by Nathan Long
Once I got into the rhythm of the life I actually didn’t mind it. I’ve always been more physical than mental, and heavy labor makes me feel useful. It toughened me up too. They didn’t let us wear anything more than loincloths—just another way to remind us we were animals—so after a bad week of pink peeling, I ended up covered in so many freckles I looked like a drop-cloth—which is as close as I ever come to getting a tan. After two weeks, I’d built up and thinned down enough that you could see my abs and biceps, even when I wasn’t flexing. I felt better and stronger than I had in years. I even stopped craving Marlboros, mostly.
But I made sure I didn’t show my true strength. I held back; digging and lifting just a little bit more than the others, just enough for Queenie to appreciate me, but not enough for anyone to take me for a threat. I was a “good girl” and a happy little worker, and I kept an eye out for the main chance.
Sai didn’t take to it like I did. Even though physically he recovered pretty quickly, mentally he was about as lively as a sloth with a barbiturate problem.
After what he’d said I kept expecting him to snap out of it, but he never did. I didn’t know what to think. Was he playing possum like me? If he was, he had an Oscar coming his way. He stumbled through each day in a sleepwalk fog, shuffling and staring at his feet and harvesting about half what the rest of us did. Not that he was allowed to work that much anyway. Kitten, who seemed to spend more time gossiping with her girlfriends than she did working, led him around like a lap dog, petting him, dressing him up in cast-offs that must have come from other slaves, both male and female, tying colorful strings and ribbons in his hair. He took it all with the same rag doll stupor he showed for everything else. He didn’t eat. He didn’t clean himself. He hardly noticed when I tried to cheer him up.
The only thing that woke him up was once when Kitten tried to take off this thin silver chain he wore around his waist. It had a medallion dangling from it that I hadn’t noticed before, probably because he kept it tucked down in his loincloth. When she grabbed it he started fighting like a wild animal. She decked him when he chomped down on her thumb and threw him into a corner, but she let him keep the chain.
I helped him up. “What was that all about?”
“She tried to take my Balurra. ’Tis the token of a man’s love for his lady. He makes it with his own hands in the shape of her family crest, and only reveals it to his beloved or at his death.”
I got a look at it before he put it away. It was a silver circle with a design of green and black diamonds inside. I’d seen the same mark inlaid on some of the luggage from Sai’s coach. Must have been his sweetheart’s stuff.
***
After a while I noticed that there were some intra-camp rivalries going on. There was another clique of Aarurrh chicks who gave our gang the cold shoulder. We’d always make sure we did our gathering as far from them as possible. Queenie sneered at them, “They from One-Eye’s clan. Too good to dig ’cause their men best hunters. Hrrn! They steal kills from other men.”
“So how come nobody says something, Hur-Hranan?”
“Best hunters protect chief. Nobody can talk to him.”
Yup, just like trying to see the boss when his secretary hates you. Not gonna happen.
One-Eye’s clan had most of the top spots in the tribe, and lorded it over everybody. One-Eye was the worst. We used to pass him and his men most mornings on the way out of camp. He always gave Handsome, who was part of his squad, the shit detail, sometimes literally. The Aarurrh used the stream as one big combined dumpster and toilet, and sometimes they threw in so much stuff that somebody had to go dredge it out. Handsome was always the guy, and One-Eye made sure to let Kitten see. It was a funny way to try to impress her, but hell, I’d seen bikers pull the same shit back home.
One day after Kitten had been moping all morning, I asked Queenie why she didn’t dump One-Eye’s ass for good. Queenie grunted, angry. “Can’t do. Chief give her to Hruthar.” Hruthar was One-Eye’s real name. “They join at pregnant moon festival, next moon. Too soon.”
“The chief’s giving her to Hruthar, Hur-Hranan? You don’t get a say in it?”
She sighed. “When I girl, I leave Hirrarah tribe and join warrior from Yurrahah tribe. Yurrahah wiped out by Unrarach Clan and my man die, so I come back here. But too old to have babies now. No use they say. Won’t feed me. Har! I best digger here, but they want warriors. Chief say he take me back if I promise daughter to him to do what he want. I got no place to go so I say okay.” She ripped a tuber out of the ground, angry. “When cheater Hruthar make top man, chief promise Murrah to him when she joining age. Now she is.”
