by Deck Davis
Gunar didn’t bother hiding the disgust he felt for the man. No point; he was no actor, and the feeling would transmit in his words and his eyes. He decided to play this honestly.
“You don’t need to talk about killing us. I know a way to get your horses back,” he said.
The slaver managed to look embarrassed. Imagine that; after Gunar and some of the others had abandoned the caravan and fled from the storm, the slaver and his band of bastards had been waiting. Gunar greeted them as saviors, and he found them to be slavers.
And this one was awkward when Gunar talked about killing.
The slaver came closer, and Gunar could see his muscles. He was late thirties but well-conditioned. His skin glistened in spots where he hadn’t rubbed alchemical salve into it properly. That told him something; that the slaver was about as prepared for Toil travel as Gunar thought he had been.
“Better you don’t listen to our conversations,” said the slaver. “It’s impolite, and you might hear things you don’t want to.”
“You’ve lost some horses, yes?” said Gunar.
“One to heatstroke. Another poor mare came down with influenza so strong it must have been demonic, and it tore through the others. Managed to isolate the sickness and stop it wiping ‘em all out.”
“You don’t bring horses to Toil,” said Gunar. “Anywhere else, horses are the better animal for pulling. Out here it’s bison.”
“Thanks,” said the slaver. “Just let me pull a few bison from my arse and we’ll be looking pretty. Sorry, I’m being sarcastic, ain’t I? What I should have said is, let me just waltz back in time so I can take your advice into account.”
“If horses are what you’ve got, then horses are what you’ve got. You haven’t butchered their corpses yet, have you?”
“Why in all the gods’ names would I butcher them?”
Gunar almost sighed, but he managed to keep his feelings internal. The slaver wasn’t as seasoned in toil travel as he thought. “When you’re crawling over the sandy arse of the queendom, frugality is divine. An animal passes from the world, you butcher it for meat. You cut off its fur and you drain as much blood as you can before it coagulates. Course, too late for that with your beasts.”
“We’ve got enough food, and our horses mean something to us, trader. They’re not just sacks of flesh, they’re part of the crew, and we don’t eat crew. You’re telling me that if your wife popped it, you’d butcher her up and parcel her out? Didn’t think so. Anything else you wanna say?”
“What if you could bring them back?” said Gunar.
The slaver’s eyes narrowed to the point of almost closing. Gunar didn’t think he’d ever been looked at with such a mix of disdain and awe. “I enslaved a group of crazies, didn’t I?” the slaver said. “I thought you were traders. Only sane reason a man would lead people into this hellhole. Well, that and to enslave them, of course. Now I’m seeing that you’re crazier than an alchemist with mercury stains on his nostrils.”
Gunar couldn’t argue that point; he was beginning to think he was crazy for coming back to Toil so many times. He hadn’t realized it until now. He thought he was too prepared to fail, but that had been arrogance. Every time he’d put a foot in the desert he’d rolled the dice and hoped fate was in a good mood.
“I was losing bison every time we came into Toil,” he said. “I usually reckoned on a forty to sixty percent loss rate, so I’d bring more bison along to compensate. More bison means bringing more feed, hirin’ more hands to watch them. More money.”
The trader nodded, completely following along. Gunar had won his attention, he could see that in his eyes. At least he was a businessman.
“So,” continued Gunar, “This time, I brought a necromancer along with me. Agreeable fella, if a little insular. You know magic types. Or maybe you don’t; some folks don’t trust things that are impossible done by people who shouldn’t be able to do it.”
It was only a millisecond before understanding crept onto the slaver’s face. That told Gunar something; tricking this one would be difficult. He’d chosen correctly when he decided to show his cards straight. Not only that, but it was impossible to ignore the fact that the woman he’d been talking with had stayed just ten feet away from them, letting him and Gunar talk, but always watching. There was a look of cruelty in her eyes, like the rest of the slavers did this for money but her reasons went deeper.
“You brought a necromancer to resurrect your fallen beasts,” said the slaver. “That didn’t even cross my mind.”
“It took almost a decade to cross mine, and another year to find a mancer who’d join me. This lad’s not long out of the academy, but he ain’t green, I can tell you that much. He’s seen some shit, that’s for sure.”
The slaver grabbed the edge of the tarpaulin and pulled it back and looked at the rest of Gunar’s crew in the wagon. “Where is he?”
“Not here. Before the storm hit, we sent him away on a cart full of explosives. Not as punishment, mind you. We didn’t want it to explode…and what do you know? It exploded. Fate is the sauciest bastard around, isn’t he? There’s a chance he made it, though. Slimmer than a sausage dog’s pecker, but a chance. That’d mean he’s out there. Get to him before the sun cooks him, give him a little water, and maybe he’ll bring back your horses.”
“Not to mention bring a handsome price. Last time I brought my contacts a mage, I didn’t leave the brothel for a whole year. You know what they say; magic flesh is worth its weight in gold. Thanks, trader.”
“Now,” said Gunar. “You can see we’re being cooperative. How’s about you let some of us go? Don’t just send ‘em loose into the desert though, the sun would pucker them up before they’ve walked ten miles. And not me. You can keep me, but the younger folks, the younger families. Drop them when you get to town, let me help pay for another chance.”
