by Stephan Knox
She turned and once more headed out of the camp.
Back at the campfire, the men continued to taunt Tannin over his choice of traveling companion and not even a woman ripe for his bed.
“She’s a might small thing. Too small for a man with your hunger, Tannin.” Dalasi couldn’t pass the opportunity to rag his good buddy with whom he had fought many battles and bedded many a shared woman.
“Yeah, I don’t think she even qualifies as a snack for you,” Dublin added.
Rayhan rubbed his crotch, grabbing the thick manhood under the skin of his loincloth to show his interest in all females. “Your little prisoner certainly has lots of spunk. I have to give her that. How often do you turn her over your knee for her little tantrums?”
Ibi took notice of the sword Tannin still wore on his back. “The Skaddary are getting slack if they are letting prisoners keep their weapons. I recognize the hilt of your spadone. How is it you still have it?”
Tannin let out a chuckle and glanced out into the dark reaches of the night looking for her, then glanced back to his little brother. “Turns out my transporter was also a thieving mouse in air ducts and locker rooms.”
“How Destiny gifts you such luck that even after all you have been through, the battles, even as a prisoner, you’ve never lost your sword?” one chuckled.
“Perhaps, but I lost everything else. So, if you can spare anything, I’ll take it.”
“Such as?”
“Everything. A set of daggers or good carving knife, for starters, would be nice. Winter clothes. A fire arm and maybe a good hunting bow—”
“Bow? He wasn’t kidding,” Ibi muttered to them and they laughed.
“I don’t see any ropes on her now,” Taymar changed the subject back to the woman, taking note that Tannin made no display of claiming her as his. The Tannin he knew would never have allowed a woman he had claims on, act out in such a way as she did, tossing dirt into his face. To Taymar, Tannin disregarding her little display only defined the relationship between them that she was open for taking. He liked hateful women. They tended to bite and scratch even when they wanted it. Best battle wounds a man could get and say he enjoyed them.
Tannin grew silent for a moment, “She has no other place to go. She can’t go back.” His mind drifted. He never planned to keep her with him all this time. Just long enough to make the union then tuck her someplace safe. But what was safe for her? She’d only known life at the base and he had surely turned her into a convict if they didn’t believe her dead by now. And because she was a breeder, she couldn’t just go anywhere. She would eventually be discovered and could be used as a weakness against him. Still, staying with him was out of the question.
Dublin passed the new gourd decanter over and Tannin helped himself to a long draught, letting the fermented drink sear his gullet with hopes it would burn away some of his thoughts He saw the moving shadow as one of the men wandered off, but it didn’t register at first. His gaze settled on the fire, watching the flickering flames licking up into the night sky with crackling sounds of burning wood.
It was good to be with the men he held as his brothers once again. But he felt distant from them at the same time. Some part of him had changed, it all felt different. That was, until he realized the mood was coming from his sym. He rolled his shoulders then pinched them back. His way of silently scolding the old man and the blue-mood faded.
Tannin took another long swig, before passing it onto— “Ha—” Tannin chuckled, “Taymar never did know how to hold his drink,” he joked after discovering it had been Taymar who had left.
“It’s not the drink he went to hold, but a trial run with the little Skaddary woman, you brought to the camp.”
Tannin’s eye popped, and he surged to his feet, “Taymar!” he shouted. Drenn. How had he been so fucking careless with his words? He raced out towards the trees, hoping he’d find them before Taymar got her to the ground. He’d have to give the man a severe scar for this.
He caught their scent just beyond the tents then heard the exchange of voices, the warning, and then Taymar’s drunken insistence.
There was a painful grunt coming from Taymar and the sound of precision trained movements, like those made by an un-holstering of weapons.
Tannin came across them on the flat shelf that overlooked the valley road below, in a grid-lock of pistols aimed point-blank at each other. Aari’s small frame never even wavering under the looming threat of Taymar, whose spare hand was nursing his balls. And she was fully armed now.
