Trying To Get By Ch. 02

"She said they were going to kill the king. I told Khratti no.

"But she still believed in them.

"Since that night, I felt like I'd been on the wrong side for almost all of my life.

"I told her ... told Khratti that it was wrong, what they wanted, but they took her away. They were leaving for Dumeyan."

She wept bitterly, standing bent over with her ribs heaving as she cried. "I didn't do it, Rhisu ... I didn't ... Please ... please, please ..."

She opened her eyes and it came out as a whisper, "Forgive me."

Rhisu was crying again, though she didn't blink much. She nodded at Lelly.

Slowly Lelly's crying slowed and she fell silent, just breathing. Sobbing and breathing. She wiped her eyes with the rough blanket. Rhisu came forward and handed Lelly a cloth bandage large enough to make a sling for an arm.

"Your nose," she whispered.

Lelly nodded.

Rhisu put her hand on Lelly's slim shoulder, "I don't know why you're telling me this unless you feel that you need to. I can understand that, I guess. Lelly, I don't hold you to blame."

She held Lelly gently and pulled her head against her, "I forgive you Lelly," she whispered in the thin girl's ear.

Lelly nodded her thanks.

It took some minutes for Lelly to be able to speak. She nodded at first. Then she said, "I -I think I had that in me for ... " she shrugged, "I dunno. It feels better.

"Rhisu, I want you to know I was working for bastards. They sent our people out to do ... really shitty things. They sent Khratti and her sweet, dark green eyes to do killer's work. They killed everybody they saw, trying to get to the king, but ... they killed the best one, the only one who understood us.

"The press got hold of you and used you for their numbers.

"You sure were professional though; I have to give you that.

"Lowlanders came and cut the heart right out of one of their star killers and the press put her in front of the cameras before she'd even had a chance to really start to cry. I heard the ratings hit a new high and I felt so ashamed.

"You didn't say a thing about revenge, didn't use bad names or words. I didn't see it on your face at all, except for what you couldn't hide in your eyes. Mostly, I just saw your pain. You were professional even then, always taking the high road.

"By the time you were done, nobody where I was made a single sound and we all stared at the half-ring of Highlanders in front of you who sought you out on their way back inside.

"No one could believe it. They came to you, knelt before you and bowed their heads for a minute, most of them wearing the blood of the Lowlanders they'd killed. "

"I'd never heard of Highlanders kneeling to anyone. I read somewhere that in the old wars long ago, they were the ones bound only by their word, not by oath. They don't even kneel to the king when there's a coronation or something like that. They said that on the news, that it's a true alliance and not fealty that they swear.

"They got up one at a time and touched you to say some words as they left. I saw blood on your shoulders from where they'd laid their bloody gloved hands - and another one would take their place in the semicircle as soon as one walked away, over and over and over and - and their love for you and their sadness ... No one had ever seen anything like that.

"It made us look like beasts. That was the thought that I had.

"It went on for a long time, but the camera never left that until it was over and you were there alone again. That was when I saw you cry because I could see that by then, you didn't have the strength to walk away. I wanted to kill the camera man for showing that."

"It's tradition," Rhisu said quietly, "I had to be there once they began to come to me.

"That company wasn't from my regiment but they had to come. I knew almost none of them. It's for ones of us who've been wronged and lost loved ones.

It's done by the unit nearest to where the wrong was done. They said their respects, but they all looked me in the eye and silently swore oaths of vengeance. I've done the same thing from the other side of it. It's just never seen on the news."

"And that night was not their vengeance."

"That's what I thought," Lelly said, "I mean, I didn't know that, but I've been where they've been, afterward. It makes sense.

"Where I was, some fool yelled out that it served you right.

"The guy next to him yelled out what I was thinking. He asked the idiot what he thought would happen now.

"He said that until then, it was just a job to those big warriors, but after that night, it would be personal. He said that all that we'd done was make all Highlanders everywhere angry.

