6 bells later
The heavy tears of Makutsi plinked against leather and metal armour. Blades caught the red glow of the fires that blazed, many pavilions were set alight. A chaos of screaming and yelling were drowned out in the clang of steel as it rang, as blades met blades. Sparks flew with the fighting, hissing as they died in the rain. Drykas were fighting invaders that had swept up onto the shore in a ship, wreathed in the deep night shadows. The walahks came, greed-possessed, cutting down men, women and babes in their barbaric path.
Rufio was panting heavily, sweat mingling with the icy droplets drenching her skin. She had been awoken by the cold fire-pit by Louka’s panicked voice. He had dragged her up the beach, were they had climbed the sand dunes, huffing and grunting as their hands clawed at the sharp, dry grasses and their feet sunk into the soft sands. They had ran for their pavilion, to warn and protect their family. To bring Drykas down to the shore, to protect the city.
Too late. The walahks came in the night, when families slept sound and unprepared. It had been so long since they had faced death brought upon them that was not of nature’s wreaking. Drought, famine, sickness, storms, wildfires. The Drykas danced with Caiyha and Zulrav, and moved with these setbacks, they grew through them with a resilience wrought in them like iron. Killing by the blade was an altogether more lethal blow. It was certain, and swift.
Tears ran unchecked down the Wildmane’s freckled cheeks, pain and fury and loss etched in her face as she turned towards the grasslands and faced the fiery glow of another burning pavilion. Tal’c, her Ankal, was howling behind her. He crouched over his wife, a bloody baby in his arms. His pain wrenched so deeply that Rufio felt his voice would split the heavens and beseech Zulrav to strike the raiders down. He did not move from his dark grey throne above.
It was Makutsi who seemed to feel the Drykas’ pain tonight, she wept heavily for their loss.
“Rufio.” The male voice sounded distant, muffled, as if the cousin that spoke it did so through water. She knelt in the muck, one hand clutching at the handle of a falx, her other resting on the chest of her favourite spirit in all the world. Louka lay dead and bloody beside her.
“Rufio!” Alar’ck called, a rough hand gripping at her shoulder and tugging her from her distracted numbness and into the horrid reality.
“Rufio, we must fight, get up!”She turned her ochre orbs to Al’s fervent face, noting the rage that tinged his cheekbones with shadows, and his deep brown eyes felt as if they would swallow her as weakened as she sat.
“There are others, get up!”“It is too late...” Rufio muttered, and sucked in a sharp breath of surprise at her voice. It was hoarse and broken. Tears anew spilled from her eyes and she moaned like a cow in labor.
Louka was dead. She had witnessed it, helpless to prevent it.
▵ ▿ ▹
3 bells ago
Louka had charged on without her when she could not keep up wth him.
Her timid, awkward cowardly Louka,
fearless.
He had plunged into camp, crying out like a warrior, kicking and slamming into those who invaded their pavilion. He had wrenched his half-spear from the rack it sat by the doorway, and had swiped it furiously at the foreigners, fierce as a lion raking its claw at the hyena.
At his feet Yama lay, her head split open by a club. Tal’c was in nothing but shirt and hide pants, brawling with the man who had struck down his wife. His bare knuckles split and ruined as he smashed in the man’s skull. There had been too many of them, the confusion overwhelming. Rufio could not get out of her head the screaming of Mar’ck, the baby, kicking and writhing in the dirt by his mother's lifeless arms.
Could never un-see the way the striders were shrieking and panicked, their hooves bricks of sheer power, stomping this way and that. She had
known what was coming, the gruesome knowing tore up her throat in a strangled cry. Her gut wrenched, she screamed for Tal’c, unable to get past a walahk as Alar’ck fought him blade to blade.
The strider brayed and reared, his great hooves flaying the rain, and when he stumbled back, in the chaos…
There was a sudden, deafening silence. The dim split all their focus. Little Mar’ck had been trampled dead. Alar’ck roared and Rufio took the tick to yank a falx from a scabbard strapped to the foreigner who faced him. With a rage like none she had ever felt in her life, they slew the walahk together.
Rufio swung the falx up above her head, the weight of it hanging in the strain of her shoulders for a chime, before her shoulder blades rippled with all the power she could muster and she sliced the blade down the man’s back. The edge bit deep and tore through the leather he wore, slicing into the flesh beneath. He screamed, and Alar’ck plunged a kopis blade into the man’s chest, then he choked on the blood and bile that erupted up his throat.
Louka crawled to the mother and baby, bloodied by a gaping wound in his side. His face twisted in agony, corporeal and emotional alike. He had fallen defending the younger girls, Laiha and Farha. Laiha helped with her axe but little Farha had been cut down as her elder sister was thrown aside. Louka charged a man three times his size and was cut open by the man’s dying thrust. He struggled, groaning, as Tal’c crawled towards them.
Alar’ck gathered grandmother Raen, who was clinging to Laiha, they wailed together. Rufio trudged to the little pile of bodies and sunk down by Louka’s side. He was coughing and spluttering, his wound pouring blood. She had pressed her hands against the wound and felt the sickening wriggle of flesh and bone under her palms. “Louka…louka…” She said his name, over and over and over, as he peered up into her face. Desperate pain and fear in his; he knew what was coming.
Rufio felt deep, wrenching sobs rake her, as he slipped into Dira’s grasp.
▵ ▿ ▹
“Rufio, we have to go!” Alar’ck’s hands tugged on her,
pleading her to move with him.
She resisted a tick, and then let him whisk her over to Grandmother Raen and Laiha, who had shaken themselves from their trauma enough to gather the horses. They stood, now, clinging to their manes, begging them to whisk them away. Tal’c would not be moved, Rufio thought, as Al tried to stir the Ankal from his grief.
“Come on Tal’c, we must leave them! They are dead and gone…we have to fight.” Survive, protect.Tal’c wailed more keenly. Rufio felt her heart break somewhere between her ribs and sobbed uncontrollably. Even so, she tread over the dead to get to her Ankal. She dropped to her knees in front of him, Yama lay between them. Her hands clutched at the slick mud, as if seeking to draw strength from Semele.
“Tal’c…” She sobbed loudly,
begging, sharing pain “Tal’c, please, we need you.” Her voice was not her own, full of sorrow and pain as it broke.
The Ankal looked up through his tears, his handsome face twisted into a grimace, wreathed by his dark, sodden braids, to meet his cousin’s ochre orbs. Rufio took his trembling hands in hers, and they shared a moment, sobbing and shaking and moaning together.
Sharing the burden. When finally Alar’ck wrapped his trembling hands around his brother’s shoulders and hauled the man to his feet. With his ascent, Rufio felt herself rise as well.
The Wildmanes clung together for a chime, arms wrapped around each other and violent sobs trembling through their bones as they took strength from each other. Moaning and occasionally crying out as if the reality of their dead struck them anew every few chimes, the Wildmane lot mounted their striders and set off at a canter for the city. Rufio rocked against Loha, her strider, feeling tangibly his weight under her, his beating hooves, the flex and pull of his muscles.
He was here. She was here. They were alive.
A pain that ebbed and rose like a beating drum ached in her, and she leaned forward to wrap her arms around Loha’s thick, curved neck. His mane whipped past her cheek in the icy wind, and she clung to him. As if he was a rock, and she a tiny limpet, clinging to life amid the stormy,
cold sea.