The Last of the Ageless (21 page)

The Joey tossed Dalan his other pack. Even with an injured tail, the awkward alien had clambered back down into the ravine to get the boy’s belongings before they’d fled. Ti’rros handed Dalan’s gun back to him and said, “It is clear I should protect you on your journeys in return for saving my pitiful life twice.”

Nyr’s eyes narrowed. She’d have to watch their alliance closely.

“I always thought there was something suspicious about you, Dalan.”

“Never knew any tribes could transmeld besides mine,” Dalan said in his strange dialect.

“Yours wasn’t the only tribe gifted with the aliens’
blessing
.” Nyr said the last word sarcastically, looking at Ti’rros.

The Joey’s blank, stupid expression wasn’t worth the trouble. “It only makes sense that my ancestors would try to dominate a weaker species.”

Dalan’s head whipped around so fast, Nyr couldn’t contain her laughter. “What’d I tell you, Dalan? The Joeys have always considered humans inferior. That’s why they brought about the Catastrophe. Tell him, Joey. Tell him you would’ve preferred we let you die.”

“Yes,” Ti’rros said. “It is as I mentioned in the canyon.” The ridiculous-looking hairs on the alien’s head wavered in opposition to the faint breeze. They must be nearer to the grasslands than Nyr had calculated.

Dalan sounded strangled as he asked, “Why?”

“Because we’re ants to be crushed.” Nyr watched his expression, wondering how his tribe had failed to educate him in the history every child knew. “The descendants of the aliens consider all of us inferior, Changeling, Purebred, Brute, what-have-you—if we all died out, the Joeys would celebrate world-wide. So you see, there was no point saving her.”

The boy shook his head in disbelief, then tilted his face to the sky. His eyes came to rest on something, and Nyr followed his gaze up to the Fragment, the constant reminder that the Joeys’ ancestors had won. The aliens hadn’t managed to exterminate the Ancients, true, but chemical warfare and disease nearly had. They’d ruined everything during the Catastrophe, leaving the descendants of both sides to scrape out a life in the ruins of a world no longer worth fighting over. Why the boy had saved one of them escaped her understanding.

His saving you made no sense either.
It took Nyr a second to determine whether that mental voice belonged to her or the amulet. The trinket tended to spend long periods of time dormant, when nothing awakened it. She decided this thought was her own.

“I know this is difficult for you to understand, Dalan,” the Joey said. “I am a true abomination, not Purebred, as the humans would say. It is shameful to be deformed like me, but to have been saved by an inferior species only brings greater shame.”

Behind them came the buzz of the boy’s pet dragonfly. Although Dalan could make it obey his silent commands, the bug fell farther and farther behind. Only their infrequent breaks allowed it to catch up. It seemed as exhausted as the rest of them.

“Time to go,” Nyr reminded them. They had to push on. Despite the extra weapons Nyr had lifted from the dead scouts, she would be too tired to put up a good fight. Plus, they skirted too close to Hellsworth territory for her comfort.

They shuffled across rocky earth, avoiding the larger boulders. By late afternoon, Dalan ran out of water and stopped in his tracks.

“What’s the matter with you?” Nyr faced the way they’d come, hoping they’d outdistanced the dust cloud, but it remained on the horizon.

“Have another canteen somewhere...” The boy rummaged through his pack.

“You’re using up all of our water.” Nyr continued toward the south, the other two flanking her. Dalan found the canteen and took a long, greedy gulp. He stumbled over a stone and caught himself, coughing. Nyr should’ve felt satisfied by slapping the boy down, but a twinge of guilt spoiled the moment. She shook it off and picked up the pace.

After an hour or so more, Nyr slowed to avoid leaving them behind. Dalan merely shuffled along. The Joey made no mention of her injuries, but her tail sometimes dragged behind her. All the Joeys Nyr had ever seen had met their deaths with more dignity than any human. If the alien’s tail was infected, Dalan and Nyr might not know until it went septic.

In the distance, short, stubby trees cast long shadows in the early twilight. More shrubs underfoot made for slower going. They’d straggled deeper into the borderlands than Nyr had wanted. Stumbling through obstacles at night while exhausted would cost them more time in the long run.

