Bhyr

by Penelope Fletcher

  He lay there until he regained control of his limbs.

  Then he returned to his brothers and ordered them to burn and bury the dead.

  41

  Indira

  Whispers echoed along the walls. My hot rock fought against the growing dark, but its light was smothered by the stygian blackness.

  Blood turned to sludge in my veins and pounded in my ears. My eyes darted side to side looking for the danger creeping up on me. The cavern was a void that swallowed light and sound. Mouth dry, my throat clicked. I’d fallen into a horror show, a flimsy reel of heat damaged film flickering ominously towards its end.

  Boulders strewn in my path were fuzzy with phosphorescent mould. Thorny vines grew past my ankles and wreathed the floor in psychedelic colours that brightened when my light shone.

  Delicate blooms budding on the vine branches moved, as if the plant itself tried to capture my attention. Chill, clammy humidity caused by these plants and noxious fumes from their rotting deadfall plugged my nostrils, deadening that sense.

  My tread slowed to a lumbering shuffle.

  Footsteps came from every direction. Voices laughed in the dark. If aliens from another planet were real, why not restless spirits of the dead?

  ‘Ghosts.’ I squeaked, shitting myself and forgetting in no way did I believe in poltergeists.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ a ghost asked.

  ‘Noises in here are distorted by the crystals. Vzzt. The stench. We cannot wait to be free of this place.’

  My eyes widened. A huge grin spread across my face. I’d done it. I’d survived long enough to be found and rescued. I opened my mouth to yell, already thinking of Bhyr’s face when he saw me, his arms around tight around me, being warm and safe and loved….

  ‘As soon as Sah Rahm, the True First, wins the war and kills Hel Bhyr, the Betrayer, we can return home.’

  ‘This is good to hear. Our patience wanes.’

  ‘Rahm’s plan will not fail. That warrior is the smartest of our generation. We had word the spies already earn the foolish Betrayer’s trust.’

  My mouth hung open, then snapped shut.

  I looked left then right.

  Seeing nowhere to hide, I squatted where I was and hunkered low to the floor.

  I considered laying flat, but needed to be able to jump and run if they spotted me.

  ‘What is the light over there?’ the voice asked.

  I covered the hot rock with my stained mitten.

  ‘Again the crystals,’ said the second voice in a long suffering tone. ‘They treat light and sound in odd ways. You saw our light reflected. Nothing more. This place plays tricks on the mind. Come. Help finish dressing this kill. Its blood-scent draws the fangbeasts. I smell the reek of pack.’

  Pack?

  Something breathed behind me. I half choked, half swallowed what would have been a blood-curdling shriek.

  A stocky shape darker than its surroundings crept past me. Then another ghosted past until I squatted in midst of the pack. Their scales were rank with piss, rotten kill-blood and the potent musk of wild animal.

  Their breath was fetid and hot, and for the first time in hours, I was wasn’t freezing my ass off, telling me something of their number.

  Silent in its hunting crouch, the largest shadow glanced at me. Yellow eyes twinkled like stars.

  Dread covered me like a shroud and, knowing my fear would change my scent into something that smelled like prey, I repressed all knowledge of what the creatures could do. I had a name for them now. Fangbeasts. For a second, the alpha’s intent focused on me. A waft of air brought with it the scent of freshly spilled blood. Its attention snapped away.

  The creatures were predators, but it appeared they were scavengers foremost.

  Betas a step behind on the alpha’s flanks, a faint laughing-hiccup broke past its flattish muzzle as thin lips peeled back over needle-thin teeth.

  ‘Faster.’ The warrior’s gaze roamed the dark past his feeble light. ‘Leave them the innards. I am in no mood to fend off pests.’

  ‘But organ meat is the most nutritious.’

  ‘Leave it.’

  They finished their bloody work then left.

  As their footfalls drifted off, the pack descended in a stinking mass upon on the wash of entrails the warriors left behind.

  Cooled with dust, I put the hot rock in my pouch, choosing stealth over comfort. My thighs cramped, and my feet and calves had numbed, but I embraced the pins and needles and stood, following the warriors’ bobbing light.

