EMERGING LEGACY
A Story of the Wolverine's Daughter
Doranna Durgin
Blue Hound Visions
Tijeras, NM
About Wolverine's Daughter:
“When a sword and sorcery book begins with humor, it’s fairly well guaranteed to be an excellent read.... This book whips along with impressive fight choreography, excellent background descriptions, and fascinating plotlines.”
--Kliatt
“With this new book, Doranna Durgin ventures into classic sword & sorcery—and turns the subgenre upside down.... And I like Kelyn, who could kick Red Sonya’s steel bikini-clad butt from introduction to epilogue. Fantasy fans in general will love this book, but it has extra appeal for feminists and for warriors of the female persuasion.”
--Hypatia’s Hoard
Copyright & Dedication
EMERGING LEGACY
Copyright © 2005 by Doranna Durgin
ISBN: 978-1-61138-538-0
Published by Blue Hound Visions, Tijeras NM, an affiliate of Book View Café
Cover: Doranna Durgin
First published in 2005 by Random House in Young Warriors
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously — and any resemblance to actual persons, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
License Notes:
This efiction is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This efiction may not be re-sold or given to others. If you would like to share, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this efiction and it was not purchased for your use, then you should purchase your own copy. Thank you for helping the ereading community to grow!
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Author Note:
This short story is a glimpse into Kelyn's life before the events of Wolverine's Daughter. It was so much fun to go poking around in the world that formed her, and to meet her friends and an earlier version of Kelyn herself! If you haven't read Wolverine's Daughter, no fears — the story stands on its own, and was featured as such in the anthology Young Warriors. If you've read Wolverine's Daughter, then welcome back to Kelyn! I hope you have as much fun as I did with this peek into her earlier days!
Without readers like you, I wouldn't be able to write these books. I appreciate your letters, emails, blog comments, and Facebook posts more than I can ever express, and I love your reviews. It's amazing to be a part of such a large circle of friends through a mutual love of books!
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Emerging Legacy
Kelyn knew she was the clumsy one.
Even if she hadn’t noticed it herself — with all the tripping, stumbling, dropping things and running into overhangs and low branches she’d done — the others in her hunting pack weren’t about to let her forget. How unfortunate that the words “Clumsy Kelyn” rolled off their tongues so easily.
All the same, she was still alive. They couldn’t say that about Sigre, whose favorite craggy perch Kelyn now occupied, her feet dangling comfortably over the edge of a drop so far that she found herself looking down on the distant treetops below. She took a generous bite of the dried plum she’d brought with her to this quiet moment, and spat the pit out into the misty morning air.
She lost sight of it long before it reached the trees — though last week, she’d had no problem watching Sigre all the way down. Or hearing her, a fading scream that turned to echoes before Sigre disappeared into the pines below.
There were some who said it should have been Kelyn. Sigre had always been light of foot, always graceful on the ledges and narrow, dangerous trails of these high, craggy mountains. She’d always been their trailblazer, taking them to new places in the thin air, finding them new hunting grounds.
Kelyn missed her — but the scattered community at the base of the mountain range would miss her more. Until now, their pack had brought in the most meat from this summer hunting, providing the old and the young with plenty. Young adults in training under the harshest of teachers, the high Keturan wilderness, the pack provided for their own families and more, and at the end of each summer they descended to the harsh rolling terrain a little more seasoned, a little more capable. A little more prepared to survive this difficult climate with its lushly coated rock cats and other predatory dangers.
Or crumbling rock edges. Kelyn stood, as careful as she ever was, intensely aware of her awkward nature and her need to counteract it. When she kept her wits about her, she seldom had trouble. It was only when she let her mind wander...
She stepped back from the edge to join the others. Even so, had she not heard her packmate Mungo’s approach, his “Kelyn! Be careful!” might just have startled her into a scary step or two. She turned on him with a glare, but wiry Iden came up from behind to put himself between them. Behind Iden came the others. Trailing Gwawl — as usual — came little Frykla, still uncertain in her first year with the pack.
Though not so uncertain that she didn’t give Mungo a good hard glare. “Kelyn saw nightfox sign this morning,” she told Mungo, who scowled under all the scrutiny, tugging his rough-edged leather vest as though it had twisted out of place. “It would make me proud to bring down nightfox pelts for trading in my first year. But I don’t suppose it’ll happen if you make her so mad she doesn’t show us the spot!”
“I can find my own nightfox dens.” Mungo tried for dignity, but it was hard to carry off. He looked to be growing into a stout frame, but for now he was the only one of them left with the precious fat of a well-fed child and it made him appear even younger than Frykla. “You fuss over nothing. Kelyn’s father is the great Thainn, remember? Surely with such a mighty hunter’s blood in her veins, she heard me coming.”
“I did hear you coming,” Kelyn said coldly, picking up her staff — Reman ironwood, bound with leather, weighted on both ends; it had come from her mother and served her well as a defensive weapon, especially as she was not allowed a long blade. “I begin to understand why my father always hunted alone. And maybe even why he left.”
