Footfalls in the grass.
It was still dark, but in the morning’s dusk I could make out Miyani’s hand creeping towards the knife at her belt while her eyes remained closed.
A rattle of metal keys came with Taganu’s smiling voice. “I see you had company.”
Miyani relaxed and sat up, stretching her arms and legs out as one by one, my limbs were freed from the chains. I hadn’t yet the strength to do more than let them fall and drape myself over the log that was Blue’s body such that my hands and feet dropped to the grass on both sides of him. By the time I mustered up the strength to do something, all I could manage was to roll over onto my back onto the grass.
Taganu knelt beside me. “You need to get ready—Kylen likes to leave first thing in the morning.”
I wheezed out, “I’m getting up.”
Miyani tapped Blue’s cheek and called his name a few times, but he didn’t budge. A pang of worry shot through me. “Is he OK?”
“Uh…” Miyani smiled. She then turned to Taganu, “gæðude ŋayi vemɪʃaθʊ’aʒʊ?”
Taganu chuckled lightly. “Every morning.”
She put the words together, “he… laktheesss… evvrieee moaning. Blue!”
My lizard friend croaked long and low, then curled his neck away from her and tucked his head between his body and mine. I needed to talk to her about that boy.
She giggled lightly and kissed him on his haunch. “Is OK.’
We made our way towards the mess, and she looked up at me with a warm smile. I loved her eyes. I loved the way her eyes widened when she was happy. I loved her perfect lips. Every time I kissed her, the whole world felt right. I didn't know why, but God, I'd have given anything just to hang on to that.
What did it mean, this custom? I tried to imagine how I might feel if she went through with it and even knowing it's supposed to be just a thing in her culture, I just couldn't settle my mind on it. I had to wonder if Lacius went through any of that with Ahmi.
I tried to understand. Miyani chose someone when she became a woman. That was one. I had no idea how many lovers she'd had since then. I really needed to talk to her.
After scarfing down some saltless goop from the mess I went to grab my things. As I changed my clothes, Miyani stood and watched with a big smile on her face. I smiled. “Oh, so you're just going to watch, I see.”
She held up a finger. “Watch, see. I learn. ʃo'ibi, keʃo'ibi.”
I dropped my filthy clothes to the floor and stood before her. “That's interesting. ʃo'ibi, that's…”
She grinned, gazing all over my naked body. “ʃo'ibi, watch, keʃo'ibi, see.”
As I started to look over my armor, she shook her hands and stopped me, “no.”
I looked at her, confused. “You're saying don't put my armor on?”
“No,” she shook her head. “No ama put.”
At her instruction, I went topless with my thin trousers and boots. She saw the silk loincloth Tani had given me lying in the dirty pile and tilted her head at me, pursing her lips.
“Oh,” I shrugged. I felt stupid. I struggled for words and looked down. “I, just… I don't…”
Miyani shook it off. Then she grinned, “I watch you!”
That made me laugh. “Oh, you're going to watch me?”
“I watch you!” She giggled. We left the barracks and made our way across the training grounds, and by God's mercy the sun had risen enough for me to absorb those delicious curves she had, barely visible on her dark skin.
We joined a gathering of men beside the gate. One of them I’d met before; he’d chased away our prayer group from the barracks the other day. He froze, glaring at Miyani with his brow furrowed and lips pursed.
She turned away, then looked up at me with a sheepish smile.
Another man, Herali, an inch or two taller than me with his hair tied into a ponytail behind his back wearing a cotton loincloth and a cougar tattoo on his shoulder gave her a friendly nod. “bevemɪʃa, ko’o sekɪwaseða?”
Rolf Foot-in-my-arse turned to him with his eyes wide in shock. A couple others chuckled lightly and shook their heads, glancing over at my girlfriend.
Miyani shook her head and smiled, nearly laughing. “No”
The Cougar guy smirked. “Damn shame.” Then he turned to me, “you must be Caleb. I’m Kylen—I’m the captain of this rabble.”