"He swung his fist at the one who'd made the remark and knocked him out cold - clean off his feet with a punch to the face and he didn't say a word as he walked out. Nobody even looked at the one on the floor."

She sniffled, "I remember thinking that the storybook romance was over.

If the girl whose prince we killed could look that hard and determined just minutes after knowing that her male was dead, no - murdered and butchered - because that was what it really was, what we did, then the war was surely lost. The idiots where I was were just too stupid to see it, that's all.

"But I knew what was coming. I tried to tell them, but they weren't listening. They were still trying to make what we did into some kind of victory.

"I heard the announcer say that because of the "remote possibility" of one-sided, non-allied action, all Highlanders everywhere had been ordered to stand down and were confined to barracks by the king's order unless they were in action.

"He probably forgot that he doesn't own any of you - that you take your orders only from your own command and not a frightened old king. I guess doing nothing to answer what had been done wasn't what your kind wanted to hear as a plan.

"Even as they were saying it on the news, there were craft leaving the castle.

"I went outside, thinking about what I wanted to do and if I was desperate enough to try. I looked and I could just see the mountain range that's your home - where you come from. It looked so far away, but I guess distance doesn't mean much.

"The whole sky over there looked like it was on fire. It flickered at the tops of those mountains where you all come from. I knew then that I didn't even have a decision to make. I had to try right then.

"It was why the craft were flying away and I knew what that meant.

"I knew it was my only warning.

"The Highlanders had been called home.

"So I knew something that maybe nobody else thought of. Your kind doesn't do war like everybody else because really, you're on your own side, no one else's.

"You're bound by your own oaths to each other before anything or anyone else, even the fat king hiding behind his walls who chose to hide instead of deal with what happened.

"My thinking when I put it together was that between our leader's crude stupidity over wanting to strike something 'important' and the king's craven inaction, it changed the face of the war in one night.

"I saw one chance for myself to try to get my own life back and I took it before it was gone - before the only window that I'd ever get closed on me.

"I didn't hear about everything to it for almost a week because I wasn't there by then, but the very next day, that whole base, one of our biggest and most secret - two day's walk deep inside our border - was wiped off the ground along with everybody stationed there.

The king found out that he'd never had the reins of his strongest allies in his hands at all. Probably got confused over what an alliance actually is.

Highlander fast movers showed up late the night of our attack and orbited the area of the base all night like hawks keeping watch over their prey.

"Nothing flew out of there. Nothing flew in. The sky was on fire, full of flashes and falling wreckage.

Anyone outside on the ground didn't get far.

At dawn, more Highlander strike craft came and beat the whole thing into mud, shot down anything that was trying to leave, ripped up any vehicle that even began to move.

"Then the assault ships landed.

"Anything in the air and even close while they were there was shot down by fast movers with no warning.

"Three press lifters showed up looking for a story, I guess. They were blown out of the sky and no apologies were given. I hoped that the camera man who showed you weeping was on one of them.

"Then all the Highlanders left.

"No prisoners. No survivors. Just torn, silent forest and broken, burning buildings.

"Life went on, but there was one less prince and I heard that you were missing.

"So you lost the one you loved more than your life and I did too. And it was all for nothing.

"We looked like lowdown dirty snakes to our own people. They seemed to think that we planned a mission and threw away hundreds of lives just to kill a prince. And he fought harder than any of our own would have done in his place. I heard that there were memorials put up in most of our cities out of respect and in open defiance of the government.

"The Highlanders told the king that the ancient alliance was over. Now the king and the Lowlander government both have growing civil wars in their countries. They're not even fighting each other now, they're too busy fighting insurrections.

"Instead of howling over their twisted view of things, the press pretty much shut up after what happened. They got the message. It wasn't stated in anything but silence but they got it.

"They'd broadcast the grief of one of theirs for the world to see.

They'd gone too far that night.

"Now, just about everybody wants the Highlanders to come back, but they've opened relations with the countries on the other side of the mountains and they're not even talking to anyone else anymore."

