‘Lower your voice.’ Bihter stood. ‘We pledged our lives in defence of Indira’s. I mean to keep that vow. We stay.’
Vyper stared in consternation. His expression drooped, then, shocked. ‘You do not trust me.’ He sounded incredulous, offended. ‘You forget I, too, have a human mate I would give my life to protect.’
‘He and Arj Grhym saved my life,’ I reminded them.
‘It is nothing to do with us trusting each other.’ Bihter stalked over wearing a scowl. ‘You think I do not want to fight? You think I wish to expose my brother’s back to the beast slit sent to kill him?’ He looked enraged at the thought. ‘The First put his faith in us. I set aside my wants to tend to his needs knowing he is strong enough to succeed without me.’ He chopped a hand through the air. ‘We stay.’
Vyper clicked his throat, frustrated. He slid me an exasperated look. ‘A waste.’
I swallowed, despairing at the thought of people dying because Bhyr was being overprotective. The Trusted were mated to women depending on me to do right by them.
What if their mates died because of me? I had chosen to stay on Vøtkyr and made myself a target, a symbol of humanity the Rebels hated.
Bhyr removed three of his strongest assets from the ranks, because he wanted me guarded by the best he had to offer aside from himself.
‘He’s right,’ I said.
‘He is not,’ Bihter replied.
‘There is no shame in wanting to fight.’ Vyper spoke in low, furious tones. ‘You are not the only one who can protect the innocent. Shelve your misplaced pride and go.’
Drayg made a rough noise. ‘Why are you trying to convince us to leave?’ An undertone of menace threaded through the question, freezing my heart.
The three males surrounding me fell into a trance like state of stillness.
Two of the males exchanged a fleeting look as the atmosphere charged with danger. Bihter moved a split second before Vyper and blocked the killing stroke to my throat. He followed with a thrust of his palm to the male’s sternum and a foot to his middle. It sent him hurtling across the shelter.
My hand flew to my neck, came away wet.
Bihter twisted to face me, assessing the damage.
‘A scratch,’ I said, shaken.
Vyper sprang up and sideswiped the rock pit. A billowing wave of heat and light flooded the room, turning the lavvu into a lantern in the dark.
‘To me!’ he hollered.
Cursing, Drayg dragged me back. He planted himself in front of me, knees bent.
I threw a look over my shoulder when the skin wall behind me tore, the tip of a dagger slashing through it.
‘Ambush,’ Drayg shouted.
Bihter spared the newcomer a glance, then spun to meet Vyper’s charge. They locked arms. With bared teeth, they strained, went down, grappled for the upper hand.
Jerking his head to motion me aside, Drayg pounced on the male who emerged from the tear. He dodged a hatchet, snarled, then dropped into a sweeping kick. Dagger appearing in his grip, he stabbed our attacker through the eye. The fallen warrior went limp.
Swords thrust into the shelter.
Drayg twisted and spun in a half dozen different directions. He hissed. ‘I pray you are as fierce as you seem, Indira. Go.’ His attention narrowed to the blades shredding the walls. ‘Find the First.’
My mouth opened to protest then I double blinked.
The lavvu was empty.
Grunting came from the blank space where Vyper and Bihter wrestled. Cowering on the opposite side of the hot rock pit was my doppelgänger, and two wrathful-looking warriors stood guard in front of her.
Drayg used his Gift.
The interlopers wouldn’t see him coming and would flock towards the deception, giving me a chance to escape without notice.
How did he do it?
By hijacking the signals from my eyes to my brain? Projecting the pattern of his own, so we saw what he wanted? Whatever he did, the display reassured me Bihter and Drayg would survive, and I didn’t hesitate any longer.
Ducking through the hole in the back, I hunkered, ignoring the sounds of the skirmish behind me. The coast was clear. I dashed across to the next shelter and peeked inside. Empty. I fumbled trying to lace the door flap behind me.
Blood rushed in my ears.
My fingers shook.
I paused to take a breath and gather my courage.
Aware I couldn’t stay for long, I crossed the pitch black space with a care for the bed rolls strewn across it. I fell to my knees and lifted the skin wall an inch from the ground.
