Alien Chronicles 3 - The Crystal Eye (11 page)

When Tantha didn’t immediately respond, Ampris took her clenched fist and forced it down to the cub, which rooted blindly against it.

“Let her learn your smell,” Ampris said.

Slowly Tantha’s fist uncurled. The fierceness in her eyes faded. Gazing down, she caressed her tiny spotted daughter, and her rigid muscles relaxed. When she began to croon softly to the little ones, Ampris backed away.

Tantha’s head snapped up in fresh alarm. “Ampris!”

Ampris turned back immediately. “I won’t leave you. I promise,” she said. “I must check on Elrabin. He’s hurt.”

The fear vanished from Tantha’s eyes. “Hurt? How bad?”

“I don’t know yet,” Ampris replied truthfully. “Let me make sure he doesn’t need anything, then I will return.”

“I must move my cubs back to camp,” Tantha said. She tried to stand up and shuddered, sinking down again.

Ampris hurried to her side and gripped her shoulders. “Stay here,” she said firmly. “You are not well enough yet to move.”

“But I—”

“We will move your cubs to the camp. We will take care of them, and they will be fine,” Ampris assured her. “I will help you. I promise. Now stay here and rest until I come back. You must gather all the strength you can. Will you do that?”

Tantha met her eyes, still looking rebellious, but after a moment she nodded. “I will.”

“Good.” Ampris gave her a pat. “Rest and do not fear. I will take care of you.”

By evening she had Tantha and her cubs settled in their shelter. She boiled water and helped Tantha wash herself so that she could rest better. As twilight gathered in dark indigo shadows beneath the trees and closed in on the camp, Ampris picked up Elrabin and moved him into his shelter. He had fever and muttered restlessly, tossing about. She tried again to give him water. After a few swallows he quietened for a while. Ampris doused her fire and settled herself to rest a short time. She was so tired she could not hold her eyes open. Yet after a couple of hours of deep sleep, she jerked awake and listened.

The noise came again, a muffled whimper.

Ampris rose immediately and checked on her patients. She found Tantha sleeping with her cubs, but Elrabin’s fever seemed higher. He was sitting up, staring into the darkness.

Ampris coaxed him into lying down again and spent the rest of the night sitting beside him, doing what she could to ease his fever and misery, and dozing in between times.

By dawn, her neck was stiff and sore, and she hurt all over. Her own graze was not healing well. It looked puffy and her arm felt hot. Ampris went off to the stream to clean it properly. She knew she could not afford to fall ill herself. Her cubs had taken her hunting sling, so she went off to hunt without it.

She did not mean to venture so far or be gone so long, but when she finally came climbing up out of the canyon and ascended the trail into camp, she carried a plump grassen hen by its feet. She had snared it at the hen’s main nesting place, where she’d managed to steal some eggs as well, which were carefully placed inside her pocket. She was coated with dust and had twigs and leaves tangled in her fur, but tonight she and her patients would eat well.

Before she reached camp, she caught the smell of Viis. At once her neck fur bristled and her lips drew back in a silent snarl. Keeping to cover, she slipped up to the clearing. But it was Harthril who emerged from her tent, not patrollers. The tall Reject wore a tattered jerkin and hood that concealed his features. His hunting axe hung at his belt, along with his water skin and a serviceable knife. Whatever he’d been searching for, he evidently had not found it, for his hands were empty.

Ampris stepped out from the trees and said, “What are you looking for, Harthril?”

He spun around, his hand reaching for his knife before he recognized her. Straightening, he stared, shoving back his hood to reveal his mottled rill and scrawny neck.

His blue eyes swept over her, noticing the grassen dangling from her hand. He gave her a tiny nod of approval. “Thought you were dead.”

“I’m not.” She’d never distrusted him since he and Luax had joined their group, but Harthril could be unpredictable at times. “Where are the others?”

“Safe.”

She allowed herself to savor the momentary luxury of relief. Since her return she’d kept busy in order not to let herself worry too much about Foloth and Nashmarl. Still, Harthril was never one to talk much. He answered only direct questions and volunteered almost nothing. She had to make sure.

“Are all of them well?” she asked. “Everyone accounted for?”

His tongue flickered out, but he did not evade the question. “No. Tantha left behind. But she is here.”

