Shadow Lands (17 page)

Denessa danced through, her blade flashing so fast he lost track of her strikes. She stabbed a man through the throat while someone at her back dropped his sword in confusion and then stared down at it dumbly. She whirled, hacking deep into his neck.

Her mind-power was causing them confusion.

Sanders slashed as someone rushed at him, dodged a strike, and then lunged, getting the man in the chest. A sword came up behind him. He spun and struck, taking his attacker down before moving a few short steps and stabbing in the back a man who was running at Etherlan.

Another Shadow ran through, clashing with a Graygual who moved with precision. It must’ve been a fairly high-ranking officer. The Shadow was no slouch, though. The officer feinted, then struck. The Shadow blocked effortlessly, countering quickly. Someone ran at his back, but Sanders charged forward and took the Graygual out while the Shadow still battled the officer.

A man went down grabbing his head and screeching. Sanders hacked at him, cutting off the scream. He stabbed through an enemy back who had an arrow aimed for Tomous. The arrow flew, high and wide, lost to the darkness.

Sanders turned, directly into the enemy, only to see the arc of a blade slicing toward him. He had time to blink. That was it.

Wind washed his face, forcing out a sputter.

When he opened his eyes again, a dead man lay at his feet, and Denessa was working on another right beside him.

Sanders sprang into action, pushing away the fear of a close call. Fear got a man killed.

He ran at two Graygual advancing on Xavier. The youth used his blade like a veteran, turning one before blocking the other, and then advancing on the first. A veteran in skill, but apparently not in final execution. He was taking too long.

Sanders rushed in and stabbed one in the side. Xavier, freed up, downed the other. They turned as one to face three running their way.

“How many more?” Xavier panted, blocking a thrust, parrying, and then stabbing. He clipped the side of the enemy as Sanders blocked a sword strike and stabbed the Graygual in the eye.

“Don’t know…”

Sanders downed the third, only to see ten more running their way.

“Attack hard and fast, boy. We’re better,” Sanders encouraged. “Charge on my word—surprise the fuckers.”

Without warning, the Graygual staggered, clutching at their bodies. Screams rose. Feet became tangled. More than a couple crumpled to the ground among tortuous noises of anguish.

Howls filled the air behind them, making Sanders look back toward the way he’d come. More Graygual, at least a dozen of them, sank to the ground.

Three men jogged from the direction of the front gate. All Shadow, and obviously strong in power, the men approached the Shadow woman who had accompanied Sanders. Panting and covered in blood she spoke in a language Sanders didn’t understand.

Instead of standing around like a fool, he quickly worked around to his men. He sought out Marc first, knowing he’d be with the worst off and wasn’t surprised when he found it was Etherlan, the weakest of them all.

Etherlan looked up as Sanders approached. He winced as Marc fastened a bandage to his arm. “Moved too slow. That officer was damned fast. Almost had me. Had to have a woman save me. Now I know how you feel, having one come to your aid.”

Sanders huffed, seeing Ruisa on the ground holding a bloody cloth to her leg. “Get used to it—there are women with weapons all over the place now. It’s terrifying.”

“
We’re
terrifying?” Denessa said as she walked over, face grim. “You are the one with two heads and only one brain.”

“You gonna let her sass you, sir?” Etherlan asked with a weak smile.

“I figure if I nod and smile, she’ll go away,” Sanders growled, catching sight of Leilius standing up by the door with a knife shaking in his hand.

“My men are alive,” Denessa said quietly. “I come to inquire about yours…”

Sanders gritted his teeth, seeing Tomous leaning against a tree, trying to catch his breath. Daniels spoke with Burson, both okay. Tepson, the lucky bastard, would live to win another game at dice, and—

Sanders’ breath caught in his throat. Tobias lay on the ground, arms wide. His hand was open, his sword resting gently on his fingers. Blood covered half his body.

A Graygual lay next to him, huge and muscular. Easily as big as the Captain, if not bigger. His black uniform was covered in glistening liquid that would surely show red come dawn.

Sanders hurried over and knelt beside Tobias, a burning in his throat. Sanders was responsible for this. It was his decision that had caused this.

He clenched his jaw and fist, keeping emotion in check.

“Not gonna cry, are ya, sir?”

Sanders blinked a few times, leaning way over so he could look into Tobias’ face. The man blinked one eye open, then closed it again. “That big fucker fell on me. Slow as hell, but I didn’t get out of the way in time. Flattened me. Rolling that big bastard off added insult to injury.”

