Majutsu-shi no Chikara Ch. 08

"Most of a day, for you." She bit the words off as they left her mouth, her eyes still scanning.

"I'm sorry."

"Why?" She glanced at his face, noted his conflicted, pained expression, and resumed her vigil.

"I thought I was a dead man, a few days ago." he pulled his fingers through his hair and made a loose twist of his locks. "I did not think I had doomed us both and given South-wold's murderers an army. Maybe my sorrow is not for you... but I am sorry."

Abhilash nodded and locked gazes with him. She looked down at the space between them, then back to his eyes. It was a simple command, and Damon wondered if all humanoids knew it. As he closed the distance, the she-ork took a breath and sighed weightily.

"Consider: if Kamakshi knew your people had a Shaman -- she would have taken only the Shaman." Abhilash gave a curt, approving nod once he was only a pace from her. "But she sent her entire host -- all of the mules of Sidero -- and dared not risk a single daughter of her own blood."

They turned, walking back toward the fire pit -- Kamakshi having smothered the flames with dirt and piss.

"You -- forget those captured -- you were taken." Abhilash pointed at his chest. "You brokered a truce, you bound Kamakshi to your demands, and you survived your own efforts to escape in death."

She breathed-in his scent, and felt a rush of blood as her nipples hardened and her sex became wet with desire.

"I didn't want this." Damon's voice was flat, and he hadn't yet noticed that his cock was hardening like there was a second dawn.

"Yet you have it." Abhilash shrugged. "I wanted only my seed-right... and I have that... but I have these chains that bind me to you. I have a magic weapon... I am outcast from my tribe... can I start my own tribe from your whelps? Can I join a human tribe? A human city?"

"Not in South-wold." Damon shook his head, not daring to look her in the eyes. "Not with me... I don't even... I don't know..."

He paused, taking a moment to rummage through his memories and wonder how much of them he could trust.

"How many died, that night?" Damon steeled himself and stared into her wolfish eyes.

"Most." Abhilash considered the scouts' reports and the numbers she witnessed with her own eyes. "More than half."

"Muh...?" Damon dropped to the ground, dizzy and nauseous. It was too much. Too many dead, and for what? Even their justified vengeance -- sacrificing him to kill the Sidero -- wouldn't be enough to protect whatever remained in the coming days and seasons... not enough to tend herds, harvest crops... and with Matta gone? The Elder had been losing his mind, but Damon remembered the briefest flash of Matta's power... the barest hint of the Elemental that the ancient sorcerer had been. Without him, they were defenseless.

The avalanche smothered him, and he went numb from the weight and shock of it.

...

"We need more firewood." Kamakshi frowned at the nearly catatonic human. "I didn't think that..."

"When has Kamakshi ever thought?" Abhilash snapped. "What difference does this make, if he loses his mind now or in another hundred moons?"

"The nymph may be able..."

"To what? Fuck him back to his mind?" Abhilash's teeth ground together audibly, her bottom lip so tight over her tusks that it split and began to bleed. "Kamakshi knows so much."

"She must have some healing magic." Kamakshi crossed her arms over her dark breasts and leveled her eyes at Abhilash. "Unless you think you can keep him here, in this little camp, until your spawn are born and they cut their teeth... if you think he will remain, and you can keep him safe from himself..."

"Shut up, Kamakshi."

"It wasn't supposed to be this way." Kamakshi snarled.

"Shut up!" and Abhilash put the sword between them, the blade whistling up to hover in the air. The steel had a diseased look, still caked in the dirt of last night's fire and wood-cutting.

...

"Stop." Such a small word, with such small sounds -- but it stood heavily on the flat of the blade and dragged it down until the tip of the sword touched the earth.

Damon looked to be his own ghost, pale and frightened of the living world. He looked too heavy to lift himself, yet stood with a deathly grace to stare, unseeing, through each of them. If he breathed, it was too shallow to see. If he spoke, the words waited until a breeze passed his lips and caught hold as though to a wild horse to ride from the cavern of his mouth, for his chest did not push the words out his throat.

"No more death."

He walked away from them to the north and east, his feet taking care only that he tread solid ground. They watched as he took first halting, shuffling steps... then small, deliberate paces forward. He made no indication that he knew which way he was facing, and did not look about to orient himself. He had been facing north and east: that was the direction he walked. When a bush obstructed his path, he stared at it for a long moment before taking a laboriously slow path around it and continuing in much the same direction.

