Cai caught her before she fell.
"None of us have much in the way of strength, but you even less, little maga."
"What you did was amazing," Yenic said. Alaysha never heard that tone in his voice before and it made her feel warm and tingling. "Such control, Alaysha."
"I seem to be paying for it, however."
He nodded, mutely. "It's still a victory. You should enjoy it."
She looked around, as much to change the subject as anything else. "What is this place?"
"This is the pine woods. It's the last piece of land before the journey to the highlander territory." Cai stretched her legs forward and Alaysha noticed her circlets were gone. There was no corresponding rattle.
"That fire," Cai nodded at the flame. "Is burning in the same place my sword sisters say Alkaia lit one her first night in exile."
Bodicca made a sound on the other side and Cai nodded at her "I knew when you found us here that it was true. You met her here, didn’t you?"
"We did, yes. She was weak. We had no idea how badly she was bleeding." Her voice seemed far off and Alaysha thought she must be remembering, maybe even watching it again. "She'd already killed four wolves by the time we found her. And the babe."
"Ellison," Theron murmured. "How did you keep him alive until you reached us?"
"Easy," Bodicca said with a grin in her voice. "We let him drink his fill from her after—after she died. Then we stole back into the village."
"So you were the ones," Cai said.
"Yes." Bodicca said. "Corrin and Yuri hid away a host of pre-men too young at the time of the quarter solstice to go to slaughter. Dozens of them." She chuckled. "Together with the stock women and wet nurses, it seemed like a thousand. The boy had plenty to drink then. Many of us lived on mother's milk for the first sun cycle."
"Fierce leader of a thousand," Alaysha mumbled, thinking of Yuri's title.
"It's easy to re-enslave those already enslaved if you offer things seeming like freedom," Bodicca said. "That was Yuri's enticement. Freedom to live and fight at their will in a city of their own. They slipped away as they did their chores and we lit on our way through the burnt lands before four sun rises."
It was a history of her father she'd never heard, and it held Alaysha rapt. "Why didn't the boys just leave before if it was so easy?"
Cai cleared her throat. "Until then, Enyalia would have noticed. They would hunt and kill anyone who left the village. But then-"
"Then the village was under strain," Bodicca said.
"Strain. A good description," Cai said. "Uta only ever called it difficult. A young warrior choosing to save a pre-man. Our leader gone into self imposed exile, taking an infant male with her and leaving the daughter."
"Self imposed? I thought she'd be banished." Alaysha was surprised to hear this.
"I suppose she knew she'd upset the balance. That to choose an outsider, she was no better than Bodicca. She would expect the same treatment."
"Uta expected us to track Alkaia and kill the boy."
Alaysha sensed something in the warrior's tone. "And you, Cai? Now that you've saved outsiders instead of your sisters?" Alaysha reached out to touch where the woman previously sported her circlets, and the thigh muscle trembled beneath her fingers.
"I can never return," she said.
"It's a hard choice," Bodicca whispered and got up, finally, staggering as Gael had done before she managed a good balance. She looked incredibly old in the firelight and Alaysha realized for the first time that she was old. She'd been such a solid, brusque constant in her life that Alaysha had always assumed she didn't age. But she was as old as her father had been.
Her father. So much she didn't know. He'd saved his half brother from certain death, rescued dozens of comrades from Enyalia, survived the burnt lands.
And had done everything in that power to ensure all but the one witch he could control was dead.
She watched Theron in the light, wondering what he knew, and found herself feeling betrayed by him. He'd known all along that she'd killed his witch—his wife she knew now—and he'd not told her the connection. How much more was he keeping quiet? She was even beginning to wonder if he was half mad at all, but used his speech patterns as a means to stay below the vision line. He'd made her take Yuri's eyes, saying they were part of Etlantium, and she'd carried them with her in her pack.
All that was left of her father after Aislin scorched him to ashes. All she had of a sister she didn't know was a memory. She thought of the warrior Alkaia and how she'd saved her son, the part Yuri played in that and felt strangely proud.
"Do you have children, Cai?"
