Challenged (Mates for the Raskarrans #8)

Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

Rardek

I turn and watch the new female leave, my heartspace thundering in my chest. Dressed in the barest amount of clothing, with no shoes on her feet, her stature diminutive, she looks as vulnerable as any human female I have ever seen. And yet, despite the fear obvious in her features, in the jerky manner of her walking, there was something blazing in her eyes when she looked up at me. A ferocious little piece of her spirit, still burning bright. A fire that has leapt into my own heartspace and already consumes it.

My linasha. I know it as surely as I know I need to breathe, eat, sleep.

I stare after her until she passes through the door and out of sight. She is on the shorter side, not quite as little as Sam, but perhaps no taller than Lorna. Unlike Lorna and Sam when we first encountered them, my linasha does not have the hollow look of hungering. Generous curves sway as she walks, her hips rounded and full, tapering up to a small waist. I want to run my fingers over every line of her, trace her shape until it is fixed in my headspace so well I would know it by a single touch.

But that fire in her eyes. I want to see that again even more. I continue to stare at the door, as if I could will her to turn round and come back just by the weight of my desire to look upon her again.

“ Well ,” Liv says. “ Ahwusntexpectinthat. ”

It is as if her voice breaks a spell that my linasha’s departure has held over not just me, but everyone. They all start speaking at once, and it is only in the sudden rush of noise that I realise how silent things had been a moment before, as if my linasha had sucked all the air out of the room and not just the breath from my lungs.

The females talk rapidly between themselves, Liv looking frustrated, a little angry, Lorna chewing at her lip and glancing at the door every so often, while Brooks scratches at the back of her neck, something akin to guilt in her expression. Meanwhile, Shemza recounts what he saw to Maldek and Gregar.

“She did not seem afraid of me,” he says. “More… unimpressed.”

“She has encountered our kind before then?” Maldek says.

Gregar and Shemza both have half an ear on the females’ conversation, and both shake their head.

“It sounds as though Angie is having difficulty believing the truth of her situation,” Shemza says.

Maldek makes a sympathetic noise, but my headspace snags on something else. Angie. This is my female’s name. I test the flavour of it on my tongue. Angie. I like it. It suits her.

The urge to go after her, to find her and make myself known to her, comes over me again, but I push it down. Force my body to relax. It is not a good idea, my headspace knows that. She has walked away because she does not wish to be among company. She desires time alone to untangle her thoughts. Besides, I cannot speak her words and she cannot speak mine. There is no comfort or reassurance I can offer her that her sisters could not do better.

It is a sharp thing to think. My heartspace - new in its infatuation - does not want to believe it. But sometimes the headspace must rule.

Shemza speaks briefly with Lorna, and I know he will be clarifying with her what is happening with my Angie, so I take a step closer, ready to listen.

“It seems she does not believe that it is possible to have slept for nineteen years,” Shemza says. “Or to have travelled between worlds. She thinks that this must all be an elaborate trick.”

She might want to think that, I think, but the fear in her voice and manner says that part of her is not so easily convinced that all of this is not truth.

“And the sight of you was not enough to persuade her?” I say, the teasing tone automatic, falling off my tongue without thought.

Shemza smiles, but shakes his head at me. “Apparently, humans have special paints and other tools that they can use to make themselves look quite different. It is not entirely unbelievable that I could be a human in disguise.”

I take a moment to be surprised once more by the ingenuity of humans. From travelling in ships across the stars to changing the shapes of their faces and features, it seems there is little they cannot do that they put their cleverness to.

“Special paints?” Gregar says. “I could believe they could mimic our colouring, but our height, our size?”

“If they had chosen you as their example, perhaps,” Shemza says, inclining his head to our chief.

“You are smaller than me, yes, but not so small that it would be possible to believe you were human underneath, surely?”

“Belief is not a thing contained by logic and reason,” I say. “It is perhaps far easier for Angie to believe that Shemza is painted than it is to believe that she has been taken so far from her home.”

“I expect that is the root of it,” Shemza says.

Gregar’s grimace shifts to sympathy. My heartspace beats a sympathetic rhythm of its own. I wish I could fix her hurts with a gentle touch or embrace, but I do not think either would work right now.

“ Time, ” Liv says to Gregar.

“We need to give her some time.”

“ Anspayse .”

“And leave her alone for now.”

I nod, and her counsel so closely matching my thoughts makes them easier for my heartspace to swallow. Liv is wise, and if she thinks these are things that my Angie needs, then she is probably right.

