by Laura Taylor
A sudden raucous cackle of kookaburras started up in the trees above them – a typical dawn chorus that they could well have done without – and all of them froze.
The first few men stirred, and Dusk waved frantically at the women. Speed would serve them better than stealth now, and if they would just... “Come on!” she whispered, putting as much urgency into the command as she could.
“Hey! Stop!”
Too late. The men were awake and had noticed their captives attempting to flee.
“Run!” Dusk yelled, darting down the hill to plant herself between the women and their captors, machete held high as she prepared to defend herself.
Gathering their wits, the three women raced for the top of the hill. A chorus of yells from the scrub signalled that help was on its way, and then Dusk was trading blows with a man twice her size, armed with an axe and determined to smash her skull open with it.
A lean, muscular body slammed into her from the side. “Get out of here!” a man yelled, one of her allies, though she couldn’t quite remember his name. “Get the women to safety!” He took over her fight with the man, moving with staggering speed and a lithe fluidity that was genuinely impressive, even as Dusk seethed at his interruption. She longed to lecture him about how she was perfectly capable of killing her own goddamn slaver, but now was not the time. Instead, she spun around and swung her machete, slicing halfway through the neck of a man who was still trying to get out of his sleeping bag. Christ in heaven, they’d actually had the damn things zipped up? They may as well have just hammered the nails into their own coffins.
Belatedly, she called, “Fuck you!” to the man who’d tried to ‘save’ her.
“Go after the women!” he yelled again, and this time, Dusk chose to ignore him.
But aside from that one kill, there wasn’t much else for her to do. The rest of the tribe had moved fast, taking the slavers by surprise, and as Whisper cracked the neck of one last enemy, a rather anticlimactic stillness fell over the camp. The kookaburras in the trees above fell silent.
Dusk was breathing hard, and grateful for the moment that she could blame it on exertion, as she was suddenly having a difficult time figuring out what she was feeling. She’d had a small band of friends before, had taught them all she could about fighting, and they’d protected each other with a fierce determination. But these men were something else. It was hard to know for sure, but it was entirely possible that less than a minute had passed between the first frantic shout and the dull thud of the last body hitting the ground. The staggering ease with which they’d won the battle was overwhelming. What must it be like to belong, wholeheartedly, to a group of warriors like this one? To know that such capable and confident fighters were at your back? Aside from a wave of admiration that made her want to weep, Dusk felt more than anything a profound sense of relief. She was no longer the strongest fighter in her tribe. The heavy weight of survival no longer rested on her shoulders alone.
“Where are the women?” The sharp, angry demand came from Aidan, and Dusk automatically looked over at the ridge where the women had been headed the last time she saw them. Thankfully, there was no sign of blood on the trail up the hill, so hopefully that meant they’d got away cleanly.
“That way,” she pointed. “They headed into the bush.”
But to her surprise, a dark and stormy glare settled on Aidan’s face. “Get the women to safety, we said,” he all but growled at her. “Not stand and fight while they hightail it halfway to Woop Woop!”
Dusk rolled her eyes at him. “Oh, come on. They can’t have got far.”
Aidan looked at her incredulously, then sighed. His patience was clearly wearing thin, but Dusk hadn’t a clue what he was so pissed off about. “Whisper, Dave, Mario, go see if you can round them up. The rest of you, loot these bastards and see if they’ve got anything useful on them.”
The three men turned and headed up the hill while the rest of them spread out, but Dusk stood glaring at Aidan. “What?” she asked, when everyone else was occupied.
“It’ll be a damn miracle if we get them back again,” he said, making an effort to control his anger. “You weren’t just supposed to get them free, you were supposed to stay with them, somewhere safe, then bring them back again once the fight was over! For fuck’s sake, we could spend weeks combing the countryside and never see them again!”
It seemed to be the day for epiphanies, and Dusk lifted her head, brushing a stray lock of dark hair out of her eyes and squaring her shoulders as she geared herself up for an argument. Typical fucking man, only seeing things from the perspective of what he wants, or what’s of benefit to him.