"I have celebrated two quarter solstices; I did not relish the task, and did not think to repeat it. I am grateful I never quickened."
Alaysha shifted uncomfortably as drums sounded in the distance, the beat growing more incessant, and she realized Cai was watching her. "Makes me nervous," she said.
"It’s meant to. They get into your chest, do they not?"
Theron grumbled from his spot next to the fire and Alaysha peered at him, trying to make out his expression. "Do they bother you too, Shaman?"
He had taken to rocking. "The hair. Stinks of burning."
"Not yet, old man. Not yet," Cai said and his eyes snapped to her, suddenly aware, as though the turn itself had struck a chord.
"And yet this old man smells it. Spectres of men once known, they follow us. They do. And they are not kind. Such is the price of escape."
"What does he mean?" Alaysha asked.
Cai sighed. "My sword has bathed in solstice blood but twice, but even I remember the stink of hair and fat."
She looked to want to avoid the topic, but Alaysha pressed her. "The drums will peak and die even though no men will be sacrificed. The pre-men will have no need to tether the men to the burning sword. Many of them will be forced to walk into the flame. Some, those who are lucky enough, will be killed before, to shed their blood for us. All will die."
Alaysha thought of Yuri, of his knowing what lay ahead of him if he stayed in the village of the Enyalia and realized at once that he'd saved dozens from their fate. She stole a look at Bodicca, who stared into the flame as though reliving her own casting ceremony so many years ago. Her mouth was twisted into a line of revulsion that echoed how Alaysha felt.
"That's savage. You don't kill for a god, or to prevent disease. You kill because they are men."
Cai pursed her lips, considering. "You speak as though there was something wrong with that."
"There is something wrong with that. You use them to procreate –"
"Not just any male, little maga. Only the halest of them."
"So you use the best specimens, force them to lie with you –"
"Not all are forced." Cai held up her hand. "Quite a few enjoy the activity."
"Only because they have no idea what their end will be. So the ones who don't enjoy it? What do you do to them? You torture them to submit?"
"Little maga, a man is simple, and his manhood even more so. There is no need for torture—unless he wants it."
"And then you murder them."
"They are men. They have no further use."
"I thought the Enyalia felt no fear for any man."
"And what do you think affords us such courage?"
"Surely you can't believe all men are vermin. These here," Alaysha pointed to Yenic and then to Gael who sat by himself hunched fire away from the fire. "These men were useful enough that you brought them here."
"I let them live because you wished it, little maga. Not because they have value besides their seed."
Alaysha groaned, frustrated, and Bodicca spoke finally. Her voice was a gritty whisper. "Had I let Yuri die in our land, this little maga you seem fond of would not be sitting in front of you."
Cai shrugged. "The value of seed, warrior, no more."
"This man was valuable enough to the Enyalia that Komandiri Alkaia gave her life for his service." She pointed
at Theron who squirmed anxiously.
"Again, all has more to do with the power of Enyalia, Bodicca, not the value of men. We birth men, they serve us, and in their time they die. If men were more resourceful, more valuable—even more fearsome a thing, they would not die so easily at the quarter solstice. My blade would not have sent a red grin across two men's throats, the pre-men would not have hoisted dozens of their comrades to the burning sword over and over and over again as long as Enyalia has thrived."
A terrible guttural sound came from the bushes and Gael, his face a fearsome mask of pain and rage, threw himself over the fire and leapt at Cai.
The two struggled, Cai finding her footing first, but Gael meeting her cheek with a resounding blow as she did so. He seemed to know each place she would be and followed her with dogged punches, to the stomach, the ribs by the time Yenic and Bodicca lunged in to separate them. Cai gave in readily to Bodicca, but Gael fought on, thrashing in Yenic's hold until Alaysha shouted that the foolishness should stop. It did stop, but Gael stomped out into the trees snarling to himself. Alaysha looked about the surprised group, all heaving, the tensions obvious in their shoulders. She turned and picked her way behind Gael.
She reached to touch him but he shifted away, his shoulder jerking forward. "Leave me be, Alaysha," he said.
"I won't. You're hurt."
