by Nero Seal
The smell of food permeated the air. His stomach grumbled; mouth watered from the aroma of grilled meat. He would have killed for a piece of warm, juicy, red steak. Slater looked around. He could have eaten lizards, and he had snakes too, but the raw meat didn’t appeal. Setting up a fire would certainly attract attention on such a clear night. Giving a hateful glare to the people around the fire, he plucked a pack of caramelized nuts out of his backpack and stuffed his cheeks.
When the night progressed, the people had prepared the horses for the night and put up tents, Slater ghosted toward Salik. Never encountering anyone during the day, the man slept propped up against a tree, making Slater wonder if the lack of a proper chase bloated his ego to the point where he’d stopped treating Talha’s people seriously. If he was the chased one, he wouldn’t be sleeping at all.
Toothless needs some lessons and exercise. Slater smirked. Arrogance was one of his favorite human traits, yet, Salik’s arrogance didn’t excite him. Tomorrow, I’ll make you sweat like a pig.
Working on a plan, Slater returned to the camp. The snakes in the sack were troublesome. They hissed, they bit, and he had to use a long stick to carry the sack around. Wanting to get rid of them as soon as possible, he clambered up in a tree to watch.
The glowing orange light, coming from the fire, now barely reached the outskirts of the glade. The round hills of the tents created enough of shadows and blind spots for him to kill everyone without anyone noticing.
Talha’s people were careless. If Slater was the hunted one, they all would have already been dead, and the night guards Talha put on the first shift wouldn’t have saved them.
Two hours later, Slater noticed a pattern. Two of the night guards used the same place as a toilet. That gave him an idea. Jumping down, he darted toward the camp.
Digging a quick hole in the ground on the way to the toilet, he imprisoned common vipers in it, using a net of branches as a grate; strong enough to keep the snakes inside but still flimsy enough to break under human weight.
The result came quickly. A howl of pain and terror was music to Slater’s ears. Perching on a branch of a massive pine tree, he surveyed the camp in small detail. Unfamiliar with the poor bugger who stepped on his trap, he didn’t feel guilty for sending one of the walī of the slain home.
Precise and quick, the instructions left Talha’s mouth, ordering two members of the jury to escort the wounded man to the lodge, treat the bites, and give him a common viper antidote.
Talha’s face was a plaster mask in the bluish light of his flashlight when he returned to the trap to inspect it. Slater fidgeted watching him chase away the remaining snakes with a long stick. When Master picked a twig used to keep snakes inside, his eyes narrowed. A pad of his thumb ran over the cut, and Slater instantly understood what he saw—a clean cut, made with a knife. Dropping the twig, Master pressed his fingers to a clear footprint in the dirt, as if the touch could tell him a tale. His face darkening with every second.
Ah, Slater was careless… Master isn’t stupid, after all.
Heart leaping into his throat, Slater swallowed, trying to rule out the unfamiliar agitation from his chest, as he observed Talha’s every move. When the man scattered the remaining twigs aside, Slater’s nails dug into the trunk next to him. A piece of rind broke off under his grip, and the tree bled with pine sap that instantly jammed his fingers. Slater didn’t pay attention.
Wide back arching, Talha loomed over the hole, examining it. Pressing his fingers to the side slope where Slater’s karambit plowed the ground, Talha leaned closer. In the stripping light of his flashlight, his long fingers caressed the ground. Slater gulped, imagining the featherlike touch on his skin as Talha studied his every scar. Somehow, in the night, surrounded by a smell of pine, the moment felt more intimate than the sex they’d had. The embryonic arousal twitched in his belly, awakening his thirst.
With an angry exhale, Talha straightened, and Slater itched to crawl closer to smell his emotions. To taste that beautiful fury that twisted Master’s face and learn its unique tang.
Talha squinted in the dark, his eyes x-raying the thick green foliage as if expecting to find someone. For a second, their gazes linked, and Slater recoiled despite knowing that no human eye could see him right now. His heart violent in his chest, every beat hurt. Unable to blink, he gawked back. He couldn’t see Talha’s eyes, but he knew they were brimming with liquid amber. Without thinking, he collected the pine sap and hoisted his hand to his eyes. In the moonlight, it glinted with the color of Talha’s eyes.
That was confusing. Never in his life had he felt like this. No human being ever caused his pulse to speed up, unless during sex. This was new, and he wanted more of this crazy, painful sensation that made him feel like dying and killing simultaneously. At that moment, Slater wished for the world to disappear, so only Master and Slater remained. So Master would keep looking at him like this, but Master turned away.
