by Lucia Ashta
“Wow. Really?” Kai asked, glowing at being flanked by the warriors.
“For once, he’s not exaggerating,” Tanus said.
“Be glad we’re riding horseback, Kai. Seriously. This way your balls only get squished and pounded a bit, but at least they still remain in one piece.”
Kai’s eyes widened, and Dolpheus reveled in having the effect he’d wished for. “Things are never quite the same again once you transport,” he continued, wagging his eyebrows for dramatic effect. The men laughed. Tanus and Dolpheus, and Lila too for that matter, seemed no worse off for their transporting experiences. However I actually got to Planet Origins, it seemed my body was also functioning normally.
The laughter ceased abruptly. The men, including Kai, brought their horses to a stop and ran hands down their horses hot necks in reassurance while they listened. Lila and I drew up behind them, and even Lila had the good sense to keep her mouth shut. We were out in the open, exposed, and I had no idea what could emerge from our surrounds. So far all I’d seen had been humans and horses. But I was on an alien planet without any guarantee that the similarities between Earth and this planet would continue. I’d seen plenty of alien movies that fueled my imagination with horrors that could slither or pounce from the shadows.
I barely dared breathe. Tanus turned in his saddle. He pressed a hand against his lips, signaling silence, and led us into the woods that bordered the trail. We wove among trees and plants as soundlessly as we could. As soon as we were hidden from the path, Tanus turned his horse back toward the trail, moved ahead of us, and stopped next to Dolpheus, both men with their sight fixed ahead. We waited like this long enough for me to grow impatient. But not one of the soldiers nor his horse even twitched as time marked its murmured passing.
Finally, after I’d begun wondering whether the men could have been mistaken (I hadn’t heard anything remarkable), the sounds of people wafted down the trail. The sounds were those of harsh men, the kind that no woman wished to encounter on her own. Even from afar, unable to make out the words of their calls to each other, I understood that it would have been a terrible thing for them to have crossed our path.
We continued to wait, unmoving. My horse had obviously been well trained for danger. She was perhaps even more still than I was. I’d had encounters with men with ill intentions on Earth, and the memory of what they’d tried to do to me crawled across my skin. I’d been lucky each time. I’d managed to defend myself well enough to get away from them. But fright pulsed against my throat now.
I wasn’t sure why these memories of attempted assaults surfaced until I heard a tormented squeal. It was a woman or child. As much I would wish to spare a woman from any suffering, I hoped that it would be her and not a child. The torment of a child was somehow worse. The greater the innocence of the victim, the more my insides wanted to scream and break things at the injustice of life, where bad things happened to good people all day long.
The noise of the approach grew louder. By the time the oncomers crossed our vantage point, their calls were clamorous, and I wondered how it was that I hadn’t heard them at the start. The band consisted of nearly a dozen men, all draped in what I could only compare to the outfits I’d seen ninjas wearing in movies. Their clothing was black and loose enough for ease of movement. Hoods hung limply across their backs, announcing their perceived impunity. Seven women and two children were squashed among their ranks. The ninja-type men had bound their captives’ hands in front of them and led them by the rope.
The ninjas were too loud to think anyone would interfere with their actions, yet their prisoners’ eyes revealed something worse. I didn’t find terror, anger, or grief in the women and children’s eyes. What I saw was defeat. Resignation. They didn’t think anyone would help them. They marched forward believing their lives were forfeit.
I cringed. Revulsion rose like a wave of bile. For the first time since I discovered myself flung through space to land here, on Origins, I was frightened by the notion that I might never be able to return to Earth. The terrible things that happened on Earth, the suffering of innocents that went on as the world stood by and did nothing to interfere, had been too much. It was one of the reasons I’d built walls around my emotions. The suffering was too great, and if I allowed myself to feel the suffering of others, I knew there would be no end to it. I’d find madness before I found relief.
I was not going to trade the cruelty and destruction of one world for that of another. I refused. If I died here, right now, then it was better than having to live with the knowledge that humanity sucked no matter where it existed.
