by Tarkin, Mika
But he wasn’t surprised. She was a good woman, with a good head, and a good heart. He knew that as soon as she got a chance to meet the Hala, she’d come around.
“Alright,” he said. “I’m ready.”
He tossed Naeesha a long, straight-bladed knife. More like a sword, really.
“Oh no way are you making me clear brush,” she said.
“Do you know Halian trail signs?”
She turned around and stepped into the brush swinging.
***
The going was slow. Marking trails is time consuming work, and so is making them. It didn’t help that they couldn’t find any game trails whatsoever (another fact that gave Marko grave concern. What did it say that even the animals had abandoned this part of the world?).
After a couple of hours and a couple of miles, they fell into a nice rhythm. Marko would pick his way through the brush, blazing a trail between one marker and the next. Naeesha would follow through, clearing it out as she went. He taught her some of the trail signals so that he could help with the clearing.
He did most of the work in his combat form, shifting his arm into a huge serrated scythe that could clear even small saplings.
It had him laugh, using his combat form ike this. He’d trained for thousands of hours trying to perfect it into the ultimate killing machine. Seemed like an awful lot of work just to beat up a few tiny trees.
It was exhausting work, moving his now eight-foot tall, three hundred pound body through the forest, but it made a nice, wide trail. He figured that the survivors could use an easy day’s hike, so he pushed through.
Marko turned around after marking a trail sign on a tall gumsap tree and saw Naeesha picking through a small bush.
“What’d you find?”
“Sourberries,” she said.
“Not a very good snack.”
“No,” she said, standing up with a shirt full of soft pink berries. “But they make a damn fine cobbler.”
He helped her pack the berries into her travelsack and they moved on.
“How far do you think we’ve gone?” she asked.
“Oh, six miles. Maybe seven.”
“How much farther do you think we’ll get today?”
“I’d planned on stopping as soon as we found somewhere to make camp. We’ve got a short day and some weary travellers.”
Naeesha looked like she wanted to say more, but didn’t. She started hacking away at the brush ahead of her, and Marko started trudging through to the next promising tree.
An hour later, he spotted a wide clearing a few hundred feet from their trail. He pointed to it, and Naeesha whooped, hacking away faster than ever. They both worked quickly, forging a trail to their destination for the evening and stumbling into the open space with gleeful smiles.
“Think there’s enough room?”
Marko looked around and laughed. They’d be able to fit their group into the space about five times over without even getting cozy.
“What do you want to do while we wait for them to catch up?” Marko asked, waggling an eyebrow at Naeesha as she dropped her heavy pack to the ground.
“Well,” she said stepping towards him and running her fingers down his arm. “I was thinking that maybe…”
She leaned in and kissed him, long and slow and suggesting so much more.
“Maybe we could clear the rocks and sticks out of the way for the sleeping tent.”
Marko groaned as Naeesha pulled away from him and started picking rocks and branches out of a big open space ahead of her. He cursed her commitment to getting the job done right and joined her, trying to make a nice, flat space for his friends to sleep on.
“How do you see this ending?” Naeesha asked.
“Hopefully with everybody sleeping comfortably through the night.”
Naeesha gave him a glare that could have melted steel.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Do you think you’ll go with them? Back to their home planet?”
“Maybe. I feel more at home with them than I ever did on Alderoc. What will you do?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll have much of a choice.”
“If it comes down to it,” Marko said. “I’ll fly you back wherever you need to go. This doesn’t have to be forever for you.”
“Aw, you’re so sweet, giving me a choice of how I spend the rest of my life,” she said mockingly.
“Then again, I can just leave you at the compound.”
“Psh. I’d be better off than ever. Five hundred miles from the nearest soul. Sounds like paradise.”
Marko looked around for anything else that might be unpleasant to sleep on top of, and found nothing.
“What do you think?” he said.
“I told you. Paradise.”
“About the clearing,” Marko nudged.
“There’s only one problem,” she said, obviously avoiding his real question.
“What?” he asked, figuring that the fastest way to get a real answer out of her would be to go along with whatever the hell she was getting at.
“I wouldn’t be able to do this.”
In one fluid motion, Naeesha knocked him onto his back and ended up sitting on top of him. She had his hands pinned over his head, and something told him that she was enjoying his struggles to get his hips free from her.
“I’m sorry we didn’t get a chance to finish what we started the other night,” she whispered. “Want to make it up?”
Chapter Seventeen
“Hold on,” Marko said, doing his best not to be sexy. So unlike him. Normally he hammed it up for her. She loved it so much that she hated him for his melodramatic romance. It made her want to force abstinence on him out of principle, but it was had the unfortunate effect of demolishing any willpower that she had not to jump him on the spot.
“What?” she said, trying not to show how frustrated she was.
“I feel something. Arousal.”
“Well thanks,” she said. “I’m glad I can still do that for you.”
“Not mine,” he said. “Someone else’s.”
