Wilderness Untamed

by Butler, J. M.

  She shook her head at it, but it continued talking. Oh shrieking crespa, it wouldn't shut up!

  Covering her ears, she burrowed down and sought a deeper darker place of silence. The Ki Valo Nakar remained around her, and she remained aware of its presence, but everything faded, faded, and faded until there was nothing but quiet darkness.

  * * *

  WroOth found it difficult to remain still. He paced around the camp, checked whether Amelia still breathed, and broke branches into bits before tossing them in the fire. It was all he could do not to twist his fingers out of joint.

  AaQar shot him a quiet glare as he circled yet again.

  "We'll be fine," he said, flinging another branch into the fire. It didn't crackle nearly loud enough. "The two of us? What can't we handle?"

  AaQar shook his head as he continued putting together more rels.

  He was already answering his own question. There was actually quite a decent amount they couldn't handle. But surely nothing that would come in response to the flares. Unless—

  QueQoa's distinctively arrhythmic wing beats announced his presence as dawn leaked over the horizon. He swept down and let the form fall away. As he landed, he staggered and caught himself against the nearest boulder.

  WroOth swallowed, the discomfort tightening his chest. One look at QueQoa's face confirmed he'd found nothing. Despair threatened to tear him apart. "Well, what else do we have to worry about? See. If there is anyone else in this soul-eating wretchedness, we have no reason to be concerned."

  QueQoa wrinkled his nose. "I could smell those flares over twenty miles off."

  "Then they're doing their job," WroOth said. He circled back to Amelia. Once Igrold had gotten snared in death vines. The choking weed had crept up his body and bound him tighter than an anaconda. They'd had to work swiftly as it kept growing and growing. It had taken the entire cadre working together to free him before those yellow-white bindings had at last fallen away. But there was no way to cut these off Amelia. The long leech venom had created veins that wrapped all the way up to her neck now.

  "What did you find, QueQoa?" AaQar asked.

  "I found places I thought might have had communities, but there was nothing there. Spaces that seemed to have been cleared out. No evidence of anything other than that." He picked up several strips of the roasted meat and placed them on the rough wooden plate. "If they're here, they're hiding. Odd smells though."

  AaQar murmured a response as he continued to work with the components for the rels, mashing up the marrow and herbs in the mortar and pestle. The usually pungent scent couldn't compete with the heavy smoke and cut-grass scent of the flare.

  The kettle over the fire boiled, hissing and spitting out steam. WroOth pulled it free and filled the canteen with hot water. The onion skins released an even more pungent odor as the steam rose and the skins steeped. Grimacing, he shook his head.

  How could she possibly find this beneficial? Whatever good onions did, they should do their work in the stew itself.

  "You have the tastebuds of a goat, dear heart." He put his arm beneath her shoulders and lifted her up. "But I made you your vile onion skin water. Will you drink it?"

  She mumbled as her eyelids fluttered open. The garbled response wasn't exactly an agreement. But she tried to respond.

  "I didn't put liver in it this time."

  "Hmmm." She scowled, her brow wrinkling. She tried to turn her head away.

  He pulled the stone bluebird from her pocket and put it back into her hand. Her fingers tightened around it almost at once.

  "Now. You drink this or I will add liver." He forced a smile, trying not to think about the fact that he could feel each vertebra in her spine and neck.

  She moaned.

  He coaxed her into drinking a few sips, but she barely responded. The heat from the fever burned through his sleeve. It took every ounce of strength not to recall every death and every loss. They played through in the back of his mind, pulled at the bonds that held his sanity in check.

  The worst part of madness was that often you weren't fully gone. You felt it coming, creeping up your spine and across the back of your head like a centipede. Ages ago, he'd believed centipede bites made you go mad. But it was more often grief. That same sensation prickled along his spine and across the back of his skull now.

  If she died, he would go mad.

  It really was that simple.

  And there was nothing he could do.

  What could he offer?

  He hadn't had any tricks or twists to play since they fell back into this world.