Two hours later, the camp quieted again, allowing Slater to climb down the tree. Needing only four hours to sleep, he had the whole night to prepare for the morning, but before that, he yearned to see Talha.
After the incident, the guards took their duties with decent diligence. Still, Slater didn’t have problems crawling into Talha’s tent. Suffused with Master’s scent, it made him freeze and suck the air in through his nose. The mix of leather and bitter almond made his head spin. None of his previous masters smelled this good. They reeked of expensive perfume that concealed the sour stench of sweat. On the contrary, Master used oils that only accented the clean scent of his skin. Even after riding the whole day, he smelled good. Crawling toward him, Slater stole another sniff, his nose almost brushing against Talha’s neck.
Slater’s body heated up. Master was beautiful in his untroubled sleep. With one hand tossed behind his head, he slept on a mat, fully clothed. A part of Slater was anxious to curl by his side and spend the night in the tent, guarding him. The other one wanted to drive a needle in the soft spot under his chin for leaving him behind, for ignoring him.
Instead, he pressed his fingers to Talha’s lips. Dry and hot, they felt rough under his pads. His heart sped up as he outlined the unshaven chin and drew a line down Talha’s long neck until his index finger stopped at the notch.
“You belong to me, Master. Don’t forget it,” he whispered, got up, and stole out of the tent, another idea forming in his mind.
Stealing a tent from a sleeping person was the funniest and easiest part of setting the stinging, living trap.
“FUCKING HELL! I’ll kill this son of a bitch!” A yell full of pain cut through the air.
Slater giggled. A massive branch beneath him vibrated as he threw a piece of orange nougat into his mouth, watching two men roll on the ground, shouting and cursing. Messing with Talha’s people was almost as fun as killing.
Fire ants were the bitch. His arms, red and irritated, burned. Scratching them every ten seconds, Slater didn’t regret the pain, as the plan worked beautifully. Relocating a huge anthill was harder than he’d imagined, and his whole body still itched, feeling the crawls of a million little legs, but the result was worth every sting. A simple tripwire trap released the tent that he sprawled between two trees, showering the men with angry ants and the remains of their ruined colony. Succumbing to panic, one man jumped to his feet and rushed toward the horses, the other clawed his clothes to pieces. Getting himself naked, he kept rolling over the ground, and Slater couldn’t tell if he was shaking the ants off or gathering them.
The group of horses, joining the madness, neighed and reared, creating beautiful chaos.
When the other victim of the attack squalled, scratching his naked, swelling body, Slater hummed. He didn’t expect such an acute allergic reaction, but that worked even better. There was no way the man could ride in such a state, it meant someone would have to bring him back to civilization and simple medical assistance.
“Eight…” Slater counted, watching his forecast coming to life.
The former ardor disappeared. Anger and panic curdled the air. So potent, Slater basked in the smell. Sometimes, the wind brought him shreds of conversations. Just like now.
“Talha, I don’t get it. It’s like… he is toying with us,” Ejder jabbered, grasping Talha’s forearm. “He was in the camp; he stole the tent and no one saw him. He could have killed us all. Why didn’t he?”
“Calm down…” Talha gnashed out. Grabbing Ejder’s shoulders, he shoved his brother toward Dinçer. When he spoke, he didn’t look at Ejder. “From now on, I’m going alone. Keep him safe.”
“Like hell, I’ll let you! I’m coming with you!” Ejder protested, his chin flying high in defiance.
Talha ignored him, his eyes locked with Dinçer’s. “If something happens to him…”
“You don’t have to worry, Reis.”
Talha picked up his bow. Slater jumped down the tree, grabbed his backpack, and sprinted toward Salik.
SALIK’S GREASY HAIR GLOWED in the midday sun as he fought his way through the bushes. His panting so loud, that Slater heard it from two hundred feet away. His face bled. Cut with stray branches, it attracted the attention of horseflies and mosquitoes. The dark swarm surrounded him like a cloak, causing his hands to flap around in powerless, meaningless fury.
Watching him fight the forest, instead of gliding through it, Slater once again realized how weak and unskilled city men were. Left without technology and the bubble wrap civilization provided, they were vulnerable, useless. Some were better than Salik, still, Slater was bored. Among them all, he couldn’t find a decent competitor.
