Olivia (125 page)

Tina snorted.  “Tobi does a pretty good job all by herself, for which I could cheerfully throttle her.  And Doru shares all his kills with her. Gullnar is supposed to do the same for me, at least until I’ve given him a baby, but to be blunt, I don’t think he’d do it even if he were here.  He may not actually hate me, but he’s damned close.”

Olivia murmured some sympathetic words which Tina accepted with a shrug and a nod.  For a while, she was quiet.  Then, with that same lopsided little smile, Tina said, “You know, when I was taking care of Vorgullum at Hollow Mountain, he tried to patch things up.”

“Gullnar?”

“His version of patching things up, anyway.  I wasn’t exactly as receptive as I could have been, partly because I was looking at a shot gulla and partly, I admit it, because he’s an ass and I don’t like him.  Then, one night, honest to God, he sneaks up into Vorgullum’s lair—with the man himself lying right there in a fever-sweat—and tried to score.”

Yawa nodded absently.  “This is Gullnar.”

“He is such a dick.  I had an opportunity to go my entire life without kicking a man in the balls and he ruined it for me.  So no, I don’t think he’s going to go out of his way to see that I’m fed.  Fortunately, I’m the chief healer, so Tobi and I are doing just fine.”

“What happens if someone challenges one of you?” Olivia asked, and blushed when Tina focused on her.  “I mean, is it legal to fight a woman for another woman?”

“I don’t know,” Tina admitted.  “Tobi and I have discussed it, but we haven’t agreed on a plan.  Your brilliant performance aside, there’s no way in hell that either of
us
could take on a horny gulla, and I know it, even if Tobi doesn’t.  I guess we’ll just have to deal with it when it happens, if it ever does.”

“It’s all so stupid,” Olivia said, and shook her head. “This is what happens when you put men in charge.  Women would settle things a lot more democratically.”

“Maybe.”  Tina did not sound convinced.  “But trust me on this, Olivia.  When democracy breaks down, a woman is a lot more likely to do some serious physical damage than any man.  I mean, sure, a guy will be the quickest to mess you up, but speaking both as a doctor and a lesbian, when a woman does fight, she’s a lot more likely to go for the kill.  Especially when the motive is sex.”

Olivia thought at once of Bahgree.

And, with a shiver, of Urga.

6

One week later, Olivia arrived in the common cave in time to see Doru heave a younger male into the wall and roar in his face.  The younger male was bleeding from several claw marks in his chest and arms, but still he bared his teeth in defiance.

“Jesus wept,” Olivia said in disgust.

The nearest human ears belonged to Liz, who glanced her way as she nursed Levonal.  “It’s not what you think,” she said.

“It’s not?”  Olivia halted and stared at the beating taking place in the center of the room.  “What else could it possibly be?”

“You almost sound disappointed.”

“Not disappointed, just….”  She didn’t really want to explore her feelings.  “What’s going on?”

“Nummak there was supposed to be guarding the door and somehow he stepped away from his post long enough for Tobi to sneak out again.”

Olivia blew her hair out of her face and looked around in vain for Tobi.  “Well, I hope he goes after her next,” she said waspishly. 

“He’ll have to wait a few months,” Liz replied.  “Tobi slipped off the aerie and took one hell of a tumble down the mountainside.”

Olivia felt her blood freeze over.  She turned and stared wide-eyed at Liz’s level eyes.  “Is she all right?  Did she lose the baby?”

“No, and no.  She broke both arms and cut holy hell out of her back, but she is otherwise just fine and will recover completely in a few months.  Tina will almost certainly do the beating that Doru doesn’t dare do, and in the meantime, Nummak made the supremely stupid mistake of lipping off when he should have quietly hunkered down and apologized for letting Tobi get by him.”

Olivia watched Nummak take a blow to the head and finally drop to the ground.  Nummak rolled onto his hip, snarled half-heartedly, and lowered his brow to rest on the stone.  “Stupid human,” he muttered.

Doru, his fists like rock, his huge chest heaving, threw back his horns on hearing this and swung his entire upper body into a pile-driving punch to his fallen opponent’s ribs.  At the last, the very last, possible instant, he aborted the path of his attack and smashed his fist explosively into the stone beside Nummak, who flinched hard, one hand coming convulsively to his side, as though he couldn’t quite believe he hadn’t been struck.

