Page 12 of Darik's Quest

Guess my behavior registered as animal fleeing a threat, not as a human. Deception had been his hope. The enemy aloft had no idea of who or what Darik truly was and wouldn’t expect one of the local Badari to have the capabilities he’d been displaying as he evaded their scans. He’d let the inner predator take the lead and eventually the aliens had lost interest or been redirected to their original purpose, whatever that might be.

Darik hunkered down on the branch he was currently occupying and watched the lights. They were too far away for even his enhanced vision to make out any details but there were three of them, stationary in the sky, flashing occasional bright white rays at whatever lay directly below. He became aware of a vague urge to leave his place of concealment and show himself to those who searched but it was mild, like an itch from a bug bite which could be ignored. He supposed it was calling to the part of him descended from the Badari who lived here but the lure was overwhelmed by his genetic engineering and the alien predator DNA. His inner beast certainly had no intention of revealing itself to those who wished to harm it.

Briefly he was amused by the consternation it would cause if they had captured him. He was the ultimate result of the very reason the enemy was here, to steal the ancestors’ DNA, but at this point in time there were no Badari Warriors as such. He was eight Generations and hundreds of years removed from any person to be found on this planet. I’d have distorted and confounded all their data for sure.

He speculated what the enemy were doing at the location they’d selected but it was none of his business. By himself, without modern weaponry or any backup, he couldn’t prevent them from doing whatever the bastards wanted.

And this is all in the past anyway. Whatever happened, happened and I can’t rewrite history.

* * *

After a night of soldier’s sleep, where he rested but was alert to any threat or change in the environment, he ate a breakfast of berries and strips of meat he’d dried from a previous hunt. Never thought I’d miss survival rations but those crunchy bars are handy to have. When he was done he traveled along the upper branches and then finally descended to the forest floor and made good time. He wasn’t too worried the enemy would return in daylight and make another attempt to capture him but he and his inner beast were watchful.

His route took him in the general direction of the spot where the enemy flyers had been hovering. He planned to avoid the place. There was nothing he could do at this point. The forest was unusually quiet today, as if the events of last night had left a pall on all the creatures residing there. Darik would be happy when he got beyond this stretch of his trip.

And then he heard the sound of a baby crying.

He stopped dead in his tracks, pivoting toward the piercing cries. Whoever the child was, it had worked itself up to a frenzy. “Come on, come on, someone take care of the baby,” he muttered. It wasn’t like him to hesitate but he couldn’t force himself to keep heading north while the distant child cried. The sound came from the general area where the aliens had hovered.

The cries continued unabated and he gripped his spear more tightly and took the first step in that direction. Soon he was sprinting, he and his beast compelled to find the child and relieve its misery. At the edge of a clearing he stopped and took cover behind the low brush, surveying the scene in front of him. His heart sank.

There were three small, relatively primitive houses, built in a rough triangle. Off to the side were sheds which might be for animals or for storage, and several domesticated herd beasts stood in a clump in a makeshift corral. The door of each house was wide open and there were no signs of life at all, other than the crying, which was now more of a whimper, as if the baby had worn itself out.

The enemy ships had been directly overhead, Darik was positive.

He could visualize the scene all too well. The aliens would have used their impeller ray on the occupants of these houses and the locals would have had no choice but to walk outside and meet their fate, whisked away as prisoners, never to return. Javon had told him there were a few isolated settlements of trappers here in the north, who collected fur from various animals and sold the pelts at big tribal gatherings. He’d also said a number of the mysterious disappearances reported to him had been from such tiny holdings.

After watching for a few minutes and confirming there was no sign of life, Darik rose and walked across the dirt yard toward the first house. The animals mooed at him, as if asking for their morning feeding but he ignored them for now. Cautiously he stepped into the dark house, spear at the ready but it was empty. A board and game pieces sat on the rough table off to the side, with two mugs half full of ale, as if the residents had been interrupted in the midst of their friendly contest. A crude rocking chair sat off to the side, close to the fireplace, and a pile of yarn lay as if dropped from a lap onto the floor. There was a loom visible in the next room and the kitchen was off to the side.

The house had a loft and Darik climbed the ladder slowly, finding a large bed, a number of chests and containers and a crib. Heart in his mouth he rushed to the crib and leaned over.

