savage 04 - the savage vengeance

by Tamara Rose Blodgett

  He stopped short, the ache in his chest deepening, the itchiness increasing.

  It was when he saw a woman leap from a horse length away onto an armed fragment much larger than she that his mouth fell open in wonder.

  She was a sight of violent beauty.

  A long golden braid, as thick as his wrist undulated like a snake as she dove, dirks high above her head like silver talismans, readying for the strike.

  And that they did. Punching twin holes of death into the thickest part of the fragment's neck. Incapacitating him. She dealt the death blow without mercy, criss-crossing the blades, taking most of his neck away from his body in a practiced cross slash.

  He turned his head, seeing the fragment sneak his way behind her, unsheathing his long sword to cut the fineness of her down as the coward he was.

  Daniel leaped forward to save her when she whirled in a motion almost too fast to track.

  But track it he did, seeing the throat slits, fully open to the rich oxygen of the forest.

  His step faltered. She would know what he was. Without gills but Band nonetheless. He shook off his reserve, surging forward. A female of the Band ringing a note of protection in his soul in a sickening adrenaline punch that caused his teeth to thrum in response. The blood of the Band overrode the fragment side of his genetics in one gigantic pulse.

  As he came for her he saw her whirl backward, using an avoidance maneuver so smooth, he understood she had employed it many times before this moment.

  He was almost upon her when she tore a hole in the belly of the fragment. Even as his entrails slipped from his body, the male's sword bore down on her. Daniel stretched his body forward, meeting the tip of the downward arc with a clanging resistance as he barred its progress but inches from her face.

  She shoved the fragment's gutted body away like trash and Daniel checked the weapon so it would not advance into her.

  They looked at each other for one interminable moment and with a move meant to disable, not kill, she jabbed her hand into his throat. He fell to his knees, gagging. He could not breathe, and thought how handy throat slits would have been for him now.

  He rolled onto his side, his hands clutching his abused throat, gasping for air as he'd seen the fish from the river do when they were on his hook.

  She bent down over his face and said in a whisper, “Aye, I thank you fragment.”

  He drew in great breaths, and caught her fragrance in his nostrils, scent recognition blooming to life. She was the thing of legend, the most sought after female in their world.

  A select.

  He was Band enough to know it and fragment enough to want it.

  She turned and without a backward glance, leapt over the bodies of the fallen and clutched the women to her, herding them out of the bowels of the wood, a womb without mercy.

  Without life.

  Calia came back from the recollection slowly. She could never get the fragment's eyes out of her mind. They haunted her. She knew what he was, that he was part and parcel of the faction that she hunted, undermined... stole from. However, she could not reconcile his tender protection of her with what he was.

  Unless that ache she had felt as a dull throb in her chest meant something more.

  Abusing him after he protected her had been the most difficult challenge she had ever encountered. More so than the three fragment she had slaughtered in her last raid. More than the two she had killed to free the three women of the clan, returning them secretly and with their assurances of silence.

  It had been worse. Her eyes burned with tears of shame. Clenching her eyes together tightly she hated that she had left him with the gift of her hand at his throat. Tears threatened.

  They did not fall.

  Calia had never cried.

  Resolve straightened her spine. She had a singular purpose: save the lone female.

  Forget the fragment.

  The one who bewitched with eyes so deep she fell into the endless well of their depths. Bound.

  Captured.

  It is what they had held that she could not rid herself of. Something she longed for and was afraid of in equal parts.

  Hope.

  Calia turned, moving from trunk to trunk, slinking closer to her quarry.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Clara

  Clara came awake, the stars greeting her, the pain a throbbing disaster at her temple.

  Her memories of the insurgence of the fragment fresh.

  Her memories of Caesar's subsequent capture and squiring her away, fresher still.

  She did not move her head quickly. Raw experience served as a cruel reminder of what awaited quick movement. Instead, she carefully sat up and was greeted by a head that did not swim. Puzzled, Clara stretched out her limbs. She took in her surroundings. She noted with dismay that a large fragment had taken her. Many bodies lay about in various states of repose. Most were deeply asleep. It had been many months since she had felt the sting of acute fear as she felt it now.

  Clara found she had not missed it.

  With the threat of sphere-life as she knew it ending, Clara tried to reconcile the two objectives and found that her survival was still of the utmost importance. After all, how could she recover and protect her sphere if she no longer lived? If her life as an integral part of the sphere was no more and a new one began as part of the criminal element of the fragment?

  Nay, she must escape even if she was not well. How many times had she escaped additional abuse and hardship at the hand of Ada and lived to serve her people another day?

  Many.

  She would persevere at all costs.

  Clara slowly moved outside her bedroll, her eyes constantly moving about her restlessly. Her sole purpose to disentangle her legs and find herself free, returning to the sphere.

  The Kingdom of Kentucky.

  When she felt a hand suddenly cover her mouth to stifle whatever sound she may produce, Clara stiffened. She never noticed what was so odd about it.

