Broud's Destiny

Chapter One

It had happened too fast. Oga had been beside him, and then the men of the Others had rushed in, their faces blanched white with clay, and Broud had heard his mother scream, and Brun had been attacked.

And then, at that horrific moment, Broud had turned only to see his own mate struck with a spear that whistled out of the sky. The spear had been thrown from an incredible distance, carried on a rush of wind as if the spirits themselves had been wielding it. It was one of the spears of the Others that Broud now focused on as he sat beside the body of his dead mate. He could not-would not-think of Oga's face as she knew she was to die. Or the way she had looked in the first flush of womanhood, when she was always so eager to care for him. Or the way her coarse, thick black hair had felt in his hands, and oh! Countless things that Broud had loved about her. And he had never told her, not once, he hadn't even thanked her… The guilt was a sharp ache in his heart, a pain mixed from the agony of Oga's death and his own bitter failure to protect her. But above it all, Broud felt a seething fury that no one had ever listened to him before about Ayla, about her kind. The threat that he had perceived as a child-nameless, unable to ever be explained fully-had been brought sharply to life in the bloodiest and most cruel way imaginable. It was Broud's nightmare, but where before the danger had been murky and veiled, now it was as real as a bolt of lightning igniting a forest, as real as a stampeding mammoth. The stirring of such powerful emotions overwhelmed the unstable young leader, and he banished them as best he could. He curled his hand over the short shaft of the animals' weaponry, and wondered about the curious manner in which it had been thrown, set into its magical flight by of another shaft of wood.

Behind him, his people, dazed and already exhausted from living outside for so long, were tending the injured and numbly seeing to their dead. Broud heard the careful footfalls of someone behind him, and yet he ignored it, lost in his own consuming mix of hatred, misery, and guilt.

It was Goov. Broud recognized the familiar beat of his careful, steady gait before the new mog-ur appeared at his side. But the furious leader would not give the man any recognition. Finally, the mog-ur said, "Broud."

The young leader already knew what would be said. Still, the simple gestures and soft words were enraging.

"We must take her. She will need her rites, and burial."

"No!" Broud cut his hand through the air, in a gesture that both refused and banished his former friend. Goov backed away in silence, to see to his own frightened mate Ovra and prepare to seek the guidance of the spirits.

Broud ran his fingers over the spear tip. It was not flint, but a shiny black material equally as workable, and lethally sharp. It was like no stone Broud had ever seen, which made enough sense. The Others, these animals, these demons, were wide-travelling people. They were passing through his land, but they had come from far away. And they did not belong here. The Others were not Clan, and they had no respect for anything. They had attacked Broud's camp for nothing but sport, as if they were playing at the hunt, and no matter what any of his people did to put their lives back together, Broud knew in his bones that this was but the first of taste of a great coming evil. And he had taken a great loss already; Brun and Oga were both dead, and nothing could be done to change that, either.

Even now, he could feel the eyes of her child upon him: Durc, that lanky toddler that Broud tolerated only because it seemed the child would be a hunter of great prowess. Having so recently the quarry of Durc's true people, the thought of the boy's inherited skill was enough to bring bile to Broud's lips.

Slowly, Broud began to understand what he must do. He would not consent to being ambushed, stalked like a roe-deer. Let the women and the old folk and the weaklings tend to the burials. Broud would take his heavy spear and his best four hunters, and they would follow the Others who had murdered Oga and Brun, and they would kill them all to a man.

"The men should be back already, Kyani. Don't go too far now. I don't need any medicine. I don't feel so bad anymore…"

"Hush, Father," the girl said softly. "You will ache again if I don't make your tea."

The old man grumbled a bit, knowing that it was true. His concerns for his only child's safety were circular, always leading back to the main argument. "Child, why do you not take Tarek as a mate when he returns? He is a good hunter, and he admires you. I am not long for this world. Who will protect you when I am gone? Who will care for you?"

Kyani bowed her head. "I am still in mourning, Papa."

"You mourn too long for a girl only mated a month!"

Kyani bit her lip. It was true, but then Kyani was a warm young woman, and she had loved her young mate with her whole heart. When the fever had set in she had tried so hard to save him, without any thought for her own health. But by the time the illness had taken hold of him, there was nothing anyone could do, not even the band's medicine woman. Six months later, she still wept for her loss.

