Queens (The Wielders of Arantha Book 2)

by Patrick Hodges

  When Kelia had made her first journey to the mountains, she'd traveled a path that involved using her air-Wielding to lift her chava, Fex, to the top of a rock-face they couldn't climb on their own. Unfortunately, Maeve didn't possess this ability, so they had to take an even longer, more winding route.

  From another saddlebag, Davin produced the small computer he'd had on him when transporting himself and Maeve to the Ixtrayu village. Maeve had asked that he bring it with them for just this scenario, along with the four defunct personal transporters.

  It took several minutes for the unit to connect with the Talon's onboard computer and scan the region's topographical data for a safe path through the mountains, after which the three of them remounted their chavas and bore south. Following the computer's directions, they rode a winding, circuitous path leading from the desert to the dry riverbed that, Maeve knew, led to the mountain lake next to which she'd landed the ship.

  Deeper and deeper they went. Rounding a bend, Maeve brightened when she beheld the ugly, craggy monster of a peak she'd seen out the Talon's forward viewport every time she checked the surveillance feeds. Only a few more minutes, and the path would open up, finally emerging onto the long-dry riverbed that would lead them back to the ship.

  “Keep an eye out,” Maeve called to Runa, as loudly as she dared. “We confirmed that two packs of lyraxes live and hunt in this area. I know they don't usually come out until the sun sets, but still …”

  Runa, ever attentive, unfastened her bow and quiver from where it hung at Tal's side. She slung the quiver over her back, chose one arrow and held it in her right hand along with her bow. She then urged Tal forward, her eyes flicking left and right, on the lookout for anything hostile.

  Maeve cast wary glances at the sloping hills on either side of the path they traversed, instructing Davin to watch the trail behind them. Apart from a few burrowing rodents that reminded Maeve of skinny gophers, she saw nothing.

  Their slow, vigilant journey eventually brought them to familiar territory, and Maeve breathed in relief as they rounded the final bend, revealing the majestic avian shape of the Talon in the distance, only a half-mile away. Just behind its black-and-silver hull, slightly obscured from view, was the excavator they'd used to find the Stone, buried deep within the mountain.

  They'd made it.

  Davin moved to hop off Zob's back, but Maeve stopped him. “Not yet, kiddo. There might be snakes nearby. We don't want a repeat of that incident.”

  “Fark no,” he said. She felt his back muscles tense as he cast his eyes to the dirt of the riverbed, as if a multitude of poisonous vipers lay just inches below the soil.

  Davin tugged on the thin but wiry strands of hair that grew out of Zob's neck, the signal to stop. Zob pulled right alongside Tal, who had also stopped. Maeve grinned wryly, amused at the look of awe on Runa's face as she gazed in stunned silence at the Talon.

  “So what do you think?” Davin asked, also clearly amused by Runa's facial display. “Pretty riff, huh?”

  “ 'Riff'?” Runa queried, her eyes not moving from the ship.

  “It's an Earth term. It means 'impressive',” Maeve clarified.

  The huntress gave a slow, almost reverent nod. “You traveled across the Above in that?”

  “Yes,” Maeve said.

  The faintest of smiles cracked onto Runa's face. “Truly wondrous. I am glad that you are our ally. I daresay even the most iron-willed man would cower in the face of … that.”

  “That's my hope as well,” Maeve said, gently kicking Zob into motion again. “Come on. Time's a-wasting. Every minute we dally is another minute before we get back home.”

  “Agreed,” Runa said, and she urged Tal into motion again.

  Fifty yards from the Talon, Maeve's ears pricked up when a strange sound floated past them. “What was that?”

  “What was what?” Davin asked.

  “It sounded like a … a snort,” Maeve said.

  “I heard it too,” Runa said, her back ramrod-straight as she nocked the arrow into her bow. They strained their ears, listening for the slightest out-of-place sound as they inched the chavas forward.

  Then came another snort. And a third.

  “I heard that,” Davin said, his back muscles tensing again. “Where is it coming from?”

  The next sound was not a snort, but a trickle. Off to their right, a cascade of pebbles and dirt slid downhill. Maeve fixed her gaze on the top of the hill. A shadowy form appeared for the briefest moment before vanishing.