Still, there is no part of my linasha being left alone with her fears that I like. Some of this must show on my face, for Lorna pats my arm.

“Angie be okay,” she says, using raskarran words the way many of our sisters are now able to - awkwardly, but with enough clarity that their meaning is plain. “She is angry because she is afraid. She know soon we give her safe.”

“She is lucky to have such kind and patient sisters,” I say.

Lorna gives me an indulgent sort of smile, as if she thinks I speak flattery and not truth. And though I am inclined to flatter when it achieves something, in this I am telling the truth. It amazes me how kind my sisters have the capacity to be when their world has shown them only cruelty.

“She is lucky that raskarrans are so-” Her nose wrinkles as she struggles to think of the right raskarran word. In the end, she turns to Shemza, speaks to him in human words.

“Noble,” Shemza says.

Lorna nods, smiles. “Noble.”

“Yours is a strange sort of world if looking after those that need it is considered noble,” I say.

I glance at the pod that contained my Angie moments ago. Cold smoke still trickles out of it.

A very strange sort of world, indeed.

“ Ahllgofinder ,” Liv says. “ Maykeshurshezsayfe. ”

“I will accompany you,” Gregar says, but he cannot take more than a single step before Liv’s hand plants firmly on his chest.

“ Ahdohneedprotectinfrom Angie,” she says. “ Anshedohneedyooinerfayse. ”

I may not speak human words, but I recognise a ‘no’ when I hear one.

“Gregar, I have words I need to speak with you,” I say, stepping in before either of their tempers can rise. “It is why I came down here.”

“It is really so urgent?” Gregar says, his expression tight.

“If it was not, I would not raise it now,” I say, letting him hear my seriousness. It is a rare enough thing that Gregar knows to heed it. He gives Liv a lingering look, then turns to me, nodding.

“It is to do with the hunting,” I say as we head out of the Mercenia hut, climbing up to the ground level, then walking the long room towards the door.

“It is thin around here?” Gregar says, and I wonder if that is a guess based on observation.

“‘Thin’ would be generous. It is non-existent. We set all our traps and caught nothing.”

Gregar might be a warrior, but he knows enough of a hunter’s craft to know how unlikely this is.

“Paskar and Jaskry caught frenelles…”

“Yesterday,” I say. “A far enough distance out from the hut that the trees are not affected.”

“Affected?”

We step outside into the clear space around the Mercenia hut. The clear space the forest has made no steps to reclaim. I have thought it odd before, but now I wonder if it is connected to the blight also.

“It would be easier to show you,” I say.

“Do we need to travel far?”

“About ten paces in that direction,” I say, indicating the tree line.

I have not checked the trees immediately around the Mercenia hut, but I have very little doubt that we will find more of the blight here.

Gregar gestures for me to lead the way. We are halfway to the tree line when Anghar falls into step beside us.

“You go to explain about the hunting?” he says. “I should like to hear what you have to say.”

The three of us head into the trees. Now that I am looking for them, I see signs everywhere. The lack of undergrowth, the thinness of the carros vines, branches that have snapped under their own weight. I am sure if I sink my claws into any of the tree trunks around us, I will quickly find rot.

I stop by a large tree with lots of roots visible above the ground. A sign that the tree is old, well established. The ground around it has been washed away by the rains, but the tree clings on, many more roots burrowing deep underground to keep it anchored. It is the sort of tree I would not have hesitated to climb, confident that its thick branches would take my weight.

“There is a contagion spreading through the forest here,” I say, “a blight I have never encountered before.”

“A blight?” Anghar looks around, hunting for the usual signs - marks on the bark and leaves, bark peeling away from the trunk. But whatever this sickness is, it does not show as a blight normally would. The leaves are thinner than they should be, perhaps, but it is the cold season. Trees dropping leaves is not uncommon at this time.

“It is a subtle sickness, difficult to spot. I confess, we only discovered it after a branch that should have taken my weight snapped beneath my feet, revealing a rot at the centre of the tree.”

I loose my claws, scrape them lightly over the bark, looking for a spot where they sink through more readily than they should. It is a matter of moments before I find it, and I scrape out some of the rotten wood to show Gregar and Anghar.

“It is not everywhere within them. Just patches. But enough that climbing them is hazardous. The branches are similarly affected.”