"Then send the shaman to tend to me." He stomped a few paces further, forcing her to step over a fallen tree to get to him.
"Gael?"
The full moon had tucked itself into black clouds, but it was light enough for her to see his face when he spun back to her. He was closer than she thought and his voice sailed over her head. "I told you to go away."
"No." She didn't understand the coldness in his tone. "You need to rest, to eat. You're still not fully healed."
"I'm as healed is I need to be."
This time when she touched what she thought was his chest, she heard his sharp intake of breath. He gave an audible swallow, then his voice, like grit in his throat. "Leave me alone, Alaysha. Go back to your pup."
The hulking shadow settled down next to the tree. There was a dark movement as though he was pulling his cloak over his head and then all was quiet but for the sounds of bats clicking in search of a meal.
Alaysha picked her way through the darkness back to the fire, feeling confused and concerned. She could make out Bodicca's form hunched next to Theron, mumbling over Cai's upturned face as the komandiri sat against a tree.
"Broken," Bodicca said. "Can you see out of the eye, Komandiri?"
Cai cursed loudly as Theron prodded about, but Alaysha was certain it wasn't because of the pain he might be inflicting on her cheekbone.
"He's quick, isn't he?" Alaysha asked.
"And brutishly strong," Yenic added. He rubbed at his shoulders as though yanking Gael off Cai had torn tissues beneath.
"Imagine the warrior when his strength is returned," Theron said, and Cai swatted the two of them away.
"He is freakish," she said, but Alaysha thought she detected a smile in her tone. A niggle of sadism streak through Alaysha that she wanted to set free.
"So," she said. "Can you see out of the eye?" It had been a wallop of a punch, aimed at a fellow fighter, not a woman, and Gael had held nothing back.
Cai stood next to the fire and stretched, making a great show of disdain over her own discomfort. "No doubt our Alkaia lends him her strength through her mark." She said it almost as though she was impressed, but Alaysha knew better by now.
"Might your Alkaia have been a bit mad?" she asked a little too sweetly.
Cai didn't take the bait, rather treated the question with all seriousness. "Uta thought her mad certainly for choosing exile over her sword sisters. All for a man. But no. I don't think her mad."
Bodicca squatted again next to the fire and poked at it. "She was a komandiri to the last," she said, and Theron made a small sound in his throat that stole Alaysha's attention.
"What was she like, Theron?"
He shook his head, refusing to engage in the conversation.
"My father's mother," Alaysha said, testing the statement to her ears.
"Madre," Bodicca said. "Our word for mother."
"Men don't have a madre," Cai said.
"No," Bodicca agreed and passed Alaysha the poker. "Your father knew he had no such claim to her, but the infant –"
"Ellison," Theron interjected.
Bodicca looked at him thoughtfully. "Ellison might have, had she lived to watch him grow." Bodicca said. "As it was she died true Enyalia even in exile."
Cai shifted as she sat, letting one long leg snake over top one crossed. "Sword in hand?" She asked.
Bodicca nodded. "Even when the red grin stretched across her neck. We had to pry it from her afterwards."
Alaysha understood their sense of pride; a warrior caste such as these women wouldn't want to die of old, doddering age. But she didn't understand how loving a male of any age could make her less a woman, less fierce. "One would think," she said. "That a true warrior wouldn't be afraid of a small infant in the first place."
Cai's foot moved across the leaf litter, but she said nothing. Instead, she sighed audibly. Alaysha hadn't forgotten the warrior sitting alone in the woods, his cloak over his head, not for an instant. "I would think a warrior such as an Enyalian wouldn't have to drug a man –"
Cai sent a glance Yenic's way. "You gave my sisters quite a fight when you came, but did we resort to drugs to keep you docile?"
Yenic looked at his feet. "I had other things to take my mind."
Cai shifted closer to Alaysha, so close her booted foot nearly crushed Alaysha's bare toe. "It's your large one you ask for, I know. But I tell you the only drugs Thera used were to keep his body quiet during his repair. The rest—I'm afraid would have all depended on my sisters."