She was still sniffling a little. "But I was far away when the base got hit. That same night, I was outside the fence and running before the after-action crap even started after the news. Like I said, I knew that I'd only get one chance.

"I was in the next valley when the fast movers arrived and lit up the sky like it was morning under a thunderstorm.

"I ran for days until I was out of the fucking country that I didn't want to be a part of anymore.

"Then I was here. Those ... those things took me and they let me go today."

Rhisu smiled, "How is it that you know so much about us? Or maybe I should say them since I left and we're obviously not there anymore. I'm not angry or offended, Lelly. I'm just really, really surprised."

Lelly shrugged, "When I was little, I got lost in the forest. I didn't know which way to go. It got dark and rained and I was cold and I couldn't stop crying or catch my breath because I was so scared. I found out later when I was older that I'd been wandering in the wrong direction the whole time. I was going the wrong way. Nobody would have ever found me.

"I probably would have died. There were cliffs where I was headed.

"My parents were out looking for me, most of my family too. The village that I was from was used as a meeting point by the guerrillas sometimes, the ones who overturned the old kingdom and became the government there now. Most of the people believed their lies back then.

"Until they'd invited themselves into your village.

"I know they were lies now because I've worked for them long enough to see through it all. They called themselves freedom fighters. Funny how most of the ones that I ever saw were just thugs who'd found a way to live better by threatening poor people so that they could live among them, hide among them.

"Hide behind them with their long knives out.

"They shot down a transport with some of the king's soldiers on it the day before. I heard later that they did terrible things to the soldiers who survived. But I didn't know anything about that then.

"I saw something in the bushes after a long time. I thought it was a monster or some kind of animal, but after a while, I saw that it was a person, huge and shiny. Armour, a little different from yours, Rhsu. Same idea though.

"The armour went away and it was a female with red hair. I'd never seen anybody that big before. She came right over to me and picked me up. She was really warm and she smelled so different, so good to me. I felt better and I was trying to stop crying.

"She looked around and carried me to a darker spot off the trail where we were. Then she sat down, leaned back against some rock and began to talk to me, so quiet and soft while looking around us at the same time.

"She asked me my name and told me that her name was Bayna. She told me to just lean against her and she'd hold me to keep me from falling over. She told me that it was important to just breathe like I was leaning against my mother. It worked. I had some asthma when I was small. She did the same things that my mother did, said kind of the same things to get me to calm down. She had a boy a little older than me named Tarnin.

"She asked me how I came to be there and I told her. I wanted to see the forest but I wasn't ever allowed to. The trees and the birds just made me want to follow along, but it got dark and I was lost.

"I've never forgotten her and that hair. I'd never seen someone who didn't have greeny-black hair like my own. I'd never seen anybody with such bright green eyes before either. She smiled at me and held me against herself with one arm and she gave me something good to chew on, like candy, but it was a little salty too, full of some nuts and things, maybe some dried berries.

"She broke off little pieces with her teeth from a bar of it that I could never bite and let me take them from her lips with mine, just like my mother did sometimes. I chewed each piece slow like she told me and we looked at each other. She let me touch her face and I let her touch mine.

"I calmed down, but I was also getting sleepy from spending a whole day alone and afraid. Bayna told me to hold on to her for a moment, so I did. She covered us both with a blanket, lifted her gun and reached right around me. She cocked it and laid it back down before she fixed the blanket so I was covered with it over my shoulders and at the back of my head just a little.

"Bayna kissed me then and it was a mother's kiss. She kissed me just like my mother would have if I was frightened and it was her and not Bayna. Just as slow and soft but not long each time with the same kind of meaning and I felt just as safe because it was what I knew from when I was really small.

"She held me with one arm and had her other one on her rifle and she kissed me and promised me that everything would be fine and to just lie my head down when I wanted to and go to sleep if I could.

Lelly looked down at herself and then back up with a quiet laugh, "My mother was made just like me. Bayna was more like you."

