34
THREE MONTHS LATER…
"Would you stand up straight? He sent word that he’d be here this morning. I can’t dress you like this." Iris pushed me in the butt and pulled back my shoulders.
"I’m as big as a house!" I complained.
"Of course you are. You have a child in there. Children live in houses," she snickered.
I stuck my tongue out at her. "Why aren’t you pregnant?"
She straightened something back there behind me and shrugged in the mirror. "Ask me again when I find a man."
"At some point, you’re going to have to stop sticking to that story. I know your voice and I can very well match that voice to the jungle moans that I’ve heard quite often now."
"Would you calm down? Goddess, you’re barely showing. What a brat you are," she laughed.
"Brat?"
"Yes, brat, as in ill-mannered and spoiled."
I wanted to stomp my feet and shoo her from the room, but that would just prove her point. "Fine. Fix whatever the hell you’re fixing so I can go down stairs."
"I’m done, and your ass looks fuckable," she told me, with a finger on her cheek. "I’m sure they won’t even notice the belly hanging over your belt."
"Gaw!" I coughed. "Bitch!"
"Brat," she returned.
"Ooooo!" I left the room before I threw something at her.
"Adian is already here. As is Bryce. Karal too. Fenrir has just come in the gate, my’Lady," Mark said, catching up with me.
"Is he coming here?" I asked.
"I believe so, yes. Where else would he be going?" he asked.
"Perhaps my sister’s house to listen for hours and hours and hours," I sneered.
"I doubt that, my’Lady. In fact, he has the rare expression of grave business about him, and he was short with the guard. I would say his direction is here, with no interruptions allowed," he said.
This slowed me down. Mark was a good judge of people, and if what he suggested was half correct, then Fenrir was not in a gaming or playing mood. Which quite frankly, pissed me off. I was looking forward to this- to my baby shower. I was looking forward to having all of them together, laughing and talking and loving me with my big belly, swollen ankles and all.
Biting my lower lip, I descended the stairs. Half way down I saw Fenrir come through the front doors, looking much grimmer than my imagination pictured. He also had a scar running down his forehead, across his left eye to his chin. It was thick, and angry. What could have given him a wound so fierce was beyond my scope. Did dragons still exist?
"Mark!" Fenrir shouted.
"Sir?" he said from behind me, turning Fenrir’s attention to my direction.
I looked for some expression change. He would have to be blind, and nose burnt not to notice my state. He glanced at me but then pinned Mark so hard with his eyes, I heard him falter slightly on the step above me.
"Is Madb still here?" Fenrir asked.
"Yes, in her tower room." Then he added. "Her man Jason is also in the Keep."
"Cured?" he asked.
"Mostly, yes."
"What about Karal, Bryce and Adian?" he demanded.
I answered this time, not liking his manner at all, "They’re all fine. All waiting for me to show up. Would you care to join?"
"Iris?"
"My sister is on her way down, yes."
"Mark, there is a shifter in the guard, named Dorian. Dorian the gray. I also need Marcus. Perhaps Priestess Bia as well." Then looking to me. "The dining room will do. Make sure there is enough food. We might be in there for some time."
"Mark, add to your list, Doctor Alexis. Fenrir, I trust you, I love you, but you’re going to sit down and let her look in your ears, your eyes and the back of your throat or we don’t go anywhere."
He looked at the floor, then turned to the guards at the door, "Then fetch her!" he commanded with such force, one of the guards bolted out of the door, running.
"Calm yourself."
“Calm myself!”
“Precisely. I’m uncomfortable, Fenrir. Pregnant and uncomfortable, but also excited. For the first goddamn time in a long, long, while, I have you all together. And before I birth this child, I am going to celebrate. We’re all going to sit down and eat cake and talk and laugh and play games.”
He looked at me, unmoved. "Play games? Let’s play a game of pretend, why don’t we. Let’s pretend I’ve just arrived from the wastelands, and what I carry is not a message, but a burden. And until that burden is delivered, I will not be calm." By the end of his statement his voice was shifting to a growl so deep I could barely make out the words, but I got the message.
"Alright," I agreed. "I will trust that this urgency and your summoning of my people and guests is due to an extreme situation." I paused, and then growled, "but don’t you dare disappoint, wolf."
He stepped forward and put his hand on my belly. "I am happy, I want this to be more important, but my head can’t drop this burden. Forgive me."
I put my hand on his, and said, "Ok."
Jason, one of Madb’s men, came into the foyer, demanding to know who thought they had the right to summon his queen. Fenrir grabbed him by the throat so quickly I didn’t see him move from me to Jason.
"I do! If you delay, then you will need to explain to Madb why you failed her and her realm to destruction — and you’ll have to do it without a throat!" and threw him into a stone column. "Move you pitiful beast!"
