by Stephan Knox
He would not even consider it. He would see her cared for then head out again on his own.
Five days of this rocky cliff climbing drenn and Aari was already wishing they were back in the greener lands of the world. It was cold and dry, and frankly, she was just sick and tired of travelling. By late midday, they breached the ridge coming out on a ledge that overlooked a steep canyon. The very canal gorge they had been before they’d trekked for the mountain temple. Only further east now.
And there below was a dwelling; home to the travelers they’d encountered the day before according to Tannin’s senses. While here was not where they’d planned to come. Their gear packs had been snatched by a couple of young men who’d wandered upon them while she and Tannin were taking advantage of a hot spring to bath. So now here they were to get what was their back.
She knew it was the spot because Tannin was already picking up familiar scents and nodding he’d tracked them right.
Aari scanned the straight drop-off across from them. Like her childhood temple further down the very same deep old-world canal, the pueblo like dwellings were carved directly into the base rock below. Even where they stood on the opposite bank, it was straight down. While one would think the cliff dweller’s village location wasn’t very secure from marauders, in fact, it was. There was no way anyone was getting down there without being seen by a sentry.
She took a step back, taking some coverage in the few sparse trees available, wondering if it was already too late for that.
She pulled the rifle from her shoulder and hefted it up, popping the screen guard open on the smart scope, and used it to scan the village. Moving the sight from one doorway to the next, lined up like little stone boxes stacked one on top of the other. Each one had a ledge step then a ladder and there they were— third level up— their gear bags piled up just outside the opening of one of the cliff homes.
“Gear made it with them,” she whispered.
“Yeah, I see,” Tannin agreed, confirming he too saw them.
“You didn’t track them down just to let them keep the gear, but there’s no way you’re getting down there without getting shot first, you know?”
“Yes, we will. We need our gear. Vagrants draw too much attention and we can’t afford it.” And right away he pulled his tunic over his head and dropped it at her feet. Next was his pulse pistol. “Hang onto that for me.” He rolled his shoulders, as though he was working up the mood for a wrestling match.
Aari couldn’t help the involuntary tantalizing thoughts as she watched him. He was just about to step away when a shiver rippled over him and he sucked in a deep breath that had his nostrils flaring. He hesitated a moment as if contemplating something, a low grumble rattled in his chest then he shot a glance over his shoulder down at her. Some minute amusement on his face. She instantly blanched, realizing she must have given off some crazy scent and of course he didn’t miss even the most minute pheromone give away when it came to her. “Sorry,” she offered.
“You got a solid charge on that?” he eyed her rifle.
“Yes.”
“Good. Don’t let anyone shoot me, okay?” And he turned away, climbing over the ledge and began his descent down the cliff side.
Aari dropped into position, Tannin’s handgun tucked away under her breasts as she watched down below, waiting for the first responders to go active.
It wasn’t long, and the dwellers were quickly streaming out of their homes and hiding spots, gathering outside. They watched intently and fully armed as one lone stranger made his way down the cliff across from them.
Two watchers in particular stepped out in front of the others, pointing in the obvious direction of Tannin’s location, which Aari also took note of so she too knew of his progress. However, the two men seemed to come to some obvious decision they didn’t want the intruder to make it to the bottom on his own accord. The big burly one on the left raised up his rifle and began to sight Tannin with his scope. Aari quickly countered their position to deliver a friendly announcement to let them know their approaching guest was not unsecured.
She clicked on the laser scope, dialed it all the way up, then watched the image screen on the smart scope as she aimed the little red dot right on the chest of the man to the gunman’s right.
At first, no one took notice, so she shifted her rifle until it caught the sunlight, catching the two men’s attention. Both quickly redirected their gaze further up the cliff towards her sheltered location. That was when one of them spotted the red dot on his chest. He swiped at it a second, then realizing what it was, quickly reached out catching the barrel of the other, and eased its aim down.
“Good boys,” she whispered aloud and turned her laser sight off to show for the appearance that she was backing down. She didn’t need the little red dot.
A short while later, Tannin was on the ground, stepping out where she could finally see him. Lying flat on her stomach at the edge of the cliff, Aari watched his approach through the scope. She adjusted the power setting, upping the magnification a few clicks. The screen flickered with each click of the dial then zoomed in closer on her target.
Shirtless, with his hands held up over his head, Tannin stopped about half way across the canal floor and slowly turned around in a full three-sixty. That’s when it occurred to her what he was doing— no shirt, no hidden weapons, and so far, it’d gotten him halfway there. But after his display, when he took another step, several of the men rushed towards him. That was Aari’s cue and she let them know just how good a shot she was by putting a pulse shot smack-dab between the leading man’s feet.
Despite the baffle on her gun barrel, it still gave off an explosive blast that echoed off the canyon walls, and all those down below who had ideas of rushing their new guests came to a screeching halt.
Tannin resumed his approach. He lowered his arms, yet still keeping them out so everyone could see his hands until he was finally met with the two men up front.
“I’m unarmed, just want to get what was mine back, and I’ll be on my way.”
