Camden stared at him, unmoving. The blanket was covering their laps—it was the only contact they had since they started, and he had accepted it only because of the cold. He didn't take the food. Kefier sighed. He didn't really feel the need to justify what he'd done back at the prison. Sometimes compassion meant death. Each man's path was his own, untouched by his fellows, even his god.
So Oji, why did you save me? You had nothing to gain. He shifted in his seat. Now you're dead and I'm here.
The cart pulled to a stop. Camden started to jump off, but Kefier pushed him back, lifting one hand. “Don’t move,” he mouthed. There were voices outside. Kefier recognized the farmer’s. There was an angry note to it. His hand strayed to the sword.
“Some watermelons, onions, to sell at the market,” the farmer was saying. “Nothing else.”
“Are you sure? Lying’s a bad idea right now.”
“Sir, I can't possibly be…”
Kefier thought he heard what sounded like sword crushing moist watermelon flesh. He closed his eyes. There was another creak, more steel being drawn, more flesh being hacked. The horse’s scream pierced the sky. Camden looked at him in alarm, his whole body rigid. Kefier looked back, afraid he would bolt at the last moment. He would never be able to outrun them.
“Vegetables, he said,” a man was saying outside the cart.
“Fruit, I think,” another added.
“We’ll see about that.”
Kefier heard, saw, the canvas rip from above, and thought he felt the blade sliding into his own flesh. He turned to his right, a second later, sweat streaming across his face in rivulets, and saw, instead, the blade buried deep within a watermelon.
It was pulled out. “That smells good. Get us one.”
A pair of hands slid under the canvas. Kefier felt blinded as the light streamed against his face and he gripped the sword tightly, his skin growing hot. But he didn't move, though every muscle in his body was urging him to fight. Looking at Camden, a man bigger and stronger than he was unarmed and shaking, he felt as if he didn't want to fight anymore. Kefier gazed into nothingness, resigned to his fate.
The flap of canvas was left back in place and he felt the darkness on his skin.
“Ugly watermelon.”
“They’ll all taste the same.”
“They’re all watermelons there? No humans?”
“Of course they’re all watermelons there. Do you think I’m blind?”
There was a second’s pause, and then another blade slid into the canvas and buried itself neatly into a watermelon right on Kefier’s lap.
“Stop that. I swear, I think if Old Man Baeddan doesn't care, Algat shouldn't. I'm sick of this whole affair. Bad enough they did what they did to Rok and the others. Isn't Kefier that dark little fellow? The Dageian?”
“He's from Gorent, I think,” the other man replied.
“Huh. I could've sworn—the accent—”
“They speak Dageian up there. We should go. We're wasting our time here. You didn't have to kill that guy, you know. He probably had a family.”
“He had that look, the kind that reports to Caelian guards.” A pause. “You know what they think of us up here.”
The voices dispersed, and in a few seconds were gone, leaving Kefier and Camden in total silence. They waited until the dark turned to grey through the holes in the canvas. And then Kefier crawled out of the cart, where the first thing he saw was the farmer, still on the driver’s seat, holding the reins in his hands. His head was gone. It had rolled off onto the dusty road, a few meters away from them, blood-marked, eyes gazing blankly.
Behind him, he heard Camden gasp, and vomit.
They had also killed the horse. It was lying where moments ago it had stood in harness, the great neck pierced. Kefier rubbed the cold head with his hands. “Were they from Vildar?” Camden asked. The first words he had spoken in hours.
Kefier shook his head. “Those weren't guards.” He glanced at the road. “We have to go. We can't wait here.”
“Go? Where?” Camden’s voice broke. “You’re wanting to go in there?” He pointed to the woods.
Kefier didn’t want to nod, but he did. He trudged forward, expecting Camden to stay behind. But the man followed him into that certain death, or so the folk tales of the Kag would have them believe.
Of course, for the hours they walked through the dark, the only real certainty lay in the silence around them. Several times Camden tried to drown it with a whistle, a tune to drive the seeming blankness away, but he gave up after a while. Even the birds were quiet. It sounded like the night after somebody's funeral.