Aari had obviously used her knee as a persuasive method of saying no when the first method failed. Now, furious, and in pain, the man too had drawn his gun. Aari’s counter would have gotten her shot if Tannin hadn’t lunged, slapping Taymar’s gun barrel away from her face. But his friend was already bringing a second sidearm around, refusing to be shoved aside to disengage.
“Taymar, don’t do this!” Tannin yelled, then turned his attention down to the petite woman, “Disengage, Aari!” Tannin placed his large frame between the two.
Aari was primed for the challenge. It was bad enough Tannin acted like she was nothing more than a feeble girl tagging along, but his friends thought she was free camp fair, and Tannin had done nothing to snuff those thoughts. She’d show them all who made that decision for her. Same way she taught the Skaddary soldiers.
Wildly flaring eyes, intent on her target, she spoke to poke-the-bear, “Go ahead, take your best shot, last one standing wins.” She stepped right under Tannin’s arm towards the still threatening man.
Tannin reached out to slap Taymar’s gun away, but it was too late, before Tannin could stop it, Taymar’s gun barrel lowered and fired into her leg.
“No!” Tannin called out, his focus dropping to the wound on her leg.
Aari let out a cry and doubled over, her fingers grasping at the open flesh wound just above her knee. Searing heat brandished out with electric jolts of pain, spiking up the nerves of her thigh. She bit her lip and sucked in a hard, deep breath, then closed her eyes to the sea of energy that came next, like a tide in a lake. A slow drift of liquid made its way from one living cell to the next until it found the ones that weren’t. Heat became cool and tingling. Not painful, but unpleasant. More deep breaths, eyes still closed as she felt and listened to her heart and the pulse that danced with it. Felt the pulse of her sym as it worked separately from her for just the briefest of moments. It was done when she felt the shiver in her spine— the shiver of her sym relaxing back into its slumbering position in her body and resumed its synchronized rhythms with hers.
Aari straightened, eyes opening in a slow devilish brew. Her fingers parting the hole in her pants to reveal a small, round pink scar on perfect skin. The man gaped at the missing wound, then up at her.
A smirk curled up on her lips. “My turn.” She fired before Tannin could stop her and with it the four seconds of hell that followed. He tried though, bending down in a twist to both grab up Aari and block with his own body, then spinning with her in his arms.
Taymar’s counter shot that came, only seconds after hers missed, biting into the flesh of Tannin’s shoulder, but there was no avoiding the shot his parry brought them into, when Nasir had come up behind them, his pulse rifle aimed straight at Aari and fire.
“Are you insane?!” Tannin shouted at his friend in utter shock as Aari’s body fell limp in his arms and slipped to the ground. “Oh, Destiny!” Tannin cursed and stooped down next to her fallen form. “By drenn, no!”
“Am I insane? What drenn do you speak of, Tannin? She had a gun. I saw her aiming for you and Taymar,” Nasir shouted in defense of his actions. Insulted that Tannin even questioned him.
“Only because Taymar challenged her!”
“She’s Skaddary. Better her then either of us.”
“She’s not Skaddary!”
“You said—” Taymar butted in.
Tannin flashed a heated look over his shoulder at h
im, “I said she was the transport driver. I didn’t say she was Skaddary.”
“What’s the difference?” Nasir glared at him, then at the dead woman sprawled on the ground.
Tannin stopped, shaking his head. He had caused this. He did nothing to clarify that she was anything but an enemy. And he had forgotten that she was a soldier, one who probably spent as much time, if not more, fighting off the approaches of men as much as she did fighting the enemy. He should not have dismissed her ability to be vindictive; to be a product of her surroundings or defend her honor where he had only squandered it.
Now, because of it, Aari lay on the ground with yet another gunshot wound from Nasir’s pulse rifle. This time to her gut, barely a hand below her heart. Tannin had at least been able to block the bullet from Taymar’s revolver now lodged in his shoulder. Had he not been successful to block it, the shot would have struck her neck and possibly injured her sym. Nevertheless, it had not been enough, she was still on the ground, and for the moment, seemingly dead.