“You got a gunman up topside. What you call that?”
“I said I was unarmed, not stupid,” Tannin jested to keep the air light.
“You say you got something here?”
Tannin popped his head up towards the dwelling overhead where the packs still sat, “Those are mine. A couple of your boys decided to snatch them yesterday, I need them back.”
The two men mumbled to each other, every word Tannin heard but he waited for the one to ask first. “You track them all the way here?”
“Yep, and you know which ones I’m talking about.”
“Well, guess you shouldn’t have left them bags unattended, if they was that important to you.”
Tannin broke out with a male chauvinistic grin just recalling his bath with Aari in the creek. “Man gets some time with his woman when she’s taking a bath, he gets distracted.”
Just then— the sound that had a tendency to strike dread in the gut. The echoing blast of a single pistol shot bounced off the canal walls.
Tannin snapped his head up and around, his eyes searching but he couldn’t see Aari or even a reflection from her rifle’s scope. He felt the condemned emotions in the pit of his stomach, dreading losing her. Even though he knew she would heal, he mourned the loss each time she was put at risk, fearing that one of these was going to be her last.
He dropped his head, forcing himself to display some of what he felt. Only inside, he waited— waited to know that this time wasn’t going to be that time.
“Guess you’re unarmed now,” one of the men said with a sardonic tone then let out a bruising chuckle.
Aari’s mind drifted with the pain that shot her through and through just to the left of her kidney. Fucking drenn, what a dirty blow to shoot her in the back. She was certain that’s what happened. As it wasn’t the first time she took a bullet there.
While she was aware of her thoughts and her pain, s
he was still floating in the darkness that hovered between life and death. She felt her sym moving, first just a warm sensation that trickled down her spine but then eventually spread out across her back, reaching towards the bullet wound like a wave of energy, and there, her flesh began to tingle.
She could feel the nerve endings coiling around the wounded tissue, as though they were an electrical current knitting themselves back together.
Slowly, she started to feel the world around her drifting into her conscious once more much as did a fog bank rolling inland from the sea. With it, came the powerful nausea that came with her body going back online.
She sucked in her first slow deep breath, making her first step back to the living-side of purgatory. Breathing was the only way to ride out the return of pain and nausea— the return of her lifeforce until it was complete.
She heard boots shuffle in the crumbled sand nearby. She forced her mind to work, then a moment later a finger. She willed it to move and curl around the trigger of the pulse gun still where she’d tucked it and then she waited. When a pair of rough hands grabbed her shoulder and rolled her over, she squeezed the trigger.
A pulsating discharge of intense, concentrated electrical charge sounded off creating a peezsh sound in rapid concession.
Six shots fired off into one body. There was no getting up from that. Not him at least.
She laid there a moment, watching while the guy’s mind slowly grasped his new reality that he was the dead man this day.
His eyes widened— his mouth parted as if to say something but only blood came out. His balance drifted a second, then toppled him over, crumbling at her feet. The threat was over.
She rolled and drug herself across the edge to where her rifle lay, snatched it back into position. She peered through the scope to find what all had transpired while she was momentarily checked out.
“You lose your bag when you’re thinking about your woman, then you lose your woman when you’re thinking about your bags. Seems to me, you ain’t got it right yet,” their leader mocked him further.
That was when the six muffled phaser shots echoed from the cliff walls and all eyes went up, searching for an answer they weren’t likely to guess right.
Relief. That’s what Tannin felt. The last gunshot wound had taken all of a fort-night to recover from; yet, this one had only taken the time of a conversation. He didn’t care. He was glad she was alive, and he planned to use it to his advantage.
Tannin let out a whistle that nearly split everyone’s ears as it travelled up the cliff walls. And right after that, a rifle shot rumbled out and took the hat right off the lead man’s head along with his previous mocking smile.
“Now that we know how good of a shot my woman is and your sentry isn’t. I’ll be taking those bags now, along with everything that came with them. If anything is missing, it needs to be replaced.”
In what took nearly twice the time it took Tannin to get down the cliff, he was back topside with their recovered gear slung over his shoulder, and an expression that resembled a look of loss on his face. But one look at her sitting up, fidgeting with her gun, Tannin dropped the packs and stepped up to roughly inspect her.
It’d been no trick, the large gaping hole in her coat confirmed she had been hit. “How did you heal so quickly this time?”
She pulled her coat open and lifted her shirt to show the pink disk of healing scar tissue on her side, only a hand width above her hipbone, “Lousy shot. No vital organs.” She shrugged and dropped her shirt.
Tannin let out a gentle sigh, getting back to his feet and took a step back, letting his hands drop at his side. While she was certain the sound he made had to have been one of relief, he hardly showed it as he picked their packs back up and tossed them over his shoulder once again. “Come then, Dantuey is just to the other side of the ridge beyond the canal.” And he turned to lead the way.
Just before dusk of the following day, they came across a small isolated colony just outside of Dantuey; a cluster of dwellings, part mud, part ruins, part rocky gorge. Clay adobes built into the still standing sections of brick and mortar old-world buildings loomed over them on a small hill. What rubble wasn’t livable was visibly salvaged and utilized for wall and barricade material.