“I was under this bizarre impression,” she began, sarcasm thick in her voice, “that we’d come out here to help these women. And if they decide that running off into the wilderness is in their best interests, then at least they’re better off than if they were the captives of slavers. But that’s not what this was about, was it? You’re not here to free women, you’re here to round them up and sell them off as wives to your own tribesmen. Fuck me, Aidan, for a brief moment there, I actually thought there was something altruistic in you after all.”
She’d hit a nerve, she could see it in his eyes, but he wasn’t going to back down that easy. “It must be nice living in a world where everything is so fucking black and white,” he snarled at her. “I do want to help them, I want them to be free from being gang-raped by hordes of strangers, but I want to provide a future for my own tribe as well. Why the hell am I suddenly evil incarnate for trying to do both?”
A piercing scream echoed through the forest, and in an instant, both of them had forgotten the argument. Dusk took off up the hill, hearing Aidan coming after her, and she ran headlong into the bush, in the direction of that scream. If the men had found one of the women, she would likely be terrified, and Dusk felt a sharp urgency to get to the woman’s side and assure her she wasn’t in any immediate danger. Was it overly generous of her, she wondered as she ran, to assume that whoever had found the woman wouldn’t do her any harm? She didn’t know these men all that well, after all…
CHAPTER NINE
By the time Dusk caught up with the men, they’d found two of the women, along with the two children. The older woman sat at the base of a tree, cradling the girl in her arms while the boy clung fearfully to her shirt. Dave, a man in his mid-twenties with his hair in a ponytail, stood over them. He was a Kiwi, Dusk knew from his accent, and aside from the ponytail, he was rather unremarkable to look at – five-foot ten, no obvious scars or tattoos.
Mario, a short, stocky man in his forties, was hauling the Asian woman out of a pocket of scrub, and he deposited her beside the first. She was breathing hard, and she discreetly wiped her eyes as she pretended to brush her hair out of her face. Dusk noticed a scar running from her left ear down her neck, and wondered how she’d got it.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, are you serious?” Dusk snarled at Mario, aghast at seeing him manhandle a woman like that, and then, when mere words weren’t enough to express her disgust, she stalked over to him and punched him squarely in the face.
He staggered back, eyes wide as he gaped at her, one hand coming up to stem the sudden flow of blood from his nose, and then he took a quick step forward -
“That’s enough!” Aidan planted himself physically between the pair of them. “We don’t have time to be- Fucking hell!” He grabbed Mario by the shoulders and shoved him sideways, just as Dusk saw the third woman, the youngest one, come charging out of the undergrowth, a machete held high. Where the hell had she got that from? She must have stolen it from one of the slavers before she left the camp. She charged at Aidan, ready to swing -
Whisper stepped neatly out from behind a tree, grabbing the handle of the machete out of the woman’s grasp and twisting her arm behind her back. Then he kicked her legs out from beneath her and she landed hard on the ground, Whisper following her down, not releasing his grip on her for one second.
But
rather than expressing any anger at the woman for trying to kill them, he instead turned his cold glare on Dusk. “’Go and get the women to safety’, we said,” he told her in a disparaging tone.
“Bite me!” Dusk snarled back at him, not yet over her argument with Aidan on the subject. “Let her go!” She was dimly aware of more of the men arriving behind her, but she wasn’t willing to take her attention off Whisper.
Whisper smirked at her, and any admiration she’d felt for him after seeing him take out that sentry swiftly vanished. “If I let you go,” he addressed the woman on the ground, “are you going to play nice, or are you going to try to kill us again?”
“Let her go!” Dusk demanded. Then she said to the women, “As much as these men are being right and proper assholes at the moment, they’re actually on your side. We came to free you from the slavers. And if you can forgive the rather rude introduction, we’d like to invite you to join our tribe.”