...

"Lightning strike me -- I would kill you now, if..."

"If what, Abhilash? You would kill me, if 'what'?" Kamakshi's silver eyes were as full of fury as ever her daughter had known.

"You... you plotting, faithless...mule-dung!" Abhilash spit and snarled, gnashing her teeth and thrusting her chin forward. The sword was not forgotten, but she kept it purposefully lowered.

"My daughters are not fools." Kamakshi crossed her arms over her breasts and lifted her chin with pride. "What of my plotting?"

"I will stop you." Abhilash pointed at her with a claw, then spat into the remains of the fire pit.

"How do you think to stop me?" Kamakshi licked her lips, glancing at the magical sword in her daughter's hand. "Will you defy him?"

"grr-Raah!" Abhilash bellowed at the sky -- until her lungs felt they would burst. Then, gasping and panting, she stormed after the human.

...

Damon's pace faltered, a sound like a bugling elk assaulting his ears -- but it was a curdling sound that dug at him and made his kidneys ache. Once it faded into the background, he resumed his journey forward.

"No more death." he repeated to himself, and it seemed that a breeze carried a familiar smell to him -- but the blossoms were too early and he only shook his head with confusion as one foot went ahead of the other.

His shadow split once or twice, sprouting up behind him as the slanted sunlight angled more vertically and warned of sunshine beating down overhead. His shadows cursed or grumbled at his back, making orkish sounds and giving him the occasional push or pull to angle him this way or that. As his feet chanced onto a game trail, he followed it with more steady steps -- caught in the heady current of a well-traveled path. He walked through the day, his stomach growling fitfully and his head too-light with thirst, until the sun's rays slanted back at him from the west. Now too few to reach much of him, the Willow Wood hauled up thick shadows of evening, and a larger, brown-green shadow with yellow-moon stars blocked his way forward.

He turned to walk left, and the shadow moved with him. As he turned to walk right, the shadow gave him a very corporeal shake that set his eyes wobbling and his teeth clacking together.

"Damn you, human, stop." Abhilash growled at him and pushed him to the ground.

Why? He'd meant to ask, and his mouth made the shapes -- yet no sound issued forth.

"What?" Abhilash looked down on him, something she felt she would be doing for many days to follow.

"Not what." Damon croaked the words, only just realizing how thirsty his body had become. "I asked 'why'. Why stop? If South-wold shall be my grave, the sooner I arrive and you are free of your burden..."

Abhilash rolled her eyes and set the magical sword into the dirt, crossing her arms and scowling down at the pitiful creature splayed on the trail at her feet.

"...and I free of mine." Damon sat up heavily, cupping a hand to his head.

"Stupid choices." Abhilash knelt down and rapped lightly at his forehead with a knuckle. "I told you -- you make stupid choices."

"What choice is there to make?" Damon frowned, wincing indignantly at her patronizing. "I go, I stay... all roads are equally drowned in shit."

"You live." her yellow eyes narrowed, and she snorted at him through her nose. "You do not care for the ork blood spilled to keep you alive... the promises made..."

"That should soothe me?" Damon's hands balled into fists and pummeled the dirt as he stood, gasping air and fighting-down the weariness. "That is the comfort of an ork who captured, murdered, tortured, and..."

"Your magic." Abhilash interrupted him.

"What?"

"Your magic gave your body to us." Abhilash sighed heavily. "Why else would a tribe of orks spare one seed-slave and go to such trouble to keep you alive... keep you safe, even from yourself?"

"Magic..." Damon scoffed, still struggling to form a coherent argument.

"Makes one crazy, it is known." Abhilash nodded. "Made Kamakshi stupid, made her protect you -- when she should have torn your throat out. Made her give promises to protect your human tribe while she milked your cock for whelps in the Sidero tribe. When I should have killed you, I hesitated. Before I was even cursed, I was already lost to your spell - whatever it is."

Here, Abhilash turned away from him and snatched-up the Thirsty Blade to begin carving swathes through the brush ahead of her.

"Now..." the she-ork swiping a magic sword covered in ash and sap grunted with her frustration. "...you make more stupid choices. Not pleased with the choice you made before, you whine like a hungry whelp and say you are too weak to make a new choice."

"That's not the whole..." Damon felt his anger bolster him, bringing the ork into focus even though it was too dark to see much.