Stumbling over a gnarled root, Nyr tossed up her hands. “Alright, time for a break.” When Dalan collapsed to the ground, she stood over him and put her hands on her hips. “For such a powerful Changeling, you’re pathetic.”

Dalan took another greedy drink from the canteen before holding it up to the Joey. They were lucky Nyr had the foresight to take all the water off the scouts they’d slain, or they never would’ve made it this far.

“Transmelding takes a lot of energy, you know.” Dalan dropped his pack to the ground and rested his head on it.

Inside Nyr’s mind, a voice said,
Not all tribes are as hardy as yours
. Her thoughts had grown more tangled with the voice over the past few days, but she recognized this backhanded compliment as the amulet’s.

“Oh, you’re back,” she snapped. “Just in time to annoy us.”

When she didn’t hear anything more from the little parasite around her neck, Nyr set about preparing dinner with the Joey’s help. Between the two of them, they’d managed to bring along quite an inventory of food. Nyr built a small fire and boiled some water while Ti’rros peeled and sliced tubers the dead scouts had thoughtfully provided.

The Joey prodded Dalan with the tip of her tail, as though afraid to touch the boy. Dalan muttered his thanks and took a boiled tuber. The three of them ate dinner in near silence, and without even offering to take watch, Dalan immediately fell back to sleep.

As though sensing Nyr’s annoyance, the Joey offered, “It would be no trouble to take first watch.”

Nyr nodded and unrolled her bedding, planning to shift forms under her blankets.

The Joey pointed at the sky, and Nyr followed her gaze.

Dalan’s pet bug darted around, doing loops midair and diving toward the fire. Nyr picked up a gun she’d taken from one of the scouts, but stayed low to avoid making herself an easy target. The Joey took the rifle, her hands sliding along its body with familiarity. The insect continued its insane dance.

“It’s trying to warn us,” Nyr murmured.

Dalan started to snore.

From the scraggly bushes to the west, Nyr heard a familiar hissing noise, and what sounded like the wind howling through a canyon. The hiss came again, and when she heard the wind instrument’s eerie moan once more, Nyr told the Joey, “Stay here and keep watch over the boy. My old clan must’ve tracked me down.”

She crept toward the chest-high bushes, the gun still clutched in her right hand. Shifting forms, Nyr tensed and her pointed ears swiveled at the quiet sounds of the borderlands at night.

A noise from ahead to her left was meant to distract her. She whipped her gun to the right instead. At the crunch of a boot on dry earth behind her, Nyr ducked.

A clawed hand passed over her head. She whirled, coming up with a left-handed uppercut to her attacker’s jaw. As he stumbled back, she trained her gun on him. Other figures came out of the darkness, surrounding her.

“You’ve grown soft in your time away, Nyr,” her clan master rasped. Klin wore an open black vest and dark denim pants. Familiar orange fur covered every inch of visible skin. “Using a projectile weapon instead of your claws? Pitiful.”

She lowered the gun and gave a nod of respect. “Clan Master Klin, I appreciate you taking the time to look for me, but I didn’t need rescuing.”

“Of course not. The thought never occurred to me. I did, however, wonder why you ran away from your own clanmates.”

More felines circled her, including a few new, young faces—as well as the one she’d punched. He came forward, red-faced and rubbing his jaw.

“Taking in children now?” Nyr smirked.

“Tal and his littermates were old enough. Too bad you missed the ceremony.”

The air grew thick with tension. Nyr wondered if Klin was bold enough to order her killed. Her claws pushed out of her fingertips. A better clan master would kill her himself.

Klin put a heavy paw on her shoulder. He raised his voice, addressing the twenty or so felines surrounding them. “Let’s go back to camp. Nyr can tell us more about her journeys... and her plunder!”

Nyr had no choice but to follow. When one’s clan master spoke, one either obeyed—or challenged him.

The Tiger Clan didn’t respect Klin as much as they had the strong warrior who’d been his predecessor, she mused. Rather than keeping for himself the plunder the clan gained, Klin gave most of it back to each clan member, effectively buying their loyalty. It wasn’t the Hellsworth way.

