Chapter Ten
The morning after their union, everything was strangely quiet. Mechan woke up before Ishara and rose to sit. Palms placed on his knees, the chieftain strained to listen and heard nothing. Not the normal, chirping morning birds, nor the women and children going down to the river to wash. The world around them slept.
Ishara stirred beside him, her soft skin brushing against his thigh. He smiled down at his new wife, who rested peacefully, as if caught in the same suspended silence from outside. Mechan reached down, tracing the line of her jaw, then her bottom lip, where tiny marks from a too-hard nibble darkened the soft, pink skin.
An angry raptor screeched somewhere overhead. The echo of its cry resounded across the sky. The tension in the air thickened. The forest and its animals knew just as well as Mechan that something was not right. Danger lurked somewhere outside of the camp.
Without trying to wake Ishara, Mechan rose out of the furs and grabbed his machete. Folding his legs so that they crossed, he sat in front of the tent flaps, blade across his lap. He waited in silence. Listened. The other men of the tribe were probably doing the same. They knew well that if the Spirits have fled, then there is something from which they are running, and it made no sense to go dashing out into the unknown to find it.
His lids closed, shutting himself into darkness. Mechan tried to envision where the threat lingered. He could sense movement in the forest, somewhere to the west, but he could not see what it was. Maybe it was the wild cat, the protector of Ishara—the protector of them both, sent by his previous wife. Maybe the lioness made the trees hold still, leaves frozen, paralyzed.
No, this was something greater. Greater than them all.
“Ishara. Wake up.”
She moaned in protest, and a foot pressed against his back with a nudge. A foot was not going to move him.
“Ishara. You must wake up. Get dressed.”
“Why can’t you leave me to sleep after what you did to me last night?” Ishara rolled over on her back, exposing her beautiful tits, nipples erect, enticing him. “Or are you waking me to fuck me again?”
Mechan smirked; he could not help it. Holding on to her ankle, he tugged her sliding her down toward him, then leaned over and kissed the inside of her thigh. “As much as I would like to, you must dress. And prepare your weapons.”
Ishara pushed herself up, brows slanting downward in concern. “Weapons? Why? Is something wrong?”
“Listen.”
Ishara lapsed into silence. After a long moment, she shook her head. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Not the birds?”
“No.”
Mechan nodded. “And the morning chores?”
“No.”
The chieftain let go of her ankle and turned back around to sit stoically. He assumed that she has discerned his apprehension. Before long, the woman was up and slipping on a borrowed dress, the same dress that drove him to cast her out forever. Now, he adored her in it. Why they ever fought about such a stupid thing was beyond him.
“Well, I hope that whenever this passes, you will find it in yourself to take me again.” Ishara shimmied into the suede, and when the garment was on just right, she padded over to Mechan and sat beside him. “I can still feel you in me.”
“Can you? I find that to be quite peculiar considering I am not.” Mechan’s eyes shifted to his wife, who mischievously smiled up at him.
She turned and pushed his machete out of the way, climbing to sit in his lap. She pushed a hand down between his legs, and curled her fingers around his balls, which tightened as soon as his prick sprung to life.
The danger forgotten, Mechan remained still as Ishara planted herself on his erection, filling the depths of her womb with his hardened cock. She distracted him to no end, but Spirits, it was good to love again.
Virgin no more, but as tight as one, Ishara bounced up and down on his thick root, her head thrown back, neck exposed. She didn’t cry out or moan this time. Her tits rose and fell with her, the little rosy tips perk and hard. He cupped one of them in his hand, holding it as Ishara too-quickly began to come.
“Shh,” Mechan warned as she hissed. At the same time, he grunted deep in his gut, trying not to cry out either.
Her pussy spasmed, and he came immediately, shooting his hot life’s seed inside her. Even after he was spent, Ishara did not stop bouncing, riding out to the very last shudder. She smiled sheepishly when she finally did stop, and then quietly whispered in his ear, “I wanted to make sure I had it all.”
Mechan laughed after kissing his wife hungrily. “Trust me, little one, you will have much more of it. Much more.”