  A shuffling noise came from their left, followed by another tiny avalanche of stones.

  “Runa!” Maeve called. “We're not alone!”

  Before either Maeve or Runa could instruct the other to retreat, a crescendo of hoofbeats came from behind them. Through a narrow gap in the rocks branching off from the riverbed, five men emerged, one after the other. Each one was draped in metal armor like medieval soldiers. Completing the image from the holo-vids she'd seen about that era in Earth's history were the animals they rode, which from this distance resembled Earth horses. Merychs, her brain corrected.

  Upon seeing them, the men drew their weapons. Three of them wielded nasty-looking swords, while the other two readied their bows to fire.

  The blood drained from Maeve's face. Five men, and the only weapon they had between them was Runa's bow. It wouldn't be enough.

  “Head for the ship!” she screamed, kicking Zob's side hard. “We'll be safe if we make it inside! Dav, tell the computer to lower the ramp!”

  The chase seemed to happen in slow motion. Davin's fingers fumbled as he furiously tapped the tiny console strapped to his arm. At a full gallop, Maeve knew their chavas could easily outpace their pursuers' merychs, but they would run out of real estate the second they hit the shores of the lake.

  Maeve inwardly cheered as she observed the exit ramp of the ship descend, finally touching the dirt of the riverbed. She prepared to hop off the chava's back the moment they pulled alongside the Talon, hoping Davin and Runa would follow right behind her.

  Thirty yards. Twenty. Ten.

  A hiss of the air being rent assaulted Maeve's ears, followed by the sickening thud of an arrow piercing the folds of Zob's neck. A second immediately followed, driving itself into the chava's side. Zob gave a gurgling howl that echoed down the wadi. The poor creature's legs buckled, and she face-planted right into the dirt.

  More arrows whizzed by as first Davin, then Maeve tumbled from Zob's back, landing hard on the ground of the riverbed. Another agonized cry disrupted the silent dusk, but this one did not come from Zob. It came from Tal. This was followed by a distinctly female scream.

  Maeve felt a jarring pain in her shoulder as she tried to scramble to her feet. Her efforts were met with a kick to the ribcage, driving the breath from her lungs. She clutched her stomach as she rolled onto her back, prepared to lash out at whoever had attacked them.

  Then came the sensation of the sharp edge of a blade against the soft tissue of her throat. This was followed by a voice so icy it chilled her blood to hear it. “Ya so much as twitch, I'm gonna see what color yer blood is, alien.”

  Within seconds, five men surrounded her, and each one had a lethal weapon pointed at her. The one who had spoken, a thickset man with a short brown beard, loomed over her, glaring at her with glacier-blue eyes.

  She felt her Irish blood boil. Just an inch of room, that's all she'd need to put these arseholes down. No matter what these primitives thought they knew about fighting, it couldn't hold a candle to Space Corps combat training. Her mind ran through a dozen ways she could get the upper hand. Captain Brownbeard would be the first to go down. A dozen Irish curses gathered at the back of her throat, just waiting for release.

  The man actually smiled, taking delight in her fury. “Ahh, I know that look. I've seen it hundreds of times. Whatever yer thinkin', woman, ya best get it outta yer head, unless ya want us to lop yer boy's head off.”

  Her heart froze. “Davin?” she forced
out. The blade hadn't moved from her neck.

  He chuckled. “So that's his name. What's yers? I never met anyone from the Above before.”

  “Fark you, shite-breath,” she spat.

  He moved his sword away from her neck, but kept the point flush against her sternum. “I'm gonna let ya up. Ya gonna behave?”

  Not bloody likely.

  “Ya best say yes, or yer lady-friend dies right now,” he said. She had no doubt he meant it.

  So Davin and Runa were still alive. For now.

  “Yes,” she said, averting her eyes.

  “Good.” Continuing to hold his sword in front of him, he and his comrades took several steps back.

  Taking this action as permission to stand, Maeve climbed to her feet. It didn't take long to assess the situation. Bile churned in her stomach as she looked over the faces of her captors. Twelve men in all, many of them looking at her with a mixture of paranoia and fear, as if afraid she might blast them all with death-rays from her eyes at that moment. If only.

