Chapter Twenty-One: Hult'ah
When they came upon the first flayed USM effigy near the top of the basin, Runite stopped and paused to study it, circling with silent poise. The image was already stamped in her mind for all time, so Nasira occupied herself watching for ripples of motion in the foliage. Without mud to cover her heat signature, she felt exposed, but Runite had shaken his head at her when she'd started to reapply it, signing that the danger was low and their trek would be brief. Her brow furrowed a little, but she had fallen into his invisible wake nonetheless. They ought to be heading in the direction Sveldman's troops had been going, towards the pale mountain range and its monoliths, which was decidedly not a brief trek. But instead they continued parallel to the highway of flayed troopers as if he meant to return yet again to where they'd caught Cooper and Farmiga.
The red birds were still amassed nearby, having gorged themselves to the point of immobility. Even when Runite decloaked to study what remained of the troopers more closely, all they could manage to do was beat their wings and roll about fatly on the ground. His masked gaze measured the distance between one effigy and the next, strung up a few dozen meters away. He took special interest in the severed end of the cable that had once held up Markel's dismembered torso.
While his attention was elsewhere, her eyes flitted guiltily to the canopy where Siwili – Shikarr – had disapparated earlier. But after his inspection, Runite picked up no trace of him in the jungle, nor her face, and gestured for them to keep moving. Her confusion only deepened, but she was reluctant to make any noise to get his attention, and tailing him proved difficult enough. She focused on following carefully while trying to match his pace, hips low and knees bent, moving toe to heel, toe to heel, probing carefully before setting her weight down for the quietest step possible. Once or twice he stopped to turn and confirm she was still there, but never long enough for her to sign a question at him. The spear haft was clutched behind her back to hold it steady as she brushed past vines.
He signaled a stop, becoming visible again, and she slipped her stance even lower and brought her weapon to her front. He indicated a sight line from the visor of his mask to a point in the distance. She adjusted her own to follow it, and there spotted the telltale shimmer.
"The hult'ah." The watchers, two of Tresses's proteges that had forced her to her knees and taken her Lacrimas, roaming about in a loose sentry pattern. "Here is safe," he said.
Hadn't he said the hult'ah were not part of the hunt? Why had he sought them out?
"Should we sneak past them? Fight them?" she signed.
He made a restraining sign; they should not cause them any permanent injury or humiliation. He used the same indicator for reckless youth that Siwili had taught her so long ago, only he had been referring to Runite at the time. "Or Un'ahta will not be the only one spurned."
"If you engage one, I can take the spare."
"No." A rumble left him, and to her ears, it sounded rather suggestive. "Ki-tka ahj. I have…experience with this."
Her mind went reeling – confusion, curiosity, some indignance – but before she could protest, he vanished from her side, re-engaging his cloak. Tongues of frustration heated her. At the very least, she should be closer in case he did need help. Here is safe? They were Hish – nowhere was safe. And what was that tone he'd used? What were these hult'ah to him, apart from Tresses's shadows?
She fell into her prone crawl beneath the bushes, speartip carefully pushing any crackling leaves out of her path, until she was within a short stretch of the patrolling hult'ah. A new shape caught her eye, immense and rippling. It was their additional spacecraft, like the one she'd seen Farmiga disappear into. These hult'ah were guarding it. Suddenly it made sense. They were a full day behind Sveldman's troops; they'd need to catch up somehow.
But why hadn't he just told her? Their grasp of each other's language still left something to be desired, it was true, but the idea would not have been difficult to explain even in mute sign. Did he think of her as a liability? The distance he kept imposing between them, and then the utter lack of it – it threw her into a continuous loop of uncertainty… and mounting irritation.
"Honorable Cih'keal." He spoke her name only after uncloaking himself. "Jehdin-jehdin."
The first hult'ah let out a rattling hiss and followed suit. She was shorter than Tresses but taller than him by a head. Her flesh was buff yellow and bright orange, with black and deep red accenting her mottling. Her tresses were partially pulled back, shorter at her shoulders but with a long bundle of strands that went to her waist. Glinting from within it were decorative ornaments, golden beads. The ki'cti-pa she brandished were smooth crescent blades, not jagged.
"Not for a Hish," she snapped, and dove at him.
He leapt aside without attempting his own countermove, his wristblades still unsheathed. From his belt he unwound cable from a spool and stretched it taut with his sole hand. Her tresses swung heavily as she pivoted and came back around with a high overhead blow, aiming to decapitate.
Runite fell onto his back leg, ducking out of the way. Quicker than a flash, he reached up with the cable around her attacking arm, twisting it into a loop. She roared as he pulled her off balance and yanked the cable down to her ankle, sweeping her footing out from under her. Limbs entangled, she opted to roll, using her superior mass to try to bring him down too. But he had made the cable snap free of his belt, relinquishing his hold, in order to dodge backwards out of the way of an invisible plunging attack. The other hult'ah flipped her sword in her hand to redirect its blade at his new position, but he was just as quick, raising his arm so it glanced off the metal of his gauntlet.
