“Lord Elk?”
“Eh? What did you say, Lord Snake?”
“I said, you spoke in the Eastern tongue. You pronounced the words perfectly and even said them in the right order.”
“Me? Impossible!”
Slithering Snake nodded, chuckling. “I'd have thought so too, if I hadn't heard you myself.”
Leaping Elk shook his head, not knowing what to think.
Fawning Elk stepped up to him, concerned.
Toward them walked a sentry, his eyes bleary from standing guard all night. He bowed to them. “Lords, Lady, that raunchy old man is outside. He, uh … he's asking for help.”
“Wind Icy?” Leaping Elk asked. The sentry nodded.
Slithering Snake rolled his eyes at his liege lord, rising to attend to the matter.
The Southerner watched them go, then turned to his mate, switching languages. “Sorry I dropped him. I promise it won't happen again.”
She nodded dubiously, frowning, but kissed him, leaning into his embrace. “You frightened me, the way you just fell over. Thank the Infinite you were sitting beside me. He didn't get hurt.” She met his gaze. “You don't remember speaking at all?”
He shook his head, drawing comfort from her.
“That's unusual—as if you shouldn't know, eh?”
Sighing, Leaping Elk put his palms on her cheeks. “I'm all right. Thank you for your concern. The Infinite probably put words in my mouth at a moment of inattention, eh? The Infinite's like all of us, sometimes lazy, sometimes distracted, sometimes angry, sometimes asleep. We create our gods in the image of man.”
“Of woman, you mean!” Smiling, she nodded. “Just because the Infinite gets inattentive doesn't mean you can too. Be careful, please?”
Nodding, he smiled. “I will.” Leaping Elk reflected that she was a better mother to this child than a thousand courtesans could ever be.
Years ago, when he'd been the Heir, he'd had first pick of the most beautiful women in the Southern Empire. Often, after weeks of Infinite-blessed bliss with one, he'd wake up one day. Looking at her, really seeing her, he'd wonder why he'd squandered his seed with such profligacy. Most of the women had been only mirrors, crafted to reflect beautifully upon him. Rarely had they had beauty in and of themselves, the beauty that time would never crack, the enduring beauty of inner harmony.
That was Fawning Elk's beauty. When the rose had faded from her cheek and the lily lay sallow on her brow, this woman would be beautiful still.
“Thank you,” she murmured, tucking her face into the crook of his neck, listening in upon his thoughts.
He held her, content. Then he yawned.
The baby often woke them at odd hours, demanding food.
That's what babies do, Leaping Elk thought.
* * *
A baby cried. Looking down, they both saw that the boy was asleep. Again, a baby cried. This time they both looked toward the cave entrance.
Icy Wind limped toward them, his staff in one hand and in the other a baby. Again, the infant wailed like the Infinite.
Fawning Elk felt a familiar pull, as though a cable connected her breasts and uterus. “Oh, blast,” Fawning Elk murmured. “I just let down.” On the front of her robes were two dark spots of moisture. Her milk had leaked. Shrugging, she handed her son off to her mate, stepping toward the old man and infant. “Infinite be with you, Lord Wind. What's that you have with you?”
“Certainly not the Infinite, Lady Elk,” Icy Wind said, his voice gravelly. “Although he howls like it. I need your help, Lady. My son's mother died in the earthquake. When her Matriarch found out I'm a bandit, she rid herself of him as fast as she could, cursed Easterner. They're all that way! Thankfully, I was nearby or she'd have abandoned him. Anyway, I've tried everything. I just can't get him to eat. 'Course, I don't know much about children, except they make a lot of noise.”
Fawning Elk took Icy Wind's boy and put him to breast. “He's hungry! Look at him pull,” she said, trying to establish a psychic link with the infant.
And failing.
“What's the matter with him, Lord Wind?” she asked, alarmed.
“Oh, you mean his lack of talent? I don't know, Lady. The shock of his mother's death, perhaps? Poor child's been through a lot. She'd just given birth to him when the earthquake struck. He survived it and she didn't. I don't even know if she gave him his bestowal. You're good at that, Lady Elk. Much better than I am.”
