by Laura Taylor
“You don’t call being forced to have sex with your so-called husband rape?” Rochelle asked bitterly from where she was loading pears into a wicker basket.
“No, I don’t,” Willow said, turning to face her. “It’s an arrangement that I agreed to, in exchange for certain benefits on my side of the equation. Consent isn’t the same as romance. Even back in the industrial world, you could pay a prostitute for sex. It was a business arrangement, about as far from romance as you could get, but even so, it was consensual.”
“Assuming you’re not talking about some of the darker corners of the world where that sort of thing was very much a form of slavery,” Rochelle pointed out.
“I’m simply trying to make a point,” Willow said, a little exasperated. “Women throughout history have married men for protection, status or monetary gain. I’m just saying that love isn’t the only valid reason for marrying someone.”
“Getting sold off by your family was another good way to get married,” Rochelle muttered, but Dusk broke in before Rochelle was successful in waylaying the conversation down darker paths.
“I’m getting the impression there’s a fair bit of romance going on over in Mei-Lien’s cabin,” she said slyly. “Bunches of flowers, candlelit dinners…”
Mei-Lien blushed. “You’re overreacting,” she told them. “It was dark, and we were eating dinner. There aren’t any light bulbs around here, so we ate by candlelight. It’s no big deal.”
“But he did give you flowers,” Willow pointed out.
“And you’ve been holding hands a fair bit,” Dusk added with a teasing smile. Though she would never admit it to the others, a part of her was jealous. Her own relationship with Aidan seemed to consist of little more than a long string of arguments, with brief moments of peace in between as they both made serious efforts to understand each other’s perspectives. It would have been nice for someone to go out of his way to make her happy, the way Torrent was doing for Mei-Lien.
“He’s trying hard,” Mei-Lien said, focusing her attention on the apple tree in front of her. “He’s kind of sweet. He’s not much to look at,” she admitted awkwardly, “but he’s very good with his cows, very gentle and patient. He likes his routine,” she added, and Dusk wasn’t surprised. When you had to be up at the crack of dawn every day for milking, a fair dose of routine was probably quite important. “He’s a long way from the worst it could have been.”
“But you would have preferred Stormbreaker,” Rochelle said, and Dusk wasn’t sure if it was a statement or a question.
Mei-Lien’s eyes opened wider, and she spluttered for a reply for a moment. But before she could say anything, another voice broke into the conversation.
“Afternoon, ladies.” All four women looked up and saw three men strolling up from down near the chicken pen. Each of them was pushing a wheelbarrow of soiled straw, collected from beneath the chicken’s overnight roosts. The straw would be combined with dead plants and offcuts from the vegetable garden to make a rich compost.
The men’s names were Mark, River and Archer – not that Dusk knew how the latter had got his name, given that she’d seen neither bow nor arrows around the village. They were all in their twenties, and so far, Dusk hadn’t had much to do with them.
They stopped when they came abreast of the women and set down their wheelbarrows. “Now, there’s a sight for sore eyes,” River said, looking the four of them up and down, and Dusk took the time to note the starkly different responses in the four of them. Mei-Lien looked away bashfully. Willow looked down at the ground, her shoulders sagging in what seemed to be defeat. But Rochelle and Dusk both straightened their backs, their heads coming up, making eye contact with the three men. They’d all been warned about this, that even with the protection of having husbands, some of the men might try to take advantage of the situation. Rochelle in particular was a cause for concern, given her unattached status, but when Dusk had asked Aidan what he planned on doing about it, he’d replied in his usual round-about fashion. “I can’t punish anyone for something they haven’t done yet.”
“Been a long while since we had any skirts in the village,” Archer said, a goofy grin on his face, and Dusk took immediate offence to the description. Not ‘women’, not even the more delicate but less appropriate ‘ladies’, but ‘skirts’. Living, breathing human beings reduced to items of clothing.
Beside her, Dusk noticed Rochelle slip her knife out of its sheath, clipped to her waist. She didn’t threaten anyone with it, but nonetheless, she had it ready to use, and Dusk had no doubt that she would do so, if it became necessary.
