Chapter 5: Confrontation

As the hours before dawn passed in wait of Anthem’s return, Ilara's pulse progressed ever faster. The rushing beat of her heart seemed a reflection of the passing time there in the stillness beneath the summer moon. She felt utterly alone. The void was closing in around her until new fears of the darkness began to play against her normal fondness for the night. Had Anthem left her? Would he return? Had he gone so far away as to not hear her call?

She could wait no longer; Ilara started a fire and by its light searched the clearing for tracks or any signs of where Anthem could have gone. Near Anthem's resting place, claw marks had dug into the earth around two hind-foot prints, suggesting a take off, but this did not tell her much, other than the fact that he had flown, which was to be expected from the winged beast. He was created for the sky. She climbed a tree and near the top scoped the horizon in every direction. Nothing met her vision but the darkened frames of the treetops.

Climbing down again, her mind cleared of fear as she readied herself for action. She grabbed her bow and made sure her boot securely held her sharpest knife, sheathed in its familiar, easily accessed place behind her calf. She threw sand on her fire and checked her back to ensure the quiver was still in place before she bolted in a random direction into the woods.

Failing to detect a sound set apart from the subtle noises of the pre-dawn forest, she retraced her steps, planning to choose another course as soon as she reached the clearing. Like the spokes of a wheel extending from the center, she would comb the forest around the clearing, hoping Anthem would be found while the clearing remained the point of reference.

The darkness soon dissolved in the immerging dawn and the faintness of morning began to expose the secrets of night as Ilara neared her campsite for the third time. Before she had reentered the clearing, she saw faint movement ahead, behind the trees. She crouched out of instinct and peered through her hiding place toward the source of movement, straining to make out the living shadow.

A pain-seared roar pierced the air just before she saw her Anthem crash through the trees on the opposite side of the clearing, his right wing hanging limp at his side. With his left wing he steadied himself as he backed away from a spearhead and a shadow.

“Anthem!” Ilara whispered, barely stilling herself as her first reaction had been to leap into the clearing and take on the form that was immerging against her beast. Instead she crept slowly forward among the low brush, trying to make out the shape of Anthem’s adversary.

As she approached the plants that edged along the clearing, she saw that Anthem’s opponent was a tall man with dark features. If some fool thinks to end my beast, I’ll have to end him myself, she had almost spoken aloud.

Before she attacked, she quickly weighed the situation. What little her brothers had taught her of hunting and fighting had been rudimentary, but after years of solitary practice with wild and hostile creatures she was now a master at assessing an opponent’s threat to herself and how much force was needed to defeat them. Yet she had never seriously fought against another human being—never with the intent to harm. Could she bring herself to do so now… to perhaps kill a man? It was slightly unnerving that she could find no immediate reasons not to. But she hadn’t time to philosophize or moralize; she would use as much force as necessary to preserve her only friend. Passing time and the dark hunter were equally against her purpose. She had to act. She reached for her knife and leapt into the lower branches of a tree.

Anthem and the hunter were each rapt in the moment, intent on taking down the other. Neither noticed Ilara as she positioned herself to descend into their midst. When the man was directly beneath Ilara’s perch, his arm held up, spear poised and ready to pierce Anthem’s heart, she leapt. Gracefully accurate, her feet struck the man in the back so that he was knocked off balance and his spear fell from his grasp. He was pinned; Ilara kept one foot on his back and the other against his cheek, pressing his face down into the dirt.

Keeping him down, Ilara turned away to see Anthem collapse to her right. He had either lost a lot of blood or he was too wounded to hold himself up. This evoked a silent, blazing fury within her and Ilara breathed not a word but pressed her foot firmly into the man’s cheek, holding the keen edge of her blade against his throat.

Shafts of light cut through the trees in front of her to the east—dawn’s blinding brilliance in her eyes. It was enough so that she was not able to see as the man beneath her grasped the spear he had dropped and with it struck her ankle, stealing her balance and knocking her off his back.