The old man was once a fearful warrior, but his tenderness for his child, and his declining health, made her tears intolerable to him. "Go on, go on!" He waved his hand at his young daughter. "Gather your herbs and hurry with my tea. The air grows cold at night; it's a misery to my bones."

Kyani set off, hurrying over the open land for the safety of the heavy primordial forest. The day had an odd feel, and the girl thought fleetingly about the rumors of the Old Ones nearby. Tarek and his cocky group of young hunters had ventured away from the main band nearly a moon ago, and though young men often roamed over long distances, Kyani knew they should have had some word of the hunters by now. But the summer sun dappled pleasantly through the trees, and the day was fresh, and the girl genuinely enjoyed her solitude. It was the only time no one would harass her about Tarek's overtures, or admonish her with the cruel reminder that life must go on. Her slim legs propelled her up a rise in the land, and she paused for a moment before a clutch of blackberry bushes. After gathering enough to share with her sick father, she moved on, down the rocky slope, over the thick, mossy trunk of a fallen pine tree. Kyani was quite small for her age but her slender body was strong. She was accustomed to travelling over long distances as her people chased the ever wandering game herds. She often got lost in her own daydreams while walking, though at a subconscious level she watched everything about the forest around her. And as the day went on, and she walked farther away from her people than she should, her eyes picked up something out of place against some large boulders at the base of another half-eroded hill.

The girl gasped at the sight of a man laying prone beside the rocks. His clothes were like nothing she had ever seen, and strange men were more dangerous than cave lions, especially to young women. But this man was not moving. Was he dead?

And then she heard the faint sound of his moan, and she knew that he was not dead, but likely dying. She crept cautiously closer, and saw the caked blood on his strong leg. Blood and filth stained his odd garments, and Kyani feared that his injuries were not fresh but days old. Infection would be setting in, and the wounded man certainly couldn't reach the stream a ways back…

Compelled by mercy and careless for herself, Kyani hurried down to the man. He was turned away from her, making some sound of anguish and pain but little movement. His voice was already weak; Kyani knew she could not leave him to die alone. The wind passed through the forest, stirring the fur leggings around his calves and tossing about his thick hair, the color of dark, red-tinted earth. Afraid to startle him, she murmured a greeting, before looking again at the long gash on his thigh. As she had thought, under all the dirt and blood she could see the edges of the wound swelling. Already, foul, yellow tinted ooze was seeping from the torn flesh. "You're hurt pretty bad," she said a little louder, crouching down beside him.

In a moment, the man turned his head, and Kyani almost fell backward. He was like no man she knew, bigger and bulkier in every way- he was one of them, the old ones! The demons that had killed three of her male cousins right before her eyes when she was a little girl, three of her people who had only sought trade and friendship… Frozen in terror, Kyani gazed on the delirious foreign man and knew that he would die without her.

Broud looked up at the creature that had disturbed his dying. He was already succumbing to his fever, and he was too close to the spirit world to make any sense of what she was. All he knew was that she was tiny and her hair was shiny and black, and her eyes were the strangest color he had ever seen, the purple of the new night sky just after sunset, the purple of sweet summer flowers. She was so peculiar, so unfamiliar, yet the dying man had the uncanny sense that she was here to take him home to his ancestors. Well, he was resigned. There was some reason, though he couldn't recall it, that he ought to die. Some reason why he deserved it over all others, and here was this strange spirit to take him to his rightful fate. He would embrace it. With his last strength, he reached out and placed his wide hand against her small, delicate face. She seems frightened, he thought curiously, and then he didn't care anymore, and he gave into his darkness.

Hours later, Broud regained consciousness with a start as his head was lifted off the ground. Water rushed over his parched throat, and he drank thirstily. And then he opened his eyes to find a woman of the Others before him, holding a bone cup to his lips. Instantly he smacked it out of her hand and tried to pull himself away, but the pain in his leg rose up so fiercely that he nearly vomited. Everything came back to him in a torrent of agony and fury: the attack, the loss of his mate and his mother's mate, the retaliatory raid that had killed his hunters, the man of the Others who had torn his thigh open with a stinging knife. Broud thought that one, or perhaps two, of the Others had survived; one had run like a coward, the other Broud had torn apart but failed to kill. Broud looked down at the wound and almost fainted in shock to see that it was bound up with fresh dressing. He looked at the woman who knelt at his side, fearful, but with something like the patience of a woman for a child in her odd eyes. She spoke: a rolling, undulating pattern of sounds that reminded the injured man of the rushing of the cool brook near his old cave.

