Warrior Witch

by J. D. Lakey

  Cheobawn met the stern look on Megan’s face. “They tattled on me, didn’t they?”

  Megan shook the hidden thing from her shirt. A dead rat fell to the ground. “Clara thought it odd that the children had managed to kill so many. She questioned Jilly and Susa. It did not take much to break them. They were bursting with the news that the pirate witch had a magic spell that killed rats. Clara has said she will keep your secret from the men but you must promise not to do such a thing again, especially in front of the children.”

  Alain picked up the rat. It was stiff, still twisted by its death convulsions. He studied it and then looked up at Cheobawn.

  “How did it die? Do you even know what you did?”

  Cheobawn shrugged and looked away from the judgmental looks on her Pack’s faces. “I made them stop.”

  “Stop?” Tam asked, trying to catch his breath.

  “I shut down their nervous systems. That did not kill them, technically. Their hearts stopped beating and then they died.”

  “How did you . . .” Alain choked on the question. “How did you learn how to do this?'

  “I killed a starship. Everything after that is . . . insignificant.”

  Cheobawn shook her head. It was not the right word but she had no other way to explain it. Both Tam and Connor cursed softly. The look of tragedy on Alain’s face was almost unbearable.

  “Why,” Megan asked. “That is my question.”

  “The rats are Lowlander fuzzies. Cruel and prolific. The children earn coins for every kill. Not unlike a fuzzy hunt in the Highreaches. The little boys beat them to death with sticks and rocks. It was . . . cruel. I could not watch them die that way. My way was better. A brief struggle as the brain dies and then it is done.”

  Tam stared at her.

  “Do I shock you?” Cheobawn asked belligerently.

  “No, sweet one,” Connor said softly. “It is just that executions are traditionally carried out by the Father’s House.”

  “But it is the Coven that orders them,” Cheobawn said. “Euthanasia, on the other hand is done in the temple by the High Priestess. The Fathers are never invited to those ceremonies.”

  “Enough,” Tam said, grabbing the dead rat. He threw it into the fire. “I trust you, wee bit. You have never acted without forethought. If you deemed it necessary, then it was.”

  “I do not like being a killer,” Cheobawn said softly. “It makes me cold and ruthless, like Mora. I swore I would never become like her. Now look at me.” Che clenched her teeth together, refusing to cry. When the spasm of self pity passed, she drew in a long, shuddering breath. “I must attend to the business of the High Mother. Nothing else matters.”

  “Have you figured out what that business is?” Tam asked.

  “Yes. No. Maybe. As Ivanna of Seawind Dome claimed, all I have to do is stand still in one spot and the Oneverse will twist itself into knots trying to get to me.”

  “By all the goddesses,” Megan breathed out in dismay. “I do not like the sound of that.”

  “It is far worse than you can imagine,” Che agreed. “All I can do is forewarn you of the danger. I have no specific threat to put a face to yet. Just dark clouds on the horizon.”

  “Do not worry. We will fight whatever comes at us,” Tam said with his usual self-assured confidence, hugging her close to his side.

  Che grimaced. That was exactly what she was afraid of.

  After dinner that evening, Tam and Alain took the young boys to the riverbank and taught them the long stick form. Standing in organized lines, the boys learned the basic movements. The girls, not allowed to participate, watched from the sidelines with hungry eyes.

  Megan and Cheobawn sat, sheltered behind a stack of packing crates from the cool evening breeze, and watched. Gurta found them there, a basket of healing supplies on her hip. She insisted on inspecting Che’s back. Susa, and Jilly gathered to watch. The oldma clucked like a mother hen as she inspected the stitches and applied a new layer of ointment before re-wrapping her chest. “You have not been kind to your body today. I suppose it would be too much to ask to keep her in bed tomorrow?” Greta said to Megan.

  Che opened her mouth to argue.. Megan pinched her thigh. “Be good,” she hissed. Looking up at the healer, Megan smiled. “Thank you, Mother. I will try. But you know how it is with little ones. It is hard to keep them abed when they think they are healed.”

  Gerta laughed, nodding. “I have raised up my own. I know this well.”