A happy gurgle greeted him and he was transfixed by the most beautiful pair of hazel eyes he’d ever seen. The baby was red faced from all her screaming but she gave him a smile and reached out her chubby fingers to him. He tucked the spear into its holder on his back and scooped her out of the crib.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he said with a broken heart, grieving for all she’d lost and would never know.

The alien invaders were notoriously slipshod and it probably didn’t occur to them to bother searching the houses, confident their impeller ray would bring all the occupants to them. But a baby couldn’t make its way outside and Darik would bet any sum of credits the parents of the child and their neighbors wouldn’t have mentioned her to the creatures who kidnapped them.

A changing table sat off to the side and as he could tell she was in need of a diaper change, he took care of the issue first, giving her a bit of a bath in the process. There were a few clean outfits in a basket next to the table so he dressed her, which was a challenge as his hands were so big and she was so small and wiggly. He almost lost her off the edge of the table before he realized she had utterly no sense of self preservation and could roll.

Wrapping her in a small, crocheted blanket, he made the leap to the first floor and explored the kitchen. There he found what were obviously bottles for feeding the child but nothing to put in them. She was beginning to work herself up again and he was sure she was starving. He stared around the small house in despair, waiting for inspiration to hit. She was so trusting and so vulnerable in his arms. He and his inner beast were fiercely protective of this tiny orphan and it was the predator which nudged him toward the yard and the penned-up animals.

Darik found a sling for carrying her against his chest and after she was safely ensconced there, he went outside to investigate the possibilities. In the first shed he found bins of what was obviously feed, as well as a shiny bucket hung on a hook and dried grasses. He carried a significant quantity out to the pens and distributed it to the impatient animals. Eyeing them, he decided the two biggest were probably destined for eating, but there was a herd of five smaller animals which reminded him of goats, and two definitely needed to be milked.

He made his way inside the pen and separated out the two females, looping small halters he found hanging from the fencepost around their necks and leading them into the barn, where there was a stool and the bucket. He sluiced it out thoroughly at the well close by, took a deep breath and marched inside the gloomy shed to do his best at milking. Fortunately the baby was napping, curled up against his chest, probably soothed by his heartbeat and his Badari body heat.

What followed was an exercise in frustration. If any of his brothers had seen him trying to figure this out they’d have laughed themselves sick, he was sure. Seven hells if he’d had to watch himself he was sure he’d be prostrate with laughter too. One of the goats was co-operative but the other one tried repeatedly to kick him and head butt him, which wasn’t a threat to him, being Badari, but was annoying. Eventually he got the more placid beast in position, the halter lead tied to a hook on the wall so she couldn’t move too far and then he sat on the stool, flexed his fingers and reluctantly put his hand on the bulging milk sac. The logistics of what needed to be done were clear enough to him but applying the proper pressure and finger movements to the teats was tricky. He was rewarded eventually with a trickle and then a steady flow of warm goat’s milk.

Confidence boosted, he swapped out the docile goat for the stubborn one and was able to get about half the quantity of milk from her before he had to give up due to her antics.

Putting them into the corral for now, he retreated inside the house and fixed up as many bottles as he could. Would this stuff keep? He couldn’t take a goat with him to the spring. There was a partially filled bottle left from the last feeding and experimentally he took a sip. The taste wasn’t to his liking but he didn’t detect any hint of spoilage.

Taking one of the bottles, he went to the rocking chair and sat awkwardly, wedging himself into the seat which clearly hadn’t been designed for a man his size. Luckily the local Badari were built on a generous scale, if not as big as he was. Darik arranged the baby in his arms and offered her the bottle. She latched onto the nipple with no hesitation and sucked greedily, watching him the whole time with her expressive eyes.

He stroked her silky hair. “You’re a heartbreaker already, little one. What am I going to do with you?”

There was no way in seven hells he was leaving her here. There were no other settlements anywhere close he could take her to. He visualized the map and confirmed that. He didn’t have time to backtrack all the way to Javon’s gathering. She would have to come with him. Actually Darik found he was relieved there was no other solution. He was fiercely protective of her already. She was his to watch over and care for now and he would do his absolute best for her.

What would happen when he reached the spring and completed his quest for the goddess? Surely one who was worshipped as the Great Mother would take pity on this innocent child and help him solve the problem?

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