Chronicles of Kin Roland 1: Enemy of Man (16 page)

“You only fired once.”

“I only saw him once,” Rickson said. “I thought you were going to be back before dark.”

Kin looked out of the cave and realized he hadn’t paid attention to the failing light during his race to get back. Now, he remembered how the orange glow of the setting sun had highlighted Droon’s features. Night was upon them, and Droon had his games to play.

“We’ll take turns standing watch. Two nights without sleep will ruin both of us,” Kin said. He looked at Rickson, who studied him as though he knew Kin had just killed five people. He lowered the rifle and put his hand briefly on Rickson’s shoulder. After he pulled his hand back, he said, “You did well. That rifle kicks.”

Rickson smiled. “I noticed.”

KIN watched the sun rise. He perched on the rocks and held his axe in a relaxed manner. He turned the weapon in his hands, pondering every detail. He thought of Bear and his axes and how the man claimed Kin’s version wasn’t heavy enough.

Golden light blazed on the canyon floor and on the sides of the mountains around him. The island of rock formations was slick with morning dew, as was the tundra and rocky soil that stretched to the winding river and beyond. A herd of large, shaggy animals wandered at the limit of his vision. He didn’t know what manner of beast they were, but
they were moving farther away.

He went to the
campfire. Rickson yawned as he heated a pot of coffee.

“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Kin said.
Most of the supplies had been lost with the horses.

“I never ate so good. Bear traveled like a king,” Rickson said. He looked away when he mentioned his new and newly lost friend. He faced Clavender. “She didn't sleep well. I had to hold her down twice. She wanted to go to the Reaper.”

“Why do you say that?” Kin asked.

Rickson focused on his small cup. “She kept saying his name. I had to hold her down.”

“You already said that.” Kin suspected the boy had quite a wrestling match with the beautiful, alien princess and was embarrassed.

“I know. You’re not a good listener. I have to say everything twice.”
He paused. “Everything twice.”

Kin laughed.

“What is wrong with her?” Rickson asked.

Kin examined Clavender and said nothing. Bruises marred her skin. He could see where the Reaper had gripped her and guessed what he had done or tried to do. His heart sank. He thought she could wake if she wanted to, but her heart was broken. She was a gentle creature and could never have anticipated the savage nature of a Reaper. She’d probably felt compelled to heal him, to be kind
and forgive his violent nature.

Kin didn’t believe the monsters were evil in a moral sense. The Reapers who had tortured him had seemed to believe they were helping him, but had been unaware of how much pain their
remedies caused. Droon saw something in Clavender that prevented him from eating her or killing her outright. Fleet troopers claimed a Reaper would mate with anything, but Kin always dismissed such talk. Reapers had nothing that approximated a human moral code. For a Reaper, rape most likely made sense, just like eating a live animal in small bites or swallowing one whole made sense, depending on the circumstances.

“How are we going to get her back to Crater Town?” Rickson asked.

Kin said nothing for a moment. Then, in a quiet voice, he spoke without taking his eyes from her. “It’ll be more difficult now. Do you see these bite marks? His blood is in her. He knows where she is. He knows if she is awake and whether she’s running from him or toward him.”

“Why would his blood be in her if he bit her? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?” Rickson asked.

“Reapers are venomous. Fleet researchers speculate they used to be poisonous, but don’t really know. I met an expert who believed Reapers used venom to track or control prey.”

“What happened to the expert?” Rickson asked.

“He died.”

“You know a lot of people who died.”

Kin touched the boy’s shoulder. “It’s been nice knowing you.”

“Not funny,” Rickson said. They pondered Clavender as she slept.

“Did he rape her?” Rickson asked.

Kin shrugged.

Tears swelled in the boy's eyes.

“Better than being eaten.” Kin checked his weapons and gear. “Wake her. It’ll be best to move during the day.”

“Is she going to be okay?”

“I don't know. Wake her up,” Kin said. “Don’t assume anything. I’ve never heard of Reaper raping a human, except as a way to invoke terror before eating.”

“Eating what, a human?”

“N
o, they eat crackers. Got any?”