  The cavern narrowed into a large tunnel, its ceiling about twenty feet high, its path forty feet wide. The walls were rough, swallowing light and deadening sound. In the enclosed space, the scent of minerals grew so strong my nose burned. I hoped the effect was worse for the warriors and would keep them from smelling me. I kept so far back as to almost lose the light, aware of the superiority of their enhanced senses. I was not so stupid as to think I was skilled enough to evade capture if I drew too near. The one thing I had going for me was the fact I wasn’t supposed to be on this planet.

  I hugged the wall, using the lumpy surface and crevices to my advantage the odd occasion they glanced back to ensure the pack wasn’t stalking their trail. Soon enough their attention focused forward.

  ‘Is it true we will attack at night? That does not seem honourable.’

  ‘The First wishes to use stealth tactics. Catch the Betrayer off guard. He will expect us to meet him on the battlefield after the divine blessing, but he is not worthy of Destruction’s protection.’

  ‘He brought the plague of humanity.’

  ‘Yes. We will cleanse our world of their taint and our species will extinguish with its dignity. Pure. Unsullied.’

  They carried the disembowelled carcass between them while exchanging banter and insulting my species in cheerful tones. They turned a sharp corner, and I lost sight and sound of them.

  I bellied up to it, risking an inch of one side of my face past the turn.

  The tunnel opened into a cavernous underground space. It glistened with clusters of crystal pillars, the ceiling covered in dripping stalactite formations. A Horde camp filled its lowest depression, floating lanterns and hot rock pits glowing festively.

  Following the rocky path to its conclusion, the warriors I’d followed greeted their carousing brothers. It wasn’t them my eyes were drawn to.

  Beyond them was a metal pole thrust into the ground, the kind used in the Gathering Grotto as an anchor point for the Keeping leashes.

  Attached to it were mutilated Aztekan females. They were large, strange and alien looking.

  They were being bred.

  Held down by their arms and legs as a mass of warriors crawled over them.

  Shaking, no, quivering with rage at the hypocrisy, I tore my eyes away and scanned the ranks of warriors. I was going to find Bhyr. Once I did, I planned to hand over as much enemy intel as possible.

  That said, these warriors could not get a hold of me.

  I shifted to leave, but my attention snagged on sight so beautiful it literally took my breath away. On the opposite side of the camp was a tunnel with pale sunlight limning it’s farthest edge.

  An exit.

  My fingers groped along the wall towards it.

  Grunts and snarls from the knot of rutting Aztekans bought me back to myself.

  Creeping past the warriors would be improbable without a distraction or the absolute cover of darkness, and I couldn’t afford to stay where I was waiting for either.

  I stood in a passage they obviously used. I had no guarantee they wouldn’t use it again while I skulked there.

  I couldn’t reach the surface the way I’d come, and I didn’t have the time to wander the underground warren to find another way out. I had hardly any food, no means to hunt, nor a desire to forage from the likely poisonous fungi. I’d be out of water in a day. Even if I found a secure den, how long before I became dehydrated, delirious, then handed them the greatest lever
age against Bhyr they could ever hope to gain?

  I slinked back and retraced about a fifth of the tunnel to a particularly deep crevice I’d seen on the journey down. I wriggled into the space. I risked taking out my hot rock, the dimming light a good focal point. I sat with my back propped against a jut of rock, tired, mentally strained and uncomfortable.

  I closed my eyes, and meditated over my options.

  Seeing no answers, no way out, I went over them again, my mental fingers plucking and prodding at the pieces to make them fit. A plan bloomed in the back of my mind. There was no gussying it up. It was dangerous to the millionth degree, but I couldn’t think of an alternative besides handing myself over and praying Bhyr didn’t pay too high a ransom.

  I pressed my forehead into my palms, fingernails scratching at my scalp.

  What a shitty thing to do.

  Remove myself from the safety he’d provided, get myself into trouble, and then expect him to rescue me at the expense of his species. Not to mention the depravity I’d endure prior to this supposed reunion. ‘No,’ I said as unmovable as the earth around me. The plan was solid.

  If it went to hell, so be it.

  The next time I scouted the camp, it was the middle of the night. The light outside was silvery, and the warriors slept. I went back to my hole and ventured out another four times until I was confident of their patterns.

