The Bronze Blade: An Elemental World Novella (4 page)

She panted, the dust creeping into her lungs until she was forced to close her mouth. Forced to stop breathing. She lay in the silent earth, unable to move as her body, starved of fresh blood, slowly repaired itself.

Hours later, the voices approached again, but they did not come close. She could hear the screams of human captives. She heard children crying and men laughing. The humans had gone on a raiding party that day, and Saaral recognized the sounds of fresh slaughter. Her throat burned in hunger, but she had no relief. Little by little, the feeling returned to her legs.

She felt a hand reach down for her, testing to make sure she remained in her living grave. Then it withdrew, and she was alone again.

She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the wind.

Nights passed.

Weeks.

Months.

Saaral woke every night with the earth in her mouth. She did not move. She no longer struggled. She never spoke. She left her body, watching from above as Kuluun, Suk, or Odval checked her each night, sometimes giving her pony blood to keep her alive, sometimes giving her nothing. Always twisting her neck so she was captive to her own useless body as they had made her captive to the earth.

And she watched from above as they dug her out, raped her, then buried her again.

As the months went by, she watched more often from away, leaving the prison of Saaral’s body and drifting above, rising out of the tent and into the skies above until she was part of the darkness. The moon spoke to her. The stars embraced her. The night wind whispered its secrets as her seasons in the earth passed.

By the time Kuluun dug her out of the ground, Saraal had become nothing.

Chapter Three: The Madness

Saaral watched her flit around the tent as Odval grunted between her legs. The laughing creature pointed silently, mimicking the look of pained pleasure the Sida wore as he found his release.

“Ungh, Saaral,” Odval said. “So tight. Not like the humans.”

Odval was so hairy, Saraal wondered whether he’d needed to wear clothes when he was human. Perhaps he had run naked like a pony. He had that much hair.

“Give me your neck.”

Wordlessly, she tilted her head back. Then the laughing creature’s eyes flashed with rage, and she drew a hand across her throat, glaring at Odval as he took her blood.

Saaral lay silent and weak on the floor of the tent. Odval tied his trousers and lifted the tent flap, but not before tossing a skin of pony blood toward her. It lay in the dust. Saaral stared at it, wanting to reach for it, but not giving Odval the satisfaction of seeing her eat.

Saraal would let no one watch her drink. No one but the laughing creature who followed her around the camp.

She had come to Saraal soon after Kuluun finally pulled her from the earth. Saaral did not know how long she had been buried, though she knew they had moved many times. Those flights were her only sliver of life. When Kuluun or one of his brothers would carry her still body in the air as they moved camp, she would feel, for a brief moment, the wind in her hair. She had glimpsed the laughing creature on one of those flights. Saw the corner of her grey eye peeking from behind a cloud. Then she was gone.

She’d appeared again in the moonlight, creeping into camp to sit next to Saaral as she washed clothes in a stream. It looked like a girl around her own age, but Saraal was suspicious. No one else reacted to her, though. They ignored the creature just as they ignored Saraal.

It followed her everywhere. Through the tents. By the cooking fires. She even hovered in the corner of the tent when Kuluun or one of his brothers rutted with her, making faces or looking bored. At first, Saraal was afraid. Afraid that the laughing girl would be captured as she had been. Eventually, she realized that no one saw the creature but her.

She must have been an older Sida because she could fly. She hung in the air and swooped like a joyful bird. One night, Saaral began to talk to her as she washed the clay cooking pots in the sand.

“What is your name?”

“My name?” The creature looked confused for a moment, then she looked up at the full moon. “You can call me Aday.”

It was a name from her human language, and it made Saraal smile. “You’re a Sida like me.”

“Yes.” Aday’s smile grew wide. “And no.”

“What do you mean? Why can no one can see you except me?”

“Can’t they?”

“You know they can’t. That’s why you mock them.”

Aday didn’t respond; she flew up in the air when Kuluun approached Saraal, towering over her.

“Who are you talking to, Saraal?”

Saraal put on the dead expression she wore for him. “No one.”

Aday came back, hovering behind Kuluun and mimicking his angry stance, hands on her hips and eyes narrowed in anger. Saraal saw her, and an unexpected laugh left her throat.

