Emerging Legacy (3 page)

The leader started a fire, grumbling at Kelyn in the
process. “It’s getting cold up here. You shouldn’t have brought us so high.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, as ingratiating as she could be
without sounding false. Mungo rolled his eyes. “It’s the only way I know.”

The sun’s light traveled up the rock, leaving the little
clearing in shadow. The other men brought more wood, gnarled dead pine that
would burn hot and fast. The leader poured a small amount of precious water
into a battered travel cup and added a pinch of the sleeping drug, heating it
beside the fire until steam wafted into the air. Then he brought it to them,
pre-occupied and watching the rocky slope for signs of his companion. “Drink,”
he commanded them. “One swallow each.” He took his eyes from the slope to
glare at them. “Don’t spit it out.”

He didn’t have to add the threats. They hung loudly enough,
if unspoken, in the air between captives and captor.

They each took a swallow, making terrible faces. Kelyn took
her turn last, and siphoned the concentrated, intensely bitter liquid under her
tongue, scrunching her face in an uncontrollable reaction to the taste.

A trickle of stone came from above. The slaver glanced
overhead, and Kelyn soundlessly pushed the mouthful out between her lips,
letting it dribble silently down her chin. By the time the man looked down
again, she’d scrubbed her chin against her shoulder, removing the traces.
Behind her, the pack held its collective breath, facing the suspicious glare.

But if the slaver saw anything amiss, he never had the
chance to say so. The trickle of stone turned into a thump and a thud, and the
slaver jumped back just in time to avoid the falling body of his companion.

The limp, falling body.

The leader shouted in surprise and anger, dropping to his
knees to roll the man over, shaking his shoulders.

Almost dusk now. Hunt time for the big cats. Kelyn glanced
anxiously back at her pack mates, her eyes full of question. As one they shook
their heads — all but Gwawl, who mimed wiping his chin. He, too, had spat out
the drug.

And the others were already drooping, quickly taken by the
warm liquid in empty stomachs no matter how they struggled against it. Kelyn
closed her eyes in resignation.
Only two of us.
And with Gwawl tied
more restrictively than she.

Clumsy Kelyn.

“He’s dead!”

Kelyn turned back to the slaver leader, unable to dredge up
surprise. She didn’t try to fake it--she was supposed to be drugged, anyway.
She watched warily, knowing the leader might well take his ire out on her; her
hands tightened on her staff. When the moment hung in the air, she gathered
her courage and her most practical, faked muzzy manner and said, “Only three of
you to split the profit, then.”

He glared, crouched over his friend and taking no apparent
notice of the four deep, bloodless puncture wounds on the man’s neck — the blow
of a rock cat so irate it hadn’t even bothered to play. This man’s neck had
been broken long before he hit the ground. Kelyn glanced back at her friends.

They’d seen it. Of course they’d seen it, even through the
drugs. Their tension filled the little overhang. But the slaver didn’t pick
up on that, either, muttering about his clumsy companion and his deadly fall. He
patted up and down the dead man’s sides, hunting — and finding — the seed pods the
man had gone to acquire. To Kelyn’s surprise, he left the dead man where he
lay and went to the fire. The other two men waited, wary and tight-lipped; the
three of them huddled together to exchange terse words, glancing frequently at
their prisoners. Then they seemed to come to some conclusion, for the leader
settled in and though they had dried meat and a handful of dried tubers already
set aside for a meal, they turned their attention to the choi buttons.

Within moments they’d crushed the seed pods to fine,
precious dust that they cupped in their palms, applying glowing sticks pulled
from the fire. Pungent smoke drifted briefly toward the overhang, but most of
it ended up inside the slavers’ lungs. After a few moments, they didn’t seem
to notice when their aim grew less precise and the odor of burnt skin mingled
with that of the choi. And a few moments after that, they stood, staggering
against one another, raucous and jovial.

Gwawl muttered, “I’m not sure...”

He didn’t have to finish his words. Kelyn, too, had hoped
the potent choi of this altitude would hit the slavers hard, but they were
apparently well-accustomed to the effects of the herb. They didn’t lose their
sense of purpose as they headed for their prisoners, three swaggering slavers
standing before a sorry group of drugged, huddled youngsters.

The leader announced, “Now that Grolph is dead, we’ve
decided we can spare one of you.”

Spare one of us...?

Suddenly, Kelyn understood.
Spare the profit,
leaving the slavers free to use and discard an unlucky youth. She gave the others
a panicked glance, seeing her friends drugged, seeing Gwawl still tightly tied,
knowing herself to be no closer to freedom.

But she had her staff. The staff that supported her on the
trail, that saved her from bruises when her pack mates picked up their own
casually acquired quarterstaffs and set to causing trouble, that protected her
from the attack of everything from unexpected rock fall to irate predators. And
if her clumsy feet were tied, they weren’t drugged, either.

The leader reached for Frykla.

Clumsy Kelyn.

Their only chance.

Their
last
chance.

