by R. Lee Smith
“I told you it would be ugly.”
She glanced around at Doru, prepared to unleash some of her anger on him. He was not looking at her, but instead leaned up against the cavern wall, scrutinizing the gathering as intently as if there were prey that moved among them, unseen. His expression was calm, almost uninterested, but his body betrayed terrific tension.
“You know, I had actually begun to think of you people as civilized.”
One ear twitched. “You’re not exactly catching us at our best,” he replied. “How civilized would your race act if they had lived three hundred years without the right to choose a mate? Three hundred years! To have the barest handful doled out to privileged few and know that you were not selected because you weren’t fit enough to breed. And then to have the most—” He broke off, lowered his horns a moment, and continued. “Most desirable among them set aside and finally there is a way, a right and just way if not a particularly civilized way, to possess her. What would your race do?”
She was miserably grateful he did not look at her. She knew she would never be able to meet his eyes if he did.
Abruptly, Doru tensed and straightened up. “Get ready, Olivia. Here it comes.”
Vorung was easing through the gathering, his eyes grimly fixed on Olivia. Olivia stood up nervously, scanning the gullan for any sign of Sudjummar, but the metal-maker did appear to be present. Her instinct was to back up, but her knees were against the bench, and the cavern doorway was beyond Vorung.
The graying male stopped before her, his wings fanning out and forward slightly. Cutting me off from the herd, she thought. Where is Sudjummar?
“Olivia.” He thrummed her name openly, displaying his chest and flexing his arms and legs in the posture Olivia had come to associate with a blatant gulla come-on. “I’ve come to court you.”
“I’m not interested,” she said, and was faintly pleased by her icy tone.
“But you are alone.”
“I’m with Sudjummar.”
“Not at the moment.”
“You told me you didn’t want to take me from my mate.”
His nostrils flared. Vorung lowered his horns. “Your son,” he said distinctly, “looks ill.”
The cave had gone very quiet. The gullan were retreating to the walls, pulling their humans with them, clearing a space. Still there was no sign of Sudjummar.
“My son,” she replied, “is sleeping.”
Vorung advanced. “You grow thin, Olivia. The metal-maker does not provide for you as he should. You deserve better. Come with me,” he hummed. “I will bring you meat of my kill.”
Sudjummar stepped silently and easily between them, his powerful frame rippling in the firelight as he put his hand on Vorung’s shoulder and pushed him back. He stepped forward as Vorung stumbled, shoved him on the other shoulder, advanced further, thrust both arms flat against Vorung’s chest and knocked him flat on the ground. He lifted his foot and drove it at Vorung’s head, stopping just short of crushing his enemy beneath his gleaming talons.
“What,” Sudjummar said reasonably, “do you want with my mate?”
Vorung eyed the talons poised above him.
Minutes crawled by in silence. Sudjummar lowered his foot to the ground and held eye contact awhile longer. When Vorung did not speak or move, the metal-maker turned his full back and limped to where Olivia stood clutching Somurg. He caught her eye, shook his head warningly. It wasn’t over yet.
Vorung rocked onto his hip, then gained his feet, and stretched his wings. At the same time, the coarse hair on his head, shoulders and biceps began to spike outward like the hackles on a dog’s neck. To Olivia, it looked as though he had doubled in size.
Sudjummar swung back to face him, his own body undergoing the same transformation as he lowered his horns and snarled wordlessly.
“Stand down,” growled Vorung.
“I defend what’s mine!” Sudjummar spat.
Vorung advanced on him, his wings arcing out impressively. “What will you do, half-man? Limp on me?”
The two males now stood alone in an empty circle ringed by frightened humans and solemn, watchful gullan. Olivia reached tentatively to the back of her neck, half-expecting to find her own hair standing on end. She felt cold; her face would be white as chalk.
Doru’s hand closed over her shoulder. “Steady,” he murmured. “Believe it or not, it’s almost over.”
Sudjummar raked his talons through rock, towering over his opponent with the massive body so much like Vorgullum’s own. “Stand down, gray-flanks, or I’ll snap you like a dry bone!”