  It had been two days.

  I’d rationed my water with a miserly hand, but I’d swallowed the second to last mouthful hours before. I saved the last gulp to tide me over until I reached a drinkable water source. My body was sluggish with ennui but not so fatigued as to foil my escape.

  I stretched, my poses swift to encourage blood flow. My mind sharpened on my goal, as I suffered a growing need to feel the wind and see the stretch of Vøtkyr’s horizon.

  I waited for the revelry to dissipate. There were golden hours before sleep when the atmosphere in the camp turned somnolent, the warriors bloated with satisfaction over their rebellion, but not too quiet, so as to make it obvious someone wasn’t where they were supposed to be.

  That was my window.

  I’d move in the deepest umbras. A void not worthy of notice and smelling of foulness they wanted to avoid.

  I left my hiding place and returned to the rebel camp. Hot rock pits had been dimmed with sand. Lanterns were grounded and covered. My eyes touched lightly on the bored watchmen scattered amongst the supine. The discarded females slept in a huddle, a warrior standing sentry over them. The last male who might have caught me leaving the tunnel threw himself down on a pallet of woven reeds, his broad back to me, its muscles relaxing.

  I crept around the corner.

  I kept low, made no darting movement to disturb the air or catch the eye. I stayed on the outermost perimeter, gaze flashing down until I spotted what I looked for. There was no way I could creep around the camp without one of them smelling me over the mineral stink. All it would take to be discovered was a warrior with a sensitive nose. I could mask my scent with the one thing they would disregard should they happen to catch a whiff of it.

  Kneeling, I gritted my teeth and rubbed my palm into the puddle of effluent splashed half up the wall. I smeared my clothes to cover up the smell of my sweat. I thought of mud and clay and paint as I swiped my fingers over my forehead, cheeks and chin. My nostrils flared. I took a moment to gag in silence. The white colour negated the useful dusky tone of my skin, so I kept my strokes light and broken so as to not make a face-shaped mask that might catch a stray sliver of moonlight. I pulled up my hood, hoping it would cast my face into shadow, then crawled on my hands and knees, moving faster when the cover was darkest, then worming along the ground on my belly when the shadows thinned on the wall curving closer to the camp.

  Less than halfway, a warrior sauntered close, a bundle of furs stuffed under his armpit. I rolled into a hollow. I made my mind blank as if a shard of wood or a chip of rock. He stopped. A pebble kicked from his foot skittered past my nose. He sniffed, made a noise of disgust then strode off to find a better resting place.

  Time lost its meaning.

  I focused on nothing but slow, careful movement. I came back to myself as I crawled from the tunnel into the open air. My lower back ached. My knees and palms were bruised. My abdominals cramped, my face stung from scrapes, and my throat was strained from unnatural restriction of breath.

  I didn’t stop until the mouth of the tunnel grew indistinct behind me.

  Oh my god, I did it.

  Wild with disbelief, I stood, ignored the fiery screams of my knotted spine and ran. And ran. I stopped fleeing when my foot came down and my leg followed it. I ended up flat on my face, sprawled, panting.

  Jolted back into my body, I looked around and licked my cracked lips.

  I had no idea where I was.

  For a moment, it was too much. I lay there and debated walking back to the Horde camp and telling them to call Bhyr.

  If you do that, they win.

  ‘Come on. Get up.’

  It took me a few false starts before I oriented myself.

  In the end, I got lucky.

  I found the ledge where I killed the fangbeast. I free-climbed the rock face, praying I wouldn’t fall and die, a sensible voice at the back of my head telling me how stupid a risk I took. From there, it was easy enough. I swallowed the last of my water. I kept my sad little knife clasped in my hand and backtracked overland what I had travelled underground. It was a shorter journey than expected. The rush of water hit my ears then my eyes caught flashes of light reflecting from the stream. I must have walked on gradients the entire time I was underground. I’d fallen deep then trekked upwards, but hadn’t covered much linear distance. Running on fumes, I drank my fill at the bank, filled my waterskin to the brim, and then followed the current downstream. I reached the grouping of rocks that signalled the turn to my cave.