For her own part, Dusk adjusted her stance, making sure she was balanced and ready to move quickly. There was a knife strapped to her ankle – she refused to leave the cabin in the morning without it, and even slept with it beneath her pillow – but she didn’t want to draw it yet. She was currently trying to defuse the situation, not inflame it further. She took a step forward, placing herself between the men and Willow, and noticed Rochelle do the same to Mei-Lien.
“Working hard, gentlemen?” Dusk asked, eager to have the men on their way again. “We wouldn’t like to keep you from your duties.”
Mark looked Dusk up and down in a way that had every muscle in her body tensing in preparation for a fight. “Oh, believe me,” he drawled slowly, “it’s no trouble.”
Carrying fully loaded boxes stacked on top of each other, Aidan and Whisper waited while Stormbreaker peered out the final door of their exit route, checking there was clear access between themselves and the vehicles. “We’re good to go,” he said, then edged out of cover. He gave a short whistle, and the men waiting by the utes saw them coming. Several of them moved to cover them in case anything happened on the short walk from the building to the cars.
But the next twenty seconds passed uneventfully. Aidan loaded his boxes into one tray, while Whisper went for the other, and then he breathed a sigh of relief. “Let’s get out of here,” he said… but it was wishful thinking to expect such an easy exit from the town. One of the men sidled up to him, glancing around the street wistfully.
“You know,” he said, “we don’t come to town very often.” He let the idea hang, and from the looks on the rest of their faces, it was clear they’d been having a discussion while Aidan was gone. Aidan followed the man’s gaze across the road to one of the houses sitting opposite. A lot of them had been looted, but this one looked relatively undamaged, the door intact, the windows not broken. There were a multitude of everyday items that could be found in a normal suburban house that were next to impossible to come by anymore, and for all his reservations about staying any longer than necessary, Aidan felt a jolt of anticipation at what they might find inside.
He looked up and down the street. It remained deserted. He listened carefully, trying to pick out the distant hum of an engine, or the bark of an agitated dog…
Nothing.
“Half of you wait outside,” he said, already moving towards the house. “Five minutes. And not a second more.”
His arms full of looted supplies, Aidan headed back to the kitchen. He dumped his find into a box that was set beside the pantry – a ream of white paper, a packet of pens, and a handful of other stationery items. Paper was getting harder to come by, and was absolutely vital for writing down the various things they discovered or invented. Soon, they’d have to learn to make parchment, or maybe turn strips of paperbark into a workable writing surface, but for as long as they could find extra paper, Aidan was glad to have it.
Mario was crouched on the floor, pulling liquor bottles off the bottom shelf of the pantry, and though Aidan wouldn’t have considered alcohol to be a necessity, he wasn’t going to make a fuss about taking some back. Keeping morale up was just as important as keeping the men physically fit, and if a couple of bottles of gin were what it took, then so be it.
But then something caught his eye over Mario’s shoulder, and he reached into the back of the cupboard to snag a packet of ground coffee,
tossing it into the box, then as an afterthought, he added a bag of sugar. Both the coffee and the sugar were sealed, so he hoped they’d still be edible. Thankfully, the previous owner of the house seemed to have been a bit of a neat-freak, everything perishable kept in sealed plastic containers, no sloppy bits of spilled jam or leaking oil. That had kept the vermin away.
“Need a caffeine fix, do we?” Whisper laughed from where he was guarding the doorway. The days of waking up to a hot cup of coffee were long gone, herbal tea now the next best early-morning option, and in Aidan’s mind, it was a distant second in terms of palatability.
“Dusk said she missed it,” he explained shortly. She’d mentioned it only once, an offhand comment that he was probably taking far too seriously, but what the hell else was he supposed to do when he was trying his hardest to make life pleasant for her, and she kept insisting on locking horns with him at every turn?
“You’re going to woo the fiery beast with coffee?” Whisper asked, a look of deep scepticism on his face.