They stopped underneath a tree with huge, looming branches. Camden slumped against a thick root jutting out of the ground, his round face red with exertion. Kefier settled on the dirt nearby. “We'll make it to Cael City,” Kefier said, thinking Camden needed the reassurance. “But then I don’t know what to do from there.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know who’s chasing us or why.”
“I’m thinking the man you killed…” Camden started, but he stopped himself and turned away.
“I think we’re safe here,” Kefier said, ignoring him. “We should be safe here.” The forest did seem less menacing than where he had come through, going to Vildar. “Are you hungry?”
Camden grunted.
“Wait here. I’ll find us something.”
He found the tracks a little off to the right of their camp, and then the deer not long after. It was old and lame, smaller than a Kag sheepdog; it had probably been seeking a quiet place to die. Kefier killed it without a fuss. He gutted and skinned the meat where he stood, removing the guts and burying them, and then he returned to camp. Camden had already started a fire. Kefier appreciated the forethought as he dropped the carcass by his feet.
They cooked the meat and ate in silence. Afterwards, Camden reached for Oji's sword, plunged unceremoniously in the soil. He started tinkering with something around the handle.
“Where did you find this?” he asked. Kefier looked up to see Camden holding up a necklace with a green stone pendant. He hadn’t noticed it on the sword before. Back when he took it from Oji’s body, it had no such ornaments. Gaven had taken the sword from him when he was captured and that was the last he’d seen of it until the day he woke up in the cart.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Camden held it in his hands, against the fire. “It was my boy’s.” His face twitched. “I gave it to him on his name day.”
“Don’t they make those by the cartload?”
Camden turned to him. “I made it myself. So I know. I know—” He closed his fingers around it. “You’re sure you don’t know anything at all?”
He didn’t reply. Camden, disgusted, walked away. The crickets started their silky chirping, but Kefier stared silently as the fire crackled and spat, thinking of a thousand things that had nothing to do with death or despair or loss.
Camden didn’t return, even after the night ended and morning mist had receded. Kefier folded the blanket, gathered the dried pieces of meat, and scattered the leftovers. He covered the fire pit with dirt and then went off to follow Camden's trail.
The broken foliage went around in large circles. By noon, Kefier had all but given up. He climbed a tree to rest, hoping he was high enough to see movement from afar. He had started to doze off when he heard voices.
“Look, we've been through this already. You were with him, weren’t you? Speak properly!”
“We heard in Vildar he escaped with you. Where’s Kefier?”
The mention of his name chilled his heart. He recognized the voice—the man was also from Singular Seven, part of the group who frequented the Chiming Princess instead of Blue-dog's Tavern. They once talked about dogs, a good four-hour conversation a lifetime ago.
“We were together, but he left me on the road. He’s probably gone now.” Camden sounded weary.
“This is ridiculous,” one of the men said. “I don’t want
to stay in these fucking woods any longer than we have to. Who knows if these creatures don’t just feast on children?”
“They don’t. If you’ve lived in these parts long enough, you know we’re not supposed to be here.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“I’m not trying to make you feel better. Here, Baidhan—tell us where he is or we’ll kill you. I’ve no desire to carry dead weight around.”
There was a long pause, and then Camden’s voice came, steady and resolute. “I’m thinking you’re getting nothing from me.” A different tone than last night's. Kefier shifted, having heard all he wanted to hear. He should have known to be more careful. Baeddan’s men were everywhere, wherever there was money to be made. Even the lords in Hafod hired them. And Vildar? Vildar, at the edge of the wood in Cael, a road away from Cairntown? Oji would've laughed and called him a half-wit. He knelt by the bushes and waited until nightfall.
The fire had dwindled to glowing embers. A single guard lay by a tree some distance away, clearly the night watch, but too exhausted to pay any attention to the job. Kefier stepped towards Camden and shook him by the shoulder. Camden’s eyes snapped open. What word he meant to utter next was stifled by Kefier’s hand against his mouth.