  The possibility that they could be alone had danced on the outskirts of his mind again and again. He'd denied it. Refuted it. His gut disagreed. They weren't alone. Couldn't be. Their cadre survived.

  But what if—what if they weren't. What if this was all that remained? And what if she died here.

  What if—what if all of it had been for nothing?

  And where was Naatos?

  He made Amelia take another sip of the onion skin tea.

  The wind changed. It carried a different scent. He straightened. Earthy. Chamomile. Thyme. Living. Sentient?

  AaQar and QueQoa had caught it too.

  QueQoa stepped closer to the hammock as AaQar picked up his staff.

  WroOth glanced at his club. He truly despised it. Not that he would ever admit it aloud. He slid it over to his side.

  The brush began to move, swaying in the wind but then bending in the wrong direction. More movement rustled the bushes at multiple points. Someone was out here. The mixture of elation and unease spiraled up in equal parts.

  He spread his arms wide. "Whoever you are, why not show yourself instead of lurking in the brush?"

  Slowly, people—real living people—stepped out.

  92

  No Dominant Predators

  WroOth remained guarded as he studied these newcomers, but elation shot through him. People! Real people. It didn't matter whether they were friend or foe. There were people, and that meant there was hope.

  They wore well-tailored green, grey, and brown clothing. Simple cut trousers and sleeveless tunics with broad belts, intricate geometric embroidery along the cuffs and hems. The weapons they carried were similarly elegant but surprisingly primitive: spears, bows, tridents, and javelins. No added runes or obvious mechanical components to give them enhanced capabilities. Basic metal and wood.

  All wore large necklaces that draped halfway down their chests, polished stones, rolled leaves, moss balls, and teeth. Their scent remained faint. Mostly masked but not completely. Thanks to those necklaces if he guessed correctly.

  All of their arms were covered with tattoos, and most had animal companions. Bealorns. Unquestionably, classically Bealorns. Two death weavers, four winged serpents, one moss mantis, three tuler hawks. He frowned. The apparent leader wore a besred-skin cloak and had a death weaver on his shoulder, but none of them had bindings or markings of any imposing creatures. Death weavers were rarely larger than a housecat despite their frightening name and had venom that wasn't even on par with a hook-fanged spider. Moss mantises were never bigger than wolf hounds. Tuler hawks barely reached two feet in height. None of these were even close to being dominant predators. They weren't even mid-range predators. Yet Bealorns generally tattooed their connection with the most powerful animals.

  AaQar tilted his head as he regarded the leader. "Did you receive our signal?"

  The leader set his spear down. It had a well-polished head albeit simple in every respect. His grey-brown eyes scanned the entirety of their camp. The death weaver spider clung to his back, its black and yellow body gleaming in the sunlight. "We heard and smelled it. What are you doing here?"

  There were so many other questions he wanted to ask. And these did not look like people who wanted friendship. Their faces were as expressive as the stones lining the firepit, but their scents carried a slightly off scent more akin to fear than confidence.

  "We do not mean you
any harm if you mean us no harm," AaQar said. "One in our cadre is ill from long leeches. In years long past, your people knew how to treat this."

  The newcomers stiffened and glanced between one another. "Long leeches?" the moss mantis woman echoed.

  The leader held up his hand, silencing the whispers among his people. He had a cautious air about him that soon relaxed. "It's only the four of you?" Stepping forward, he indicated AaQar's lithok, the silver ear clasp that covered most of his left ear. "You're a Vawtrian? You're all Vawtrians?"

  "All but the woman." AaQar looked the leader up and down.

  Murmurs of relief passed through the newcomers as all but two lowered their weapons.

  "Quite a ways out from your holes, aren't you?" The leader set his spear on the ground and smirked. Laughter rippled out from his followers. They scattered around the camp, examining the bags and searching through them, a few taking the meat from the leaf wraps and eating. One even tried to take QueQoa's bag from his hand; each time he pushed the man back. One of the hawk handlers picked up the mortar and pestle with the dried marrow and herbs and grimaced, starting to toss it over his shoulder.