“You are made of dry bones,” Vorung scoffed. “Dry bones and a mangy pelt! What can you give this woman but fleas, crippled rat!”
“Palsied pervert!”
“Challenge!” screamed the other, and threw himself forward.
Sudjummar caught him with his left hand and slammed him face down on the ground with a terrible impact. He limped around him in a wide circle, so that Vorung’s next leap would bring him away from Olivia, if he had the strength to move at all.
Vorung pushed himself raggedly to his knees, then to his feet, and looked groggily around. He glanced back at Olivia, and the sight of her seemed to draw him back into furious focus. His wings snapped out, he crouched like a cat, and sprang.
Sudjummar met him again, this time with his lame foot planted square in the center of Vorung’s loincloth.
The older gulla let out a whistling howl and dropped to his knees. His wings snapped to his body like wet rubber. He grabbed himself with both hands, bent double, and ground his forehead against the stone floor.
Long minutes passed. Sudjummar simply stood and waited.
At last, Vorung made a sound.
The metal-maker tipped his head to one side. “What?”
Vorung whimpered again.
Sudjummar limped a little closer, started to bend down.
Vorung’s hand whipped out, caught the smith’s good foot, and flipped it into the air.
Sudjummar let out a cry and dropped onto his back. His good wing snapped tight against his body; his withered left wing struck the ground, then bent, then cracked in two. Sudjummar and Olivia shrieked together.
Vorung couldn’t leap up, but he did manage a clumsy pounce, landing on the thrashing gulla and raising his clawed hands for a final blow.
Olivia started forward and Doru took her shoulders. She struggled and he let her, but pulled her back against his chest and held her firm.
Vorung’s claws came down. Sudjummar caught his wrists. His huge hands closed. And tensed. And twisted.
And broke them.
Vorung threw back his head and howled, but Sudjummar did not release him. The smith continued to twist his hands, continued to tighten and grind at the bones as they were crushed against each other in his grip.
When Vorung started pitching wildly back against the wall, Sudjummar threw him aside, rolled to his feet, and kicked him in the chin. Vorung landed on his side, then dropped onto his belly, drooling blood.
Sudjummar seized his foe by one horn, yanked him up and lifted his right arm like a hammer.
“Concede,” croaked Vorung.
Sudjummar paused, his club-like hand poised at the arc of descent.
“I concede,” Vorung said again.
Sudjummar uncurled his fist, reached his hand under the other’s arm, and hauled him to his feet. Without further interest, he turned away and limped back towards Olivia.
The circle of gullan began to break up.
Holding her wailing son, scarcely able to reconcile what she had seen, Olivia maintained enough presence of mind to know that both rivals needed medical attention and fast. “Get Tina,” she commanded shakily. “Tell her Sudjummar’s wing is broken.” She did not mention Vorung’s wrists.
Three females set off at once to obey. Less than a minute later, Tina bolted into the room with a backpack over each shoulder. The paramedic stopped cold in the center of the room, stared at first on
e, then the other, and then back at Olivia.
“Sudjummar,” Olivia said.
Tina looked at her hard, but knelt and explored the break. “It’s clean,” she said curtly. “Should heal pretty quick. Rumm, help me get it in place.”
Sudjummar didn’t make a sound as the human and gulla pulled his bones apart and fit them back together. A splint was fashioned, and Tina stood back as Rumm, far more familiar with gullan anatomy, bound it on over the bent angles of his wing.
The paramedic faced Olivia, pointedly keeping her back on Vorung, who still lay on his belly, holding his wrists out at a terrible angle and making a thin, whining cry in the back of his throat.
“Is my mate well?” Olivia asked, trying to keep her voice steady.
“He’ll heal.”
“Then see to that other one.”
With obvious relief, Tina swung around to inspect the damage.
Sudjummar stood up and advanced on Olivia, his eyes glaring, his hand held out in a gesture that stank of ritual victory.
