by Robert Brady
“In that case,” Aniquen said, “and I am loathe to state this, but the best thing we can do is tell the Emperor everything we know, and ally ourselves with him.”
Again, they all sat quiet. Avek and D’gattis looked at each other, then at Angron.
“Speak, both of you,” Angron said.
“I know Lupus better than any Uman-Chi,” D’gattis said. “Perhaps as well as anyone living. I know his methods, his thoughts, and his mind.
“I think that, with the resources of Eldador and the years he has had to control them, Lupus the Conqueror probably already has an army that could march on Trenbon and overwhelm it.
“I know the woman Shela, and I believe that together we could defeat her, if we knew she was coming. However, Lupus will ensure that, as before, we have no idea when she is coming, and that before we can match the Bitch of Eldador, she will have destroyed most of us.
“And I know that, with Trenbon under his control, there will be no stopping Eldador from controlling Tren Bay, and the combined armies of Fovea will fall to him. Even if we were to march against him now, Sea Wolves using his Eldadorian Fire will defeat our navy as they have before, isolate us here and neutralize Trenbon, so he can pluck us at his leisure.”
“I think that the expense of managing a completely conquered nation would be overwhelming for Eldador or for any other nation,” Chaheff commented.
Angron shook his head. “I should have brought a Merchant here for this conference,” he said. “And if I did, he would tell you Eldador is a juggernaut producing gold. Taxing less, they make more, a science that still baffles our shrewdest counters. Eldador produces more grain than she can eat, more iron than she can smelt, more ships than she can sail and more warriors to man them than people the Silent Isle.”
“And let us not forget, when he invaded,” D’gattis added, “that our own Scitai subjects helped him. This was an act we have been unable to punish—in fact have rewarded, in that we sold to them disputed plains which they now farm.”
They were quiet again, then Angron turned to Avek.
He looked at the table, collecting his thoughts. He knew what he wanted to say, and what he had to say, and what his King needed to hear. In the end, he sidestepped it all and spoke from his heart.
“You know I was a Wolf Soldier,” he said. “I believe I am Heir in part because of that. It is my place in life to know the Emperor’s mind, and I do.”
He thought for a moment, looked right into his King’s eyes and said, “Your Majesty, I cannot lie to you. Our supremacy on Fovea is ended. We were too dependent on our walls, our magic and our influence with the High Council. Lupus has answers for it all.
“Give him the strangers, tell him what we know. If the gods wished for us to act, they planned poorly for our success by their own admission. The best we can hope for now is to survive until the next prophesy.”
They were quiet together. Twelve years is the blink of an eye to an Uman-Chi, and in that time they had reverted from the virtual rulers of their known world, to the vassals of Men, a race barely more than animals.
“Better to suffer the fate of the Cheyak,” Aniquen said.
“No,” Angron said. “For them, there is no hope. For us, there is much. Remember every person here will outlive the Conqueror. There is nothing to say his successor shall be anything like him. We who live our lives by centuries, not months, can bend the knee for a decade.
“In humility, let us find strength. And as tame as sheep, let us summon the Wolf.”
* * *
In her personal chambers, Glynn knelt in prayer, in humble thanks to the All-Father, and to the Taker and the Giver, who looked out for her and who protected her in this trial.
In her heart, she knew who had touched her. It was the god-mother. She simply knew it, as one knows yellow is not red or sugar tastes sweet, she knew she had sung Eveave’s words.
Right now Uman-Chi males, like Angron and Aniquen and D’gattis, debated the meaning of her song. She had worshipped them just a day before, but they seemed smaller to her now. They remained her people, however she didn’t worship them. Gods had spoken through her, and these males were not they.
It became difficult to clear her thoughts, so many were they. She poured them like fish into a stream, and this time the great white one she had nourished did not come to devour them. The fish swam around her in the stream, but the current didn’t sweep them away.
Had she become dependent on it? Perhaps.
She saw the fish for what they symbolized. One represented the thought of the newcomers, another the truth of the song. She saw the worry she hadn’t been invited to the meeting of the King’s advisors, and several regarding her new brother.
In her mind’s eye, she knelt by the stream, and watched them. They turned their wide eyes up toward her expectantly, fish-eyes oddly sentient in regarding her.
She willed them away, and they scattered, but returned to her again. She could not nurse them, she could not nourish them—how would she scatter what had never been meant to stay?
Then it occurred to her—she could not. These thoughts belonged to her, and remained real. Where she had scattered them once before, or nourished and cultivated them, or absorbed them in the greater worry of her song, now she had them here, and they had nowhere to go.
Instead, in her minds eye, she shed her garment, and she leapt into the icy stream. The strong current, the icy water swept her away, leaving these thoughts and worries to swim behind her.
Immersed in the water, she accepted its cold, its pain, and let it numb her and batter her, accepting that she had no strength to fight it.
She swept down the stream, past rocks and fish and curious things without end, growing ever colder, numbed and battered thoroughly.