He then wrapped his arm around the neck of a man standing next to him and pulled him in close. “This here’s Tobi.”
Tobi was short, muscular, also Herali with his hair in braids down his back and a cougar tattoo on his shoulder, and wore a cotton loincloth with three blades around the belt. About half the men had eupin longbows like mine; Tobi’s was etched with an image of the epic battle between Bear and Cougar just before the Doom was opened.
Kylen continued his introduction, “this is Samaius, Jaysa, Rolf, Wedsen, Dyson…”
He continued rattling off names faster than I could connect them to faces. After Rolf, Tobi, and Kylen, there were five other Herali, one of whom wore a Falcon tattoo, an older Goloagi man with a number branded on each arm, and a man who had the dark green skin of the natives with the dark green hair and eyes of his Herali father. Every one of them wore the cotton yithi leaving their skin exposed but for a cotton flap hanging from his belt at the front with another over his arse.
The three other guys were from the Orca clan—they wore no ink, but I’d seen them hanging out with Borel after training.
Kylen plastered a great big grin across his face and introduced the three Orca men and myself to his veterans as ‘noobs.’ One of his veterans scowled at Miyani, and I felt her wrap her hands around my arm and pull her body close to mine.
It felt weird knowing that she might hold his hand that way, if even for a night. And worse, what if that was a regular thing? Would I have to just accept that about my girlfriend?
I really needed to talk to her. In the meantime, I wrapped that arm behind her shoulder and pulled her in close so that her body was against mine. She slithered her arm around my waist and looked up at me with that smile.
I may have accidentally allowed my fingers to creep in and brush against her nipple.
Miyani gently swatted my hand and squinted up at me with her lips pursed.
When I looked up, a scout had emerged from the vita’o yard riding the same dark-colored lizard with the vertical green stripes down her body as the day before. She wore the same cotton loincloth, same necklace of giant wooden beads, and wore her hair in the same two long white braids, one over each shoulder that ended in jeweled butterfly beads that dangled about her breasts. On her fingernails she wore the same sharpened black claws as most of the women at Carthia. She glanced at Miyani as she rode up and nodded with a smile. Miyani smiled back at her and nodded as well.
Kylen nodded. “Gentlemen, looks like we get Yumi today.”
I stepped towards her vita'o, the same one who, the day I went to look for Ahmi, had rested her claws on my shoulders and stretched her neck way up to peer down on me from above with those jagged teeth.
I spoke to the creature. “I never did get your name?”
She chirped, clicked, and jerked her head up a few inches.
Yumi answered, using the Goloagi word for “Queen.”
Rolf shook his head and frowned at us before lifting his chin towards our scout. He spoke in a raspy baritone, “ʒɪŋuse ŋuve?”
Yumi then looked up and whistled a strange tune, like a flip followed by a streak upwards ending in a brief warble.
I asked, “what's that?”
Miyani looked up at me and explained, “ʒɪŋuviye.”
“Her what?”
Rolf spat on the ground and mumbled, “bloody amateur!”
Kylen ignored him and explained, “you hear that call, that's Yumi. You don't hear that call, it ain't Yumi.”
Tobi added with a light chuckle, “you don’t hear that call, you shoot it!”
Kylen nodded, “Very simple. Go again, love?”
Yumi nodded and repeated her call. I held Miyani in front of me with my arms over her shoulders and pulled her in close enough to tilt my head down and smell her hair. Kylen was going over more instructions when I felt something very nice pressing into the front of my thighs. Back and forth Miyani worked her arse into my lap, and I had lost all ability to pay attention to the conversation after that.
I wondered if that boy was going to ask her after I left, and because I'd been such a coward, I missed the chance to talk to her about it.
I really, really needed to talk to her.
Yumi and Queen raced out across the thousand yards of cleared grass at some ungodly speed I never imagined possible before disappearing into the dark forest, and the men filed out.
I turned to Miyani. Before I could lean down to kiss her, she jumped into my arms and squeezed her thighs around my waist, draping her arms around my shoulders. We took turns pressing our lips into one another and trading giggles until I had to run to catch up to them.
