Chapter 9
Krashe
I had worked with my commanding officers for several hours, reinforcing the plan of attack.
I wanted to make sure that each one of them knew exactly what they had to do when Bitter Storm marched on the village of Thunder Rock in the coming days.
I knew now that I couldn’t be there with them, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t move forward with the plan.
It was a good plan and I still believed it was the only way to feed all the hungry bellies.
Leaving Naomi that morning had been extremely difficult, but it had to be done.
As I slept, I’d dreamed over and over of the things the Clan would do to her if they discovered her.
I’d been deeply unsettled by it all, and when awake, I’d known that I could not subject her to live confined to four walls, forced to remain in hiding.
So I’d made preparations, as many as I could while she still slumbered.
Then I’d set about surreptitiously settling my affairs with the Clan.
Only Aser had glanced at me with some suspicion during that morning’s meeting with my officers.
That male was sharp as an Ayala when scenting berries.
I’d saddled him with as many tasks as I could think of, hoping to keep him busy.
As the final meeting wound down, I knew I couldn’t restrain the urge to go check on my mate.
A feverish excitement filled the Hearth Caves, but it seemed to be getting stronger.
Younglings were racing along the pathways, shouting at each other, and ducking around corners to whisper secrets.
I had attributed that excitement to the coming war, but now I wasn’t so sure.
Dread settled deep in my gut, and that feeling only got stronger when I saw two warriors come from the direction of my home.
They each glared at me suspiciously when I greeted them with a casual nod.
A snarl settled into place on my face after that, sending anyone crossing my path to flee in the other direction.
When I turned into an alley with a direct view of my home, my blood froze in my veins.
There was a whole crowd gathered, most of them warriors armed with their spears or even swords.
With them were several high-ranking females and that was what set off every alarm in my head.
Before they could notice I was there, I ducked out of sight and rushed to make a different approach.
Ducking through the latrine tunnel, I raced past several Naga who were shoveling new holes with disgusted, bored expressions.
I threw myself around another bend, and then threw myself carelessly through the fabric curtain painted to resemble the rock wall.
I was now in a narrow crevice that with only a couple of twists and turns brought me directly up to the back wall of my home.
I pressed my ear to the wooden panel that covered the hidden entrance, listening with bated breath for any signs that they’d breached my home yet. I wasn’t sure, and it didn’t really matter anyway, I was going in there regardless. Naomi was mine, and nobody was touching her.
Flicking the latch, I swung open the door.
With my hand on the hilt of my sword, I ducked through in a rush, eyes frantically searching for my mate.
Visions of her dead body, beaten and bloody were spiraling through my mind, only fueling my fear for her.
On high alert for any danger, my focus was mostly on the still-locked and closed front door. I never saw the weapon coming.
Pain radiated up my spine and down along my tail from the blow and I had to throw myself sideways to avoid a second one.
Then my eyes landed on the culprit, Naomi, wielding the fire poker I’d shaped out of the fang of a Rakworm.
She was on the floor directly in front of the hearth, right next to where my secret passage swung open, fiercely holding onto the fire poker as though it was a sword.
At least the Sleara hadn’t flown at my head again, he was still perched on her shoulder, and his focus was on the front door.
Good little man, he’d figured out I wasn’t a threat.
What was a surprise, was the hole in the floor, the chest with my mother’s lorekeeping tools standing on the floor right next to it.
My clever mate had decided to investigate.
There was a tingle of worry shooting through me, a hint of doubt.
Had she ensnared me so she could get to the information my mother had guarded all her life?
I tossed those thoughts aside. Nobody knew those things were there but Naomi had seen them when I had looked through them earlier.
She’d seen me put them away so she had every reason to know where I hid them.
Of course she would investigate what she could when she was trapped in here.
In her place, I’d have done the same thing.
“Krashe!” Naomi said as soon as she realized it was me, not an enemy.
She tossed the fire poker aside with a clatter and threw herself toward me, arms spread wide.
The sudden move caused the Sleara to dislodge from her shoulder with a screech and I had to move fast to catch her.
She was a warm weight against my chest when I pulled her against me.
My entire body flushed with warmth, with this sense of rightness.
“Nomy,” I growled into her hair. She was in one piece, and now that I held her, I knew she would be safe.
Relief rushed through me, along with a sense of victory.
She had come to me, thrown herself willingly into my arms!
And when she tilted her head up to mine and wound her arms around my neck, the look in her eyes was so… warm.
“We have to hurry,” I said, even though I wanted to bask in that moment as long as I could.
I’d only been away for a few hours, but that was a few hours too many being apart from her.
I carefully shifted her in my arms so I could put her back down on the fur she’d spread out on the floor.
I had things to quickly pack before we made our getaway.
The door was holding, and they didn’t even know I was in here.
I still couldn’t keep myself from maintaining a link with her, even when I was hurrying for my armor stand and strapping everything onto my body.
My tail circled her waist, holding her tightly anchored to me.
I had this asinine fear that if I stopped touching her, she’d be ripped from my grasp, even though I could hear my brethren talk beyond my door on how to break it down. They hadn’t even started breaching yet.
“I’m sorry, this is my fault!” Naomi said, her fingers patting the scales on my tail while she watched me work.
“I washed up. I thought if I just cleaned myself regularly, my scent wouldn’t spread…
” I cast a look over my shoulder at her while I tightened the last strap on my pauldron, cinching the leather shoulder armor into place.
“I don’t think that was it. I could not scent you outside, the Sleara musk-marked near the door which is blocking a lot of it.
