In Her Name

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, his eyes alight with renewed desire as he tossed the dragon’s claw aside, “I surely do.”

* * *

The warmth of the sun and the heat of their lovemaking made for two sleepy lovers, and Eustus had fetched the blanket Enya had brought. “For a picnic,” she had told him. Now, lying awake on the soft flannel, Enya’s head resting on his shoulder, his mind and heart skirmished over the future.

I’ve done my three required combat tours, he told himself. While that was not enough to retire from federal service, it was sufficient to get himself a posting to a non-combat position or Territorial Army assignment. He could stay here, he thought. With Enya. While he had only known her these two weeks, he felt as if he had known her all his life. He had known infatuation before, but never like this. He loved her, he admitted to himself. He had never really loved anyone before; there had never been time. But here…

Beside him was the crumpled heap that was his uniform, and the crimson dragon of the regimental insignia stared at him as if saying, “Traitor.” The men and women of the company beside whom he had fought and lived, whom he had helped to survive and who had helped him – how could he simply walk away from them? They were not the riffraff they had once been. No matter what the raw material, they were the best Marines in the service. Reza had seen to that.

Reza. He almost groaned to himself. What of him? How could he turn his back on Reza? Deep inside, he knew that Reza would understand the burning in his heart, the desire to stay with this woman who was now a part of him. Eustus had served him well, and they had long been close friends; more than that, they had developed the bond that only those who live through times of extreme hardship know, the knowledge that they can rely on each other, no matter what.

But that only seemed to make things worse. Reza would go on and on, until finally he was alone. And alone he would die, with no one to watch over him, with no one to be there for him, to remind him that he was human and not the half-alien beast that so many believed he was.

His thoughts sinking to despair, he turned his head to look at the cliff that soared into the noon sky. A glint of light from the ground nearby caught his attention, and he reached out and retrieved the dragon’s claw from where he had dropped it. Turning it over in his hand, he examined it closely in an effort to push thoughts of the future from his mind. One of his fingers slipped, rubbing across the curved edge of the “rock,” and he saw a line of red appear on his finger.

Some lucky charm, he thought sourly as blood began to seep from the half-inch long wound that was like a huge paper cut. He set the rock down carefully, avoiding the edge on which he had cut himself, and sucked on his finger to get the bleeding to stop. He knew that rocks and minerals of various types could be sharp either naturally or with a little help from busy hands, but the dragon’s claw Enya had given him seemed to have an extraordinarily good edge.

As he thought about it, checking his finger to see if the bleeding stopped, something about the dragon’s claw nagged at him. There was something vaguely and disturbingly familiar about it, but he could not put his finger – which by now had stopped bleeding – on it.

One of the horses suddenly looked up from where it had been contentedly stuffing its face with grass, its ears pricked forward. The other one did the same. Both of them began snorting, their nostrils flaring and eyes widening in alarm.

Eustus had been with Reza long enough to trust his own instincts and those of others, especially animals.

“Enya,” he said, rousing her from sleep, “wake up.”

“What is it?” she said, her eyes snapping wide open. She was a deep sleeper, but when she woke up, she was fully awake almost instantly. She sat up beside Eustus, drawing the blanket up to cover her breasts.

“The horses are spooked,” Eustus said quietly, reaching for the blaster that normally hung low on his thigh, but was now nestled in the pile of clothing beside him. The feel of the weapon, nearly as long and large around as his forearm, steadied and comforted him. No predator of the forest could survive its firepower. He raised his nude body into a wary crouch, his eyes scanning around them, a tingling sensation running up his spine as his scrotum contracted, drawing his testicles into a less exposed position. He looked at the horses. They were staring straight across the lake, their eyes fixed on the cliff. “Something over there is spooking them,” he whispered, “but I can’t see any–”

And then he heard it, a keening sound that appeared at the uppermost range of his hearing and slowly moved down the scale.

“The sirens,” Enya whispered excitedly. “The horses heard them before we did.”

Eustus’s blood chilled at the sound as it evolved into a chorus of haunting voices that alternately boomed and whispered over the lake, the sound reverberating between the cliff and the trees around them.

“Jesus,” he whispered, but the name of the Christian Savior was swept away on a melody of sadness and mourning that was like nothing he had ever heard. The song evolved into a complex harmony that would have been the envy of the most accomplished chorus, the notes washing over Eustus and Enya like gentle but urgent waves upon two tiny reefs.

And then, as rapidly as they had come, the voices ebbed away, their mournful song fading into notes so low that Eustus and Enya could no longer hear them. The two sat, transfixed, until they noticed that the horses had resumed their eating, the sound no longer audible even to their more sensitive ears.

Eustus swallowed, then sat back down, the strength drawn from him as if someone had sucked it out with a straw. The blaster slipped from his numbed hand to fall harmlessly onto the blanket.

“I told you,” Enya whispered into the sudden silence as she pulled herself close to him, wrapping her arms around his chest. “Isn’t it incredible?”

“That’s hardly the word for it,” Eustus said, wincing at the sound of his voice, as if it were an unworthy intrusion to his ears after what he had just heard. “Come to think of it, I don’t think there is a word to describe it.”

Enya nodded. “That’s the third time I’ve heard it. The first was when I was nine. The last time was five years ago. And it’s different every time, as if you’re hearing different parts of the same song.”

“Has anyone ever tried to find the caves or whatever it is that makes the sound?”

“People have tried to find the source for a long time,” she said, “but I’ve never heard of anyone finding anything except little caves and such that didn’t lead anywhere, and had no strange acoustic properties that would account for the sound.”

He looked at her. “Care to do some exploring?”

She eyed him slyly. “Why? Haven’t you done enough cave exploring for one day?”

He pulled her close and kissed her, feeling his body react to the warmth and softness of her skin, the smell of her body. “You’re right,” he said as he lay down, pulling her on top of him, her legs straddling his waist. “Maybe I should get some more experience here first.”

“Excellent idea,” she breathed as he slid inside her.

* * *

Eustus trailed behind her as she made her way along the rock ledge like a mountain goat. Extremely agile himself, the result of Reza’s training more than any intrinsic ability on his part, he still felt clumsy as he watched her fluid movements.

“Watch your step here,” she warned, pointing to a spot on the ledge that was crumbling. Enya easily stepped over it, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were a hundred meters or more above the lake.

Eustus peered down quickly, then up, before he stepped over the crumbling part of the ledge. While it had looked sheer from their earlier vantage point, the cliff face had an undulating series of ledges that was almost like a secret staircase, wide enough to walk comfortably without turning sideways against the cliff.

“Are you sure that the place you saw was this far over?” Eustus asked, silently cursing himself for not bringing his binoculars so they could have gotten a better look at the mountain before they started up.

“Yes,” Enya told him. After they had decided to abandon – temporarily, at least – their amorous pursuits, she had taken a good look at the cliff and noticed a dark spot where there should not have been one. Below it were streaks of dust and debris, as if part of the cliff face had sloughed off, revealing… what? “It shouldn’t be much… Eustus!”

“What? What is it?”