Aidan glared at him. “For lack of a better idea,” he said, not appreciating any comment Whisper had to say on the matter. His own relationship with Willow seemed to be going far smoother, nary a cross word ever passing between them. Whisper had made a number of suggestions about things he’d like to start teaching Mikey, how to identify edible wild plants, or how to skin a rabbit, and Willow had enthusiastically agreed.
Just then, Stormbreaker rushed into the kitchen, dumping several books into the box. There were three novels – Aidan knew Stormbreaker had read every novel in the village at least twice – but he was glad to see there was also a book on carpentry and another on how to identify various types of trees. They’d worked out all the common ones around the village, having learned from experience by now which were hardwood and which softwood, which ones burned better, and which ones did nothing but lie in the fire like a lump of rock. But even so, more information about the less common trees would be useful.
But then Stormbreaker held out his other discovery, a glittering diamond necklace. The chain looked like it was made of white gold.
“What do you think?” he asked, suddenly breathless. “I don’t even know if she likes jewellery. It is too much? Or not enough? I mean, it’s not like I had to buy it…”
Aidan simply raised an eyebrow at Whisper. “And you think I’m crazy,” he muttered. “All right, folks, we’re out of here. Pack up and get moving.”
“What do you think?” Stormbreaker insisted, and Aidan didn’t have the heart to tell him that he could probably give Rochelle any gift in the entire world, it wasn’t likely to make any difference. “You want it, take it,” he said, dodging neatly around the question.
Just then, a low whistle came from outside, and Aidan grabbed up his gun from where it was slung over his shoulder. Whisper had his gun up and ready to fire in an instant, the muzzle preceding him as he peered around the corner of the door. “Oh, by all the saints in hell…” he muttered.
The men guarding the utes had all ducked for cover, those with guns pointing them at a target coming from the west along the road – blocking their easiest exit route, but thankfully, it was far from the only one.
Aidan peered past Whisper, wanting to know what they were up against. At the far end of the street were four four-wheel-drive vehicles, a collection of fierce-looking men leaning out of them. They were armed, that much was obvious, but it wasn’t the men who were causing Whisper to curse like a seasoned sailor. Standing beside the vehicles, straining at the end of their leashes, were four very large, very angry dogs.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Dusk braced herself as the three men spread out around them. It was always possible to run away, of course, but for fuck’s sake, this was their own tribe! Dusk wasn’t about to back down from snots like these, and she was once again pissed off that they thought the women would be an easy target when they were outnumbered four to three.
But neither Willow nor Mei-Lien were going to put up much of a fight, she realised quickly, and wondered whether the men knew that already. She was going to have to talk to Aidan, and probably Whisper as well, about getting some self-defence training going for the two women.
“Come on, sweetheart,” Mark cooed at her. “Just one kiss. It’s been so long since I got to feel how soft a woman is…” He reached out a hand, aiming for Dusk’s cheek, and she slapped it away.
“How about you fuck off and leave us alone?” she suggested sharply, debating whether or not to pull out her knife. If she did, she had to be willing to use it, and for all their apparent respect for women, she really wasn’t sure how Aidan and Whisper would react if they actually killed some of the men.
Rochelle, however, was feeling none of Dusk’s reticence. She brandished her knife brazenly. “You touch me, and I’ll cut your fucking balls off,” she told them.
“I’d rather like to have my balls in your hands,” Archer crooned. “Come on, show me what it’s like.” He went for Rochelle and she tried to slash him with her knife, but he saw the move coming, twisted sideways and tried to trip her over. Rochelle was too fast, spinning around to stop him getting behind her.
