by Deck Davis
CHAPTER 10
Something was prowling around in the cave. Jakub retreated fifty yards and crouched as best he could behind a rock. It didn’t cover him perfectly but his shirt had started out dark the first time he’d worn it in Sun Toil, and by now sweat and grime had worked their magic to blend it even more deeply into the night. That was something a Toil traveler learned quickly – there were no rivers in the desert for you to wash your clothes.
Certain that he was far enough away and it was dark enough that whatever was in the cave wouldn’t see him, Jakub was content to place his dagger by his feet ready for use, rather than grip it.
The wind blasted the left side of him, numbing his face and snaking down his shirt collar and icing his skin. He kept the rock to his right.
“Ben, stand here,” he said, and he pointed at the ground to his left. His loyal friend stomped over and became a wind block on that side. An instinct in Jakub made him feel pity for Ben before he reminded himself that Ben was dead, and his years upon years of necromancial training gave him the suspicion that dead things don’t feel the cold.
Now he watched the cave and tried to figure what could be in there. The way he approached it could differ wildly depending on what had taken residence in the snug that Jakub eyed for himself.
He quickly found that it wasn’t the best night for cave watching. The tail end of the dust storm sliced through the air from time to time like the trailing lashes of a whip. Nowhere near fast enough to tear through things, but enough that they threw dust in his face without warning.
Normally, the stars were so bright out here that they gave a white glow to the desert, but not tonight. Tonight, they were hiding behind the clouds, and even after adjusting to the darkness, Jakub’s vision was nowhere near what he needed.
He’d just have to weigh the possibilities and go for it. It was getting too cold now, and this was barely the start of it. The cold he felt now was just a playful doe, and the stag had yet to show.
It was the cave or nothing, but what could be in there?
He wanted to believe that another survivor had crawled out of the dust storms and dry lightning and had sought shelter. Gunar’s men were seasoned travelers. When they used to stop at night and light fires, Jakub would listen to them in their favorite past time of one-upmanship, where they’d take turns telling stories of disaster and survival, each worse than the last.
From that, Jakub had added flavoring to the knowledge he’d learned before setting out to Toil. He knew that if you were driving a wagon in the middle of a moderate dust storm, the kind that didn’t shred you to pieces, you turned your wagon with the storm, not against it.
He knew that there was a Toil weed that could heal venom bites, but there was a similar-looking weed that could cause a poisonous effect.
Above all, he’d learned that if Gunar’s people were nails and Sun Toil was a hammer, its head would break when it tried to pound them. His heart told him that one of those nails had made it to shelter and that he wasn’t alone anymore.
If only he could listen to it.
He remembered more and more of the disaster now. If it were just one dust storm powerful enough to cause the shredding effect, that would have been disaster enough.
To get caught in two was utterly impossible to survive. To then have dry lightning crash down while toil-lusks attacked…
No, Jakub was the only person to crawl out of that gangbang of death, and that was only because he’d driven a wagon just out of reach.
That meant the footsteps he’d heard in the cave belonged to one of Sun Toil’s indigenous residents. If Toil was an unforgiving place, then the creatures forced to live in it had developed survival traits to match. Everything and anything that dwelled in Toil would attack first and briefly think about questions after while it feasted on your carcass.
The simplest thing would be to leave, but he had no idea if there was another shelter around, and he couldn’t afford to look when the worst of the cold set in. If he could get through tonight, then he could explore a little. Find better shelter, find water, find food, and find out if anything remained of the caravan itself.
But he needed to survive tonight to do that. If he walked away from the cave, he was giving up.
He felt relieved to decide, even if that decision was to forcibly turn a Toil creature out of its home. No, he just needed to weigh up his approach.
There were a few creatures he could think of that would take shelter in a cave. Toil-lusks were out, since they burrowed into the ground at night. There were coyote-like animals that roamed Toil, but they lived in packs.
He would have heard more footsteps if a pack of coyotes had been in the cave. Not only that, but they would have smelled him, and they wouldn’t have been content to let a sack of warm meat skulk around their shelter.
He remembered reading about all the lizards that called Toil home. Big ones and small ones, docile ones and active ones. Some were like giant, scaly dogs that wouldn’t hurt you if you walked over to them, while there were snakes slithering across the dust tracks and canyons that would kill a man if he breathed in their direction.
It wouldn’t be so bad if it was one of the larger lizards in there. In fact, he could cuddle up to it and share body heat. The lizard would like it just as much as him.
Above all else, there was one animal that he hoped it wouldn’t be. He would have prayed that it wasn’t, if he didn’t already know that no gods presided over the seven afterlives.
If it was anything else, a snake, coyotes, anything, he was sure he could figure a way around it and claim the shelter as his own. But if it was the one thing he dreaded…
“Ben,” he said. “We need to appeal to the gods of good luck. They don’t exist, but let’s speak to them on the off chance. Quietly moo if you’re with me.”