“The Infinite hasn't exactly endowed you for this,” Fawning Elk said. “How will you care for him? That cave of yours is no home for an infant. As if ours is any better,” she muttered, glancing at the ceiling. “He's only a few days old, poor little boy. Leaping Elk, can't we do something? Lord Wind, I'm not letting you take this boy back to that pestilential cave of yours. You must clean up the place. He'll get sick and die if you don't, do you hear?” She pleaded instead of yelling because of the child in her arms. Babies heard everything. Even a disparaging tone of voice might upset an infant.
“Go on, do it now, please. I'll take care of the child for a few hours and bring him to your cave about midday, eh? If that place doesn't sparkle, I'll take a scrub-brush to you and your cave. Oh, look at your new robes, already torn and filthy.”
Shaking her head in frustration, she sat down on a nearby rock and calmed herself. Her milk could stop if she didn't relax. Most of the time she fully controlled her lactation. Sometimes however, when really upset, she lost that control.
Greedily, the boy continued to feed. The soft down on his head was blond, with a reddish tint. The eyes were the gray-blue of hazy skies. He's beautiful! she thought contentedly, rocking him gently while he fed. She looked toward Icy Wind.
He hadn't left. He looked at her. “He could die?”
“Yes, Lord Wind, he could,” she said, nodding. “What's his name?”
“Uh, Seeking Sword, Lady. Uh, should I … bathe?”
“Yes, Lord Wind, you should,” she said, nodding.
He seemed to deflate and shrink before them.
“Please, Lord Wind, go on,” she said.
Nodding, he limped away, leaning heavily on the staff.
Fawning Elk noticed he hadn't bowed. “Infinite help this poor child,” she muttered.
Leaping Elk rocked his baby side to side, smiling with inner pleasure and seeming unaware of her distress.
“What are we going to do, my mate?” Fawning Elk asked.
“I don't know. We can't take Seeking Sword from him, eh? You can't go to his cave every time the child gets hungry. Perhaps one of the ladies would volunteer to be a wet nurse.”
She glanced askance at him. “I've never met a more slovenly lot of women in all my life, Lord. They'd be worse for the boy than the old man. Besides, none of them would volunteer to live with the Lord Wind—for good reason. I certainly wouldn't.” Putting the child to her shoulder, she burped him, then shifted the infant to the other breast, watching his face tenderly. “What do you think about what he told us?”
He met her gaze. “It sounded prepared, as if he'd practiced.”
She nodded, rocking back and forth. “That's what I thought.” She rocked and fed the boy for awhile, lost in thought. Who are Seeking Sword's real parents? she wondered. No woman with any dignity would deign to let such a disgusting man as Icy Wind into her sacred cave. Perhaps she sells her pleasures in a brothel. Even a prostitute would shrink from one whiff of Icy Wind's breath. No, Icy Wind isn't the boy's father. She sighed, thinking only the Infinite knew—or perhaps Icy Wind.
“Leaping Elk?” she asked plaintively.
“Yes?” he said, wincing as if he knew her question already.
“Can we give them both a home? Just for awhile, only until Icy Wind can feed the boy himself? Please?”
“When that time comes, dear Lady, you'll have gotten so attached to Seeking Sword that you won't let him go. No, Fawning Elk.”
“Oh, I promise I won't get attached. I swear!”
Laughing, he shoo
k his head.
Frowning, she bit her lower lip, pleading sadly with him.
“How am I supposed to keep this band together if we have a skunk in our midst?”
“He doesn't smell that much when he bathes,” she replied.
“He stinks that much when he does!”
“Well, maybe he doesn't know how to bathe, eh?”
Leaping Elk snorted sardonically.
She looked around to make sure no one would overhear them. No one in the central cavern was within thirty feet. “You're the one who thinks he's Lofty Lion,” she said, her voice low. “Maybe servants cared for him so long he forgot how to care for himself.”
“Maybe he also has the Northern Heir Sword in his cave. Buried beneath years of garbage. By the Infinite, woman, think realistically. We both know he'll always stink. We both know you'll adopt that child if you continue to breast-feed him.”
Fawning Elk sighed. “I promise upon the Infinite not to adopt this cute baby of Icy Wind's.”
“You already have!”