“You run with these men?” the woman on the ground asked, ignoring Whisper, who still had a knee pressed into her back.
“For fuck’s sake, Whisper, let her go!” If he didn’t get off her in the next five seconds, she was going to kick him in the face. With a shrug, Whisper finally did so, and the woman knelt up, brushing dirt off her face and clothes. “I do,” Dusk answered the question. She opened her mouth to say she’d only been part of the tribe for a day or so, but then hesitated. If she told them that, they’d never join them. She felt an uneasy trickle of guilt run through her. If they let them just leave, even if the women managed to survive in the wilderness, the children would almost certainly die. But not mentioning how long she’d been with the tribe was a deliberate enough omission to count as a lie, and her willingness to manipulate these women, even for their own benefit, meant she was committing exactly the same sin she’d accused Aidan of not five minutes ago.
“In all honesty, I’ve only been with them for a couple of days,” she said finally. It was close enough to the truth to make a point, but not so close as to scare them off entirely. “But in that time, they’ve behaved as decent and respectable men.” It was true. Yesterday afternoon, Aidan had done exactly as he said he would, and arguably a fair bit more. “None of them have harmed me in any way, they’re honest and reliable, and they’re well-provisioned with all the basic necessities of life.”
The blonde woman looked her up and down, unconvinced. “So, you’ve freed us from the slavers, but it’s abundantly clear you’re not going to just let us go. So how is this any different?”
“You’re not our prisoners,” Aidan said firmly, stepping forward. “My name’s Aidan. I’m the leader of this tribe. And I assure you, you are absolutely free to leave. But after you’ve heard us out. We just want to talk, then you can go.”
“Is he lying?” the woman asked Dusk abruptly.
“No,” Dusk answered honestly. “They offered me the same choice when they rescued me from slavers. I chose to stay with them, but I truly believe that if I’d turned them down, they’d have let me leave.”
“What exactly are you offering us?” It was the older woman who spoke, still rubbing soothing circles on her daughter’s back, as she’d apparently tired of the standoff between the younger woman and the rest of the tribe.
“We don’t need anything from them!” the blonde woman snapped, glaring at her companion.
“Rochelle! Hear them out.”
“Don’t tell them my fucking name!”
“My name’s Linda,” the older woman said, making a clear point in the process. “And this is Mikey,” she added, nodding to the boy still clinging to her arm, “and Julia. Julia’s three and Mikey’s five.” She looked Dusk over again, noting the machete in her hand and the knife strapped to her ankle. The presence of both weapons spoke volumes about her place among these men.
“You run with this tribe,” Linda said, an unexpectedly shrewd look in her eyes, even as her voice carried a profound weariness, “but what exactly is your arrangement with them?”
Weary, she might be, but also smart. She knew how to ask the right questions.
Dusk glanced at Aidan, feeling a suddenly flush of heat over her face. “Aidan is my husband,” she said, after that brief hesitation. Husband. Such an odd word… “I made it clear I’m a one-man woman, and Aidan’s promised to knock a few heads together if the rest of the tribe ever has any doubts about that.”
“And what exactly would you be offering us?” Linda asked, looking at Aidan now.
“The same thing I offered Dusk. Join us and we’ll provide all your material needs. You’ll be considered full and active members of the tribe; you’ll be expected to do your fair share of the work, but you’ll also be free to go about the village at will, and you’ll be protected from harm, both from outsiders, and from our own men. But there is one condition you would have to abide by. We currently have fifty men and only one woman, so you would be expected to take one of our men as your husband.”
“You can burn in hell, you misogynistic asshole!” The protest, unsurprisingly, came from Rochelle.
“The arrangement would be for your own safety,” Aidan pointed out. “Even among honourable men, an unattached woman wouldn’t stay that way for long.”
Dusk longed to protest against the terms. For all that she’d already agreed to the arrangement, put so bluntly it could only be taken as a threat. Take one man as your husband, or risk being raped by more of them. But in order to protest Aidan’s terms, she would have to offer an alternative arrangement. Nothing helpful came to mind.
