Bone Witch (4 page)

“Who?”

He nodded in Bodicca's direction.

“More of her,” Alaysha guessed.

“If they catch us with her, we're good as
dead.”

“She'll tell them we saved her, won't she?”
Alaysha squatted in front of the woman and saw for the first time how old she
really was. Without the typical command of a warrior's stance, or arms, or the
haughty knowledge that she could best most men, the woman in her pain revealed
that she had to be at least the same age as Yuri. Maybe a full season or two
younger.

“You'll tell them, Bodicca.”

“They won't be happy you saved me,” was all
the fallen warrior said.

“But you're one of them.” Alaysha's
confusion deepened even as Theron began rustling about the woman, trying to
drag her off somewhere—deities only knew where he thought he would hide.
“Theron, what are you—”

Bodicca interrupted her. “I was one of them
yes. Many seasons ago. Who do you think did this to me?”

“But—”

“But they are fierce. You don't know,
little witch.” Bodicca, grimacing and biting her lip, did her best to help
Theron, even pushing herself to her hands and knees, and then, staggering to
her feet.

The pain must have been nearly insurmountable,
even Gael reached out to help her, only to step back when the Enyalian swatted
him weakly away. She reached out for the shaman's arm. “It's near Solstice,”
she said, and the shaman's sharp intake of breath made Alaysha squint at him
suspiciously. He covered over the mistake by coughing in a fit but Alaysha knew
something dreadful waited in the one word.

She squinted at him suspiciously. “What's
solstice?”

“No time, no time, no, none at all,” he
said and tried to drag at Bodicca's beast, who'd planted padded feet firmly in
the earth.

“Leave her,” Bodicca said and put her hand
out to Aedus. “Come, girl.”

Alaysha watched Aedus peer at the horizon,
the hulking forms, now looming larger, wider, separating into a dozen beasts.

“They'll be coming to the well,” Bodicca
ground out, her voice was pinched with pain. “Your witch will stay.” Bodicca
glanced at Alaysha. “You will not want the girl with you.” She glanced at
Edulph and grinned. “Him—well, you'll see.”

Alaysha might not understand what was going
on, but she understood urgency, and she understood capture. She began gathering
all the water skins she could and slapped Barruch's rump. “You won't have time
to get far.”

The woman's cracked lips spread in a
knowing smile. “Have no fear, witch. When they see you and that one,” she
nodded at Gael, “We'll suddenly have plenty of time.”

Alaysha reached for Aedus and held her arms
out. The girl rushed into them and squeezed so hard, Alaysha felt her breath
rush from her lungs.

“I'll find you,” Alaysha said and felt
Aedus' face burrow into her belly, then the girl squirmed to look at where
Edulph stood watching her with a keen expression. She blinked and rubbed at her
eyes and then peered back up at Alaysha.

"I want to go with you."

Theron stepped closer and peeled Aedus
away. “This shaman, we know where to find her, little one.”

Aedus went, but reluctantly. She peered
back over her shoulder as the three shuffled away, off to find some safety in
the distance of a cracked horizon. Alaysha watched them go, leading Barruch
away from her, knowing with each step, the Enyalia were drawing closer.

“What will they do, Gael?” she murmured,
“When they reach us here, at their well.”

He sighed resignedly, “I imagine they will
kill us.” He chuckled. “Or they will try.”

She looked at him, drinking in each feature
that the rising sun painted in red, then orange, then yellow. She thought then
of his touch on her skin, his breath against her throat. She thought if this
was the last moment she would live, then she would think without guilt of the
time they spent together. His worship of her body, the heat of his kiss, the
feeling of surrender she gave him. She would enjoy it, the entire memory of all
aspects of it from the fevered touches to the selfless way he comforted her. It
hadn't felt like betrayal of her bond with Yenic—how could it be when Yenic
himself had betrayed her. Even still, Gael had respected the bond and asked no
more of her than that one moment when he could be hers ultimately and forever.
She watched his face as he watched the horizon, tensing, getting ready, and
when he glanced at her, she thought she felt a streak of wet running down her
cheek, but that couldn't be true. She was exhausted of fluid.

She watched his throat convulse. She knew
he was remembering it too. She thought perhaps he'd speak, remind her of that
night, but he shook his head, then spread his arms wide, stretching, twisting
his torso. Then he strode to the strange Enyalian beast and pulled out swords
and knives and cut Edulph loose and pulled the leather from his mouth.

“You will need to fight for your life. Will
you?”

Edulph nodded, grinned, and Alaysha saw for
one heartbeat the savage brute who had captured and hurt his sister, then tried
to manipulate Alaysha into killing her entire city.

“Fight?” Edulph's voice was hoarse from
disuse, but the word was clear. “I'll kill every bitch I see.”