  Her chest tightened as she beheld the bleeding, lifeless corpses of Zob and Tal, and the rust-colored pool that had formed around their heads. A dozen arrows protruded from their massive bodies.

  She scanned the area for Davin and Runa, spotting them, on their knees and with their hands bound, about twenty yards away. Davin looked uninjured save for a patch of raw skin on his cheek, but Runa was another matter. She was bleeding from gashes on both her forehead and her lip, and her right eye had swollen shut. She obviously hadn't gone down without a fight. On the ground nearby lay her bow, broken in half.

  Two men stood behind Runa and Davin, each with a sword held only inches away from them, ready to strike them dead at the slightest provocation. Nine others flicked their gazes between Maeve and Brownbeard. Obviously, he was the one in charge.

  Brownbeard lowered his sword, holding it slackly at his side. “Yer a soldier, ain't ya?”

  She met his gaze, somewhat taken aback by his powers of deduction, but did not respond.

  “Thought so,” he said. “The way ya stand, the defiance in yer eyes. Once ya've seen battle, there's no way ta hide it. Guess we ain't so different after all.”

  Maeve clenched her fists at her sides, wanting nothing more than to smash Brownbeard's smug face in. “What do you want?”

  He nodded. “Straight ta business, huh? Fine.” He strode up, standing chest-to-chest with her. He even stuck out his chin, as if daring her to make a move. “Ya have a Stone. My Lord, Elzor, wants it. Yer gonna give it ta me.” He used his sword to gesture at Davin and Runa. “Or they die, slowly, right in front o' ya.”

  She looked at Davin, her heart skipping a beat when she saw the terror in his eyes. She gave him a motherly nod, trying to reassure him.

  She shot her most vicious glare at Brownbeard. “You lay a finger on him, and my people,” she cast an ominous glance skyward, “will lay waste to this world.” An utter lie, but hey, she reasoned, why not put the fear of the Big Bad Alien into these bastards?

  Brownbeard actually laughed, a deep, crackling guffaw. Several others joined him. “Ya think me a fool, woman? Ya ain't got nobody, and I know it. Yer all alone. So stop wastin' my time and get me the blagging Stone!”

  Shite.

  “How do I know you won't just kill us anyway?”

  With a grimace, he gestured at the soldier standing behind Runa, who raised his sword high. One thrust, and the huntress would die.

  “I got two prisoners,” Brownbeard said. “I only need one.”

  Runa had regained some semblance of consciousness. She stared at Maeve with her one good eye, her mouth set into a firm line. She nodded, almost imperceptibly, at Maeve.

  No.

  “Jabel,” Brownbeard addressed the soldier behind Runa, “kill her.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Maeve and Runa's chavas had no sooner disappeared into the distance than Kelia's morning devolved into pure chaos.

  The remaining chavas, forty in all, would be pushed to their limits today. The first group of evacuees would include Eloni as well as Liana's daughter Hathi, the lead gatherer for the tribe. They, along with several huntresses, would make their temporary lodgings comfortable as well as defensible. Kelia prayed that it was indeed the Stone and not her tribe's obliteration that was their enemies' objective. She took a small measure of comfort from the fact that most of her sisters would be well out of harm's way, and that the Ixtrayu would continue if the battle went badly for those who remained behind.

  It took much effort on Kelia's part to convince Katura to go with the first group as well. It had been decades since she'd ridden a chava, and the trip would not be a smooth ride. Kelia insisted Katura ride on Fex, her favorite mount and the swiftest animal on Elystra. Katura grudgingly accepted, and, over the next hour, every chava in the corral began their trek south.

  Kelia couldn't keep herself from glancing at the approaching storm clouds every other minute as if trying to keep them at bay by sheer force of will, but they refused to change direction or dissipate. By midday, the entire sky was a blanket of slate-grey, and a brisk wind had kicked up. A flash of lightning, still hours distant, struck an icicle of terror into her heart.

  Great Arantha, today is the day. Our grim fate approaches.