  The size.

  The size of the hand which stilled her voice was all wrong.

  Too small.

  Too small by far.

  *

  Calia looked down on the woman and knew immediately that the blood of the Band flowed within those royal veins. How did she ken that the tiny woman who she restrained so easily was royal?

  The crown told the story, Calia thought with mirth. Yes, indeed. She had been about the rescue of a sphere-dweller, no great thing, that. Instead, she had stumbled upon a woman such as herself, yet of the sphere as well.

  A mystery to be sure.

  Calia very much liked mysteries. She intended to make the most of it.

  She felt the woman stiffen and jerked her from her station, the legs that had been entangled in the bedding sack, falling away with the force of her pull. She weighed nothing. She was the smallest woman Calia had ever captured.

  It would be the utmost of ease.

  *

  Clara bucked in the woman's grasp and it was like warm copper, at once pliable and strong. She was instantly afraid. With the males of the fragment, one was certain of their mindset. They took all females. It was their way. With one female for fifteen, their desperation drove off any shred of intellect or compassion. It was a primal impulse followed without regard for anything other than instinct. What of this female? The strength of a male but looking like she would enjoy respite with needlepoint? A fierce combination of feminine grace and lithe strength, seemingly poised on the cusp of violence.

  Clara was unsure if she should not take her chances with the fragment.

  However, the female made up Clara's mind for her by pulling her out of her bedding roll with such force that the linen slid away without purchase. She looped a small and supple arm around Clara's waist and dragged her away from behind. The flash of silver that was her blade glittered an ominous light in the gloom of the moonlight, shattered by the canopy of tree cover.

  Clara watched as the fragment lay quietly all around th
e forest as fallen trees, a lone female taking their prize as they slept.

  When Calia was certain the royal would not put up a fight she released her. Using the universal gesture for quiet Calia demanded silence by pressing her pointing finger upon her full lips. The royal nodded once, her crown askew, her attire lavish. Calia smirked. She was obviously accustomed to a soft lifestyle full of luxury and the like. Calia looked into her eyes and found a sad knowledge within their depths. It was striking really. The woman appeared so innocent. She would appeal to any male. Mainly because of how fragile she appeared.

  Calia liked that she was strong and self-contained. She did not need a male to protect her.

  She never had. Many had died thinking they would take what was not theirs to have and become her benefactor.

  On the contrary.

  Dead is what they became.

  A cruel smile curled her lips as she wrenched the young woman's hand and towed her behind her.

  To safety.

  Clara's shoulder burned where the female had nearly jerked it out of its socket. Had she asked for cooperation, it was very likely that Clara would have offered it. After all, until she knew what everything was about, silence would benefit her greatly.

  Finally they stopped beside a small stream.

  Clara watched as the woman's eyes moved restlessly in the gloom. Apparently satisfied that they were safe for the moment she said, “Drink.”

  Clara did. She was careful not to allow any water on her throat. She thought this even as she watched the gills on the female flare open and closed as she breathed.

  Band.

  She was a rare female of the Band.

  So like Clara's mother that it caused an ache to bloom unbidden inside her breastbone.

  Clara sat upright and wiped the back of her hand against her mouth in a most unroyal gesture. She giggled and realized at once that the stress of all that had happened was leaking about her like a pungy with a pierced bow.

  Calia's brows drew together in a frown. Perhaps she had acquired one of the sphere-dwellers that had gone soft in the head. The rumors were rampant as to the interbreeding that went on inside the spheres. Anything in the least objectionable in their lines was at once magnified by intermarrying too closely. Calia already had little respect for the sphere-dwellers as it were. Weak and insufficient. Who would they be if left to their own devices in the open?

  Nothing.

  Clara watched the frown pucker the perfect skin of the female and smiled at her. Clearly she thought Clara daft. It was too ridiculous and of course, Clara wished to laugh all the more.

  That would not do. Holding back her mirth with an effort, since it was incongruous to the circumstance, she smoothed her features. Calling on every ounce of royal bearing she had ever possessed she addressed her new captor.

  “I am Clara, Queen of the Kingdom of Ohio.” Clara stood, smoothing her least formal royal attire and straightening her ludicrous crown. Made even more ostentatious by the environment in which she found herself. There was no place for jewels and gold in the wilderness of Outside.

  She watched the female sheath the blade in its holder and look about her once more. Saying nothing, she dipped a flask into the stream, catching the cool water as its path crossed the narrow mouth. Full, she lifted it to her mouth and took a long pull, her eyes meeting Clara's with cautious regard.

  Clara returned it.

  “I am Calia,” she said, closing the top of the flask with a practiced turn and snap. She turned, tying it to the side of a garment that allowed obscene portions of flesh to be revealed. Clara allowed herself that private moment to stare at the female.