"There -- anger!" Abhilash laughed, slowing the pace of her arm in clearing the brush. "At what, human? At me, for taking your cock? At my mother, for letting you live? At Sidero, for needing you to survive? At your own tribe, for leaving you for dead after the attack?"

"That is a damned lie." Damon shook his head, refusing to yield ground -- even if it meant being wrong. He was too angry to care about the truth, only in denying Abhilash any victory.

"Lie or truth -- it is the same." Abhilash stopped, sweat shining on her face and breasts, to look into the midnight wells of Damon's eyes. "Your anger will rob you of the path forward... your fear will rob you of the path forward... you are weak, and you will always be weak. If not for..."

She stopped herself, and Damon could only just see the twist of pain in her scowl. His own eyes opened wider with realization.

"You would have cut yourself open to be rid of the life growing inside you..." Damon spoke with horrid awe of her. "...but it... you couldn't."

With a gruff snort, she spat and nodded at him -- at last he seemed to grasp the truth she so plainly spoke.

"You've been quiet, Kamakshi." Damon looked behind him, seeing the silver pinpoints just glinting in the darkness.

"What would you have me say?" and she closed the distance, looking the part of temptress and shadowy nightmare both.

"Why haven't you just taken control of your tribe?" Damon made those infuriating human movements again that revealed nothing while trying to add weight to his words. "Why haven't you taken control of me... why are you letting this happen?"

"Magic..." she began, before Damon gave a loud, hateful laugh.

"Ha! Magic makes one crazy...it's known." He sneered, or smiled, unsure of where his anger would take him. "So you keep saying."

"Magic knows." Kamakshi hugged herself, holding tight a moment as she gave a brief weighing of her decision to engage Damon. "It knows when a pact is formed -- knows when it is honored and when it is broken."

"Why do you care? Betrayer? Why care?" Damon's arms were wide, his face canted and scowling his doubt fully at her.

"Because I have not been magically bound since Sidero's death." Kamakshi lifted her chin slightly, letting her arms drop to her sides so her breasts could heave as she thrust her chest forward in defiance.

Even in a human fit of rage, Damon's prick kept its own council and applauded Kamakshi's display -- though a human's weak night-eyes would not catch such details in the growing dark. He felt the tension in his crotch, and swore under his breath -- cursing the treachery of his own manhood.

"It is easy to call me 'betrayer', who were thralls to Sidero until his death -- trading shackles for shackles and knowing only that their master had changed." Kamakshi frowned. "If this is where Abhilash will have you sleep, I will prepare a fire."

"I'm not done talking to you." Damon snarled.

"I am done talking." Kamakshi didn't look back.

"Some promise you made, to save your fucking daughter..." if Damon had hoped to rile her, he was not ready for her response. The former chieftain of the Sidero, lurching at him with eyes ablaze and casting her gray-brown face with hellish shadows, twisted her lips in feral threat and bellowed in his face -- her words just ahead or behind the spittle that blotted across his cheeks and mouth.

"Know your place, male!" Kamakshi loomed, seeming to tower over him and the fervor and fire in her eyes cowed Damon suddenly and he shrank from her with primal terror. His mind fought for control of his muscles -- spurring him to flee, and causing him to cower before her. The buzzing at the base of his skull prickled angrily before he blinked and it was gone. Abhilash stood beside Kamakshi, the dark blade at her mother's throat. Damon found himself holding his breath, urgently waiting for a moment when the palpable threat of Kamakshi's very presence diminished enough that he could suck air back into his lungs.

"Release him." Abhilash warned.

"If I could control him, I would not release him." Kamakshi's eyes were wild with her rage. "Do not think, human, that I would trade her for you. It was only your magic that weakened me, and our pact that put her in the way of your death."

"Where do lies and truth draw lines between them?" Damon rolled his eyes. "Desire, promise, magic... it's all insane."

"What would you do, human?" Kamakshi eased her visage, taking a step away from him and her daughter. "If you were desperate and all your tribe about to be sacrificed? What would you do -- had you the power -- and how far would you go?"

Kamakshi turned and vanished into the darkness, the sound of her passage clear as she snapped branches and cracked rocks against one another. Damon stared after her into the dark, even as Abhilash gave a deep sigh and shake of her head.

"You are stupid, Damon." lip curled between a sneer and a smile, half insult and half reminder. "Whatever bond you made with Kamakshi: you are a fool to think it remains. She serves herself."