Horde warriors painted with waede ghosted along the dirt paths. Bhyr’s Trusted hadn’t held the ceremony to receive a divine blessing.
Those wearing the waede were Rebels, and those with undecorated exoskeletons were Bhyr’s people.
Unless they’re defectors.
We’d known there were spies amongst us, I’d brought the news myself, but it stunned me Arj Vyper had been corrupted. He had a human mate. He’d saved my life. It was the reason Bhyr assigned him as one of my guards.
Was Grhym a traitor, too?
My mind flashed to the last memory I had of my mate; him leaving the lavvu with that male at his back.
I quivered all over.
Right. I trusted four warriors without a shadow of doubt. Two confronted the assassins sent to kill me. The third, Kov Ohx, guarded the First, my mate, who himself was the fourth.
Without knowing who was friend or foe, everyone but the four were to be avoided until I reached my mate.
Past the rows of shelters, metal clashed and a cacophony of battle cries split the night.
The First of the Horde wouldn’t be cowering behind his army. He’d stand bold in the eye of the storm and destroy whatever was unlucky or stupid enough to catch his ire.
He wouldn’t want me surrounded by peril, but nowhere was safe for me on Vøtkyr. The place I stood a chance was at his side.
My mind made up, I rolled under the skin wall and crept towards the fighting.
I stepped on something squashy. My heel lifted with a wet sucking and a metallic stink wafted into my nostrils.
I looked down.
My foot had sunken into a wash of guts, the warrior hacked into pieces and discarded across the pathway.
I lurched to the side, flailing against nothingness as I fought for balance.
A shout came from my right. Excited. Trouble had found me. I pushed through the faint and bolted. The voice shouted again, this time accompanied by rhythmic footfalls.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I zigged and zagged through the labyrinthine warren of shelters, doubling back once and haring in one side of a lavvu and out the other when my pursuer closed too much of the distance between us. Evasive manoeuvres would get me only so far. On foot, Aztekans were fast.
I broke free of the encampment and careened into a full-fledged battle. Warriors screamed and fought. Died. The smell. So much blood. A body jumped high, clearing the throng by ten feet then powered down and smashed into an unwitting victim below. Another faceless warrior emitted a blinding light from his palms that stunned his foes before he beheaded them. The chaotic mass could only be a thousand–no–two thousand bodies strong, but as far as I could see to either side of me, and into the distance, Aztekan males tore into each other. A red stench hovered in the air. Attacker and defender was unclear. Warriors paired off and duelled with unthinking, unrepentant savagery.
My hectic gaze found Bhyr where I’d predicted, reaping death in the middle of the bloodshed. Ohx orbited him as if he were a sun, laying waste to a secondary ring of foes.
I sensed movement behind me and surged forward, blind with panic, weaving and bounding through the melee with the light-footedness of a squirrel, when I wasn’t blundering with the grace of an elephant. I used selective hearing, tunnelled my vision and ran towards Bhyr with everything I had. I didn’t do it alone. The Trusted saw me coming. They cleared a safe passage, heaving enemies from my path and sliding into
my wake to guard my rear. I made it across the battlefield without getting my head lopped off.
I fell afoul of Ohx, who’d registered movement barrelling towards his First and reacted by trying to slice it in two.
He roared, a subterranean rumble that shook the earth, a mere taste of his divine Gift, and pulled his blow a hairsbreadth from landing.
Shoulders up by my ears, I scuttled past with my arms flailing over my head, frightened half to death.
‘Female,’ Ohx shouted. ‘Incoming.’
I smacked face first into Bhyr’s back. He twisted in time to absorb the impact of a warrior chasing me.
Giants falling.
Me flattened under them.
A squelching pop was followed by pained gurgle, and then the crushing weight above me lifted. Bhyr slung the dead warrior off of us. He huddled over me, fists either side of my head. ‘What are you doing? I told you to flee with your guard.’ His voice was a roar. His eyes were wild. He looked monstrous.
I wet myself. ‘Vyper. Spy. Fighting. I ran. Grhym?’
To my amazement, he gleaned meaning from my babble. ‘You should have stayed with Drayg!’
