by Sam Sykes
Kwar didn’t cringe at her words. Kwar didn’t so much as blink. Yet Kataria caught herself, all the same. She shut her eyes tight, held her breath, forced her voice lower, soft as she could make it.
“I’ve turned it over time and time again in my head, thinking there was something I missed,” Kataria said. “That there was some way I could end this all, make Shekune see reason, make the other shicts listen, something. I don’t know, maybe there still is. But I can’t think of it. I can’t think of anything that doesn’t end with someone dying.
“And if it has to be that way, then it has to be Shekune,” she said. The words fell out of her mouth, heavy with impossibility. “Kill her, the tribes lose their leader, their will to fight. That’s all I can come up with. But I need to find her, first. If that’s the way to do it, anyway. If I’ve missed anything, if there’s another way I’m not seeing, I …”
She looked down at her hands, at the calluses on her fingers from bows drawn and arrows fired. She’d killed many creatures before today: for food, for protection, sometimes for fun. This shouldn’t be any different. Just one more death.
Yet somehow, it felt like much more.
“Kwar,” she whispered, “get up.”
Kwar didn’t get up.
Kwar didn’t move. She barely breathed. Her ears hung limp from her head, lying in the sand. Her eyelids twitched slightly. And that was it. Maybe she hadn’t even heard Kataria.
Or maybe it’s time for the knife, Kataria thought.
“I don’t think I can.”
Kwar was not speaking to her. Not directly. She spoke to the sky, as though she were simply breathing and words just came out with her breath.
“My head feels heavy,” Kwar said. “Like it’s filled with iron. And if I try to move, I might break my neck.”
She fell silent for a long time. When she spoke again, her words were so soft that Kataria strained to hear them.
“I don’t know what I did,” she said. “I just sit here and I keep wondering what I did wrong. I don’t know if it was the time I made my mother cry or the time I hit Thua or … something. I don’t know. But everything … everything I had, I lost. And I don’t know why I did.”
“Kwar …” Kataria began, but Kwar did not seem to hear her.
“When my mother died, all I could think about was killing humans. I kept thinking that if I could just kill enough of them, I’d make it better. But whenever I tried to think of them, of the humans that killed her that I had to kill, all I could see was her face. And now … whenever I see her face, I see Thua’s face with her. I see him crying, I see him laughing, and I … he just feels like a dream, like he was never there, so I try to get up and move and … I fall down.”
Her body shuddered. As though it were trying to shed tears she didn’t have, loose a scream she lost long ago.
“I don’t have a name for it, when I know things are okay. I barely know what it is, just that I know when I have it and when I don’t. I can never hold on to it. I only get it for a few days and then it’s gone. And I can’t figure out how to get it back or what I did to lose it and I wonder if I lie here … will everything just be easier if I stop trying to find it?”
Kataria had never thought of herself as stupid. Far from it, she was the one who was clever enough not to waste time on stupid conversations and stupid ideas. She was made for shooting arrows, stabbing knives, and generally beating problems to death.
Not … this.
Whatever this was, this thing happening to Kwar, to her, she couldn’t shoot it, she couldn’t kill it. All she could do was stand there, like an idiot, staring at the empty air Kwar’s words disappeared into.
Which was probably why she started cursing.
“Fuck that,” she snarled. “FUCK THAT. We didn’t come this far to hear that! We didn’t see so many people die, with so many more to come, to hear that! I can’t … I can’t use that, Kwar!” she all but roared, her voice carrying across the dunes. “I can’t stop Shekune by myself! I can’t save everyone if you don’t get up! So get up.”
Kwar did not get up.
“Get up, Kwar.”
Kwar did not move.
“Get up.”
Kwar closed her eyes, let out a breath, and lay still.
There were more words she could have said, Kataria thought. Tender words she had whispered in dark places, ones that had moved Kwar before. But she clenched her jaw tight, ground those words between her teeth, spit them onto the ground in a thick phlegm as she turned around and left.
