A Warrior's Revenge (6 page)

Kana dipped out a big bowl of soup and
noticed Zora smiling up at her from her seat by the fire, “Have him
eating out of your hand already do you?”

Kana smiled back feeling both wonderfully
female and powerful all at the same moment. “Soon.” Was all she
said in reply before she turned and headed back towards the
tent.

Eshta watched Kana go not understanding her
sister’s behavior or the situation that was piling up in layers of
complexity she had no comprehension of. Eshta turned to Zora, her
look of frustration expressing her lack of understanding of the
situation.

Zora just smiled as she gazed into the fire,
“Male and female. Masculine versus feminine. Eshta it’s an
interplay of opposite, but equally compatible, emotions that has
been going on since time began and it has had the same result
countless times over and over again. Don’t try to figure it out
Eshta, it’s something that you have to feel for yourself to fully
understand. What’s taking place right now is just as it was created
and meant to be from mankind’s creation upon the Earth.

Blankly Eshta asked, “What’s the Earth?”

Zora’s expression turned bittersweet, as she
continued to stare into the flames, “So much has been lost. How I
pray that there will be a new beginning for you and your sister and
so many others.”

Kana slipped back inside the tent and after
looking up the Hunter looked back down. She didn’t like calling him
Hunter anymore and wondered if he had a name.

“I brought you some soup.” She said, as she
came to a stop in front of him. He remained still and she decided
to take matters into her own hands. Grasping his left wrist lightly
she lifted it up off his knee and sat down on it.

He abruptly leaned back from her and gave
her a look that said he thought she was crazy. Lifting a spoonful
of the soup to his lips she waited for him to open up, but his lips
and the strong white teeth behind them remained clamped shut. It
was another hurdle to have to overcome apparently.

Kana balanced the bowl between her knees and
lifted her left hand up toward his face. She didn’t dare make eye
contact with him, as starring fixatedly at his mouth she squeezed
his nostrils shut. Eventually he was going to have to open his
mouth, unless he could breathe through his ears.

His mouth came open grudgingly and in went
the soup spoon, even as she let go of his nose. She got another
spoonful and lifted it and this time his mouth opened without
coercion. The success she was having was lost on her, as an
unintended awareness of being so close to him and watching his
mouth move was impinging on her control of the situation.

She grabbed his hand and stuck the bowl into
it before standing up quickly, “There, you see how it’s done. You
can finish the rest of it on your own.” Kana said, as she retreated
quickly towards the tent flap needing the fresh air that lay
outside.

She’d reach the tent flap, when his voice
calling her name stopped her, “Kana?” She looked back at him
questioningly.

“Kana means beautiful doesn’t it?” He asked
slowly.

“Yes.” She whispered before ducking out of
the tent.

The Hunter looked at the tent flap for a
while and then down at the bowl in his hand. He stared at it for a
moment and then glanced over to the knife lodged in the table
seeming to weigh the option that it represented and then he glanced
back to the swaying tent flap. He picked the spoon up and began to
finish off the rest of the soup. This would be his decision, for
now at least.

Kana stayed away for the rest of the day
feeling too emotionally exposed to the stranger to want to be near
him. Her life had been turned upside down by this Hunter and it
wasn’t fair. She didn’t know what she wanted or what was right.
Maybe it was her inner turmoil over the strange connection she had
with the Hunter or perhaps from guilt, because of not going back to
changes his bandage in the evening like she should have. Whatever
it was it was keeping her awake and restless long into the night,
which is why she heard the slight cry that she probably wouldn’t
have, if she’d been sleeping and instinctively she knew it was
him.

She jumped out of her blankets and winced,
as she forgot about her ankle and then as quickly as she could she
hobbled over to the Hunter’s tent. In the dim light of the single
candle burning in the room she saw the Hunter thrashing about on
the floor moaning.