The honeycomb of structures was ideal for a small colony of families. A sentry stood on the perimeter embankment wall, watching them as they passed, keeping his rifle in clear view, but passive rested in the crook of his folded arms.
They were almost passed, when another joined the sentry on the wall and shouted out to them. “Do you have news?!”
Tannin stopped to consider them. He sniffed at the air a few times pausing only long enough for what appeared to be some moment of inner turmoil of decision. Whatever it was he acknowledged them, “I have news!”
The man waved his head in a backwards motion, beckoning them to come to the gate, “I have hot stew and bread for news!” he called to them.
Tannin and Aari quietly ate while the table greeted them with a whirlwind of questions from the man who had invited them, along with a head woman and a half dozen others who had joined them, revealing their concerns over mixed, contradicting news. The spoke of word that the soldiers’ camp had been sent orders announcing Maegrethe had elevated his colonel to lord marshal and placed as head of the soldier army who from here on would take orders directly from him. This came in contradiction to word spread by the code talkers that Maegrethe, his parasite bride, and two sons were actually dead.
“The signal from the code talkers reaches all the way up here?” Aari asked between mouthfuls of stew.
“No,” and elderly woman answered. But their massage is delivered by word of traders, or travelers such as yourselves.”
Tannin set the news straight, added the new information regarding the coming army from Jazirian to ensure his control over the City of Maegray and its soldiers, so to deflect any ideas the self-appointed lord marshal had of invading anyone outside his territory. The news Tannin brought to them soon had everyone in the room growing uneasy.
“I am heading down in to Dantuey to bring this news to them. To warn them, but I may not be welcomed as a friend,” Tannin cut into the murmurs that filled the room. “I could use a place to keep my woman safe until I come back in a day or two.”
The head woman quickly nodded, “You are not the first to come seeking accommodations.”
Tannin’s attention perked up in question.
“Two men came a day hence, escorting a woman, said they were meeting with someone before traveling north.”
“Odd characters,” someone in the back muttered but was quickly shushed by another.
“I say it’s them dead priests from the parasite carriers,” another from the crowd spat his ill content of the foreign arrivals.
The head woman spun around, zeroing in on a gangly older man in the back corner of the room. “Quiet you, now. Even if it they be, we will not bear anymore bad will for the evils done to them. Priests are priests and the Keepers of Destiny are fond of them.” The head woman turned back in her seat and drew in a tight expression, leveling her gaze on Tannin as best as she could, considering his height even sitting down. “We are a neutral people. It’s how we survive.”
Tannin said nothing and that was enough for them. She waved a woman forward and whispered in her ear a moment. The woman straightened, glancing at Tannin then Aari, “If you will follow me, please. There’s a vacant mudcap up on the hill you can sleep in tonight.”
Tannin kept Aari close to his side as they followed the girl to the offered accommodations. In the morning, he would head out alone, leaving Aari here. She’d be safe here for a bit and he could send word for friends of his tribe to come for her and keep her with them. She would have protection and the company of families. She would be safely hidden away inside the nomadic tribe of the Bedouin. He knew of no other way, he told himself. After he’d managed to get a civil war started, he would go see
her, and check in on her to see she had settled in well.
They followed the small mud clay footpath, past a well and then started up a sloping incline to where several white capped round domes sat lined up along the hill. That’s when he picked up the scent of another.
The scent of another Symbiote female drifting tantalizingly on the cold breeze. A breeder, yet it caused every hair on his body to bristle up. The Keepers had sent the other breeder just as They said they would.
He switched the bag to his other shoulder, freeing up his arm to drop possessively around Aari. It had to be tonight, or destiny was going to push him in another direction. One he found himself reluctant to consider.
Their guide stopped at the entrance of a small concrete slab hut. Whatever roof it used to have was gone and now had what the woman called a typical mudcap. Branches bent over in a dome then piled on with thatch, mud, and more clay until it hardened. The hutch wasn’t much but its circular walls were fully intact and a roof. Even at first glance it was obviously kept up, including shutters on the windows to keep as much of the cold out as possible.
“There’s chopped wood around back for the fireplace. And I can send someone up with a few extra hides for a bed. The bison hunts were plentiful this season, so I’ll be sure to pick out a couple of thick pelts for you.” The girl then nodded then hurried away, back to the communal clutch of adobes.
Tannin stood outside, lingering a moment, watching as their host hurried off. He took in a deep breath. The scent was light, not as alluring as Aari’s, but not vile either. She was near.
And the whole thing pissed him off.
Once inside, he dropped their packs down and watched as Aari went to work unrolling their bedrolls, laying them out on the raised bed slat in the far corner, then pulling out a few extra items to set their perimeter alert traps. He had to chuckle. Even here, she knew they had to stay on guard. It would leave him with some comfort when he left in the morning. He would leave her with as much supply as he could, taking only the bare minimum of what he needed. He’d have an easier time of replacing the things he needed than she would. It would also lighten his load, allowing him to travel at more than twice the pace.