She wouldn’t waste anything more on the woman who had kidnapped her, who had made her abandon everything, who now lay as useless and limp as a dead fish on dry earth. No more breath, no more words.
Words weren’t arrows.
Words couldn’t kill anyone. Words couldn’t save everyone. Words couldn’t stop Shekune.
She would solve this with arrows. With poison, with yijis, with rocks, with whatever she had to use to stop Shekune, to save the shicts, to save the humans, to save Asper and Dreadaeleon and …
And Lenk.
And if she had to do it without Kwar, then so be it.
She stopped by the oasis pool, gathered up what supplies and water she had left there, and hitched them to her belt. She glanced up and saw that the yijis were gone. Perhaps they had heard that outburst and left, or perhaps they saw some prey to chase. Kataria didn’t care.
She snorted, spit, and stormed off.
Her storming turned to a stalking turned to a weary trudging as she put more tracks behind her and the oasis grew distant. While she might not have had any words to waste on Kwar, she found that she had quite a few thoughts to spare on her.
Most of them angry.
Stupid fucking idiot, she snarled inside her own skull. Stupid fucking idiot with her stupid fucking … whatever. Does she not see what I’m trying to do? Or does she just not care? Does she think I’m doing this for the humans? For Lenk?
Aren’t you?
“No!” Kataria snarled aloud.
Not just for them, anyway. I’m not saying we need to live in peace with them. We just … can’t fight them this way. There are so many of them and they’ll kill us all. Can’t she see I’m doing this for us? Our people? She won’t even help. I’m the one who has to save the shicts.
Those thoughts grew heavy in her skull, made her feet sink deeper into the sand, made her head bow itself under the weight until she stopped and stared down at the earth. And the realization bore down on her like the heat.
Save the shicts, she thought. When you can’t even save one.
Words were not arrows. Words couldn’t kill. She had severe doubts that words could do much of anything. But some of them felt very satisfying to say.
“Fuck.”
Like that one.
She ran her hands over her face, turned around, and started stalking back toward the oasis.
She kidnapped you, she reminded herself.
She hadn’t forgotten.
You told her never to touch you again.
She had meant it.
So why bother?
She didn’t have an answer.
Not one in her head, anyway.
The sun had just begun creeping low in the sky as she drew closer to the oasis. The sands were painted orange and the scrub grass looked like jagged shadows across its face. The dune where they had made camp still loomed and she knew she’d find Kwar on the other side, still.
The plan hadn’t changed. She would find new yijis. She would find Shekune. She would stop her plan, her war, and the slaughter that would follow. She would save everyone.
Starting with Kwar.
Just as soon as you think of what to tell her to make her get up, she thought.
“Fuck,” she whispered breathlessly to herself as she drew nearer to the oasis and the scrub grass loomed large. “No, that didn’t work last time. Maybe ‘Hey, listen, could you maybe put this off, whatever you’re doing, until I can kill the leader of
our people?’ Probably not.” She snorted. “I’m going to have to apologize, aren’t I?”
“Did you say something?”
Her ears shot straight up. Her feet froze in their tracks.
“I don’t know. Have I said anything to you for the last six hours?”
“No.”
Voices. Two of them. Gruff, angry, unfamiliar.
“No?”
And she was moving again.
She went low to the ground, creeping swiftly toward a hedge of scrub grass. She pulled her bow from her back, an arrow from her quiver, and nocked it as she ducked behind the foliage and peered through its branches.
“Then what makes you think I’d have anything to say to you now?”
Tulwar.
Two of them. One male. One female.
Kataria murmured a curse under her breath; she had been so consumed with thought she hadn’t heard them until she was this close.
They stood at the water’s edge, tall and lean, their skin and hair black beneath the ragged leather armor they wore. Their faces were painted with a chalky white dust, their belts sagging with what looked like pieces of metal that someone had started shaping into blades and got bored halfway through.