I unsheathed two of Tanus’ knives, with no idea what I’d do with them. I went to nudge my horse to the side and forward, intending to go around the men that banded in a line across the front of our group.
But just as I’d chosen my moment for action, Tanus whipped around and met fierce eyes with Lila and me. He held up one single hand, a sword already in it. Palm forward, he gestured in the universal silent expression of Stay. His eyes flicked down to my armed hands as fast as a hummingbird before flitting away. If he’d registered my intentions, he didn’t show it before turning back to face the band of armed kidnappers. They were passing us.
If there had been any warning of what the soldiers intended to do, it was so subtle as to go without notice. Leaned slightly forward in their saddles, they clutched weapons, their knees clamped against their horses’ wide ribcages.
Then, without a sound signaling action, Tanus and Dolpheus, with Kai close behind, exploded out of the woods. Their horses put on a magnificent display of the perfect combination of animal strength and grace before the startled screams of the ninjas’ victims and the clashing of metal weapons distracted me from any such appreciative thought.
SEVENTEEN
IT WAS like a fight scene from a B movie shot with a small budget. As soon as Tanus, Dolpheus, and Kai shot out from the woods, the ninja kidnappers organized themselves into a defensive formation. They pushed their victims behind and out of the way, releasing their ropes to the ground, so that they could form a semicircle, each man spread equidistantly from the other. They drew curved swords from their belts at the same moment that Tanus, Dolpheus, and Kai charged the path.
Where there’d been stunned silence one moment, the next it became a distant thought, obliterated from memory. The clash of metal upon metal was deafening, enough to wade through the whooshing of blood that flooded my brain. It was as if my head were stuffed with cotton balls. I wanted to do something to help, but what could I do? I was on a strange planet, and despite what Tanus believed, I had no warrior training. I felt wholly inadequate to intervene when I saw the skill the men in our group displayed.
From his horse, Tanus swung his sword, delivering a lethal blow to one man before he dismounted. By then, another ninja lay on the ground, still moving but bleeding heavily, and Dolpheus, free of his horse, hovered over him.
Kai was quick to follow their lead. He drew his horse out to the edge of the conflict and hopped off, sword ahead of him. By then, Dolpheus cut down a second ninja, and Tanus was in heavy combat with another.
The chaos was dizzying. Even with the bad guys dressed in an identifiable uniform, I couldn’t believe that Tanus, Dolpheus, and Kai could keep the enemy straight. Everything was moving too fast. Arms swung and sliced, legs jumped and dodged, and men followed each other around as one attacked and the other retreated before seizing the opportunity to pounce. Each motion was quick and decisive. They carried the weight of death.
The clanging of swords was numbing. It was with great effort that I drew my eyes away from the battle toward its outer edge. There, the victims of kidnapping stood unmoving, riveted as I was. Their eyes were wide and vulnerable. Ropes hung loose against the ground, yet neither the women nor the children made a move to escape. A part of me wanted to yell at them to run for their lives, to get away while they still had the chance. Yet another part of me understood what they already had: there was no point t
o it. If the soldiers didn’t manage to kill their captors, the women and children would be at the mercy of whatever cruel fate the ninja-like kidnappers handed out. Running wouldn’t make a difference. There was nowhere to run that would get them far enough away.
The victims were helpless, waiting and hoping for this unexpected deliverance. I, however, wasn’t used to feeling helpless. I squirmed in my saddle but didn’t move forward. There was nothing I could do that wouldn’t risk making things worse.
I hardly knew Tanus, yet I realized that if I were to get involved in this fight—to do what, I had no idea—it would distract his attention and likely the others’ as well. After all, they believed me a princess, one they’d be obligated to defend. The best thing I could do to help was to stay put. And I’d never liked staying put.
A man yelled. My panicked mind swung back toward the skirmish. Relief spread through me like a heat wave when I identified the person who’d screamed. He was dressed fully in black, his sword abandoned for a pain he couldn’t suppress. The man lay in a heap of pain, curled in on himself, cradling a leg. He cried and whimpered. My shoulders inched downward in relief. Even though I took no joy in another’s pain, better his than one of the victims or the soldiers who were intent on setting wrongs right.
