David Drake - Out of the waters

The pieced-together crystal gave a pop and shivered to sparkling powder. The dancers vanished, leaving only ruins and the jungle.

Lann gulped, then gave a series of gulps like nothing Hedia had heard from him before. She looked closely, afraid that the toy had injured her protector when it burst.

The ape-man squatted on his haunches, his head bowed and his fingertips touching the dug-up soil in front of him. He was crying.

Hedia got to her feet and went to Lann's side. She placed her hands on his shoulders and began rubbing them. His long, reddish hair was softer than she had imagined, more like a cat's fur than a horse's. The ape-man's skin was loose over the muscles, but those muscles were as firm as a bronze statue.

She squatted, still massaging him. She would rather have kneeled, but she didn't want to chance lumps of broken crystal in the dirt.

"There, now," she said. He wouldn't understand the words, but he could hear her tone. "We're alive, dear Lann. You saved me. You're so strong, darling. I've never met a man as strong as you. No one could be as strong as you."

The ape-man turned his head to look at her; his biceps rubbed her breasts. She smiled.

His broad, flat nostrils suddenly flared. He stood, taking Hedia by the shoulders.

His member protruded from its furry sheath. It was not, she was glad to see, nearly as much out of ordinary human scale as the remainder of Lann's physique was.

Lann turned Hedia around and started to bend her over. Not on this ground, not even if you were no stronger and heavier than I'm used to.

She wriggled free of his hands. He hooted in obvious surprise, but he followed when she touched his fingertips and led him to the slab where she had been sitting.

It took a series of gestures and pats for Hedia to convince the ape-man to sit on the edge. She was about to straddle him in a sitting position when a whim struck her. She touched Lann's shoulders again, then mimed shoving him backward. Still puzzled but willing, the ape-man lay flat.

About time, Hedia thought as she stood over him, because I'm really ready!

She lowered herself, carefully at first but then driving herself down with a scream of satisfaction.

The last time I did this… Hedia thought. She burst out laughing.

It would never have been like this with poor dear Saxa. Even if the Servitors hadn't appeared.

David Drake

Out of the Waters-ARC

Alphena laid the shaman down full length on the mat that he'd used to cover the entrance to the kiva. She sat beside him for a moment, waiting to catch her breath.

Nobody seemed to be coming from the village with food and her garment. She got to her feet. The axe was balanced in her hand, the shaft upright. She had gotten the feel of the weapon and was coming to like it.

Two women-Sanga and her companion from the field-immediately started from the huts carrying pots. Moments later a boy followed at a run with Alphena's tunic.

Alphena smiled in a fashion and sat down again. She supposed she looked foolish, muddy and nude, but these Westerners weren't laughing. That showed they understood the situation. She might not be the magician that they thought she was, but with this axe she could certainly teach a few barbarians to respect a citizen of Carce.

The women approached with their heads bent so low that they were looking at their own bosoms rather than at the ground. "Mistress," Sanga muttered. She didn't have her infant with her.

They had brought a pot containing maize and flat beans cooked into a porridge, a separate container of meat stew, and a skin bottle. Both pots were of red clay. They weren't glazed but they had been blackened during firing and were marked on the outside with herringbone scratches.

The women started off as soon as they delivered the food. Alphena said, "Wait!" to stop them.

She tried the skin. It was water, but some kind of berries had been crushed into it to counteract the brackish taste; it would do.

"You," she said, pointing to the woman whose name she didn't know. "Bring us a basin of plain water. I want to wash off."

The boy handed the tunic, damp but folded, to Alphena. He seemed about six years old, and as naked as she was. Unlike the young women, he stared at her in fascination.

Uktena rolled onto his elbow. Sanga wailed softly. She didn't disobey Alphena's order to remain, but she sank to her knees and turned her head away. The other woman scampered away.

The shaman's muscles bunched as though he were about to sit up. Instead he relaxed and smiled. He said, "You brought me out of the sound, little one."

"I said I would stand with you, my friend," Alphena said. "We have food. Is there anything else you want from the village?"

"No," Uktena said. "Sanga, was anyone from Cascotan injured when we fought?"

"No, master," the woman mumbled. Her eyes were closed. "We ran into the woods when we saw what was happening."

Sanga looked up cautiously-she seemed more afraid of Alphena than of the shaman. Perhaps she was right in her concern, because Uktena wouldn't deliberately hurt his own people.

She said, "Bocascat's hut burned. And trees near where we were hiding burned. It was like lightning, but purple and much worse."

She lowered her head again and whispered, "Master, will it happen again?"

"Yes," said Uktena. "It will happen until the Atlantean dies or I die."

"Sanga, you can go," Alphena said, hearing the rasp in her voice. Didn't they see what Uktena was risking for them?

"You too, boy," she added to the child. She wondered if the word meant slave in this language as it did in her own.

Sanga turned thankfully. The boy might have lingered, but the woman twined her fingers in his hair and dragged him yelping after her.

Uktena scooped porridge with three fingers of his right hand. He swallowed and said, "Will you go with me tomorrow, little one?"

"Yes," Alphena said. She was bone tired. She had been at the end of her strength by the time she got the shaman to shore; if he had fallen a little farther out in the sound, she would have been unable to help.

But she would go. She would try.

Uktena gave her a smile that looked straight into her heart. She blinked.

"We will eat," he said, "and sleep. I will be able to manage the ladder. And in the morning, my friend Alphena, we shall see what we shall see."

"Yes," Alphena said.

And every morning. Until Procron dies, or Uktena dies.

Or I die.

Hedia stretched luxuriantly while the ape-man resumed rummaging among the overgrown rubble. She ached, and she suspected she would ache still more by the next morning, but she wasn't complaining. No, quite the contrary…

The bird or one like it sounded its clear gong-note from the canopy again. Lann ignored it as he lifted a block of crystal at least half the size of the one Hedia now lay on. Apparently she wasn't the only one who had found the recent break to have been a much-needed relief from stress.

Lann tilted backward at a thirty-degree angle and waddled to the edge of where the undamaged fortress had stood. He pitched the block outward. A simple beast wouldn't have bothered to discard it where it wouldn't get in the way of further excavation. His huge flat feet seemed to grip on any slope.

Someone so big should be clumsy. Hedia had known-briefly-a pair of acrobats, and they even in combination weren't nearly as flexible as Lann had proven. She grinned broadly and got to her feet.

The ape-man returned to the cavity he had opened in the foliage. He squatted, cooed with delight, and plunged his hands deep in the hole. Whatever they gripped resisted for a moment; then he lifted it to the surface.

Hedia went over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder, both to warn him of where she was standing and-as she knew in her heart-to proclaim her ownership. She looked at the object Lann was cleaning with his thumbs, then tongue.