The slaver held his gaze, and Gunar saw the depth in his eyes now. They were dark, but not with cruelty. If anything, there was a glimmer in his stare that told him this man could have been something else, something good, if he’d taken a different path. Even with that path fork behind him, his way wasn’t completely dark yet.
“You’ve bought the freedom of one man, one woman, and one child,” said the slaver. “Choose who it is amongst yourselves.”
Gunar watched the slaver walk away, and he saw the woman approach him. Listening intently, he heard their hushed words.
“You’re letting three of them go? Tell me you’re bullshitting them.”
The slaver shook his head. “I’ll keep my word. The necromancer’s flesh will keep us living like princes, if he’s already dead. There’s a guy who’ll pay for flesh with a kick to it.”
A hand squeezed Gunar’s shoulder, breaking his concentration. Helen was next to him. She’d avoided him for hours, but now she was back by his side and there was something approaching kindness in her eyes. “You did a good thing,” she told him.
Bear had traveled under the glare of the morning sun until Pup’s tracks became strange, moving in circles that became small and smaller. He pushed on until he reached the center of the circle, it was there that he felt the weight of the sky, of the desert, of all of life crash onto his old shoulders.
Blood was splattered all around. It was dried on the ground in great patches. Lots of it, too much to hope that anything good could come now. Even if Bear had hope in his heart, his heart shattered when he saw the lump at the center of the circle.
A bloodied lump. Four paws, a small, long body. No fur. Just left there to cook under the sun.
Bear collapsed to the ground. He wailed and wailed and wailed. He tore at his fur. He thought of his best friend and he despaired, and he wished he could do anything, give anything to have Pup back.
He would have given his own life to the desert so Pup could walk again.
He stayed there all morning and he wept until he was dry. The sun cast warning rays down at him, heating his fur, burning the skin under the bald patches th
at had begun to form recently. Bear felt it scorch him but he stayed there with one paw resting on Pup’s raw body. He waited in a daze, staring into the distance until he began to imagine that he would see Pup emerge from the distance just as he had so many times before after coming back from the hunt.
Pup never came and the sun never stopped, and Bear didn’t feel time pass now because his mind was one long stream of pictures. Pictures in his head of the things he and Pup had done, the things they had seen. Pictures of nights curled up in caves, both comfortable and knowing they were safe with each other.
He’d forgotten what it was like to be alone. Now he would have to know again.
More hours passed, and by the time darkness wanted to show itself again, Bear’s throat cried for water, his belly cried for food.
But his mind wanted something else. His mind had turned as dark as night. He thought not of pup anymore but the man. Pup had sought the man, and he had found him, and only a man could have done this.
Now, Bear would find him.
For as many suns and moons as his old body had left, he would look for this man. After that, he hoped he would join Cub and Pup. Until then, the desert was his only friend. He might be getting slower and weaker, but Bear knew the land better than any man.
CHAPTER 19
It was amazing the damage a poor sleeping position and a shelter fit for a mouse could do to your back. After failing to find a tavern full of whiskey, women, and duck-feather mattresses, Jakub had decided to spend the night in the shelter he had labeled on his map as Back-killer Cavern.
As much as his shelter was poor, at least the surrounding area had something to offer. Jakub bled it dry. He harvested every cactus he could find, foraging for more flowers, leaves, and even a few more previous prickly pear fruits.
Desert life was all about priorities. Ultimately, he needed to find a way to travel the hundreds of miles either direction so he could leave Toil. He could head west to go back toward Dispolis and the heart of the Queendom, or head east to reach New Sanzance, the settlement Gunar wanted to trade with. He knew they’d crossed the halfway mark back when he was still with the caravan, so it’d be a shorter journey to the settlement.
Once he decided which way to go, he needed the means to do it. He hadn’t tested it yet, but he figured that he could walk between twenty and thirty miles per day. He had a long way to travel. He’d need food, but he reckoned he could harvest enough cactus and even hunt the occasional rabbit or fox for that.
Next were the two biggest worries; water and shelter. He needed a plentiful water supply, and he needed a way to store the water. Next, he needed a portable shelter. If he was walking out of here, he’d have to do the bulk of his traveling in the early morning and evenings, keeping out of the sun when it was at its strongest.
He could cut this travel down, of course. He might find one of Gunar’s wagons, which Ben could pull. It’d be slow, but it’d solve his shelter problem at the same time. Jakub didn’t work this into his calculation because he couldn’t bank on it. The dust storm had pulverized the caravan, and he didn’t think there was anything left at all.
This brought him onto another problem; his skin was looking redder than a naughty child’s smacked bottom. He needed the salve or something else he could use. He was sure he could cover his arms and maybe fashion a wrap for his face and head, but it was too hot to travel like that. It’d do for now, but salve was essential.
While scavenging the area in the coolest parts of the day and staying in his shelter when the sun was up, he’d had a lot of time to think. The biggest question he had was about the caravan; Gunar and a few of the other traders had told him how the dust storms started small and began picking up more and more specks of dust, traveling across the desert and growing bigger and stronger and faster until at their most powerful, the gravel and dust and stones were like little teeth that could shred through anything.