Kai wasn’t as skilled as Tanus or Dolpheus, but Tanus and Dolpheus’ prowess seemed remarkable, and I finally understood Kai’s admiration for the two friends. Tanus was Gerard Butler in 300, and Dolpheus was one of those other Spartans that kicked ass. Still, Kai held his own. He lunged, parried, hedged, and attacked. He and the ninja went back and forth, neither one of them owning the clear advantage.
Swiftly, too swiftly it seemed, Tanus and Dolpheus took down the rest of the enemy. Three men in black squirmed in agony on the dirt path, crimson stains spreading around them like indelible ink. Three other men in black lay still in the way that only the dead did.
The only one to pose any threat was the ninja Kai fought. When I realized that neither Tanus nor Dolpheus intended to help Kai, I wiggled in my saddle some more. The friends stood, swords pointing down, red sliding down metal, and watched.
I wanted to share in their confidence in Kai but couldn’t. My shoulders were tight, and my neck already sore from the tension. The ninja looked like he might be gaining the upper hand. He forced Kai to take several steps backward. When the ninja struck Kai and hit his mark, a cry slipped from my lips before I could stop it. Tanus’ green eyes found mine through the thickness of forest, but they said nothing.
Kai’s right arm, his spare one, pressed against his bicep. Red soaked the fabric around his fingers. I wondered absently, as one does in moments when one shouldn’t, whether Kai wore mutable clothing and whether this was all that the cloth could do. Lila had touted mutable clothing as the ultimate in innovation, able to adjust for any contingency. But could it adapt to wounding by sword?
The ninja tossed concerned glances at Tanus and Dolpheus before stepping toward Kai, looking to press his advantage. Still, Tanus and Dolpheus remained rooted to their spots, stares trained on Kai.
The ginger soldier flashed a worried look toward his heroes but then reined himself in. His nostrils flared in concentrated breath. He released the pressure from his arm and brought the sword in front of him. Before the ninja could push him back any farther, he advanced.
The next moves were a blur. Kai lunged and tried to stick the man in black but missed. The ninja did the same in the opposite direction. Kai parried then lunged. The ninja jumped to the side and attacked. Kai managed to get his sword up in time to deflect the blow, and the impact of Kai’s defense threw the ninja off balance. It was just a second, but it was enough. While the ninja’s sword was raised, Kai lunged and pierced his chest.
The sounds of death dissected into parts as I purposefully listened to a person die for the first time. Like the slow motion effect of movies on Earth, I heard metal pierce fabric, crisp and quick. Then metal slicing through flesh. It was fast. The flesh put up no resistance, and I couldn’t believe how rapidly a sword could spear a man. Something almost like a thud sounded, and I froze as I imagined that was the sword embedding itself in the man’s spine. The ninja grunted, as if air and not life had been knocked out of him, a deflated understatement.
Then all that remained was the sound of Kai breathing heavily, winded, and the whimpering sounds of the fallen yet still living.
Kai yanked his sword out. Blood spurted from the hole it left behind. It was like a juice box you squeezed too hard trying to put the straw in. A crimson squirt shot out at first, then it oozed. The liquid was thick with the rapidly vanishing essence of life.
The kidnapper crumpled to the ground, legs folded at awkward angles. It wasn’t an elegant position to die in, but it’s what he got.
I nudged my horse from the trees and immediately regretted doing so. Every one of my mare’s steps brought me nearer to the semicircle of death.
Dolpheus went to the two men on the ground that were groaning the loudest from their injuries and killed them. Perhaps, I thought, Dolpheus was an angel of mercy. He relieved those two men of their suffering.
He stopped at the third, however. Tanus already stood over the seated man who eyed them warily. When Dolpheus joined Tanus, the ninja dragged himself backward along the ground, scooting his black-clothed butt across dirt.
Dolpheus and Tanus exchanged a look that made the ninja drag himself back farther, until he would have bumped into his victims if they hadn’t finally reacted and retreated from danger. Only now there wasn’t any more danger. Not to them, at least.