She felt it too. It was the same sensation she got around the Halians. Well, it hadn’t been exactly like this, but it was close enough.
“They can’t have caught up already, right?”
She stood up and looked towards the trail. There was nothing. Nobody. Marko got up and looked around, checking the treeline around the clearing. Something caught his eye.
“What the--”
Two dozen armed Hala appeared from the trees, their weapons raised at both of them.
They weren’t part of Marko’s group. The Hala started shouting. She could feel anger. Biting rage. Marko spoke back to them. He was calm, but she’d seen him enough to sense the edge that his voice took on when he was scared. And she heard it now.
The Hala shouted back, stepping closer, brandishing their weapons.
Marko talked faster, his cool slipping away from him. The Hala kept encroaching, their weapons looming larger and larger. Marko was almost babbling by this point, and Naeesha started to wonder if maybe this was how their adventure ended.
Then, the leader of the Hala group stopped mid step. He was curious, almost in disbelief. He said something to Marko. It was short. A question, she thought.
Marko nodded, and said something brief. Naeesha could feel the Hala’s doubt, but his curiosity overpowered everything else. The Hala all lowered their weapons, and the leader pointed to Marko, then to Naeesha.
The Halians rounded them up and motioned them to the base of a big tree. They sat down, and a big soldier with a strange weapon stood guard over them while the others dispersed and talked softly among themselves.
“Ok, so what’s all this about?” Naeesha whispered.
Her comment turned the heads of the new Halians, and she froze, hoping that she hadn’t done anything to make them any more irate.
Marko slowly turned towards her.
“They’re
from another group. They think that we’re Alderoccan soldiers trying to hunt down Halian tribes.”
“And you uh, told them otherwise, right?”
“No, Naeesha. I told them that we were agents of the Crown and that we would stop at nothing to make sure every member of their race was destroyed in righteous hellfire.”
Marko’s eyes darted around the clearing. He was taking stock of the situation, just as Naeesha had already done. More Halians had come from the brush. They were looking at nearly fifty of them now, and it seemed that only counted the fighters. By Naeesha’s guess, there were probably hundreds more somewhere nearby.
“Ok, but seriously.”
“I told them that we’re scouting a trail for our own clan. Than we suffered a terrible attack, and that we have sick and wounded coming who need help.”
Naeesha breathed a sigh of relief. If she’d learned anything about the Hala, it was that they jumped at a chance to help somebody in need.
“So they want to help?”
“Not quite.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well I told them who some of our elders were, hoping that I could invoke their names as a trusted intermediary.”
“And?”
Marko took a long breath, started to speak, and let out a sort of protracted sigh. It was the sort of sound he normally made when Naeesha was about to beat him at a hand of cards, or right before he gave her a particularly undesirable assignment.
“Well, it turns out that this guy, Rakkan, is mortal enemies with one of our elders or something.”
“Oh well that’s just great.”
“How was I supposed to know? Everybody loves Jintak.”
“Except for the people who happen to have taken us prisoner.”
“Thanks for pointing that out to me.”
Naeesha found the suns through the trees. The first one was setting. The second would be going down about six hours from now. With any luck, they could expect their group to arrive in an hour or two from now.
Not that they’d been able to count on luck, exactly.
“So what do we do? Do we try and escape and warn our people? You could shift and get away.”
“No. As long as we behave honorably and respectfully, I think we’ll be treated well. Doing anything to try their suspicions or their patience will result in rather more unpleasant treatment,” Marko said. “For you, anyway. Obviously I’d be somewhere else.”
“Great.”
“You have a funny idea about what constitutes greatness, you know.”
“Sarcasm, Marko. Learn it sometime.”
At least it didn’t seem like they were in any immediate danger. Their guard wasn’t particularly concerned with them. He mostly paced around with a look that would have been all too familiar for any soldier who’d stood guard or walked on patrol.
“Listen,” Marko said.
“I don’t hear anything.”
But Marko clearly did. Naeesha couldn’t make out what by his reaction, but he was obviously tracking some kind of sound or another. A few minutes later, she picked up on it too.
Singing.
More specifically, Halian songs that she’d hard the night before, prior to the attack. Their Halian captors took note too, disappearing into the trees. The leader came over and shouted at Marko, before vanishing with the rest of the troops.
“What did he say?”
“He told us to act normal.”
“Won’t your people feel their people?”
“These soldiers can control their emotions. It’s why we didn’t notice them at first.”
The singing grew louder, and it wasn’t long before they could see the Halian entourage snaking through the forest, in high spirits and ahead of schedule.
“Do you ever remember one of our units making a march on time?” she asked.
“The military can only dream of having Halian discipline.”
The survivors funneled into the clearing, greeting Marko and Naeesha with hugs and happy feelings. It was nearly impossible for her to conceal the fear that she felt, knowing that there were enemies all around, and that her new friends didn’t have the faintest idea.
