looked at Harland and Robert. All three knew what it meant. As did Rowenna.
It was in that moment of realization that her eyes met Raymond's, her heart stuffed in her thro
at, she could hardly breathe for its throbbing terror.
Rowenna made an instant decision. She turned her child against her, tightening the papoose, and though she was sore and tired from the birth a week past, she ran to Raymond. The King of the sphere and the Pathway, those things would route her daughter to safety.
Her body remembered and overcame its fatigue, aiding her progress in the truest form of fight or flight response there ever was: a mother saving their child is a fearsome thing to behold.
Harland tore after her, watching the lioness move with her cub strapped to her chest, the wheaten hair a flag of slashing gold behind her, a dot of copper at her front, one hand pressed against the flame of hair on their child, the other around a dagger.
Harland had never been more scared for another nor had he ever thought anything more beautiful than Rowenna as she fearlessly sprinted with their babe toward safety.
Raymond watched her come, a fierce creature, teeth clenched, the babe held with a strong arm, the other outstretched with a weapon at the ready.
The Fragment moved in and they met her blade.
Raymond heard Rowenna's cries. They blended with those of the Red Men in an eerie harmony that would haunt him on his death bed.
“Raymond!” Rowenna screamed.
Raymond met her, an arrow sailing over his head with an ominous whistle.
Up close she looked frightened and young. The babe gave soft whimpers of distress. He had but two heartbeats to admire the large sea-colored eyes and burnt orange hair, like a high-burning flame as a Fragment moved behind Rowenna.
Oh Guardian.
A weaponless Raymond jerked her behind him and looked into the whites of eyes that gave him pause, the manic glee all that lay therein, sanity a theory.
Then the head rolled, a dagger punching from back to front, the tip an angry metal fin at the front of his neck. A boot kicked the vagrant aside and Raymond saw that it was Harland.
Harland and Raymond looked at each other as a moment of silent understanding passed and Raymond nodded his assent. Harland turned, moving into the wall of bodies that was the Fragment.
“No!” Rowenna screamed, the baby beginning to flail and scream, reacting to her mother's distress.
“Rowenna,” Raymond yelled over the fight, the Red Men taking the scalps of those they killed.
Raymond watched the slaughter as if outside his own body. There was none of the romanticism that he had read about in the few books which remained in the sphere.
War was not romantic.
All around the smell of blood was a choking metallic sea, wave after wave crashing against them both. The sounds were not the muted clash of swords but of flesh being tenderized under fists and bone.
Males fell and the Band was overwhelmed, as were the Indians.
Raymond knew what he must do. He had known when Harland had given him a look only another male could understand.
Raymond had understood when Harland told him with his eyes, I shall not live, but Rowenna and the babe shall... protect them.
Protect them thought the cost be high.
Raymond pulled Rowenna backward as five of the Fragment overcame Harland.
“No!” she screamed again, moving forward and Raymond grabbed her around the waist, jerking her off the ground and lifting her backward.
Leaving Harland for dead they moved to where the remaining Band still stood and Rowenna slipped from his grip, running to Harland, cradling the small baby's head against her chest.
“No, no, no, no...” she cried softly in disbelief, putting her head against Harland's chest.
“If I but had gills...” he tried to gurgle through the wounds of his chest.
“No, do not leave me, dear one... do not leave us!” she said urgently, hitting him on his arm. “I cannot... I cannot, be without you,” Rowenna said, searching his face.
He gave her his eyes, his heart in them as it had always been. “I love you...” he said, his eyes sliding to the babe that was his. When he had his fill he looked at Rowenna again, then his eyes shifted to Raymond's and their stare held.
“I shall,” Raymond answered his unspoken request.
“Do so,” Harland said, choking out his last.
“No!” Rowenna screamed, her head thrown back, the breaking of her heart like shattered glass that fell from the sky like jagged rain.
The remaining Fragment looked at the female, their eyes missing nothing.
Especially the second female held against the first.
The leader moved toward the sphere-dweller and the female of the Band. Her mate was dead, leaving her unprotected and exactly like a ripe piece of fruit.
For the taking.
Raymond jerked Rowenna from Harland's still form and ran the few yards with her, stumbling... her grief crippling them.
