The Bronze Blade

by Elizabeth Hunter

  As the rich blood hit her tongue, the human arched his back and let out a grunt of pleasure.

  She pulled her mouth away and scowled. She had no desire to please him. Had this human cared about pleasing her when he’d used her body like a vessel? Her hand tightened on his neck as she remembered the terror of her first years in the camp. The man’s grunts of pleasure turned into whines of pain. His mouth dropped open, so Saaral sent the thought again.

  Quiet.

  He said nothing, frozen in fear. She took his neck again, taking gulps of blood fresh from his body. Live blood. She could feel her body grow strong as the old man grew weak. Her energy mounted. Her senses came alive. She could feel tiny currents of air teasing her skin. Her hair. The night wind caressed her body with eager fingers. Her skin grew flush and pink as she drank.

  The human’s heartbeat slowed.

  Then stopped.

  Saaral looked down in disgust. Surely he had more blood than that! Her hungry eyes swept the creek bed, only to see that none of the other humans was about. In the back of her mind, she knew Kuluun would not be pleased, but she ignored the fear for a moment, reveling in the rush of energy and strength. For a moment, her toes left the ground, and something she thought might be laughter bubbled in her chest.

  Then her feet came back to earth, and she cocked her head, considering the lifeless human body that lay in the dirt. She bent down and threw it over her shoulder. Jumping easily across the stream, she worked her way back into the brush where the branches of the trees grew thick and no goats could graze. Then she found a small clearing and stopped. She tossed the old man’s body to the ground and began to dig.

  In a few minutes, the hole was deep. Saaral barely felt the exertion. She kicked the body into the hole and buried it, brushing the earth from her hands as she stood.

  Then, she calmly walked back to camp. For a moment, she considered walking away as she did every night, but where would she go that Kuluun would not find her? He told her every night.

  “If you leave, I will fly out and find you. Send one of my sons in every direction until they track you down and drag you back. Then I will bind you in my tent every night. I will bury you when you sleep, so you wake with the earth in your mouth.”

  If there was any threat that Saaral feared, it was waking with the earth in her mouth. It struck a primal fear into her that bordered on madness. She froze even at the thought, and Kuluun knew this.

  But as she crossed the river, she saw him. His glare chilled the blood in her stomach, and she suddenly felt like vomiting up every drop of blood she’d taken. He knew. He would be able to see her energy. See the flush in her face. See the life in her eyes.

  In the blink of an eye, Saaral ran.

  She ducked back into the copse of trees, darting this way and that, running under the branches where the monsters could not sweep down from above. But in too short a time, the trees ran out and she faced a broad meadow. She could hear them behind her, the humans crashing through the brush, the swirl of Sida above. She had nowhere to turn. Going back into the brush put her in the path of the humans. Going forward put her at the mercy of Kuluun.

  She felt her fangs drop, and she ran into the meadow.

  Perhaps, the blood of the old man would make her strong enough.

  Perhaps, she would make the distant stand of trees that promised shelter.

  Perhaps—

  “I told you, Saaral.”

  He grabbed her by the hair.

  “No!” she screamed, her voice rang thought the cool night air. “Let me go!”

  Kuluun swept her up, jerking her closer as she struggled against his hold. She tried to reach for the blade at his waist to cut off her long braid and release herself, but she couldn’t reach. He saw her trying for the knife and backhanded her, causing her vision to blacken and stars to flash at the edges of her vision.

  “I told you.”

  “Just let me go.” She twisted and fought, desperate as she hadn’t been since the first night she’d been taken. “Please, Kuluun,” she begged. “Let me—”

  He cut her off and pulled her to his face, baring his teeth and hissing in her face. “You are mine. You do what I tell you. You drink what I give you. And you will not forget it again.”

  Then Kuluun shook her so hard, her brain rattled and she heard the bones in her spine crack. Her body fell dead as she lost the feeling from her neck down. Her limbs hung loose, flapping in the cold wind as Kuluun circled and turned back to the camp.