She glanced at Marko, who was in the middle of a happy swarm of Halians, barraging him with gratitude. He was sweating hard, looking around with quick, piercing glances, his shoulders and back tight. He was nervous.
The sudden burst of fear and confusion hit Naeesha right in the stomach. She turned to see the enemy Halians spring from the trees, weapons drawn. Their leader walked out of their ranks and singled out the man that she gathered was Jintak.
Rakkan and Jintak talked with heated words, going back and forth, their voices growing louder and their emotions turning from irritated, to angry, to enraged. Naeesha could feel their feelings over the entire groups, which ran at a lower grade scared confusion.
It didn’t take long for the argument to reach a boiling point. She clenched her jaw and watched intently. Although she couldn’t not make out how the conversation was going, it was plenty obvious that they weren’t moving towards a resolution. Considering that one side of the conversation was heavily armed and had the other surrounded, she didn’t really like how things are going.
“What are they talking about?”
“I don’t actually know. I can’t keep up with them. Something about a betrayal.”
“A betrayal?”
“Either that or livestock. The two words are very similar.”
“You think this is about farm animals?”
“What? No. That’s ridiculous.”
Naeesha made a note to kill Marko if the Halians didn’t do it for her.
Jintak was small and frail and very, very old. The leader of the other Hala group was tall, strong, and broad shouldered. So it took Naeesha as something of a surprise when the old Halian squared his shoulders to the younger, spoke in a calm and measured voice, and the argument ended right then, with the younger Halian bending knee and bowing at Jintak’s feet.
“What did he just say?”
“I think he said ‘if you had not acted so much like the sand skins, your mother would not lie dead at their hands’.”
“Okay. I think I need another translation.”
“The Hala call our kind ‘sand skins’. It’s a reference to our natural shifting ability. As for the rest of it, I’m not sure. I think that Jintak and the other Hala were part of the same group once, and that Jintak fractured it.”
“And the other Hala’s mother?”
“It sounds like she left with Jintak and didn’t make it back here.”
Naeesha looked back at the two Halians, now locked in a friendly embrace. There was an overwhelming sea of compassion from both groups of Halians. It didn’t make much sense.
“Why would the other leader bow to Jintak after hearing that? Those seem more like fighting words.”
“When a Halian is humbled by the realization of their foolishness, it is customary for them to supplicate, ask forgiveness, and meditate on their mistakes.”
“And that’s what happened?”
“It seems like it.”
Jintak turned and addressed both groups. A wave of elation swept over the Halians.
“He says that we’ll stay as one family tonight. There are many more Halians on their way here, and they bring food and medicine and will tend to our wounded. We will meet to discuss our actions, eat together, and meet tomorrow as it comes.”
Naeesha couldn’t begin to understand why this news made the Halians so happy, but she could not deny the strength of their emotions. The crowd began to disperse, the soldiers joining the survivors to unpack, prepare, and set up camp.
“Well,” Naeesha said. “We’d better get to work.”
Chapter Eighteen
Marko hefted the thick rope line that raised the center support of the tent and watched as the enormous canvas sheet lifted off the ground and sprung up proudly into the air. The onlookers cheered, which seemed unusual, until he re
alized that nobody was watching the construction of the tent, and that all eyes were turned towards the trail.
A procession of Halians in brightly colored robes was spilling into the clearing. Each of them carried huge bundles and wore warm smiles. There was no suspicion and no fear.
He quickly gathered that most of the two groups knew each other. Their feelings were not that of two strangers meeting for the first time, but of old friends being reunited.
There was some degree of confusion and mistrust as the newcomers walked past Marko and Naeesha. Mistrust that was fairly given based on how the Watchers and humans had treated the Halians over the last twenty-five years. Those feelings quickly faded as members of his tribe vouched for them both, and explained the circumstances of their arrival.
The emotions that did not dissipate were the pangs of grief and sorrow that spread through the crowd like ripples in a pond. Both groups had lost many souls since they’d parted, and everyone was just now learning of friends and family that had died.
Tears came to Marko’s eyes and he had to excuse himself from work. It was too much for him. Naeesha came over and joined him. She didn’t look like she was doing so well either.
“How do they handle it?” she asked, sitting down beside him.
Marko didn’t know. Practice, maybe. There was no avoiding it for them. It was their reality. Their way of life. Still, he couldn’t imagine that it was any easier.
“I wish I knew,” he said.
“What do you think is going to happen?”
“Well,” Marko said. “I expect we’ll learn why the other group is headed the other direction, and we’ll tell them why we’re headed for the Dynasty compound and through the portal there.”
“And then?”
“Who knows. Maybe they know something important. Something that will make everybody turn around.”
“But maybe they don’t. Maybe they join us.”
“Exactly.”
He thought again about how Naeesha had come here looking for him, trying to get him to come back to the capital. And now she’d ended up going further away, following him to who knew where.