The Enyalia took their time; it seemed
there was no rush in light of a barren landscape. No need to find an opponent
before it disappeared. No reason to hurry a slaughter. Even still, as they drew
closer, Alaysha was taken aback by their size. She had but one thought when
they drew close enough that she could make out each muscle that tensed and
released in gargantuan thighs, hear the rattle of the bracelets around their
legs, hips, or ankles. Some of them, the largest, had rows of white marbles
wrapped around their thighs and when they leapt from their beasts, those
circlets sounded like teeth chattering against the cold.

Gael wasn't surreptitious about it when he
passed Alaysha her sword and then pressed her behind him.

She felt a moment of anger, thinking he
would coddle her so, but then Edulph took his place next to her and whispered
in her ear, and she had no time to think or feel anything, except to agree.

“This is the best way to die.”

W
hen they leapt from their beasts, it was almost as though
they did so as one unit. The moon had its near bloat, and the darkness of the
desert wasn't as full as the stars shivered out of their clouds and lent cool
white light to the area. Enough that the sight of the immense women struck a
sort of dread in Alaysha's chest. The rattling of their movement died and an
undercurrent of subtle threat echoed in the air in its place. The largest
woman, a redhead as strikingly beautiful as she looked dangerous, strode
forward with all the confidence of a panther about to settle in for a languid
meal she'd stashed in a tree.

Alaysha watched Gael's shoulders shift
subtly, gathering energy from the coils of muscle deep into his spine. She
expected an explosion of movement, a flurry of excitement from beside her as
Edulph lost the rest of his mind to battle madness.

Neither man moved. Both trained, Alaysha
thought. Both in their ways, to the warrior's way. Disciplined. Wait for the
right time. Wait. Wait.

Alaysha wasn't sure exactly what to expect;
she could hear her own breath, finding time with Gael's, with Edulph's finding
balance with hers. Everything hummed around her. She felt her heart beat.
Filled her legs with air, her fingertips with breath. She became one great lung
waiting to exhale.

The leader shouted a word, startling Gael,
Alaysha could see. He flinched, but he didn't move to strike, he was that
disciplined. Alaysha wanted to steal a look at Edulph, to make sure he wasn't
fool enough to engage before time.

The sound came again and Alaysha thought
she understood the word. She waited, not sure if she should slip out of line or
not. Then it came again.

“Woman.”

Gael didn't move so much as a lung to
inhale. Edulph stood stock still. Alaysha shuffled, taking a step sideways and
those mica colored eyes landed on her.

“Are these yours?” the woman demanded.

“Mine?”

The face hardened impatiently. “These.” 
The woman didn't even drop a look to Gael or Edulph; instead they stayed on
Alaysha's face so steadily Alaysha believed they were deliberately ignoring the
presence of the two men. That's when she realized they were.

“These are my friends,” she admitted.
“We're traveling together. Yes.”

The woman's gaze narrowed. “Traveling? No
one travels the burnt lands.” She sent a look to the women on either side of
her, and two women stepped forward.

Alaysha only had time to think it was
foolish for them to try to defend themselves against such calm command. And
then she was sprung like a mechanism too long held taut.

She felt her arm lifting her sword, heard
the clang of metal against metal. The jolt of meeting an unrelenting match
leapt down her elbow and into some soft tissue beneath her ribcage. She meant
to fight with all she had. She meant to meet each thrust with equal fervor,
until she fell.

Only she didn't.

She couldn't.

The battle still raged, she could hear the
metallic sounds, the grunts of effort. But she herself was impotent.

It took a few heartbeats to realize she was
being held.

Two of the mountainous women towered behind
her, holding her arms behind her back. One of them should have been enough to
seize her, but Alaysha supposed the battle madness had given her enough juice
to fight being pinned. And so two now held her tightly against one woman's
body, with arms bent back from the shoulders, and her legs trapped between four
legs. Alaysha could barely move enough to breathe.

Her shoulder burned deep in the tissues
beneath the cuff as the women pulled her arms behind her and pinned them there.
She could see Edulph being worn down, and she knew by the way he swung his
sword a little too slowly, that he was finding it heavy. Still, the women
circling him refused to engage him as anything but one-on-one when they could
have made short work of him as a group.

The ground kicked up in plumes of dust that
turned to grit sanding her eyes and coughing down into her lungs, making
breathing difficult. How badly Edulph must be feeling she didn't want to guess,
but he fought on anyway.

His opponent took her time, almost lazily
playing with him as she blocked his every thrust, lifting her sword at the last
moment, twisting it with barely any hip swing. Alaysha
realized he was still too dehydrated to stand for long. She wondered why he
didn't just give up. It was clear who the better
fighter was. Still, Edulph gave it his all and only when it was painfully clear
even to him that he would lose, did his opponent leap at him and send him
hurtling backwards to the earth, her sword point at his throat. His chest
heaved; hers barely moved. Edulph's hair plastered
against his head, sweating. Only then, seeing how
easily the woman could have taken Edulph did Alaysha breathe easily. The shame
she felt at being so quickly dispatched melted away.