  Kelia sprinted up the staircase to the top of the Plateau, joining Nyla, Sarja, Zarina, and Yarji as they kept vigil on the northern face. The River Ix continued to flow below them, threading its way through the croplands until it disappeared into the forest a mile away.

  “Mama,” Nyla greeted her with a hug. “This is happening, isn't it?”

  “I'm afraid so, duma.” Kelia stared at her daughter, at the young woman and the incredibly powerful Wielder she'd become. Fighting down every motherly instinct she possessed to put Nyla on the next chava out of the village, she offered a confident smile.

  “Are we really going to have to … to kill?”

  Kelia closed her eyes, pressing her forehead against Nyla's. “Believe me, I didn't want it this way. I would have been happy for things to continue as they were for another eight hundred years, but Arantha's plans for us have changed.”

  She pulled away, addressing Yarji and Zarina. “I assure you, the idea of killing another Elystran soul is repugnant to me. But we have no choice. The men approaching want our Stone, and are willing to destroy anything and anyone that gets in their way. We cannot let them have it. Arantha has made you Wielders. You must show our enemies just what that means.”

  Yarji and Zarina exchanged glances, then nodded.

  “Wound if you can, kill if you must,” Kelia continued. “And conserve your strength whenever possible.”

  “Yes, Protectress,” they said. Nyla made a pained face.

  “Sarja,” Kelia addressed the young huntress, standing unobtrusively behind Nyla. “You are leaving with the next group.”

  “Protectress!” she cried in alarm. “No! I must stay! I can help defend the village!”

  “Please, Sar,” Nyla said softly, facing her Promised. “Do what she says. I have to stay. You don't.”

  “That's not fair! I may not be a Wielder, but I can still shoot a bow!”

  Kelia put a hand on Sarja's shoulder. “This is not up for debate. You must do as I ask.”

  Under the weight of Kelia's frown, Sarja's shoulders slumped. “Yes, Protectress.” She cast a mournful look at Nyla. “May we … have a moment to say goodbye?”

  Kelia nodded. “Of course.” She then headed for the staircase leading down, Yarji and Zarina right behind her.

  The trio made their way to the dining area, where only the remnants of the morning meal awaited them. All of the preserved kova meat had been packed onto the chavas, which left only a few scant pieces of slightly overripe riverfruit for them to eat. Kelia selected one of the yellow-orange fruits, used a knife to section it, and passed it out to her sister Wielders. The room was empty of Ixtrayu, so they chewed their food in tense silence.

  “I'm scared,
Protectress,” Zarina said, and Kelia could see the terror in her eyes. “Not just for me, but for Bika.”

  “I know,” Kelia said. “But all is not lost. All we have to do is hold our ground until Maeve returns in her ship. I promise you, one sight of that will send our enemies running.” She allowed herself a slight smile. “And besides, we have four Wielders on our side. They only have one.”

  “We could have had five,” Yarji grumbled.

  Kelia didn't respond. Having Gladia fight alongside them would have improved their chances of victory tremendously, but it was not to be.

  * * *

  Nearly an hour later, the herd of Ixtrayu chavas returned. Hathi reported to Kelia that the first group, led by Eloni, had begun to set up their hidden camp at Lake Barix. Katura had survived the arduous journey, but was very much the worse for wear. Kelia asked Lyala to go with the second group, but she refused, insisting that a healer be present to tend the wounded during the battle. The elder healer shared a heartfelt moment with her daughter before Sershi departed. Even more heartfelt was the embrace shared by Nyla and Sarja before the young huntress, too, mounted a chava and galloped away.

  The final Ixtrayu to leave was Hathi, who pulled Liana aboard Fex's enormous back. “Take care, nima,” Liana said, tears pouring from her eyes. “You and Nyla keep each other safe, all right?”

  “We will, ama,” Kelia said, placing a protective arm around her daughter.

  “Onara would be so proud of you,” Liana said as Hathi nudged Fex into motion. “I love you so much!” And then they were gone, Fex's hoof beats fading into the distance.

  Kelia turned to face every Ixtrayu that remained, a group comprised of Nyla, Yarji, Zarina, Lyala, and thirty-five huntresses. All looked to her expectantly, their faces creased in barely controlled fear.