As she departed her unreal body this time, leaving it to the water and the rocks, she saw it ruined and broken in the stream. Her real body remained relatively pristine and perfect. She again identified the tiny imperfection on her real shoulder, and she connected her lifeline to it.
She arose before the city of Outpost IX, this time not as a thin sheet but a fog, a pulsing mass, wet and invisible, radiating thundering power as she had never done before and should not do now, exhausted as she found herself.
In the city, she identified a young tree with no bark, its leaves springing green in the coldest months. She caressed its trunk with her ethereal fingers, feeling ghostly smooth. She pressed her ethereal lips to it, and tasted its woody purity.
When she withdrew from it, she saw herself in its bole, not as a woman but as a jewel, and had to wonder at what that meant.
* * *
The armored guards brought them to their own room in a tower in the palace. They saw a gigantic bed, thick carpets, another room to sit down in, a table for eating, even a canvas and paints where they could indulge their creative needs if they wanted to, and a gigantic window to look out onto the city, supposedly for inspiration.
From the window they looked out onto a bustling place where people in robes and dresses, pants and armor, on foot and in wagons and on horseback, moved from here to there by torch and lamp light. A plain white moon hung over the horizon, casting its reflection on the water past the city walls.
“It’s an island,” Melissa commented.
“They seem to be in the Middle Ages,” Bill said.
“Like, King Arthur?” she said.
“Yeah. Those men who came to get you wore armor and had some kind of swords. There are some more like them down there.”
“I see a few on horseback, but I don’t see any cars,” Melissa said.
“I am having serious doubts about their ability to get us back from here,” Bill said.
She walked away from the window and back to the one bed. Apparently, they assumed the two were a package.
Someone had piled the mattresses and quilts up so high that Melissa actually had to jump to get up on it. When she did, she sank back down another foot into its softness. “Whoa, w
ow!”
“Is that a feather bed?” Bill asked, following her.
“I dunno,” she said. She lay back, threw back her arms and spread her legs. Her robe flew open and exposed her from stem to stern.
Bill turned away politely. She didn’t need to look up to know he did it. She sighed.
“You’ve already seen it,” she said.
“I know.”
“You don’t like it?”
“Didn’t say that.”
“You gay?”
“What?”
She laughed, pulled her arms out of the sleeves of her robe, and rolled over, raising a leg up. “There,” she said. “Look at my butt. You like my butt.”
She heard him sigh, then felt the bed shift as he crawled in next to her.
She had had enough of being out of control, of being victim-girl, of being ‘Melly.’ He hadn’t asked what happened to her, and she hadn’t told him. He couldn’t fix it for her, and she didn’t want his sympathy, didn’t want to look in his eyes and see pity.
“Wow, this is a goose down mattress,” he said.
He settled in a polite foot from her. The mattress dipped toward him, and she let herself roll toward him.
“Whoops,” he said, as her breasts rolled over his arm, and she pinned his hand under her belly.
“Deal with it,” she said, wryly.
She hadn’t chosen to be here, she hadn’t chosen to be touched, paralyzed, stripped and dragged around. This, she chose.
He looked into her face, then leaned back and closed his eyes.
“You don’t want me?”
“Of course I want you,” he said. “Its just that—”
“You are sweet,” she said. She laid her head on his shoulder, and turned so he could get a better look at her.
Sometimes she just enjoyed teasing him. He was a nice guy. He might be older, but her track record with boys her own age hadn’t been that great. Bill respected women. She could look in his eyes and saw the tenderness there. Those eyes held no harm for her, no cruelty. Bill had love to give to her, she could see it in almost everything he did.
What did a few years matter for a man with love to give?
“What do you think?”
“I think I am having a nic’ fit so bad, I could bite the top off of a beer bottle, and I bet they don’t have that here, either.”
She laughed. “I am right behind you,” she said, laying her hand on his chest. “I would dry a butt from a wet ashtray right now.”
“The only butt I’ve seen around here is yours,” he joked.
She looked up at him, a wide grin on her face. “Why Bill, are you flirting?”
He screwed up his face and considered. “That could be flirting,” he said, nodding.
She reached inside of his robe. “Well, then, why don’t you come on?” she said. “It isn’t too late for you to have your lucky night?”
“Don’t you want to order lobster first?”
She reached up and kissed him. His beard was rough on her lips. She pushed her tongue into his mouth and opened her eyes to see the surprise on his face. She grinned and pulled back, letting him press her, tasting his mouth on hers. She surprised him again by sucking on his invading tongue, then giving it a gentle bite.
A younger man would have tried to clean her tonsils, drooled all over her and made her jaw sore. Bill seemed more interested in her enjoying it. The hand beneath her turned and found her breast, the free one found her back, and traveled between her shoulder and her upper thigh. She stood just over five feet tall, he could reach all of her with his long arms.
His fingers reminded her of the old Uman-Chi. She fought the memory. Bill felt her tense up, and broke the kiss to look in her eyes. She took his beard between her thumb and forefinger, and pulled his lips back to hers. She forced the thought to the edge of her mind, because she hadn’t had enough time to force it away.
