Olivia (54 page)

“No,” she said automatically.

“So be it.”  He straightened and tightened up his wings with a few angry snaps.  “You obviously think you’re saving her, and she would surely need saving if her part in your wounding were known.  But what are you saving her for?  So she can try again, and perhaps succeed?  Olivia, what would have happened if that beast had made good her escape?  Think.  Even assuming she had survived the climb and found helpful humans somewhere in the wild.  What would happen to us?”

“No one would believe her if she told them about you,” she said, but her reasoning had no strength, and why should it?  She’d argued against it too effectively when just that claim had been made by other women.

“They might.  Long enough, at any rate, to fly up here in their metal cars and look for us.”

And Olivia was confronted once more with the vision of gullan shot down by faceless army-guys of the sort that always showed up in the last frame of any movie to deal with the bad guys.  And for the human captives?  Rescue for some, she supposed, but what about her?  Her, with a bellyful of baby gulla. 

She moved around him very deliberately and continued down the tunnel to Cheyenne’s cave.  “I appreciate your concern,” she said.  “But I fell down.”

“Onto your own hand?”  He snorted.  “Was this before or after you stepped on your own spikes?”

“If I hadn’t been so stupid as to try and go down to the baths by myself in the first place, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.  Which,” she added, “is beginning to sound an awful lot like an accusation.”

“Are you trying to scare me, Olivia?”  He barked out a hard laugh.  “A man can’t
be
scared after he’s coupled with Chugg!”

She tried to keep a straight face and failed.

His voice lowered, even if it didn’t quite soften.  “I tell you all this for your own sake, and for the sake of the other humans.  You understand that if you died, most of what binds we gullan to our little mates would blow apart like smoke in a storm.”

Olivia rolled her eyes and tried to turn away.  He turned her right back.

“You think this is more of that worshipful Olivia-is-always-wise nonsense that Vorgullum is so fond of flinging about, but stop and think.  There are damn few humans willing even to play at friendship with their mates, and most are little more than…I don’t know the word.  Those animals you humans sometimes bring on hunts—you feed them and work them, and keep them chained to trees when you’re not using them.”

“Pets,” Olivia said numbly.

He repeated the word, testing it and finding it good.  “Most are pets.  Willing pets, if you can imagine that.  Only after Olivia came out of her cave did they start to wake up, to learn our words and show any interest in our ways.  Great Spirit, do you think Gormuck would have made any effort to bring his Liz out of that madness she had after Judith died if you hadn’t been trying as well?  And between us, I think it was your words more than his that did the trick.”

Probably.  Her threat to tell Vorgullum about Liz’s pills.  Olivia turned away and kept walking.  This time, he settled for following her.

“Do you think we would allow Thugg’s bitter little bitch-mate to walk around freely, much less open her poison mouth, if not for your continued efforts to reason with her?  And Mojo Woman.  Do you think she lives because we fear her?  Well, some do, perhaps, but
I
am not one of them, not by a spear’s throw.  With damn few exceptions, none of the females make any effort to be happy.  Karen
hates
Bodual, Sarabee sits and cries all day, Carla—”

“And Tobi?” she interrupted, sending him a swift and (against her will) troubled glance.  “Are you having problems with her?”

“With Tobi? 
My
Tobi?”  He sounded honestly surprised.  Then, without warning, he broke out laughing.  Real laughter, neither angry or strained, but the rolling, good-natured sort of laughter that so perfectly fit his massive frame.  “My Tobi?” he said again, and shrugged.  “A little, in the beginning, but surely no worse than could be expected.  No, we have no hot claws between us, but if things were different, I never would have tried to take her for my mate.”

They had nearly reached Kodjunn’s chambers, and Olivia was slowing down, not only out of deference to her throbbing feet, but to give the conversation a chance to play out.  “Why?  Is something wrong with her?”

“Nothing’s wrong with her.  She is my healthy, strong, clever, cheerful, fine, young Tobi.  She…”  He snapped his teeth absently, his brow furrowed as he sought words.  “I don’t know if you can understand this,” he said hesitantly.  “Tobi does not enjoy the act of coupling.”

Olivia briefly considered falling down and goggling at him in shock, decided that he wouldn’t get it, and refrained. 