Kana dropped to her knees beside him and
shook his shoulder hard and he jarred awake and almost knocked her
over backward with how abruptly he sat up. He was breathing as hard
as if he’d been in a race and he was covered in sweat.

“A nightmare?” Kana asked softly wanting to
console the terrible look in his eyes.

He looked at her and blinked briefly, “No,
not a nightmare just reality.” He abruptly got up and walked out
into the night and she stared in shock after him. Where was he
going?

Kana got to her feet and ran out of the tent
into the darkness of the night and almost smacked into his back.
She pulled off to the side of him a little and watched him, as he
stared up at the starry night sky.

“What is it that you want from me?” He asked
his voice loud in the night.

“Zora says that you’re important to our
future. She believes that you could be the key to our freedom from
the survival on the edge that we cling to.”

The Hunter snorted loudly in contempt, “Do
you believe her?”

Kana stammered slightly, “I trust Zora with
my life.”

“That’s not what I asked, do you believe
her?” He pressed.

“I’m not sure.” Kana stammered out in
response.

“Then why are you risking anything to do
with me?” The Hunter declared angrily turning to face her.

Kana wanted to back away, but didn’t and
instead held her ground, as he came up to stand inches from her.
“Zora asked me to and because I saw… I saw something in you.”

“Tell me Kana what did you see?”

Kana looked down and then back up and firmly
got out, “I saw a man. A man who still cares. A good man!”

He was quiet for a moment and then in a
calmer tone he asked, “Kana do you know how many people I’ve killed
with these hands?” Both of his hands came up to rest on her
shoulders and involuntarily Kana quivered in remembrance of having
those hands around her neck choking the life out of her.

“How close I came to killing you?” He
pressed.

She didn’t have an answer and she stood
quivering slightly in the dark under the weight of his hands.

“I’ll give you a hint Kana, it doesn’t stop
at a thousand or two thousand or even three thousand.”

Kana’s lips quivered and tears ran down her
face at the awful intensity she saw in his eyes. “That doesn’t
matter.” She managed to whisper out.

Anger surged through the Hunter and his
hands squeezed down over her shoulders to the point of pain.
“Doesn’t matter! Tell me Kana, has a Hunter ever killed someone you
cared about?”

Kana’s eyes were awash with tears and all of
her shook as she stood in his grasp. She looked down, but he shook
her hard and she looked back up at him barely able to hold back the
deep sobs that wanted to come out.

“Well have you?” He almost shouted into her
face.

“Yes!” She choked out emotionally.

“Who was it Kana, who did I or someone just
like me take away from you for forever?”

On a sob she breathed out, “My parents.”

His grip on her shoulders relax slightly and
his tone softened a little, “I took your parents from you Kana! You
of all people should hate me and want me dead this night!”

“But I don’t! What you did or didn’t do
doesn’t matter now because….” She trailed off, as she saw the
intensity of his eyes.

“Because of what Kana?” He asked
brutally.

“Because I’ve forgiven you!”

His face reflected stunned shock, “You’ve
forgiven me?”

“Yes, because you’re not the same man that
you were when you killed all those people!

“Yes I am Kana!” He said angrily just before
he turned away from her.

“No you’re not and I can prove it to you!”
Kana said forcefully, as she regained her composure slightly.

He turned back to her threateningly and
asked, “How can you prove that?”

Kana stepped forward and grabbed both of his
wrists and then brought both of his hands up to her throat, “If
you’re the same man then finish what you started and kill me!”

He looked at her in stunned disbelief
shaking his head no reflexively before ripping his hands free of
her grasp and hurriedly stepping back from her several paces.

“That proves nothing!” He said less
passionately, as if he didn’t quite believe it himself.

“It proves a great deal! That machine thing
they hooked up to you is what controlled you to do the things that
you have done, otherwise you would’ve killed me just now, but you
can’t because you’re a good man at heart. The monsters, who put
that device on you are the ones responsible for what they made you
do! You are just a weapon in their hands to use, but now you have a
chance to do something good with the very skills they taught you to
kill us with and thus define who you truly are as a person!” Kana
had advanced, as she had spoken pointing her finger passionately at
him, until she was close enough to jab a finger against his hard
chest with her last words.