Man, and I thought chicks had it tough back home. I saw how One-Eye treated Kitten. I couldn’t see him changing when they tied the knot. I felt sorry for her and Queenie. But then something happened that made me put their troubles on the back burner.
***
One night Queenie and Kitten left us alone at the tent to go do some secret tribal women stuff. No slaves allowed. Sai was his usual talkative self, so I’d gone down to the creek to rinse the grain for the next day’s breakfast. When I got back to the tent Sai was teetering on top of Queenie’s cooking tripod, the tallest piece of furniture in the tent. Getting up there must have been the most athletic thing he’d done since we got here.
“Sai? What the hell...” Then I noticed the rope around his neck, knotted to one of the tent’s cross poles. “Sai! Don’t!”
He looked down at me. The smeared mess of Kitten’s last rouge and eye make-up experiment made him look like an abused doll. “At last I find hope of escape.”
And with that he pitched forward, tipping over the cooking tripod and falling free. The rope jerked tight and swung as he reached its limit. The whole tent shook.
“Sai!” I leaped up to the cross pole and tore at the knot as Sai made hideous dying fish noises below me. Thank god he hadn’t dropped far enough to break his neck, but if I didn’t untie that knot he was going to choke to death.
It was too tight, and my fingernails were worn to the quick from digging tubers. I looked around, desperate. Queenie’s cooking blade hung “out of reach” on the center pole just below my feet. I snatched it up and chopped down on the knot. The blade bit through the rope and Sai hit the ground like a sack of shark bait. I was next to him in a second, digging my finger under the rope and tugging it lose none too gently. “You stupid butt-smack! What the fuck do you think you were doing?”
It took a minute for him to stop retching enough to answer. When he did it wasn’t to thank me. “How dare you? After shaming myself for these long days, too much the coward to do what must be done, I finally summon the strength and do the deed, and... and you ruin it!”
“Ruin it? I saved your life!” Then it hit me. “Wait a minute. Hope of escape? Is this what you meant by ‘finding a way out?’ You sorry-ass loser!”
He pouted. “And now you make it doubly hard. Now that I know the pain and fear of it first hand, how much more difficult will it be to find the courage a second time?”
I’m sorry to say I bitch-slapped him. Somebody had to. “You whiny little puke. You think you’re being brave by committing suicide? All that crap about honor and courage. You’re just giving up. Sure your life sucks right now, but you’re alive. You’ve got all your arms and legs. They work. As long as you’ve got all that there’s still a chance.”
Sai tried to push me away. I grabbed his jaw and forced him to look at me. “Can you save your fiancée from that dumb jock when you’re dead? Can you fix things with your dad? And what about me? You’re gonna leave me here to fend for myself?”
He flushed at that, turning from lavender to magenta. “Mistress Jae-En, I am ashamed that an outlander should show me the path of honor. You are correct. I have strayed, forgetting in my misery your plight and that of my beloved Wen-Jhai. Ending my own wretched life is a luxury I can not indulge in until I have done my all to deliver you both from your fates. I crave your forgiveness.�
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Man, I hated when he got all gushy on me. “Forget it.”
From outside the tent we heard Queenie’s alto purr and Kitten’s soprano whine. They were coming back. I leaped up.
“Quick! The hibachi!” Good thing I pointed too. I had a tendency to mix my old dictionary with my new one when I got excited and half the time Sai didn’t know what I was talking about. He righted the cooking tripod as I shoved the rope under a trunk and leaped for the cross pole, yanked the chopper out of the wood, hung it back on its hook, and was down again sweeping the rug with a straw broom just as the tent flap started to open.
Sai, in a flash of inspiration that made me hope he’d gotten over his suicidal funk, tied one of kitten’s brightly colored scarves over the raw rope marks on his neck. It make him look like a sixties stereotype of an interior decorator, but it hid the evidence. Queenie and Kitten were busy talking and paid even less attention to us than usual. Probably more Hatfield and McCoy stuff.