Sanders gently touched Tobias’ chest. “Anything broken?” he asked with a badly masked, shaking voice.

“Nah. Just tired. Damn tired. We’ve been doing nothing but battling against all odds. It really gets a man down when all that ends with a big fucker falling on you…”

Sanders huffed out a laugh. “Get up you lazy sack,” he said, straightening.

“I’d ask if a pretty woman could be brought to my room, but all the ones in this city come with a warning label. I think I’ll take my chances with my hand,” Tobias mumbled, not bothering to move.

“You’ll fall down and be asleep in minutes,” Sanders responded.

“That would be good, too.” Tobias rolled to his side and slowly got to his feet.

“All right, everyone—let’s head in before any more arrive.” Sanders made a circle in the air and headed up the small hill to the secret door.

“We were lucky they didn’t set up camp a little higher,” Denessa said as her men caught up to walk by her side.

“It was you who was predicted to die,” Burson said, catching up with Sanders.

Sanders groaned. “Saved by a woman again. This is getting to be a bad joke.”

Behind them, Tobias started laughing.

“Next time, Burson, just spell that out.” Sanders threw the older man a scowl. “I’ve been feeling guilty this whole time thinking it might’ve been someone else. That’s a rotten thing to do to a man.”

“Telling you might’ve changed the outcome of your narrow escape.”

Sanders rolled his eyes. There was always something.

“They are organizing,” Daniels said in his customary serious tone. “We need to strike now, before they are set.”

“We wait for Chosen,” one of the mental-workers said in a gruff voice. “Only win with Chosen. Big battle decide fate. Doctrines say.”

“Does anyone know if she is close to the end?” Rohnan asked quietly.

“Last we heard, they’d reached the trial of the land,” Denessa said. “If they make it through that they will be at the final trial, which is the battle. We’ve always thought we needed to stage the final battle, but… now the Thinkers aren’t so sure.”

“You won’t need to stage a battle—the Graygual will do that for you,” Daniels said in a solemn voice. “If the Captain doesn’t finish up soon, the battle will be over before he joins it. All that will be left to do for the Graygual is to grab the foreign woman and head for the mainland.”

S
hanti felt
her way along the path as night descended. The thick canopy above strangled the light, leaving her and Cayan in darkness. Vines still grabbed her feet, and more than once Cayan tripped, finally leaving his hand on her shoulder to stay close.

Another creature had joined the first on the hunt, stalking silently through the foliage. The only way she knew this was feeling that presence moving ever closer. Watching her. Ready to strike.

Thoughts of the boys flashed into her head. Their parents had said goodbye amid tears and proud smiles upon hearing that the Captain chose them, above all others, for such an important journey. They’d be battling for their lives as the Graygual gathered en masse on the island. She thought of people like Tomous, and Tauneya, who had had their lives ripped out from under them and looked for guidance to stand on their own again. She thought of the justice left unclaimed that would receive a huge setback if she and Cayan failed in these woods.

As if in perfect clarity, it finally hit her. After all this time, after all these years, and all her suffering, it finally made sense, She may not be the best one to lead people into battle, but she was the only one standing up and saying she’d do it at any cost. That alone meant it was her responsibility. Someone had to have the courage to step forward, to say that what was happening wasn’t right, and to fight back. Someone had to push back regardless of the opposition. If not her, then who?

She would let herself be a beacon for others to gather around. She’d be the example of what it was to lose everything, yet not give up.

She’d be the one to put a knife through Xandre’s eye.

“Let’s stop here and wait for them. There’s no use continuing in the dark.” Shanti stopped and dropped her pack. She glanced up, seeing the glow of moonlight in the very tops of the trees. Like the light, no rain made it through to the ground level. They wouldn’t need much of a shelter. “Let’s make a fire.”

“That’ll cut down our visibility past the flames.”

Shanti chuckled. “What visibility, Cayan? Our eyes are used to the darkness, and still we can’t see. At least a fire will cut down one of the sides they can come at us.”

Cayan’s pack thumped to the ground. “Predators would’ve attacked by now,” he said, feeling his way through the pack.

Shanti closed her eyes and felt the night, something she’d done so often when traveling the wilds, feeling for Graygual. Letting her natural sense pick up on various dangers. Humans had these capabilities, as much as animals, but they were far buried by reason. All it took was living in constant danger for those abilities to surface like a buoy in calm waters.

She felt them, out there. Close. Stationary in the trees, in two different areas, watching. Cayan was right. Normal predators hunting for food would’ve attacked by now.

