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Chapter 37: Without Her Love

Sitting atop the small hut, Keeno crouched low and listened. Judging by the deserted streets, Keeno knew it was very late. The torches were burning low before each thatched hut, and in the empty doorways, from the rafters swung wooden chimes, feathers, bones, and whatever decorations pleased the pygmy eye. The village, with the jungle pressing in at its walls, was very still and silent. A pup wailed every now and then, splitting the night with its shrills for nourishment, and from some homes there even came the sounds of arguing. Aside from that, all was still. Crouching there with his mane in his eyes, Keeno felt the wonder creeping over him. It was bizarre, the normality of this place. It was almost like being home.

But then again, what had Keeno expected? That pygmies swung from trees? Slept in the mud? Threw their own shit? No. It turned out that, in the end, pygmies were just wolves too. Wolves with families, friends, enemies, and lives to live.

Still, this realization did not cool the wild thrashing that had begun in Keeno's chest the moment Elele spoke those words to him. Roriana was dead . . . and because of Keeno! He had thought for years afterward about Roriana, about that brief time they had spent together in her bed, holding each other, speaking about their lives. They had exchanged names, and afterward, Roriana had never wasted an opportunity to call Keeno by his name. She had looked at him with glowing yellow eyes - eyes that glowed with something more than mere affection. Keeno kept telling himself that she wasn't falling in love, that she couldn't be. God, if only he knew how wrong he was.

Trying desperately to push thoughts of Roriana from his mind, Keeno's eyes darted to the ground below. He braced himself and climbed nimbly down, jumping the last few feet to the ground. Squatting low in the alley between two houses, he listened again. Some chattering from the window above his head, an old pygmy coughing somewhere down the street.

Keeno pressed his back against the wall and looked around. He needed a weapon. His eyes trailed over the old barrels of junk outside the nearest hut. One barrel contained a broken spear. The spear still had the blade attached to it, but the shaft had been snapped so that it was barely the length of two paws. Keeno snatched the broken spear up. It was better than nothing.

His eyes shifting back and forth, he moved stealthily around the hut and paused when he heard the guards grumbling with each other. There were two of them, he could smell them. Two males. He darted a look around the corner. Yes, he was right. A dark gray one and a lighter one. Both with spears. One had a stud in his nose that sparkled like a jewel.

". . . tired of guarding the holding hut," one guard was complaining.

"Yeah. There's no fun in guarding something we can't have. No, the princess only belongs to his highness Prince Eleu."

"And on pain of death," sniffed the other one. "I tell you, back in the day, we used to share spoils. You catch a female and bring her home? You share her. Don't keep her to yaself."

"Unless you're the prince," said the other guard scathingly. "But then," he added in a doting voice, "it's Prince Eleu. Anything for the prince." He said the last part warmly, as if he was speaking of a younger brother, and the two males banged their chests with one paw and bowed their heads momentarily - almost as if they were speaking of some god, Keeno thought, rolling his eyes.

"Yeah," sniffed a guard after the short and reverent pause. "Bless that boy. He'll be better than his mother, I know he will. He'll lead us into triumphs we can scarcely imagine. Still . . . wouldn't do no harm if we snuck in there and had a quick fuck --"

"Nah, she's a strong one. Doesn't look it, but she got that shemale mojo. Those skinny arms will smack you into tomorrow."

"Damn."

"But you know what I heard?"

"Nah, what?"

"Shemales, when they got horny, could fuck like . . ." The guard balled up his fist and waved it like a firm, thrusting dick. The other guard laughed at this.

Having had enough of this conversation, Keeno made his move. The look on the guards' faces was priceless when he suddenly pounced from the shadows. He managed to kick one in the groin, and while he was crumpling to the dirt, his companion attacked. Keeno dodged the blow and caught the butt-end of the spear in his side instead. His attacker was fierce to the point of drooling as the blows kept coming, his eyes alight with rage that Keeno had dared to escape - and not only escape, but had dared to attack them!

Keeno dodged the rapid volley of blows as best he could. He managed to grab the shaft of the pygmy's spear and shove him back into the wall. Keeno noticed out of the corner of his eye that the other one crumpled on the ground and cursing was dragging himself up, about to give the howl. Keeno viscously stamped on his paw, which resulted in another cry of agony and more cursing.

The second guard lunged from the wall. Keeno whirled with the broken spear and at once drove it home. The blade sank in the pygmy's belly, pushing up ribbons of blood. The pygmy sputtered and choked, then slumped against Keeno. Keeno shoved him off the spearhead and turned to the other guard, who was nursing his nuts and his misshapen paw with tears in his eyes.

His eyes darting around fearfully less some pygmy might come along and shout the alarm, Keeno grabbed the guards - the crying one and the dead one - and dragged them both inside. He heard Wynn's cry of shock from above as he pulled them by their feet into the gloom. Chucking his broken spear aside, he took the spear of the dead pygmy and pressed it against his sobbing comrade's throat.

"Do you want to live?" Keeno said grimly to the guard.

