“What?” Alaysha asked, looking at the girl who pointed to the horizon where black, hulking shapes had come into bare view.
“Sweet deities,” Alaysha said. “Saved.”
“Not safe, us,” Theron said, rushing about to gather everything he could into his pouches and bags. He hurried over to Edulph and stuffed a filthy bit of leather into the man's mouth.
Alaysha searched for Gael's eyes and, finding them, saw steely resolution within the grayish green.
“Who?”
He nodded in Bodicca's direction.
“More of her,” Alaysha guessed.
“If they catch us with her, we're good as dead.”
“She'll tell them we saved her, won't she?” Alaysha squatted in front of the woman and saw for the first time how old she really was. Without the typical command of a warrior's stance, or arms, or the haughty knowledge that she could best most men, the woman in her pain revealed that she had to be at least the same age as Yuri. Maybe a full season or two younger.
“You'll tell them, Bodicca.”
“They won't be happy you saved me,” was all the fallen warrior said.
“But you're one of them.” Alaysha's confusion deepened even as Theron began rustling about the woman, trying to drag her off somewhere—deities only knew where he thought he would hide. “Theron, what are you—”
Bodicca interrupted her. “I was one of them yes. Many seasons ago. Who do you think did this to me?”
“But—”
“But they are fierce. You don't know, little witch.” Bodicca, grimacing and biting her lip, did her best to help Theron, even pushing herself to her hands and knees, and then, staggering to her feet.
The pain must have been nearly insurmountable, even Gael reached out to help her, only to step back when the Enyalian swatted him weakly away. She reached out for the shaman's arm. “It's near Solstice,” she said, and the shaman's sharp intake of breath made Alaysha squint at him suspiciously. He covered over the mistake by coughing in a fit but Alaysha knew something dreadful waited in the one word.
She squinted at him suspiciously. “What's solstice?”
“No time, no time, no, none at all,” he said and tried to drag at Bodicca's beast, who'd planted padded feet firmly in the earth.
“Leave her,” Bodicca said and put her hand out to Aedus. “Come, girl.”
Alaysha watched Aedus peer at the horizon, the hulking forms, now looming larger, wider, separating into a dozen beasts.
“They'll be coming to the well,” Bodicca ground out, her voice was pinched with pain. “Your witch will stay.” Bodicca glanced at Alaysha. “You will not want the girl with you.” She glanced at Edulph and grinned. “Him—well, you'll see.”
Alaysha might not understand what was going on, but she understood urgency, and she understood capture. She began gathering all the water skins she could and slapped Barruch's rump. “You won't have time to get far.”
The woman's cracked lips spread in a knowing smile. “Have no fear, witch. When they see you and that one,” she nodded at Gael, “We'll suddenly have plenty of time.”
Alaysha reached for Aedus and held her arms out. The girl rushed into them and squeezed so hard, Alaysha felt her breath rush from her lungs.
“I'll find you,” Alaysha said and felt Aedus' face burrow into her belly, then the girl squirmed to look at where Edulph stood watching her with a keen expression. She blinked and rubbed at her eyes and then peered back up at Alaysha.
"I want to go with you."
Theron stepped closer and peeled Aedus away. “This shaman, we know where to find her, little one.”
Aedus went, but reluctantly. She peered back over her shoulder as the three shuffled away, off to find some safety in the distance of a cracked horizon. Alaysha watched them go, leading Barruch away from her, knowing with each step, the Enyalia were drawing closer.
“What will they do, Gael?” she murmured, “When they reach us here, at their well.”
He sighed resignedly, “I imagine they will kill us.” He chuckled. “Or they will try.”