  It was the dead of the night, so everything was silvered. Her blades, a dull pewter as the women stood motionless by the riverside. Her hair lay in a thick plait that reached a waist that was quite narrow. Not as small as Clara's, but for her height, very similar. Her bosom was constrained by a twine wrapped tunic that knotted between her breasts, the leather twisting back to run the length of her sides, pockets of her skin flashing at the openings.

  Calia caught her staring and a horrendous heat climbed Clara's body. She was acutely embarrassed at her lack of propriety. Save her mother, she had never met a female of the Band.

  She was something to behold. Clara herself was Band. But not near so much.

  “You are bold for one of the sphere,” Calia commented.

  “And what experience do you have of my people?” Clara asked in her forthright manner.

  “Bold indeed.” Calia's smile turned into a grin. She thought she might like this female of the sphere.

  Very much.

  *

  “Your name... it is said as the flower which grows aside the marsh? The Calla Lily?” Clara asked.

  Calia tilted her head to the side and shrugged. “I know not.”

  There was a look in her eyes... Clara recognized it.

  “Do you... where do you hail from?”

  Calia's face fell into neutral lines and Clara pressed. “You are fragment?”

  The knife lay below Clara's tender throat before she had taken her next breath.

  Calia whispered, “You would do very well not to ask questions such as those.”

  Clara dared not swallow.

  Calia met her eyes and took the blade away slowly.

  Clara breathed, letting out a shaky exhalation. She touched her throat where the cold steel had just been and said, “I meant no offense, although I have the lowest regard for the fragment.” Save one, Clara thought, her mind's eye on Daniel.

  Calia saw her hesitation on the word and wondered on it.

  “I have been many years but in the company of myself.” Her eyes dropped and then shifted back to Clara's. “I was once in the heart of the fragment. I learned their ways, their patterns. When I came of age...” Her voice trailed off and she looked away, staring at the horizon, dawn but a promise as she remembered her last days amongst the fragment.

  *

  Calia was but ten and two when the first of the mutterings of her trade began. The fragment was well-aware of her status. She would fetch the highest price for her gene pool. What it afforded to the fragment. And she was untried. She must never forget that.

  A virgin garnered a deep purse for that faction, one beyond measure.

  It disgusted Calia; they were vile. She loathed them with an abiding rage. Taken from her true clan when she was but an infant, she knew not from whence she hailed. The other children her age abhorred her existence. What she represented.

  Some of the males of the fragment cared less about the riches they stood to obtain and more about possessing a female of the Band. There had been a terrible rumor she had heard since she was a child about a poor female of the Band. Subjected to unspeakable handling, ultimately, she had borne a son of one of the fragment. Despondent after the birth, understanding what her future held, she had ended her misery by snuffing out the flame of her horrible existence.

  But what of the child? That part of the tale had been murky.

  It was then that Calia made a vow she would never break. She would not be a plaything of the fragment. A novelty of breeding stature. It was not the fault of her gender that there were so little females.

  There were murmurings within the small female population of the fragment that in other places dwelt peace and equality for females.

  Calia scoffed at this. It was obvious that it was a complete myth. Abuse and suffering were all she had ever known.

  She had the scars to prove it.

  As did they.

  Her memory of escape trembled on the chasm of reflection. She allowed it to come, flowing over her like soothing water.

  Whenever Calia was lonely, which was often, she thought upon it. When she was bereft due to her circumstances, she would think on her escape. It lessened her loneliness, the comparison of what was, weighing against the present.

  Calia had always been proficient with her memory and insightful in teachings. She never forgot a les
son, a need, a want... a slight. She was especially astute with weapons. Some of the fragment had seen that she was gifted with weaponry. However rare, she was used in battle when she was but nine years. Calia fought alongside the youngest of the fragment, males aged ten and three and older.

  When the third enemy fragment lay bleeding out at her feet and her home fragment piled the spoils onto the leather tarps that the horses began to lead away, a large male came to her and said, “Calia, wipe your blade. Clean your weapon of the grime of battle. Are you daft girl?” He cuffed her so hard her head rang. Calia had gripped the handle of the dirk until her hand became numb, his death a taste on her tongue. He saw her expression and grunted with vindictive pleasure.

  Her mind's eye affixed on his future demise. Set at that precise moment.

  He was the first that she killed on that fateful night of her escape, his death was a sweet balm upon her soul.

  She had waited in her bedroll, knowing that the ones that would take her before she was ready, before she could be traded had come within killing distance.

  When they were close enough to kiss she would meet them with her blade.

  With death.

  Clara watched Calia stare off into the distance and recognized the expression. She did not interrupt her thoughts until the sky had lightened. When it had been nearly thirty minutes and Clara grew tired from standing within the silence of her reflection she said softly, “Calia.”

  Nothing.

  She repeated her name and the female started.

  Calia startled at her name and realized she had been taken along the swift current of her memories. A river that branched in every direction. She sighed, looking at the woman she had rescued. She seemed hardly more than a girl.

  Except for the eyes.

  Those were ancient.

  They gazed at each other a moment longer. “Let us go,” Calia said.