She wanted to stay long enough to hear whether or not Vorung would be crippled for life. She went to Sudjummar instead, feeling light-headed and nauseas. When he took her by the arm and led her swiftly from the cave she was absolutely certain the first order of business would be a solid, ceremonial screwing in that fabled tunnel set aside for that purpose.
She was wrong, however.
“I am in a great deal of pain,” he whispered, as soon as they were far enough down the passage so as not to be overheard.
Olivia stopped at once, her hand going to her middle before remembering that she wasn’t wearing her belt pouch or her pack. “My things are at the forge,” she replied. “Can you make it that far?”
He turned a tight smile on her. “Could you carry me if I can’t?”
“No.”
“Well, then I guess I’ll just have to try.”
They traveled blindly down tunnels they both knew by heart.
“Olivia, there is something troubling me,” he said at last.
She made a small sound of inquiry.
“You’re acting very strange. Almost as if you expect me to…I don’t know…order you to put up your skirt and lie down.”
She swallowed hard. It made a dry, guilty click. “The thought had crossed my mind,” she admitted.
She could sense his disappointment in her. It only made her feel worse. She cradled Somurg for comfort, which only made the baby start fussing. “What was I supposed to think?” she blurted unhappily. “I thought you’d bash each other around like goats or something! I wasn’t ready to see blood! I wasn’t ready to hear your wing snap or…Vorung’s wrists…” She could still hear the sound of bones grinding themselves into splinters.
“That,” Sudjummar said, “was not a typical challenge. That was what we know as a blood challenge, and it’s extremely rare. I expected him to concede after I kicked him in the stones. I thought that was what he was trying to tell me or I never would have gotten so close to him.”
“If he’d killed you, was I supposed to walk off into that goddamn tunnel with him while you lay there dead? How can you think that’s not wrong?”
He was silent a little while, then abruptly said, “Do you know what a wolf is, Olivia?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Noble creatures,” he remarked. “Very civilized. Social animals, for the most part. The leader of the pack is a female, and she takes a powerful mate. She must, because every male in the pack wants her badly, and if she’s to get anything accomplished in her busy night, she needs a strong mate to keep the others off her back. So to speak.”
Olivia managed a shaky laugh.
“Wolves challenge each other occasionally. Usually, their fights are settled swiftly and relatively painlessly. Very rarely, blood is drawn. Once in a great while, a wolf is killed, do you see?”
“I think so.”
“You don’t yet, but I’m trying.” He touched her arm again in the dark, a comforting gesture. “The first time the leader’s mate is challenged is almost always the bloodiest, but is almost never fatal. If the mate is sufficiently formidable, any other challenges are quick ones, almost formalities. But if the mate shows weakness or lack of resolve, then even if he is successful in defending her, he is likely to be challenged again and again. He is also much more apt to be seriously injured or killed.
“Tonight, in a way,” he said slowly, “I was fighting not only Vorung, but all of them. Did you see the way they watched me? There hasn’t been a real challenge in this tribe in better than a hundred years. No one knew what to expect and I gave them one hell of a show. There were a great many in that cave that put themselves in Vorung’s place and grappled with me in their minds.”
“And got their wrists crushed,” Olivia reminded him.
“That, too. With luck, it will prevent further fighting, at least until my wing is healed enough that I could meet another blood challenge.”
“What about Vorung?”
“I’m sure he’ll heal,” he said absently. “But in the meantime, he’ll have to depend on others to provide for him. And he’s forbidden to challenge for you again in any case.”
They reached the forge and in the light of its ever-burning fires, Olivia got her first good look at him and felt slightly encouraged. In spite of the break, the dry flesh at the wing’s extremity was warm and living.
“There is something that worried me,” she said hesitantly, reaching down the glass jar containing one of Murgull’s most potent painkillers.
“Yes?”
“It was inexcusable of me to think that you would take advantage of me after this…blood challenge. I know you better than that and I’m sorry. But would Vorung have shared your opinion?” She met his eyes over her equipment. “Would he have fought you and won and then…been content to just sit in the dark in that stupid room and not do anything?”