Mark moved to hit Dusk at the same time as River went for Willow, and suddenly Dusk was moving without thinking about it, blocking blows, striking out in retaliation, in a dance that was fluid and smooth, and as second-nature to her as breathing. She punched Mark in the kidney, elbowed him in the face, and caught a fist to her own face as River came to his defence. Mei-Lien was curled up on the ground, screaming at them to stop, and while it might not have been an impressive response to the attack, it was an effective one. Shouts from down in the village meant the other men had heard the commotion… and Dusk could only hope they were coming to help, rather than join in with the assault on them. Torrent was still in the village, she remembered dimly, as Mark grabbed her by the hair, yanking her head back and giving her breasts a hard squeeze. Surely he wouldn’t stand by and let this happen?
She stomped down hard on his foot, then grabbed his hair to pull him forward and gain herself enough leverage to slam her fist into his face. He staggered back, then fell backwards onto his ass, the blow coming close to knocking him out.
“Get off me!” Willow yelled, and Dusk saw River lying on top of her, trying to shove his hand down her pants. Archer had got the knife away from Rochelle by now and had her arm twisted behind her back, while he tried to hold her still enough to get his free hand up inside her shirt.
Aidan jammed the butt of his gun into the mastiff’s face as hard as he could, stunning him enough that he let go of Mario’s leg. Before the dog could recover and come back for a second go, he spun the rifle around and shot it in the head. Blood sprayed in a disgusting mess, which Aidan forced himself to ignore.
“Into the ute!” he ordered, ducking for cover behind the tray as the Eden tribe fired at them. They were only thirty metres away now, advancing slowly but steadily as Aidan’s men worked to get everyone back into the utes and ready to make a fast getaway. The men of this tribe were rough-looking sorts, with shaved heads, facial tattoos and makeshift leather armour that was presumably designed to scare people; it was decorated with red streaks and images of devilish faces.
Two of the men in the tray grabbed Mario by the shoulders and hauled him up and over the side, while Whisper and Stormbreaker fired a couple of shots back at the advancing men. Their attackers were both smart and cautious, using their own vehicles as cover as they crept forward. The cars had been modified to minimise weak spots; the windows covered with metal plates and narrow platforms welded onto the footboards to allow people to ride on the sides of the vehicles. Even the windscreen was reinforced, a sheet of corrugated iron strapped to the front, allowing just enough space for the driver to see where he was going.
Aidan’s men were no slouches on their own end, though. The driver of one of the utes had backed it up across the house’s front yard, but overgrown plants and scattered debris meant there was still a fair
gap between the front door and the cover provided by the vehicle. Part of their difficulty was that it was almost impossible to have everyone inside the trays of the utes, and in cover at the same time. The last two men were crouched in the doorway, ready to make a run for it, but distracting the advancing men was no easy task.
Without warning, another of the massive dogs was let off its chain, and it rushed towards them, leaping at one of the men who was still trying to cover the ones inside the house. He went down, shoving his arm into the dog’s mouth to stop it ripping out his throat. He screamed as the dog bit down. Aidan rushed over to him and shoved the muzzle of his rifle into the dog’s mouth, pulling the trigger. He hadn’t got the gun braced, and it recoiled violently, pulling a muscle in his arm, but it got the job done. The dog collapsed in a bloody heap, and Aidan prised its jaws off his comrade’s arm.
“Move it!” Whisper yelled at the two men still in the house, and they rushed for the utes, even while bullets flew around them. A scream from one of them indicated he’d been hit, but he didn’t stop, just took a flying leap into the back of the ute, groaning as he hit the metal hard.
“Inside!” Aidan ordered, opening the driver’s side door – which happened to be closest – and tossed the injured man inside. He landed in a sprawled heap across the driver’s lap, but that wasn’t going to slow them down.
Aidan was the last man on the ground, and he tossed his gun into the ute – he’d run out of bullets for the moment anyway – and leapt in after it. His heart was racing, his mouth dry, time seeming to pass with unnerving slowness as he did a last-moment check for anyone who might have been left behind.
All clear. “GO!”
Both drivers put their foot down, but the age of the cars, combined with being fully loaded, meant the two reliable old Hiluxes weren’t going to do them any favours. They rolled away down the road at a less-than-impressive rate, but for the moment, at least, the Eden tribe wasn’t in a hurry to chase after them.
