Chapter 4 – Catharsis
For an eternal moment, neither of them moved. At last Siaran, conscious of her hurts and the psychological exhaustion from the fight, dragged her gaze from the barrel of the plasma gun to the warrior's impassive faceplate. "If you're going to do it, do it."
She didn't speak out of expectation that she'd be understood. The fight had left her edgy and upset. What she needed was to move, to ease cramped and trembling muscles. Even if it was to lay down and die. The expression molded into the warrior's mask was fierce; she imitated it and braced for the blast.
The plasma cannon lifted and retracted back over the hunter's left shoulder with a subtle whine. The laser sight flicked off and left the tall man-thing regarding her silently, half in shadow from the moonlight. The unchanging expression of his faceplate made her nervous, but she had so much curiosity, so many unanswered questions, that those balanced out the fear. Siaran watched him steadily back. Believing he wouldn't kill her outright, she straightened up, arching out the kinks in her spine. The gashes high up between her shoulder blades made her wince, but otherwise it felt good to stretch her muscles.
The hunter put his head to one side, for all the world like a curious dog, and studied her movements. The familiar gesture startled Siaran, and she was further disconcerted by the hope that speared through her. Could she communicate with this extraordinary being? She wasn't sure how friendly she wanted to get with him, but if she read his body language right, he was not displaying hostility now, but interest. Her eyes flicked over the rest of his massive body, seeing details she hadn't had time to notice before. His hair—probably not a headdress given the way it fell from underneath his helm—was tightly braided into smooth tapering strands, ornamented with small metal cylinders, and fell past his shoulders. Beneath the armor, he wore only a body suit made of a ropy mesh. The skin was dusky and yellowish, ticked and mottled with brown at the broad edges of the forearm and quadriceps muscles, and also on the sides, over the ribs. He wore a thick leather belt and a knee-length loincloth of the same bright, jointed metal as the rest of his armor. Small skulls and bones hung from the belt. Maybe ornaments, maybe trophies from previous hunts. His hands had four fingers and a thumb, same as hers, but each digit was tipped in a sharp black nail that was nearly a claw. The boots he wore had raised toe ridges that suggested clawed feet as well.
Siaran swallowed. He looked powerful, magnificent, and wholly intimidating. By contrast, she imagined she must look a pretty sorry excuse for a humanoid: no claws (even her fingernails were pared nearly to the quick, to prevent them cutting her palms during a closed-fist punch), square teeth, thin skin that bled now from neck and hip. God knew what kind of bacteria were crawling on those serpents' claws. She had no armor, either; just a filthy green fisherman's sweater, a torn pair of jeans, and hiking boots. Overall, she was sweaty, bloody, sore, and tired.
So it came as no surprise when the hunter turned away from his cursory examination of her before she was done looking him over. She couldn't have known she'd just been scanned via natural, infrared, and a form of heat-sensing x-ray vision, nor what her inscrutable new companion's opinion was. Warily, Siaran followed him; partly because she wasn't sure what else to do, but mostly because she didn't want to be caught alone if more of the serpents attacked.
Ignoring her completely, the silent warrior stalked over to the nearest serpent corpse. It was the one Siaran had impaled with the fallen warrior's spear, and it still hung there, grotesquely pierced through the brain pan. The hunter examined it thoroughly before he yanked the spear free. The carcass collapsed with a rattle of chitin, blood hissing on the sand. Turning abruptly away, he stood and looked down at the body of his fallen comrade. Siaran watched from a safe distance. The dead warrior's neck was a mess of torn flesh and iridescent green blood. There was no disguising the ragged hole that had torn part of his throat away. She closed her eyes, remembering how it had seemed such a small thing to take up the dead hunter's weapon and use it to protect herself. Now, in the aftermath, it seemed a desecration.
With a clink of armor, the hunter knelt over his fallen comrade. The sound made Siaran open her eyes. He was silent a moment, then raised his head and gave a long, wild roar of rage and grief that set Siaran's teeth on edge and made the fine hairs at the edge of her scalp prickle. She stumbled backed a few steps. The hunter's cry ebbed to a rattling moan, then died away. The silence that followed was profound, interrupted only by the whisper of night air that hissed in the sand and sounded now to her as if it carried an echo of despair.
She was given no time to appreciate the startling knowledge that this fierce creature could show despair at all. Moving quickly, he removed a couple of weapons from the body, including the shoulder-mounted plasma cannon, then rose and whirled on Siaran, menacing in the night with the moon silvering the edges of his armor. She held her ground though she was lightheaded with fear. The hunter looked down at her for a long moment, then over at the corpse of the black dragon. He raised the spear and tilted his head, watching her again, assessing her capabilities in light of the evidence that she had killed the serpent. Siaran let out a wordless exclamation, hardly a puff of air. It was all she could summon in a throat half-closed with tension.