"Then why is she here? Why go to any trouble at all? What is she playing at?" Damon threw his hands to the heavens, asking the canopy as much for enlightenment as the she-ork with the yellow wolf eyes.

"Hm." Abhilash looked into the dark, picking-out clearly where Kamakshi was preparing their next campsite. "There is water not far from here... drink, and I will tell you what I know."

She led him to a different stream -- more a deep gully of water less than a cubit wide, swift-flowing and likely feeding the creek that swept north near South-wold. If he had expected her to give an elaborate recounting of Kamakshi's history -- he was left deeply wanting.

"Two hundred and fifty moons ago, Sidero was killed -- far north, in a place you would call 'The High Ice'... something like that, as the humans there talk differently and your tongue is little used there... and Kamakshi became Chief. She was Shaman of Sidero, before, and her father taught her so he could lead war parties and raid, rape, and pillage."

"Her father?"

"Sidero."

"I thought she was the bride of Sidero?"

"Same-same." Abhilash shrugged. "Sidero was a powerful ork warlord, Shaman and Chief of his own tribe... and he took his daughter Kamakshi as his mate. I do not know her mother, but I heard it was a troll or a giant or something... Kamakshi does not speak of it, and all the orks of Sidero's horde are gone."

"But that's..." Damon grimaced, his cock likewise conflicted about this knowledge.

"Yes, humans do not like this. Drink." Abhilash chuckled at his strange human taboos. "Orks only know to rut when it is time to rut, and to take the strongest to mate. Sometimes, it does not work."

"Inbreeding."

"Just so. Kamakshi may have been a daughter-wife, or some later spawn of Sidero... but she carried his seed of magic -- so he taught her. When he died..."

"How'd he die?"

"He was old, human. Orks do not live forever like elves or dwarves."

"Elves don't..."

"Shut up. He died in battle, I think. It was while Kamakshi was fat with her last litter of whelps."

"You, and your sisters?"

"Yes, shut up. Her fear must have grown from that, fat and bloated -- unable to walk -- and she used her power to guard herself. From there, treachery upon treachery... broken treaties with humans or other orks, making slaves of trolls or giants..."

"She made slaves of giants?"

"Your mouth must hurt to be silent... or are your ears too weak to listen?" Abhilash crossed her arms over her breasts. Damon stared at her, if only because it was now too dark for him to see anything more than the dim yellow glow reflecting in her eyes.

"Please continue, Ser Abhilash." Damon bowed his head, more in self-reproach than respect. Abhilash chewed at her lip a moment and nodded.

"Twice a dozen moons ago, Kamakshi declared that the Sidero would move south... to a place she knew before, where Sidero had sired her and the land was fat with meat. Much of the horde had been used to buy-off or butcher her enemies, and the blood-flow did not stop -- so, Sidero moved south. Now, we are here... In my memory, we numbered more than ten hundreds when I was still very small and did not fight well. When we marched south, we were fewer than five hundreds. Always with barter and butcher of lives, Kamakshi led us south and our numbers fell. We followed the mountains down, keeping them to the left, until we reached the Roaring Water... then, we came north and west... and that is where we found Sidero's old camp."

Damon nodded, pressing his lips together between his teeth to keep from asking more questions.

"That was not long ago... six or eight moons, I think? And our scouts found many places to gather goods. Your tribe was the nearest that were not goblins or small lizard-things. Before the raid, Sidero numbered in the hundreds. Now, our numbers are like that of your tribe. Your Shaman killed twice or more as many of the Sidero as your own."

"Twice as many... you mean 'twice as many as the Sidero killed'?" Damon could not contain the question. Anyway, it seemed a fitting place to interrupt.

"No. The mules reported only killing a handful -- we wanted living slaves, Damon." Abhilash squatted by the water and cupped water to her lips with one hand. "The rest was magic-sickness from your Shaman, the one called 'Elemental'. The Sidero paid a heavy blood price for a half-dozen captives... and traded all away for you."

Abhilash nodded in thought at this, recognizing the absurd and painfully stupid pride of Kamakshi behind many of these decisions... and so many of her tribe unable to do other than obey every command.

"And the Sidero will not recover." the human noticed Kamakshi as though she sprang from the darkness like smoke -- though it was only the flickering light of a small fire dancing along her in profile as she stood. "Or would not -- but for you."