  She stared helplessly at the stars, letting her mind go blank.

  Dark.

  Quiet.

  In the blackness, her senses clarified.

  Everything in her stilled. She focused on one sensation.

  One thought.

  She enjoyed the feeling of the wind in her hair.

  Saaral woke with the earth in her mouth and a burning hunger in her belly.

  She tried to scream. She tried to struggle. But as she desperately dug her way to what she thought was the surface, a hand plunged into the earth and grabbed her neck. It twisted until her spine cracked again, and she lost the ability to move. Then she lay still and terrified in the darkness as distant voices walked away from her, leaving her alone.

  She panted, the dust creeping into her lungs until she was forced to close her mouth. Forced to stop breathing. She lay in the silent earth, unable to move as her body, starved of fresh blood, slowly repaired itself.

  Hours later, the voices approached again, but they did not come close. She could hear the screams of human captives. She heard children crying and men laughing. The humans had gone on a raiding party that day, and Saaral recognized the sounds of fresh slaughter. Her throat burned in hunger, but she had no relief. Little by little, the feeling returned to her legs.

  She felt a hand reach down for her, testing to make sure she remained in her living grave. Then it withdrew, and she was alone again.

  She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the wind.

  Nights passed.

  Weeks.

  Months.

  Saaral woke every night with the earth in her mouth. She did not move. She no longer struggled. She never spoke. She left her body, watching from above as Kuluun, Suk, or Odval checked her each night, sometimes giving her pony blood to keep her alive, sometimes giving her nothing. Always twisting her neck so she was captive to her own useless body as they had made her captive to the earth.

  And she watched from above as they dug her out, raped her, then buried her again.

  As the months went by, she watched more often from away, leaving the prison of Saaral’s body and drifting above, rising out of the tent and into the skies above until she was part of the darkness. The moon spoke to her. The stars embraced her. The night wind whispered its secrets as her seasons in the earth passed.

  By the time Kuluun dug her out of the ground, Saraal had become nothing.

  Chapter Three: The Madness

  Saaral watched her flit around the tent as Odval grunted between her legs. The laughing creature pointed silently, mimicking the look of pained pleasure the Sida wore as he found his release.

  “Ungh, Saaral,” Odval said. “So tight. Not like the humans.”

  Odval was so hairy, Saraal wondered whether he’d needed to wear clothes when he was human. Perhaps he had run naked like a pony. He had that much hair.

  “Give me your neck.”

  Wordlessly, she tilted her head back. Then the laughing creature’s eyes flashed with rage, and she drew a hand across her throat, glaring at Odval as he took her blood.

  Saaral lay silent and weak on the floor of the tent. Odval tied his trousers and lifted the tent flap, but not before tossing a skin of pony blood toward her. It lay in the dust. Saaral stared at it, wanting to reach for it, but not giving Odval the satisfaction of seeing her eat.

  Saraal would let no one watch her drink. No one but the laughing creature who followed her around the camp.

  She had come to Saraal soon afte
r Kuluun finally pulled her from the earth. Saaral did not know how long she had been buried, though she knew they had moved many times. Those flights were her only sliver of life. When Kuluun or one of his brothers would carry her still body in the air as they moved camp, she would feel, for a brief moment, the wind in her hair. She had glimpsed the laughing creature on one of those flights. Saw the corner of her grey eye peeking from behind a cloud. Then she was gone.

  She’d appeared again in the moonlight, creeping into camp to sit next to Saaral as she washed clothes in a stream. It looked like a girl around her own age, but Saraal was suspicious. No one else reacted to her, though. They ignored the creature just as they ignored Saraal.

  It followed her everywhere. Through the tents. By the cooking fires. She even hovered in the corner of the tent when Kuluun or one of his brothers rutted with her, making faces or looking bored. At first, Saraal was afraid. Afraid that the laughing girl would be captured as she had been. Eventually, she realized that no one saw the creature but her.