The kissing kept on going, until she felt good and ready for the next part. Again, she took the lead, pushing his shoulders back, getting him ready with her mouth first, then getting up on top of him. He was too big to lay on her, but she found herself athletic enough to make it work from on top. He watched her, wanting to put his hands everywhere at the same time, to squeeze and tickle, to nibble her breasts when she leaned forward, and to gently tug her hair as she leaned back.
Bill counted as her third time, but she knew what she was about. She made it all happen for herself. It turned out wonderful, just what she hoped for. He didn’t rock her world—but he got the job done. Afterward he held her, safe in his arms, his breath on her, his heart beating under her ear, until she felt safe and she fell asleep. Not since she had been rocked in her daddy’s arms had she known that contentment in her life, and that had happened a long, long time ago.
Chapter Six:
The New Kids on the Block
They spent their days trying to learn the language. They spent their nights in each other’s arms. They were cared for and fed, and it all made Melissa feel like a pet—one whose cage was too small.
Human throats just couldn’t utter the sounds made by Uman-Chi, but the others, the servant race that called themselves Uman—their language could be spoken. Melissa learned that, slowly picking out the nouns and vowels, and the differences between ‘I am hungry’ and ‘I am hunger.’
They found Men who worked within the palace. Bill greeted them like lost relatives, but they seemed standoffish. He towered over all of them, heavier than the biggest of them and older than any two of them combined. They spoke a language that Bill said sounded a lot like Polish, which his grandmother had taught him as a boy. He picked that up, moving a lot faster than Melissa could.
All of the local humans, who called themselves Men as a race (and didn’t that get Melissa’s feminist dander rising!) were servants, just like the Uman. That made them hard to engage. If Melissa tried to speak with them, they immediately assumed she wanted something, and then were very focused on how to get it for her. Once they figured out that she wanted to talk, to learn their languages, they usually just gave short answers to questions, pretended not to or actually couldn’t understand anything too deep, and excused themselves as soon as they could.
“You’re too used to being free,” Bill informed her one day, in their rooms, two weeks after coming here. It was evening and they’d been served their evening meal—steaming platters of meat and roots like potatoes and carrots laid out between them with pitchers of milk and clean water. In Fovea, or at least among the Uman-Chi, you weren’t served directly—food was laid out communally and you grabbed what you wanted from a pile.
Melissa had tried to get the Uman servants to stay and eat with them, and they’d gone wide-eyed when they’d realized what she wanted, and fled.
“Everyone should be free,” Melissa argued, sitting across from him in a padded, wooden chair at a little round table by their one window. Their room faced south, and when the sun went down they were treated to an excellent view of the city, all with lit lanterns and little houses, smoke rising from chimneys here and there, and people walking down immaculate cobblestone streets. There were trees and flower beds here and there and, if you looked long enough, you’d often see men and women walking side-by-side, holding hands or being trailed by their children.
“Everyone should be,” Bill agreed, “but in fact not everyone is, even where we’re from. This place is more like the Middle Ages, and these people are vassals to their lords.”
Melissa reached out to a platter with a two-pronged fork and pulled a red strip of beef onto her plate. Here they never used the fork to eat with—that was the purpose of your knife, which had a wide, curved end almost like a flat spoon. You fetched your food with your fork or held it while you cut it with your knife, and then you used your knife to put it into your mouth. That actually made more sense when you considered this fork was going to touch food on a platter that other people might want.
“Vessels?” she asked Bill. He was dressed in an
evening robe—they changed clothes like three times a day here. You had your morning wear and your day way, and then something blousy and comfortable for the evening.
They also went commando—no underwear. Women in their cycle would wear something almost like a diaper, but they wore such giant, full skirts that it was impossible to tell.
“Vassals,” Bill corrected her. He spoke around a piece of meat he was chewing. Melissa took some as well, with a smashed piece of potato—it was amazing. Bill had called it ‘farm fresh’ but she didn’t know what that meant, other than to say it had more flavor than anything she’d ever had from a restaurant or from a supermarket.
“People who are literally owned by their noble lords, like property,” he continued. “They exist to serve their so-called betters, people of higher birth. All of the betters here are Uman-Chi.”
Melissa felt her eyebrows knit. “Like—slaves?” she asked.
Bill shook his head. “Serfs, not slaves,” he said. He took a big gulp of milk, then continued with a little of it hanging on the end of his moustache. “They can’t be bought or sold—they have some rights, but they live to serve.
“Believe it or not,” he continued, poking at his meat, “that’s been the human experience for most of our history. People have only started to be born common and free for a few hundred years.”
Melissa thought about those old Errol Flynn movies she’d watched as a kid, before cable. Those times of men with swords and peasants in Sherwood Forrest had seemed very romantic to her at the time.
She had been an enthusiastic student in college, but not on topics like this. She’d excelled at the physical sciences, chemistry and biology, but found it difficult to connect with the social ones.
People here were more beaten down—they were actually afraid to talk to her. On the other hand, the Uman-Chi had violated her privacy and thought nothing of it. Angron had seemed to apologize, but in fact he was clearly surprised by it bothering her.