Nearby, a pair of gaambols stood. The massive simians had buried their faces in the water, lapping eagerly. None of them seemed to have noticed her; the gaambols were too involved in slaking their thirst and the tulwar were too consumed with …
“You always get like this on journeys,” the female grunted. “You always get snippy if you don’t kill something.”
Whatever this was.
“I do not get snippy.” The male sneered, baring long yellow fangs. “I just had nothing to say and I didn’t say anything like you thought I did.”
“You’re bored with tracking shicts all day and not getting to fight them,” the female replied. “That is why you’re snippy.”
“I just said I wasn’t—” He snarled suddenly, throwing his hands up and turning away from her. “It just doesn’t make any sense. The daanaja said he wants to march on the humans soon, and he sends the Mak Lak Kai out to track shicts?”
Kataria’s ears twitched at the name. Mak Lak Kai. She knew them. She had fought them.
It hadn’t gone well.
She kept her breathing shallow, forced herself still. With any luck, they would stay only long enough to water their beasts and then be on their way. No sense in betraying her position before then. Not when she had only ten arrows and need for all of them.
“It’s a long way between the two cities,” the female replied. “The daanaja wants to make sure the way is clear for his march.” She reached into her belt, produced a rolled-up hide scroll, and waved it. “And there are many shicts these days.”
Kataria’s eyes narrowed on the scroll. But before she could even begin to guess what it might be, the female tulwar returned it to her belt.
“Then why not send the Chee Chree or some other clan to do it?” the male snarled. “The Mak Lak Kai are made for war, not scouting.”
“The other clans are weak. Stupid. They whine to the daanaja about having us malaa in their city. So he sends us out on these little errands to placate them. Do not worry. We will be there at the slaughter.”
“They cast me out of my clan because I was malaa,” the male grumbled. “They cast me out of the city because I was malaa. Why would they not cast me out of the battle because I am malaa?”
“Because they need Mak Lak Kai more than they hate malaa.” The female shot him a yellow, toothy grin. “If they cast you out of the battle, it will be because you’re snippy.”
The male roared, tore his crude blade from his belt, and brandished it at her. She laughed, tearing her own weapon free. They tensed, as if to rush each other, when a third voice cut through the air.
“And what is this?”
From a nearby dune, another gaambol came loping down. This one was bigger, fiercer-looking, its face and hands the color of blood and its fur and eyes black as pitch. Yet for all its ferocity, it seemed a pale sight compared to its rider.
Another tulwar, her long and lean body covered in black fur, sparse in patches where knotted scars protruded. Her armor was tattered and damaged, yet it was clear no effort had been made to repair it. The sword on her back, a massive wedge of sharpened metal, looked almost too big for her to wield. And though she wore white paint on her face, there was no substance on earth thick enough to cover the wild red of her eyes and the manic yellow of her fanged smile.
“Chakaa,” the female said. “Come and see. I am about to cut him open.”
“No, Chakaa,” the male snapped. “We are simply settling an argument.”
The creature known as Chakaa glanced between the two tulwar. She offered a shrug and slipped off her gaambol, walking nonchalantly between the two.
“I am not convinced that there is much difference between the two,” she said. “And I am even less convinced that you two would be interesting to watch kill each other.” She patted the male on the head, as though he were a child. “You may kill each other when we are done or when the idea seems a little funnier. We’ll see which comes first.”
The tulwar muttered something but sheathed his sword, the female following. Kataria held her breath, watching Chakaa carefully. The leader, no doubt. Somehow the tulwar always seemed to elect whoever looked like they chewed glass for fun as their leadership.
Chakaa turned to her gaambol. The great beast scowled down at her through a pair of black eyes. She made a clicking sound with her tongue before delivering a fierce slap to the creature’s face.
“What are you looking at me like that for?” she chided. “You are always so cranky when you don’t eat. Go. Find your dinner.”