“What is wrong with you?” Kuluun asked. “You don’t speak to anyone but me.”

Then Aday began to sing, though Kuluun ignored her.

“Not true, not true!” Aday’s voice floated in the wind. “She talks to me, you old goat.”

Saraal felt it again, a burst of laughter so high and clear she thought it must be coming from someone else. Kuluun backhanded her. But Saraal didn’t stop laughing because Aday kept singing.

“Old goat! Hairless goat! Do your balls drag behind you, old goat?”

Kuluun glared at the laughing Saraal. “What is wrong with you? Disgusting bitch.”

“
She’s
disgusting?” Aday flew over and hovered in front of Kuluun, but he paid her no attention. “Do you like it when the other goats lick your sagging balls, Kuluun? They must get so dirty in the pony shit.”

Saraal couldn’t stop laughing. Tears came out of her eyes. She didn’t even feel it when Kuluun’s fist connected with her jaw. The pain was inconsequential. The joy of hearing Aday insult Kuluun made any pain he inflicted a pleasure.

Suk must have heard Saraal’s peals of laughter because he wandered over and pulled Kuluun’s arm back, stopping him from hitting her more.

“What’s wrong with you? It’s my turn with her tonight. And I’m tired of fucking a dead thing. Leave her alone, Kuluun.”

The glowering Sida wiped spittle from his mouth, his fangs cutting the back of his hand before he swung at his brother. “Shut up, you stupid shit, or you’ll get no turn with my woman tonight. She’s mine to do with as I like.”

Suk cocked his head, watching Saaral, who was still giggling on the ground.

“What is wrong with her?”

“I don’t know.” Kuluun kicked her, but Saraal just rolled in the sand, laughing.

“She’s mad. You’ve made her mad with your stupid punishment. I told you. She’ll be no good to anyone now.”

Odval wandered over. “At least she’s laughing. Maybe she’ll be a better fuck now that she’s mad.”

“I doubt it.”

Odval shrugged. “I don’t care. I’ll take her if you don’t want her anymore.”

Kuluun punched his brother. “She’s mine. You get a turn with her when I say so.”

“Fine,” Suk said, pulling Odval away before the brothers began fighting again. Saraal just watched them from the ground, smiling when she caught Aday behind them making rude gestures. Soon enough, the brothers wandered away, and she began washing the cooking pots again.
 

Some of the human women who belonged to the other Sida wandered over to do their chores alongside her, but no one spoke to Saraal.

The human women the Sida collected—those they didn’t kill right away—thought of her as a mute. She wasn’t human so she couldn’t be trusted. But they knew she was a captive too, so she wasn’t respected. They treated her with fearful disdain. There was no friendly chatter as the women did their chores, like Saraal faintly remembered from her human life.

The brothers had made many children over the years. Saraal would guess there were over fifty of them. Maybe more. But none was very strong. Not like Kuluun, Suk, and Odval had been. And the brothers were growing weaker. Saraal could sense it. Like water sapping from a leaky skin, every time one of the brothers sired another child, their strength depleted. She wondered what their own sire would think of it, but then she never saw him. He was only a rumor, like the sun.

As if reading her mind, Aday came to sit across from her.

“Who is their master?”

“Kuluun and his brothers?”

“Yes.”

“They call him Jun. I never see him. Only once, when he made me.”

“What do you remember of him?”

She thought back to that night, but the memory had become more and more hazy as the years passed.

“He was frightening.”

Aday glanced around at the human women, who were staring at Saraal. She hissed like a snake, but the humans paid no attention.

Then she asked, “Do you think Jun keeps women, too?”

“I don’t know.”

“How many other children does he have? Many? Like Kuluun and his brothers?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know much.”

Saraal shrugged, oddly hurt by the insult from the laughing creature. “I don’t ask questions.”

The women stood and walked away from her, moving downstream, though they kept their eyes on Saraal. She bared her fangs and they sneered. They also walked faster.

“You
should
ask questions,” Aday said. “You never know what they might answer if you do.”

“Why does it matter?”

Aday floated to her, curling around so that she could whisper in Saraal’s ear.