As if they were both trained in the arts of the predatory beasts, each was back on their feet in an instant. Now his spear was aimed at her, the two of them circling each other. Ilara finally caught sight of her opponent’s face. Startling recognition came with the morning and her anger blended with an unbidden fear. The result was only to make her wrath fiercer, though frozen beneath the surface. The man stared back, making no move but holding his stance of readiness.

~~*~~

Xavier stood still for a moment, surprised by the soft features he had not expected to find on his attacker. Despite all his combat experience, he had never had to face a woman in a fight. The proper response to this attack was hard to assess—his surprise kept him from being able to draw any conclusions to act on. One moment he had been just about to complete the kill of a bigger leoptera than any the records of renown had yet to boast, the next he was assured that kill was lost, and the cause was the unprecedented appearance of some unearthly woman-creature.

For a moment he just stood there with his spear and watched the girl’s murky grey-green eyes burn into his own. The sun cast low beams of light to illuminate her from the back as the wind tossed loose strands of raven hair that seemed to burn crimson as it caught the light. She was slender and taller than most of the women in Caelta, Reirq, or Sheia, and whiter than anyone he’d ever seen. Her tunic, jerkin, leggings, and boots were such as he’d never seen on a woman, but they seemed to suit her hostility. All that adorned her was masculine, but it was only a thin veil over an uncontainable beauty, and he was taken aback despite himself.

If he had realized immediately that his attacker was female, he wouldn’t have knocked her off his back. Now his chivalry would be a barrier to any violent means of defending himself. But even if it weren’t for this barrier, he would have been stalled merely by the intensity in the girl’s wild eyes.

He was slightly encouraged that the girl was as inhibited to follow through with the fight as he was. “Who are you?” He asked, finding his voice awkward and small to his hearing. Her eyes slightly flickered but she made no reply. Her left brow, delicate beneath an old scar, crinkled just barely. Like a deer caught unaware, she seemed mesmerized; her energy seemed pent-up below the surface, like she would bolt at the slightest provocation.

“Just put down your knife and…” he was cut-off as she jerked out of her trance, rushed at him, and pinned him between a tree and her knife.

Her eyes made clear her refusal to cooperate even before her lips parted. “You’ve no right to attack my beast,” she spat through the loose strands of hair that had fallen from her dark braid

Xavier glanced over at the fallen leoptera with curious eyes. “How is it that you call him your beast? Leoptera take no masters, nor can they be tamed.” He waited for a retort, but receiving none continued. “They are vicious killers. Can you take offense that I seek to rid my people of such a threat?”

She answered him not a word but pressed the flat of the blade more firmly into his neck.

“I answered your question; I was doing my duty. I couldn’t have known anyone cared for a bloodthirsty animal,” he said.

Clear offense was taken at the derogatory remark directed at the leoptera. The girl did not move, or even blink, but that conveyed enough. Xavier saw that she truly valued the life of the dark beast, so she would eventually have to tend to its wounds, leaving Xavier under her power to show mercy or malice. He didn’t put much faith in the former.

He could maneuver himself fairly easily and get hold of her wrist, but a stalemate was the only foreseeable result; the girl was not strong but she seemed to make up for it with skill. Besides, he could not bring himself to use force against a woman. “Look, if you release me and promise not to kill me, I’ll see to your leoptera’s wounds and let you both go,” he offered, the only alternative he could see to submission or brutality.

~~*~~

Studying the face of Sa’Celim, Ilara felt weighted on all ends. She was in control and she was not about to let him take that away under the pretense of a bargain. Half of her wanted to simply slit his throat—the part that frightened her, which she pushed back down even as it immerged. The other part was wary of his offer; it would probably mean going to his village. Why was that so hard for her to accept? She did not know, but she still clung to her aversion. Even so, she was distraught by the fear of what the consequences might be for Anthem if she did not accept help.

Sa’Celim’s brown eyes were meeting hers in the growing light, as if daring her to look away and submit. “What skill do you have to heal?” she finally asked, keeping her blade as firmly pressed against his neck as before and cloaking her misgivings beneath a harsh tone. She was unsure why she was pursuing this option at all, other than her fear that she could not minister to her beast alone and save him.