"She was playing with him," she
heard herself say, and one of the women holding her made a sound of agreement.

Alaysha slumped in their hold. Fighting had
been a futile endeavour, obviously allowed by these women only as a means to
demonstrate their strength and superiority. She tried to twist in their grasp,
to see if Gael realized it too. To tell him to give it up, not to waste his
strength fighting for a life that they obviously didn't plan to take.

Her holders didn't seem to want to allow it
at first, but when the sounds of battle didn't stop, even when Edulph was being
forced to his knees and his hands bound behind him, Alaysha grew belligerent.

"Pull them off," she growled,
thinking it was smarter for Gael to conserve his strength, that to continue to
oppose the warriors might well mean his unintentional death—he was a stubborn
one, that man.

At first, she felt the women slacken their
hold, and then she heard a cry of anguish from beside her. She felt her arm
being let go and she spun so she could see around before the other could
capture it and pull it taut against its mate again.

Yet the clang of metal continued. Gael,
Alaysha thought. He must still be fighting. She needed to twist to see him, but
she couldn't. She couldn't move enough, and she prayed she'd not hear the
silence descend. That one would fight to the death, she knew.

The moments were few but could have been
seasons as Alaysha waited. The sounds of exertion grew more laboured, the
sounds of scuffle meant a barrage of warriors rather than two. Alaysha counted
quietly; two for Edulph, two for her. That meant at least eight against Gael.

She tried to struggle and heard a harsh
command in her ear.

“Be still.”

Alaysha tried to catch Edulph's eye as he
was forced to his knees. His face was bloody, his cheeks swollen. His beard was
cut neatly into two swaths by a long slash. He'd fought with all he had, she
thought and sighed heavily. If it weren't for Gael, and for the uncertainty of
how far the others had managed to flee, Alaysha would bleed these women of
their fluid and be done with it.

The hold on her arms began to twist, and
she realized she too was forced to her knees. She swore to herself if Gael was
harmed, she would bleed these women. She would, and pray Aedus had gotten far
enough away to use the rain that would come after.

As her knees struck the earth, she felt the
hold on her lessen, and then she was thrust onto her side, her shoulder ramming
the unyielding clay painfully. The point of a sword—her own—was pressed
behind her ear as she was left to see the carnage.

Dear deities, there were bodies and body
parts everywhere. The ground was soaked with blood.

There, in the midst of three standing,
fully engaged women fought Gael. She'd seen him in battle before, and it could
be described as beautiful, the way he moved, the way he struck out with such
economy of motion it was obvious he treated it with the sense of art he thought
it. He fought so now, stepping lightly, face down, arms moving—one with blade,
one with sword. Strikingly only when necessary, waiting with the patience of a
cobra for the right moment, except now, his combat was not a thing of beauty.

He was bloodied. Hair clotted with red,
arms slashed and bleeding. When he spun to meet the blade of an Enyalian who
got too close, Alaysha could see his eyes were swollen nearly shut—he'd been
struck by a fist or a sword hilt or elbow.

Someone had got close enough to do him
harm.

Alaysha could tell the women had realized
one was not enough to take this warrior down. Several women lay bleeding and
sprawled on the ground around him. It was to one of these fallen that one of
Alaysha's captors ran, stumbling in a way that told Alaysha the woman was dead,
and none of these Enyalia—least of all that weeping and furious woman touching
an unmoving face—would let him live for such folly.

Gael was fighting for his life and he knew
it. To call to him would be foolish. They were too large, too strong, too
disciplined.

Alaysha couldn't feel her lungs expand. She
fought to inhale, to feel her heart pump. Once, as he spun and swung, his metal
biting into the blade of another, she thought she caught his eye, and she knew
what he'd see if indeed he could see at all: her fear. Fear in her face, her
posture. Fear in the way she felt her face contorting in an effort to hold back
the stinging in her eyes, to sop up the tears that pooled beneath her nose and
leaked into her mouth.

And fear of the knowledge that the power
was coming despite her best attempt to wait until he was indeed dead and gone,
because if he lived through the battle, then she’d drain him as surely as she
drained the rest, and she’d never survive the guilt of it.

And then he dropped his blade, let his arms
fall to his sides as he halted, facing her, keeping her gaze with his own
purpled and bloody one. He surrendered for her, she knew that. He would've died
fighting but for the guilt she'd have to live with if he didn't. He chose
instead the blades of his opponents as his death, all three of them darting for
him at the same moment he gave in.

Alaysha braced herself for the strike,
telling herself she would unleash the coiled power the moment the blades went
in. She did her best to hold it back, knowing that if she let go too late, it
would be she who took Gael's life.

But it was too late.

The power was unready unfurling.