  The oldma gathered up her supplies and took them back to her hut. The little girls stayed and watched as Megan helped Cheobawn back into her shirt. Jilly drew near, Susa following close behind. She patted Cheobawn’s hand in sympathy. “Do you want to see our dolls?” she asked, thinking to make Che feel better.

  Che smiled down at her. “I would love to see your dolls.” It was Megan’s turn to snort in disbelief. Cheobawn gave her heartsister a cool smile. She knew how to act the diplomat when the moment required.

  Jilly grinned and grabbed her hand, tugging Che to her feet. Megan rose and put her hand under Che’s elbow to help her stand. The little girls pulled them over to a storage crate that had been turned upside down. On its top a grand feast had been laid out. Roughly-formed dishes made by tiny fingers of mud from the riverbank—service for six—had been placed carefully atop a frayed piece of canvas. Old, weathered belaying pins stood at each place setting. Someone had carved a face into hafts of the pins. Some wore skirts and capes of the brightly printed cloth. Bits of white cloth and red yarn—tied artfully around them—gave others the appearance of hedge witches.

  Che touched the bit of colorful cloth. The image of Spider was unmistakable. “Where did you get this cloth?”

  “From Mama,” the little girl said defensively.

  “No, I did not mean to imply that you stole it. Which Elder of your village makes it?”

  Jilly shrugged. “We get it from another village. We trade baskets and wood carvings for it.”

  “Which village?” Che asked.

  “I don’t know. The one with the hedge witch.”

  The images of Spider dancing upon the waves could have only come from Spider’s mind. Was Spider fiddling with Lowlander’s dreams, inserting a species memory into the minds of the hedge witches? Or did magic run deep, here in the wild parts of Occonomara? Cheobawn pointed at the Spider. “Do you dream of Spider?”

  Both Jilly and Susa stared at her in horror.

  Megan nudged Cheobawn aside. “They are lovely,” she said, picking up one of the dolls. “Did you carve them yourself?”

  “I drew the faces. Papa did the carving,” replied Jilly.

  “Which one is your father?” Megan asked.

  Jilly pointed to the group of men who had gathered to watch Tam and Alain move through the staff form. “That one is Papa.”

  “Distar is your father?” Cheobawn asked. “Is he a good fighter?”

  “The best in the village,” Jilly nodded. “That is what mama says.”

  And yet he did not want his daughter to learn how to fight. Cheobawn shook her head. The Lowlanders were all mad. A mad idea of her own popped into her head.

  “Do you have more of these pins?” Che asked. “I know a game called bowling. I am sure that I can beat everyone here. Do you want me to teach you?”

  “Oh, yes please!” Jilly and Susa said together as they scampered over to a crate full of random pieces of flotsam plucked from the currents of the river. It held a dozen belaying pins in varying states of decay, their wood weathered to a smooth, silvery patina.

  Che took out six and set them up in a triangle just as Sam had taught her. Then she stepped out the paces that counted for 20 feet and scuffed her heel in the dust, making a line. “This is the foul line. You can’t step over it. Now. Let me show you how to throw.”

  Che took a pin and sent it sailing through the air. The healer’s salve had worked. The stitches did not pull at her skin. The bela
ying pin hit the lead pin just off center and sent it spinning into the others. Four others fell over. “That is 40 points. If I would have knocked all of them down it would have been 60 plus another 50.”

  “110,” nodded Susa.

  “Ah,” smiled Megan, “someone has been teaching you your numbers.”

  “Very good,” Cheobawn said. “When you throw, I want you to imagine that the lead pin is an evil pirate come to steal your sisters. Hit him as hard as you can.”

  Susa scattered pins left and right with her first throw. Cheobawn shouted in delight. “Well done!”

  Jilly was next. She managed to take out a few pins, even with a throw that was wide. Other little girls gathered around. Cheobawn taught them how to hold the pins and how to step into the throw, using their whole body to put force behind their arm. By bed time, the girls had a healthy competition going and all of them could hit the lead pin dead center.

  Megan had been watching from the sidelines. Che joined her and walked by her side towards the hay loft in the barn.