  She must have been an older Sida because she could fly. She hung in the air and swooped like a joyful bird. One night, Saaral began to talk to her as she washed the clay cooking pots in the sand.

  “What is your name?”

  “My name?” The creature looked confused for a moment, then she looked up at the full moon. “You can call me Aday.”

  It was a name from her human language, and it made Saraal smile. “You’re a Sida like me.”

  “Yes.” Aday’s smile grew wide. “And no.”

  “What do you mean? Why can no one can see you except me?”

  “Can’t they?”

  “You know they can’t. That’s why you mock them.”

  Aday didn’t respond; she flew up in the air when Kuluun approached Saraal, towering over her.

  “Who are you talking to, Saraal?”

  Saraal put on the dead expression she wore for him. “No one.”

  Aday came back, hovering behind Kuluun and mimicking his angry stance, hands on her hips and eyes narrowed in anger. Saraal saw her, and an unexpected laugh left her throat.

  “What is wrong with you?” Kuluun asked. “You don’t speak to anyone but me.”

  Then Aday began to sing, though Kuluun ignored her.

  “Not true, not true!” Aday’s voice floated in the wind. “She talks to me, you old goat.”

  Saraal felt it again, a burst of laughter so high and clear she thought it must be coming from someone else. Kuluun backhanded her. But Saraal didn’t stop laughing because Aday kept singing.

  “Old goat! Hairless goat! Do your balls drag behind you, old goat?”

  Kuluun glared at the laughing Saraal. “What is wrong with you? Disgusting bitch.”

  “She’s disgusting?” Aday flew over and hovered in front of Kuluun, but he paid her no attention. “Do you like it when the other goats lick your sagging balls, Kuluun? They must get so dirty in the pony shit.”

  Saraal couldn’t stop laughing. Tears came out of her eyes. She didn’t even feel it when Kuluun’s fist connected with her jaw. The pain was inconsequential. The joy of hearing Aday insult Kuluun made any pain he inflicted a pleasure.

  Suk must have heard Saraal’s peals of laughter because he wandered over and pulled Kuluun’s arm back, stopping him from hitting her more.

  “What’s wrong with you? It’s my turn with her tonight. And I’m tired of fucking a dead thing. Leave her alone, Kuluun.”

  The glowering Sida wiped spittle from his mouth, his fangs cutting the back of his hand before he swung at his brother. “Shut up, you stupid shit, or you’ll get no turn with my woman tonight. She’s mine to do with as I like.”

  Suk cocked his head, watching Saaral, who was still giggling on the ground.

  “What is wrong with her?”

  “I don’t know.” Kuluun kicked her, but Saraal just rolled in the sand, laughing.

  “She’s mad. You’ve made her mad with your stupid punishment. I told you. She’ll be no good to anyone now.”

  Odval wandered over. “At least she’s laughing. Maybe she’ll be a better fuck now that she’s mad.”

  “I doubt it.”

  Odval shrugged. “I don’t care. I’ll take her if you don’t want her anymore.”

  Kuluun punched his brother. “She’s mine. You get a turn with her when I say so.”

  “Fine,” Suk said, pulling Odval away before the brothers began fighting again. Saraal just watched them from the ground, smiling when she caught Aday behind them making rude gestures. Soon enough, the brothers wandered away, and she began washing the cooking pots again.

  Some of the human women who belonged to the other Sida wandered over to do their chores alongside her, but no one spoke to Saraal.

  The human women the Sida collected—those they didn’t kill right away—thought of her as a mute. She wasn’t human so she couldn’t be trusted. But they knew she was a captive too, so she wasn’t respected. They treated her with fearful disdain. There was no friendly chatter as the women did their chores, like Saraal faintly remembered from her human life.

  The brothers had made many children over the years. Saraal would guess there were over fifty of them. Maybe more. But none was very strong. Not like Kuluun, Suk, and Odval had been. And the brothers were growing weaker. Saraal could sense it. Like water sapping from a leaky skin, every time one of the brothers sired another child, their strength depleted. She wondered what their own sire would think of it, but then she never saw him. He was only a rumor, like the sun.

