The men were all quiet, give or take a few murmurs, before another man stood up. “We’ve got more to worry about than battlers,” he called out. “How are we expected to make it through the winter? There’s not enough food, and we can’t hunt from here. There’s a reason these plains are described as
dead
.”
“And what about the prisoner?” someone else cried. “We want to hang him! What’s the delay?” Most of the gathered men cheered.
Galway turned away, sighing. He didn’t want to hear about any hangings.
Devon followed him. “You make a good point,” he remarked as they walked outside.
“What else can I do?” The trapper looked out through the falling white. “I should have left sooner. Unless this snow lets up, and I doubt it will, I’m stuck here. And it won’t be nearly so nice with a trio of angry battlers around. I’d rather they didn’t think we were a threat.”
“You sound so calm about them,” Devon remarked, clearly puzzled. “They scare the life out of me. I don’t know how you can stand them.”
Galway laughed. “Probably helps I’ve spent my life hunting dangerous animals. They’re plenty scary. Heyou’s a good kid.
He
doesn’t get all worked up that he’s a battler, so no reason I should.”
“Not everyone is going to agree with that,” Devon replied.
“Most of the women will. They know who’s going to be
protecting their kids.” Galway glanced back toward the council tent, where they could hear arguments still going on, about food and executions and even the battlers again. He’d said his piece. Any more would only serve to undermine his argument.
He had a sudden idea. “Maybe it’ll help for them to see the battlers helping with something the people here can’t do.” Clapping the other man on the shoulder, the trapper set off through the snow.
“Where are you going?” Devon asked.
“To ask a favor.”
Leon knelt on the cold floor of a room carved from solid stone, his only light provided by a single fat candle that dripped rivers of wax down its sides. His boots had been taken, along with his weapons, and his hands and ankles were tied behind him. A short rope led between the two, making it so he couldn’t stretch from his cramped position. His hands and feet were numb from lack of circulation, and he had a huge knot on his head from where Mace had hit him. His vision was a little fuzzy, and every time he moved he felt nauseous.
He didn’t move much, kneeling there in a haze of pain and exhaustion, his head bowed to his chest. Everything he’d ever had faith in had come crashing down, shattering in the instant when he first heard his battler speak. He’d killed that little girl for nothing, murdered her for no reason at all except the order of a king he hadn’t respected for years.
Ril had never been his. They’d worked together for fifteen years, lived together, watched Leon’s girls grow. All that time, Ril had seemed to hate him a little less than other battlers did their own masters, and Leon had convinced himself that the sylph had some level of affection for him, even that Ril returned a little bit of the love of his master. Now Leon knew just how badly he’d been fooling himself. He was a traitor, a murderer. He’d taken a creature who’d risked everything to come through that gate and betrayed him in a manner beyond comprehension, then turned him into a slave.
Leon’s neck and back ached as he knelt there, his knees on fire against the hard stone floor. His mouth was dry but tears leaked down his face and into his beard. All he could do was wait for someone to come and kill him while he remembered every day of the last fifteen years and every second of that girl’s death. He didn’t know why Mace hadn’t already killed him, but it was a cruelty.
The door, a thin slab of perfectly balanced stone, swung open with barely a breath of air. It let blinding light in from the hallway outside, and Leon blinked in pain, peering up. A man stood in the doorway, dressed in a rough tunic that was several sizes too large for him and hung to his bare knees. It was all he wore, and snow peppered his bare legs. He was tall and lean, his short blond hair hanging in front of his eyes.
He looks like one of Lizzy’s favorite storybook characters, Leon thought hazily. The eyes, however, were bright with hatred. They were familiar, even though they were gray now instead of gold.
“Ril?” he whispered. The battler’s face twisted with rage, and Leon’s head dropped again. “Oh, gods.”
Ril was suppressing his hatred, not projecting at all, but Leon was still master enough to feel it. He could sense the sylph’s loathing and rage, as well as the pain Ril still felt from his wound. And Leon now sensed all of the things that had normally been masked by Ril’s aura of hatred, a tempest of emotions he hadn’t realized the sylph harbored.
Tasting his turmoil, Leon bowed his head deeper. There was silence. After fifteen years of slavery, his battler apparently didn’t know what to say.
Leon spoke first. “I’m sorry.”
That broke through. “How dare you say that to me!” Ril shouted. His hate aura flared for a moment, then was just as quickly buried.
“What else am I going to say?”
“You killed her!” Ril screamed. Dropping to his knees before his master, he grabbed Leon by the throat and hauled him upright. “She was helpless, and you killed her!”
