Keeping With Destiny

by Stephan Knox

  “What say you? Why wait you even?” Taymar grew bold, almost offended that Tannin had a gift before him and wasn’t using it to fulfill his destiny.

  “Because I have already taken her from the only hell she has known, and she hates me for it. What am I to do, rape her now?”

  “Yes!” several of the men answered at once.

  “No!” Tannin snapped back.

  Idi shoved up to his feet, standing in challenge next to the fire before Tannin. “Make the union and put an end to the Blood Lords! It was what you were destined for!”

  Tannin got to his feet, meeting the challenge, “I will not force her!”

  Idi refused to let up, “She is but one woman measured against the thousands that die in slow misery by the hands of Blood Lords. Make the union and be done with it!” For him, there was no comparison, sacrifice one woman’s dignity for the sake of all humanity was not even a consideration to make. Force or no.

  Tannin’s every action showed its effect on the small woman, making him all too aware of himself and he hated it. He refused to drop any lower than he already had with Aari, nor would he let his brethren lure him otherwise. “I will not!” Already she lay half dead in the tent, because he would not let himself see her as anything more than a means to fulfill his destiny. Seeing them do the same, brought the judgment down on him further.

  “Then perhaps I will.” Idi stomped around the others for the tent. “I will take the gift and kill the bastards myself.”

  Tannin lunged for him, taking them both to the ground. They rolled, arm in arm, through the firepit, and into the sand bank. Tannin was quickly the succeeding dominant and landed on top with his blade to Idi’s throat. “Do not dare lay a hand on her or I will run you through,” Tannin growled heatedly at his half sibling.

  Idi stilled under him, “You choose her over a brother? A brethren, who has fought many battles at your side? Spilled my blood to keep you! What has she done to earn your loyalty? She won’t even give you her gift so that you may complete the destiny that will save so many. Will you still choose her over your brethren?”

  “I cannot force her,” Tannin growled once more then stabbed the knife into the sand next to Idi’s head. “Stay away from her. Don’t force me to make that choice.” Tannin warned then pushed up and headed off for his tent, and to guard over Aari while she lay vulnerable.

  He stilled, once inside the tent, drawing in a deep inhale of the returning faint, but sweet scent of her body— letting it settle him— and his racing thoughts. He shivered, trying to will the anguish he felt away. When he opened his eyes once more his gaze fell heavily on the still limp body lying on the bedroll where he had placed her earlier.

  She had yet to even stir.

  He stretched out alongside of her, rubbing her arms to warm the chill from them. “How can I make things right for you?” he asked the darkness.

  If she were awake she’d have likely slap him. An assault he would gladly accept it if she would only wake up.

  THE ARRIVAL OF GHOSTS

  By the next evening, Aari had still not awakened, but her pulse had grown stronger, and her body burned with a fever now. He wished he had spent some time quizzing her over the details of her healing ability, so he would better understand the process and know what to do. If there was anything he could do.

  Outside the tent, the winds picked up with an approaching storm. Low rumblings from the clouds echoed off the valley walls behind them and the darkening evening sky lit up with the distant flickers of lightning.

  Ironic how the weather suited his mood.

  He had watched over her throughout the day, refusing the care offered from the three women traveling with the men. However, when the fever developed, he relented, allowing them in to wash and tend to her, and still he grieved. Without hope for redemption.

  Hunger finally drove him to leave her side. With the eagerness of a good meal, he also looked to dispel some of his guilt, but when he returned, Aari’s body was gone.

  “Aari!” he shouted out for her, but there was no answer. He pricked his nose to the air, relieved to catch her scent on the breeze that also carried the coming rain, and he followed it.

  It led him to a trail behind their tent and headed along the row where he found her several tents down. Relief flooded him as he rushed to her side as she stood up on a fallen log, finding her peeking through the flaps of one of the other tents. Neither did he miss the gun harness strapped to her thigh, along with the second leather strap she was keen to wear over her shoulder, securing a holster and the second pistol under her arm.