In a rush, Dolpheus and Tanus pinned the man to the ground. They were both big, solid men. The ninja couldn’t move, not even to tend to his wounds. His legs thrashed in useless struggle. I hiccupped a hint of vomit as I caught sight of white poking through black. A broken bone protruded through skin and fabric.
Dolpheus spoke with a calm that would have been appropriate at a fancy dinner party. It was only the deadly edge to his voice that provided it with the relevant setting. “We can do this the easy way. Or we can do it the hard way.” I wondered at the synchronicities of life. This was a variation of a line I’d heard in nearly every action movie I’d ever watched, delivered by the man who was about to torture another for information. In the movies, I looked away when things got too violent. Now, I couldn’t seem to get my eyes to move from Dolpheus’ intent face. “What’s it going to be?” Dolpheus said, and I wanted to smile but couldn’t.
“Fuck you,” the man in black said, another line often spoken by the resilient target of interrogation.
A corner of Dolpheus’ mouth lifted. “I like to get fucked, just not by you.” Aghast, I watched Dolpheus’ hand slide toward that ivory white protrusion that stuck out like a gruesome flag of surrender. The scream came almost before Dolpheus’ fingers dug into the area that surrounded the bone fragment. It was a scream I hoped never to hear again, one I willed myself even then to forget immediately.
The ninja panted heavily. He rolled his head side to side, grinding his hair into the ground. Dolpheus and Tanus held him pinned at the shoulder and thigh points.
“Shall we try this again?” Dolpheus said. “Are you ready to talk, or do we have to keep playing this game?”
“I have honor.” The ninja’s voice lacked conviction, and his words dripped of an irony he didn’t seem to notice.
“Does this honor prevent you from talking to us?”
“Yes,” the ninja said, eyes alternating back and forth between his leg and Dolpheus’ handsome face.
Dolpheus sighed. It was a sound that lacked the lament I’d hope for in a man preparing to do what he was about to do. “Very well.” His hand slid across torn black fabric.
When the scream came, it formed a single, strangled word. “Stop.”
Dolpheus did stop. “I’ll stop only if you’ll talk.”
The man swiveled his head in the dirt again, this time to take in his fallen comrades. They all lay dead. Not a singl
e one of them moved. There would be no friend to witness his defeat.
When the ninja still hesitated, Dolpheus flexed his fingers. They moved no more than half an inch, but you wouldn’t have known it from the pitch of the ninja’s scream.
“All right. I’ll talk. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
“Why’d you take these women and children?” It was Tanus who asked the first question. Kai watched from the background, a hand clamped against his bleeding bicep.
“To sell them.”
“To whom?”
“Anyone that would buy them.”
“Where’d you take the women and children from?” Dolpheus asked.
“One of the outpost villages. That way.” The ninja signaled with his head in the direction we’d been heading.
“Where did you plan on selling them?” Tanus said.
“Outside the royal city.”
“What’s the name of your group?” Tanus asked.
“What name? We don’t have a name. We’re just men.”
Dolpheus put light pressure on the torn flesh around the exit wound. The ninja hurried to better his answer. “We call ourselves the Dark Warriors.” The ninja’s eyes darted back and forth between Tanus and Dolpheus’ faces. It looked as if he were attempting to determine which of the two posed the greater threat.
“He’s lying,” Tanus said.
“That he is,” Dolpheus said. “What do you think we should do about it?”
“Well, he’s not leaving us much of a choice, is he?”
“He sure as fuck isn’t,” Dolpheus said to Tanus. To the man on the ground, “I told you we’d do this the hard way if we had to. It’s too bad that’s what you chose.” Dolpheus clamped the fullness of his palm against the ragged bone. A scream that threatened to wake his dead comrades tore from the ninja.
I shot a glance at the ninja’s victims. They observed the punishment of their aggressor with the same hopeless eyes as they had the fight. The victims all looked the same, stooped shoulders, vapid expressions. I feared they might already be dead inside.