He’d left Ketura before she was born — before she was even conceived. Kelyn’s mother had met him in Rema, and never expected him to stay with her. At Kelyn’s conception her mother had traveled to Ketura to raise her child in her father’s lands.
Any child of Thainn’s, her mother had reasoned, was bound to get into more than her fair share of trouble. She wanted Kelyn hardened by this harsh land...trained by it. Challenged by it.
Of course, her mother had never had any reason to expect Thainn’s child to be a clumsy one. Or an awkward one, with features that fought each other for attention. Or the one whose opinion faced casual dismissal as the pack equated clumsy with incapable.
Just because she didn’t like the direction her thoughts had taken, Kelyn gave the pack a good hard glare. And then, with some assurance, she stepped off in the direction of the nightfox den.
Whereupon she stumbled over nothing, twisted around her own leg, and hit the rocky ground hard.
Stupid! she chided herself, wrapping her arms around the wrenched leg. If there was one thing she’d learned, it was that she among them all could never not pay attention. Never be distracted, by emotions or events or daydreams.
“Kelyn!” Frykla crouched by her side. “That looked bad.”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone fly in so many directions at once,” Iden observed, but unlike Mungo there was kindness in his voice.
Kelyn untangled herself, pushed herself to her feet with help from the staff, and tested the leg. She’d given it a good twist, all right — but she thought she could wa
lk out of it in a few days. And besides, she had the staff. “It’ll heal,” she told Frykla, who still hesitated by her side. “I don’t know if I can get up to the dens...but I can take you close enough.” More than once Kelyn had admired the nightfoxes’ ability to nimbly ascend the sheer rock faces to their precariously placed dens. Today she wouldn’t even try to emulate them.
Not that it mattered. This one was for Frykla.
~~~~~
Kelyn waited at the bottom of the abruptly thrusting rock face, pulling her fur-lined vest more closely around herself and applying herself to scraping the generous cache of edible lichen from the base of the rock. Soup tonight! Perfect to ward off the year-round chill of the high air.
Her leg pained her, but not as much as it might have; she favored it only because she knew better than to over-strain it. She’d likely find it bruised and battered beneath the loose leather of her leggings and snug loin cloth, and looked forward to the hot spring in their favorite camp spot.
When the sun reached midday, she heard the faint echoes of victorious shouting, and she smiled to herself. They might mock her lack of grace, they might ignore her concerns on the trail, but not one among them had a better eye for nightfox sign. Not long afterward, the little hunting pack made their way down the back side of the thrusting rock and surrounded Kelyn with their ebullience and slightly breathless victory. They’d also discovered valuable choi buttons, which they could leave to cure another month and then harvest for sale to outsiders.
In quick order, they skinned the two nightfoxes they’d snagged, and left the bodies arranged on a nearby outcrop, a tribute to the rock cat that lived in this area. Kelyn joined them as they started down, a descent of several hours to their closest established camp. They chattered about their success as Frykla, flushed and happy, recounted the harrowing climb to the den several times over. Satisfied enough with her part in the valuable acquisition, Kelyn concentrated on navigating the rough terrain.
Perhaps that’s why she was the first to hesitate — the first to think something wasn’t quite right. She held up a hand and the others instantly stopped — but a moment of group inspection revealed no sound or sight out of place. Mungo was the first to shift impatiently, and Kelyn knew why — just around this stand of stunted trees, through the narrow opening in two looming rocks, their favorite camp waited. The hot springs inside their low scoop of a cave called to Kelyn and her aching leg, and her stomach hungered for the gnarled tubers waiting to supplement the lichen. The others were no less tired, no less ready to settle in for the evening.
So even though she didn’t yet know what little wrongness in their surroundings had caught her attention, the others gave a shrug and moved onward. Their habitual dismissiveness of her skills took over, and one by one, they slipped through the gap in the sentry rocks to throw themselves to the ground around the banked coals of the fire.
Or so Kelyn thought, hearing the sounds within. Until she actually took her turn through the sentry rocks and discovered her pack mates sprawled on the hard-packed dirt and stone of the area, dazed and surrounded and some of them even being sat upon — all by rough, dark men in unfamiliar clothing. The discovery startled her so much that she stumbled and fell, saving them the effort of taking her down.
Men, here? After us? Shock and fear coursed along her spine; her heart hammered in her chest, lending her a burst of energy too late to do any good.
One of the four men gave a short laugh at Kelyn’s fall, and said something to the others in a harsh, unfamiliar language. They all relaxed slightly. They know we’re all here. And that they’d accomplished this capture without a fight.
Captured. But they had nothing of value to steal--nothing but the recently acquired nightfox pelts and the small collection of less significant pelts and dried meat. They had nothing but...
Themselves.
Kelyn lifted her head to look at them with revulsion, and the man who’d spoken gave her a nasty-toothed grin. “Figuring it out, are you?” he asked in her own language, sitting on Mungo’s rump as though it were a pillowed throne. Mungo himself was still dazed, or the man’s impudent self-confidence would have been ill-rewarded. “You’re our prize. All of you.”
Frykla gave him a startled look. “What?”
“Slavers?” Gwawl twisted beneath the man who had his knee in the small of his back, trying to see how the rest of them faired.
