by R. Lee Smith
She did, breathing hard—too hard, she was too new to this, too underfed, too small and weak, too human—as she pulled a spear from the air and readied it against him.
This time, she charged, dropping to her knees and stabbing upwards in a move that was, however ultimately futile, worthy of an admiring grunt as he, the tachuqi, darted nimbly aside and tore out the back of her neck in a single bite. “You are dead,” he told her, pinning her face briefly against the ground. “Get up.”
She didn’t, not right away, but when she finally got her arms up and her feet under her, she was arming herself invisibly yet again.
“Survival in the wildlands is not a matter of persistence,” he said, ignoring her to sit down again on his mat. “Only knowledge, strength and skill. You have none of these things. Stay within your camp, human. I am with you and Sheul’s eye is upon us both.” He picked up his cuuvash and broke off another bite, pretending not to watch her.
She glared at him, weaving slightly on her feet with her empty hands still locked around an invisible spear. She was tired enough, bruised enough, muddied enough, that he thought she might give in despite the look in her eyes.
But this was Amber.
She dove at him.
He was not a tachuqi any longer. He caught her up upon the heel of his hand, her feet flying out before her with the force of her aborted momentum, and down she went upon her back much more gently than she would have gone were he an honest enemy. He held her there, waiting as she gasped herself calm, aware that every human in the camp was awake and watching them. A little water collected at the corner of one eye, just one, and it did not replenish itself once it fell. She did not cry surrender.
Meoraq moved his hand from her breastbone to her elbow and helped her to sit up. She wouldn’t look him in the eye, but she took a piece of cuuvash when he offered it and put it in her mouth. She chewed, staring fixedly at the ground.
Gradually, the other humans settled themselves, although some continued to watch them. Scott was one of these. Nicci, he noticed, was not.
“Can you teach me that?” Amber asked at last, still avoiding his eye.
Meoraq snorted. “Yes. Come to me as soon as you can present the signet of your father’s House, proving you are a son born to the warrior’s caste and we shall begin the seventeen years of training. Don’t talk at me like an idiot. We don’t have time to waste in foolishness.”
Her mouthparts pressed together into a flat, pale line. Her lower jaw trembled.
He waited until he was certain she had accepted her defeat and then said, firmly, “You will stay in sight of this camp always. You will not go even one step beyond its borders alone. Give me your obedience.”
She looked up and directly at him with eyes that were too bright and too green. “No.”
He stared at her, knowing his spines were fully extended and surprise etched in every scale of him for all the world to see. “What did you just say?”
“I said, no.”
“You did not!” he said inanely.
“Want to hear it again, lizardman? No. And you don’t get to argue with me about it.”
“You forbid me?” That was a killing offense, and yet he was not in the least angry. Stunned, yes, but the first emotion that bled in when shock finally faded was still not anger, only amusement. “If you have something else to say before I bind and muzzle you, I suggest you come to it quickly.”
“That’s exactly what you’re going to have to do,” she told him. “Look, you’re already sick to death of us. You aren’t going to stick around one minute longer than you have to. When we get to wherever it is you’re taking us, you’ll leave.”
He opened his mouth to tell her this was not necessarily so, but closed it again with that unspoken because the alternatives so obviously included killing them and he would rather not have that possibility between them just yet. And it would be a lie in any event to say that leaving the humans behind was not a pleasant thought. She surely knew it and he would not insult her by pretending otherwise.
“Life sure as hell isn’t going to get easier,” she was saying. “Right now, the only thing standing between us and a horrible death is you. And you’re leaving. So, no. No, I am not going to stand around all damn day waiting for you to come home in one of your pissy moods because you’re doing it all yourself. If you don’t want me with you, that’s fine, I’ll figure things out by myself, but you don’t get to tell me to stay home and just…just wait to die.”
And she’d done it again. She forbade him to give her orders. Unbelievable.
“I am tending to you, human,” he said, trying very hard to sound reasonable. “It is not an easy task and requires my full attention. Do you think you can just stride out into the wildlands at my side and be anything but a hindrance? Your intentions may be good, but I can’t afford to indulge them and if you truly believe it is not an indulgence, that only proves you don’t understand how desperate your circumstances are.”
“I think you’re the one who isn’t getting it, lizardman.” She paused and raked a hand through the mess of her hair, snagging all four fingers before she had even reached her ear. She swore, disentangling herself, but the distraction quieted her some. “Listen,” she said, frowning. “Just listen, okay?”
Meoraq rubbed his brow-ridges and gestured for her to speak.
But she didn’t, not right away. She searched his face, her human mouth opening and closing, and finally she said, “There were these stray cats that lived under the building where I lived, and the lady three doors down would feed them, you know?”
Meoraq leaned back with a frown. What was she saying now? Was the argument over? Had he won or lost?
“The super kept threatening to evict her for it, so what would happen is, she’d sneak out in the middle of the night every few days and dump this bag of food out on the ground, and if you looked out the window, you could see them all together and purring as they shared it. It must have made her feel real good, like she was saving them.” She paused to frown at him uncertainly. “Are you…Are you getting any of this?”