‘He told me to go!’
A wave of Rebels descended upon us.
Bhyr leapt onto his feet.
One moment, waede painted warriors rushed us, and the moment after charred pieces rained from the heavens in a cloud of burnt meat.
I inhaled flecks of ash and coughed.
Watching Destruction’s Avatar use his Gift unfettered was a great and terrible thing. He moved with blinding speed. They perished before realising death had found them.
Scanning for his next victim, Bhyr used his inner elbow to smear the gore from his face onto his arm.
I waded through blood and entrails. A thin layer of corpse particles gritted my skin. ‘That was so violent.’ I shoved away a decapitated head, its lips moving, eyes rolled back.
I don’t want to see this.
Bhyr bellowed for Ohx.
They moved back to back with me on my knees between them. I tried to stay unobtrusive, but I kept flinching and shying from the mound of corpses piling around me.
The heavens cracked and a streak of burning light descended over the battleground. Another, sleeker craft punctured the sky with a subsonic boom and many in the field ducked, slamming their hands over their ears.
My nose prickled at the burnt smell of atmospheric gasses and spent fuel flooding the air, briefly covering the miasma of death.
It was the calvary, but whose?
Shoving a finger in my ear canal then checking for blood, I glanced at Bhyr’s face, angled upwards at the spectacle.
Relief lightened his eyes.
These were good guys.
The vessels hovered, emitting waves of scorching heat, until they darted to the outskirts and landed.
Grhym sprinted into view, Bihter and Drayg in tow. They were coiled with tension, faces grim with satisfaction.
Arj Grhym’s eyes fell on me. His expression blanked at the lack of welcome in mine. He switched his attention to Bhyr. ‘Arj Vyper and those who helped him are dead. The Undecided fight for you. The traitors have been decimated. You have won, God’s Chosen.’ Uncertain, he jerked his chin to the spaceships. ‘You called for help?’
‘No, but I recognise the insignias.’ Bhyr surveyed the battlefield. ‘Offer those who surrender amnesty.’
Drayg straightened. ‘Amnesty?’
‘First!’ Bihter exclaimed.
‘Do it.’ Bhyr kicked aside bodies and severed limbs. He pulled on a serene facade and clasped my hands, helping me onto my feet. ‘Are you hurt?’
I started to close the distance between us, but he was caked in cruor. ‘No.’
‘You cannot pardon them.’ Bihter pointed at the battle with his axe. ‘They defied you.’
Bhyr held me to his side.
He faced his brother. ‘So did you, once.’
Bihter jerked as if struck.
‘We will offer them mercy, because in time, they will learn better, as we did.’ Bhyr looked at me for support.
I was ready to give it, but it was hard.
Horde philosophy had enshrined barbaric ideals. They had refused to see their suffering of before as an aberration that had needed correction, a correction which had been accomplished and now needed to be set aside. Instead, they had become oppressors. In fear of what might happen, their tyrannical Law had alienated them from the female of their species, then compounded their failure by fighting the changes Bhyr brought with humanity.
Some of the Horde found their way through the darkness.
Other’s had embraced it.
The traitors had lied, schemed and murdered.
They had begun a war.
Maybe their choices invited their own deaths, but to Bhyr, the First of the Horde, they were his wayward charges who needed care and understanding. They were a large part of the scant few he had left to rebuild with. He would never agree to executing them, and even exile would be a stretch too far. He would forgive them.
I had braced myself for it, but I didn’t know how to feel about it, except frustrated.
‘Can you forgive them, my Indira?’ Bhyr asked.
I touched his cheek. ‘Of course. We’ll figure it out.’
I just hoped my fellow humans were as forgiving.
The ramp of the bulkier ship fell with a crash.
A muscled, fierce-looking alien dressed in thigh high boots, a loincloth and masses of wild black hair that streamed down his back tore across the distance between us. From Bhyr’s description of him, it was Beowyn ThunderClaw, the Great Alpha. His pupils were black stars in a flood of gold. Panting slightly, he gave me a fanged grin. ‘We arrive too late to claim a share of the fun.’
Bhyr levelled him a flat stare. ‘Did you think I could not handle my affairs?’