  The scent of sex drifted to him and he knew without looking what she saw. Inside, Rayhan’s gruff breath voiced his pleasure to the woman who mewed under him, made public through the thin canvas of the tent.

  “You like watching?” Tannin couldn’t help the perverse humor from catching her in the voyeuristic act. Of all the things she should get caught doing after waking from the dead. Aari spun about, her hand coming across his face hard, leaving a bitter sting on the skin of his cheek. He froze up any reaction his predatory nature would have made, “I guess, I deserved that,” he confessed, feeling even more of the guilt he had been burdened with. “Aari, please. I’m sorry.” It was nearly a plea rather than an actual apology.

  She ignored him, turning back to the man who was still taking his time to pleasure the woman in his tent. “He makes her feel good,” she whispered.

  “It’s supposed to. That’s why we do it, often,” he offered gentle reassurance, hoping perhaps it would ease her to the idea of their union. Guilt or not, his plans would not change.

  “Not for me, it won’t.” She shot him a cold hard stare.

  “What makes you say that? I will take the time to please you, Aari. I will make you feel good when we join.” He shook his head, puzzled by the statement. He would willingly lay with her, often while they had the chance, if she’d just get passed the initial submission to him.

  “No. Just once so you can have what you came for then you’ll be gone. You only want what I can give. Not me. You don’t want me.”

  More guilt burned in his back and no amount of shifting his shoulder blades stopped the emotional spill from his sym this time. His veins seized with it. “Aari, you don’t understand—”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Where guilt burned in him, hate ignited in her, fired up in her eyes as she glared hotly at him. Her lips, which usually looked as if they ached to be kissed, were now drawn tight across her face.

  “I wish I had never crawled in the air duct to see you.”

  “I am glad you did,” he whispered, remembering how her sweet scent made him feel. How he longed to see her face. How the mouse crawling above his cell made him feel like a boy back home, preparing for his first crush.

  “I don’t. Back there, you looked up at me like you enjoyed me. Now, you look at me with disgust. Now, you only want the gift of my Symbiotai. But you won’t keep me with you,” she spat the words at him then turned and headed off.

  “Aari! Wait! You don’t understand. No woma—” Tannin spun, in the span of a micron second, his gun drew up at the intruder that wafted into his senses like a drifting breeze of death. In the click that followed, a flash of lightning lit up the night revealing ghosts that appeared on the fringe of the camp. “Aari!” He called out, but her response came as a short scream, a short acre-breadth away, paired with the sound of her own gun being drawn.

  Aari froze in a squatted position, her gun poised upward at the saddened, road weary faces looming in the darkness. She hadn’t even heard them approach, but they stood silently as if any further rejection would turn them to dust.

  Tannin moved to her side and she heard the others from the camp running their direction. No doubt alerted to trouble by her scream. She straightened, but didn’t dare drop her weapon, though she saw none on the strangers. Lightning lit up the sky once again and she saw so many of them. Pale faces like a sea o
f apparitions in the night.

  Tannin’s hand eased her aim down. “I think these are the ones they were waiting for.”

  Aari kept to the fire while the new arrivals were tended to and settled down in the tents provided. She felt unnerved by everyone in the camp and crept away, sensing a change in the way Tannin’s friends looked at her, but the distrust was still there. And the others— the Laymask Tribe or what was left of it— fear-stricken faces now void of a will to live. Even after the men welcomed the women and elders into the camp, the haunting expressions on their faces never faded from the pale hopeless eyes. Aari couldn’t stay around them. Her back burned with remorse and for some reason, she felt as though the men of the camp looked at her like she was at part to blame.