“They are hidden from the
Gift,
they are absolutely silent. They can obviously see something, even in the dead of night…” Shanti crouched next to Cayan. “Maybe they’re waiting for us to stop moving. Letting the night trap us here.”

“We’ve been moving so slowly we might as well have been still.” A click of rock announced the flash of spark. The next spark was lower, illuminating the small fire-starting fuel supply they’d carried with them and kept dry. A third strike had a tiny flame growing to life, flickering in silence.

“You’re getting good at that,” Shanti said quietly, facing toward one of the two presences. Facing the attack that would eventually come.

“I can be taught.”

Shanti let a smile curl her lips as the glow from the fire crept along the ground beneath her. It slowly reached out, burning away vegetation around it. Cayan added what fuel they had left and sat back on his haunches. “We need more wood. This won’t last long.”

“As I recall, by your standards, getting wood is the man’s job. As is hunting. Off you go.”

Cayan looked around them. He stood and took out his sword. In another moment, he stalked off to the right.

“Wait,” Shanti said, jumping up and following him. “Don’t be absurd! I was just—”

Cayan cut her off by picking up some dead wood at the bottom of a nearby tree. He turned around and held it up, the night mostly masking his smirk. “Done. Go gather, woman.”

Shanti sighed, dropping her sword. Cayan laughed and bent to hack off some of the hollow, thin trees that grew in this wood.

A flash of movement in her peripheral vision caught Shanti’s eye. A warning blared through her body as something lunged. A black body shot toward her. Great white teeth flashed in the firelight.

Shanti threw herself to the side. A claw scraped her shoulder, ripping through her coat to the skin underneath. She stabbed as the animal landed quietly and gracefully on padded feet beside her, ready to lunge again. Her blade sank into the flesh behind its shoulder. The animal screamed, a sound chillingly like a baby’s cry.

Before Shanti could stab it for a final kill, another flash of movement had her pulling back. Another body came at her, huge and robust, claws out wide in the leap. Cayan stepped in front of her, thrusting his sword forward. It pierced the animal’s middle. Cayan’s larger body barreled into it, knocking it out of the air. The black, furred animal tumbled into the dirt.

The one under Shanti tried to stand, but she didn’t hesitate in sticking it again in the side. And again, until it lay down and died with that terrible scream.

In thirty seconds, it was all over.

Shanti stared down at the large black cat. Crimson caught in the firelight, coating its side, and started to pool under the body. Standing, it would have reached her middle. Muscular but sleek, this was a predator of the darkness.

“That’s why we didn’t see them,” she said, placing a hand to her wildly beating heart. “Why does killing animals like this seem so much worse than killing Graygual?”

“This one is a female,” Cayan said, out of breath. He knelt by the animal he’d killed. “She’s had cubs… recently. There’s milk.”

He looked up. Firelight illuminated his eyes making the remorse plain in his features. A profound sorrow welled up out of nowhere, taking over his emotions, blasting out through his
Gift,
and overflowing into her.

A lump formed in her throat, reacting to his feelings. In a thick voice he said, “We had to kill her, but we can’t kill her babies. That’s just not right.”

Shanti sighed as she looked down on the great beast. “What are we going to do, Cayan? It’s pitch dark and these animals won’t leave much in the way of tracks in wood this thick with live vegetation.”

“It’ll be light tomorrow. We have to at least try. We can’t leave them to starve.”

“Can we leave your men to be killed by the Graygual?” she countered. It was nature, after all, and nature was brutal. If some other animal, higher up on the food chain than these great cats, had fought back and won, they wouldn’t go looking for the cubs. “And what are we going to do when we find the cubs? I’m not lactating.”

Cayan stared at her for a moment, pain bleeding through his expression. That heart-wrenching pain was so strong it consumed them both through the merge. He nodded, turning away. “You’re right.”

Like a child that had been whipped, he hunched as he gathered more wood and built up the fire.

Why do I suddenly feel like a monster?

Shanti threw up her hands. This was not logical. It was nature, for goodness sake; this stuff happened. But his reaction was beyond anything she could have expected. An old pain haunted him to the point of distraction, and the trigger had been those cubs left defenseless.

Her heart squeezed, responding in a very illogical way. “Fine. We’ll take a quick look.
Quick.
If it eats too much time, they’ll just have to figure it out on their own.”