” The little green fellow was pacing along the floor just in front of the portal, posturing with a puffed-up chest and exposed fangs.
He was anxious to protect my mate, just like I was.
“He wants to protect you too,” I said to her.
She hadn’t been idle while I’d been away, having fashioned some kind of warm upper garment for herself from one of the furs from my nest. She’d chosen wisely, it was a relatively new addition, which meant that it still strongly smelled of the smoke and chemicals with which I’d cured it.
That too helped to cover her scent. No, I was very certain that something else had happened that had caused them to discover her presence.
I’d been the one that made a mistake, I just needed to figure out what it was. Had it been Aser?
Her smile in response to my words was a little tremulous, “I’m still sorry Krashe.
I didn’t mean to cause so much trouble for you with your Clan.
” I shrugged, turning my back on her so she couldn’t see me struggle with the mess of feelings roiling through me.
Was I truly sorry to be leaving? I wasn’t even sure.
Sorry that I couldn’t bring more food to all these starving mouths, yeah, that’s what I felt bad about.
But not about leaving, and not about meeting Naomi and having her as my mate.
I yanked the already partially filled backpack from the peg near my door and scooped up the chest with my mother’s things.
Then I added what food rations I had left, padding out the rest with more weapons and furs.
I shrugged into the bulky pack just as the first thud of a battering ram reverberated through my home.
Naomi’s eyes went wide, her fear scent growing stronger but a calm settled over me instead.
With a coil of my tail, I nudged the flagstone back in place over the hideyhole; no need to alert Bitter Storm to any more illicit activities.
Then I picked up Naomi in my arms and turned to look down at the tiny winged rodent still pacing in front of the door.
The thuds of the battering ram were regular now, and the lock I’d fashioned with the heavy bars that rolled in place was groaning with it.
Not long now and it would splinter to pieces, allowing them to get in here.
Naomi was going to want to have the little one with her, and honestly, I was happy that she had a protective companion, even if he was tiny.
I scooped him up with the tip of my tail and flicked him over my shoulder directly into my mate’s arms. He was still yelping in shock when I threw myself through the secret passage door and started yanking it shut behind us.
I kept a beam here, propped up against the wall that I manually heaved into place in the carved-out brackets.
A crude, but very effective, lock that would slow down the Clan for some time if they did discover the passageway.
“Woah, you are prepared for everything, aren’t you?
” Naomi whispered, one arm curled around my neck to hold on, the other petting the Sleara to calm him down.
I grinned in the dark passageway, aware she wouldn’t be able to see much.
Yeah, that was my motto, be prepared. I’d learned that at the coils of my father who was always ready for the worst-case scenario and always thinking ahead.
This passage and the hideyhole in front of the hearth were his doing, I’d only improved them.
I raced through the narrow crevice with Naomi and the Sleara, my shoulder pauldrons flaring too wide to make this comfortable.
Then I lifted the edge of the camouflaging fabric at the exit to check that no one was watching.
Here, the smells of the old latrines were still overwhelming enough that they would cover our tracks and make being there extremely undesirable.
Naomi wrinkled her tiny, soft little nose at the smells but said nothing as I ducked out of the hidden passage and raced for the warren of tunnels beyond the latrines.
Those passages were patrolled regularly, and by skilled sentinels, some of which I’d trained with growing up.
But I knew them like the back of my hand, I knew that once in there, they wouldn’t be able to track us down.
Darkness swallowed us up in the tunnels but that soon made way for the faintest of bio-luminescence coming from the strange ores that traced like veins along the walls.
It was enough for my eyes to see by, enough for the sentinels too, so I needed to tread carefully until we’d left the Bitter Storm territories.
I already had a destination in mind, but that decision was still weighing on me; was it the right one?
What would Naomi think? I had never wondered about the opinion of another before, usually, I was very certain that what I thought was the right way so I hardly cared.
In this case… How she might feel about it seemed the most important thing in the world.
I didn’t slow down my pace until I could no longer hear the sounds of the Hearth Caves for several minutes.
There was only silence in these tunnels now, which meant we weren’t being chased.
My muscles were burning from the exertion, my breathing rapid, but that eased up quickly when I slowed.
Now, I became aware of the heavy weight of the chest tucked into my backpack, and how light Naomi was in my arms in comparison.
“Are we in the clear?” she whispered quietly.
Her pale cheeks were flushed with red, her eyes wide as she leaned around me to scan the tunnel over my shoulder.
The little Sleara had scuttled from her arms to perch on my other shoulder, digging his claws into the hard leather of my pauldrons.
They were both still tense and alert, waiting for the sound of a chase.
I cocked my head, listening with them just to be sure before I nodded.
“They are not chasing us. Now we just need to avoid the sentinels as we leave the caverns.” It was at least several hours of traveling in the dark to escape the mountain via this direction.
I knew from my mother’s lore books that even deeper below these tunnels lay an ancient evil, one of the reasons that Bitter Storm was here to prevent a second ending of the world.
As a youngling, I had searched for a way in, convinced I could single-handedly destroy this evil and be a hero.
But I had never located even a single trace to indicate that more tunnels or ancient relics existed below our home, Orshala Peak.
“Okay,” Naomi whispered quietly, “Then what? Where can we go?” I liked how her question implied that she thought we’d be going together.
Somewhere along the way during this strange courtship, she’d decided she could trust me.
I didn’t feel like I’d given her very many reasons to do so yet, but I was glad.