Beowyn huffed. ‘I never doubted you would manage alone, but you needn’t of had to.’ He thumped his shoulder. ‘I am your friend. I will always help you.’
A banshee screech ripped through the air. Cristina stood on the ramp waving her fist.
Braced on spread legs beside her, Ashleigh was quiet, but hefted a gun bigger than her torso.
A cluster of women gathered behind them, faces dark with anger.
‘Uh oh,’ I said.
Bhyr twisted his head, eyes sparking fire. ‘I sent you the humans for safekeeping.’
Beowyn waved at them. ‘They insisted upon returning. Who am I to deny them the chance to fight for their home?’
‘Who are you? A ruling King I sent my people to for safekeeping.’
‘I rule Vayhalun, but my mates rule me, and they thought it was a good idea to not be torn apart by females demanding to return home. The Rä were worse, issuing all manner of dire threats should we not hurry to lend you aid.’
Bhyr blinked. ‘They did?’
‘You’re full of shit, Wyn,’ a distorted female voice said. ‘You begged us to intervene.’
Beowyn grinned wider and detached a shiny oval from his utility belt. ‘Lumen. Best friend. I arrived safely, as did your beloved mates.’
‘Uh huh. I would like to make it known I get where the First is coming from.’
‘I do not,’ Beowyn protested.
‘It was dangerous to take them back there.’ Lumen paused. ‘I would also like to make it known the fact I agree with the First of all people about anything is deeply distressing.’
I scowled at her tone, but then remembered what Bhyr had done to her family and kept my mouth shut.
‘Let me put it this way, is Sìne with you?’ Lumen asked.
‘No!’ Beowyn paled, tossing his head as if to gore her words with the twin horns curling around his skull. ‘She is safe on the ship with Eorik in deep space. I would never endanger her by bringing her into the middle of such a fierce conflict.’
Head lifting, he seemed to finally notice the battle-worn Horde males peering in confusion at the shuttle. Human women
spilled from it and their confusion morphed into abject horror.
‘Oh.’ Beowyn’s pointed ears twitched. ‘I see.’
‘Hallelujah. Indira?’
I stared at the device Beowyn held closer to my face. ‘Yes. Hello?’
‘Hi! I’m Lumen. My mate Fiercely Comes the Night, um, the the cute one with the shy smile? Right. He is going to keep the women on the ship, okay? Venomous and Wyn will stay to offer whatever assistance they can, but from what I can hear, the First has regained control.’
Cute one with the shy smile? Not the way I would have described the seven-foot, four-armed, black-eyed behemoth herding the woman back into the shuttle, but whatever.
People didn’t see what I saw when I looked at my mate, either. ‘Thank you.’
I glanced at Bhyr.
He looked constipated.
I elbowed him in the side then gave him a look.
‘Lumen,’ he said.
‘First.’ Her voice quieted to an amiable tenor that sounded a hundred percent fake.
Bhyr hesitated. ‘You remember my voice?’
‘I have nightmares.’
I winced. I put a hand on Bhyr’s rigid back, my gaze going to the alien approaching.
He was unbothered by my scrutiny, a smile on his lips at the sound of Lumen’s voice.
A forked, black tongue whipped into the air.
I inched closer to my mate, but then spotted a welcome sight sheltered in his wake.
‘Indie!’ Cristina rushed forward and caught me in a stranglehold. ‘You’re alive.’
Ashleigh trudged up and gave me a mean glare. ‘Indira.’
I nodded, wondering what her problem was.
She looked good, healthy and clean, while I was exhausted, dirty and bedraggled.
‘You left us,’ she said.
Ah. ‘I didn’t have a choice.’
‘I don’t believe you.’ Her mouth thinned as she crossed her arms. ‘You were gone an hour before we took off. You could have warned us.’
‘No, I couldn’t.’ I let my chin rest on Cristina’s shoulder. ‘By the time I got to the bridge, it was done. I barely got off.’
She looked away, shaking her head, fingers digging into her arms. ‘I don’t like you, Indira.’
Ouch. ‘You don’t have to.’
‘She grows on you.’ Cristina let me go to dab her eyes.
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