“This isn’t the sort of thing a man tells a woman…but what the hell, I told you about Chugg.”  He stopped walking and looked at her, his eyes gleaming in the near-blackness.  “So I’ll tell you how it is with my Tobi.  First, you ought to know that I didn’t find her.  The female I brought out of the hive was that one you call Ellen.  And let me tell you, even as serious as the whole business was, if I
had
been the one to find Tobi, I would have left her sleeping in her den.  I ended up with Tobi because she knocked Mudmar in the head and ran off while we were getting ready to fly, and I went after her.  When I got back, Mudmar had flown off with Ellen like the sneaky little snake that he is—it’s always the quiet ones you have to watch—and I was left with Tobi.  Believe me, I was truly unhappy about it.  Tobi is such a scrawny thing…I didn’t want her to be afraid of me.  More than that, I didn’t want to break her.

“That first night, thoughts of mating were foremost in my mind and about the last thing my body wanted.  She lay in my pit like a sack of mud with her head still thick with Murgull’s
tharo
.  I sat there all day and watched her, keeping up my courage with thumperjuice, to the effect that by the time she woke up, I was busy being sick.  She tried to run, made it as far as the mainway, and fell down.  I carried her back to the pit, not exactly at my best, and passed out.  She thought I was dead and actually—”  He laughed again, softer this time, smiling.  “—ran for help.  I like to think that wasn’t just the
tharo
.  Once she got someone in to see to me, of course, she just ran.  Vorgullum had to post a guard outside my cave to keep her in while I recovered.  The third day, when both our heads were clear, I decided it was soon enough.  I went to undress her.  She fought me.”  His smile broadened with something like pride.  “Fought like a she-bear.  You would never think it to look at that skinny snake’s body.”  His smile faded, and then he shook the memory away.

“And once I had her pinned down, I couldn’t think of what to do with her.  If I eased back on her legs, she kicked.  If I released her arms, she punched.  If I bent too close, she bit.  My fierce Tobi.  So I had to sit on top of her for all the hours of daylight until she finally came too close to sleep to throw me off or beat at me and I settled for lying there beside her.

“The next day, I was determined.  I taught her the words for
stop
and for
yes
.  Then I went to undress her again.  Five days she told me stop.  On the eighth day, she came naked to my pit.  I came naked to the pit.  I touched my Tobi.  Then she told me stop.  Fine.  Fair.  And five more days of this.  And finally, finally!”  He tossed his horns and spread out both arms in a pose of triumph.  “I thought it was good.  For both of us, I mean.  And each time after when I called to her to lie down with me, she came willingly.  And lay there.”  Doru’s step slowed.  He looked straight ahead.  “Just lay there.”

Olivia could not reply.

“But she was good company, and clever, and I taught her our words as fast as she could learn them, because I knew her season was coming and I needed her to be ready.  On the day I explained to her of a female’s season and of coupling, she narrowed her eyes at me and says, ‘Seasons make baby?’  I admitted that was the way of things.  My Tobi…” 

Doru trailed off and Olivia looked up at him, piercing the darkness as best as she was able.  He was still smiling, but his eyes were full of pain.  “My Tobi said, ‘Season comes, Tobi fuck you.  Never again.’  And that was it.  All I tried to teach her of patience or pleasure or…or love…”  He walked along, his head bent, staring at his feet as they paced through the tunnel. 

“Tobi has had three seasons since we brought you to Hollow Mountain.  This last, when I scented it starting, I said, ‘You are in season.’  She hadn’t enjoyed hers before, but we had made a little friendship between us and I had heard there were…well,
things
you can do to give a human pleasure.  I thought…never mind.  She put down her book, she lay back, she pulled up her covering, and she said, ‘Fuck away.’”  Doru’s mouth twisted as he clumsily repeated the English words.  “And she did this—”  Doru reached out and drummed his claws rapidly on the wall.  Then he just stood, his head down, breathing hard.  “So I left.  I sent Gullnar’s Tina to stay with her until her season was done.  I would rather have a friend, a true friend, than a mate who does this—”  He drummed his claws again.  “—when I come to her to couple.”

He started walking.  So did Olivia, after a moment.

“Kurlun is happy,” Doru said.  “Wurlgunn is happy.  Lorchumn was happy, spirits pity the poor bastard.  Vorgullum is happy.  And that is all we have of happiness here.  That, and the spark in your belly.  You’ll forgive me if I choose not to risk it for the sake of that beast you’re protecting.”