“Here?” Iden pulled against the rough ropes that already bound his wrists and ankles together.
In the lowlands, yes. Slavers and reivers, both — people who preyed on the misfortune and weakness of others. But here in the craggy reaches of the Keturan mountains, surrounded by the unfamiliar dangers of climate and predator? Neither was forgiving — it was the very reason they forged young hunting packs into strong, capable warriors, independent but respectful of community.
Strong, capable...
“You came here just for us,” Kelyn said, her voice low with the horror of it. The man who’d tied Iden moved on to another, whipping another short length of coarse rope from his belt with the speed of long practice.
The man rubbed his nose. It didn’t help; the nose remained dirty and ugly. “Not you in particular. Just whichever of you was up here this year.” He pointed at her, then gestured at the fire circle. “Come in here.”
She thought about running. If she flung herself back out of the narrow aisle between the sentry rocks, they’d never catch her — and they probably wouldn’t leave the others behind to even try. She could make it to safety, but their village community would feel the loss for years, if it even survived. Life here was too precarious, too close to the edge.
She couldn’t face that. She couldn’t good-bye to her friends, never to know how they fared; she couldn’t break the news to their families.
With care, Kelyn got to her feet, closing her hand around the staff to bring it with her. The men instantly came to alert, and the one who sat on Mungo’s rump sprang to his feet, a short spear to hand. “Leave that!”
She gave it a surprised glance. She’d reached for it out of entrenched habit; she rarely went anywhere without it. It served her on the rocky paths and it served her as a weapon. She wielded it with more grace than anything else in her life. She depended on it. And now she gave the man a deeply puzzled look. “It’s just my mother’s old walking stick. I hurt my leg.”
Frykla lifted her head for a startled look. Just a walking stick? And then she glanced quickly away, trying to hide her reaction, to cover it with scorn. “She’s a clumsy oaf, that’s what.”
Just as startled, Gwawl opened his mouth — but Frykla widened her eyes at him, the best unspoken warning she could give him.
The dirty-faced slaver frowned. “What?”
Iden gave a sudden curse and began fighting his ropes, flipping around like a snared rabbit. Distraction. The man who’d tied him grinned, exposing just how few teeth he had, and moved on to tie Frykla. One man still sat on Gwawl, his fingers tangled in Gwawl’s dreadlocked hair and a thick-bladed knife at the back of his neck, and another stood by with his arms crossed, watching Iden’s futile struggles in twisted amusement.
Kelyn took advantage of the moment to move to the center of the rock-enclosed site, limping heavily, using the staff for support as obviously as she could without over-doing it.
Perhaps she over-did it after all, for as Iden’s timely struggles ceased the man who seemed to be their leader said, “You don’t look like you can keep up with us.”
The man still standing by Iden said something short and sharp in whatever harsh language they called their own, and the leader raised an eyebrow at Kelyn — as hard as it was to see through his brushy hair. “He wants to kill you. He thinks you’ll slow us down and die along the way.”
Kelyn’s hand tightened around the staff just as her skin prickled all the way down her spine. She hadn’t considered —
“She can keep up,” Frykla said in a low voice, one that already had a little cringe in it.
“And she’ll heal fast.”
The man snorted. “One would almost think you wanted to be slaves.”
“I’m not ready to die,” Kelyn told him, blunt...and preparing herself to run. The skin between her shoulder blades twitched, anticipating the impact of that short spear.
“You prefer slavery to death?” The man snorted. “No...you’re just foolish enough to think you can escape.” At Kelyn’s sullen glare he shrugged. “It serves me well enough if you choose to think so. Just don’t be so foolish that you think you can escape from me. It’s never happened. It never will. Now sit down.” He pointed, choosing a spot where Kelyn could reach none of her friends, or even so much as exchange a discreet word. Then he gestured at one of the men, who dug into the satchel at his side and produced a folded packet. Kelyn eyed it warily as she took her seat, making sure she leaned heavily on the staff.
The man took up the cook pot left by the side of the hearth and dipped it into the hot spring. Into the water went a careful sprinkle of the powder that had been contained by the paper...and Kelyn understood then that they’d be drugged. At least for the night...possibly for the days. But as the rope-wielding man took up her ankles and wrists, binding them just freely enough that she might use the staff, she felt the surge of determination overcome her fear.
We’ll escape.
We’ll be the first.
~~~~~
The next morning, the aftermath of the bitter herb still gripped them even in the bracing chill of the morning air. It was all Kelyn could do to lift her muzzy head and keep an eye on their progress along the steep, rocky trail. She limped and lurched without having to play-act the injury to her leg, and her natural tendency to stumble reasserted itself at every inconvenient opportunity.
But she knew where they were going and so did the others; at every rare chance, they caught one another’s eyes, and Kelyn saw the knowledge there. And though the slavers spat vicious words at the first sign of the huge rock fall that had destroyed the entire slope stretching before them, neither she nor her pack mates found it a surprise. Kelyn caught everyone’s gaze with her own, holding long enough to give it significance, until within moments they all stood a little taller...waiting.
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