The familiar undercurrent of the Pathway recognized Raymond's biological signature as it had been programmed to, accepting the bundle that was attached to him without question. Its futuristic technology automatically embedding the new biological organisms with whom he traveled.
The babe and Rowenna had been duly noted and cataloged. They would be recognized as long as they both lived.
The hand of the Fragment passed through Rowenna's hair as she was sucked into apparent nothingness.
He stood motionless as one moment, the female and her baby had stood there taunting him with their nearness, then the next, an arrow rested in the meatiest part of his neck.
He turned, the motion bringing the flint tip deeper, as was its design.
The Indian smiled, fool, he thought in his native tongue. Soft and stupid. And with a wail of express joy, the remaining Indians called to the Mother Earth, and she opened her skin to receive the blood of battle that they had spilled.
They wept when every scalp was collected, giving thanks to the earth for its bounty and cleansing of the white skinned scum that roamed without giving back.
Taking, always taking.
However, now they took no more.
Their eyes moved to the strange males that had the white skin but the gills of the meat of the sea.
The Indians approached the strange warrior pair who remained, fascinated by the slit skin at their necks. It moved as they breathed, flaring and nearly disappearing in the exhale.
“Come, Adahy!” the Red Man leader said sharply.
A tall Indian warrior approached, his height unusual for the tribe.
Jared and Robert tensed. The Fragment lay dead yet this new people could be a threat. And they numbered ten. Seasoned warriors. Though they were smaller in stature, they were fierce in battle. To be respected and watched.
“Make the white man words,” he instructed.
Adahy had not always been tribe and he looked at the two warriors with white skin, a burning in his chest.
“He is Band,” Jared whispered.
“He is a Red Man,” Robert answered with puzzlement.
“Kinship recognition,” Jared clarified aloud in amazement.
Adahy scowled at the two warriors, looking at him so strangely. He was a warrior of the Iroquois.
He released his dagger, moving forward.
“Definitely Band,” Jared said dryly, holding his hands up, palms out, in the universal language of peace, as did Robert.
The Red Man leader laid a staying palm on Adahy and he growled low in this throat, his raven's wing black hair tied at his nape, his eyes, a deep mossy green, narrowed on the strangers, his tawny skin rippled with the musculature indicative of all Band.
“Use them,” his Chief commanded in the native tongue of the Iroquois and his shoulders relaxed.
Adahy would much rather kill them and dance the victory dance around the fire as they told their stories.
However, for this moment, he would do as his elder wished.
He used words that fell, rusty and slow from his mouth. They were from another time. A time that he never thought of. It did not matter, it was before his time with the tribe.
Adahy turned to face males that equaled himself in size. He tried not to think of the coincidence of that, averting his eyes from the slits at their throats. “What do you say?” he asked in halting rudimentary speech.
Jared's jaw dropped. Robert glanced at him. “Let me... let me attend to Harland.”
Jared nodded and Robert went to cover Harland's body and that dagger flashed again.
“No!” Jared yelled for Adahy to stop, “he sees to our dead!”
The massive fist with its deadly spike of metal came shy of digging a hole into Robert.
“Definitely Band,” Robert said.
“I believe I mentioned that,” Jared answered, his eyes wide.
“Yes you did.” He looked back at Harland, his skin cooling, Rowenna had gone into the nothingness of the sky. He might have only been a half-blood but he had enough blood of the Band to fight as a male of honor, throat slits or no.
Adahy gave a short nod and Robert laid his outer tunic over Harland, his sad expression causing Adahy to take note that the battle was over, they were no threat. Though they shared skin color with the other males they had put down like the rabid dogs they were, it was a superficial resemblance.
Adahy sheathed his dagger, straightening, he watched the two that caused his chest to burn with pleasant fire. It felt good. It intimidated Adahy.
Jared looked back at the warrior, cautiously approaching him. When they were within arms reach, Jared looked him over, head to toe.
He was one of us, he marveled, somehow.
Jared received a similar appraisal. When Robert rejoined him, a grin spread over his face and Jared stuck his hand out.
Adahy looked at the proffered hand curiously and finally he gave a tentative hand back. Jared enclosed it with his own, doing a slow pump.
“We are well-met warrior, very well met,” Jared said.
Adahy gave a tentative smile.
“What does the white flesh say?” his chief asked him in their native tongue.
The Savage Principle Page 8