  “I thought Mowatt made himself clear. He does not want the females armed.”

  “What?” Che said innocently, a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. “It is just a game.”

  “You have killed using those pins, admit it.”

  “Nothing more than a few rats.”

  “They are hard to catch,” Megan nodded,.”On the barge, I tried to kill them with knives but they are swift and canny. They chew through the hull and eat the ropes. The rivermen hate them.,” Megan nodded.

  “They are stowaways from the stars. I am still trying to solve that conundrum. The Lowlanders poison them but that has had the exact opposite effect from what was intended for some reason. Rat-magic must be powerful stuff.”

  “That would make sense. It got them off the planet of their birth and across the vast expanse of space to come to Occonomara. Are you teaching the little girls to kill rats?”

  “No. Pirates and Outlaws. One pin will make a man think twice about risking another. Well placed, it might even knock him down. I doubt these Little Mothers have the strength to actually kill someone. We could only hope.”

  Megan stopped, shocked. “Ch’che! You cannot mean to teach those girls to kill men.”

  “No. I am teaching them how to defend themselves. If someone should die as a consequence, then, to my mind, they deserve it.”

  Megan stared at her. Cheobawn looked away, not wanting her heartsister to see the thing that wanted to climb out of her soul and eat the world. There was a broken child stuck in the dark somewhere inside her heart who wanted the world to share in her pain. Perhaps the death of a few bad men would quench the fire smoldering there.

  Megan put her arm around her little sisterwife and hugged her close. Brave Megan, Che thought. She would not touch me if she knew what I have tucked behind the walls of my mind.

  After a brief moment of stiffness, Cheobawn relaxed into the embrace and hugged Megan back.

  Chapter 13

  Che opened her eyes and listened to the night. The stitches on her back itched, her ribs ached, and the bruise on her hip reminded her it was there every time she moved. Maybe if she held perfectly still, sleep would return. But the air in the loft was too stuffy. Her brain was infected with an unquenchable restlessness and the deep cold of her dreams kept the comfort of sleep far from her mind. For some reason her conversation with Kirr hung at the front of her brain, haunting her.

  She sent her Ear out into the ambient, looking for something to distract her mind. Bear Under the Mountain grumbled sleepily, ignoring her.

  “Stupid Bear,” she whispered, leaving him to his slumber.

  Moonlight filtered through the gaps between the planks of the walls. The carrion dragons, anticipating her movement, dropped out of the rafters one by one and flitted out the loft door.

  She wanted to wake Megan, but held her hand from the place where her Alpha Ear lay curled around Susa and Jilly. They were not intimidated by the threat of Cheobawn’s magic enough to stay away. Somewhere in the long house, Tam and the rest of her Pack slept with the other bachelors. Plans had been made to join the village men on tomorrow’s fishing expedition. The tiniest of the Little Fathers had been catching bait fish for days in the traps set in the shallows. Tomorrow the Elders would bait the big weighted hooks and fish for the fierce deep-water fish who swam in voracious schools out in the middle of the River Liff.

  Che wanted to crawl into Tam’s bunk and let him wrap his arms around her, in hopes that he could keep her monsters a bay. Or Alain, who would wake without complaint but then ask her all sorts of pointed questions, none of which she had answers for. No. She would let them sleep.

  The world . . . itched. She waited.

  Ever since the rat incident, one of her Pack was always by her side. It made it impossible to think clearly. One thing she knew for certain. She was tired of being treated like a child. Tired of being treated like she was fragile. Tired of being guarded by someone every minute of the day. The magic of the Coven, worked long ago at the moment of her birth, was in motion. The threats to her person hovered overhead like a snow-laden slope getting ready to release an avalanche. The Hegemony had gotten its fingers singed trying to kidnap her, losing a starship in the process, the bits of which were still raining down through the upper atmosphere as a nightly display of shooting stars. But if they were anything else, they were persistent. The next time they tried to kidnap her, the consequences would be far more deadly. The Scerrons were terrified of her and it was they—behind the scenes—who manipulated the minds of those in power. For the life of her, she could not figure out the moment in time when Oud had become her enemy. The powered elite of Dunauken—both legitimate and nefarious—were far more learned in the ways of the domes. The tacit agreement had always been that if they interfered with the Highlanders they risked ending the bloodstone trade. And yet the Scerrons and the Spacers had inserted themselves into the planet politics making things were swinging out of balance.