He stopped outside the narrow chute leading up to Kodjunn’s lair and eyed her feet.  “I’m going to carry you,” he said, and put out his hands.

Olivia stepped into them gratefully, hissing with pleasure as he took her into the air and her weight left the ground.  An instant later, the dull ache that had settled like stones inside her wounds turned to fire-hot flares of agony and she almost wished she was walking again.  Then her back was scraped along the rough chimney wall as Doru attempted to squeeze them both up together and that more or less took her mind off her feet.

“Bear piss,” Doru grunted as he heaved them both out and spilled into the entry chamber.  “That about took half my hide clean off.”

“Who comes?”  Kodjunn appeared in the entry room, his wings fanned out impressively and the glint of a steel knife in his hand.  When he saw them, he relaxed slightly but continued to fill the doorway to his inner lair.  “What does Vorgullum ask of me?” he asked with an edge of suspicion.

“Nothing, that I know of,” Olivia said with surprise.

“He sends his mate and his chief hunter for nothing?”

“I was not sent,
sigruum
,” Doru countered mildly, testing the stretch of his left wing and wincing.  “I was walking a woman with crippled feet.”

Kodjunn’s eyes darted to Olivia’s bandages and she saw a shadow of pain flash across his face.  He sheathed his knife in his belt.  “Forgive me.  More than one gulla has come here this evening to offer me…advice.”

“Ha, I’m sure.”  After a moment, Doru realized both Kodjunn and Olivia were looking at him expectantly.  He managed not to show too much of his obvious annoyance as he turned around.  “I’ll wait just below,” he said.  “But you are warned, woman, I intend to carry you right back to your lair when you are finished with this pointless endeavor.”

“Thank you,” said Olivia, and Kodjunn showed him his open hand in respectful, if distracted, salute.

After Doru was gone, Olivia came forward and touched Kodjunn’s arm.  “How is she?”

“Hurt.  Murgull brought her something for her pain this morning, but she just spits it out at me when I try to give it to her.”  He started to say more, then gave her an embarrassed sort of glance and shook his head.  “She’ll recover.  How are you?”

“My feet hurt, but Murgull says there’s no infection.  The wounds were deep and feet always heal slowly, but they should heal well.”

“I meant the baby.”

“I’m a moon along at most,” she told him, rolling her eyes.  “I’m perfectly fine.”  His somber expression had not changed.  She let her smile fade away, glanced past him at the sleeping room and said, “Is something wrong?”

“I told her you were pregnant.  I told her that babies are the reason she and the others were brought here, and now that we know it is possible, I expect her to be my mate.  I told her she would be free to live in the women’s tunnels once she catches my spark, but until then, I will couple with her when she is in season.  I’ve been patient, but I won’t allow her to refuse me anymore.”

Olivia could feel her features darkening with foreboding.

“I know,” he said, as if she had spoken aloud.  “But I…don’t have a choice.  Vorgullum knows I haven’t been coupling with her.  He was willing to overlook it as long as it was not known whether our kinds could breed, but now it is, and if I’m not willing to give him a child, he’ll find someone who will.  Someone who won’t limit himself to her seasons.  I don’t want her…but I don’t want her hurt.”  Kodjunn covered his eyes briefly, then looked at her again.  “I suppose you want to see her.”

“I think I ought to.”

“If it were anyone but you…”  But Kodjunn gave that up with a sigh and beckoned her to follow him.

Cheyenne lay in the sleeping pit.  Her left leg had been wrapped with bandages and splinted with straight wooden stakes, but that was not the first thing Olivia saw. 

Cheyenne had indeed been chained to the wall.  Both hands and her good foot had been caught up in iron shackles, padded by sheepskin (had Sudjummar made those as well?  Climbing claws for some, shackles for others), with enough slack to allow her to move almost anywhere in the sleeping room, but not as far as the hearth, and not as far as the door.  All her needs had been provided for: a bucket of ashes waited beneath the nearest bench; she had two jugs of water and a basket of bread and apples within easy reach on one side; on the other, a short stack of magazines, untouched. 

Cheyenne looked at Olivia furiously and turned her face to the wall.