“Yes, and very angry at being abandoned,” Ampris said. “Did you lose anyone else?”

“No.”

“My cubs?”

He hesitated a moment. “Safe.”

“Any trouble?”

Harthril’s blue eyes stared at her a long moment. “I found Elrabin, much hurt,” he said, evading her question. “Where is Paket?”

Her shoulders slumped. “Dead.”

His rill rose up behind his head, but he displayed no other emotion. “This is a great loss to us.”

Guilt mixed with grief washed over her. “The patrollers shot him while we were escaping. He should have stayed here in camp.”

“Velia says he volunteered to help rescue you. Elrabin would not wait until my return.”

Ampris nodded. “And now Paket is dead and Elrabin is hurt. I feel responsible. They should have both stayed here.”

But as she said it, she knew how relieved she’d been to see them.

“We now have others to feed,” Harthril said, shifting the conversation.

She lifted her gaze to his. “Others? You mean some of the field slaves?”

He gestured assent.

“How many?”

“Too many to feed.”

She sighed. “We’ll manage. Once they learn to hunt—”

“More patrollers in the fields today. Maybe come back into hills with sniffers,” Harthril said. “Too close. Too risky. Fires drive game away maybe. Not much game left to hunt anyway. We must go.”

“I agree. But we must wait until Elrabin and Tantha are well enough to travel. Is anyone else hurt?”

“Robuhl fell and hurt leg.”

She backed her ears. “Can he walk?”

“He cries.”

Pity touched her. The poor old creature had outgrown his own wits. Now he was as helpless and simple as an infant. “We’ll have to carry him.”

“Carry Elrabin too?”

“Maybe. He has fever, and I’m not sure if he will recover.”

Harthril’s tongue flickered out. He stepped closer and rested his hand briefly on Ampris’s shoulder, surprising her again.

“You cured Luax of the wasting sickness. You will cure Elrabin,” he said with assurance. “Stay here. I will bring others tomorrow. We will talk then of where to go.”

Ampris watched him leave the camp and melt into the undergrowth with smooth expertise. She wished she could share his confidence.

Tantha appeared in the doorway of her shelter, cradling one of her sleeping cubs on her shoulder. “Is he gone?” she asked, her voice a husky growl.

“Yes.”

“Good. I will forgive none of them!”

“Tantha—”

“You have food. Good. I am hungry.”

Tantha vanished inside her shelter. Ampris backed her ears but decided to say nothing at the moment. Tantha had been hard to deal with ever since her mate died, but she needed to remember she wasn’t the center of the universe. Still, Ampris remembered how she’d felt during pregnancy and after giving birth. She found a well-spring of sympathy for Tantha and went off to clean and cook the grassen.

Tantha came outside, pacing back and forth while the grassen finished cooking. Delectable smells filled the air. Ampris’s mouth was watering. She could barely keep herself from grabbing the fowl off the fire and tearing it into pieces. But eating an underdone grassen was like chewing wood.

Mewing sounds of curiosity caught her attention. She turned her head and saw the cubs venturing past the doorway of the shelter. Their eyes had opened today, and now they came crawling out, wobbly and adorable. All were spotted except the little male. His coat was light brown in hue, but it had no markings of any kind.

Ampris left her cooking fire and went to scoop him up. Cuddling him close, she smiled into his wide eyes and slid her finger beneath his tiny chin. He snuggled closer to her, but Tantha appeared at Ampris’s side and grabbed him. Draping him behind her neck, she gave Ampris a brief but hostile glance of warning and walked away to gather up her other wandering cubs.

Baring her teeth, Ampris snarled silently at Tantha’s back and went back to her cooking. She worked busily, collecting the sizzling cooking juices in a small brass pot. It helped distract her mind from the welcome sensation of holding a tiny cub in her arms again. There was nothing equal to the joy of motherhood, nothing as precious as those first few days of communing between mother and infant: learning each other’s smell, discovering deep and tender mutual love. Over the years, there had been a time or two when Ampris would have taken a mate, but the male Aarouns could not tolerate the physical ugliness of Foloth and Nashmarl enough to accept them as family. Both her sons needed a male figure in their lives, someone with brute strength to back up his authority. Elrabin tried his best to help her raise them, but they were now the same size as the Kelth and they refused to respect him as they should.

