Lost Bloodline 5 - Chapter 11

Chapter 11

There were arguments, Koda would have been surprised if there weren’t. Most of the elders for the Hillstrider tribe were belligerent enough that they insisted on instead confronting the Crooked. But Koda was at least able to talk them into dispatching scouts to confirm the sighting of the Crooked, as well as messengers to the other neighboring clans to bring the news and warning to them.

Talking it over with his wives, Koda and his girls decided that they would stay with the Hillstrider tribe for the moment to find out what sort of news came back from the scouts. This would give them an opportunity to talk with the tribesfolk and get to know them. Koda knew that Sienna had suggested it specifically with the hope of learning how she could convince these people to be safe and not risk themselves foolishly.

They had covered quite a bit of ground getting this far into the plains, and after discussing it with Finna and the local hunters, they were able to ascertain that they were just about two-thirds of the way into the vast plains. He’d been worried that it would be difficult to spot where the Crooked were coming from, since Pippin hadn’t bothered to tell him where they were, simply that the Crooked were coming.

It lasted for three days before the anxiety got to be too much.

“I can’t keep sitting around like this,” Koda grumbled as he flopped down next to Finna in the shade of one of the short, scrubby trees that grew along the stream they were camping beside.

“You weren’t sitting, in fact you haven’t been sitting for the last four hours,” Finna said with an amused grin. “You’ve been going at it in turns with Calandra, Arthene, and Sienna since we finished breakfast.”

“And not even the fun way,” Arthene grumbled from her spot by the water where she lay submerged to the waist in the cool liquid. “I’d much rather be going at it in the hot and sticky fashion.”

“I don’t know if I could relax enough to really enjoy that,” Calandra huffed as she strode over to where Koda lay sprawled. “Here, hold this for me.”

Koda wasn’t even given the chance to speak before Calandra dropped her axe on his chest, making him grunt in surprise and protest at the sudden weight. His next protest was muffled as the stout dwarven woman yanked her sweat-stained shirt over her head and tossed it at his face.

“Sweating like a pig staring at the midsummer fires here,” Calandra grumbled and Koda heard the thump of her boots coming off, followed a moment later by the jingle of her belt hitting the ground.

“Come and join me then, Cal,” Arthene called. “Maybe with the two of us, we can tempt Koda into stripping down and christening this stream as well.”

“Already was part of the plan. You’d think Koda was a bit nervous given the stories you all have told him about Sloane,” Calandra chuckled and Koda pulled the sweaty linen shirt out of his face fast enough to spot his lover’s bouncing behind as she trotted over before wading into the stream wearing nothing but the smile he could hear in her words.

“I’m not nervous about meeting Sloane,” Koda protested, sitting up and tossing Calandra’s shirt onto the pile with her other clothes. The bone axe he was more gentle with, despite it being far more sturdy than anything else the dwarven woman owned.

“Yes you are, Koda,” Samira broke in from her spot up in the tree above them. “It’s okay for you to be nervous. Thundering Sharphorn has a reputation that has endured ages as a grappler and a master of the fist.”

“Okay,” Koda replied with a sigh. “Maybe I am nervous, but that is more because I don’t feel like I’ve trained enough.”

“And you think you can make up for years in a matter of hours?” Finna teased him, the lapine woman giving him a wry grin while she worked beeswax into spare bowstrings from her pack.

“It’s better than sitting around waiting and stressing about the Crooked. At least with the baron’s forces I expect them to take longer…” Koda said grimly, and the smile dropped off of Finna’s face at that, to be replaced by a frown of understanding.

“Sienna should be getting back from spending more time talking with the Hillstrider elders,” Samira suggested from above them. “She wandered that way after she finished her turn sparring with you. Said it would only be a bit and it’s been a few hours.”

Koda would have been worried about his first mate being alone amongst what amounted to strangers, but he also knew the havoc that Sienna was capable of if threatened. There was absolutely no way that she’d not be able to raise so much ruckus that they’d hear her from their spot on the other side of the ridge from the camp.

They were downstream from where the tribe collected its water currently, actually further down than where they would bathe in this area too. Koda had wanted some privacy to train and talk with his girls.

“What do you all think we should do?” Koda asked for the third time in as many days.

“I don’t know what else there is to do, lover,” Calandra called from where she stood waist deep in the water. The stout dwarven woman turned, her thick braids floating on top of the water in her wake, and began scooping up handfuls of the chill liquid and splashing it over her large breasts. “Chandra’s tight ass that feels good!”

“We could confront the Crooked,” Koda suggested. “Scout them out for the tribes. Carry word to the other tribes. Or go and check on the baron’s forces. All of those sound infinitely better than just hanging around and waiting.”

“There are already scouts going to check on them,” Finna soothed him, repeating the same line she’d used when Koda had brought up his irritation at sitting still the previous day.

“And we can move far faster than they can,” Koda insisted with a growl. “I don’t like sitting around like this. I want to be moving. Helping. Doing something, anything honestly.”