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
What if she kissed him that way?
When I caught up with the others, Rolf had hung back to walk among the three guys from the Orca clan. He had a long line of a scar that ran clean across his chest. “We walk single-file. One man out front checks for traps, every fifteen minutes we rotate. You won't have to do that yet, but you need to learn how…”
I stepped closer to hear him better, and he glared at me, looking me up and down with his brow furrowed. I got uncomfortable with him just glaring at me like that, and I wasn't sure what to do about it.
Foot-in-my-arse shook his head and continued. “Everyone else, we alternate. Right, left, right, left, you keep watch on your side. If you hear a whistle that's not high up in the trees, sounds like it don't belong there, draw. Each man aims two feet from where the next man aims.”
Tobi walked next to Kylen. He turned back to us and added, “wild vita'o still hunt for another hour or so, but once it's daylight they won't go after large groups. Also ain't no enemy war parties made it this far by morning, so right now enemy scouts are what we need to worry about.”
One of the Orca men asked Rolf, “how long you been here, man?”
Rolf pursed his lips and cocked his head to one side. “Maybe five? Six years?”
Another one of the new guys answered, “gods, man! Why didn't you go home when your tour was over?”
Rolf looked ahead and smiled warmly. “I am home!”
Tobi, a man of average height dwarfed by his friend Kylen, held up his hand and counted off on his fingers for us. “Number one rule for survival here is respect, number two is humility. Number three is luck. Actually that’s probably number one.”
I stepped closer to Rolf, and he glowered at me. My heart slammed as a shot of adrenaline precluded my talking to him. “May I ask you a question?”
We walked for quite a ways with him staring at me before he finally asked in a gruff tone, “what?”
“Why do you have a problem with Miyani?”
Rolf pursed his lips, and two more of the veterans huffed while the guy with the Falcon tattoo shook his head and grimaced. Kylen turned around to walk backwards and answered for him. “He doesn't, because she's on our side now.”
Tobi added, “Rule number four is don't let things get personal.” He glared at Rolf. “Isn't that right?”
Rolf looked away and sucked his teeth.
“Wait.” My eyes wandered over the nibbled grass as we approached the line of trees. I wasn't asking any of them in particular, rather thinking out loud. “Does that mean she was on their side?”
Aside from Rolf, the Falcon guy was the only one barefoot. He lifted his arm and pointed at two small lines of scars over his ribcage, each about the width of an arrowhead. “These are from your girlfriend.”
We stopped seventy yards short of the azuka grass, just outside the range of those native bows. Kylen raised his hand and turned to face us. “Time to nock arrows and cut the conversation. Noobs, listen up. Take out the rider, you've got a pissed-off lizard coming at you faster than you can reload. Take out the mount, the rider goes down. Your aim is hip height. Siren bird makes this sound,” he whistled the up-down-up-down-warble fairly well, “draw. If you don't hear Yumi's call, shoot.”
Tobi added, “even if you miss, you'll teach her to keep her distance.”
Rolf spoke last, “eyes and ears on the trees at all times.”
And we entered the dark forest.
Through the azuka grass we walked as morning's dusk slipped away, and dew covered all around us. We reached the groves of fruit trees, but there were no gatherers about so early in the morning.
I heard an up-down-up-down-warble suddenly about twenty feet to my right, behind a thick grove of mango trees. Just as sudden, half the men in the unit drew their bows and faced the same direction. I took their cue and drew as well.
Then we heard a whistle like a flip followed by a streak upwards ending in a brief warble.
We relaxed, and Yumi emerged from the foliage, nodding her approval just as the sky dumped rain all over us.
I ran for the nearest tree, a giant umbrella with massive leaves to hide under though I'd already been soaked through. I found myself with the three men from the Orca clan looking out at the rest of Kylen's men standing in the deluge like it was nothing.
Yumi also ignored the rain and urged Queen towards Kylen and Rolf for a quiet discussion that I couldn't hear over the water pelting everything around me, then she darted off ahead.