Her busy hands slowed and grew idle. She stared past the fire, caught by a feeling of intense loneliness. She missed her sons, missed their arguments and bickering, missed how clumsy they were, all elbows and feet, missed them surrounding her with hugs and growls, complaining constantly about how hungry they were, or begging her to get the portable vid player recharged so they could watch it. They were growing up semi-feral, their manners rough except when it suited them to remember her instructions. Often she feared for them, feared what kind of world they would find when they grew up. They fit in nowhere except here, yet this was not the kind of life she had envisioned for them. What would the future give them, when they were neither Viis nor Aaroun, but instead some terrible mixture of both? Already they had often known the stinging cruelty of rejection and insult. She prayed nightly for them, while they snored on their side of the tent, asking that they might grow up strong and healthy, that they might grow into wisdom and good sense. For they would have to forge their own paths, would have to make their own place in a world that might not ever accept them.

“Goldie?”

Her name was spoken by a voice so weak she barely heard it.

Startled from her reverie, Ampris looked around and saw Elrabin leaning against the doorway of his shelter. Beneath the crooked bandage swathing his head, his bloodshot eyes stared at her.

“Elrabin!” She jumped to her feet and hurried over to him. “You shouldn’t be up. Let me get you back to bed.”

He tried to protest, but he was too weak to resist her. By the time she lowered him onto his blanket and covered him, he was falling asleep again. She sat beside him, holding his hand, until she was certain he was settled.

Returning to her dinner, she lifted the grassen off the fire and laid it on a flat, washed rock to cool. She mixed warm water with the cooking juices she’d collected and when the mixture was cool enough she awoke Elrabin and fed the broth to him.

He sipped eagerly, too weak to even hold up his head without help, and he fell asleep again before he finished all the broth. Ampris tucked the blanket around him and watched over his sleep a few moments longer. He seemed to be mending at last, and she was thankful to see this improvement.

When she emerged from his shelter, she found Tantha sitting on the ground, gnawing on the cooked grassen.

Ampris roared in outrage and rushed at Tantha. She knocked the food from Tantha’s hands, and Tantha swiped back with an angry roar of her own. The rake of her claws across Ampris’s wounded arm broke the last seal on Ampris’s temper. She grabbed Tantha in a head-lock and flipped her onto her back with enough force to knock the wind from the spotted Aaroun.

Tantha lay there, wheezing for breath. Ampris stood over her with ears back and teeth bared. Tantha tried to sit up, but Ampris planted her foot on the Aaroun and held her down.

“I hunted that food,” she said furiously.

Tantha’s eyes held both anger and desperation. “I have cubs to feed.”

“We were to share it,” Ampris said. She moved her foot and stepped back, letting Tantha up. “Always I have shared. If you had any doubt you could have asked. There is no need to steal behind my back.”

Panting, Tantha looked from Ampris to the food lying on the ground and said nothing.

“We are not barbarians,” Ampris said. She picked up the grassen and dusted the grass and dirt off it. Expertly, she tore the still-warm carcass in half and tossed a share to Tantha.

The other Aaroun caught it and resumed eating, tearing off chunks of the white, juicy meat and almost gulping them whole.

Ampris waited, but it seemed Tantha had no intention of offering an apology. Disappointment sank through Ampris. After her kindness toward Tantha, she was hurt that Tantha could be so selfish.

Yet it had long been the tradition among slaves of all kinds to stand alone, to not help each other. The Viis encouraged this, wanting the abiru to betray and distrust each other so that never again would they unite and become a force to be reckoned with. Ampris had thought that among her own small community this trait could be changed, but it took only a crisis or the threat of starvation to tear all her progress down.

She ate slowly, unable to taste her meal while Tantha polished off every morsel and even crunched the bones to suck the marrow from them. When she finished, Tantha buried the bones neatly and walked away in silence.

Still fuming, Ampris put out the cooking fire and cleaned up, then she went back to sit by Elrabin.

She was there, an hour or so later, holding his hand and softly singing over him when a figure appeared in the doorway of the small shelter.

“So,” Velia’s shrill voice said, “this is where I find my mate, in the arms of another female.”