Nyr had hoped to bring back enough treasure on her own to impress her clanmates, and then challenge Klin to combat. She would have defeated him in two ways, and more than proven herself fit for rule. But now she needed a new plan.

The overpowering scent of cooking meat interrupted her thoughts. Her clan had pitched their tents not far from where Dalan napped, but far enough the Joey wouldn’t see them through the dark and the undergrowth. Though Nyr had just eaten, she’d gladly partake of meat, all too rare near the drylands. In their quiet way, Nyr’s clansmates gathered around the fire as they waited for the four designated cooks to finish.

After the cooks distributed the meat, some of the younger members scuffled, trying to take more than their share from each other. Tal and one of the other younger felines tumbled beside the fire, their feet almost touching the flames. They rolled too close to Klin, and he kicked one of them in the ribs. “Tal. Orn. Enough. No time for that tonight. Listen to Nyr’s tale.”

Nyr chewed a piece of venison, savoring the juices flowing over her tongue while deliberating on what to say. “I’m sure you all remember our last victory before I wandered off.”

The Hellsworth Tribe council had dispatched the Tiger Clan to “collect tribute” from a village of Purebreeds not far from the tribe’s ever-expanding northern border. Unwilling to claim the barren drylands as their own, Hellsworth Tribe territory crept around the borderlands in a dogleg before pushing north.

At Nyr’s question, there were nods and mutterings of, “They were weak,” and “It was too easy!”

Nyr looked around the circle at her fellow Changelings. With few in cat form, they might have been mistaken for a clan of Purebreeds, except for the lack of weapons. Ti’rros had been right about that.

Nyr spoke around her next bite. “I was all set to slice open a Purebreed, but what he said intrigued me. If I spared him, he said, he would tell me where I could find a treasure worth our entire tribe’s weight in gold. I let him talk for a few more minutes about this village. The defenses of the tribe. And so on. With those details, he couldn’t be lying. Still, I broke a few of his fingers just to be sure.”

Her clanmates’ chuckling reassured her. Nyr glanced around the fire and noticed Jaul’s eyes fixed upon her. She winked at her former littermate and lover, and then wondered why Neula wasn’t at his side. Nyr refused to believe her friend might be dead, but Jaul’s mane of trophies had grown thicker, making Nyr wonder what battles she’d missed.

“Go on,” Klin said.

Nyr continued, “I dragged him with me to the village—Mapleton, I think it was—and sneaked into the hut the pathetic fool had described. The occupant of the hut didn’t take kindly; let’s just say I had to put him down. But everything the old man said was right. I found this.”

Nyr lifted the trinket from her chest for them to see, away from the dozen other necklaces she wore. The pink orbs inside glowed in the darkness. Iuka, a young woman who’d always looked up to Nyr, stared at her across the fire, rapt. Even perched on a stool, Iuka’s full-length cotton dress brushed the dry earth.

Nyr didn’t mention she’d already had her trophy by then and had found its mates in a trunk inside the hut. Nor did she want her clanmates to know she’d been so enthralled with her discovery that she’d neglected to notice she had company in the hut until the voice warned her.

She gathered her thoughts. “I heard his friends outside. That was my cue to head out. I sliced open a couple of them on my way—knocked over a brazier of fire to keep them busy. Unfortunately, several of them followed me on horseback. That’s why I wasn’t able to return so quickly. I knew better than to lead them to my clan: that would be stupid. So I led them on a chase, hoping to double-back and take them out, one by one.”

Meeting her clanmates’ eyes, she wondered how to tell them about the next parts. She wouldn’t mention that her trophy had been whispering in her mind about other pretties scattered throughout the drylands—her clanmates would think she was crazy. And she deserved to keep some of what she gained.

“Imagine my shock when I saw two figures firing at my pursuers. One was a man, another a Joey, if you can believe it. Their distraction was all I needed to finish off the few who remained. Unfortunately, they had few possessions. My two ‘rescuers’ thought they’d saved a poor helpless Purebred girl until I showed them otherwise. I didn’t see any reason not to travel with them until I could catch back up with you. And here we are.”