  AaQar snagged it immediately. He shot the man a glare. "We are travelers, and we are willing to trade for medicine to cure long leech venom."

  WroOth refrained from scowling as he watched the easy manner with which these people were dismantling and violating their camp. As if they owned it. But he would give no sign of just how thin the ice they walked was. His brother was playing it still for now, and he wasn't going to ruin the plan. Getting treatment for Amelia was far more important than any of their pride.

  QueQoa remained equally guarded, moving out of the path of one of the women with the death weavers who kept trying to touch his shoulder. He scowled at her and rumbled a low warning.

  "We could do trade," the leader said. "But why should we?"

  AaQar's expression tightened ever so slightly.

  Shape up, Bealorns, WroOth thought. This was rude even by their standards.

  One of the hawk masters emptied the stone vessel filled with what little remained of the ilthun salt.

  "In case there has been a misunderstanding, we mean you no harm. I am AaQar of the Shrieking Chimera Cadre—"

  "Why should I care what your name is, skinchanger?" The leader poked him in the chest, using the blade of his spear to push back his robe and reveal the tunic beneath. He raised an eyebrow. "Where are your chips? Are you out of the antidote? You may just want to crawl back into a grim worm hole and wait for death. Unless you'd rather cooperate with us. We'll hide you. For a price."

  AaQar lifted his chin and pushed the spear away, his eyes narrowing at the leader. "We do not require that you hide us. We are willing to trade for medicine."

  "All that you have is ours," announced one of the winged serpent masters. Her winged serpents hissed as she dumped out the contents of Amelia's satchel. She grunted as she kicked aside the white box with the red cross. "Not that you have anything of value."

  Another snapped the long spoon in half and tossed the pieces aside.

  Ooh. Naatos's spoon.

  WroOth lifted his brow. Well, that fellow was certainly dead. And what an awful way to go. Death because of and by a polished wooden stirring spoon.

  AaQar cast a half-shaded look in WroOth's direction. The closest his brother usually came to saying "I told you so."

  He shrugged in response. How was he to know that the first people they'd encounter in this place would be disgusting wastes of breath and space? But it wasn't as if they were overly strong. AaQar could have handled them just fine. He probably wanted to see if a peaceful resolution and connection was possible.

  It wasn't. At this point he had no doubt of any other course.

  Not with the way these pathetic excuses for Bealorn warriors were tossing around their belongings, acting like children intent on showing how their supposed toughness.

  What he didn't understand was why their being Vawtrians made them so much less intimidating? What had happened to their people in all these years? And when had the Bealorns been this, well, pathetic?

  The bigger question was whether they could figure out the treatment.

  The hawk master with the bright parrot and hawk tattoos strode up to him. "You're a skinchanger too?"

  Annoyance peeled through him. It was one thing for the Libyshans to use that word. Another for Bealorns and those of Ecekom. Neither was good, but this was tantamount to requesting spikes to the face. WroOth smiled wanly. "I am a Vawtrian."

  The Bealorn laughed, the skin around his eyes crinkling. "Can you turn into a loaf of bread?"

  WroOth raised an eyebrow. Was this the level of wit they were dealing with? Elonumato help them because he certainly wouldn't.

  Amelia started coughing. Her whole body shook.

  Stepping closer, WroOth helped lift her up and wiped her mouth. "Shhh, dear heart. Just breathe. These people are going to help you." Or else.

  The moss mantis handler grimaced as she reached the opposite side of the hammock. "Disgusting. Is she dead yet?" She started to poke at her neck.

  WroOth seized her by the wrist and bent her arm back. "She isn't, but you will be if you don't show the appropriate level respect."

  The moss mantis handler yelped, her face pinched and pale with shock. Her small moss mantis sprang forward but he kicked it aside.

  Two of the newcomers lifted their weapons, eyes widening. Three of the others pointed their bows at WroOth while the remaining ones pointed their weapons between AaQar and QueQoa.