He had no idea what she meant, of course. She retrieved the cup and filled it from a water sack made from the treated stomach of a deer. She hesitated before extending her arm, wondering if Broud would smack it away again. Kyani thought that he was likely dying from thirst, but there was something in the furious depths of his deep brown eyes that terrified her. "You should drink," she said quietly, knowing he did not understand her. Against Broud's weakened will, the gentle cadence of her voice lulled him. He sighed, driven to it only by the fierce need of his tortured body, and let her pour the sweet water into his mouth. Nothing had ever tasted so good to him.

By the time the soft light of early evening filtered down through the thick pines, Broud was hydrated and his fever was lowered by the willow-bark tea she had hastily made and carried to him. He was able to think better. But he did not want to think, because he knew that he had done nothing but lost his second in command and dear friend Vorn, along with his two other best hunters. This was in addition to the two men and three women already dead from the first attack. Could their numbers even be so reduced that they would not make it as a clan? How could this have happened so quickly? First they lost the cave, and now this? The leader's head ached from it, and worse, he was beginning to understand his own deep culpability in all the calamities that had befallen his people. Brun had been right about him: Broud was too rash, perhaps even unfit to lead. The pain of this was almost too much for Broud to bear, and now he did not even have Brun to turn to for guidance.

I have to get back to my people, he thought, groaning because he couldn't even move without terrible pain. The wound in his leg was deep, slicing into the heavy muscles of his thigh. He had lost a great deal of blood. But Broud had always been strong. He forced himself to sit through the atrocious pain, breathing hard from the effort. To his utter shock the woman, whom he had almost forgotten, touched his shoulder with her long, fragile-looking fingers. He looked up at her with true astonishment. Women did not touch men this way, and besides, who was she to try to restrain him? In his anger, he wanted to strike her, but he found he was too exhausted from trying to master his pain. He merely glared at her, knowing for certain that though they could not communicate with words or even gestures, she would understand the look in his eyes.

"Suit yourself," Kyani said simply. Strangely, this man reminded Kyani of her father at his most irritable, when he was suffering from his infirmities and the bitterness of not being able to hunt anymore. She tightened the water sack and tucked her cup into the leather pouch she had snatched over her sleeping father's head. She would have to return soon, but she dreaded leaving the injured man out in the open at night. He would be powerful in full health, Kyani thought, meeting his appalled stare and still scanning his hard face and body with the eyes of a girl who had tended to a sick and cranky man for years. He would be more than powerful. She found herself wondering what sort of game he preferred to hunt. There was some enormous claw, perhaps a cave-bear claw, on a cord around his neck. She thought she could see a tattoo on his chest, and she wondered if it was the mark of his spirits. She wondered what sort of spirit guided him. Surely it would be a fierce one. His eyes burned, even without the fever. "You can't stay here," she told him quietly. Helpless, she looked about the darkening forest, pointing into the shadows, to the deepening sky. She wished she knew where his people were. She thought about asking some of the men of her camp for help, but knew that after that one terrible incident years ago, her own kind were more likely to finish the poor man off than bring him to the camp and let him recover. But still, perhaps if she asked her aunt…

I am a dead man if she leaves me alone, Broud thought, gazing towards the newly risen waxing moon. At least he would be able to see whatever it was that would come out to eat him. This woman, Broud wondered, where is she from? And why is she helping me? Does she know what I would do to her, if I could? And will she bring her kind here, to kill me?