Jason moved. He moved fast. I had heard the saying, tail between his legs, and now I understood it.
Alexis came in and Fenrir got down on his knees so she could inspect him. She declared him not infected. Fenrir stood and moved us into the dining room. As soon as Madb was in the room with Jason, Fenrir began, without formality or waiting. As Marcus and Dorian came in, he nodded and kept on without pause.
He did not disappoint.
After pinning up a map of the continents to the curtains, Fenrir outlined the wastelands, which were mostly the desert regions where Arizona and Nevada once were. In the area which once was the Navajo Nation, the largest Kind tribal gathering was now located.
The Navajo were the least affected by the virus, and shared the area with the Kind — until the last few years. Now there were only a handful of Navajo there.
"And the Kind there are not in line with the shape of the tribes. They do not follow the ways." Fenrir said.
"I’m sorry, but what ways?" I asked.
He nodded and chewed a hunk of meat. He started eating when he walked in the room and continued as he talked. "The Kind built up their tribes using the Ways of the Iroquois. It seemed the wisest of the choices, and had a long history of successful governing.
One of the main parts of that way of living was that the women and men had separate councils, with the women’s being the governing force, and the men, as the deciders of action. Basically, the women decided what was going to happen and the men then decided how it was going to happen."
"And these tribes don’t," I said.
"They have removed the women council, and the women are now basically second class citizens. They are used for sex, child baring and labor, with no voice or rights. It’s not clear what happened to the Navajo, but there are strong signs they were killed and their lands taken."
"Goddess," Iris breathed.
I looked to Madb, but her eyes never left Fenrir.
Fenrir then marked a large area in the wastes, near what was once the Mexican border with Arizona. "This here, roughly, is a kingdom."
"A what?" Marcus asked.
"You heard me. It is ruled by a king, and is heavily populated. Ragnar is in this area. Because the king is his last target. The last of the warlords who attacked this realm and killed its queen. Here," he continued, drawing another circle in the area of the Sierra Madre, near that same location, "is the largest nest I’ve ever seen, ruled by a zombie queen named August. Her horde is at least ten thousand strong, and she has more than drones. She has monstrous creatures, and zombie warriors that easily match the Kind for strength and fortitude. Thousands of these."
"So close to the human kingdom?" I asked.
"Ragnar doesn’t believe that in the kingdom it is common knowledge, but he knows that the king and queen have worked out a pact of some sort." Fenrir looked to Madb. "And no, he’s not infected. In fact, neither are any of the Kind in the Navajo lands. The king made a pact with the Kind Tribes there, before he made nice with the zombie queen August."
Fenrir looked at the map and made a circle around all three areas. "This is now the enemy. They have destroyed the realms in the Rockies. There’s nothing left of those any longer. All goods and supplies were stripped, and no human lives there anymore. They were either killed or enslaved and taken back to the kingdom."
"He didn’t move there? Just destroyed the realms, and stripped them bare?" Karal asked.
"Yes," Fenrir answered. "Their next target is Queen Madb’s realm."
"Beth’s realm is closer," Iris pointed out.
Fenrir grabbed another hunk of meat, "They want Madb. She’s kicked their collective asses for too long. Also, Beth could have working nuclear missiles, and I know she has Apache helicopters and tanks. They call Beth, Kali. Goddess of Death. But she’s next, after Madb and Myriana, here."
The discussion went on for hours. Questions of size and populations. Details about siege engines and armament. Tactical questions, formations, ranks. Between Karal, Jason, and Marcus, the questions all came back to a single answer. ‘Larger than yours, more than yours, bigger than yours, stronger than yours, meaner than yours.’ Fenrir was right. He didn’t carry a message, he carried a burden. There was no ‘good news,’ in any of it.
Ragnar, my father, did not return, but he wasn’t dead either. From what I gleaned, he was waiting for the king to come out from his walls and march on Madb. He would then follow, look for a moment, and kill him. From that point, getting out of there would be a miracle, and he was certain of his own death. Fenrir said he had a letter, but then was asked more questions.
"How long," I asked, cutting through the conversations. "How long until they march?"
"Hours ago," Fenrir said. "At dawn they began."
Madb leaned over, and whispered something in Jason’s ear, then stood and left the room. After the door closed behind her, Jason looked around the silent room, and then said, "she told me to take notes, and she was going back to her room," sounding apologetic.
Dorian stood, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, "Shame the tribes didn’t like your special wine, Myriana. I guess it will be a while before I have another glass. But, my nature calls."
I didn’t think he meant that he needed to relieve himself. But he made no explanation, and simply walked to the door. There he turned and looked back to Fenrir. "It’s been an honor." Then he stepped out, closing the door behind him.
I had the feeling that I wasn’t ever going to see him again, and it hurt, in my heart.
THE END….FOR NOW