“I thought when you said the Reaper would eat me alive it was a figure of speech,” Rickson said.

“Wake her up. We need to get moving.”

But Rickson couldn’t wake her up. Kin tended her wounds again and took his time. Droon was probably closing in, but she needed careful attention, more than just cleaning and binding wounds. She needed him to sit with her and be silent in spirit.

“I am sorry, Kin,” Clavender said, softly. Her voice sounded weak. He squeezed her hand and looked into her eyes. She smiled as only an exhausted person can. She arched her back and stretched.

“For what?” he asked.

“I tried to take the Reaper to my people, but something interferes with the wormhole. I made things worse.”

“I doubt it,” Kin said.

“He was in my head. I feel him. He draws me back. Every moment away causes me pain.”

Kin put a hand on her shoulder but didn’t know what to say. Few people survived a Reaper bite. Escaping was almost impossible. He still suffered from the wounds the Reaper women on Hellsbreach inflicted on him, but they had done other things to heal him. His situation was different, but he didn’t understand why. Guilt plagued him.
Reapers dragged thousands of troopers into pits on Hellsbreach, yet he was the only man to emerge alive.

“He knows you,” Clavender said.

Kin brushed hair from her eyes. “The mind of a Reaper is slippery. They are individuals, but can’t easily differentiate between group memories and their own. They care little for the linear concept of time as we know it and confuse themselves as often as not. He may know me, or he may only think he knows me.”

She studied him. “How do you know that?”

“I was on Hellsbreach for a long time. They took me prisoner and I escaped. It’s a complicated story, one the Fleet didn’t appreciate. High Command questioned my loyalty afterward and ordered me to initiate the final detonation sequence to destroy the Reaper’s world.”

Kin didn’t care if Rickson heard
. The boy knew the Fleet wanted him, though Kin had never intended to reveal his captivity. He tried to ignore the look of horror on Rickson’s face.

Distant thunder drew Kin’s attention west. He couldn’t see the wormhole. It had drifted behind the mountains between his location and the coast, which meant that it was very low. He
couldn’t remember the last time the wormhole wasn’t visible. It didn’t orbit the planet as the moons and stars did. Sometimes he felt as though the anomaly was staring at him.

“The trip back to Crater Town will be dangerous. Is there another place I could take you? Do your people have a stronghold?” Kin asked. He hoped she would say no, because Crater Town needed her. Yet, he hoped she would say yes, because only a miracle was going to save them from Droon. Sophia’s warnings of Clavender’s people remained with him. According to the wise old woman, Clavender’s people were both numerous and warlike. Without knowing more about them, Kin simultaneously feared the
m and hoped for them as allies.

“I cannot return to them. My desperate actions might have saved us from the Reaper had I reached my people, but they would use me to
start a war they cannot win.” She sat up and pulled the travel blanket around her.

Kin yielded to her calming influence. He needed to think, and there was no better place for peace and quiet than beside Clavender. Reaper bites tortured the body and the mind. He understood this, yet Clavender hid discomfort and fear. Anyone else would have run screaming toward the monster. Anyone else would be dead, nothing but Reaper aftertaste.

“Are you my hero?” she asked.

“Something about the way y
ou say that makes me think you’re amused.”

She laughed. Her eyes lit up.
“The men of the Ror-Rea are not so different. They think women need protecting and saving.”

“It’s good to see you laugh,” Kin said, and it was good. Clavender’s beauty differed from Laura’s good looks or even Kin’s idealized memory of Becca. When Clavender smiled, he felt it. Rickson felt it as we
ll. It seemed a weight lifted from them all. “You never talk about your people. What would my name be if I were a warrior of the Ror-Rea?”

She laughed
again, though Kin sensed fatigue behind her expression.

“Most likely you would be The Wingless One Who Strikes Hard.”

“How about the idiot who pisses off Reapers,” Rickson said.

“That would be more accurate,” Clavender said, as she touched the boy’s arm. She winked conspiratorially.

Rickson smiled and stood straighter.

“Settle down, Rickson,” Kin said.