  The death weavers skittered clumsily off their masters' shoulders; the hawks spread their wings and emitted warning shrieks. QueQoa batted the ones that moved toward him away as easily as WroOth had knocked the mantis back.

  The hawks recoiled without even attacking.

  WroOth shook the woman as he glared down at her. "Why don't you apologize to her?"

  "WroOth, don't hurt her." AaQar offered a light wave of his hand. "Yet." He turned his gaze back on the leader though the leader had now put the spear blade directly at his throat.

  WroOth released the moss mantis handler with a flourish. He gave her a dark smile as she scurried back, grasping her bruised wrist and whimpering.

  AaQar continued in the same quiet manner. "This isn't going to play out the way you think. We've tolerated your rudeness up to this point, but that will not last. We are willing to overlook it for now. But we need to know, can you help us eliminate the long leech venom?"

  The Bealorn leader looked from AaQar with his almost ethereally calm expression to QueQoa who had not flinched even slightly. You had to know him well to know that he was furious and worried because he didn't let a fleck of that show on his broad features. At most his forehead had creased a little more, and his shoulders and biceps carried more tension. Nothing these fools would notice. AaQar, at this moment, was far more sinister if only because he was serene.

  Just to make things more unsettling, WroOth flashed a grin at the leader, but he remained close to Amelia, his hand on her shoulder.

  "Can you?" AaQar asked again.

  The leader narrowed his gaze but then crossed over toward her. All of the other Bealorns now had their weapons at the ready, no longer so casual as before.

  WroOth remained guarded as well though he maintained a relaxed posture. If this sikalt so much as laid a finger on her without it bringing healing, he would snap that finger off. And a few more besides.

  Amelia had slid back into a deep sleep, her eyes closed and her head to the side. Those dark veins intermingled with the scars now. She hated exposing them, but there were just too many. At least she wasn't conscious to see these wretches gawking at her now.

  The leader tilted his head, his wide mouth twisting with disgust. "She isn't much to look at, is she? How many children has she borne?"

  "None," QueQoa said. "And she won't. She can't."

  "It's none of your concern anyway," WroOth added.

  The le
ader shook his head. "Why are you even bothering with saving her? Look at those scars. Hideous. She can't be a good lay, and she's too small to be good bait. Obviously weak for the next six months or more to be good for anything else. There are too many mouths to feed to indulge in something like this. No. We could cure her, but I see no value in it for us. Even if we sold all of you, she wouldn't be worth the cost."

  Heat flared through him, threatening to spill over. The twisting in his gut intensified. She wasn't going to die. She was fine. She would be fine. They had time. "You could heal her though?" It took effort to keep from biting the words out. He'd beat the answers out of them if he had to.

  "We have the resources in our community, yes, but this one will be dead by morning. There's no—" He broke off as thundering wing strokes broke the tension. They drew closer and closer.

  Oh good.

  It would have been a shame for Naatos to miss all this. Especially since it sounded like a full-on raid and a declaration of war with whatever this Bealorn group was associated with was now on the table. What a story to tell Amelia when she woke. Leaving out the resulting carnage of course.

  "What's that?" one of the winged serpent masters asked, tipping his head back.

  "Another member of our family," AaQar said calmly. "Probably in the storm drake form right now."

  "Skinchangers can't be dragons," the moss mantis handler said.

  WroOth raised an eyebrow at this.

  Naatos appeared over the gap in the trees, dark-scaled and glistening in the mid-morning sunlight. His tail lashed out, and—he was carrying a curly-haired woman in his claws. She wore bright orange robes with turquoise slashes and held a large black bag.

  Well, apparently Naatos wasn't going to be surprised that there were other people here.

  Naatos dropped the woman into the middle of the camp and then landed, relinquishing his form back into his state of rest. She staggered as she shoved her honey-brown hair back from her face. "All right, I take it back. You can fly. Iseenasa, remind me never to make a bet with you again." She glanced around as she straightened her garments, an uneasy expression on her face.