She giggled as the child let go of her breast. Cradling his head, she put the infant to her shoulder and gently rubbed his back. He burped and spit up. She examined the milky substance on her shoulder. It was fresh milk, not half-digested curdles. Good, she thought, wiping it off her shoulder.
Walking up, Slithering Snake bent to look at the child closely. “He's a cute one, eh? I'll bet he grows up to be handsome.” The large sectathon tickled the child under the chin. “May I?”
She handed the baby to him immediately.
He lifted the child, supporting the head properly with his hand.
“You're getting good at that, Lord Snake,” she said, standing to stretch her muscles, her body still sore from childbirth and travel. “Most men hold babies as if they're crystal and easily broken.”
“I've been watching you both,” Slithering Snake replied. “Having these two around will make this place more like a home, eh Lord Elk?”
Snorting in disgust, Leaping Elk glanced at the ceiling. “I can see we'll be talking babies for the next few years.”
Fawning Elk smiled. “You'd rather talk about something else?”
“You wouldn't,” he accused.
“No, I wouldn't,” she agreed sweetly.
“Well, that's your choice, I suppose.” Leaping Elk smiled. “What about you, Lord Snake? You want to talk about babies?”
“Me? I'd rather talk about Scowling Tiger's great idea. Together, and only together, can we wrest the Northern Imperial Sword from Flying Arrow. I'm glad the bandit general wants to unite us all. Give these children a decent place to live.” Slithering Snake looked into the infant's face.
“Without the Heir Sword, it's just a sword, not important.”
“Perhaps, Lord Elk,” Slithering Snake replied. “Until the Imperial Sword is ours, we won't be anything but bandits. Stupid to invest so much into silly pieces of metal. The Empires wouldn't exist without them, eh?”
Leaping Elk smiled. “ 'Wherever be men, be governments.' No, Lord Snake. We'd have Empires, but they'd rise and fall like waves at the beach. The tides of rule would wash over the land with the moon. We'd have brother against brother for awhile, then brother and brother fighting cousin. We have that now, even with the Swords. They help us humans define borders and assure successions, two things we always fought about before the Swords.”
“Look where they've brought us,” Fawning Elk said.
Leaping Elk and Slithering Snake laughed, each man holding a baby.
“Scowling Tiger seeks to unite bandits for the wrong reason,” Fawning Elk said. “What does he want with bandit unity? What's his goal?”
“The fall of the Eastern Empire, eh?”
“Yes, and that's the wrong reason, Lord Snake. What did Easing Comfort say? 'When the host dies, so does the parasite.' He knows.”
“All right, Lady Elk. Perhaps not the most benevolent motive. Is there better? For what other reason should the bandits unite?”
Tickling the baby's chin, Leaping Elk replied: “For bandits.” Awake, the days-old infant peered through eyes not yet fully open.
“What do you mean?” Slithering Snake asked.
Leaping and Fawning Elk glanced at each other, their understanding instinctive. “Listen carefully, Lord Snake,” Leaping Elk said. “We're all better off if we unite to make our lives better, than if we unite to destroy someone else's life.”
Slithering Snake frowned but nodded. “You're right, Lord. We'd have to abandon the border to the Empire and move to the interior of the northern lands, though, which means the raids would have to stop.”
Leaping Elk nodded. “That won't happen while Scowling Tiger lives, eh?”
The sectathon shook his head. “No, it won't.”
“So for the next few years, until a new generation rules our bands, none of us will stop being bandits. So Infinite help us to teach our children to be something else—anything else.”
“Infinite help us all,” Fawning Elk agreed.
* * *
About the Author
Scott Michael Decker, MSW, is an author by avocation and a social worker by trade. He is the author of twenty-plus novels, mostly in the Science Fiction genre and some in the Fantasy genre. His biggest fantasy is wishing he were published. His fifteen years of experience working with high-risk populations is relieved only by his incisive humor. Formerly interested in engineering, he's now tilting at the windmills he once aspired to build. Asked about the MSW after his name, the author is adamant it stands for Masters in Social Work, and not “Municipal Solid Waste,” which he spreads pretty thick as well. His favorite quote goes, “Scott is a social work novelist, who never had time for a life” (apologies to Billy Joel). He lives and dreams happily with his wife near Sacramento, California.
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The Bandit (Fall of the Swords Book 2) Page 31