She actually giggled, "I was over the moons!

"I squirmed a little and she asked me what was wrong. I guess I looked really tired because I was, and I moved a little more like any sleepy kid would and licked her nipple a few times before I opened my mouth to carefully suck. I'd have tried if it was my mother there, and Bayna let me. I think that she was the perfect mother, now that I'm grown. I thought that her boy Tarnin was really lucky at the time.

"She looked down at me, kissed my head and smiled. I think that's why I still remember her so clearly. She let me suck but I'm sure I didn't last very long. There was no milk or anything, but it was really good and it gave my thumb a break. My mother never let me do it anymore by that time, but I think that Bayna knew that it was what I needed then to drift off.

"I fell asleep lying on her under the blanket.

"In the morning, She was still awake when I woke up and she carried me a long way because she said we needed to go quickly, but suddenly she stopped and put me down after telling me to be quiet. The armour came back, but the face part didn't and she took my hand and we walked a little more. Then I heard my parents calling me and I ran to them.

"My father picked me up and hugged me and then my mother had me and she squeezed me so tightly. Everybody else came running. I started to tell them about Bayna and they looked, but they weren't smiling anymore.

"They were backing away. Even my mother backed away. I could see that they were all afraid of Bayna and I didn't understand why.

"My uncle held up a rifle and Bayna's came up and she told him not to be stupid in front of a child. He dropped it and ran. Bayna walked right through where my family had been standing, but she stopped and said goodbye to me.

"I started to cry.

"Bayna looked at my parents, but she lowered her head, still looking at them and she hugged me, kissed my forehead and smiled. She told me to be a good girl and grow up strong.

"She looked at my mother and told her that I was very beautiful and that she should be very proud to have a daughter like me. She said that a girl like me was a gift to anyone and that my mother should be more careful so I wouldn't get lost again. Then she said that I wandered because I was very bright and curious and that it would have killed me if I'd wandered only a little farther in the dark.

"She kissed me again and Said that she couldn't stay. Then she was gone.

"My family was on the other side.

"I cried for two days. It didn't make sense to a little kid like I was. Somebody found me and took care of me. Why was everybody acting like I did something wrong?

"When we got home, almost the whole village was burned but the little street that we lived on. There were bodies everywhere. My parents found the village chief and told him what had happened. He said to me that Bayna was bad, that she was one of the murderers. He said they attacked the village at night and killed so many people.

"I was a kid. I didn't know what to think. But I figured it out one day. Like everybody else, the chief couldn't tell the truth to save his life.

"So this is what I think happened. A Highlander found me lost and alone and kept me away from the village. My family were saved because they kept looking for me until it got really late. By then, they just had to hear the fighting and have seen the fires so that stayed away and that more than likely saved their lives.

"Bayna protected me and watched over me while the rest of them dealt with the guerrillas. The village chief hid in the manure pile like the brave sympathiser that he was. I don't know who put the antiaircraft weapons in the forest, but I think it must have been the guerrillas. When I found them years later, they were all looking melted so I know who it was that must have done that.

"I worked for the army because everybody has to do three years. Mine were up, but they never told me when I could go home. So I ran away the night they killed your husband and the base was destroyed the next day, like I knew that it would be. I took a different name, and I was free.

"When I got old enough to know about some of the other parts of my body, I used to have a fantasy about being with Bayna. I'm pretty sure that she didn't like girls, but it's my fantasy, right? I like to daydream about her making love to me."

"I don't know if Highlanders are pure and perfectly good or not, but they've helped me twice that I know about and I kind of like them - in a careful way. I just learned what I could about them when I could my whole life.

"I couldn't get over it when you came to me. I stared and blinked, but you wouldn't disappear. I knew you right off - the poor girl from the castle and then I was shit-scared because I've heard a lot about you and what you've done."

She looked down again and smiled a little as she shook her head slowly, "You gave me this blanket and said that you cared enough about a stranger to want to keep her from freezing - even though you knew me as a Lowlander.