She looked at him, drinking in each feature that the rising sun painted in red, then orange, then yellow. She thought then of his touch on her skin, his breath against her throat. She thought if this was the last moment she would live, then she would think without guilt of the time they spent together. His worship of her body, the heat of his kiss, the feeling of surrender she gave him. She would enjoy it, the entire memory of all aspects of it from the fevered touches to the selfless way he comforted her. It hadn't felt like betrayal of her bond with Yenic—how could it be when Yenic himself had betrayed her. Even still, Gael had respected the bond and asked no more of her than that one moment when he could be hers ultimately and forever. She watched his face as he watched the horizon, tensing, getting ready, and when he glanced at her, she thought she felt a streak of wet running down her cheek, but that couldn't be true. She was exhausted of fluid.
She watched his throat convulse. She knew he was remembering it too. She thought perhaps he'd speak, remind her of that night, but he shook his head, then spread his arms wide, stretching, twisting his torso. Then he strode to the strange Enyalian beast and pulled out swords and knives and cut Edulph loose and pulled the leather from his mouth.
“You will need to fight for your life. Will you?”
Edulph nodded, grinned, and Alaysha saw for one heartbeat the savage brute who had captured and hurt his sister, then tried to manipulate Alaysha into killing her entire city.
“Fight?” Edulph's voice was hoarse from disuse, but the word was clear. “I'll kill every bitch I see.”
The Enyalia took their time; it seemed there was no rush in light of a barren landscape. No need to find an opponent before it disappeared. No reason to hurry a slaughter. Even still, as they drew closer, Alaysha was taken aback by their size. She had but one thought when they drew close enough that she could make out each muscle that tensed and released in gargantuan thighs, hear the rattle of the bracelets around their legs, hips, or ankles. Some of them, the largest, had rows of white marbles wrapped around their thighs and when they leapt from their beasts, those circlets sounded like teeth chattering against the cold.
Gael wasn't surreptitious about it when he passed Alaysha her sword and then pressed her behind him.
She felt a moment of anger, thinking he would coddle her so, but then Edulph took his place next to her and whispered in her ear, and she had no time to think or feel anything, except to agree.
“This is the best way to die.”
Chapter 5
When they leapt from their beasts, it was almost as though they did so as one unit. The moon had its near bloat, and the darkness of the desert wasn't as full as the stars shivered out of their clouds and lent cool white light to the area. Enough that the sight of the immense women struck a sort of dread in Alaysha's chest. The rattling of their movement died and an undercurrent of subtle threat echoed in the air in its place. The largest woman, a redhead as strikingly beautiful as she looked dangerous, strode forward with all the confidence of a panther about to settle in for a languid meal she'd stashed in a tree.
Alaysha watched Gael's shoulders shift subtly, gathering energy from the coils of muscle deep into his spine. She expected an explosion of movement, a flurry of excitement from beside her as Edulph lost the rest of his mind to battle madness.
Neither man moved. Both trained, Alaysha thought. Both in their ways, to the warrior's way. Disciplined. Wait for the right time. Wait. Wait.
Alaysha wasn't sure exactly what to expect; she could hear her own breath, finding time with Gael's, with Edulph's finding balance with hers. Everything hummed around her. She felt her heart beat. Filled her legs with air, her fingertips with breath. She became one great lung waiting to exhale.
The leader shouted a word, startling Gael, Alaysha could see. He flinched, but he didn't move to strike, he was that disciplined. Alaysha wanted to steal a look at Edulph, to make sure he wasn
't fool enough to engage before time.
The sound came again and Alaysha thought she understood the word. She waited, not sure if she should slip out of line or not. Then it came again.
“Woman.”
Gael didn't move so much as a lung to inhale. Edulph stood stock still. Alaysha shuffled, taking a step sideways and those mica colored eyes landed on her.
“Are these yours?” the woman demanded.
“Mine?”
The face hardened impatiently. “These.” The woman didn't even drop a look to Gael or Edulph; instead they stayed on Alaysha's face so steadily Alaysha believed they were deliberately ignoring the presence of the two men. That's when she realized they were.
“These are my friends,” she admitted. “We're traveling together. Yes.”
The woman's gaze narrowed. “Traveling? No one travels the burnt lands.” She sent a look to the women on either side of her, and two women stepped forward.
