Chapter Four #2
Her and I rarely go on hunts without one another. That, and Ninon usually volunteers on the nights of the farm delivery since she has no interest in partaking in relations with men. Usually I’m the one that stays behind on this night if I can help it.
I know exactly where she is, but of course I can’t say. “I took her place tonight. She has her nose stuck in a book somewhere.”
“She wasn’t on last night either,” the other young huntress with us, Dashka, says.
“She was with me and Kalixta,” I answer calmly, though my body prickles with sweat. “She’ll be here tomorrow night, I’m sure.”
Haven huffs out a laugh. “She’d better. With you gone we’ll need all the hands we can get. We’re all praying you get pregnant soon so you can get back to the hunts quickly.”
Dashka’s mouth pops open, head swiveling to me. “Will you hunt while pregnant?”
I shrug a shoulder. “Why not?”
Haven laughs again. “When your belly is swollen with children you won’t want to get anywhere near a horse.”
I snicker. “In the beginning it won’t be a problem, but by the second or third term, well, you might be right.
” My heart swells with affection. They don’t judge me for continuing on with them even though I’ve been made a carremai.
We all understand what it’s like. We all crave the unnamable feeling of being under the open sky, of riding fast, of providing for our people with the animals we hunt and bring home.
When I look at these women: strong, capable, intelligent, I wonder what it was about us, about them, that made the Sar Dyēus deem us undesirable?
Whether he knew it or not, he released me from a fate I didn’t want, at least for a few years, and doomed me to suffer my mother’s undying disappointment.
Swinging up onto our horses, we set out into the Sere as the sun lowers.
In the coming weeks, torrential winds will carry dust in large swaths that will coat the land and drive our hunters home.
Our people will feel hunger in these times.
I remember when I saw a storm come in from the comfort of Dyēus’s islands in the sky.
Anger that I wasn’t home to help, where I ought to be, rolled through me as swift as the storm.
It was the moment that I’d become well and truly disillusioned from any enchantment the sky kingdom had ensnared me in those first few months after Alixor chose me.
Across the desert there are several outposts and blinds we use to hunt for game.
Others are closer to the Realm and for the sole purpose of keeping an eye out for wayward rogues that slip past the sky kingdom’s defenses.
With the guard’s encampments constantly on the move in anticipation of weak points around the Realm, it’s rare that we encounter a rogue, but we’ve all noticed that it’s been happening more often than usual.
At twilight, I fell a saiga. I’m not ready to go back yet, so another huntress offers to return home to dress it. And, I suspect, to enjoy the evening with the farmhands.
Haven shakes her head, scoffing. “Lucky.”
“You could have volunteered,” I say.
“Nah. I’m fertile. Not worth the risk.”
It’s not strictly against any rules to have children with the farmhands, but they abide by the same conduct as children of Dyēus do, and typically a woman will only have one child instead of twins. It works out sometimes, like with Ninon, but often the pregnancies ultimately fail.
“Oh I don’t know,” I say, scanning the dark horizon now that twilight has wheeled into night. “Hands and mouths can provide plenty of pleasure if you ask me. You don’t need to take it that far if you don’t wish to.”
She sighs. “I can’t help myself.”
I grin. “Insatiable.”
“Pot calling the kettle black, I think.”
I toss my head back and laugh. “I think you may be right.”
“I’m still jealous of you getting that kind of attention consistently when you’re in Dyēus.
” Haven, several years older than me, told me when I became a carremai that she desperately wanted to be chosen, to see the sky kingdom, to feel like someone wanted her.
Her mother, a lot like mine, had a less than favorable reaction to the undesirable distinction placed upon her.
My attention is pulled to where the islands float in the sky. “I’m trying not to think about it.”
Haven puts a hand on mine, giving it a squeeze. “Sorry. I know you don’t really want to do this. I was only attempting to point out some good you’ll have of it.”
I place my free hand on top of hers. “I know. Shall we head to the outposts? I have a feeling tonight.”
“Yeah?” Haven asks, brow raised. “At your leisure, then.”
That tugs a smile from me. My pace is never leisurely.
I’m pleased when Dashka matches my speed, both her and Haven flanking my lead on either side.
My heart thunders and pulls, remembering my ride with Ninon two mornings ago and the dark-haired rogue staring at me as if he could see my very soul.
The farther we get from Nevoba, the more desolate the Sere becomes.
Twisted, leafless trees with bark as dark as coal and pale, scrubby brush collect in the crevices of the rock monuments that rise up, powerful and imposing, like waves in the ocean.
Vegetation is scarce, but brings the saiga and the hare.
We hunt both, but we’re here for neither now as the darkness of deep night takes hold.
In short order we make it to our outpost, relieving the earlier crew.
Once they’re gone, our horses replace theirs in a deep rock outcropping that conceals them.
Next to the outcropping is a low, wide arch of rock, the white stone cast blue in the growing light of the twin moons, and the three of us hunker down into it.
I position myself facing the Realm of Rogues with Dyēus’s sky kingdom to my right.
Haven sits next to me, facing the opposite direction while a few short yards away, Dashka faces the mountains, poking her head into the dugouts for us to shoot arrows from.