He didn’t doubt Gunar was telling the truth. He was a skinflint, honestly, and the fact he paid for a storm oracle said a lot. Even so, Jakub couldn’t believe that there was no trace of the caravan.
Nope, not possible. He’d just been looking in the wrong places.
So, as the evening had approached on the second day in his new shelter, he’d tapped his glyphline tattoo to make his map appear, and he’d puzzled it out with Ben.
“I was somewhere south in the explosive cart when the storms hit,” said Jakub, pretending Ben was listening. “I woke up here, and I didn’t see any sign of the caravan. We know that the storms hit primarily from the east, and the locust things seemed to come from the west. If anyone fled the caravan, they would have gone north. It would have been the only safe direction.”
Ben was quiet, and although Jakub was as sure in his guess as he could be, he needed reassurance. “Ben, if I make a proclamation or ask a question, just make a grunt from now on.”
The bison half-grunted and half-mooed, and Jakub felt strangely optimistic. He spent the rest of the night trying to sleep, and as soon as there was a slight hint that morning was breaking, he rose.
He checked his provisions for the journey. He had five prickly pear fruits. That was his only source water, and they’d last him a day. He needed to find something else, the sooner the better. He’d dreamed of waterfalls last night, clear lakes for the two nights before it.
Food-wise, he was doing better. He’d dried the snakeskin in the sun to preserve it, and he had enough cactus flowers and leaves to last him a few days.
For soul essence, he had five bars in his necklace; enough for one or two spells, depending on what he used. He still wasn’t sure about that.
Orientating himself using his map, then tapping the rocks that had been his shelter for the last two nights and thanking them, Jakub headed north.
Anyone or anything watching then would have seen a necromancer striding in the early dawn with his shirt fastened and with coyote fur on his shoulders, ready to slip over his head when the sun peaked.
They’d see his reanimating bison walking loyally alongside him with his inventory hanging over its body in a sling he’d fashioned from leftover fur, its skin caked in dust and showing signs of tearing from the harsh desert conditions.
Above all, they’d see a man who wasn’t ready to die yet, trapped in a place where death came ready or not.
CHAPTER 20
He would have sold his soul for a half cup of water. He was sure some necromancer out there had figured out a way to do that, but he was still thinking rationally enough to know it wasn’t a fair trade. The water was worth way, way more.
Thinking about souls had made him consider one solution; whenever he summoned Ludwig, a portal to the Greylands, the life between life and death, opened. Jakub could then jump into the portal and get into the Greylands. It’d be an escape from the desert, at least.
There were two problems there.
For one, the Greylands was full of creatures capable of stealing his thoughts, emotions, and memories with just a single look. That was how dangerous a place it was for him; just one wrong look into a demon’s eyes, and it would wrench information from his brain.
It might take his ability to walk. It might steal his academy training. It might make him forget the one, glorious night he’d spent with a librarian redhead named Ami, just after he’d left Dispolis to go traveling.
Secondly, he’d be swapping one hostile, barren, pit of hell for another. Greylands wasn’t a place for mortals. At least not physically; people went there when they died. It wasn’t somewhere with plentiful food and water.
Of course, there was the chance that some of the caravaners would be there. The dead ones who hadn’t gone to their afterlife yet. Hmm, maybe that was something.
See, every person who died went to one of the afterlives, barring any interference from those pesky necromancers, of course. But before they died they went into the Greylands, where they waited for their afterlife to be allocated to them. This was done by a complex weighing of the s
oul by things nobody had ever seen nor could understand, and it wasn’t important to get bogged down in thinking about that.
Necromancers called this time in the Greylands a person’s Resurrection Window. During the time that they spent in the Greylands, they could be resurrected by a mancer with appropriate skill levels. After they went to their allocated afterlife, it was too late. The window had shut.
For a person, an average resurrection window was between three and five days, with five being a rarer case. He’d heard, though, of someone being brought back on their sixth day after death.
This meant there was a chance - a chance barely bigger than an ant’s balls - that one of the caravaners would still be in the Greylands awaiting travel to their afterlife. If Jakub could go down there, he could ask them what happened to the rest of the caravan and if anyone had managed to break clear of the storm.
Then again, summoning Ludwig so he could open the portal would waste essence, and it was incredibly unlikely a caravaner was still in the Greylands.
Nope, it was too risky to waste essence like that. The Greylands was a non-solution. Another to cross off the list.
Jakub focused on another cheery subject as he walked; his dwindling supplies.
His snake meat was gone. He’d already popped the last pear fruit and enjoyed the fleeting rush of moisture on his tongue. He’d rationed himself, but even so, he’d eaten half his leaf and flower supplies. The desert, the barren bitch that she was, had refused to offer anything else to him. He was beginning to realize that the cacti near his old shelter had been the exception, rather than the rule. The rule in Sun Toil was, no food and water for miles and miles, and that’s what you got for trying to cross it.
Staying in his shelter hadn’t been an option because he’d bled the surrounding area dry. Lacking other options, Jakub had gone north.