Anghar turns to the tree and unleashes his own claws, making to climb up. He gets a few arm spans up the trunk when he hits a patch of rot and his claws shred through it, causing him to sink back down. Only a quick stab of his other hand into a different part of the trunk saves him from tumbling as I did. Carefully, he resumes his climb, examines the branches. The first is old and extremely thick, taking his weight without issue, but he reaches up to grab another, only for it to snap in his hand the moment he tugs on it. He drops back to the ground, examining the end of it.

“I wonder if any of the elders have seen this before,” he says, holding the branch out to Gregar.

Our chief looks at it, bending it to test its strength. It splinters again immediately.

“It is a wonder that any of the branches remain attached when they snap so easily,” he says, looking above us. “Karvin is the oldest of us here. I will speak with him, but somehow I doubt this is something even the eldest of our elders will have seen before.”

We all look in the direction of the Mercenia hut.

“It seems unlikely that the hut could cause a blight,” Anghar says, though he sounds uneasy to claim it.

“And yet it also seems unlikely that it could be unconnected,” I say, voicing the feeling I am certain they share.

Gregar’s brow furrows, a deep line forming at the bridge of his nose. “If the hut was unsafe, my Liv would not have consented to come here.”

“None of the females would have,” Anghar says. “Sally is quite content to have little Marsal here and I do not consider her a fool. She must be confident of her daughters’ safety.”

“Basran and his tribe lived here for three seasons,” Gregar says.

“They were not well,” Anghar says.

“From lack of good eating,” I say. “It is not just the trees - the other plants are similarly affected. The bushes and the vines do not grow, so there is no food for the prey creatures. They have either died or left to find better forage.”

“And when they went, the predators left with them,” Anghar says, looking round. “There is an unnatural quiet here. My spirit has been unsettled since we drew close, but I assumed it was simply the presence of the Mercenia hut affecting me.”

“The reason we have all failed to notice there is something seriously amiss before now,” I say. “Any sense of wrongness we have felt, we have dismissed without investigation.”

“And now we have another problem to deal with when we are so close to leaving this place,” Gregar says with a huff. “How far does it spread?”

“That will be our first task - to map it. But it is going to be a large area, based on what we have found so far.”

“A burn?”

“The only way, I think.”

“How many seasons since we have had to do a burn?” Anghar says.

“Many,” Gregar says. “But we have contained any blight in our trees as soon as it was noticed. Basran either did not notice or did not care.”

“Either seems possible to me,” Anghar says, his expression wry. He walks up to another tree, examining it with his claws. “You say the plants are affected as well as the trees. You mean to say that more than one variety of tree is afflicted with this blight?”

“All that we have tested,” I say.

He turns and starts walking back to us, his brow furrowed in thought. “That is not how blights work. They affect certain trees, not all. They-”

His arms flail as his foot sinks into the ground with a squelching noise. I leap to his side, gripping him at the elbow until he finds his footing, pulling his boot out and setting it gingerly down again, testing his weight before committing. His boot is covered in a dark brown slime, the smell of it rancid.

“What is that?” Gregar says as I crouch down to investigate.

It is much the same as the branches - only worse. The rot in the roots is so advanced it has turned them to mulch, the weight of Anghar’s foot more than enough to crush them. I press down on the roots, see how far they remain spongy. It spreads some distance, but only really gets bad close to where Anghar trod.

“More rot,” I say, rising to my feet. I try to brush the slime of the roots off my hand without getting the stink of it on my clothing. “The worst I have seen yet.”

“So a contagion that cannot be caused by the hut and yet is also worse close to it,” Anghar says.

We all turn to look at the hut, considering the contradiction. When I turn back to Gregar, his expression is grim.

“The cause of it is less important to me than the ending of it. I trust I can leave the burn in your capable hands?”

I incline my head. “Of course.”

He nods at me. “Good. Use whatever resources can be spared. I will not have our younglings inherit a sick forest.”

The human females have given us cause to hope since they arrived some half a season ago. But hope can be a sharp edged thing when something is poised to take it away. Gregar’s words are forceful, passionate. But fear shapes them also. It is not just the blight - the presence of the Mercenia hut weighs on all of us. The knowledge that Mercenia was here before, that they might come again.

But I can do nothing about that. It is beyond my knowledge and skills to use the machines that might contain the answers. Blight is something I do know.

“We will stop the blight,” I say, my own passion as strong as Gregar’s. “I would not let you or our future younglings down.”

“I know you would not,” Gregar says.