We came to the alligator swamp. Half the veterans unsheathed their swords and made threats at the giant monsters while the other half kept their bows trained on the woods nearby. When we came to the tree with the berries, I picked one.
Rolf slapped my hand, knocking my snack to the ground. He whispered, “idiot! They'll know we passed through here!”
I tried to remain focused. In reality, my mind went over and over the revelation from earlier, that Miyani had been an enemy scout, which drowned out the earlier revelation that she may well accept some boy’s request to take her from me for an evening.
I really, really, really needed to talk to her.
We climbed the embankment with nothing to hide behind at the top, and Yumi was there waiting for us. She spoke not to any of us, but nodded as we passed.
By then the rainwater sloshing around in my boots grew very difficult on my toes.
We came to the open canopy that gave us a clean view for hundreds of yards in all directions. That same tree-branch of a snake had coiled its thick, endless body around another branch and rested its head… somewhere. Kylen stopped and put his hand up. Then he started looking around in all directions, pointing to Tobi with two fingers to his eyes and then turning them out.
Rolf and the others stooped down below the bushes, and we all looked around. Off to my right, vision ended at a grove of palm trees that grew hundreds of new stalks so dense as to be nearly impassable. To my left, two-hundred yards away was a thicket of those berry trees covered in bright yellow stick-like flowers.
Kylen raised his hand high and gave two bold waves before crouching down once more. Far in the distance ahead, we heard Yumi's whistle again.
At that, Kylen stood and turned to us. “We rest here. Tobi, Caleb, Palo, Wedsen, you take first watch.”
Wedsen was that old Goloagi guy with streaks of gray in his short, curly hair and his old slave number branded into his arms, 221-989. Palo was Herali, but had no tattoos or anything to tell me what clan he was from. The four of us arranged ourselves as points in a square around the rest of the men while they sat and took their boots off.
On one of the Orca men's feet, I saw a cluster of white pellets beneath his skin at the bottom of his calf that he clearly hadn't noticed.
I pointed, “you got eggs, man!”
Rolf snapped at me and pointed, “you need to be looking out there!”
I turned and looked back out. Behind me, I heard Kylen’s voice. “Good eye, Caleb. Rolf is right, but that's good of you to notice.”
Rolf grumbled something, to which Kylen replied, “he's learning.”
When it was our turn to rest, I couldn't wait to rip my boots off and ring my socks dry. Tobi sat across from me and watched as I twisted a generous amount of water from my socks. Then he folded his own together and wrung out more, and flashed me a big smile.
I couldn't let myself get outdone, not like that. “Let's see what's in your boot.”
Tobi chuckled and lifted his to pour.
Wedsen grinned at us, “wait up!” He lifted his own boot, and the three of us poured together while Palo leaned back and closed his eyes.
The half-Herali guy with the dark skin and dark hair had lain across the packs with his arms spread and his eyes closed, snoring, one of the noobs from the Orca clan sat rummaging through his pack.
Kylen kept watch to the south. væfa. I mean væfa. I glanced between him and Tobi, “how long have you guys known each other?”
Tobi stuffed a cloth of sorts down into his boot with one hand and answered. “Whole lives, man. Grew up together in Suplenty.”
“Suplenty?” I raised an eyebrow at that. “Have you ever been to Treanet?”
Tobi grinned wide, “every winter, man! Kylen’s got a woman there—name's Melyce.”
I nearly laughed. “You know Melyce?”
Tobi grinned and opened his eyes wide. “You know her?”
“Yeah, man,” I said. “My friend Davod slept with her on our way here.”
A pang of shame swept through me; I shouldn't have aired her business like that. I shouldn't have aired Davod's business like that.
Tobi covered his face and giggled, looking up at Kylen, who kept his eye on the jungle. I heard him take a deep breath, though, and could see on the side of his face a hard grimace as he shook his head.
I tried to change the subject, “how long ago did they call you two? Do you know what happened to Shavod and Darius?”
Before Tobi could answer, Rolf inserted, “Miyani killed them both.”