Finna didn’t answer him, instead the lapine woman traded glances with Arthene while Calandra dunked her head into the stream and then emerged blowing water from her nose and mouth in a spray.

“The answer is simple then,” Calandra said, shaking her head to dislodge more droplets while swiping the water from her eyes.

“Oh?” Arthene asked pointedly, turning her attention back to the much smaller woman.

“Yeah,” Calandra said with a shrug, wading back to the shore with an easy stride that sent both distracting jiggles through her full form and a shimmering wave of sparkles from the droplets of water on her skin.

“Our man wants to be doing something, needs to be moving. It serves no purpose for us to remain here and continue arguing with the Hillstrider Tribe. If they aren’t going to listen and aren’t going to budge, then we need to find those who will.”

Calandra’s confident statement brought a smile to Koda’s lips and the other three all shared looks before shrugging.

“She does have a point,” Finna said after a long moment of silence.

“I had been wondering the same thing,” Samira said quietly, her tail lashing the air behind her. The caracal woman made a pulling gesture at Calandra and the water clinging to her bare skin and soaking her braids leaped free to fall to the ground in a pattering rain.

“Thanks Samira,” Calandra told the cat woman with a grin, getting a shy smile in return.

Calandra could have summoned a wind to dry herself just as easily, but Samira had been jumping at any chance to practice the magic she’d been gifted when she joined Koda’s family. So they had taken to letting the excitable caracal woman have first shot at such things to let her build up her confidence.

“But yes,” Calandra said a moment later, turning her attention back to the group while she strode, naked and uncaring, back to her clothes. Something Koda was happy to appreciate. “If Koda is feeling restless then we should be doing something. We can’t make plans without information, so we might as well go get some.”

“And if the Hillstrider Tribe was going to act without their own scouts’ word then they would have agreed by now,” Finna added, getting a nod and a wink from the dwarven woman. “That is a fair assumption. Shall we go and locate Sienna to see what she thinks of the plan?”

“Sienna is going to be getting just as antsy as Koda is,” Arthene said, standing up from where she lounged on the shore as well, slapping the water off of her muscled thighs and buttocks.

Unlike Calandra, Arthene had only partially stripped down, shedding her hide skirt to sit in the water while leaving her top on for the moment. It had surprised Koda at first since Arthene normally took any opportunity she was allowed to get naked, but she’d also bundled her thick hair up so it wouldn’t dip down and get soaked by the water.

Samira made another tugging gesture and the remaining water on Arthene’s skin leaped free to spatter on the rocks by the shore of the stream. The gesture earned her a grin and a wink from the large bear woman while Arthene strode to where her skirt lay discarded and she dressed as well.

“I should probably wash too,” Koda said after a moment of thought. “If we are going to be traveling, it would be better to take the time now.”

Glancing up, he realized that all four of the women were staring at him with equal looks of amusement and desire. The two that hadn’t just gotten out of the stream shifted to get comfortable, while Arthene’s smile turned into a broad, toothy grin.

“Well,” Calandra said in a businesslike tone while she stepped back into her pants. “Don’t let us stop you, lover. Start stripping!”

<><><>

Sienna returned to them in a grumpy mood just as Koda was wrapping up his quick bath. He wasn’t sure if it was the news that they’d be heading out to scout themselves or seeing him standing naked up to his thighs in the stream that turned her frown into a smile, but Koda wouldn’t complain either way. Letting his wolfish lover have a peek at him was, almost quite literally, the least he could do.

The wolf beastfolk hadn’t had any further luck finding a way to persuade the Hillstrider tribe to start making for their borders to be able to avoid the conflict or to commit to dealing with the Crooked. The tribe was oddly resistant to the idea of rallying together with their neighbors, despite knowing that a large force of Crooked would need the help of as many fighters as possible.

Which left Koda with the decision that he’d been pondering for a while of what he would need to do in order to motivate the tribe. After all, if this one tribe was resistant to believing the threat, then others would also likely be just as resistant.

It had surprised Koda at first, given how quickly the different tribes had accepted him as Thera’s champion when exposed to his power or witnessing what he could do. Though it also made sense, since as a champion it wasn’t as if he could command their obedience.

So instead, Koda and his girls bade farewell to the Hillstrider Tribe, promising that they would try and send word back of what they had found and also warning them to not get in the way of the larger group of forces of the baron if they continued to the south.

The anxiety that had been building in Koda at sitting on his hands for so long—at least that was what he felt like he had been doing—abated within hours of them departing from the semi-permanent camp of the Hillstrider Tribe.

Sienna, despite not being able to convince the tribe to start moving either to safety or to confront the oncoming threat, had been able to get directions to the other tribes’ territories. With that information and Samira’s knowledge of the plains, they were able to prepare a rough map with landmarks to help them navigate the sprawling distances of the plains.

It does kind of skew thought processes to realize that there is so much open land here and we can traverse it so easily thanks to Calandra’s wind magic, Koda thought with a wry smile as they bounded over the landscape. If the distances are anything to go on, we have weeks before we have to actively deal with the Crooked forces, unless they have some way of moving quicker than this. Same with the baron’s people.