After we finished making and serving our mistresses their vittles and cleaning up, we were finally allowed to lie down on our straw to sleep.
Sai whispered in my ear, “Again I apologize, Mistress Jae-En. I have been so long absorbed in my own despair that I have ignored you. Have you a plan?”
I hated to disappoint him. “Sorry, Sai, not yet. But stay strong and stay ready. Something will happen.”
And something did.
CHAPTER FIVE
SNEAK ATTACK!
For about half a big moon... Now, wait. I guess I gotta explain about that first. I already said about the two moons—the big slow one and the little fast one. Well, the Aarurrh used them to tell time and keep track of the days. I picked it up just being around them.
The little moon went by so fast it lapped the big one twice a night—and twice a day too—you just couldn’t see it so well then. The Aarurrh called the time that the little guy was in the sky a crossing, and the time it was on the other side of the planet a dark, so the day was cut up into First Crossing, First Dark—sunrise to noon—Second Crossing, Second Dark—noon to sunset—Third Crossing, Third Dark—sunset to midnight—and Fourth Crossing, Fourth Dark —midnight to sunrise.
They kept track of the passing days by the quarters of the big moon, which went from full to dark to full in about twenty days by my count, so each quarter was five days long. Got it? Okay. Where was I?
Right. For about half a big moon, things had been getting tenser and tenser in the camp. Even Sai felt it. It was like somebody was winding a guitar string too tight. Any minute something was going to pop, you just didn’t know exactly when. There were high level councils around the men’s fire most nights, with the big chief and all his captains arguing long into the Fourth Crossing. Queenie and Kitten talked in hushed tones with the other females. One-Eye was crankier than ever, and more than once caught Kitten and Handsome meeting in secret and making like the last act of Romeo and Juliet. I thought he was going to kill poor Handsome, but though he whaled the tar out of him he was careful not to do any serious damage, though it sure looked like he wanted to.
Every day, raiding parties returned to camp with severed heads of Aarurrh stuck on the points of their spears. When they passed, the women howled and snarled like a wolf pack. Queenie would grin and point. “See how ugly? Disgusting. Barahir thieves. Poach our meat-birds. We make pay, hin? Ugly dung eaters.”
I guess you had to be an Aarurrh to see it. The junk jewelry they wove into their dreads was a little different, but other than that they looked just like the guys from Queenie’s tribe to me.
Ugly or not, our tribe, I mean Queenie’s tribe, the Hirrarah, had a major beef with these guys, the Barahir, and things were heating up big time. Everywhere we went in the camp I could pick out that name, “Barahir” from all the usual Aarurrh cat yowling. I noticed a lot of spear sharpening going on too. Defenses around the camp were doubled, and Queenie and Kitten were going to funerals for young Hirrarah warriors almost every night. Sai and I watched it all and started getting excited. War means chaos, and chaos is good for opportunities. Of course, when it came, it didn’t work out exactly the way I wanted it to, but that’s chaos for you.
***
It all started as just another day of hunting and gathering. Sai and I were out with Queenie’s work party about a half mile from the ravine, digging the black tubers, and also picking little sapphire-blue weeds which were in season. If you dried and crushed them, they made a sour, orange-rindy type seasoning. A hunting party had passed us on our way up to the plains, and rode off east at first light.
Sai was finally pulling his weight, and actually seemed to be getting used to the life, or at least not actively hating it. He was even interacting with Kitten a little. Not that he pretended to like her petting on him, but at least now he’d get pissed and wipe off the make-up she put on him instead of just sitting there like a lump. Kitten thought this was cute, and called him “bad baby.” Poor guy just couldn’t win.
We had armed guards with us these days. They’d been coming out ever since things got tense with the Barahir. They were supposed to be keeping an eye out, but mostly they talked to the girls. That little breach of duty almost got us all killed.