Still squatting beside her, he checked for a pulse, but found none. Alarmed, he fell to his knees and quickly swept her up in his arms. “Aari,” he breathed her name, feeling around her neck, still unable to find a pulse of any kind. It couldn’t be. She had to still be alive.
The others caught up and gathered around. They did not share the same woes as Tannin did for the militia woman.
“Fuckin’ Skaddary. They should all be blessed with death, just like the Blood Lord armies.” Caamen would have spat on her, but Tannin shoved him from them.
“Enough!” Tannin ignored the rest of the curses that followed. It angered him, but finding her pulse was more important. He held her in one arm and checked again. His eyes closed, listening and feeling. Focusing every part of his heightened senses on her.
There.
He followed the soft pulse that led him to the location of her Symbiotai. If her sym was still alive then Aari too would survive. It was faint, but at least there was something, and he felt some relief with the flutter under his palm. He shook his head again. He really was fucking everything up with her at every turn. Not to mention, he was going to have some explaining to do when she was up and walking again in however long it took for her to heal from this sort of injury. She would heal though, he hoped.
SHAME FROM ONLY ONE
Tannin held the twist of cloth in his teeth, holding the ends wrapped around his fists, and tensed up for the pain to come. Pain he deserved. Thank Destiny, Taymar’s aim hadn’t improved much, otherwise he feared the limits to Aari’s healing ability may have been reached.
“Why are you carrying a Skaddary rat around with you anyways, Tannin?” Baturoo scoffed at him as he used the tip of a hot blade to dig the bullet from Tannin’s shoulder.
Baturoo had reason to hate the Skaddary more than any of them. The militia sent the Guillotine Hunters to attack the village where he kept his wife, his child, and two sisters. The Gil hunters came on rumors the villagers were keeping a priest of the old temple. And though the suspected priest had died many solar cycles prior, the Hunters rounded up the villagers, herded them into a large cage, and set them on fire.
Tannin let out an anguished growl through the bite of cloth in his mouth before responding, “I told you. She’s not Skaddary.”
“You said you—” Caamen was right there with the others on what Tannin had said and more on what he had not said, which left it open for them to assume Aari was anything but a Skaddary soldier.
“I know what I said, but she isn’t Skaddary,” Tannin bit the words through his teeth then glanced back over his shoulder towards the tent as if he expected her to step out any minute and put on a show of just how spunky she could be, but she didn’t come. “She’s different,” he added under his breath.
The men all glanced at him. This was not the Tannin they knew. “Surely you have not become smitten with her? Dare I say it? Love this little woman?” Taymar finally asked with every intention to rub him for it if it were true.
Tannin’s head snapped around. “No. Of course not.” He shrugged and dropped his eyes. Almost ashamed that he didn’t even feel enough to treat her properly.
“Then why is it you allow her to live?” Baturoo spat once again. He wasn’t willing to give up his hatred of the Skaddary, not even for Tannin’s little woman.
“She’s a Symbiote.”
There was a long deathly quiet when he confessed what she was.
“Wha—” Dublin was the first to break the silence with his mouth dropping open; the exclamation was passed and shared amongst several of the others.
Taymar was the first to recover from the initial shock and asked the next question. “What say you, Tannin? There haven’t been any surviving syms for some time now. Guillotine-Hunters killed them all.”
Tannin grew solemn, shaking his head slowly, then just as slowly glanced up and locked eyes with him. “Not all.”
Even Rayhan, who had kept quiet through all of the back and forth was now shaking his head in disbelief of what he was hearing, “How can you be certain?”
“Because I, too, am a Symbiote now.”
This time the men sat silent for a much longer moment, all gaping at him. Not one having any sudden response to the staggering confession, but Tannin knew what the next question would be, so he offered the story freely to divest them of their queries.