"Yeah, well," she tried to keep the quaver out of her voice as she walked back up to the serpent carcass, kicking puffs of sand up from her boots. "That's not the only one. But...I'm sorry about your friend." The hunter turned away before she was done speaking, making her bite her lip at the apparent rebuff. For the briefest moment, Siaran considered taking offense. In the end, she decided he was not the sort of creature with whom it would be healthy to argue insult, and shrugged instead. He was scanning the area now, and moved off toward the wrecked car. He paused there to examine the half-buried serpent Siaran had killed during the height of the sandstorm. The look he gave her this time was longer and more penetrating, head down to see her better and again cocked slightly to one side.
She had followed him once more and now put one hand on the car's dented roof, seeking solidity and reassurance beneath that silent, inscrutable gaze. He shook his head slightly, sending the beaded braids clicking, and rose to his full height. With his left hand, he unfastened two slender tubes that connected his faceplate to a compact power pack on his back. The tubes detached with a pressurized hiss. Transfixed, Siaran watched as he lifted the helmet away.
The eyes, deep-set and green, held both human intelligence and the iron patience of a predatory animal. It was that combination, maybe even more than his alien strangeness, that made the face so shocking. Siaran sucked in a breath. From the high broad speckled forehead to the four overlapping, tusk-tipped mandibles that framed his mouth, his face was both frightening and hideously ugly. As she stared, he lowered his head and flared all four mandibles to reveal a deep red mouth lined with sharp teeth, and roared in her face.
The roar was loud, full of challenge, and those sharp mandibles were inches from her head. It was terrifying. But Siaran stood firm, noticing that his body language hadn't changed and praying she was right, that this was some sort of test. She'd been drilled ad nauseum to pay more attention to a person's body language than to his voice or expression. Those things, by design, could be used to lie, but it was hard to lie with the whole body.
And the predator's body was flat-footed, knees straight, shoulders relaxed. She stood her ground, eyes wide but otherwise showing no fear.
The mandibles retracted with a click of surprise. She read the same emotion in his eyes. Beast-cold eyes with human light and a keen intelligence. She'd been right. Siaran sagged against the battered car and chuckled weakly. Life and warmth flowed through her limbs again. He was more than just a killing machine. And she was more than just a scared human fighting to stay alive.
With a grin that was somewhat jauntier than she felt, Siaran blinked up into the alien face. "Look, pal," she said. "My ancestors went naked into battle, armed only with tree branches. They screamed and yelled and charged down the Scottish hillsides, and scared the crap out of the Roman army, the best-trained fighting force in the world. So don't think you can scare me with your ugly face and some roaring, got it?"
It felt good to joke (even if her voice shook), to stretch and ease the tension in her mind just as she had done with her body. And because he probably couldn't understand word one, he could hardly take offense and rip her head off. In fact, he was regarding her again, head to one side. Suddenly, he drew a jewel-hafted knife from his belt and bent to the carcass of the dead serpent. Siaran let out a long, steadying breath. "Besides," she amended, just in case he might understand, and dislike, sarcasm. Her eyes were on the knife. "We fought together back there, like brothers." She might have even saved his life in that first rush, after his companion fell. That had to be worth something.
The predator squatted before her, over the sand-covered body. He used the knife to sever one of the serpent's long finger bones, then stood suddenly, so close she could have touched his chest without fully extending her arm. Siaran resisted the urge to recoil as he held the finger up for her inspection. "Careful with that thing, it burns," she muttered nervously, eyeing it.
Then he pointed to a mark, almost a brand, that scarred the skin of his forehead: a curving vertical slash little more than an inch long, and beside it, a second but reversed mark. It was reminiscent of a yin yang symbol because each mark mirrored and reversed the other: as if a yin yang had been drawn to the specifications of a Celtic or Viking rune.
The predator pointed at Siaran's forehead now, then at the severed claw. She understood. It was an ancient ritual practiced by nearly all Earth's own primitive hunting-based tribal cultures: he was going to mark her with the blood of her kill, branding her a member of the tribe. It made sense—the primitive-seeming weaponry, the beautiful and practiced motions of combat, the trophies that decorated his belt and hung from his neck. However advanced the plasma cannon and that big forehead suggested his race was, his customs were those of a much more primitive warrior society, complete with a code of honor and coming-of-age trials. And now he wanted to give her the mark of his clan, to honor her part in the battle.
That was a big step to acceptance.
"Full of surprises, aren't you?" Siaran knew it would hurt, and that it would be better if she didn't try to anticipate how much. Instead, she raised her head and pushed back the sweaty tendrils of hair that had escaped her braid. The hunter flared his lower mandibles and growled as he touched the severed digit to her pale forehead. Two strokes, clean and quick, he etched into her skin. It was a corrosive agony that gnawed into Siaran's skull, but she didn't move or make a sound. He scissored his mandibles, impressed. When he had received his own mark, the pain had made him snarl.
Siaran was biting her cheek, pain to combat pain. When he finished, the burning subsided to a fierce throbbing. They stared at each other a moment longer, trained combatants from very different worlds, united by circumstance and choice. Emboldened by the blooding ritual, and vulnerably aware of her lack of armor or weapons, Siaran opened her empty right hand and held it up to him.
