Gwen
awoke. Someone was in her house; someone
who should not be there.
Her
chest heaved as she tried to calm her racing heart. She reached down beside her mattress and grasped
her battle staff. Slipping out of bed,
she positioned herself beside the door. The
moon’s light piercing her window shimmered across her pale pink cotton
nightgown.
Three
years ago, hearing an intruder in her house would have scared her,
She would have called 911 and
trusted someone else to take care of this.
But three years ago, she met Sanchor. She was adopted by his band,
trained by him, fought by his side, lost her heart to him, and been betrayed by
him in turn. So tonight, as she heard
someone prowling beyond her door, she was terrified, but she knew what she was
capable of.
The
door handle turned. Gwen shifted her
balance and centered herself. The door
opened.
A
bolt chunked into her mattress. She
stilled her breathing. A figure entered
the room, glowing in the moon light. Its
face was smooth, no indentations for eyes or mouth, no protuberances for nose
or brows. No hair, no ears, clothed in
nothing other than its scales. It was a ukera,
a lizard-like humanoid. Its stench
filled her nostrils and she fought the urge to gag.
The
ukera’s head wobbled as it searched the room by sonar. Sanchor had told her that ukeras had once
been good and served the Light. That was
before the Darkness came. The Darkness
that Sanchor said twisted man and creature to its will. The ukera’s head stopped wobbling. It turned to face her.
She
swung: the sower harvests the grain, and caught the ukera on the
side of its knees. It fell to the
floor. Never hit an ukera in the head, Sanchor had warned her. It will
explode and spray you with its musky blood.
You’ll never get rid of the smell.
She
planted the business end of her battle stick on the triangle joining its two
rib cages. She heard a snap as its lungs
burst outward, filling with air. A slow
way to die, but sure.
She
leapt over the ukera and sprinted down the hall to the kitchen. She squatted beside the table and peered out
the window. Two hooded men were silhouetted
by the faithful moon. The moonlight
glinted off crossbows held ready in their arms.
Ukera never used weapons. Who fired
the bolt into her bed? Her ears near
burst trying to listen for the other soldier -- the one who carried a crossbow
and had to be inside with her. She heard
nothing.
She
kept low; she reached the phone beside the frig. Its dial tone blared loudly and she stabbed
at 9 then 1 then 1 again. It rang three
times before a woman answered, sounding bored.
“Intruders!”
Gwen hissed as quietly as she could.
“I’m
sorry; you’ll have to speak up. What is
your emergency?”
“Is
that what you call a telephone?” The robed figure stepped into the kitchen,
brandishing a loaded crossbow.
She
lunged upward, Salmon up the River, ramming the stick into the
soldier’s belly while screaming, “He’s trying to kill me, there’s a man in my
house. Help!” She hoped the operator
understood and would act on it.
A
bolt shattered the glass in the kitchen door and embedded itself into the
microwave. Gwen rolled under the table
as the door exploded inward. One soldier
ran to his fallen comrade while the other blocked the exit. Moonlight shimmered across their face masks:
lighteners. Lighteners were made from
the skins of some luminescent sea creature on a far distant world and allowed
the wearer to see in the darkness.
You know how to blind a
lightener, don’t you, Gwen?
she remembered Sanchor’s lesson as he smiled at her so long ago.
Gwen
aimed her battle staff and threw it. It
clipped the light switch and the florescent flooded the room. The soldiers screamed in agony and tried to
rip the masks from their faces.
Gwen
ran into the backyard, vaulted the wooden fence and tumbled into her neighbor’s
back yard. A dog lunged at her, straining
its chain to the limit and barking ferociously.
Saliva splattered her as she sprinted past the massive pit-bull.
Lights flashed on in the houses around her as other dogs
took up the alarm.
“Call the police!” Gwen shouted.
“What’s
going on?” a neighbor growled.
She slammed into a trio of trashcans, screaming for help,
and then silently slipped back through the alley to the fence behind her
house. She had made enough noise to lead
the soldiers away. And by now, the police were coming, she hoped. She snuck over the fence and crouched behind
the ancient oak in the corner of her yard.
She could see into her kitchen – the soldiers were gone. She drew a deep breath and pressed her
forehead against the bark.
A popping acorn was her only warning. She jumped up and swung at the man, a simple Frog in the Pond move. He blocked her blow with graceful ease – Rock against the River, twisting her staff out of
her hands with his own battle staff. She
head-butted his chin and cartwheeled backwards to retrieve her staff. He reached over from behind her and yanked
her against him with her own staff. Her
bare feet dangled above the ground, unable to hurt him through his metal shin
guards.
He
shook her and pressed the staff more firmly against her throat. “It’s good to know you have not gone soft and
forgotten your training.”
She stilled.
“Sanchor?”
He pressed his lips against her ear and whispered, “Do
you still love me, Gwen?”
Excerpt from
Comes
the Warrior
© Evelyn Rainey
Available for publication.
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