Ben let out a faint moo on command, and Jakub looked up at the skies where the clouds were beginning to thin and reveal the tapestry of glinting starlight hanging miles above.
“Gods of good luck,” he said to the sky, “I don’t ask for riches. I’ve never even asked for happiness. But tonight, this one night, I need to ask for a favor. Gods of good luck, whatever it is in that cave…please don’t let it be a desert bear.”
CHAPTER 11
York the Hunter
“There can’t be bears in the desert, I hear you say?” asked the old hunter.
He was a lonely man who lived on his own in his cottage, where he banged around like a pebble in a bucket. It was like a palace for a man who had never wanted one. A cold, empty abode fraught with memories that he wished for all the world he could enjoy, but he just felt a loneliness whenever they caught his attention. If he had to trace this feeling back, really dig until he found the root, he’d have to say it started when he lost Maeve.
So now, on the day that his once-estranged son had come to visit him after a dozen years, York found himself entertaining his grandchildren.
His grandchildren! And he had never even known they had existed. Ever since he got Patton’s letter two weeks ago, he’d put every fiber of his being into making sure that even if relations with Patton would take a few more years to scab over and then even longer to heal, he could at least make an impression on his grandchildren.
He brought them cake from a bakery fifty-eight miles away. It had taken him two separate wagon rides to get there, having no horse of his own, but it was worth it. The icing was said to taste like it had fallen to the mortal world from the Upperlon itself.
“They don’t like sweet things,” was what Patton said when York gave them the cake.
That was okay. York had hired a nearby clown to entertain them. A little fancy for just a visit, sure, and extremely expensive for a dancing man covered in greasepaint. But York had no one else to spend his money on.
“They’re scared of clowns,” said Patton.
York was beginning to think that his son was overly protective, but that stood to reason given how the children had lost their
mother. In fact, that was the only reason Patton had reached out to his father again after so long estranged.
The cake and clown were what he’d wagered his gold on, and it hadn’t worked. His grandchildren, on their first meeting with him, had sat on their chairs, backs still, faces glancing toward the door.
York whispered to Patton, “Why don’t they even look at me?”
Patton’s cheeks flushed. “Your scars.”
He felt his face then. It was an instinctual reaction to feel the gouges in his skin whenever he felt someone was looking at them. He knew what a mess his face was, but what was he supposed to do about it?
“I can’t help my scars. Perhaps if they learned where I got them. That a bear…”
“No, Pa. That’ll scare the hell out of them.”
Their unease had lasted for hours, and it seemed like it might never go away until York had gone to get them a drink, tripped over a box, and a skull had tumbled out.
His grandson leaped to his feet, eyes ablaze. “Wow! What’s that?”
York picked up the skull. “This? Oh, just something that almost killed me. There’s a story that comes with it, if you’d like to hear it.”
“They don’t like things like that,” Patton was quick to say. “Animal skulls and stuff.”
“Really? Their faces say otherwise.”
“You always used to do this, Pa. Show off your strange relics.”
“What is it?” asked his grandson.
It was the first thing he’d said to him directly, the first thing not filtered through their father. York’s heart filled with grandfatherly love.
He brought the skull over and handed it to them. “Well, this is a gantelop. They live primarily in the moors many, many miles south of Dispolis, but you can find them all over if you know where to look, and you’re patient enough to do it. But be sure not to startle them, because when you do…” he began.
Before he knew it, he’d lost himself in talking about his old passion, about the career he was too old for now.
The children were enraptured by every word. He showed them skulls, fossils, feathers, fur. They demanded explanations for each one, and York was ecstatic to provide them. He’d never laughed so much as when they asked him questions only children could ask. He hadn’t felt this energized since Maeve was still here.
Before long one box was empty save for a claw. Four inches long, brown and yellowed, and curved so that it could help the beast inflict maximum damage. It made York’s scar burn just looking at it.
“This belongs to a desert bear,” he told them. “Not the most improbable of creatures, but certainly up there. These bears aren’t like all the others. Not only have they lived in their lands for so long that they know how to survive in the heat, but nature has nurtured them until they are the most fearsome of predators.”
“Predators? What does that mean?”
“An animal that naturally preys on others. In other words, things that kill to stay alive.”
“Father,” said Patton, though he was a little less tight now, and there was almost a smile on his face. It took York a few seconds to understand why his son, previously so insular around him, had suddenly smiled.
Understanding slapped him like a lion’s paw on the chops. It was because years ago, Patton had sat there, just as his children were, and he’d asked his father to empty the box and explain where all his things had come from.
York was so happy he wanted to cry.
“How did you get the claw?” asked his granddaughter.
“You might better ask how I got this,” said York. He unbuttoned the first three buttons of his shirt and showed them a mean scar that ran all the way across his chest. “My scar and the claw go hand in hand, and the story is better for including both.”
CHAPTER 12
It was a desert bear.
He had hoped he was wrong but after watching the cave for a while, there was no point deluding himself. Every so often he’d hear the creature shuffle, and the sound it made when it redistributed its weight said that it was something big. In Toil, there weren’t many big creatures that could survive above ground.