Ishara pushed back off the chieftain’s lap and sat next to him once again. She grabbed a bow that was propped up against the tent’s canvas and placed it across her lap, mimicking Mechan.
The smell of sex lingered in the air. Sex and something else; the same something that made it quiet. Mechan’s chest rose and fell as he inhaled deeply, closing his eyes once more. “What is it?” Ishara inquired as she restrung her bow. Mechan could hear the snapping of the thin sinews used as the tight string. Stringing a bow proved to be difficult, but Ishara must have mastered this in her childhood since the snapping stopped soon after and the vibrations of a plucked bow string hummed through the tent.
“Something is not right.” Mechan opened his eyes again, more confused than he was last time.
From somewhere outside of the tent, a woman shrieked. Her pain seared up Mechan’s spine and through his bones. His heart stopped.
Another scream. This time, it was not a woman. Worse, it was a child. It screamed briefly, and then suddenly, the screaming stopped.
“Move!” He barked the order, and then followed it with a louder, “To arms! To arms!”
The camp peeled away into a coordinated effort of weapons and protection. Mechan stepped out to evaluate the situation, Ishara right behind him. Women flooded out of their tents, filing into a bigger area where they could protect the children. Slaves, if not left behind in their pens, went willingly with their mistresses, since it was the only protection they had.
The men, on the other hand, set up a perimeter around the camp. They carried all kinds of weapons: machetes, bones, axes, and mallets. Mechan held an arm back, signaling for Ishara to stay by his—their—tent. With a pout, she obeyed, but never once lowered her bow.
Another scream. This time, it came from off in the distance. West. Maybe it was a woman. It seemed inhuman. Raw.
The men shifted in their places. “Calm. Calm. The Spirits will show us which way.”
They didn’t calm, though. One man raised his machete and savagely called out into the trees. Birds took to flight, flying high above the treetops. Mechan followed them with his eyes. They flew east. East. It is coming from the west.
But they were too late. When Mechan glanced at the men, he watched one of them fall on their back, a spear embedded through his chest. He didn’t even call out. Blood frothed from his mouth, and he was still.
“Attack!” Someone shouted the order.
It did not come from Mechan. There wasn’t anything to attack here. The spear soared from the brush, the thrower hidden deep within the trees. Any skilled spearman knew how to hit his mark from yards and yards away. The call came too soon, and the men rushed toward the jungle.
* * *
Drawing her bow, Ishara’s gaze darted around the camp, searching for her first target. The Manahotchi ran toward the tress at full speed, but she could not see any enemy or sure target that she could hit.
She scanned the trees and that is when she saw it—them. A man dropped down from branches, covered in the white sap from the ancient berry bushes that grew in one place and one place only—the Oolani lands. Ishara kept her arrow notched and ready, but her breath caught in her chest. One by one, men covered in white seemed to appear out of nowhere, each armed with deadly weapons, their eyes filled with intense hatred. Though she stood at a distance, she could feel their anger from where she stood.
“Father.”
The words were whispered too late. The Manahotchi were upon the Oolani, blades and spears ready. The forces clashed together, and war-driven screams rose into the once-silent air. Ishara didn’t know where to look, or what she should do. She searched the faces of the Oolani, trying to identify someone she was familiar with. She had to get them to stop.
Beside her, a Manahotchi man ran his blade through his enemy’s shoulder, and the terrifying shriek climbed up her spine and into her ears. She spun around, lowering her bow, then used her palms to push the Manahotchi warrior away from the Oolani. “Go! Stop them from fighting. These are my people!” Ishara dropped to the ground beside the grievously injured man and pressed her hands over the wound gushing warm, dark blood.
The man’s dark eyes, now glazing over, connected with Ishara’s. He smiled and she could see the blood in his mouth. It was too late for him. She would not be able to do anything to save his life. But the happiness that replaced the pain on his face touched her heart. He sputtered her name with one of his last breaths. “Ishara.”
“Yes. It is I. You have found me.” She wanted to say more, but the man expired during her last words to him. The sounds of battle behind her came rushing back, and Ishara rose to her feet, determined to stop the impending raid before more of her people—the Oolani and the Manahotchi—perished around her.