Alaysha only had time to think it was foolish for them to try to defend themselves against such calm command. And then she was sprung like a mechanism too long held taut.
She felt her arm lifting her sword, heard the clang of metal against metal. The jolt of meeting an unrelenting match leapt down her elbow and into some soft tissue beneath her ribcage. She meant to fight with all she had. She meant to meet each thrust with equal fervor, until she fell.
Only she didn't.
She couldn't.
The battle still raged, she could hear the metallic sounds, the grunts of effort. But she herself was impotent.
It took a few heartbeats to realize she was being held.
Two of the mountainous women towered behind her, holding her arms behind her back. One of them should have been enough to seize her, but Alaysha supposed the battle madness had given her enough juice to fight being pinned. And so two now held her tightly against one woman's body, with arms bent back from the shoulders, and her legs trapped between four legs. Alaysha could barely move enough to breathe.
Her shoulder burned deep in the tissues beneath the cuff as the women pulled her arms behind her and pinned them there. She could see Edulph being worn down, and she knew by the way he swung his sword a little too slowly, that he was finding it heavy. Still, the women circling him refused to engage him as anything but one-on-one when they could have made short work of him as a group.
The ground kicked up in plumes of dust that turned to grit sanding her eyes and coughing down into her lungs, making breathing difficult. How badly Edulph must be feeling she didn't want to guess, but he fought on anyway.
His opponent took her time, almost lazily playing with him as she blocked his every thrust, lifting her sword at the last moment, twisting it with barely any hip swing. Alaysha realized he was still too dehydrated to stand for long. She wondered why he didn't just give up. It was clear who the better fighter was. Still, Edulph gave it his all and only when it was painfully clear even to him that he would lose, did his opponent leap at him and send him hurtling backwards to the earth, her sword point at his throat. His chest heaved; hers barely moved. Edulph's hair plastered against his head, sweating. Only then, seeing how easily the woman could have taken Edulph did Alaysha breathe easily. The shame she felt at being so quickly dispatched melted away.
"She was playing with him," she heard herself say, and one of the women holding her made a sound of agreement.
Alaysha slumped in their hold. Fighting had been a futile endeavour, obviously allowed by these women only as a means to demonstrate their strength and superiority. She tried to twist in their grasp, to see if Gael realized it too. To tell him to give it up, not to waste his strength fighting for a life that they obviously didn't plan to take.
Her holders didn't seem to want to allow it at first, but when the sounds of battle didn't stop, even when Edulph was being forced to his knees and his hands bound behind him, Alaysha grew belligerent.
"Pull them off," she growled, thinking it was smarter for Gael to conserve his strength, that to continue to oppose the warriors might well mean his unintentional death—he was a stubborn one, that man.
At first, she felt the women slacken their hold, and then she heard a cry of anguish from beside her. She felt her arm being let go and she spun so she could see around before the other could capture it and pull it taut against its mate again.
Yet the clang of metal continued. Gael, Alaysha thought. He must still be fighting. She needed to twist to see him, but she couldn't. She couldn't move enough, and she prayed she'd not hear the silence descend. That one would fight to the death, she knew.
The moments were few but could have been seasons as Alaysha waited. The sounds of exertion grew more laboured, the sounds of scuffle meant a barrage of warriors rather than two. Alaysha counted quietly; two for Edulph, two for her. That meant at least eight against Gael.
She tried to struggle and heard a harsh command in her ear.
“Be still.”
Alaysha tried to catch Edulph's eye as he was forced to his knees. His face was bloody, his cheeks swollen. His beard was cut neatly into two swaths by a long slash. He'd fought with all he had, she thought and sighed heavily. If it weren't for Gael, and for the uncertainty of how far the others had managed to flee, Alaysha would bleed these women of their fluid and be done with it.
The hold on her arms began to twist, and she realized she too was forced to her knees. She swore to herself if Gael was harmed, she would bleed these women. She would, and pray Aedus had gotten far enough away to use the rain that would come after.
