“Lower your voice! This is our home. Home is where the Tribe is.”
“Don’t be such a cheese dick. There’s no Lieutenant around who could hear us.”
“Shut up, you moron. Let’s drink to the Colonel!”
“Yeah, whatever.”
The conversation makes Tarasov frown. His escape from the Pit and the mission given by the Bhegum now appear in a wholly different light. However, he can’t ponder on what might happen to the Tribe in the future now.
He opens the door to Boxkicker’s bunker. When he steps inside, the armourer jumps up and recoils with fright. His face is still green and blue from the last beating he’d taken from Tarasov.
“Is that camouflage paint on your face?”
“Oh my God,” Boxkicker says in panic. “It’s you!”
“Indeed. But who am I?”
“I… I don’t care, just chill, okay? What do you need?”
“Ammunition. Lots of.”
“Take whatever you want… but it’s no longer free, you know?”
Tarasov looks at the pitcher on Boxkicker’s table. It is filled with the same brown, misty liquid that the warriors were having.
“Here’s the deal. Two boxes of 12-gauge double-0 buckshot, a C-mag for a P27, and… never mind, I have enough for my M4.”
“Double-0? One shell is equal to shooting someone a half dozen times with 9 millimeter rounds. What are you after, dinosaurs?”
“I don’t know yet. Anyway, give me all this and in exchange I will tell you what you are drinking.”
“It comes from the w– I mean, our wonderful healer, so it must be something made from an artifact or whatever…”
“No.” Tarasov can barely hold back his laughter. “So, do you want to know what it is?”
“Take the ammo. And now tell me!”
“Leave that Geiger counter alone. It’s safe to drink.” Tarasov takes a long gulp from Boxkicker’s pitcher. “Not bad… but could be colder.”
“Will you just tell me what the hell this is?”
“Kvas.”
“What’s kvas?”
“I get her kiss. You get her kvas. Bye!”
All jealous thoughts vanish as he opens the door and sees Nooria sitting on the ground with pestle and mortar between her legs, grinding herbs. The hearth is lit, its fire casting a spell of coziness over the room. A thousand words come to his mind but his lips can only utter two.
“I’m back.”
She looks up with an impish smile that hides joy in the corner of her eyes. “That’s good.”
“Where’s the Bhegum?”
“She is with Colonel. Sometimes they talk. She will not be back soon.” Nooria fixes her eyes on him, still smiling. The pestle crushing the herbs in the mortar moves faster.
“Maybe we also talk?” Tarasov asks. He puts his heavy gear down on the table.
Whoever designed this damned exoskeleton didn’t have a way of quickly getting out of it in mind.
“No. Why?” The pestle moves even faster and deeper into the mortar. She licks her lips.
“Well… where I came from, I mean, normally, when a man comes home to his woman…”
“But now you are not where you come from,” Nooria whispers and licks the pestle, as if tasting the balm she is preparing. “You are where you arrive to.”
Tarasov sits down in front of her, watching her hands moving the pestle in the mortar, slowing down to gentle movements, then speeding up and crushing the herbs inside with a heady rhythm. The scent rising from the mortar between her legs cleans his mind, shifting the concerns from his soul, making way for the basic instincts erupting from his heart.
Yes. This is where I have arrived, and will arrive.
He grasps her hands and, putting the mortar aside, takes its place between her legs, eventually entering the safest refuge a man could find from the clasps of thunder and the raging storm outside.
“We need to talk.”
Nooria’s whisper awakes him from his half-sleep. One single candle is flickering in the darkness. The storm is still roaring outside.
“Not now,” he moans.
Nooria stands up and, covering her naked, sweaty body with her scarf, takes a little box from a shelf where all kinds of old and enigmatic things lie.
“Wake up and listen. I have something to tell you.”
Her words remind Tarasov of what the Colonel told him. Suddenly he is fully awake. Looking at Nooria’s face in the candlelight, the emotion he least expected grasps his heart: fear. She sits there, looking into the candle, with a face that seems to battle the most terrible demons in the darkness beyond the dim light. Her face appears ageless and, with the shadows hiding her scar, inhumanly beautiful.
“All was lost after they destroyed Samal and all was unleashed after he fell. It took over Colonel’s soul but he crushed darkness with its own weapons. But he was not victorious. He is now part of darkness. As we are all who live under his protection. Power of darkness shed its light on him. His strength reflected it like ancient stone shining on Samal’s head, but he was not Samal. Darkness stained him. You will go into darkness to find its power. But Samal is no longer there to protect you. And you have not strength of our leader.”
What the hell are you talking about, Tarasov wants to ask, but a look into Nooria’s eyes stops his tongue. She looks into the candle with her eyes wide open, but he can only see their whites. Nooria seems to be lost in a space where he could never follow her.
“I hold a bridge between old time when Samal was our sentinel and today. What I hold is here.” She closes her eyes. When she opens them, he can see her pupils again. Nooria looks down at a small, red stone in her right hand. “Sit up.”
Obeying her words, Tarasov raises from the mat. A knife flashes in Nooria’s left hand, cutting deep into the flesh above his heart. The cut fills him with burning pain as she pushes the stone deep into the wound and holds her palm over it. The pain eases a little but blood is still pouring from the wound, flowing through her fingers and down her arm.
“Why did you hurt me?” he groans.
“I would never hurt you.”
Even through his pain, he can only think about her lightning-quick cut as he realizes that this fragile woman, who now takes her hand off his chest and licks the blood from her fingers, must be as good at killing as she is at healing.
“Now you are bearing last stone that once adorned Samal’s crown. And I bear your blood and your life inside me. That is what I took in exchange for protecting you.”
“For protecting me?”
“One part protects you. Two parts bond the darkness.”
Tarasov opens his mouth to say something but Nooria puts her finger on his lips.
“Do you want to see me again and live with me?”
“I do, Nooria.”
“Forever?”
“Is there such a thing?”
Nooria caresses his head. It is domination, not tenderness — but powerless domination, because while her hands are soothing his pain, her eyes seem to be begging with him.
“Remember your own words when you find shadow of darkness. You will shed blood and last drop will be yours. If you want me to live, you will have to make a sacrifice.”
“I am still in pain and not understanding anything.”
“You will. Lie down.”
Nooria kneels over him, her left hand on Tarasov’s wound, the right on his forehead. He feels the pain finally fading away from his chest, just like the fear from his mind. Closing his eyes, he hears Nooria whispering words that melt into a long incantation. His heart is beating under her warm hand, as if it were pumping his blood into her veins.