“Mechan?” Ishara searched the many fighting men for her husband. She grabbed the blade that the dead Oolani man was obviously not using any more and edged into the heart of the commotion, calling for the chieftain. “Mechan?”
No one seemed to hear anything but their own rage boiling between their ears. No matter how loudly Ishara called for him, no one answered back. At times, some Oolani noticed Ishara and dropped their weapons in shock. Did they expect her to be dead?
A man that Ishara did know, Yeten, spotted her and called out above the others. “The chieftain’s daughter! The chieftain’s daughter!” He ran toward, his face lit up like he’d found the rarest of treasures. “She is alive!”
Before Yeten could reach her, Mechan stepped in the way and swung his mighty machete in warning, ready to clear the Oolani’s head clear from his shoulders. Ishara gasped in horror and threw her arms up in front of Mechan to stop him. “Mechan, wait!”
His muscles bulged as he fought the downward arc of the machete, barely missing both she and Yeten, stopping just short of their flesh.
She shifted her horrified gaze to her husband, her mouth slightly agape. “These are my people.”
Mechan’s feral, instinctive anger slowly wavered from the harsh lines in his face. His dark brows slanted up. “What?”
“They are my people, Mechan. They are my people. They are Oolani.”
Color drained from his dark face, though it seemed nearly impossible for it to do so. Quickly, he turned around, his mouth opening to call off the fight. “Stop fighting. Stop. Fighting.” His deep, guttural voice resounded over the camp of blood and destruction. “Stop fi—”
His words stopped.
Ishara blinked, unsure of what she witnessed. But when Mechan’s body swayed, then dropped to the floor, all she could see standing where he once had was his son. Aloran. He held a bloody dagger in his hand, his body riddled with wounds of his own. And all she could hear was her own, panicked screaming. “Mechan! Mechan! Get up!”
“Didn’t I tell you that I would get what I wanted?” Aloran laughed, stepping on his father’s arm to pin it to the ground. The machete dropped out of the chieftain’s hand.
In Ishara’s moment of shock at seeing Mechan fall, a thick hand clasped around her upper arm, yanking her backwards. Her body bumped against another solid form and away from the victorious son standing over the defeated father. Without even looking, Ishara knew that it was her father who held her close to his side. She felt a mix of relief at being with him and a tinge of betrayal for not being beside her expiring husband.
“We go home now.” The Oolani chieftain’s rich voice sounded warm, loving. It always calmed Ishara.
“I cannot leave, Father.” Ishara barely kept from struggling against her father so he would let her go, but that would be disrespectful, and she would never disrespect him. Oolani warriors stopped fighting one-by-one when they realized that what they’ve come for—Ishara—has been found. The Manahotchi also stopped fighting, but theirs was more from the shock of the moment, their chieftain slain by his own son, and their camp under siege.
“What do you mean we cannot leave?”
Ishara turned, taking her eyes from her husband and the gloating Aloran to look up at her father. He was around the same age as Mechan and had a similar muscular build. Like most Oolani, he wore his hair in long dreads with small objects, tokens, of his past woven through, a status symbol among their people. Blood smeared across his cheeks, and with his dark eyes, so much darker and serious than her own, he glared expectantly down at her.
Ishara also noticed that the camp fell silent, save for the wet sucking noises of Mechan’s labored breathing. “Because, Father, I am his—”
“You are my slave, honorably reclaimed in war, along with the title of chieftain. To take her would not only be a disrespect, but it would mean that there will be unending wars between our tribes.” Aloran continued to stand on his father’s arm. “Hand her over.”
The Oolani chieftain’s only reply was a hearty laugh.
From above the trees, a flock of parrots fluttered upward, speckling the pale blue sky. Ishara used the distraction to pull away from her father. Before he could reach out to grab her, an arrow whistled through the air, barely grazing the side of Aloran’s head. Dahlia jumped down out of a tree, notching another arrow in the same motion.
He spun around, his weapon drawn high, ready to retaliate. Ishara grabbed Mechan’s machete and with a fierce battle cry, ran it through Aloran’s gut.
He still gazed the other way as the cold blade sliced through his warm flesh. When he turned his head back to find his assassin, Ishara met his gaze with a cold and steady one of her own.