“If you don’t know how many there are, you don’t know how many you’ll have to kill…”

“I can’t.”

“You can.” Aday floated above her as Saraal washed her clothes in the creek. She was wearing Suk’s cast-offs, which were huge on her, but not as bad as Kuluun’s or Odval’s. “Why couldn’t you?”

“I’m not strong enough.”

“Not yet.” Aday swooped down and hovered over the running stream, her long hair floating in the breeze, lifted by unseen currents. Saraal stared at her longingly. What would it be like to fly? To soar over the earth and feel the wind holding her body as a mother carried a child?

For a moment, she hated Aday. Then the moment passed and she thought about what the other woman had said.

“I’m not strong enough because I only drink pony blood. The others drink from the humans they capture.”

“And why do you drink what they give you, Saraal?” Aday’s grey eyes were playful. “You took from the vein once. Don’t you remember?” The woman’s seductive voice whispered, “How sweet was the blood on your tongue? Do you remember how it made you strong? You could join me, you know…” Aday did a slow flip in the moonlight. “You’re older than most of them now. And you could be stronger. If you drank enough from the humans, you would fly, too.”

A chill wrapped itself around her heart. “And if Kuluun saw it. He would break me.”

Until I become nothing again.

“You’re not nothing,” Aday hissed.

“I am.”

“You’re not.”

“I’m—”

“Not!” Aday sang out, swinging her body up over the water, dipping a hand in the current. “Not, not, not!” she sang some more. “You are mighty, my girl. A warrior in slave’s clothing. A wolf hiding in the brush.”

She hummed an old song Saraal thought she remembered her grandmother singing when she was a child. How the laughing girl knew it, she had no idea. They were many mountains away from her tribe. So many seasons had passed that her son would be grown.

If he’d lived.

“Go away, Aday.” The thought of her green-eyed boy pulled forgotten sorrow from her chest. “I’m tired of you tonight.”

Without a whisper, the flying woman disappeared, and Saraal looked up to see two human women watching her, their eyes wide and frightened. She bared her fangs. It was easy to frighten the humans, and she didn’t like their company anyway. They were more fearful than sheep.

She plunged her hands back into the freezing water. It was spring. Thin shoots of grass fought their way up from the earth, only to be ripped up as the animals fed. The water ran clear and ice-cold from the mountains.

It would take many hours for her clothes to dry. They might not even be done by the next night. No matter. She didn’t feel the cold. Often, Saraal wondered why she wore clothes at all.

Then she would catch a glimpse of one of the human captives, who were tossed naked into piles as they were drained. Like stacks of wood. Jumbled pottery shards. Waste. Their clothes were gone. Wool was not wasted on the dead. Then Saraal would wrap her torn clothing around her more tightly and shove the image from her mind.

She bent over, and her braid dipped in the water. There was a flash of memory, as the stream gripped her hair, pulling it.

“No! Let me go!”

Kuluun grabbing her hair, yanking it as he captured her, dragging her into the darkness.

The water swirled around the long braid. A stick caught in it as she stared.

A new leaf.

Saraal could see quicksilver fish dart to the surface, cautiously testing the black threads that hung in the water like some alien weed, then darting back into the shadows.

How long had she looked into the dark water? She stared at her reflection, the glittering sweep of stars behind her head. The black night beyond.

Nothing.

Saraal let herself absorb the dark sky as she felt her body dissolve, until the stars shone through her and not around. Her hair—that loathsome rope that had bound her to her captor—drifted in front of the vision, marring her view of the sky.

She sat back on her heels, searching the camp.

Kuluun was drinking from a human at the edge of the fire, four of his sons surrounding him. They hoped for his cast-offs. Usually, Kuluun would let them feed after him. If there was any blood left.

Odval was in the corner, fucking a human woman who no longer cried. He’d kept her for almost a week. The woman’s eyes were dead. He would drain her blood soon. Saraal felt relief on her behalf. Odval had no gentleness in him.

Various other Sida strolled around the camp. Some drinking. Some fighting. Others polishing weapons or saddles, since most of them still rode the ponies they stole from the humans. They weren’t strong enough to fly.