  Only the camp fire offered some solitude. A distance barely tolerated by Tannin as he aided the new arrivals, insisting she stay within sight for her own wellbeing, but was really for his. Though, she didn’t know why he cared. He acted like he held some arousal for her when they were alone but ignored her when they were not. The push and pull was too much mental movement on her. He should just force her and be done with it. He would have what he came for and she could move on and try to find some safe place to hide out the rest of her life. Try to forget the man she was in union with didn’t want her as his own woman.

  She feared the ache that would find her after his imminent departure; like the one that prowled around her sister and forced her to take her own life.

  Life had been painful enough keeping her secret existence from others. Unable to share in the companionship or even the lust offered to her. Lonely, but never alone. That had been her only holding, but in a union without Tannin close by, desolation and heartache would be a far worse torture than the loneliness she already knew.

  She didn’t stir when the familiar oversized body cast her in its shadow.

  Tannin found Aari still sitting in the very spot he had commanded her to remain and slid in next to her. Closer than she probably wanted him, but after learning of the fate of the Laymask Tribe, he needed to console his own soul, and for reasons he could not explain, nor did he try, it seemed only her body could do it for him at that moment. He felt her tense at his presence. At least she didn’t pull away from him. But it was clear she would not be permitting any closer proximity. Nevertheless, he would take whatever she would allow, for now.

  He watched her as she poked at the fire, keeping her eyes from him. Sparing him perhaps from more of her anger or the despair he saw clouding her face. The storm rumbling and flashing on the horizon, had also spared them, skirting around. It was more than he could say about fate.

  Aari’s hands stilled and she shot a glance over her shoulder at him, catching his gaze. “Those people— there weren’t any children with them. Why don’t any of them have children? Just women and old men.”

  Tannin rolled his lips a moment, there was no easy way to tell it. “Jazirian’s army raided their camp. Most of the men were gone already, lost within too many battles leaving them defenseless. Jazirian’s men gathered up all the children, and every boy within coming age and threw them in a pit and set them on fire so there could never be anymore Laymask warriors to come for revenge in the next generation. The women were forced to watch.” He paused dropping a heavy elbow on a bent knee and thrummed over his lips a moment while picturing the scene in the flickering flames of the fire before him, “If they were lucky, they were dragged away and raped, instead of having to watch their babies die in the flames.”

  Aari’s eyes quickly deflected away, looking out into the darkness. He saw the shiver over the skin of her back. Even her Symbiotai wasn’t so hardened that the news didn’t hurt. And for the first time, he felt the hurt for her. He reached out, taking her shoulder and pulled her back, easing her down across his lap, wrapping his arms around her, offering up shelter within the walls of his body. He could not take the hate and pain of the world away, or spare her from it, but he could hold her and pretend he could.

  And for the first time since he had dragged her from the only life she knew, the small woman curled up into him, surrendering to his arms, granting an unspoken respite for his own grief and guilt. At least he was able to do this one thing for her.

  “What will become of them now?” she whispered, not bothering to look up at him. Instead, she stared out beyond the arms that encased her into the burning embers of the fire, stirred by the breeze still lingering from the drifting storm.

  “They are miijimaa, brothers to our tribe. They’ll come live amongst my people. We have good women in our tribe. If healing is possible, they will help the Laymask find it. We have plenty of men, too. One day the women of the Laymask will take new unions and bear new children.”

  While he said nothing of it, he wondered if it wouldn’t be a good place to send her for safe keeping as well. His tribe had long sheltered many Symbiote. They would take good care of her, watch over her. Perhaps, in time, she might feel like one of them, feel welcomed and not so alone. But there was no sense bringing it up just now. She wasn’t ready to accept any of it, because it came with a price. One she knew she would have to pay but wasn’t willing to give that freely either.

  HOW DID YOU HAPPEN

  That morning, before the sun was up, Tannin had them packed and heading out of the camp. Heavy only a few extra provisions. Winter clothes wasn’t amongst them, but one of the women had fashioned two spare wool blankets into capable parkas for them both. Enough to shield them from the winds some. They would have to do, for time was pressing.