“Get out,” Doru growled.

Nummak eased back onto his hands and knees and peered up at Doru.

“I gave you an order.  I commanded you to protect a bringer of
damned
precious life, and you failed in that, which I could forgive in time.”  Doru turned his eyes, snapping with rage, to pin Nummak in place.  “But you sit there and curse the life that the Great Spirit in his mercy has spared, you curse the mother that bears
my
child as she lies fighting to keep the spark in her womb.”

One of Nummak’s ears twitched and he slid back some short inches and watched Doru warily.

“Get out of my mountain,” Doru snarled.  “If I see your face before ten nights have passed, I will rip it off your head.”

The other gulla didn’t argue.  He got to his feet and ran.

Gullan were silently slipping out of the commons, fading into shadows and taking their humans with them as they went.  Doru continued to stand, his head turned and eyes burning on the spot Nummak had just vacated.  His hands clenched and flexed rhythmically; his claws nicked small drops of blood from his palms to spatter over the stone.  He made no sound at all.

Olivia took a step towards him and three hands reached out at once to restrain her.  She thought a moment, but then gently and firmly moved away from them and went to Doru’s side.

“She’s all right,” she said softly.

“She is not,” he answered, his words a hum of rage pushing through his clenched teeth.  “She will be one day, but for now, she is
not
all right.  My child is not all right.  And that—” He turned and spat on the stone where Nummak had crouched.  “That
animal
would show me his teeth and curse her!”

Olivia put her hand hesitantly on his arm; it was hard as rock, unyielding to her. 

He said, “It could have happened in the shaft, for the spirits’ sake!  I suppose I should be thankful she fell from the aerie, where at least she had a slope of stone to break her fall, but
what
in Urga’s name possessed her to leave the mountain in the first place?  She swore me an oath that she would stay until the child was born!”

They did not speak for a long time.

“He’s not whole,” Doru said finally, grudgingly.  “Nummak.  He doesn’t look it, but he’s one of the Wasted.  He doesn’t think right.  He has foaming fits sometimes.  Damn it, I should have set someone else to guard, but he was the first person I saw and I was biting at the chance to get out.  I’ve spent too many days training Yawa.  We needed a real hunt!”

Olivia said nothing.

Doru growled and shook his head, the gesture only a thin thread from an open display of horns and aggression.  “We found summer elk, a fine fat herd.  I was coming back with the first load when I saw her…broken there at the bottom of the upper aerie, where the goat trail winds around to the pen.  I knew instantly, instantly, who it was.  I don’t even remember dropping the meat.  I was terrified to move her.  I started baying and Bodual came and threw off his meat and we wrapped her in a deer litter.”

The big gulla shuddered, a hard slow roll of horror.  “My father,” he said slowly.  “He got tagged by a rogue elk in season, shredded his left wing, and tried to fly back to the mountain on it.  I was close enough to see him when he dropped. We tried to put him on a litter.  I still remember the sounds his back made when we moved him.  He was dead before we were in the air again.  I had to put my hands on Tobi.  I had to put my hands on her and move her.”

His right hand curled into a fist with the sound of brittle snapping.  He was beginning to growl again, and his hackles were slowly spiking out across his back and shoulders.  “And that ass I sent to guard the entry was in the commons, drinking thumperjuice.  When I sent Bodual and Yawa to carry my Tobi to the healer and went to him, he showed his teeth to me!”

“Is he going to survive being banished for ten nights?  Is he smart enough to go to ground during the day?”

Doru did not look at her, but he straightened, tossing his horns and shrugging back his fanned wings.  His hackles were still spiked high and his body was still rigid with tension, but his voice was even as he shouted for Mudmar and ordered the hunter to find Nummak and stay with him until dawn before bringing him back into the mountain.  He glanced at Olivia, still scowling, and then turned away from her.

She pursued him quietly, took his hand and turned it to examine his knuckles.  “Are you hurt?” she asked.

“Damned idiot,” he spat, and tossed a dark look at her.  “Not you,” he added in a muttering undertone.

“No, that one had Tobi all over it,” she agreed.  “Did you break your hand?”

“No.”  He took it back from her, rubbed restlessly at his arm.  “But I gave an old wound a fresh reminder.  That’s good.  Give me something to think about while I wait to hear whether or not my child will leave this world before it ever draws a breath.”