  As if reading her mind, Aday came to sit across from her.

  “Who is their master?”

  “Kuluun and his brothers?”

  “Yes.”

  “They call him Jun. I never see him. Only once, when he made me.”

  “What do you remember of him?”

  She thought back to that night, but the memory had become more and more hazy as the years passed.

  “He was frightening.”

  Aday glanced around at the human women, who were staring at Saraal. She hissed like a snake, but the humans paid no attention.

  Then she asked, “Do you think Jun keeps women, too?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How many other children does he have? Many? Like Kuluun and his brothers?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know much.”

  Saraal shrugged, oddly hurt by the insult from the laughing creature. “I don’t ask questions.”

  The women stood and walked away from her, moving downstream, though they kept their eyes on Saraal. She bared her fangs and they sneered. They also walked faster.

  “You should ask questions,” Aday said. “You never know what they might answer if you do.”

  “Why does it matter?”

  Aday floated to her, curling around so that she could whisper in Saraal’s ear.

  “If you don’t know how many there are, you don’t know how many you’ll have to kill…”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can.” Aday floated above her as Saraal washed her clothes in the creek. She was wearing Suk’s cast-offs, which were huge on her, but not as bad as Kuluun’s or Odval’s. “Why couldn’t you?”

  “I’m not strong enough.”

  “Not yet.” Aday swooped down and hovered over the running stream, her long hair floating in the breeze, lifted by unseen currents. Saraal stared at her longingly. What would it be like to fly? To soar over the earth and feel the wind holding her body as a mother carried a child?

  For a moment, she hated Aday. Then the moment passed and she thought about what the other woman had said.

  “I’m not strong enough because I only drink pony blood. The others drink from the humans they capture.”

  “And why do you drink what they give you, Saraal?” Aday’s grey eyes were playful. “You took from the vein once. Don’t you remember?” The woman’s seductive voice whispered, “How sweet was the blood on your tongue? Do you remember how it m
ade you strong? You could join me, you know…” Aday did a slow flip in the moonlight. “You’re older than most of them now. And you could be stronger. If you drank enough from the humans, you would fly, too.”

  A chill wrapped itself around her heart. “And if Kuluun saw it. He would break me.”

  Until I become nothing again.

  “You’re not nothing,” Aday hissed.

  “I am.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I’m—”

  “Not!” Aday sang out, swinging her body up over the water, dipping a hand in the current. “Not, not, not!” she sang some more. “You are mighty, my girl. A warrior in slave’s clothing. A wolf hiding in the brush.”

  She hummed an old song Saraal thought she remembered her grandmother singing when she was a child. How the laughing girl knew it, she had no idea. They were many mountains away from her tribe. So many seasons had passed that her son would be grown.

  If he’d lived.

  “Go away, Aday.” The thought of her green-eyed boy pulled forgotten sorrow from her chest. “I’m tired of you tonight.”

  Without a whisper, the flying woman disappeared, and Saraal looked up to see two human women watching her, their eyes wide and frightened. She bared her fangs. It was easy to frighten the humans, and she didn’t like their company anyway. They were more fearful than sheep.

  She plunged her hands back into the freezing water. It was spring. Thin shoots of grass fought their way up from the earth, only to be ripped up as the animals fed. The water ran clear and ice-cold from the mountains.

  It would take many hours for her clothes to dry. They might not even be done by the next night. No matter. She didn’t feel the cold. Often, Saraal wondered why she wore clothes at all.

  Then she would catch a glimpse of one of the human captives, who were tossed naked into piles as they were drained. Like stacks of wood. Jumbled pottery shards. Waste. Their clothes were gone. Wool was not wasted on the dead. Then Saraal would wrap her torn clothing around her more tightly and shove the image from her mind.

  She bent over, and her braid dipped in the water. There was a flash of memory, as the stream gripped her hair, pulling it.