“I have dealt with wounds for the past ten years. I have seen pain like you’ve never known. I’ve dealt it, and I’ve mended it; if you care at all for the creature, you’ll let me go,” he finished.

Ilara hesitated. He knows nothing of my pain.

Having once more made no reply, the man must have assumed she was bent on violence, for he twisted out of her grasp and pinned her knife-wielding wrist into the tree and her other arm over her head. He met her eyes again, this time from above, looming with a new light behind his eyes.

Ilara was kicking herself for her weakness. She could have killed him while he was under her power, but she had not had the will. Later she would reflect that it was better her hands were not stained with unnecessary blood, but the value of a life was as yet unclear to her.

His look softened as he twisted the knife out of her hand. Stepping away, he turned his back on her and went to Anthem’s fallen form. It was not more than a moment before Ilara had notched an arrow at her bow and set her aim at Sa’Celim’s back.

“Are we still at that? Have you not yet accepted a truce?” the man called from his crouched position at the side of the beast, only briefly looking back at her.

The sight of Anthem lying in a pool of his own blood was enough to sharpen the edge of disdain Ilara clung to. “You took my knife, but you’ll regret leaving me my bow,” she replied simply, though the notion of actually killing him seemed unnecessary now. Still, she had to prevent him from any kind of double-cross, even if it required injuring him.

At this the hunter stood and turned to her once more, his full height and breadth lending to his response. “Are you really going to put an arrow in me? Do you really want to carry this to an ordeal where nobody wins? I see a leoptera with serious wounds and a girl who seems to care if he lives or dies. If you really want him to live, you’ll have to trust me. Afterwards, by all means, you can go on your way.”

Ilara held her arrow steady at her bow for a few moments more, not putting it down until Sa’Celim had turned back to attending Anthem. For some reason he was helping Anthem even without her cooperation. She had not promised him anything and indeed no bargain was struck, therefore she assumed there was something more he wanted. Of course he would never say so—that would be foolish—but this was almost certainly regarded by Ilara as mere leverage for Sa’Celim’s own unnamed benefit.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Examining his wounds,” he replied.

“What have you done to his wing?”

“I…” he began but altered his response, “It’s broken. I’ll have to sew it down and bind it. And I’ll need water and a lot of cloth to tend his wounds. But I don’t think any of that can be done here without my equipment and some of my men. I must get help in the village, or this beast will die.”

“I can get water from the stream and you can use my other tunic for binding,” she offered, a dread creeping up under her skin at the idea of more men being added to the scenario.

“No, it won’t be enough. The leoptera will die if we don’t stop his bleeding, and your tunic will not do much. Can you stay here and cover this wound while I retrieve my men?”

Ilara stared back at him, her raw repulsion as clear as the morning air. Something was unconcealed behind her eyes, which might have been fear, but as she responded her voice resonated with only anger. “You’ll leave him here to die… you’ll leave me alone to watch it happen… or you’ll bring others and get what you want by force.” She shifted her eyes for a moment and then lifted her bow once more, fitting the arrow with smooth resolve. Her choices were spent.

Even as her arrow was steadied, Sa’Celim had risen and was backing away with a perception of the new malice in Ilara’s intentions. “Wait, I’m not…” he began but could not finish. The feathers at the back of the shaft slipped between Ilara’s fingers as the arrow took flight and hit its mark in Sa’Celim’s thigh, silencing him in shock. He staggered backward, his hands around the bloodied arrow and his eyes wide in some emotion she could not recognize. She knew even as she looked at him that she had seen the look before; on the face of Taerith, and Aiden, and long ago, her father; disappointment. That was the cause for the look in their cases; disappointment tinged in their love for her. This look could be nothing of the sort, yet it was unmistakably like the other looks… those looks she’d now give her very freedom to witness again.

Such were the thoughts that coursed through her in the mere seconds after the impact of her arrow, and such were the thoughts that were blackened just as quickly as a hard object struck the back of her head and she slipped into unconscious oblivion.