  Tannin had learned from the Laymask elders of a supply convoy they’d spied along their journey, one with some strangely interesting wagons that bulked under tarp of whatever goods they carried. And he wanted to see it for himself. The ground he and Aari would have to cover to head the convoy off was going to be rough, so he wanted to get an early start. He said his goodbyes, thanked them for the few provisions they could part with, and they headed out, leaving everyone for their own destiny.

  For four days, they traveled on uneven terrain, through ripped regions of landscape that had been torn and shredded during the time of Terra’s changes.

  As they climbed higher up in altitude, the wind grew bitter cold and robbed them of hydration quickly, but it was not the only thing slowing down their steps. Loose rock shifted under every step, threatening to send their feet out from under them. Tannin had scolded Aari on more than one occasion for not watching her step.

  When she slipped and caught her ankle between sliding rock, costing them a few hours of travel time, waiting for the broken bone in her ankle to heal, he really laid into her.

  Back on the move, Tannin led them higher. Relentless in his push to climb farther up into the broken mountain range, while cold winds blew from the north, bringing in the harsh cold season. The chill zapped them both of moisture and dried their skin to leather, chafing their faces from the endless exposure. Tiring them faster than did the warm winds from below. And still, Tannin pressed on. While no one from the Laymask understood what it was they had seen being transported by the caravan, Tannin feared it was supplies that would be used to advance the war machines in the City of Maegray, including the MV4 fly-a-bouts. If he was right, it was a convoy shipment he wanted to be sure never arrived.

  They had one last ridge to make, then their trek would clear until they reached the next valley on the other side of the mountain range, and to the valley’s trade road where he planned to pick up the caravan. But they weren’t there yet, and the rough moving rock soon transformed into loose shale. With it, the warnings from Tannin increased.

  They’d climbed up some considerable altitude, trying to shorten some of the distance to make up for lost time, putting their hike at greater risk. To one side, the slope of shale continued high above their heads. To the other, the declining slope went another forty meters, then dropped straight down to an icy river nearly twelve fathoms below.

  Aari’s feet hurt with the increasing
number of blisters assaulting her with each step she took. Her boots weren’t meant for this kind of trekking about. And having already worn her socks to threads, the seams of her boots now rubbed and chafed against bear skin. Despite her healing ability, the continued friction of the hardened leather rubbed until she was raw, hindering any chance of healing until darkness came when they stopped for the night.

  Tannin kept vigil on her as they traveled, but she kept silent about her wounds. They were minor, like trench foot. She was raised to be a Skaddary militia soldier, she had been trained to tolerate this. The problem was, she was now a gunner and a driver; she hadn’t trained for shit in six turns of the season cycle. Mostly, she kept quiet so as not to get reamed by Tannin any further over how she was slowing them down and perhaps doing so deliberately. Which she wasn’t. Not this time at least.

  As the seventh day passed, Aari found herself stumbling more, despite her best efforts to remain on the straight and narrow. However, she was a growing tad fed up with the drill sergeant version of her captor, who climbed like he had mountain goat in him along with all the other predatory skills. The surging attitude it was causing her, made her all the more careless as she stomped, rather than stepped, cautiously up the steep trail.

  “Aari, watch your step, the trail narrows here, and the shale is very loose. If you go, there’s no stopping until you’ve reached the bottom.”

  Aari only glowered at his back, saying nothing, because that agitated him more than her foul mouth did.

  “Aari?” He glanced back, only to match the scowl she wore with one of his own. Even wrapped in the tuareg, she could make out the lines across his forehead pinching together and his brows pressed down, shadowing over his eyes.

  Tannin turned back to the trail ahead, leaving her to her silent tantrum. Knowing full well arguing against it didn’t improve matters between them. She was exhausted, her small body wasn’t cut out for this, but he had no choice. He had to press on and she had to stay with him for now. At least until she agreed to their union.