Chapter 5: An Attack
The Hukm climbed down from the coastal mountains, and for several days they made good time over the Mammoth Run Plateau.
The glistening Dragon Spines rose above the plain, seeming to march nearer with every step. Often during the nights, Darrissea would stop in the moonlight and look behind her. The Hukm’s great mammoth herd stretched behind for miles in the darkness, like black pearls on ivory satin. In the mountains she’d never really seen what a huge company she had joined.
The white snakes never attacked them. Phylomon surmised that the pounding feet of the mammoth herd kept them at bay. Or perhaps the mammoths and their Hukm masters merely confused the creatures. They had been created to target humans and Pwi, after all.
So the Meat People stayed hidden deep within the Hukm’s ranks.
During the nights, sometimes, a thousand Hukm at once would take out their giant wooden flutes and play as they traveled.
Their melodies seemed to Darrissea to be fluid, quirky—the sounds of windsong and rainsong and women pining for men on a lonely afternoon.
The Hukm did not play human music—no vibrant dance tunes, nothing one could sing to.
Darrissea at first imagined that each piece was improvised. Yet as she listened, she found that all the Hukm played together, high reedy flutes harmonizing with deep basses. But in her weeks of travel, she never heard the same song twice.
Sometimes when she looked at the Hukm in the early morning, she would see them standing or sitting beneath the trees, hairy giants tending their mammoth herds, and she’d hear the music in her head. And for a moment she could almost imagine what it was like to be a Hukm, a creature of the field, living in isolation, the peacefulness of bluebottle flies buzzing around your head and a few green leaves to chew.
Sometimes they’d come to a frozen river, and the Hukm would break the ice and dive, playing like otters, steam rising from their wide nostrils, and she could hear that in their music, too—joy, celebration.
But in the evenings she would watch the Hukm women practice with their great war staves, whirling the clubs and smashing one another faster than she’d have believed possible for such large beasts.
Even in practice they fought like berserkers, often drawing blood and knocking one another into the snow. Yet the Hukm played no war music, nothing with marches or the pounding of blood in it, and Fava sensed that this upcoming battle, these ages spent fighting the Blade Kin, were some alien thing thrust upon the Hukm, something they would never fully comprehend or embrace.
Darrissea had not learned the Hukm finger language, but she spoke with Fava about it one day, and Fava said, “You are right. Even after all these hundreds of years fighting the Blade Kin, the Hukm still do not have a word for war.”
Darrissea pondered that, and wished that the need for such a word would be done away.
During the days, Darrissea and Stavan often talked after sword practice or in the evenings. Though she was drawn to him, she felt guilty for it.
She’d watch Fava’s back during the night as she rode her mammoth and spoke finger language with the Hukm, and knew that Fava felt bereft. There was no one for her to talk to.
The Okanjara were marching somewhere south of the camp, so that there were no other Neanderthals among the Hukm.
Phylomon remained aloof, self-absorbed. The few odd humans in camp were a little tribe to themselves, which left only Darrissea and Stavan for Fava to speak with, and Stavan’s attempts at conversation with Fava were always half-hearted.
He spoke no Pwi, and Fava’s English was terrible, deeply nasal in accent with greatly shortened vowels.
After nearly a week, as Darrissea rode next to Fava one night, Fava said simply, “Thank you.”
“For what?” Darrissea asked.
“For being my friend. For staying close when I need to talk.”
Darrissea found that her throat felt tight. “You’re welcome.”
“I know that you would prefer to spend time with Stavan,” Fava said. “Your eyes shine when you are near him. I think you should spend more time with him.”
“You wouldn’t feel bad?”
“If I am feeling bad, I’ll know where to find you.” With those words, Fava gave permission for Darrissea to leave.
Darrissea immediately slowed her mammoth until it came even with Stavan’s, and she felt as if she had just made a promising change in her life.
That night, when the Hukm stopped to give the mammoths a brief rest, Stavan invited Darrissea to ride with him for the rest of the night, and he kept his arms around her, warming her back with his body, resting his thinly bearded chin on her shoulder.
He snuggled, as if they were longtime lovers even though they had spoken little.
“Tell me more about yourself,” Darrissea asked as they rode. “I don’t even know your last name.”
“Toucher, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“I … don’t really know. My father had a last name, Toucher. I guess that would be my name.”
Darrissea turned to the side, gazed into his gray eyes to see if he was telling the truth. He really didn’t know his last name, she decided. “Of course Toucher is your last name,” she said.
Stavan nodded thoughtfully, as if he had just figured something out.
Darrissea asked, “Where are you from?”
“North,” Stavan said. “The mountains.”
“What? No city?”
“No. We lived in the mountains. My father is a trapper, and an ivory carver.”
“And your mother, was she Pwi?” He did not look Pwi, but sometimes he acted it, between his openness and his mannerisms. There was something odd to them.
“No, she’s—you ask too many questions.”
His mother could be a dryad, she suddenly thought, a keeper of the trees. That would make sense, why he lived in the mountains, whey he acted so strange. Children born of dryads were often quite handsome, she’d heard. She felt guilty for prying.
“I’m sorry,” Darrissea said. “I only want to know you. I want to know everything about you.”
“I’m hungry for you,” he whispered savagely, “that’s all you need to know.”
Though the night was cold, Darrissea began to perspire. She leaned back, kissed him.
