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“Drink,” he says, lifting my head a little and holding a spoonful of broth to my lips. It tastes amazing, but having him feed me a little at a time makes the meal take forever. Is that a good thing, or a dangerous thing? It feels good to be close to his muscular frame, to have his mane falling gently over me as he holds me close, cradling me like a precious thing.
There’s an elephant in the room, though. One which makes all this snuggling and cuddling feel a little hollow.
“You ran away and left me there.”
“I didn’t want to leave you, but the Eponites must be repelled with vigor.”
“You could have just killed them all.”
“We don’t like to kill them, and even if we could kill them, they come with poisoned arrows which cause a painful and almost inevitable death over a matter of many days, for both us and our horses. If they can sneak up on us, the only option is retreat.”
“Why don’t you want to kill them? They sound like real assholes.”
“True, but they have the same right to exist as every vicious animal. They have a place in the great big wide realm of existence. Slaughtering them every time they attacked would soon wipe them out entirely. They survive only because we abandon camps and allow them to scavenge our leavings.”
So he’s letting them be wildly dangerous little assholes so they can survive while remaining dangerous little assholes.
“Why don’t you just tame them. You know, like you tried with me.”
“Oh, you are far more civilized than they are. Their wildness can never be broken. It is like the difference between a pet cat and a tiger. You are a civilized human, and my blood is descended from your kind, whereas they…” he lowers his voice. “Some of them we suspect are direct descendants of marketing managers.”
“My god.”
“Exactly.”
To ancient ears, this discussion would sound ludicrous. They didn’t understand what evil was lurking in their midst. They didn’t know how far the marketers would go to achieve their goals. They almost destroyed the whole world in the pursuit of selling things. They marketed poison to people regularly as a substitute for fun. They were ruthless even in ancient times when they were tolerated in a good and decent society. Now we know how dangerous they are in the same way humanity learned not to put lead in makeup, or play with mercury, or discover radiation… you do not fuck with marketers.
“So you’re afraid of them.”
“I am not afraid of them. I simply refuse to wipe them from the face of existence, even if they deserve it. The world is full of things that do not convenience me, and yet are still allowed to live.”
His opinion is far more evolved than I expected. He is supposed to be the great conquering tyrant, but he’s almost a conservationist.
“You should probably have scouts and guards and lookouts so you can get your prisoners out of their pens before they get attacked and you have to detonate them.”
“Yes. Probably.”
“Probably,” I repeat, knowing that he would have had all of those things, and somehow they all failed at once.
“No Eponites had been seen in the area for a very long time. They must have been a roving party looking for fresh supplies. They produce absolutely nothing, you see. They are entirely unable to be productive in any way. Their demise seems inevitable, but for their brutal and vicious raids.”
“You could just leave food parcels for them. Save them from having to raid.”
“If we feed them, they become domesticated. Their essential natures will change. We have to allow them to hunt, as we allow any wild animal to hunt.”
“But they hunt you.”
“Can’t be helped.”
“Could be helped though, couldn’t it. And if it had been helped, I wouldn’t have been blown up.”
“You were lightly exploded,” he says. “But you're on the mend, and I won’t let you be exploded again.”
Well, isn’t that a chivalrous promise?
I relax because I have very little choice. I have no energy to do anything else. My captivity was stressful enough, but physical trauma and the fear of being cooked alive by a tribe of golden-arched monstrosities have taken the last of my reserves.
For the first time in as long as I can remember, I want to be looked after. I just want to lie here and have food spooned into my mouth and be swaddled in blankets and let all the worlds sort of just revolve around me for a while.
* * *
Equs
I failed her. She knows it. I know it. Everybody knows it. I will not fail her again. I am taking her to the capital city, a place I have traditionally spent as little time as possible because I hate built-up places.
But she needs protection. She needs to be somewhere she can be guarded, and where the Eponites cannot reach her. It is one thing to have the feral little bastards chasing me constantly, but should I happen to overcome the effects of her human birth retardant, I cannot afford to have a pregnant human at their mercy. And, I suppose, I don’t want an un-pregnant human at their mercy either. After all, as she says, she matters regardless of how pregnant she is or isn’t.