Broud knew that he couldn't do anything at all tonight. He leaned back on the cold stone behind him, and to keep from remembering the nightmares he had caused, he watched this curious little woman of the Others. She seemed afraid, but not of him anymore. In fact, she seemed afraid for him. And now, she was walking away from him. His eyes watched the sway of her slim body, and he wondered if she was a child rather than a woman. You can't tell with their kind, he knew. To his surprise, she returned with an armful of dried kindling, neatly arranging some dried leaves and dead orange pine needles before scrabbling in the dirt to make her fire. As he watched, preferring the sight of her to the awareness of his own pain and guilt, she built a pretty little fire beside him, lined with stones and complete with a pile of logs. He could pick one up and smack her with it, easily. Broud chastened himself for this thought. The woman, the child, whatever it was, had built a fire for him. He would have a chance tonight. He was wishing that he still had his spear when the girl of the Others slowly, cautiously, set a strange black knife at his side. At the sight of the large weapon in those small, feminine hands, Broud's jaw unhinged. It was the girl's father's ten inch obsidian blade set in a bone handle, the one he took on hunts to finish off game; the old man would not miss it. As soon as the girl set the weapon down she jumped away, darting into the dark forest as gracefully as a doe. Broud was dumbfounded. The girl had left him her water, too.

Kyani woke in the first light of morning. Father was still sleeping. The old man felt that he had little to live for; if only his child would find another mate he could go on to the spirit world, where perhaps he might be useful again. Consequently, he spent as much time in his dreams as he could, when he was still a young and powerful man in his band of men. Kyani gazed on the old man for a moment. "I'm sorry, Papa," she whispered. And then she tore into their stores of dried venison, gathered fresh strips of bandaging and her own honey-paste mixture made for dressing wounds. Kyani's aunt Myriana was a healer, and though her own daughter would succeed her, she had taught Kyani some of her skill. Ilona, another young woman who was growing thick with child, laughed and asked the girl where she was going in such a hurry.

Kyani knew she couldn't tell about the man of the old ones, not yet anyway. Perhaps not ever. And when the new moon came, they would move on again, and the man would be left alone… I'll do what I can, Kyani promised herself. He is strong, he'll be able to walk soon. She rushed into the forest, back to the injured man.

She found him awake, sitting up still and turning the obsidian blade around in his hands as if it were a mystery to unravel. Kyani hesitated. He was obviously better; strong enough to kill her? He swept his dark eyes up at the girl as she stood uncertain before him, and they held each other's gaze for a frighteningly long time. But then the injured man of the old ones sighed, and tossed the knife a short distance away in a gesture meant to reassure the strange girl who was back again. Broud hoped she had some food for him. And truth be told, he had never felt so alone in his life, or so terribly helpless. He couldn't believe he was doing it, but he gestured the girl over to him, as if she were a real girl, a girl of the Clan who could care for him. As if she were- Well, Broud refused to think of that.

Kyani rushed to him, knelt at his side and ignored the powerful arms and hands that could break her effortlessly. She wanted, first, to touch his brow and look into his eyes to see if he still had that hateful fever. And so she raised her hand slowly, but he leaned away, breathing a very wary, disapproving breath through his tight jaw. Still, his eyes were clear and dark, and he was alert. She lowered her pack and dug out first the venison. He was hungry, a good sign. He ate quickly, and as Broud tasted his first bit of food in days, the girl put her hands tentatively on his injured leg. He flinched at the uninvited female touch, but he knew it was necessary if he were to live and return to his people. The girl swept his wrap aside in one bold, business-like stroke, even as her ivory cheeks burned red to see him fully, a much larger and more powerful man than she was accustomed to seeing unclothed. Broud was slightly amused by this, and he ignored his pain enough to raise his leg and let her undo yesterday's binding. The wound looked better. Kyani washed it carefully from the water she had left the day before, and she was struck by recognition. She had thought first that an animal had gored the man, perhaps on a hunt gone awry, but her growing sense of discomfort was too much to dismiss. Kyani realized all at once that this was a wound done by a man, perhaps even…

Broud followed her eyes, her fearful curiosity. He slowly leaned away, pulling his heavy body along until he grasped the obsidian knife again. Kyani was stunned with fear, wondering if he would kill her as she tried to help him. There were demons in his eyes, she had seen that yesterday. Now she began to sense what had put them there, what had done this to him.