  Those problems had not been pressing enough to lose sleep over—until now. Something she had done recently had shifted the powers against her.

  Cheobawn held her breath. The silence was like a living thing, caressing her inside and out. Even the moonlight had a weight, making her itch wherever it touched her skin. The night beckoned.

  Che eased out of the nest in the straw and padded to the door of the loft to stare out at the River Liff. Her carrion dragons hung from the eaves above her head, eyes glittering in the moonlight, waiting. The barn was made of a wondrous hodge-podge of lumber pulled from the river. Driftwood and planks, the ribs of a giant fish and the decks of salvaged boats. Everything disgorged from the river had found a place in their building right down to the ridge-line of the roof which was made from the keel of an old sloop. Using fingers and toes to find leverage in the old, cracked wood on the side of the barn, she climbed up to join her dragons. Once over the eaves, she scrambled up the moss-covered wood shakes to the keel.

  Like a great psi predator, she balanced on the balls of her feet and stretched herself wide. The ambient flooded into her mind. Che brushed against the dreams of the villagers. Blackwind Pack was wearing out their welcome in this place. These were simple people whose way of life was set in stone. It seemed stifling to her, but it was how they survived. Distar carried the brass knuckles on his person. His peril tugged heavily at her mind. She should not have taken them from the barge guard. She should not have gifted them to Distar. She should not have agreed to allow their sale in the markets of Dunauken tomorrow. People were not to be trusted. A Lowlander’s word was worth nothing. No matter what Distar’s intentions were, no matter what he told the craftsman who worked in brass, the metal-smith would make more money selling an already crafted object over the weight of the melted brass. He would sell it to the kind of people—dregs, Kirr had called them—who had no qualms about using brass knuckles as a weapon.

  Cheobawn let her mind f
ollow that thought down into its deep, dark hole. They were men who were not so squeamish about the feel of the bones of someone’s skull cracking under their fist. No. They would recognize the weapon and come looking for the thief who had stolen it. The barge guard had recognized her. He would know about the bounty on her head. She was a prize of great worth to those who had the will to exploit her gifts. If he were lucky, Distar would come away with nothing more than a split lip. If they were not so lucky the village would be awash in smugglers, pirates, and Dominick’s spies by the end of tomorrow. It was the best outcome she could hope for. Cheobawn pulled herself out of the ambient with a shudder.

  She could retrieve her brass knuckles. Keep them from going to Dunauken. Stop the inevitable from happening. But why stop it? This was as good a time as any to set these players into motion. Yes, it was time to play Mora’s War. But most importantly, it was time to hunt the hunter who wanted her dead.

  Clearing the shadowy threads of the underbelly of Dunauken from her mind, she went looking for things clean of such darkness. She found the lizards called Night who patrolled the shallows of the River Liff, hunting for the schools of little fingerling fish.

  For a time Cheobawn let herself get caught up in the joy of fishing with blue-tongue lures and sharp teeth.

  Bursts of angry energy soon distracted her, drawing her mind’s eye to Dunauken’s waterfront where the rat war still raged. She had started that war. The rats had been so utterly wrong and out-of-place when she first discovered them. It had been hard to resist—reaching into their minds, finding that special spot—their All Mind, trying to tune it to Tearmann’s harmonics so that they were not such an anomaly. It had worked, after a fashion. She had erred on the side of caution. The rat-nest in the warehouse where she was being held prisoner had succumbed to her seduction and joined the infinite All Mother and those rats went out onto the waterfront and found other rats. But the other rats were having none of it. Her new rats did not smell right, perhaps. Had she become Amabel’s apprentice, a Maker of the Living Thread? Had she fused the rat DNA into something new, something better, something whose vibrational energy played in harmony with all other life on this planet? Or perhaps it was just the planet, trying to take back what was stolen from it. Perhaps she had opened a door and let something powerful walk back into the world.