“You said one would come tonight,” Have begins. “Want to place a wager?”
“You have nothing I want.”
Haven scoffs. “I’ve seen the way you look at my mare.”
Sure enough, Haven’s mare is swift, but I would never give up Aspa. “What use do I have for two horses?”
“For when one gets tired and yet you have not?”
I laugh. “Fair point—it’s a deal then.” I won’t actually take her horse, and she knows it.
“It’s a deal.”
After that, we’re quiet. The nights at the outposts are not for words or idle gossip.
The night here is for listening. The night here is for blending.
I’ve been shooting and taking down rogues since I was eighteen, on the hunt since I was twelve, and wielding the bow since I was six.
The tip of my arrow gleams in the moonlight, ready to cut into the flesh of rogue serpents of the night—ones who betrayed the gods, their curse a punishment for their crimes, or those of us turned by the curse upon entering their Realm.
So we’re warned. Ninon seems to believe it though, and for the most part, I believe what she does.
There’s tension in the air. Lean muscles coiled, sharp eyes trained, delicately pointed ears perked—one of our only gifts from our fathers. Gifts that we take and use against our enemies.
When I continued coming on hunts after Alixor claimed me, my mother and others tried to have me tend to the other mechanisms of running our community instead, as was commonly the duty of the carremai.
But I was too accurate, too useful here in the Sere when I wasn’t visiting the opulent sky kingdom, and so the arguments to keep me confined soon ebbed.
I would have kept coming regardless, would have found a way even if they tied me to the stone walls each night, even if I had to chew through bindings or cut through stone.
Movement to my left catches my attention and a dark streak slices through the sky, stars winking out for a bare moment before returning to their glory. I signal with a hand to Haven and she drags her fingers through the fine layer of rock and debris, the sound a message to Dashka. Look to the sky.
We hear the shift of wind first. Then the zip of an arrow is loosed, sprinting through the night.
A tumult of air beats against the rock arch, sending tiny pebbles skittering.
The arch is deep enough that claws cannot reach inside, and thick enough that it can’t be crushed, though it’s riddled with claw marks that show it’s not for lack of effort. I watch Dashka loose another arrow.
“Missed again!”
“Get out of there,” I hiss at her. She’s revealed her location twice now. When the dragon comes back around it will know exactly where to strike.
“No, I’ve got it, it’s turning back around.”
I curse and scramble away from my position, throwing my body into her dugout. I have to climb several feet to reach her.
“Wait—” she pauses. “Where’d it go?”
My skin prickles with sweat, my ears straining to hear. “Get out, get out, get out,” I repeat quickly, grabbing hold of her ankles. With a single hard tug I pull her back as the mouth of the dragon collides with the opening.
Dashka screams. Rubble crumbles down on our heads, sticking in our hair, coating our mouth. Now she’s scrambling back, our bodies awkward and tangled as I wiggle out of the channel. The dragon strikes with his claws again and again, sending a storm of rock and debris into our faces.
Haven grabs my legs and pulls us out as the dugout collapses in on itself. The dragon’s high pitch scream pierces my ears.
“Haven, to the right,” I shout. “I’ve got the left.”
Haven goes wordlessly, and at my back Dashka pleads, “I’m sorry!”
“Stay here,” I reply, snatching up my bow and arrows.
Out in the open air, I see the dragon swoop low, shoulder dropping, wings loping on the air.
The beast gets so close I catch the cloudiness of its eyes in the moonlight.
My arrow is already drawn and I let it fly.
The rogue’s head kicks back, a pained keening ripping from the beast. The creature lands hard, thrashing and tangling itself in its wings.
I watch, even as tears pinch my eyes. I watch, even though everything in me screams at the wrongness of it.
Every time. It’s like this for me every single time.
Haven is breathing hard at my side as the rogue’s limbs stop moving, its mighty wings drooping.
“Well. I guess I owe you a mare.”
“You pulled me out from being buried alive. Let’s call it even.”
After another moment, vapor rises to envelop the beast, slow and sluggish as the dragon at long last, turns back into a human.
I once thought death was the only way a rogue could shift back into its human body.
A rogue, we’re told, is a rogue because it couldn’t shift into a human again.
An abomination to their kind when they turned against the gods.
After what Ninon and I witnessed two mornings ago though, I’m not so sure.
I try and fail to recall if the dragon Ninon and I met had clouded eyes, like this one, before it shifted.
Dashka’s at our side as we approach the rogue.
A male—not one of our women. I’m not surprised.
It never is. Women used to disappear all the time when my mother was young apparently.
Now, it doesn’t happen. If there are any Nevobans in the Realm of Rogues that were cursed to turn into beasts, they’ve never made it out again.
“Wow,” Dashka breathes, swiping a tear from her face with the back of her hand.
“Your first rogue slaying?” Haven asks.
“Yeah,” she murmurs, nodding.
I want to tell her that the feeling never gets better. Instead I say, “When we get back, send word with a raven to Dyēus. One of the collectors will take care of this. I’m done for tonight.” Then I turn, go back to my horse, and head for home.