Kefier lifted a finger to his lips.
“Let me go,” Camden mumbled. “Your hand smells.”
Kefier turned his head to check on the sleeping men before he withdrew his hand, wiping it against his trousers with disgust. He lifted the knife from his belt and began to work at the rope.
“What are you doing here?” Camden whispered.
Kefier stopped and gave Camden a worried look. “Have you fallen in love with your captors? Should I leave?”
“Just stop talking and get me out!”
“I'm trying.” Kefier pointed at the tangled mess the rope had been knotted into while he began to hack at it with the knife in his other hand. “Stop wriggling!” He drew back for a second to inspect his work and sighed. The rope was thick and the knife was dull after all the meat he had gone through the past night.
“Thank you,” Camden whispered. “I mean, after last night—I was just upset, and…”
Kefier shot him an angry look.
“You’re wanting no sentiments, yeah?”
“None right now, please,” Kefier growled. He suddenly swore. The knife had gone through not just the rope but across the skin of his thumb. He realized his mistake all too quickly. Grasping the bleeding thumb with his other hand, he turned and saw the men stirring from their sleep.
“Somebody’s…it’s Kefier!” The man stumbled towards them, sword in hand. Sweat dripped down Kefier's face. His head leered. The man’s every step seemed slow and he felt as if he was in a dream, his eyes weighed down by rocks. So he thought it was only his imagination that made the man look to his side in fear, if he hadn’t heard Camden’s scream.
A huge figure emerged from the bushes and crashed into the mercenary. It pulled his head off in one quick motion and waved it at the dying fire, screeching. Then it started to dance around the camp, cracking his skull as if it was nothing more than a piece of fruit and slurping the insides with relish.
Camden had dropped to the ground. Kefier knelt beside him and pulled the blanket over them, hoping it would hide them in the night. He felt nauseous, looking at the remains of the man he once knew. He remembered he liked greyhounds, suddenly. Something about their grace, their independence. That thing in the middle, prancing apelike around the fire, didn't even register in his mind. It still didn't seem real. It wasn't real. It couldn't be.
That thought didn't stop it from flinging the men left and right. Some, the lucky ones, died at once. Others had to watch their companions ripped from limb to limb. The creature sat in the midst of this bloodbath, laughing, its long hairy arms moving to shove each morsel into its gaping mouth.
Kefier and Camden remained motionless for what seemed like hours. And then, when they thought that it would be over, that the creature would take the last bite and leave, it sat up, and begin to sniff the air, unmindful of the writhing body parts around it. Kefier felt the sweat drip down his jaw. The creature was still hungry. It was still hungry. It had caught their scent. It was looking for them.
The tears began to roll off Camden’s face. His own breath felt laborious, cold. Time stopped.
He forced himself to look back into the clearing. The creature had ventured nearer and sat an arm’s length away from them. He saw its face for the first time. It looked vaguely like a man, though its head was the size of two, with greyish-green skin and eyes, eyes so unlike anything he had ever seen before. But what unsettled him the most was the creature’s smile. It stretched all the way to its ears, nonchalant, happy, still tainted with the blood and bits of flesh from the men it had just killed.
And then the creature scratched its head and moved away, and only then did he realize that it didn't seem to know where they were. He suddenly remembered the incident on the road, when the mercenary had looked down at him and seen nothing but watermelons. He fingered the blanket. It felt like an ordinary wool blanket, but it had to be more than that. He had thought the man who left it was strange—could he have been a mage? He’d heard they could attach power to ordinary things.
But the creature could still smell them. Undaunted, it continued to rummage through the camp. Kefier realized that if they stayed where they were it would stumble on them sooner or later. He made a decision and touched Camden's shoulder, to warn him. Camden gave him a puzzled look. He reached for a stone and threw it across the bushes.
The ape-thing turned at the sound. Instantly, Kefier leaped, sword held high, and aimed for the creature’s spine.