Leon found himself choking, and he gasped for air even as he wished the battler would just finish it. “I know. I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” That girl could have been Lizzie, or any of his daughters.
“You!” Ril squeezed harder, cutting off Leon’s air, but finally shoved him back, hard. “I can’t kill you! Those damn orders protect you from me!”
Leon lay on the floor, his arms and legs screaming with pain while he gasped for breath. He could only think of one thing that would allow him to live with himself. Or not.
“I release you!” he gasped. “From all of it! Do whatever you want to me!”
Ril stared, feeling the bonds relax. Leon was still his master. He could feed from the man’s energy, and he inhaled, drinking deeply. It felt familiar, comfortable, healing. But the rules were gone. Not just the commands never to speak or change his shape that Solie had broken, either. He could do anything now.
He could still feel Leon, though, just as Leon could now clearly feel him. Without the hate aura up, Ril felt the man’s remorse and regret, his absolute love for his wife and daughters, and even for Ril himself. The battler told himself that wasn’t enough, that his master had to die for every crime he’d ever committed, but he kept remembering Leon stroking him, Leon’s gentle touch, the times Leon let his daughters stay and play with him when everyone said he shouldn’t, how he’d come here and risked his life to rescue Ril from two battlers after seeing him knocked down. Leon always paid attention to him, which was the very thing Ril had crossed the gate to find: someone’s notice.
The battler’s face twisted horrifically. “Damn you!” he gasped. “Damn you forever!” Turning, he ran.
Leon lay where he’d been left, weeping quietly from emotions he couldn’t name.
Giddy with freedom, Heyou flew high over the plains, his senses tickling the broken land below as he raced against the winds. It was still snowing, but he darted easily through the flakes, headed steadily eastward. He didn’t know what lay in that direction, as they’d come from the south, but there had to be something.
Optimistic, he decided to keep going and swooped down, traveling fast enough that he could already see the end of the plains and the ground rising up into more mountains. He swooped through them and over the forests that covered the slopes, darting down valleys in between.
He didn’t really see what he was looking for, not in those snow-filled mountain forests. Galway hadn’t been terribly specific, other than that he avoid humans and human settlements. Solie had been in agreement when he left her with Mace. It felt strange to be away from her, but good to be trusted with this.
Heyou shot through a canyon and swooped upward in surprise as it opened into a settled valley with pastures of cattle and a full-sized town. No one was outside to see him, cottage-sized and comprised of winged black smoke, but he heard dogs barking. He flew up into the cloud line and kept going, careful not to reveal himself any more than he already had.
There were human habitations everywhere. A road snaked through the first valley and into the next, where more villages stood. Forced to stay high, Heyou followed it, wending his way past the mountains and valleys until they at last ended. Before him now lay a huge expanse of water, any land on the other side too far away to see. Here on the coast, a city with a castle was built along the shore and wharves reached out into the blue, packed thick with ships.
More vessels were out at sea, fishing in the icy water. Intrigued, Heyou swept out past the farthest of the ships and only then dropped in altitude.
The water smelled strange and moved constantly. Barely skimming the waves, Heyou sent out his senses, looking for life…and was amazed to find it all around him. Even the water seemed animate, though that wasn’t much use for his purposes. He slowed a little and sensed farther, finding schools of fish that darted here and there with a single mind. They didn’t help much either.
He finally discovered what he needed farther out, breaching the water in slow arcs. Most of them were more than he could handle, but he did see one or two that were large enough for what Galway intended without being too big to lift. At least, he hoped this was what Galway wanted. The trapper hadn’t said anything about great big bodies of water.
Heyou dove, focusing a blast of power strong enough to kill without obliterating. It slammed into his target, blowing the creature right out of the water while its pod mates dove in a panic, and he dug his claws into the carcass before it could fall, yanking it up with him into the air. The weight turned out to be nearly more than he could carry after all. Giving a shriek, Heyou almost ended up plummeting into the waves. Instead he forced himself upward, all of his energy focused on that one task.
Trembling, he started back the way he’d come, his prize dangling below, but this made him somewhat less successful at remaining unnoticed. Heyou saw humans standing in the streets of the city, staring up at him. He tried to gain more altitude, but he wasn’t strong enough. Desperate, he created more claws and dug them into the beast, as the ones he had created already were starting to tear through, and sent a plea home along the hive lines. A distant answer came as he struggled onward, slowly making his way back
up through the river valleys and mountains, and Ril met him several hours later, appearing as Heyou struggled against shifting air currents he hadn’t suffered on his way to the sea.