He understood at once, and uttered a purring sort of growl she took for approval. Picking up his fallen companion's spear, which he'd dropped to dismember the corpse, he held it horizontally, just out of her reach, and peered at her closely to make sure she was paying attention. Siaran watched, a little confused but alert, as he rotated the spear haft and pressed the hidden catch that retracted the weapon to a third its full length, pulling the deadly blades inside the black handle. He handed the truncated spear to Siaran.
She hefted it, felt the weight, and found the catch. Smoothly, the spear sprang out to its full length. She smiled and retracted it. Nodded to the tall hunter.
Satisfied that he had properly armed this young warrior, the predator busied himself reattaching his faceplate. Using the nanodes built into the interface that sensed his eye and facial movements, he scanned back through the recordings he'd made of her voice, found the one he wanted, and blinked the sequence for a replay. "To-gether...like bro-thers." It wasn't perfect, but it was the first time he'd had the chance to attempt to code her voice. It was important that she understood, because they had some miles to travel this night before he could complete his mission, and the rescue ship would not reach orbit until the moon was past its zenith.
Siaran jumped as a tinny version of her own voice spoke to her from the hunter's faceplate. After watching him wide-eyed for a moment, she smiled a little. "That's a neat trick. Guess I'd better watch what I say around you, huh?"
In response, he gave a short, commanding bark and swept his arm out westward, fingers splayed. He moved a few steps in that direction and stopped, looking back at her, and barked again. It was a surprise, and a dubious honor, but it was clear that he wanted Siaran to go with him. Well, she thought, and why not? It was a damn sight better than being lost in the desert, and the predator had for some reason of his own accepted her as something of an equal. "Wait," she said, holding up both hands, palm out. "Let me get my things, okay?" She trotted around to the car's trunk and lifted out her Gregory pack. Checking the top zip pocket to make sure the full water bottle was there, she removed that and shrugged into the padded straps. The lumbar belt, once fastened, rode her hips below the gashes higher up on her waist, and it also lifted most of the weight off her shoulders. The discomfort was mild; she could walk like that for a few hours, she reckoned, before it became a problem.
Somewhere in the pack was a first aid kit, but she contented herself with being glad it was there for now. With the prospect of leaving came the urge to put as much distance between herself and the scene of the battle as possible. She took a long pull from the water bottle, then followed as the predator set off to the west with long, steady strides. He covered a surprising amount of ground, and Siaran had to adopt a loping walk to keep up. That was awkward at first, but it kept her warm in the cold, arid night, and for that she was glad. She carried her new spear in her right hand and kept her head up, looking around in the moonlight for signs of attack. She knew just enough about outdoor tracking to not look directly at any object but rather past it, trusting her brain to work out the shape of a thing and whether or not it moved.
But the cold desert was still and unchanging. The sandstorm must have passed this way, but there was so little on that vast barren plain that a storm could damage that its path was undetectable. Nothing crawled or screamed or swooped down upon them. The tall predator at her side paced tirelessly, alert but relaxed. After a while, his sense of security lulled Siaran too, and her mind turned to other things.
She finally broke the silence between them. "I'm not sure how much you understand me, but it'd make me feel a lot better if I had a name to call you. Something I can pronounce." No doubt the clicks and growls and guttural barks were his own language, but it made no sense at all to her except as a general indication of intent, based on tone and pitch.
The hunter strode on, showing no sign of listening to her. Undaunted, Siaran pressed on, watching him from the corners of her eyes. "My name is Siaran." She spread her left hand over her chest. "See-ahr-ahn." She made a fist, tapped her chest. "Understand?"
He continued to ignore her. He didn't even look at her. "Fine," she told him flatly. "You won't help me, I'll make up a name by myself." Frowning, she studied him, then winced as the muscles creasing on her forehead set the mark he'd given her to throbbing all over again. Something clicked, and her face cleared. Siaran smiled. "I'm going to call you Rune, so that no matter what happens, I'll remember how I got this scar." With two fingers, she pointed toward her forehead, then up at his. "Rune. Okay?"
No response.
"You really know how to chat up the ladies, don't you, Rune? Must be those boyish good looks."
Refreshing as it was to know she'd regained sufficient confidence to bait him, it was a game she quickly wearied of. It just wasn't much fun when the adversary couldn't retort. Siaran gave up and saved her breath for walking. There was enough of that for both of them.
The moon rose higher above the plain, shedding brilliant cold light on the emptiness. The wind picked up to a dismal howl, occasionally stinging Siaran's cheeks with sand. Here and there, a lonely outcropping of rock threw a shadow. These made Siaran tense at first. But the rocks were just rocks, the shadows empty of threat. Still they moved steadily west.
Around midnight, Rune found the camp.
Author's Note: Happy Thanksgiving! I am thankful for everyone who has read, reviewed, and bookmarked this tale so far. The inspiration is still going strong, and I managed to complete another chapter in between baking pies, going for a pre-feast run, and gorging myself to the point of pain. Hooray for fat-of-the-land holidays.