Chapter 6

Summer gave way to autumn and ten rings hung around my neck. With each encounter I grew more confident in my fighting acumen. My sword skills improved and I learned to parry and attack, to dodge and thrust. My opponents were young and old, mostly men but a few women as well. When we chanced upon humans, we gave them our booty. We distributed clothes and boots, and all of the items of the traveler from sewing kits to water flasks. I took the time to help people find others, to form clans and find more secure places to hide. Our names spread as clans found each other.

Always I listened for the next "swatch" of a rift opening. I wanted another kill and yet I despaired. Killing one at a time was so time consuming and trivial. Eldenhaun of a vast nation of cowards and I wanted to hurt all of them. I dreamed of lobbing a nuclear bomb through the rift and taking out entire cities, but there were no more nuclear bombs. It was a childish fantasy but the fact was undeniable. In those lonely moments I felt as if I was pissing in the chill autumn wind. I rummaged my memory for a better answer but found none.

The day of my eleventh battle, the sky proved no friend. A thin drizzle of freezing rain kept irritating the skin around my collar and we were both grumpy. We were marching through a series of thickets that looked vaguely familiar. The forest was unusually quiet as all of its denizens hunkered down in their dens and nests to avoid the penetrating wet.

The sound of a rift opening over the next outcropping swept away my depressing thoughts. Without instruction we both started running towards the sound, weapons at the ready. Before we reached the top, Reena was already easing off towards my right. We crested the stony outcrop together and Reena came to an arresting halt.

"Brother," she whispered. I stared down at the young warrior with the full beard who spied us at the same moment.

"Put away your bow," I ordered her with some well earned confidence, "We're not going to kill him; I want your brother alive and kicking."

I lobbed spell after spell of jayda at the man as we sped down the hill with my sword bared. He countered some and took the hit for others. He wasn't the best we had faced, but we had always won before using subterfuge, never by face to face confrontation. I eased to left and Reena to the right, placing the brother warrior between us. As we drew near, I heard him squawk in recognition, "Donaya!"

I pulled out a mithral dagger and aimed at the meaty part of his upper arm while he was distracted. The blade sank deep into the muscle and he turned back to me with a roar of pain. He jerked free the dagger and began a chant of healing, trying to close the wound before I came into striking distance with my sword. He never saw his sister pick up a club of wood and bash him in the back of head. He crumpled to the ground.

Under the leaves and branches of a pine grove, my captive lay bound in the tight coils of my jayda. The fresh smell of pine helped to clear my head. Here was my chance to do more than just kill one bastard, if I could figure out what to do.

"Donaya," he mumbled as he tried to fix his un-focused sight upon her. It was obvious that he had a concussion.

"She is no longer Donaya, warrior. She is bound to me and she is Reena, a slave to a human," I spat at him with glee. The torment in his face was delightful.

As the gob of spit dripped down, my answer struck me like muted thunder. There was a bomb, a very human bomb. Eldenhaun clothed themselves in jayda built charms that protected them from disease and illness, but they had no clue as to the source of illness. Humans had knowledge of bacterial infections and colds, the Eldenhaun didn't.

I paced the little clearing. My last unit in science before vacation those many years ago had been on human cells and the difference between bacteria and viruses. My paper, which I got an "A" on, was on the Ebola virus in Africa. I was pissed because my best friend, Howie, got Avian Flu for his topic. My report had a big blown up photo of the virus and its genetic code on the front cover, which I had found before I discovered articles I could actually understand. I had been so proud of that report that I stared at the cover for hours with fascination. Could I use jayda to infect him with Ebola?

Jayda cannot create life out of nothingness; it works with matter and life that already exists. I plucked a leaf, turned it over and spit into it. Assuming the position of meditation, I summoned Reena to assume the same position in front of me. I placed the leaf on the ground between us.

I focused on the living matter in the saliva; it was teeming. With the picture and the diagram in the fore of my mind, I delved into the minute life searching for a benign and malleable germ to modify. The first two choices were failures; they died. I felt the frustration and fatigue building in my limbs; Reena sensed my stress.

At the moment of decision to continue, I felt Reena reach out to me with a wave of calmness and confidence. Her reminder of "gentle" from an earlier day echoed in my thoughts, giving me hope to try again. How odd it seemed when I considered how she was giving me the ability to destroy her clan and people.

The third try was a charm, as the old saying goes with ominous new meaning. I watched my little virus dance in the spittle with single minded ravenous hunger. I picked up the leaf and carefully walked it over to my victim. Reena held open his jaw as I flipped over the leaf in his mouth and delivered the lethal packet.