Cih'keal snapped the cable and knifed to standing. The other hult'ah, uncloaked now, slipped behind him with the fluidity of water to trap Runite between them. A beat passed, and then both of them exploded into motion – Cih'keal with a straight up thrust to Runite's middle, and the other diving with her sword at his legs. He twisted to avoid the blade and then stepped hard backwards away from Cih'keal's thrust, toward the hult'ah's undefended center. Smaller, his bodycheck only elicited a grunt, but then his legs straightened to flip her over his back, dumping her on the ground.
"Let us pass," he said. "The hunt is God's practice."
"You shamed yourself, sain'ja," said Cih'keal. " Bpi-de, the unworthy End, is all that awaits you now. You, and your unnatural companion."
He snarled and rushed her. Her blades sliced his thigh, but he was undeterred and barreled into her, catching her neck and locking her throat into a tight hold. She seethed, and the sound turned to rasping as her blood supply was cut off.
"Yield," he demanded of the other hult'ah. She only roared and advanced.
Cih'keal clawed weakly at Runite's arm as he dragged them both out of the way. Her strength was fading, but not fast enough. She tried to scratch over her shoulder at his head but only managed to unseat her own mask.
Nasira sprang up, hefting her spear like a javelin, aiming at the other hult'ah's back and letting it fly. Runite's focus snapped to it and he roared a sound of dissent. He let go of Cih'keal and she folded, semi-conscious. He moved to intercept the spear but did not make it in time - his action alerted the hult'ah to the danger, though, and she whipped around in time to see the spear coming and dodge out of the way - too slow, the spear grazed her side deep enough for green blood to spatter.
Runite ripped another length of cable from its coil and quickly headbutted the stunned hult'ah, hooking her ankle with his so her stumble seated her. He roped the cable around her wrists and then dragged her snarling and screeching to Cih'keal, binding the two of them together. From each of their gauntlets, he took their wrist computers, and a seam appeared in the ship's cloaking as the ramp lowered.
He retrieved the spear and jutted a sign at Nasira to board, spinning its haft instead of offering it to her. She could feel the reprimand coming off him as she passed by, but pulsating adrenaline and indignance sent any thoughts of apologizing surging downstream. She'd drawn blood when clearly he had not been meaning to, but he hadn't been forthcoming with her about his plan, so what had he expected?
Still, she stamped aboard moodily, not failing to catch the attention of the bound hult'ah. Cih'keal was blinking back to consciousness. She was still unmasked, and her eyes were the color of tropical green waters, rich jade sewn with threads of blue luminance.
"You err, oomani-di," she rasped. "The sain'ja will never be yours."
Nasira stopped, frozen, but she couldn't even begin to compose a reply; the hult'ah were reminiscent of Tresses – intimidating, cold, austere, even captive like they were. Runite snarled again and gestured for Nasira to keep going, which she did, and he marched the hult'ah up the ramp at spearpoint and secured them separately to a wall just inside the ship.
Mist spilled down the ramp from the corridors of the craft to mingle with the moist air of the jungle. Despite the ship's humidity, the interior actually came as some small relief compared to the outside atmosphere. Its appearance was strange for a spacecraft, walls resembling an intricately carved and textured plaster material that radiated warmth and glowed from within orange contours, but plenty of electrical elements also spanned the ceilings, and beneath the thick layer of knee-high fog was a grated steel floor. Nasira wandered farther in, still bristling, though against possible threats or roiling emotions, she couldn't say.
Runite touched a hidden panel and a door whooshed up to reveal holding cells. He put the first hult'ah in one, and then returned for Cih'keal and her mask. When both were contained, the door slid back down and a series of heavy locks engaged, leaving them alone once more.
He looked at her, unreadable, and she glared back at him hard, even when he stepped closer with a dangerous sound. This was it –- the only way to gain any ground with his kind was to demand it. If they were Hish, then they were Hish together.
He held the spear out lengthwise over the ground. She took the haft but he did not let go, yanking her forward a step, his stature looming but hers unshrinking. He lowered his face closer to hers, tusks still rattling behind his mask. She increased her pressure on the spear and he finally relinquished it, only to reach behind her back and trap the end of her braid between two fingers. He pulled down on it just so, forcing her chin higher, almost uncomfortably, and twisted a length of it around his fist.
He was still for moments longer. They were as close as they'd been in the cavern, but now the frisson of energy between them was charged tension. All she could move was her eyes, which dropped from his visor to where, behind his mask, she'd known the shape of his face. Her lips parted, and her breath hitched.
He chuffed, then gave another vexed tug down on her braid before releasing her. He moved away, and her mouth twisted wryly as she followed him farther into the ship.