Rochelle spat in Aidan’s direction. “And if we don’t like your terms?”
“You’re free to go,” he said flatly. “Leave our lands and make your own way in the wilderness. Our home is to the east and a slaver camp is to the north. I’d recommend you go south or west.”
“Fine. Then we reject your offer. End of story.”
“If I stayed,” Linda spoke up, ignoring Rochelle’s declaration, “what would happen to my children?”
The contrast between the two women was not lost on Aidan. “Whatever man claims you as his wife will be expected to care for your children and raise them as his own,” he told her. And then, to his credit, he offered no further opinion, no additional attempt to convince her to stay. He just let the truth speak for itself.
Rochelle, too, seemed lost for words for the moment, and they all waited, nervous shuffles evidence of their collective unease.
“Then I will stay with you,” Linda declared finally.
Rochelle made a sound of disgust. “Are you mad? You would let a man rut upon your body for a full belly and a warm bed?”
“If they look after my children,” Linda told her, calmly but in a tone that would brook no opposition, “then they can do whatever they like to me.”
It was a bold declaration, and possibly a suicidal one. Dusk had tried to negotiate her own circumstances as well as she could, threatening anger and bloodshed should those terms be violated. But for Linda to openly declare that she didn’t care either way…
“What about you?” Rochelle asked the third woman, who was currently sitting on the ground with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them.
“What’s your name?” Dusk asked, before the woman answered. Slavers were never interested in their captives’ names.
“Don’t tell them,” Rochelle snapped.
The woman hesitated, looking from Dusk, to Aidan, then back to Rochelle. “I’m Mei-Lien,” she said finally. She glanced at Rochelle again. “And I would like to stay with your tribe.”
In all honesty, Dusk was surprised at her decision. She seemed a timid sort who would more likely follow her group’s apparent leader than strike out on her own. But that still left Rochelle…
“Will you join us?” Aidan prompted her, though they’d all guessed the answer by now.
Rochelle looked him in the eye. “I would rather die than let one more man force his rank and bloated body inside mine.”
Mei-Lien looked suddenly distraught, as though she hadn’t realised that was what Rochelle was going to do, while Linda merely looked resigned. “Rochelle?” Mei-Lien asked, her voice thin and wavering.
“You’ll be fine,” Rochelle told her, her tone falling just short of snapping at her companion. “I’m sure they’ll look after you well enough.” She stood up and looked around, then returned her attention to Whisper. “Am I allowed to take a weapon with me?”
Whisper thought the idea over. Then he picked up the machete he’d taken from her earlier and tossed it a good four or five metres away. “You may,” he said, clearly giving himself the space to see an attack coming, if she attempted another one.
“Fine, then.” Rochelle drew herself up straight, looking both her former companions in the eye. “I guess this is goodbye, then.”
“Godspeed,” Aidan told her grimly.
“Wait,” Dusk said, her mind racing. No. This was all just… No. She took three steps forward, planting herself beside Rochelle, turning to face the gathered men. “If she’s going into the wilderness alone, then I’m going with her.”
From the blank looks on the faces around her – Rochelle’s included – it was clear her little announcement was taking a moment to sink in.
“You’re what?” Aidan asked, as if she’d just announced she was a wombat.
“You said I had the freedom to choose,” she told him firmly. “To stay, or to leave. I choose to leave.” That explained nothing at all, really, when right at the moment, even Dusk wasn’t sure what she was trying to achieve. When she’d been offered the same choice, she’d very nearly taken the option of dying alone in the wilderness. But she’d been alone from the start. Somehow, taking Rochelle’s companions from her and then sending her off to die seemed a thousand times worse.
Aidan glanced nervously at Whisper, who seemed to have nothing useful to add, then at the other men gathered around. “You agreed to be my wife,” he told her, more confused than angry. “You accepted me, in front of the entire tribe.”