Kataria wasn’t sure what was more amazing: the fact that the beast didn’t strike back or the fact that it seemed to understand her. Casting an indignant stare at her, and being sure to flash its bright red buttocks at her as it turned, it took off loping into the dunes. The other two got up and followed it, shrieking as they did.
Fuck, Kataria thought.
However slim her hopes had been for the tulwar to be on their way were damn near starved to death now. Chakaa pulled something that was either clumps of meat or clumps of hair from her belt and began to chew on it.
“Typical,” the male snorted. “Even the gaambol get to kill something before I do.”
“If you want to go chase down horses, go right ahead,” Chakaa said. “Just be sure you run faster than I do. I do not like your snippiness.”
“See?” the female said.
“Otherwise, be patient,” Chakaa continued. “They will be back before long and we can go kill a shict, if it will make you happy.”
“It would make me happy to kill many shicts,” the male snapped. “There are enough, aren’t there? What are they all moving in such big numbers for? Are they going to a party?”
“Rude of them not to invite us.” She popped another piece of flesh and hair into her mouth, chewed for a moment, then spit out what appeared to be a bone. “But then, what do shicts know of good manners?”
Kataria’s sense of revulsion was overwhelmed by her curiosity. They were tracking the shicts. They knew where they had gone. The scroll. That had to be what was written on it.
“Either way, the daanaja wants to know where they are. If you’d like to tell him you didn’t have the patience to learn, you may do that, too, once he is done killing the others.”
“If he even is a daanaja,” the male spit. “I have heard of no daanaja like him. What did Mototaru call him? A drag … drago …”
“Dragonman,” Chakaa replied. “Different word, same thing.”
Kataria’s blood froze. And for the first time since she had met him, she wished there were more dragonmen in the world so that she might have reason to believe that Gariath wasn’t involved with these creatures.
“What are we to do for our food, Chakaa?” the female asked. She eyed the bits of meat in
Chakaa’s hands. “Will you share?”
“What example would I be setting for you, then?” Chakaa laughed, spewing bits of hair and flesh everywhere. “If you are hungry, go search for something.”
Kataria tensed as the female cast a gaze around the oasis before settling on the scrub grass she was hiding behind. She held her breath as the tulwar drew close, drew her bow, aiming for the heart as the tulwar drew within twenty paces and—
“Wait.”
At Chakaa’s voice, the female glanced up and looked back. Chakaa glanced to the male, gesturing with her chin.
“You do it.”
“What? Why me?” the male replied, indignant.
“I would be a poor Humn to my clan if I did not seek to improve attitudes wherever I went,” Chakaa said. “You think too much of your needs. Doing a good deed for your fellow Mak Lak Kai will improve your attitude.”
Kataria breathed a sigh of relief as the female hurried back toward the other two tulwar.
“But this is all scrub!” the male complained. “There won’t be anything here!”
“True.” Chakaa glanced to a nearby dune and Kataria froze once more. “Go see the other side of that dune, then. There is probably a yoto den or something.”
The male glanced toward the dune, the very dune Kwar hid behind.
And without thinking, Kataria’s bow was up. Her arrow was drawn. And there was the sound of wind whistling.
And by the time the male looked back, three feet of wood was quivering where his left eye was.
He blinked, as if not quite sure what had happened. The two female tulwar looked at him, as if they didn’t quite recognize him anymore. Then, without a sound, he collapsed to the earth.
“He’s dead,” the female tulwar observed.
“Isn’t that typical,” Chakaa sighed. “Give him a little criticism and he goes and gets shot in the face.”
Whatever reply the female might have offered was lost in the shriek of wind and the punch of hard flesh. The female staggered two steps backward, head contorting as she tried to look at the arrow shaft jutting from her throat.
She turned a bewildered stare to Chakaa, who stared back, blankly. She opened her mouth, but whatever she intended to say came out as only a wet gurgling sound buried beneath the crunch of sand as she fell to the earth and did not rise.