"I can't make pups now, I know I can't," the pygmy rasped miserably. "Mondo -- you killed him! You son of a bitch, you'll p-pay for this --"

"I guess not," Keeno said, and shocking Wynn, he drove the spear home.

Wynn stifled a scream behind her paw as the spear came down and a toss of blood and brains went up. She trembled, watching her uncle's muscular back as if spellbound. Who was that wolf down there? For the first time in her life, she was seeing her uncle in warrior mode. That Kilyan and Keeno dedicated their lives daily to protecting their village and more often than not fought off lone wolves and raids, Wynn was aware of. But it had never hit home before that moment that her father and Keeno had probably killed in that cold manner - and would gladly do it again to protect those they loved.

When Keeno turned to look up at Wynn, the hard expression of the warrior was still there. He looked so cold and determined, so dark in the face. Keeno was always smiling and laughing and joking. To see him so serious was to see the sun turn blue.

"Are you alright? Where's Inden?"

Wynn was still amazed and stammered a moment before she managed to answer, "With Elele."

Keeno groaned. "Great. Now we have to go searching for him. What did she have to take him for?" With a dark expression, he moved toward the rope that kept Wynn's cage aloft and untied it, then passed the rope paw over paw until Wynn's cage had lowered to the ground. He cut the cage door open with his spear and pulled Wynn out and to her feet.

Wynn didn't have a chance to lose the stiffness in her legs, for Keeno pulled her by the arm to the doorway. He pressed Wynn behind him and peered out the curtain, spear in paw. The coast must've been clear, because not long after, he grabbed Wynn by the arm and they hurried in a funny crouching run to the nearest dark alley.

"I guess we'll look in Finivive's hut for Inden and your father," Keeno whispered.

Wynn watched as he went to a nearby jumble of barrels, and after picking one, he started rummaging as quietly as he could through it. He passed Wynn a chipped dagger that had been in the junk pile, then gestured for her to follow.

Finivive's massive hut was not far off. As in most villages, it stood on the edge of the village square, where village gatherings would have been held. Keeno and Wynn darted from alley to alley, drawing ever closer to the queen's home. They paused in the shadows when they had drawn very close and observed the hut.

Guards at the door. Smoke rising from the smoke hole meant a fire. And there were no windows on the lower floor. Great. They weren't getting in there without a fight. They may not even come back out.

"Wynn," began Keeno heavily, "I wanted to say - about your grandmother, I . . ." Keeno swallowed hard. His eyes were fixed on Finivive's hut, but he could feel Wynn's miserable stare. "I won't say I loved Roriana. Just know that when Kilyan and I came here all those years ago, we were young and scared and we just wanted to go home. If Roriana wanted to sleep with me, how could I say no and keep my balls? So I slept with her. And in a way, we became friends. She flew me around and we talked and laughed. But she wanted things that I couldn't give her, Wynn. Do you understand that? I had to go home."

He managed to look at Wynn at last, and he was relieved to see understanding in those green eyes.

"I know, Uncle Kee. It's okay. Grandmother knew it too. Still, it didn't stop her from loving you."

Keeno's dark eyes went back to Finivive's hut and he glowered. "I'm sorry things came to this. She was so proud of it, her jungle. So worried that things would fall apart. God, if she wasn't right for worrying." He shook his head. "I would kill every motherfucker in this village to make things right with Roriana."

Wynn watched Keeno sadly, knowing that her grandmother would have been very pleased had Keeno somehow done the impossible and wiped the jungle clear of the pygmies.

"I'm telling you this, Wynn, because I might not get a chance later. I want you to know. . . ." he looked Wynn in the eye and said, "I'm sorry."

Wynn looked at her uncle and conveyed with her eyes alone that the apology was accepted.

Keeno drew a breath and was about to make a move for the guards when Wynn grabbed his arm. A smell. A musky smell had caught her nose. It was the tingly smell of magic. Her eyes widened. And it was coming from the hut they were hiding beside!

Wynn backtracked around the hut, Keeno following and hissing questions at her. She didn't answer but kept sniffing until she found herself at a window. Peering inside, she gasped at what she saw.

It was a very small hut and very much like the holding hut they had come from: nothing was inside it but two torches standing either side the doors and a prisoner. Wynn's eyes fixed in astonishment and horror on the prisoner, for it was none other than Sylas. The young fox was standing against the wall, to which his arms and legs were chained until he hung forward from it like a star. His white fur was filthy and red with tiny scratches, as if he had run from the pygmies through the jungle, and his tails were low behind him. His head was bowed, and the mop of white curls that Wynn loved playing in so much had fallen forward to hide his face. But the way Sylas sagged in those golden shackles, Wynn didn't need to see his face to know he was unconscious.

Without hesitating, Wynn hoisted herself through the window. She fell hard on the earthen floor but scrambled up and ran to Sylas. As she fumbled to rip his chains from the wall, she could hear Keeno cursing behind her as he too fell hard into the room.

