Eric Flint - Mother of Demons

Julius was pale. "The Kiktu were destroyed? Completely?"

Indira nodded. "Apparently so. Well, the refugee I spoke to said that some of the Kiktu fled into the swamp. But she seemed to view that as no more than a protracted death sentence. That aside, yes. And not just the Kiktu, but all of their tribal allies. They were surrounded and pinned against the swamp. Crushed. The tribes' mothers would have been crippled and enslaved. All others butchered for meat, except for young females conscripted into the Utuku army."

"Conscripted?"

"Yes. It's the Utuku custom to force young warriors and females to join their army."

Julius shook his head. "Sounds like a chancy proposition to me. What's to keep them loyal?"

"They are required to participate in a ceremony which guarantees they will not go back to their old tribe."

Julius turned even paler. "I don't think I want to hear this."

"Yes. They are forced to eat their tribespeople in the victory feast."

He looked away. "I knew I didn't want to hear it."

"You must, Julius. As Ushulubang said, there is the danger of the future-and the peril of the present. The entire Papti Plain is now open to the Utuku. They will be sweeping across it like army ants. With nothing between them and us but the slopes of the Chiton. And whatever army we can build to defend those slopes."

"Maybe they'll turn south."

"Toward the prevalates?" She shook her head. "I don't think so. Neither does Ushulubang. The Beak of the Utuku is reputed to be cold and calculating, as well as vicious. As powerful as the Utuku have become, they are still not ready to match flails with the Anshac. Not yet. They will need to consolidate their rule over the Papti first. And in order to do that, the Beak will see to the elimination of any possible threat in the vicinity. Such as demons living on the mountain that overlooks the plain."

She stared out the hut.

"Where are you, Joseph?" she whispered.

To her relief, Joseph returned the next day. With, for the first time since he began the raids, a prisoner.

That is easily the biggest gukuy I have ever seen, except a mother, thought Indira, gazing at the figure on the litter. Also, if I've learned to assess gukuy standards of beauty, the ugliest.

Then she noticed the small figure of the male inside the warrior's mantle cavity.

That's strange. The males usually don't associate closely with warriors. I wonder what happened to his mate?

The female gukuy was unconscious, and horribly injured. Her left eye was a ruin, and there were two great puncture wounds on her mantle.

Spear wounds.

Nor was the gukuy the only injured member of the returning expedition. Jens Knudsen had been hurt as well. But it was merely a flesh wound, Indira was relieved to see.

"Merely," she thought ruefully. God, how this life has changed us all.

Maria De Los Reyes was examining the wounded gukuy, with a fierce frown on her face.

"Why didn't you just dismember her completely, while you were at it?" she demanded crossly.

"Can you save her life?" asked Jens.

Somewhat hesitantly, Maria nodded. "I think so. Her mantle cavity's obviously infected, but those poultices you put on the wounds have probably kept her from dying. It'll be touch and go, but-if this warrior's as tough as she looks, she'll survive."

Joseph smiled. "She's even tougher. Judging, at least, from the damage she caused-four wounded, two of them with broken bones."

Indira stared at the unconscious gukuy on the litter.

" All those injuries were caused by her? Alone? " She was genuinely shocked. Since the very first fight with slavers, none of Joseph's expeditions had suffered more than minor wounds to one or two warriors.

"All. The other slavers died like papakoy. This one-was terrible."

Jens winced and held up his right arm, which was heavily bandaged. "That's where I got this. She damn near tore my arm off. Her name's Nukurren, by the way, and-"

"Why did you let her live, then?" demanded Indira. "You've never done that before with any slavers you caught."

For a moment, the faces of the young human warriors assumed an expression which Indira had not seen on them for a long time. Uncertainty, hesitation; almost childlike confusion.

"I'm-not sure," replied Joseph. "Partly it was because one of the owoc slaves insisted."

"What?"

Ludmilla nodded vigorously. "It's true, Indira. We were astonished. Of course, the owoc are never-" She hesitated.

Bloodthirsty. Like we are.

"But still, I've never seen an owoc show any real concern for a slaver. As long as we bury the bodies. But the owoc was quite firm about it. She said this one was different."

Jens was frowning. "But that's not the only reason we let her live. It was also… I don't know. She was so incredibly brave."

Indira sighed. She understood, even if Jens didn't. The culture of the human colony was rapidly being shaped by its necessities.

A warrior culture. One of whose inevitable features is deep respect for courage, even the courage of the enemy.

It was an aspect of warrior cultures which many people admired, even in the 22nd century-including professional historians. Romantically seductive, unless you understood the corollary.

When the Mongols took Kiev they spared the life of the commander of the garrison, out of admiration for his courage. They did the same, later, at Aleppo.

Then they slaughtered everyone else.

Her musings were interrupted by the male in the wounded gukuy's mantle.

"Please. Do any of you-demons-speak my language?" The male was speaking Anshaku.

"Yes," replied Indira immediately. "I do."

Ochre and red rippled across the male's mantle, in the delicate, complex traceries of which only males were capable.

"Are you-are you the Mother of Demons?"

Indira sighed. It seemed she was doomed to that title.

"You may call me so, if you wish."

The male-a truemale, she now recognized-made the gesture of obedience. Then spoke again.

"Will Nukurren live?"

"She will live, according to our healer. Her recovery will be difficult, however. And-" A quick question to Maria. "-her eye cannot be saved."

"So long as she lives," said the truemale softly. To Indira's astonishment, the little male began stroking his companion's head. His mantle was flushed with that shade of green which, for gukuy, was the sign of romantic attachment.

Now this is something I've never seen. A romantic attachment between a female and a truemale?

She pondered the situation. Julius had long been puzzled by the active sex life enjoyed by the gukuy, the vast majority of whom were sterile females. Sex, he had explained to her, takes up a lot of biological energy, and he couldn't figure out why a species would evolve such an orientation when there was no possibility of reproduction between sterile females. Among the owoc, a cousin species, there was little sexual activity except between mothers and males. He had eventually developed an explanation which satisfied him. Though it was based on an elaborate (to Indira's mind, arcane) web of neurological reasoning and kin selection game theory, his hypothesis amounted to: "They're smart, sex is fun, and how are you gonna keep 'em down on the farm when they've been to gay Paree?"

Still, the sex life of gukuy followed definite rules. Sterile females coupled with other sterile females. Truemales with mothers. (Eumales with no one.) Indira had never observed a romantic relationship between a truemale and a sterile female. Even among the relatively tolerant barbarian tribes, such an attachment would be considered unnatural and perverted. And among the far less tolerant civilized cultures-such as the Ansha from which the truemale obviously came-such a coupling would be anathema, for which the priests would demand the death penalty.