Broud shifted his weight again. He could smell her sudden rise of fear, but it didn't matter. Her eyes had asked a question, and he meant to answer her. He meant to tell her just what had happened, in the most direct way possible. He held the weapon of the Others in his hand, and slowly, he pantomimed the injury that the man of the Others had dealt him as Broud had rammed his spear into another man's belly. He looked back up at her and pushed the knife towards her, as if to tell about its obvious ownership.

"Oh," she breathed, horrified. A thousand questions arose in her mind. Had he met their hunting party? Were there others of his kind with him? Where were they now? And where was Tarek's group of hunters, so long overdue? Had they met in the forest and slaughtered each other? And why were men so stupid? It had been a hard winter, with few successful hunts in the area. Likely both groups had suffered, and so why not work together? Why kill? Why always kill? What would happen to them now, without the young hunters? And Tarek, he was bad-tempered anyway, she could imagine him striking first…

Ursus help me, her eyes are leaking. Broud knew very well what that meant. Yes, yes, I killed your awful people. But they are the tresspassers! Broud sunk his hands into the earth beside him, pulling up a chunk of it. He held it out to her and then clutched it to his own heart. My land, do you understand that? This is my land.

Kyani looked away, pointedly ignoring him. She returned to the task of dressing his wound, which pleased her because she saw that the inflammation was going down. Not so many days ago, then. And then, as she finished, the man's heavy hand caught hers. She looked up in fear, and he met her gaze for a long moment; there was challenge in his eyes, and an easy knowledge of his own unassailable physical dominance. But then he looked away, to her hand, which was so small in his. His fingers ran down her arm, feeling the lightness of her bones, the elegant proportions of her arm. He swept his fingers up again, over her palm, spreading her own hands out, measuring against them.

"Hand," she said softly. The man looked up at her curiously, as if a tree had spoken, and out of turn at that. Kyani remembered then. When she had been a little girl, she had found it quite curious that the women of the Clan were so deferential to the men. After all, they contributed in just as many ways, including that most important of all, the bringing of new life. But so much made sense now-the sharp, horrified look in his face when she had touched his shoulder, hoping he wouldn't try to move anymore. That he had smacked her hand away in his first moment of consciousness. She had offended him with her forwardness, though Kyani had never thought of herself as forward at all. She looked away from him, as if to give him that personal space that men of his sort wanted. Still, he held her hand up, and she would not remove it.

And then, the man gave his own word. Kyani was stunned. She tried her lips on the sound, which was harsher than her own, like the hiss of winter wind. She looked back at him. His pleasure was grudged, and Kyani couldn't help offer a small smile at that.

Grimace, Broud thought. But a pretty enough one. She wasn't bearing her teeth like a snarling wolf. What am I thinking? He closed his fingers on hers quickly, wondering how such ridiculously delicate people could have thrown a spear so far, even with that strange tool. The girl's violet eyes were wide now, as Broud swung between hatred and this new thing he felt, this growing desire to keep the girl with him until he could leave. He was utterly lonely and miserable when left to his own thoughts. The female offered diversion, and a chance to learn something of her people. Broud knew in his guts that if he could not learn about them, he was doomed to die at their hands, as more and more of their kind streamed across his land. For countless millennia, his people had been the apex predators of Europe, but these light and lanky newcomers sweeping out of the south and east somehow were tearing the old balance apart. Could they be stopped? If only Broud could see her camp!

He let her go, thinking she might run now. But instead she examined her own hand, and then, she dropped it to her foot and gave her word. Broud narrowed his eyes, and Kyani thought he was still angry. But then, in a whisper, Broud offered his word. It became a game for them, the girl determined to save a life and the man afraid to be left to his own horrors. They traded words quickly, and sometimes the man would make a motion and throw her off, because she knew he had somehow taken their game to a level she didn't understand. His frightening dark eyes grew warm then. When a bird called, he gave her the word for the creature, and then the gesture to indicate that it sang. He touched his throat pointedly, and was rewarded with a rush of relief and pleasure when the girl repeated both his word and gesture. It didn't surprise him, Ayla had learned with the same speed, so they were not a stupid people. Broud was stunned at the depth of his pleasure to be communicating after his long, bloody, and unsuccessful bid at vengeance.