Kelyn cast her self-doubts aside and exploded upward in
front of her friend, staff whirling deftly in spite of tied hands — and when the
men laughed, she planted one end of the staff and cast herself around it,
slamming her feet into one barrel chest, knocking the man into his buddy. She
landed in a crouch, lifting the weighted end of the staff to sweep it against
the leader’s shins. Down he went with a cry of surprise, turning the slavers
into a tangle of stinking, choi-besotted limbs. The surprise only lasted a
moment — it was long enough for Gwawl to launch himself into the fray, loop his
arms over one man’s head to jam the tight ropes against his throat and pull the
man back onto himself.

Gwawl might have been smaller than the slaver, and he might
well have trouble breathing beneath the man — but the slaver was now his shield,
and both the other men immediately turned to Kelyn.

She grinned at them, a fierce grin, and unleashed the
ululating hunt cry that until now had only echoed through the mountains in
practice — the cry that declared her prowess and confidence and intent. She didn’t
wait for their move — she leaped at them, her stance as wide as she could manage
in the ropes, and she turned the staff into her shield, whirling it so quickly
it became nothing more than a blur. “
I’ve
decided,” she snarled. “We
can’t spare any of us — but we can spare all of
you
.”

One of the slavers snarled right back at her. “You bi — ”

That’s when Kelyn heard it. Another snarl altogether, deep
and throaty and full of menace. She glanced at Gwawl, protected under his
choking human shield, and she dove for the overhang, miscalculating enough to
land right on top of her befuddled pack mates. “Down,” she said to them as
they tried to heave her off. “Down, down,
down
.”

They stayed down. Kelyn twisted to look back to the
clearing as a huge shadow passed before the overhang. A great webbed paw
slapped one man, a hind paw scraped across the man on top of Gwawl, and the
immense dappled white rock cat snatched the leader up in his jaws and bounded
right out of the clearing.

Silence.

Kelyn sat up; the others disentangled themselves. Gwawl
pulled his arms free and dragged himself out from beneath the dead weight of
the equally dead man atop him, and crawled over to join the others. The fire
had been kicked to sparks; night was nearly upon them.

But the slavers were gone. The hunt pack was free.

Gwawl looked at her and murmured approvingly, “It takes more
than brawn to make a powerful hunter...or warrior. And anyway, you saved the
clumsy for last.”

Kelyn moved quickly out into the clearing, using the last
bit of fading light to grab knives from the slavers, and to snatch up the meat
scattered beside the dead fire. She gave Gwawl one of the knives and they went
to work on the ropes. She glanced at their stuporous pack mates. “Will they
even remember what happened?”

Gwawl grunted as his ankle ropes parted, and stretched his
legs with pleasure. “Who knows? Does it matter?”

“No,” Kelyn said, settling in for a long night of huddling
beneath the overhang to watch over her drugged friends, guarding against the
return of the rock cat. “It doesn’t.”

Because
she
knew. And things would be different from
now on.

Clumsy Kelyn could be her father’s daughter after all.

~~~~~~~~~~

There are so many good books to read...thank you for choosing
Emerging Legacy
! I appreciate your letters, emails, blog comments, and Facebook posts more than I can ever express. These days, readers hold more power than ever with their choices, and reviews and word of mouth are an author's best friend — always very much appreciated!

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If you enjoyed this short story, you might like Kelyn's ongoing adventures in the novel
Wolverine's Daughter
:

Kelyn of Ketura.
Daughter of a legendary warrior
who left the mountains before she was born. Brave. Strong. Tempered by her struggle to survive in the hostile, craggy Keturan mountains. And plagued by moments of enormous and puzzling clumsiness.
"Find your father,"
the local wisewoman tells her. "To find your true self, find the Wolverine."
Angered by his abandonment,
Kelyn doesn't care about her father--but the lure of adventure in the Out Lands calls to her, just as it called to the Wolverine before her, and she accepts the challenge.
New languages, new weapons.
Magic. Witch hunts. The treacheries of civilization. She doesn't know just how much of a challenge it'll be.

And
here's the first book in the Changespell Series:
Dun Lady's Jess
: all woman, all heart... all horse.

When hikers Dayna and Eric find a naked and terrified young woman,
they’re sure she’s the victim of foul play. But the truth is much more shocking: she isn’t human at all. She’s Dun Lady’s Jess, a horse transformed into this new shape by the spell that brought her and her rider, to whom she is utterly devoted, into this world.

Possessed now of human intelligence but still a horse deep inside,
Jess desperately searches this world for her master and rider, using her fiery equine spirit to take on human idiosyncrasies — and human threats.

~~~~~~~~~~

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Doranna Durgin is an award-winning author (Compton Crook, best first SF/F/H) whose quirky spirit has led to an eclectic and extensive publishing journey across genres. Beyond that, she hangs around outside her Southwest mountain home with horse and dogs, and the dogs keep her busy in the sports of tracking, obedience, and agility. She doesn't believe in mastering the beast within, but in channeling its power. For good or bad has yet to be decided...

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Complete Booklist