Less than a mile away a huge herd of those big birds, which Sai called krae, wild cousins of the big-headed bastards that had pulled his coach, were grazing in the blue grass. That was pretty common. The krae were a prime source of meat for the tribe and hunters went out every few days to bring down a dozen or so. They weren’t dangerous if you kept your distance and didn’t provoke them. They looked like crazed carnivores, but they were really more like cows. They used those big snapping turtle beaks to steam-shovel up the same tubers we were digging for. We ignored them. Most of the time they ignored us. Not today.
I had just filled my first sack of tubers when I heard a rumble. The guards looked up from their flirting. The heads of the slaves and the women came up like prairie dogs. The krae were stampeding right for us. My heart jumped like a frog in a bread box. A big, gray wave of huge, shaggy birds a mile wide was about to crash down and drown us.
The krae are fast. Real fast. The tribe’s hunters almost never try to cut them down them on the fly. They get most of their kills sneaking up on them and using their bolos to bring them down, or trapping them in blind canyons and spearing them like fish in a barrel. In a straight race the birds win every time. We were in big trouble.
The guards, those brain-dead, bootie-blinded bone-heads, shouted a command—about two minutes too late—but we were already running, the Aarurrh girls screaming, the older, wiser women saving their breath.
Some of the slaves got left behind in the confusion, pumping away on their scrawny legs without a chance in hell. I would have revealed my leaping ability right then and there, but Queenie, the sweetheart, slung me up on her back and we raced for the ravine trailhead. I looked over and saw Kitten scoop up Sai and tuck him under her arm like a running back with the pigskin. Whew!
The birds were gaining. They’d been at a full run when we noticed them, a half mile away, and by the time we’d all got up to speed, the gap was closed by half, and the ravine didn’t seem any closer. I looked back, just in time to see a slave go down under the tide, claws wider than he was crushing him to the ground and ripping giant divots out of his back. I could make out individual feathers on the big bastards now, and the red of their wild eyes.
Then a glint made me look beyond them. I squinted into the huge cloud of dust those big chicken feet were kicking up and saw something back there that wasn’t a bird—a spear head, a spangle of jewelry, the silhouettes of broad shoulders and dreadlocks.
“Hur-Hranan! Look! There are Aarurrh back there! Behind the krae!”
Queenie shot a look back and growled low in her throat. She barked to the guards. “Barahir!”
They looked back too.
The ravine was only a hundred yards away now, but the krae were only fifty. The guards were dropping back and urging us ahead. Q
ueenie was doing the same, shoving the other females ahead of her. I broke out in a cold sweat. It’s fine to play the noble den mother, but not when you’ve got a passenger. The first girls were sweeping into the hairpin turn of the steep trail down to the floor of the ravine. The trail hugs the cliff pretty tight in some places. The Aarurrh don’t usually go down it more than two abreast. The girls were taking it full tilt three and four at a time.
The first krae were twenty feet away when we all suddenly realized that they weren’t going to stop! Whatever the Aarurrh behind them had scared them with, it was enough to do a total lemming trip on them. Forget gravity. Forget flightless wings. The krae herd was about to become a mindless krae avalanche.
Queenie wheeled down into the trail as the first of the krae hit the edge and did the old Wile E. Coyote step into thin air. A dozen more were right behind them. The air was filled with squawking screeching plummeting bodies. Looking back I saw our four guards bulldozed off the cliff by a tidal wave of unstoppable bird-flesh. Ahead of us, down the trail, krae were bouncing off the path between sprinting Aarurrh girls.
We were actually lucky that the damn things ran so fast, because momentum arced most of them over the narrow trail and straight into the ravine. It was like riding behind a solid, feathered waterfall. Unfortunately, a lot of the birdbrained things tripped at the edge. It reminded me of that Indiana Jones movie where the temple collapses and big chunks of stone drop all around the hero, only with giant birds. Far down the path an Aarurrh mama was punched off the trail like an eight ball getting knocked into a corner pocket. Right in front of us a young Aarurrh girl got clobbered on the hindquarters and went down all splay-legged and half off the trail.
Queenie, the idiot, stopped to help her up. Krae were hitting like depth charges all around us. One grazed Queenie’s shoulder, and mine. Queenie didn’t flinch. She got the poor girl’s hind legs back on the trail and had her halfway to her feet when we heard a roaring behind us.