And then the girl grew quiet, almost nervous. She motioned through the canopy to the sky, and he guessed right away. She would leave him, she would return to her own kind. They would be worried, surely. Broud didn't want her to go. In fact, everything in him wanted to grab her about her little waist and plop her down beside him, but he only watched as she made up his fire, took the water sack and went off to fill it, and finally returned to place it beside him. She put her fingers on the knife by his side, and then she turned the bone hilt up and handed it to him. Broud marveled at the sight of her small, fragile hand grasping what was obviously a man's weapon, so innocent and careless of the laws of his own people that would condemn her for it. The Others were as strange as he has suspected. He took the knife from her, and bowed his head in gratitude. It would not be much of a help in the forest, but a fire and a weapon left Broud in much better form than he had been in, lying helpless in delirium. Even his leg felt better, and his stomach was full of a great deal of dried venison which surely would be missed by someone in her camp. It struck him hard, then: this girl of the hated Others was saving his life.

As she left, Broud found himself watching again as her hips rocked with her gait. He decided that she was surely a woman, albeit a young one. He wondered if she had a mate, and what that man might think of her care for an enemy. He found himself curious about what her small body would feel like beneath his, and how her hips would fit into his wide, strong hands. Just as his body stirred in response to his thoughts, he realized what he was thinking. He closed his hand around the strange weapon, just the same as the one that had injured him. He wished Creb were alive so that he could help Broud make sense of this madness. But Broud had killed Creb, as surely as if with his own hands. And he had gone to kill the Others as well, yet here he was, unable to walk and at the mercy of one of their women, who for some reason unknown to any but the spirits, was nursing him to health and arming him with the very weapon that struck him. And she was as beautiful and sweet as a summer breeze, and that made no sense either.

"Kyani! Kyani!" Sara rushed up to Kyani the moment she returned, tears all over her face. The members of the band streamed by, rushing through their dome-shaped tents to the meeting place around the central campfire. In the center of a clutch of shouting men she could see a bloodied man sitting on the ground, where Myriana the medicine woman was tending him. She gasped as she knew that the survivors of the clash between her people and the injured man's kind had returned.

Sara's words rained around her. "They were attacked by the demon-people! Oh, Kyani, Tarek was killed! Ilona's brother is badly injured-"

Kyani ran from Sara, to the crush of her people. Drakav, eldest son of the leader, was shouting in the center of the other men. "No! There are more! One got away, and the rest of his kind must still be close by! We should hunt him down! Let us make war on these demons, and finish them!"

"We should move on, Drakav," Myriana judged. "Save your strength for keeping your people safe and fed until we reach the fall hunting camp. We have lost too many hunters already."

But the loss was too great, and the people did not know that Broud's raid had been provoked. Men began to yell again. "Today I smelled a campfire in the woods! Your demon might be stalking us now! He might have more with him! I say we at least search the area! We must be sure that we will not be ambushed as we pack up our camp!"

Kyani spun on her heel. She needed to hear no more. She knew she would be missed-she might even be followed-but she had to warn the man before Drakav and his brothers slaughtered him, and all because of a fire that she in her foolishness had lit. With her doeskin dress hiked about her knees, Kyani raced through the forest, rushing down on him as he was shaving his beard off with the obsidian knife, appreciating its fine blade.

"Come, come!" she pleaded, dousing the fire clumsily with water. "They are coming to kill you! You have to stand up!" She grabbed his hands and pulled, and he was so terribly heavy, and so injured. "Please!"

Broud dropped the young woman's hands. It was no great leap to understand that she had been followed, that he had attacked her people and eluded them in the forest, and now they were coming to finish him. Incredibly, she seemed to want him to run! Even walking would be beyond him now. But Broud would not die sitting down, and so as the flesh in his leg tore and pulled and burned, Broud pushed himself up. He tightened his grasp around the knife, glad that he had practiced with it when she was gone, tested it, discovered how best he might kill with it.