“I mark enough. Go on.”
“Well, she wasn’t saving them. She was just feeding them. And eventually, she disappeared. I don’t know, maybe she died. My point is, she was gone and do you think the cats started catching all the rats and roaches that were absolutely infesting that building? Do you think they started taking care of themselves just because they had to?”
Meoraq glanced over at the other humans. They looked curiously back at him as they ate the food he had provided and warmed themselves at the fire he had built.
“No, they stood outside where the old lady used to feed them and yowled all day and all night, because that was what they knew how to do. And when they got hungry enough and desperate enough, what they started eating was each other. Every time you looked out there, you could see them, all those cats, with their bones showing and their fur falling out and blood all over them like…like zombie-cats, still yowling and fucking…and eating. Finally the super put out some poison. He was picking up dead cats for weeks and the moral of this story is, feeding someone isn’t saving them. You want to talk to me some more about luxuries now, lizardman?”
The hand of Sheul was heavy on his shoulder.
“I need to pray about this,” he said at last.
Her glare deepened. She folded her arms like a warrior, gripping at her slender biceps where a Sheulek’s honor-knives should be. “I’ll wait.”
He grunted and closed his eyes, finding stillness with just a few breaths. ‘Sheul, O my Father, guide me, I pray,’ he began silently, but then stopped and just sat quiet. He was not ready to know Sheul’s mind just yet. His own knew too much unrest.
There was nothing in Sheul’s Word to specifically forbid a woman from carrying a spear or standing a watch. The goodly virtues of a woman—to be invisible and chaste while in her father’s House, to show her husband meek obedience and loyalty, to be fruitful and to raise her chil
dren in the sight of Sheul—did not seem to apply to Amber’s present situation. If it dishonored her father that she was wandering the prairie in the company of so many human males, it was no concern of his. It was disgraceful behavior, perhaps, but not criminal.
You’re already sick to death of us…feeding someone isn’t saving them…
He’d felt something when she said that. He felt it again now, clarified in the quiet. He didn’t like to call it hurt…an itch, perhaps. He had fantasized many times, in much detail, during each day’s walk and each evening’s patrol about the end of this interminable journey. He had imagined walking across the courtyard of Xi’Matezh with the humans at his back and seeing the doors that had stood fast against so many travelers open wide for him. He had imagined kneeling before the holy forge at which Prophet Lashraq and the rest of the Six had met with Sheul Himself and hearing His voice spoken aloud and perhaps, just perhaps, feeling His hand with warmth and living weight upon his shoulder, looking up and seeing the very face of God looking down at him.
Ah yes.
But afterwards? If Sheul gave him no command regarding the humans who presently plagued him, what would he do with them? He could not leave them at Xi’Matezh to desecrate that holy place. Surely God would lead him to some other place. Some secluded valley, perhaps, with a slip of a stream and a few trees. He would help them build a smokehouse and fleshing pit and then he would go and let their fate fall into their own hands.
His mind conjured the fleeting impression of Amber alone with her spear in her hand, receding as with distance. He pushed it away, but now found himself thinking…If Sheul led him to that gentle valley, of course he would leave the humans there as Sheul willed. But if Sheul instead gave him his own will in the matter…what would he do then? With her?
Timeless stretches of unquiet passed and left him with no answers.
‘Well, it is very simple,’ he told himself abruptly. ‘Will you kill them?’
No. Not all of them, anyway. Scott had a way of getting under his scales, but the rest of them were only minor annoyances in a large group and once they were behind him, he thought he would forget easily enough. He didn’t need to kill them to have peace.
‘Then you will abandon them to the wilds and let them find death at the hour Sheul decides. It is not your responsibility to hold watch over all the people of the world. Besides, if they are still unable to provide for themselves after you have carried them all the way to Xi’Matezh, it can only be because they are meant to die.’
Then he would leave them to their fate, but he would take Amber with him.
‘Why?’
Why not? He would not be the only one ever to take mementos home from his pilgrimage.
‘Most people settle for bits of broken temple bricks.’
It would be as long a journey home as it was to reach the shrine and Amber made better company than a broken brick.
‘Only sometimes. She’s far more often a profound annoyance. And she’s ugly.’
He was uncomfortable with that, however true it was. Surely her flat face, furry patches, and clay-soft body would be gruesome aberrations to any dumaq, but she was human. And for a human, she was…agreeable.
‘And what will you do with your agreeable human and her agreeable pet? Because even if you convinced her to leave the rest behind—unlikely—Amber would pull the heart from her breast before she left her Nicci. Will you wander the wildlands for the rest of your days tending the two of them?’
No. With Amber, that was at least only a foolish thought. Add Nicci and it became lunacy. He would have to take up stewardship of House Uyane just to give them a place to safely stay. Even in the depths of his meditations, he could feel himself wanting to laugh at that, but before he could, the image abruptly fell on him of how it would really be to bring Amber into his House. If humans were people, then she was a woman. He would be bringing a woman into his House. His woman. And he, the steward of his bloodline.
‘At least until your brothers challenge you on the grounds that you have bound yourself to a monster.’