She slipped her hand around his and gave a gentle tug.

He glared at her again.  “What?”

“Let’s go see her,” she said.

He didn’t immediately move, but when he did, it was with swift authority towards the women’s tunnels.  Olivia kept her hand in his and jogged beside him through the dark passages, neither of them speaking.  They came to the hide flap that separated the sexes within the mountain, and there Doru stopped and glared at it as if it were an enemy he wished to strike out and kill.  When it became clear that he wasn’t going to go any further, Olivia moved past him and held the flap open.

He did not move.

“Come on,” she said.

“I shouldn’t.”

“I’ll never tell.  Come on.”

He ducked below the leather door and eased into the tunnel beyond.  She led him past the women’s commons, and he hesitated as he heard female voices hiss to a stop and strike up again in scandalized whispers.  “No,” he said, digging in his talons.  “I shouldn’t be here.”

“You came when Chey—”

He interrupted her before the full name could be spoken, making that hooking gesture to catch the sound before it left her mouth.  “I came to kill her,” he stated flatly.  “Which females are forbidden to do.  I shouldn’t be here now.”  He turned around.

Olivia caught his arm.  “Don’t make me drag you,” she warned.  “I
can
do it, let me assure you,” she added as he glanced back at her cautiously.

Thoughts of Huuk clearly crossed his mind as he considered her.  Slowly, unwillingly, he permitted her to turn him and lead him on through the tunnels.  He didn’t speak, although she could feel the tension in him growing at each gasp and whisper that came as the females saw him.  And then they heard it, bouncing wildly from the misleading curves of the tunnel walls: a blend of gullanese and English in Tina’s high, furious voice.

“—in the bottom of the fucking mountain, and I’ll put you there myself if I ever,
if I ever,
hear or see or so much as
suspect
that you’ve done such a goddamn stupid thing again!  What do you think went through my mind when I saw them carry you in here?  Huh?  Answer me!”

“I don’t—”

“
Shut up
!  I have to be den mother to a dozen humans and a hundred gullan and I have
three preemies
that need round-the-clock care and the
last
person I should have to baby-sit is you, you insensitive little bitch!  Don’t you even care about what I feel?  Huh?  Is that how much ‘I do’ means to you that you can just go galloping out of the mountain just to throw your spear around?  I
begged
you to stay home, Doru
ordered
you to stay home, you
promised us both
you—Are you
crying
?”

“No!” Tobi’s voice sobbed.

“I’m going to get some aspirin.”  Stomping footsteps.

“I don’t need any aspirin.”

“
Well you sure as hell aren’t crying because you feel sorry
!” Tina roared.  “Because if you felt
sorry
, you’d
stop
, now
wouldn’t
you?”

Doru was dragging his feet again, but Olivia kept a firm grip on his hand and pulled him into the brightly lit cave they all called the clinic.  Tobi was propped up in a sleeping pit, both arms splinted and wrapped, crying quietly into her chest as Tina messily and noisily threw some of Murgull’s white willow bark and boneset tea into a pot of hot water.

“I’m really sorry and I swear—”

“Save it!” snarled Tina.  “Save it until you mean it!”

Tina spun around, sloshing tea over her arm, and saw Doru.  Her eyes first widened, then narrowed.  “Well, now look who’s here,” she said sourly.  “Perhaps, Tobi, you would like to explain to the father of your child why you saw fit to go sneaking off like you did?  Go on!  Say something!”

“I don’t—”

“Shut up!” Tina roared again, slapping the tea down on the side of the pit.  “Perhaps it has escaped your attention, but you are not sixteen and this is not the night of the Junior Prom and I am not your mother,
I’m your wife
!”

“Tobi,” Doru said quietly.

Tobi had withstood Tina’s final assault very well, but at the low sound of Doru’s calm voice, her burgeoning grip on self-control crumpled and she began to wail.

“I thought I would lose you,” Doru said.

Tobi twisted towards the bedding and sobbed.

“For our child, I still fear I might.”

Tobi shook with tears, hiding from him behind her hands.  Tina knelt at her head, her expression in grim harmony with Doru’s low, even words, and brought the tea to Tobi’s lips.  Tobi managed a few choking swallows, and then continued to cry, more quietly.