"No!" she cried, horrified. He would be dead before Drakav even got close enough to be cut! "Come, run!" In desperation, she cried out his word for feet and stomped hers, then grabbed his hand again and pulled. They had to get away from the campfire, and they had to do it without leaving so much sign that Drakav and his hunters would follow them. It would be impossible, but if they could cross the stream and head deeper into the forest…

She's can't be serious, Broud thought. But he would try. He staggered forward five steps before the pain became blinding. He could feel the soft leather bandages soaking with new blood. Kyani, agonized that her patient might be killed, took his arm in hers, her body bidding his to lean against her. Broud knew that the tiny woman couldn't bear him along for a step, let alone an escape. "No," he gestured silently, though he knew she wouldn't understand. His injury burned him now. He could feel pain-driven delirium creeping into the edges of his consciousness. He knew he was finished, he knew he would have a painful death. He knew that his people would be left leaderless, doomed to starvation or worse. But Broud could only hope to make a good, brave end. Clutching the knife in his hands, he stood tall.

"No, please!" Kyani cried, pulling his big hand. "They will kill you!" Why would he not move? Why was he ignoring her now, as if she were a little gnat flittering around a bear? Did he not understand?

And then the worst thing happened. Drakav and his brothers swept out of the woods in their fringed leggings and feather-adorned braids, spears and knives held at ready. Kyani screamed, clinging to Broud's hand. "Drakav, no! Don't do this!"

"Traitor!" Drakav cried angrily. He could not believe that the woman Tarek wanted to mate had betrayed them so terribly! Everyone had seen Kyani bolt from the camp, and the shrewd hunter Drakav had shocked his brothers by insisting they first follow her. The girl hadn't been right since her mate died, but that she could help the animal that had killed Tarek was beyond belief. Drakav did not even consider his own culpability in attacking Broud's clan to begin with. They were beneath him. "Kyani, get away from that animal!"

"No! He is hurt, Drakav! It is not our way to kill an injured man, alone in the forest!"

"He is no man! He killed the man you would mate! He is our enemy! Get away from him, or you will have his blood all over your dress!"

"Drakav, your father would not want you to do this!" Kyani accused, as her heart pumped her into dizziness.

Drakav was finished negotiating with Kyani, daughter of old Gadvin the useless. He motioned to his brothers, and they rushed down the embankment. Broud settled into a ready position, sheltering his injured side, hands up to his enemies, the ten inch black blade a lethal extention of his powerful fists. Broud's nightmare was coming to life, but he had been ready for it since the moment Ayla had invaded his life, so long ago. He was tired of his fear, and ready to face whatever happened at that moment when he used to wake up from those nightmares of her kind, breathing hard in the darkness around Brun's hearth. But then the delicate little woman jumped before him as lightly as a glossy black starling and flashed her own pretty skinning knife, and her men drew back in disgusted shock.

"No!" she cried. "This is not our way! You will have to kill me as well!"

"Move!" Drakav shouted, his blood rushing with throbbing desire to finish the fight. "Or you can die with him!"

Kyani's throat tightened, but she held her weapon up and sheltered Broud, her eyes furious. "You can explain that to my aunt Myriana, Drakav! And then explain it to your father, our leader!"

Drakav pulled his weapon back, flaring at the traitor of a girl before him. He was caught. Furiously he spat, "Then you go on with him! He killed your mate-to-be, let him take you!"

"Drakav-" Kieran, the mate of Ilona cut in, "You can't do that. Think of what would happen to her!"

"No, let her go! I will be leader next, I don't need any tainted woman in my band! Perhaps she carries his child already! Pull a weapon on me, to defend this animal! Go with him, or I will kill you myself!"

Kyani couldn't breathe. She had never meant for this to happen! How could Drakav think-? She had only wanted the awful fighting to stop! He couldn't really drive her away like this, could he? "Kieran!" Kyani cried, hoping that her friend's mate would stand her friend.

"Don't speak to him! He knows you are polluted by that animal! And he will be my third-in-command when I am leader, he will do what is best for his people! Go! Take him and go! Hurry, before I change my mind and kill you both."

Kyani looked up at the man of the old earth, who stood with a ready knife over her shoulder. He understood none of this, only that these men had weapons drawn on him. But when he looked down at her, his blood rushed even harder. "Come," Kyani murmured, keeping her knife in one hand as she pulled on Broud's arm lightly. He would not come away with her for a long while, not even after he comprehended that they were being released. He would not turn his back on these men, not once during the agonizing walk away. He would not turn his back until they were well clear of the men and their obsidian and bone weapons, and even then he listened to hear the Others following him. But they never did.