He’d best them.
‘You sound very sure.’
He was very sure. Even if he could be persuaded to abandon his woman and bastard children, Nduman fought with favor to his left arm ever since the judgment at Riqar and Salkith was an idiot. A well-trained idiot, but still an idiot and no match for a true Sheulek. He’d best them easily, both together if necessary, and then he’d put Nicci away in his mother’s old rooms and give her a servant or something so he wouldn’t ever have to deal with her. He could spend the rest of his life waiting to defend Xeqor and all the households of Uyane’s protection, a portrait of domesticity to do his father’s memory great honor.
‘And what will you do with Amber?’
This was disturbing for one or two short moments, and the most disturbing thing about it was the apparent ease with which his imagination was able to provide him with suggestions for how the two of them might sexually combine. Too many of his thoughts were turning in that direction lately. He accepted that for the distraction that it was, embraced it, owned it, and finally fought it down to a place where it could be ignored. Sex was not the issue. Amber was, in herself, not the issue. What was to come of the humans once he was away from them was not the issue, although it was bordering. The issue was and remained whether it was permissible or wise to set a human female at watch while he slept.
But he found he trusted Amber.
‘You don’t trust her, you just want to fuck her,’ he told himself cruelly, but the thought, although unsettling, did not sound like truth. Amber was weak and she was ignorant. She would not know every danger if she saw it. But if she did know it, by Sheul, she would defend him.
Meoraq opened his eyes on Amber, watching him with predictable exasperation and impatience. It really was the most amazingly ugly face, if one stopped to think about it. Strange, how often he simply didn’t see it.
‘She would never be boring,’ he thought, and snorted.
“That better not mean what I think it means,” she said, scowling at him with mud on her face and grass in her hair. Pinned to Gann four times, and not defeated yet.
His hand went out without his will to brush at her flat, smooth, pallid and generally disgusting brow—the second time he had done so. They both recoiled a little.
He recovered first, frowning. “So be it,” he said briskly. “We will hold watches between us at night and I will take you to hunt with me whenever possible.”
“Tomorrow?”
He hesitated, then shrugged his spines. “I could spare an hour in the morning if you rise early, although the only thing we’re likely to spear is more gruu.”
“At least it won’t run far,” she said with a crooked smile. “Maybe I can actually catch a limping potato.”
He grunted, then pointed sternly at her face. “But when I am not with you, you will stay within my camp. You go nowhere alone, do you mark me?”
“Okay, okay,” said Amber, rolling her eyes. “In the spirit of compromise, I promise to buddy up when I go to the bathroom.”
“Uyane hears your vow. You have the first watch tonight. Wake me when you begin to tire.”
“Got it.” She pushed herself onto her feet, but stayed bent awhile, brushing at dried mud and grass. This gave Meoraq the unlooked-for and not entirely unwelcome opportunity to watch her odd body in motion, so that when she finally straightened up and asked if he was going to sleep right away, the only honest answer was, “No. I think I have to pray.”
“Oh. Well…good night.” She backed up, then walked away across the camp, raising her hand as she went without bothering to look at him.
Meoraq watched her go until she took up her spear and a sentry’s position at the boundary of the camp, then resumed the assembly of his tent, trying to ignore the undeniable fact that he was profoundly, even painfully aroused. “Father,” he murmured, stabbing poles into the ground with more force than was usual. “See Your son i
n his ordeal and grant him the strength to endure it, because without Your hand upon me, O great Sheul, I do not know how I am going to survive this.”
Footsteps.
Meoraq glanced around, but it was Scott coming toward him, not Amber. He grunted dismissively and flattened the spines which had been flaring forward in greeting. “What do you want?”
“What were you two talking about?” the human asked, making a very poor effort to sound merely curious.
“If you wished to know, you should have come closer and joined us.”
A lengthy pause led Meoraq to silently congratulate himself on a scathingly civil retort, right up until Scott’s hesitant, “What?”
Meoraq sighed. He gave the tent-fasten under his hand a particularly vicious yank as he tied it to the pole and turned around. “I told her,” he said, speaking slowly, “to stand a watch.”
Scott stared at him and, after Meoraq had ample time to prepare a defense of this admittedly outrageous order, said, “What?”
“Go away!” snapped Meoraq and stomped past him to fetch up his pack and bedroll. “Why do you throw questions around when you cannot catch the answers? Swaggering idiot,” he muttered, ducking into his tent. “Sheul, my Father, grant me Your divine patience, and if You cannot grant me that, grant me the strength to knock his head off with one blow so that I don’t have to listen to him squeal.”
“What did he say?” called Scott, retreating.
Meoraq tied his tent shut and spread out his mat. He had the liberty to undress now, if he wished; if he opened his loin-plate the smallest degree, he would be out of it. He took his boots off, but left his clothes on and lay down. Eventually, Scott went away. The night was quiet. The wind was low. Amber was close and impossibly fierce with her pointed stick in her little hand. Meoraq prayed drowsily, indulged a few lustful thoughts of Gann’s devising, prayed some more, and slept.