Stavan’s lips and tongue tasted sweet, sweeter than another man’s, almost as if the faint scent of honey lingered there, and his lips felt faintly warm. Such kisses came from dryads she knew.
She wondered at that. Was he really part dryad? Before she could consider the problem more, she found her head beginning to spin, as if she’d drunk too much wine.
She kissed him more firmly, twisted in his grasp so that her right breast pressed into his chest, and the next kiss lasted minutes.
In all the hundreds of love poems she had written, Darrissea had never envisioned such passion as she felt in unleashed in that one kiss. All her life she had imagined that when she first made love, she would take hours, that she would use the time to compose a poem even in the act.
Yet as she kissed Stavan, feeling his taut body beside her, Darrissea’s plans all seemed like romantic nonsense. She knew that she would give herself to him in the morning.
Near dawn the Hukm stopped, and all along the caravan, the Hukm began to talk in finger language, their waggling fingers falling like rain.
Fava report to Darrissea that the scouts had come upon another caravan of Blade Kin, and Darrissea set camp while the Hukm prepared to make an attack.
The Hukm rode off, leaving the humans in the dark.
They ate breakfast, and for a while after dawn, Darrissea stood beside a small campfire hidden in a heavily wooded grotto, letting the smoke rise to warm her, feeling it caress her face.
Stavan crept up behind, wrapped a wool blanket around her, large enough for the both of them.
“Thank you for keeping me warm last night,” Darrissea said, and Stavan whispered in her ear, “I’m hungry for you, now.”
Darrissea peered around. Nearly all of the Hukm had gone to fight. Fava was washing pans with snow. Phylomon had left with the hunting party.
Two hundred yards away the odd humans occupied the only other camp in sight.
“Where shall we go?” Darrissea said, her heart hammering, and Stavan pointed up a ravine. “Let’s go over the hill. We can be alone there.”
She let him lead the way, eagerly, yet feeling nervous enough that she slowed their pace.
They ambled up a narrow trail, hand in hand, until they found a small cubbyhole wedged between snow-covered rocks. “I—I’ve never done this before,” Darrissea said as he made the bed.
“That’s all right,” Stavan answered; he kissed her, a long slow kiss from lips that tasted sweet. She could feel her skin burning right back to her eyeballs, and she stood frozen, not wanting to stop. In this one moment she felt that she had touched glory.
Stavan made a bed of his cape, pulled his knife and plunged it into the snow, its blade naked.
Then he began to undress her, and she found the clasp to his belt, opened it. They kissed, undressing slowly, and Darrissea closed her eyes and relished the moment. When they had undressed, Stavan helped lay her down gently.
There was no wind here in the grotto, and though the touch of the air felt cold, it was not painful. Instead, it somehow seemed to fuel her passion.
Footsteps crunched through the snow, coming toward them, and Darrissea imagined that Fava was searching for her.
Stavan stopped kissing her, raised his head cautiously. Darrissea kept silent, hoping Fava would go away. The footsteps stopped just outside the circle of rocks, and Darrissea listened for a long moment, hearing nothing, thinking that perhaps the person had departed.
Then someone moved into view—a girl—one of the newcomers to camp, found only three nights earlier, a human named Allon Tech with pale skin and blond hair. She glanced behind guiltily, as if checking the trail, her lips full and puckered, then she faced them.
“Oh, you’re awake,” Allon said.
“Yes,” Stavan answered.
Allon averted her eyes, as if caught off guard. Darrissea realized that she must be a thief, for she’d obviously been checking to see if anyone had seen her approach the rock.
“What do you want?” Stavan asked.
Darrissea stirred, moving from beneath him.
“What are you doing?” Allon asked Stavan casually, as if she had no idea.
Stavan said, “What concern is it of yours?”
The girl stared at him blankly, as if trying to comprehend his words. “I … I need,” she said to Stavan. “I thought, we might share.…”
Darrissea’s heart hammered, afraid of what the girl was suggesting.
Stavan rolled off Darrissea just a bit, enough to look up at the girl. Allon had a strange slack expression in her face, and her eyes did not focus on either of them, as if she looked past them.
Darrissea suddenly realized that the girl seemed insane, possibly dangerous.
“Go away,” Stavan said. “I have nothing to offer you.”
“The others, they want it, too,” Allon answered. She made a strange moaning noise, like the whine of a small pup, and stepped closer, breathing heavily so that her chest heaved.
Stavan grabbed his knife, and his muscles tensed. Darrissea could feel his arms, incredibly strong.
“Leave,” he ordered. “Now!”
“Oh, oh,” Allon said. She turned, shot a feral glance over her shoulder.
Darrissea crawled free, watched her go.
“What was that all about?” Darrissea asked, heart pounding.
“I swear, I have no idea,” Stavan said.
Allon had just crested the hill when Phylomon and Fava appeared over the top, riding a mammoth.
Darrissea quickly pulled her clothes on, and then stood as the two approached. Stavan remained naked, wrapped in his blanket, scowling at the intrusion.
Phylomon came close and gazed down at them, neither approving nor condemning.
“The attack failed,” he said. “The Blade Kin sounded an alarm, so we lost the element of surprise. However, before their caravan had a chance to retreat, we caught some prisoners—a Dragon Captain and two Smilodon Lancers. I plan to question them tonight.”
“Good,” Darrissea said. At least something positive had come of the morning.
“For now,” The Starfarer asked Darrissea, “I’d like you to come with Fava and me. I have something to show you.”
***