It wasn’t just the fact it was a bear that made sweat break out on his forehead and turn instantly cold in the Toil night. No, it was because it was a desert bear.
Many places in the queendom were home to bears, from the mostly human-shy black bears that lived deep in forests, to the grunder bears that made forays into villages for food and who had to be driven back by hunters.
Jakub knew a little about the desert bears because they had come up during his research into Toil. They appeared in various ways in various books, usually under reassuring chapter headings such as ‘Dangers of Sun Toil’ and ‘Dying in Toil in One Easy Step: Let a Toil bear see you.’
As well as comforting passages like those, he remembered the little poem one of the caravan drivers had taught him. He was the oldest driver in the caravan, and many of the other caravaners treated him like he was senile. Jakub traveled next to him every day to give him some non-bison company for once, and to try and leech as much Toil experience from his as he could.
The rhyme the driver taught him about bears was as simple as it was uncomforting.
Hear my words, hear them fair
The black bear’s fine; he just doesn’t care.
But never approach a grunder bear’s lair,
And there’s one last thing, of this I swear.
Hear my words, hear them fair,
There’s but one name for the dreaded toil bear:
Nightmare, nightmare, nightmare.
Toil bears were lightly furred creatures that stood eight feet tall and weighed as much as a trader wagon. Rather than thick coats they had bristles on their skin that helped them avoid overheating in the day, but gave them a small amount of protection at night. Enough that they didn’t freeze, but not quite enough to withstand the Toil winds. Hence, a Toil bear seeking a cave.
Jakub had never seen one in person, but he remembered the drawing he had seen in a book. A nightmare of a creature, its skin tanned and covered in scratches and lesions, with some skin hanging over its arms like a cloth too big for its table. He remembered the mean eyes that gave a predator’s stare, and its open mouth filled with teeth that evolution had made fit for not only tearing apart meat, but grinding bones to get to the marrow. Food was scarce in Toil, and the toil bear had evolved so it could get every scrap of sustenance from its kill.
“Come on, Ben,” he said, retreating a further fifty yards from the cave. He lost his rock cover, but it meant there was less chance of the bear stirring in its sleep and picking up his scent. He made Ben lie down and then he spread out next to him, using his dead friend’s body as a wind shield.
It was at this safer distance that he thought some more about it. The way he saw it, he had two options; look for another shelter, or try and persuade the bear to leave.
He broke it down further. Looking for another shelter meant heading deeper into the unknown parts of Toil. He wanted to head to roughly where he had last seen the caravan and see if anything or anyone had survived, but not in the darkness.
Toil cold came on fast and in tremendous force, and he didn’t want to leave the shelter and then get hit by a freezing snap and get so weak he couldn’t move. His waist still ached and his legs were feeling heavy, and he knew he couldn’t handle much more walking.
That left getting the bear out of there. That meant killing it or tricking it out of the shelter somehow.
Could a tired, hungry, cold, and injured man armed only with a dagger kill a Toil bear? No, was the sensible answer. He ruled that option out straight away.
So how did he get a bear to leave its shelter and stay out of it?
Ten minutes later, he had nothing.
He’d used all his essence reanimating Ben and then healing his torso wound, so there were no spells he could cast. Nor was there anything in his inventory besides the twine, salve, and various under-powered weapo
ns.
He considered digging a ditch outside the cave and coaxing the bear out so that it fell into it, but there were two main drawbacks; toil bears could climb, so it’d have to be a hole twenty feet deep to trap it. Jakub didn’t have any tools that would help him do that, and even if he did, he’d have to dig right outside the cave.
No, he had to face it, there was no way he was getting into the shelter. The best thing he could do would be to leave now, spend as much time as he could spare to find somewhere else, and failing that, hunker down next to Ben and try and shiver through the night.
The prospect of more walking into the endless night was not a delightful one to a cold and tired man. It made him ache even thinking about it, but he didn’t see what else he could do other than make gods-damned sure he didn’t die tonight.
He thought about taking a couple of gulps of the Firelick whiskey. As one of the most potent alcohols in the world, it was famous for its ability to make a man feel like his insides were burning up. The feeling was an illusion, though. Alcohol made a man feel colder, and it would be fatal for Jakub to lower his body temperature tonight just for the illusion of warmth.
Checking his map, he first marked the cave on it.
Map marker added: Toil Bear cave
Next, he traced a line from his wake-up site and then north to where he believed he’d last been with the caravan. He’d head back there tonight, and when he reached the site he would either cry with joy when he found a wagon waiting for him, or he’d have to give up walking and settle next to his dead bison friend.
He closed his inventory bag, adjusted the straps, and he set out into the night, feeling a bout of sadness as he left the cave behind him.
The desert seemed darker now, as if his choice to pass on the shelter had intensified it, as if the decision was water thrown onto a dying fire. The cold hugged him close, numbing his face, fingers, and anything he couldn’t cover.