He gazed at her and swallowed slightly, as
he watched her breathe hard after delivering her impassioned speech
and not for the first time he was overwhelmed by how beautiful she
was, especially right now in her impassioned defense of his
character. He wanted to continue to wallow in the self-hatred that
came so easily in regards to the innocent blood that his hands had
spilled, but she had left him no room to do so.

“What is it that you want me to do?” He
asked softly in defeat.

Kana blinked, had she really just convinced
him of his worth as a human being enough for him to throw in with
them and stop from the quest of killing himself? Where was Zora
when you needed her, thought Kana, as she scrambled to come up with
an answer to his question.

Out of the darkness Zora’s aged voice spoke,
“I need you to protect these girls Loric. I need you to lead them
somewhere where they will be safe and you know where that is. It’s
the only place left that still holds the secrets capable of
defeating the enemy. It’s time to wake the Guardian. You alone know
where she sleeps.” Zora had approached, as she had talked from out
of the deeper shadows, until she stood in the slight light cast off
from the moon that Loric and Kana stood in.

Kana looked from Zora to Loric and back
again, a sense of awe overcoming her as she watched the two. Every
nerve and muscle seemed to pulse within the Hunter’s body. Zora
knew his name? Loric?

“Who are you and how do you know about the
Guardian?” Kana heard the man called Loric breath out in
question.

“I was your grandmother’s youngest sister. I
was born a Ta’lont just as you were, only then my name wasn’t Zora,
but instead it was Ellasantha.”

Kana watched Loric suck a deep breath in, as
Zora held out her arms before her. “These arms rocked you to sleep
when you were just a baby. I saw what happened that night Loric. I
saw you rush to defend your mother being just a boy of seven years.
I saw you carried away by the dark ships of the enemy. I and a few
other survivors buried your mother next to your father. Little did
I dare hope that you could have survived all this time, but when I
saw you but a day ago I knew. You have the strength and bearing of
character of your father and his father before him and so one
dating back all the way to Tadias the great patriarch of our
family. That you have come to us is no coincidence, but rather
instead it is a sign from God to me of the excellence of His ways
and His mercy that my old eyes should once again see the glory of
my family bloodline continue on into the future and that my prayers
for the girls I have shepherded over the years have not gone
unanswered.”

There was a stillness then, as Kana moved to
console Zora, who was crying as she stared at Loric. It was the
first time Kana had ever seen Zora shed a tear and she did so now
with abandon. Eshta came out of the darkness and hugged Zora.

As Zora calmed down, Loric asked softly,
“How is it that you know of the Guardian? No one was to know of
her!”

Zora gathered herself, as she stood
supported by both Eshta and Kana, “Your father in his delirium
before death mistook me for your mother and told me of the agony of
his decision. He told me that he had almost awakened the Guardian,
but had managed to hold off, because it was not yet time. She was
to sleep for two hundred and seventy-five years and there were
still two years left to go yet before it was time for her
awakening. He feared that awakening her early would’ve led to
disaster so he let her sleep and watched powerlessly, as our people
were slaughtered. It was that agony of powerlessness that I believe
killed him over any of the injuries that he had sustained in
battle. It is time for the Guardian to awaken Loric! Well past
time!”

Loric looked away and then back, as the
gathered women watched tears slide down his face. He spoke, “I’m
afraid that even the Guardian cannot restore what has been lost and
done to the land and its peoples Ellasantha.”

Zora broke free from the girls supporting
hold on her and approached Loric and grabbed onto his muscular
arms, “You and I both know Loric that the Guardian was never
intended to save this world from its fallen state, but rather that
she was meant to lead those that had survived onward to a new
future beyond the sad place that our world has become. Will you
lead my girls over the mountains and take them to safety
Loric?”