The older battler had been in a foul mood all day, and he swooped down out of the overhanging clouds as though he expected a fight. He gasped when he saw what Heyou was carrying. It was a third again as big as the youth.
What is that?
I don’t know. Galway asked me to get it.
Why?
To eat, I think.
Heyou shifted his grip and nearly dropped the thing.
Help?
Ril shuddered in revulsion, but he moved close, helping to take the weight. Together, they were able to lift the carcass up above the cloud line, where the wind currents weren’t so treacherous and no one would be able to see them. Relieved, Heyou headed for home, pleased to be sharing the weight.
Galway
told you to get it?
Ril asked at last, his cloud form flickering in confusion.
Why would you obey a human?
Heyou considered.
Solie said the men here aren’t battlers, and we shouldn’t act like they are. She said we have to stop seeing them as enemies.
Men are enemies,
Ril replied.
Galway isn’t,
Heyou argued.
He was kind to me. I would have died without his help.
He paused.
I think I like him. He’s a friend. If someone’s kind to you, it doesn’t matter if they’re male or female, does it? They’re friends.
It matters.
But
we’re
friends,
Heyou pointed out.
Ril lashed a tail of smoke.
We’re different. We’re from the same hive line.
So? You weren’t originally. We’re friends now, though. I want men like Galway to be friends, too.
I don’t need to be friends with any man!
Ril thundered, and he let go of his end to race away.
Heyou squealed and wrapped himself around his prize, trying not to drop it while descending with barely controlled rapidity. Having just cleared the mountains, he nearly landed on his belly on the plain, and he skimmed that snowy surface, heading slowly and miserably for home. He could see Ril, an angry dot on the horizon, the sylph’s hate broadcasting along the hive line if not into the ether, where Solie had banned it.
A distant query came from Mace, asking what was wrong. Heyou just snarled, not understanding it himself. Wrapping as much of his cloud form around the carcass as he could, which didn’t prevent blood from dripping onto the snowy ground beneath him, he laboriously continued his quest.
It took him nearly the rest of the day to get home, and he was exhausted by the time he arrived. Too worn out to rise up the cliff face, he flew around back and swept up the slope, startled humans staring at him and his cargo in shock. Children shouted, running after him, but at last Heyou saw Solie coming out of a kitchen tent with a paring knife and a half-peeled potato. She was wide-eyed with surprise and delight.
Mace was just behind her, his face impassive, but shocked men gaped at Heyou from every direction—and at what he carried. For once they weren’t afraid. Heyou could even feel a happy relief from them, and the realization of what Galway had intended: that the battlers could provide enough food for the Community to survive the winter.
Heyou floated right up to his queen and dropped his cargo, letting the fifteen-foot whale thud into the snow. Shifting back to human form, he stumbled over to her and fell into her arms, completely worn out. As her energy pulsed out over him, he pressed close, drinking.
“Is this enough meat?” he asked plaintively.
She giggled. “I certainly hope so.”
They ate well that night, feasting on thick whale steaks. What parts they couldn’t eat were already being smoked and the fat rendered down for candles and oil. Such preparation was disgusting, ugly work, but the Community was happy and confident for the first time in months.
Solie sat at a table with her battlers, and while none of the sylphs was eating, she enjoyed her own meal. There was already talk of them bringing in more food, including fruits and vegetables if possible. That was one task the other sylphs couldn’t be used for, as they wouldn’t kill anything, not even a plant. Though sylphs helped till the earth and tend the crops, harvesting had to be done by humans. The battlers, naturally, had no such compunctions.
“Do you mind helping get food?” she asked them as she ate. The whale meat was oily but good, and there was more than enough.
Heyou shrugged. “S’long’s it’s not so big. I think I pulled something.”
Ril looked away, but Mace nodded slowly. “As long as this place isn’t left unguarded, we don’t mind.”
Solie smiled at the trio. She still wasn’t used to this strange empathy, and she ignored it most of the time, just for the sake of her sanity, but her battle sylphs were hard to block out. Mace felt like a smooth lake, strong and soothing. Heyou was a sparkling fountain, exciting and happy. Ril…was a strangled swamp, or a dam about to break.
She looked over at him. The battler was staring out at the gathered families, his aura contained but his mood sour, dragging at her. Something was bothering him, and she wasn’t sure what to do about it. Ril was far older than she. Was it her place to invade his privacy? Though he was hers, she barely knew him at all.
Solie sighed, the oiliness of her meal defeating her appetite. She was tired. She had been fatigued since before she came here and the feeling was worse today. She knew the battlers took their energy from her, but it hadn’t really occurred to her that she might not have enough. Ril’s attitude dragged at her.