Koda grimaced as he remembered that distant smudge of people and forces. The information that they’d gathered had been sketchy at best, but he was fairly certain that they’d have to factor the baron’s forces in. The initial rumors that they were planning to head south were all that he could operate on, so Koda had to keep with that until news came otherwise.

The territory that the different tribes held were fairly large, according to what the Hillstriders had told them. They’d only missed one tribe on the way in, somehow passing unmolested and unnoticed through the range held by the Rockmoss tribe. And they would need to pass into another tribe’s territory to get to the southern edge of the plains, which would take another week or so of travel at a relaxed pace for Koda’s group, which would be an outright sprint for those without wind magic.

But rather than pursuing another of the tribes, Koda had a different goal in mind. While they’d stayed with the Hillstrider tribe, they’d heard stories of a section of cliffs and ravines on the southern border of the tribe’s lands. The land both surged upwards, and dove down deep into the earth at the same time. Apparently, many of the streams in the plains all terminated in this winding canyon that meandered south-east for a ways as the land sloped more gently towards the sea.

The cliffs were an outcropping of dark basalt and actually gave a decent view of the surrounding land, though they weren’t the easiest to climb given their wind-sculpted surfaces. With Sienna’s help though, Koda was confident that they’d be able to make it up high enough to get a good view of the southern plains.

Koda also guessed that those same cliffs were partially at fault for the lax attitude of the Hillstrider tribe. It wasn’t hard to deduce that they were used to those barriers being rather absolute boundaries of their territory.

And when Koda saw the black stone cliffs, he understood why. 

They started as a smudge in the distance, rising like the fin on the back of a fish as it surfaced from underwater. If it hadn’t been for the slowly flattening terrain, Koda might have missed the looming shadow in the distance.

He couldn’t help but wish for some means to travel even faster, though. Koda cast fond memories towards one of the books he’d been reading in his small amounts of free time before coming here, of a world where people traveled on flying ships or on the backs of magical animals. Having something like those methods of transport would have allowed them to cover these distances even quicker, but Koda refused to complain. Having Calandra’s magic to speed them along, Sienna’s to make their camps comfortable, and Samira to ensure they had clean water to drink saved a lot of effort on a day-to-day basis.

But just being out and traveling once more, rather than sitting around waiting on reports that he had no idea when they’d arrive, made everything better for Koda. The miles melted away beneath his boots and every night he spent surrounded by the women he loved.

The only thing that Koda regretted was not being able to bring their friends along. Hans, Netta, Hannah, and Todd had accompanied him into some very dangerous situations, and they’d learned to watch each other’s backs. Even without magic or the power of a primal spirit, those four had proved themselves to be staunch allies and good friends.

Though it is reassuring to know they are watching over the village back home. Makes it easier to not worry about what might be happening, Koda reminded himself when he realized his mind had wandered back to what might be occurring back in Silverstone.

“Something bothering you, Aegisclaw?” Finna asked, the lapine-eared woman falling in next to him.

Koda took a moment to glance over the incarnate spirit, taking in her easy stride and even breathing matched with utterly soundless steps.

She looks more like she’s dancing over the field than running, Koda thought, though he kept the amused smile off of his face.

“Just lost in my own thoughts,” he said instead, bringing his eyes back up to meet her bright blue eyes. “Been worrying about things out of my control.”

“Like?” Finna asked gently.

“Silverstone, Thera, all of this, the Crooked. The list just continues to grow and I can’t seem to check anything off, just push it further down in priority.”

Finna smirked at that, reaching over and flicking Koda’s ear before he could get away.

“Silly man,” Finna chastised him gently. “You don’t need to answer all of those problems. You don’t bear the weight of the world on your shoulders, though it must feel like it sometimes.”

Koda rubbed at his stinging ear while shooting her a cross look for a moment while he considered the primal spirit’s words.

She’s not wrong.

The thought floated through Koda’s mind, but it didn’t feel like it came from his own mind. It felt like his thought, but he didn’t know where it came from.

Our job is to protect what is ours. You keep claiming more and more, and that will stretch us thin.

“It might not be my responsibility,” Koda said, shaking his head to dislodge the errant thoughts. “But someone has to look to the future and think about those things.”

“Don’t let it weigh on you too much,” Finna counseled sagely. “There are more Crooked than any one man or god could slay by themselves, and beyond them more threats than any could truly battle. Your arms may be strong, but you can’t reach far enough to solve every problem. Just keep doing your best, Koda.”

Finna’s words resonated in his chest and Koda felt something shift there. He recognized it as the same power that roared defiance in battle and urged him to claim all that his eyes could see as his own and keep it close to ensure it remained safe. But rather than boiling in anger and wrath like it normally did when roused, the power shifted and rumbled thoughtfully.

“Maybe my arms just need to grow longer then,” Koda murmured to himself. His tone made it clear that it wasn’t directed at Finna, but the primal spirit’s eyebrow went up curiously as she studied the young man out of the corner of her eye.