“About four cycles ago, I banded up with a guardian warrior named Kacek from the old west shores. He was searching for sym survivors, hoping to bring them to a city hidden in the deep forests where they could be safe. He was a good fighter and sharp as a whip, but only I knew the region, so we kept together. Over our travels, I learned there was a Bedouin woman, a midwife servant working under Maegrethe in the City of Maegray. I knew I couldn’t pass up the chance to get to the Blood Lord, but Kacek would not follow me. He’d gotten some news himself of a survivor and he had to see if it were true. We went our separate ways, agreeing to meet up at a certain cave when our deeds were done in the turn of one moon cycle.”
“We heard Maegrethe is dead. Is it true?” Dalasi barged in with his question. “We’ve been keeping a good distance from Maegrethe’s territory. It makes for a longer trek. But news is not always reliable this far off. We couldn’t risk coming in range of his building armies. But if you’ve just come from there, perhaps you can set some of the rumors right. Some good news might allow us to reset our course to head to the sou-eastern low lands for the winter.”
“Yes, the rumor is true. His Symbiote bride took her own life while I was there. The Bedouin midwife let me into the fortress that very same night, just moments after she’d learned of it. I slipped into his fortress and I cut Maegrethe’s throat.” Tannin looked at them each firmly. “He and his sons died by my hand while they still slept.”
“So, the seers were true about you. You are the destined one,” Dalasi added with some reverence that the time had come, when their niijimaa, their brother and comrade, would fulfill his destiny and set the land free. And they would all be a part of it.
“But, what of this sym you say you have?” Taymar went back to the subject at hand.
“After I killed Maegrethe, I went to the cave where I was to meet up with Kacek, but someone beat me there and he was half dead when I arrived. That’s when he confessed to me that he was a Symbiote and that his sym had chosen me to be his new host.”
Outside of Baturoo’s hate for the Skaddary, he also had some knowledge of the Symbiote. His wife had been one. “But how?” Baturoo asked. “With no priests or tenders to perform the ceremony to aid you. No pool of awakening for the Symbiotai to cleanse itself before entering.”
“Kacek was too weak to make it back to his own temple or the priests he had protected by the time I reached him and any delay put his sym at risk. I couldn’t even make the cut in the proper place.” Tannin twisted, showing the nail length scar at the base of his back just to the left of his spine instead of under th
e last vertebrae of his neck. He’d even had to make the cut himself with his own blade so the Symbiotai could enter his body. The greater issue came that without the proper care, the cut had healed shut trapping his sym within him forever.
“Painful?” Taymar asked.
Tannin grinned sheepishly for the first time since he’d arrived. “Worst pain I’ve ever endured,” he answered with a side to side nod, recalling how the bond between him and the Symbiotai had been excruciating for them both. Nevertheless, they had survived it. And now, so much was different for him.
“And its gift for you?” Baturoo urged him to continue.
“Sif is a predator. It’s like having the ears of a fox, eyes of a hawk— I smell things that others do not. Feel— sense— hear— see with such clarity. When there isn’t enough light to see with, I see people’s body heat like a red image in my brain. But her—” Tannin looked down the row of tents once more, where Aari lay, hopefully healing. “She lights up through walls to me.”
“Why her?” Nasir asked, now feeling a little guilty for being the one who shot her.
“Because she’s a breeder. And no matter how stubborn I try to act, my sym wants her, and I feel, smell, and sense every tiny quiver of her body like it were thunder against my skin.”
Again, they all fell silent just staring at him a moment. They had all grown up with Tannin. Knew the destiny their fathers told them. That one-day, Tannin would take down the Blood Lords, and they all hoped they would be with him when it happened. But never did any of them know how Tannin, who was just a man like them, was supposed to do this or when. Now, it was making sense— in a rather eerie way.
“Then you have made the union with her. Why did you not say such things? I would not have touched her, Tannin,” Taymar exclaimed, finally breaking the silence amongst them all.
“Because I have not yet. And I—” Tannin dropped off, not wanting to admit his worst faults of his disregard to her as a person.