She couldn’t help the slight, squeezing anxiety that pressed into her guts when he only stood and considered the question instead of hastening to reassure her. His answer, when he finally ventured it, did little to soothe her.
“Vorung? Probably.” Sudjummar watched as her hands began to shake just the tiniest bit. “Even a blood challenge does not give a man the right to force an unwilling woman.” He threw her a quick, quirky smile. “That’s why the Great Spirit gave us hands.”
She laughed without meaning to, without much wanting to, but that was funny. “Is that so?”
He started to shrug and winced. “May I have that now?”
“Only a swallow.” She watched closely while he drank, then took it back. “I don’t know if this stuff is habit-forming, but from all Murgull’s cautions, I’d have to guess so.”
She had just finished capping the jar and returning it to her place on the forge’s worktable when Sudjummar sleepily said, “Oh, say, that’s nice.” She glanced up and he smiled at her dopily.
“Feel better?” she asked.
“Much better. Olivia?”
“Yes, Sudjummar.”
“I am very sorry that you had to see me do that.” The metal smith reached out to touch her cheek, her chin, the curve of her throat. “And I am sorry, but you’ll have to see it again. Do you hate me?”
His resemblance to Vorgullum was now complete. “No,” she said with unhappy honesty. “No, I don’t hate you.”
“Are we still friends?”
“Still friends.”
He nodded slowly. “Can you bring me some bedding? I don’t think I can climb up to my lair.”
Olivia retreated to the smith’s private chambers to gather up the two thickest sleeping bags, but when she returned, Sudjummar was lying on his stomach on the bearskin in the corner, fast asleep. She covered him up, lay down beside him with Somurg, and quietly cried herself into oblivion.
8
Sudjummar was back in the forge before Olivia even woke up the next morning, which irritated her. She could hear him hammering the entire time it took to
change, feed, and clean Somurg, and by the time she finished wiping the baby-spit off her shoulder, she had the beginnings of what she suspected was going to be a damned good headache. When she confronted him in an attempt to make him take it easy for a few days, he listened to her politely, then went right back to banging on a new mining pick.
“Good grief, man, doesn’t that hurt?” she finally exploded.
He paused, glancing at her coyly over one shoulder. “Not at all,” he said. “Because if it did hurt, if it hurt enough to keep me from my work, why then, that may impede my ability to feed and defend my mate and her child.”
Disgusted, she punched her hands onto her hips and glared at him. “You’re acting like a goat. Do you think Vorung is going to get up and go off hunting?”
He laughed. “Of course not! Vorung lost!”
“You—! Fine.” She untied the carrier sling in which Somurg had been riding and set the baby down. “Watch him for me. I’ve got better things to do than try and talk sense into a goat-head like you.”
“As you will, Olivia.” He had turned back to his work, but she was convinced he was smirking at her.
So Olivia went to the women’s tunnels to look in on Liz. Rumm, Crugunn and Thurga were there in a tight circle around the human, engaging in a group massage. Liz looked positively transcendent with pleasure while her attendees chatted and gossiped over her.
“How are you feeling?” Olivia asked, coming over with a smile.
Talk ceased. Heads turned.
“Fine,” Liz replied blissfully. “I hear you made quite a speech last night at the gathering. Good for you.”
“Thanks, I was pretty impressed with it myself.” Olivia ran her eyes over the awed and envious expressions on the gullan, feeling weirdly smug. “And did you also hear about the great challenge?”
“Several times,” Liz acknowledged, and opened her eyes. They were sparkling with mirth and not a little cynicism. “I’d wager you were thrilled to death to be the bone in their dogfight.”
“Blood challenge,” one of the others murmured, savoring the sound of it. “Who would have thought Sudjummar to be so fierce?”
“Honestly,” sighed Liz. “Why don’t they just hold pissing contests and be done with it? But no, they’ve got to roar and beat their chests and fling each other around until they’re bleeding all over. Like you’re going to think that’s so attractive.”