As her knees struck the earth, she felt the hold on her lessen, and then she was thrust onto her side, her shoulder ramming the unyielding clay painfully. The point of a sword—her own—was pressed behind her ear as she was left to see the carnage.
Dear deities, there were bodies and body parts everywhere. The ground was soaked with blood.
There, in the midst of three standing, fully engaged women fought Gael. She'd seen him in battle before, and it could be described as beautiful, the way he moved, the way he struck out with such economy of motion it was obvious he treated it with the sense of art he thought it. He fought so now, stepping lightly, face down, arms moving—one with blade, one with sword. Strikingly only when necessary, waiting with the patience of a cobra for the right moment, except now, his combat was not a thing of beauty.
He was bloodied. Hair clotted with red, arms slashed and bleeding. When he spun to meet the blade of an Enyalian who got too close, Alaysha could see his eyes were swollen nearly shut—he'd been struck by a fist or a sword hilt or elbow.
Someone had got close enough to do him harm.
Alaysha could tell the women had realized one was not enough to take this warrior down. Several women lay bleeding and sprawled on the ground around him. It was to one of these fallen that one of Alaysha's captors ran, stumbling in a way that told Alaysha the woman was dead, and none of these Enyalia—least of all that weeping and furious woman touching an unmoving face—would let him live for such folly.
Gael was fighting for his life and he knew it. To call to him would be foolish. They were too large, too strong, too disciplined.
Alaysha couldn't feel her lungs expand. She fought to inhale, to feel her heart pump. Once, as he spun and swung, his metal biting into the blade of another, she thought she caught his eye, and she knew what he'd see if indeed he could see at all: her fear. Fear in her face, her posture. Fear in the way she felt her face contorting in an effort to hold back the stinging in her eyes, to sop up the tears that pooled beneath her nose and leaked into her mouth.
And fear of the knowledge that the power was coming despite her best attempt to wait until he was indeed dead and gone, because if he lived through the battle, then she’d drain him as surely as she drained the rest, and she’d never survive the guilt of it.
And then he dropped his blade, let his arms fall to his sides as he halted, facing her, keeping her gaze with his own purpled and bloody one. He surrendered for her,
she knew that. He would've died fighting but for the guilt she'd have to live with if he didn't. He chose instead the blades of his opponents as his death, all three of them darting for him at the same moment he gave in.
Alaysha braced herself for the strike, telling herself she would unleash the coiled power the moment the blades went in. She did her best to hold it back, knowing that if she let go too late, it would be she who took Gael's life.
But it was too late.
The power was unready unfurling.
Chapter 6
One heartbeat, two. Before ten, and she knew the mist would gather as it drained and psyched every bit of fluid it could detect. All the tears and sweat from these women—Alaysha could already taste the salt. Edulph's blood drying in his veins, Gael's. But first the most available: the water skins filled and bloated on the beasts' backs. The water from the well as it rose from the crack Gael had managed to create as he'd hefted the stone lid.
Fury had hold of her, and it wanted—no, needed—to see the mist gather. She wanted these women to dry to leathered husks and drift on the wind like dried brush at the weather's whim, and she could care less what happened to their seeds as they fell from their sockets, unliving forever, never to be released. Never to take root and inhabit any other savage world ever again.
She thought she heard her name, but it didn't matter. The woman standing next to her fell, not dead—not yet, but the skin was already drying. Alaysha looked past her, thinking to let the rain burst over Gael when it bloated to its limit, thinking she'd give him back the fullness of his flesh after she'd taken it so he would still be beautiful, so his eyes could stay where they belonged. His eyes. So gray green, so filled with the soul of his body.
His eyes. Open. Staring at her, reminding her he wasn't dead, that it wasn't time for vengeance.
Alive. Alive, Alaysha. Let it go, let the power go. She forced herself to think of nohma again, the love she felt for the gentle woman seep into her being and fill her hands, her feet, her moisture as it raced through her veins. Nohma. Aedus. Saxa: all those she loved without question or doubt or fear. She pictured their faces; reached out to them with her mind.
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