Clavender sat beside Kin and held his hand. He understood at least part of the reason the Reaper hunted her and why every resident of Crater Town held her dear. To be near her was to experience a feeling of wellbeing. To be touched was to be healed. He had a feeling that the Clinger on Droon’s back had a different fate in mind, given what Sophia said about them. Droon had carried her for days rather than eat her a piece a day as Reapers often did when traveling, but being eaten by a Clinger seemed worse somehow.

“I should not have taken Droon through the portal,” Claven
der said. “My people are single-minded and stubborn. They would have resented my opening the way for the Reaper when I have refused to open it for them.”

“Could they kill a Reaper?”

“Yes. Reapers fear the Ror-Rea,” she said. “My father was the king and a warrior.”

“Is he dead?” Kin asked.

“I do not know. I left the Ror-Rea when I was young. He abdicated his throne to search for me,” she said. “Your people need me. They do not understand this planet.”

“Why’d you leave your home?” Kin asked.

Clavender glanced away, but Kin continued to stare at her, waiting for an answer.

“We should go. I can feel Droon’s hunger,” she said.

Kin didn’t move. He held Clavender’s gaze, taking advantage of her discomfort and feeling guilty about it. “Do we really need you at Crater Town, or would we be safe without you?”

Rickson stood and glared at Kin. “You’ve seen the weather around Crater Town. From the summit of the pass, the
ocean looked weird. You and Bear both said it.”

“He is not accusing me of an
ything, Rickson. Are you, Kin?”

They stared at each other for a moment. She looked away, stood, and rolled up one of the blankets. Eventually, she faced Kin.

“You have been talking to Sophia,” she said.

“She told me a story.”

Clavender nodded and looked down. She handed the blanket to Rickson, and while he stowed it in his pack, she walked closer to Kin. “She did not tell you the entire story, because she does not know it. This planet is not named Crashdown, it is Edain, and is for the people of the Ror-Rea. No one may remain without our blessing.”

“Without your blessing,” Kin said. She didn’t look away. She didn’t blink. Her eyes answered his question.

Kin checked his weapons and went to the mouth of the rocks. He caught Rickson looking at her with both pity and a desire to save her. The boy wasn’t hard to read. Kin suspected he knew his thoughts.

Before Clavender regained consciousness, Rickson plagued Kin with questions about Reapers. He was obsessed with the idea the Reaper had his way with Clavender. Kin knew why this bothered the orphan. The boy’s mother died in child birth and his father eventually died of heartbreak.
Rickson became a very young, very lonely shepherd, unable to endure the sound of children playing and mothers calling them to dinner. But most of all, he ran from the sounds of women giving birth.

Years later he learned to amuse town children as a big brother might, but he never stayed long.

The mortality rate during Reaper birth was high, which should be expected. Mothers often ate their young, but the young sometimes ate their mothers. He had seen it and been horrified, but came to know it was their nature and nothing more. He didn’t understand why they needed to feel the terror of their victims or why they had been made to be pure killing machines.

There probably was a reason. Kin forced himself to remember that there was a good chance the Reaper had never thought to mate with her. He had no evidence such a thing had happened and dared not ask her.

“Rickson, if I run into the night without warning, take Clavender as quickly as you can to Crater Town. Don’t try to help me,” Kin said. “We’ll need to track the Reaper until we know where he is. It’s dangerous, but the only way.”

Rickson nodded. “I’m no expert, but tracking something that’s hunting us shouldn’t be difficult.”

“It’ll be as easy as jumping off a cliff,” Kin said.

Rickson laughed awkwardly. Lack of sleep showed on his face and he was tense. Clavender moved to his side and touched his hand. He blushed and stood as straight as he could manage.

Kin led the way across the open ground, kneeling frequently to search for tracks. He smelled the soil, pinched it between his fingers, but didn’t taste it as Bear would have. Many animals had come this way during the night, probably running from the Reaper. Kin chose a course that came near the water but not too near. The Reaper would hunt wherever game existed, but wouldn’t swim unless there was no choice. He found Droon’s trail and quickly lost it.