“I’m not making any sense, I know,” Cayan said in a soft voice, placing a piece of wood on the fire. “I was twelve or so when my mother died. I’d just returned from hunting and had gotten my first big kill. A wild boar—a sow. I’d almost been gored trying to kill it. They’re vicious animals. So when I got home, I showed my dad what I had. The first thing he noticed was that it was female, and the second thing was that it was still nursing. Instead of the praise I was expecting, he chastised me. Said I was disrupting the food chain and killing off our food supply.

“My dad was always hard on me. I was the only son, I’d have to lead one day—nothing I did was ever good enough. So I figured this was another of those times. I tried to ignore him.”

Cayan absently stoked the fire, his eyes distant. “My mother had been sick, she took a turn for the worse that night. Her fever came back strong, and her strength… evaporated. I sat with her all night, holding her hand. I remember her last words to me. ‘Be good, Cayan. You have so many gifts. You must help those weaker than you. Stay true to your heart and watch out for those you love.’ She gave me a small smile before coughs racked her body. I felt her grip getting weaker. I heard
the fluid in her lungs—the awful wheezing.”

Cayan shook his head. “She was always my biggest supporter. Always rooting for me. She was a sweet-natured woman, pliant and quick to smile, but when my dad took it too far she stepped in and showed her core of iron. When she was sticking up for a loved one, or something she cared about, the earth couldn’t move her. She’d step in front of an army and lift her chin, defiant to the last.”

Cayan broke off and swallowed, blinking quickly. He was trying not to cry. Men from his land could succumb to rage and fury, using their fists and killing at will, but they weren’t supposed to allow the “softer” emotions. Only women cried they said, and by this reasoning, that made women weak. Lesser. All for a natural emotion they held inside, bottled up, and that eventually fueled their destructive nature, needing release in some way.

Asinine behavior. Why express one emotion and not another? Why push back on one’s humanity? Shanti didn’t understand that part of their culture, but now wasn’t the time to question. Instead, she moved close to him and ran her hand up the center of his back, giving support.

“She died that night. Just smiled one last time, closed her eyes, and…” He shook his head again, willing strength. “Her death hit me really hard. Really, really hard. She was my favorite person in the world. And her last words stuck. I knew she’d be disappointed in me for killing a mother. Not angry, like my father, but disappointed. I’d left defenseless young animals to suffer. It wasn’t right. By the time I got there to right that wrong, they were gone. Some other predator had gotten to them. What was left was blood and gore. She’d just died, and already I felt like I had failed her.”

He blew out a breath, still willing control. Trying to force back the memories and emotion. He’d just lock them up, trapping them inside him. He needed to find release in order to heal.

So she initiated another outlet men reached for in times of vulnerability they didn’t want to face. She crawled into his lap and kissed him softly. He responded by crushing her to him, deepening the kiss until emotion overcame him. He tore at her clothes, letting passion overcome his sorrow. Letting love fill in the pain. She accepted him into her body, holding him tightly. Kissing the stray tear that escaped and meeting his ardent passion with her own.

In the aftermath Cayan held her firmly against him, near the fire. She rested her head on his shoulder and let him trail his fingertips up her back slowly, comforting her as a way to comfort himself.

“I’ve never told anyone that,” Cayan said softly, stroking her hair now. “It’s not really something you talk about. It’s just...”

“I get it,” Shanti said softly. “We’ll look. I have no idea what we’ll do if we find them, but we’ll look.”

“Thanks. I owe you an absurd request.”

“I’m repaying you, I think,” she scoffed. The man had pulled her from Death’s grip more times than was healthy. The least she could do was let him look for some wild animals to cure an old, aching wound.
Nothing I do is ever normal it seems.

After a moment of listening to the crackling fire, she ventured, “Would it be obtuse of me to cut up some meat now? We really shouldn’t let the kills go to waste…”

“No. Let’s eat what we can now. We’ll need the protein.”

“Let’s hope there’s nothing that hunts these things close by. Or scavengers. It’s not exactly safe in the wild with food laying around.”

“They are over there, we are over here. We’ll take what we need, and hope any scavengers are happy with the easy meal and leave us alone.”

Shanti pulled on her pants. “Should be a restful night, then…”

D
awn came slowly
. They’d taken turns keeping watch, and had the rare opportunity to see a wolf wandering into their camp to get at the leftover carcasses. It growled at her. She’d jumped up and yelled at it before adding wood to the fire. Cayan had bounded up a moment later, sword in hand.

The wolf, eyeing them with bared fangs, had stood its ground. It had friends hovering close by. Shanti and Cayan didn’t. So they sat next to their fire, built high and burning brightly, and watched as dangerous animals ate just a few paces away.