“Bweeeh?” The creature’s voice sounded like a trumpet. Kefier halted and saw its neck spin around, though its body remained where it was. It didn't even seem surprised at all. The sound of its laughter made the hair on Kefier’s arms stand on end. It turned its body the right way and began to walk towards him. Kefier tried to lift his sword, but found he could not. His arms and feet felt like lead. He tried to speak, to call to Camden and have him run to safety, but he couldn't even open his mouth.
It roared, spraying the air with the stench of corpses. Its tongue was black and spiny, its teeth dull and brown and decorated with pieces of red flesh. Kefier stood there, waiting for the inevitable.
And then Camden slammed into its side with his heavy body and whatever spell it had cast on Kefier broke. Kefier saw it reach out to crush Camden’s skull. He turned to grab a switch, thrusting it into the embers. The creature’s arms were still in mid-air when Kefier slammed the blazing torch at its head.
The fire did it. It screamed and tottered backwards. Kefier plunged the sword into its neck as it fell. Black blood hissed and spurted out of the open wound. It slumped to the ground and shrank. In its stead lay the body of an infant, too small to have been out of the womb. That, too, didn’t last. Before Kefier could crawl closer to inspect it, it was gone, leaving nothing but ashes blowing in the wind.
He and Camden stared at each other in silence. The spitting of embers and the heavy aroma of wet blood surrounded them.
“I’m thinking we’re crazy,” Camden breathed. “Stark raving mad. We're probably piss ass drunk back in our cells. I was never the one for drinking.”
Kefier sank to the ground.
“That witch…Naijwa. Those beasts she made.” Camden buried his face into the crook of one arm. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “But it seems like those stories were true. The stories about the Kag woods is true and we…
Kefier crawled to his feet. “Camden,” he said. “Can we go? I don’t want to spend a moment more in here than we need to.”
But Camden was crying softly. Kefier turned away and murmured his own prayer. Ab, take care of those departed. Ab, watch over their souls. He didn't know, didn't think, about the creature taking those from them, too. They couldn't always be right about the demons in Cael.
/> By the time they left the clearing, the sun had begun its slow, steady ascent over the treetops.
Chapter Eleven
Somehow, they managed to find their way back to the road and onto the scattered remnants of civilization across the fields. Farms and villages they passed offered them food and directed them to Cael City. One tried to send his daughter off with them, a homely thing with bugged eyes. Kefier had to mumble something about already having a wife while Camden expressed great regret in lacking certain areas necessary to reproduce.
Still, it was difficult to ward the gnawing fear from that night. Trees stood everywhere around them, always. Kefier wasn't entirely too sure that they stayed off the roads or away from the sunlight. They didn't seem like the sort to follow rules.
He found himself thinking more and more about Lillah's stories. About Naijwa and her sewed-up dolls. His mind started playing tricks on him—made him imagine, at times, that there was a dead cat with two heads sitting on his chest, or a monkey with a pig's snout up a tree. Which was ridiculous, really, since they didn't have monkeys in the Kag. He also found himself distracted by other stories he'd heard—of a hunter ensnared in his own trap and was forced, upside-down, to watch a herd of smelly, hoofed figures pass through the road in the dark.
Camden, for his part, was no help. He was not a mainland Kag and couldn’t fathom a way to deal with their pressing surroundings. He spoke a lot about the hero Agartes, who had braved these woods himself even before there were roads and towns to greet him. How did he do it? The stories never mentioned demons, and yet Naijwa's story—if you could believe it—happened before his time. He slew beasts and meddled with politics and made shrines to the god Yohak, making him an even bigger figure than Mother Namalah, whose consort he was.
Agartes himself, of course, was born in Baidh. A farm boy, the youngest of seven. Sick of his father’s careless parenting and his brothers’ bullying, he ran off one day and found an egg by the shore. He ate it. What was a hungry boy to do, having found an egg? Even if it was very large and blue? You didn’t run around trying to sell it—you ate it, scrambled with carrots and pepper and seasoned with a sprinkle of salt.
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