My eyes popped. “What?”
Rolf turned back to face me and clarified. “Shavod of Treanet was on the road to Tower Three when your girlfriend killed their scout and started copying her signal. She led his whole unit right into an ambush. Darius of Treanet was in my unit when we were sent to investigate a boat landing. Your girlfriend keeps our scout busy with cat-and-mouse games, then tries to draw her out of hiding by shooting Darius in the head. That's what happened to them. Since you want to know so much.”
The conversation continued around me until our break had ended, but I spoke nothing further.
Heavenly Father, I don't know how to feel about this.
We passed by the sadirac lair, where broken pieces of a box with blades remained at the side of the road. Kylen glanced down at it and held up one hand, searching the trees all around.
We kept moving.
“Got a trap!” the lead man called back to us. He then found a stick off to the side and thrust it down into the moss that covered it, leaving it there as a mark.”
Kylen rested his hand on the man's shoulder and whispered something in his ear.
The man nodded.
Fifty yards later, we all gathered around a small patch of rough green moss. Rolf knelt close to it and looked up at the three men from the Orca clan. He didn't look at me once. “You see how this moss isn't attached to anything beneath it? You see how loose it is?”
He pulled it aside to reveal an empty hole with blades at the sides pointed down towards a central, barbed blade sticking up from the bottom. “Step in there, we lop your foot off and carry you the rest of the way. Any questions?”
The Orca guys’ eyes bulged. The short, slim one couldn't rip his eyes from the thing.
Further ahead, the trees grew thick on all sides. We kept walking until Yumi and Queen blocked the way. Kylen gaped at her. “What's wrong?”
Queen lowered her head and traced an invisible line shin-high across the black slate road.
Tobi knelt for a closer look. “Gods!”
A tiny thread stretched across the road from a nearby bush on both sides, completely invisible if your eyes weren't inches from it. It went across a stick and reached high up into a nearby tree so thick with foliage we couldn't see what was at the end of it.
One by one, we stepped over the wire and kept walking.
The road led us along a ridge where up ahead the sound of crashing water drowned out everything else. Rolf, Kylen, Tobi, and the other veterans shifted their bows towards the dense forest around us and lifted an elbow ready to draw, and we continued to walk. We passed over a stone bridge that led us over tumbling rocks, and the ridge on the left gave way to a narrow gap where one could see the waterfall some twenty yards above us.
Rolf looked at something on the right and drew his bow. As he did, three of the other veterans followed, standing beside him. Their eyes scanned the trees for nearly two minutes before they relaxed. Rolf then gave me a nasty glare and shook his head. “Draw, you dummy!”
We kept walking. It wasn’t lost on me that we’d gone at least another hour or so with no sign of Yumi, and none of the veterans looked concerned.
We came to an open field. Five-hundred yards ahead and surrounded by a branch of a river, a curtain wall fifteen yards high made of the same gray and yellow mortared stones as the walls at Carthia and the Lake of Doom. At the center was one tall tower that bulged out at the top with two buttresses reaching out towards two smaller towers in a manner quite like a praying mantis. A massive wooden gate beyond the river was closed, above which men paced the ramparts.
Yumi materialized from the trees and stood beside us, counting us as we walked by. In Queen’s jaws was a human leg cut off at the top of the thigh with dark-green skin peeling away from raw meat still dripping blood. The three noobs gaped and glanced at one another in horror. Yumi glanced at Queen’s lunch and said nothing.
As we drew near, heavy metal chains creaked to herald the drawbridge opening for us.
Still reeling from the sight of Yumi’s vita’o with a human leg in her mouth, I approached Rolf. “I think we should talk. I understand that Miyani wasn't always on our side, I believe she hurt someone very dear to you. I know the past is difficult…”
Rolf stopped walking and turned to face me with his arms at his sides. He shook his head, “it's not her I have a problem with; it's you.”
“Me?”
Rolf sneered. “I'm not your friend. I don't like you.” He turned to leave. “There. We talked.”