Alaysha didn't want to hear anymore. She didn't want to have to think about any woman equally as large as the Enyalian leader settling into bed with Gael, touching him. Rousing him from a wounded sleep.
"I'm tired," she said. "Someone needs to take watch."
"I'll do it," Bodicca said. "I find pain a remarkable antidote for weariness."
Alaysha moved back into her furs and stretched out. Someone tapped her shoulder and she turned to see Yenic slipping in behind her. He curled around her without a word, pulling her close. His warmth felt right next to hers, the comfort it gave to have another body next to hers helped her eyelids ease closed.
Dawn hadn't yet courted the tree line when Alaysha heard it. Her eyes flew open but she kept her body still, not moving, not shifting or breathing. She could tell by Yenic's arms around her midsection that he heard it too, and like her, he pretended he was asleep. The forest clung to a wet mist, even in the quiet gloom of predawn, a figure would have thickened into a great hulking shape if it tried to move through the wide swath of mist, but still Alaysha knew something was out there.
Bodicca and Cai thought so too. Neither's eyes were open, but each had tightened grip on their blades. Cai was sitting frozen next to a tree, the obvious lookout for the early morning, a woman who for all intents and purposes appeared to have fallen asleep.
It would fool many invaders, but not Alaysha. The warrior looked entirely too comfortable and the woman never looked comfortable.
They came even as Alaysha was contemplating whether Theron understood they would soon be under attack.
One moment there was nothing but mist, the next a savage looking man appeared directly in front of her, his muscled legs springing from a squat as he landed to a full-on run in her direction. There were dozens of them: all-male, all slick with mud, twigs, and branches and leaves in their hair, streaks of soot across their faces. Perfectly camouflaged for dropping out of trees and it was evident that's what they done. Half a dozen still were dropping.
Alaysha had time to bolt to her feet and dart sideways to avoid her attacker. He caught Yenic as he tried to gain speed and together they rolle
d across the forest floor, Yenic doing his best to avoid the blade in his attacker's hand.
The sound of metal striking metal met Alaysha's ears and she knew she had to get her sword. The man in front of her pulled an arrow from his quiver; Alaysha wasn't fool enough to believe he could use it at such close proximity. She made a lunge for him, thinking to put him off balance and sprint passed him. He held onto the arrow as though it was a blade, jabbing it into her forearm. She felt the bite between the bones and gasped. The arrow head must've been made of god's teeth it was so sharp. She caught the fury in his face as he pulled it out and made to stab again, this time aiming for her throat. His gaze touched for an instant on her chin and she took that moment to swipe with her good hand for the arrow. She grasped it above his grip and broke off the feather fletching, leaving the shaft with the arrowhead still in his hand. No good. She needed to get the black arrow tip away from him.
She would have ducked and swept his legs with her feet except a blow landed on her back stealing her air and dropping her knees from beneath her. Little gnat bites burned into her shoulders two it a time, and the sting went deep into her tissues. It reminded her of the oddly numb feeling in her side when Drahl had tried to kill her—not truly painful, not at least until she saw the blood running down her arms. She peered up to face her attacker, this time with the arrow ready to swipe across her throat.
All sound returned, and she heard her group fighting on despite being outnumbered. Her chest burned to release the power, even as she felt too weak to keep it at bay. She couldn't let loose. Not yet. They were still very much alive. She had to block out the emotion, use the flat heartlessness her father taught her.
She made to come up with fist aimed to block her attacker's swing, but even as she uncoiled the springs in her thigh muscles, the man's head disappeared from his shoulders and his torso fell sideways in a heap.
"Move, Alaysha," Gael ordered and turned to engage yet another attacker. Beyond him, two handfuls of invaders in similar states were all around her. He finished with one and stormed toward where Bodicca was cutting an equally fierce swath around Theron. They all appeared ferocious and vigorous in their battle, but the subtleties were different; Alaysha could detect the slight hesitations in the movements, the heaving chests from effort, the slight sway to their stance. They still battled the invisible enemy of fatigue and recovery from the earlier attack and to her, it showed.
Bone Witch (Elemental Magic, #3) Page 16