When his arms were loose, Sylas' body collapsed forward, and the noise the chains made as he fell into Wynn's arms made the guards come bursting in. They regarded the scene in amazement, but their awe only lasted a second before they had launched at Wynn. Keeno charged at them, catching one in the face with a punch and the other in the belly with the butt-end of his spear. He quickly dispatched of each guard with a cold blow to the head, and hurrying to the curtain, he peered out to see if any pygmies had noticed the disturbance.

Wynn had slumped to her knees with Sylas' heavy body in her arms, and closing her ears to the muffled sounds of murder taking place just feet away from her, she had lightly slapped Sylas on the face, begging him to wake. There was dried blood in Sylas' mane and the fox king was so heavily dazed that Wynn was beginning to wonder just how long he'd been knocked out. Perhaps he had been here from day one, projecting himself from the jungle, and had failed to tell Wynn what had happened to her mother! How could Sylas keep such things from her? How could he allow her to come here when he knew of the danger? She was suddenly furious and started to shake his limp body, demanding that he wake.

As Wynn's sobs were rising to low screams of anger, she heard Keeno suddenly roar. She looked around and was horrified: Keeno was charging at Eleu with his spear raised. Eleu stood in the doorway, his dagger ready, a scowl on his face.

"No! Uncle Keeno - STOP!"

Wynn managed to pounce on Keeno's back before he had reached Eleu, and locking her arm around his throat, she pulled him away.

"Wynn, are you crazy - he's a pygmy!" Keeno yelled as Wynn shoved him back.

Eleu sheathed his dagger and stepped into the room. His chest was heaving and his eyes glinted with indignation when they traced over the dead bodies of his fellow pygmies. Apparently, he had known them well. He knelt at the side of one body and touched its mane tenderly. He whispered something to the corpse as he closed its eyes, and Keeno realized it was a language he had never heard before. It certainly wasn't the quick jibberish of the shemales, nor was it the low, guttural grunts of the winged warriors. And it wasn't elegant enough to have been the tongue of the moon wolves. He stood there looking at Eleu's sorrow and realized for the first time that the pygmies had a language of their own. And Wynn could speak it!

Wynn said something apologetically to the prince, then added in the common tongue, "They were attacking and Uncle Keeno protected me. He thought you would hurt me too. He didn't know you were on our side."

Eleu straightened up and lifted his eyebrows at Wynn. "Am I?"

Wynn looked a little frightened, "Eleu . . . I thought . . ."

"I came here to kill Sylas," Eleu went on, shocking Wynn with the cold words. "When I realized what it would mean were he to live, I came here to kill him. He has been here a long time, that creature. Our border patrol captured him out on the shore as he slept. Mother had him tortured until he admitted his reasons for coming: he had come here looking for you. Mother thought you were dead, and she told him as much. He cursed and wept for days after she told him, declaring that he loved you, that he had come to take you to some place. He tried to use magic to escape so he could find you, managed to run off into the jungle too. Mother had him beat unconscious. We couldn't let a thing like him go free, so we kept him. It only takes gold to bind his kind." He gestured at the gold scraps which had been Sylas' chains before Wynn destroyed them. Then he looked at Wynn with flashing eyes and said, "Do you have any idea what he is!"

"He's the fox king!" Wynn cried in confusion and despair. "Why must you kill him for that --?"

"He wishes to impregnate you," went on Eleu, stepping closer into the room. His gray eyes were fervent, as if he was trying to make Wynn understand that Sylas was evil. "He wishes to kidnap you into some magical place and make you his pleasure slave --"

"Kid," said Keeno dryly, "you're not saying anything we haven't heard."

Eleu looked quickly between Keeno and Wynn. He looked at Wynn in amazement and said in disgust as it dawned on him, "You want this! You want to be the slave of that --thing!" He gestured at Sylas' limp body and sneered.

Sylas was a pile of glowing fur on the floor. Wynn had dropped him in her haste to stop Keeno, and with her heart in her throat, she knelt beside his body and gathered it to her breast. She held Sylas tight and said shamelessly to Eleu, "Yes. I want that. I want Sylas!"

Eleu's lips tightened, but there was pain in his eyes. "So it wasn't enough that you cut me to ribbons, that you pushed that bird between the legs of my sister - now you must destroy me further by taking off with this male --"

"I never promised you anything!" Wynn shrilled more loudly than she intended. In desperation, she added, "We were children, Eleu! Just children! I didn't know what the words meant when I spoke them --"

"Then you shouldn't have spoken them!"

In a sudden rage, Eleu dove at Wynn with his dagger raised. Wynn could not close her eyes, could not turn away from the horrible thing that happened next: Keeno stepped between them, and shielding Wynn with his body, he drove his spear into Eleu's belly. Eleu had seen this coming but had made no attempt to avoid it, and it was with a satisfied light in his eyes that he sank to his knees. Wynn let go of Sylas and rushed to Eleu, gathering him close, begging to know why he had forced Keeno to murder him.

Keeno backed away and stood miserably in the shadows as Eleu whispered to Wynn,

"I . . . could not live . . . without your love . . ."