  It was there I dunked myself into the water and scrubbed my furs and skin raw to remove the frozen smears of waste. I vomited clear, burning liquid I figured was mostly water, but then felt much better. It was behind me, and I didn’t have to think about it. I left the water and dragged my feet the rest of the way, dying to feel the warmth of my hot rock pit and anticipating the sour, zesty flesh of the gourds.

  Only once my freshly washed furs were drying, my stomach hard with food, my eyes drooping with exhaustion did the full scale of what I’d done–what I was still doing–crash over me.

  Getting off the spaceship was a mistake.

  I’m in over my head.

  My motherlode of luck would run dry and when it did, I was going to die. I hadn’t wanted to leave Bhyr behind, but what good was it if I died and he never found my body?

  Pulling my cape over me, I lay on the unforgiving stretch of rock I’d claimed for a bed and covered my head with my arms to block out the world.

  I woke with a start.

  It felt as if I’d barely slept.

  The hot rocks had warmed the cave enough I’d kicked off the fur I’d used as a blanket.

  Movement caught by my peripheral vision had me jerking to the side, reaching for my antler knife.

  Weapon in hand, I froze.

  Bhyr sat opposite my rock pit, motionless, his eyes bright in the early morning dark.

  My knife clattered to the ground. ‘Holy shit.’ I immediately regretted treating the weapon that served me well so poorly. I snatched it up, checked for nicks along the single sharp edge, then set it aside with the reverence it deserved.

  Bhyr watched this with an unblinking gaze.

  I curled over and pressed my forehead to my palm, waiting for my pulse to settle into something less arrhythmic. Instead, it accelerated into a drumming beat that made me feel as if I floated outside my body.

  He found me.

  ‘Indira.’ My name was a caress from his lips.

  My head lifted. ‘Hi.’

  His eyelids slid shut as powerful emotions washed across his face. ‘Are you hurt?’<
br />
  ‘Um.’ I cocked my leg to check out my calf wound. It looked good. Healed. I had a low grade headache, but that would be gone in another day. ‘No.’

  ‘Hungry?’

  Unnerved by his behaviour, I shook my head.

  Frissons of heat swept over my skin. I trembled with the need to touch him.

  He exhaled in a shudder, shoulders slumping. ‘Good.’ He reached over and wrapped his fingers around my ankle.

  42

  Indira

  An evil old dragon raking his hoard of gold, Bhyr dragged me under his armoured belly. His unique smell enveloped me along with the heat radiating from the edges of his glass-smooth flesh. Calloused fingers gripped my jaw. They angled my face for a kiss, a moment of chaste greeting, lips brushing, and then an eternity of devouring need, his tongue a hot lash. My back arched, pussy wet from the instant he’d touched me. A brawny thigh wedged between mine to pry my legs open. I spread wide and rode the tense muscle, coiling an arm around his narrow waist to grab a handful of flexing ass.

  ‘I missed you.’ I gasped between kisses. ‘I missed you.’

  My other hand stroked the iron slabs lining his lower torso on its journey south.

  He lifted his hips to give me room. Hissing irritation, I tore aside his leather codpiece.

  His penis distended to slap against his stomach.

  I squirmed as my fingers curled around his solid shaft. They grew sticky. I inhaled the rich musk signalling his readiness and a whine slid from my throat. I rocked my hips, catching my clit against the swollen head of his cock as it leaked over my fist. I used the fluid as lubricant to speed up my strokes. Pleasure stabbed me in the gut. My eyes rolled into the back of my head as I masturbated myself on him.

  ‘Bhyr.’ I panted as my free hand groped whatever flesh it encountered. ‘Fuck me,’ I begged, and he snarled, ‘Trying,’ against my lips with such exasperation, I laughed.

  Joy raced through me.

  Almost as exquisite a feeling as Bhyr rutting into my palm and grunting into my mouth each time our sexes smacked together. His hips ground in erratic fits until the head of his cock caught my cunt. I moved my hand to keep it from being crushed and braced it against his shoulder. He thrust, and the buzzing vibration in his chest ripped past his grimace of pain. I bucked as his heavy shaft bottomed-out on that first plunge and threw my head back to moan. Our heaving bodies slapped out a rhythm accompanied by my broken gasps and his clicking growls.