Even Talha had disappointed. He didn’t look like he had been interested in the hunt at all. More than often, he let Ejder make decisions about the directions, and corrected him only when their route strayed too much from Salik’s. A few times Slater saw him teach Ejder how to read the path, so Slater knew Talha could see where Salik had gone. Yet, he never used the knowledge. Slater couldn’t understand why.
At some point, Slater started thinking that maybe, once again, he was looking in the wrong place and instead of a master he should be looking for an enemy. A strong, smart, cruel, yet dominant enemy. Someone who had been born to entertain Slater, oppose him, maybe even break him. Imagining such an enemy, Slater shivered with anticipation. He wouldn’t mind if someone like this broke him.
Daydreaming, he startled, as an arrow cut the air and plunged into the dead pine tree, shards of rotten bark spattering from the impact point. The flight of the arrow was black.
So Master could be fast, after all… He is only fifteen minutes behind. Slater wasn’t sure if that made him happy or disappointed. He didn’t hear Talha approach, which surprised him, but he hoped to have more time to play with Salik before anyone managed to find him. His vision focused on the foliage, reading small, tale-telling oscillations.
Salik yelped, bending to the ground, he rushed north, where the bushes were thicker and the ground muddier.
Sinking into the shadows, Slater watched Master slither through wind-fallen trees. Jumping over a stump, Talha ducked below a net of fallen trees. His hand caught twigs, bending them away and releasing them as he passed. Horseless, with a bow in one hand and a quiver behind his back, Talha sent another arrow after the fugitive. With a swish, it once again hit a tree.
Huh? Master missed again. Master is sloppy.
Talha picked up the tempo, as his movements became less precise. Sending one arrow after another, he collected them on his way, as he chased after Salik forcing him to speed up. The first thought about Master being a lousy archer crumbled to dust when a pattern formed. Every arrow hit a mere inch away from Salik, impelling him to run in a certain direction. The longer Slater watched, the more it resembled a game, a hare chase.
Cascades of sweat rushed down Salik’s red face, he slurred something under his shallow breath. Meanwhile, Talha’s white shirt remained dry, nearly perfect. Entranced in smooth movements of Talha’s body, Slater couldn’t stop ogling his trapezius muscles bulge with every pull of the bowstring.
Holding his bow above his head, Talha froze, and Slater’s heart halted. He didn’t dare to blink, scared to miss something.
“I wanted to give you more time and the grieving families the opportunity to earn on your death, but it looks like the devil is on your side, for now. You have one hour, Salik,” Talha said in such a cold, emotionless voice that Slater’s skin crawled. He wanted Master to talk like this to him. In bed. To feel the cage of his impelling hands on his throat. To enjoy Master’s cock in his ass. The warmth of arousal flushed through his body.
Talha blew the air out of his lungs and released the arrow. Twirling in the air, the tip caught the running man’s earlobe.
“One hour, Salik. Then I’m coming for you.”
A BRANCH THROBBED beneath him in beat with his heart, increasing his nervousness. A wide trunk of a forked tree guarded his back, Slater fidgeted. He had been sprinting to get ahead of Salik for the last thirty minutes, and now his sweat attracted all kinds of insects. According to his predictions, Salik should have passed him seven minutes ago, yet, he couldn’t even hear him.
He was about to jump down when the sound of breaking wood spiked his senses. Every muscle tense, Slater froze, listening.
Heavy panting, curses that were barely above the whisperer, and the stench. A sour, greasy stench of fear and unwashed body.
His hand, moving behind his back, found a sheath tucked under his backpack. The corrugated grip perfect in his hand, Slater drew his combat knife out. He didn’t use it often, giving preference to his karambits, yet it was a good, reliable weapon. Custom made and perfectly balanced it was adjusted to his palm.
Flipping the blade around his fingers, Slater waited for Salik to approach before he sent the knife down. The blade sliced through the ground, sticking halt-deep and an inch away from the tip of Salik’s boot. The man flinched and jumped aside. The black beads of his eyes shooting a feral glance up as his upper lip curled, revealing the black gape where his teeth should have been.
“Y-you?”
The sounds of his pitched voice made Slater cringe inwardly. Bringing his index finger to his lips, he hushed, “Shhhh.”
Salik dropped his focus to the weapon, and Slater hopped to another branch, then to the next one, before escaping into the shadows of the forest.
HIS SUGARY FINGERS FROZE halfway to his mouth, holding a piece of mint rahat locum. He watched Salik’s scrawny frame rise from the mud behind Talha; a knife squeezed in his fist blade up was a perfect continuation of his hand. The stench, coming from his body, faded and even the swarm of midges that used to give away his location now lost their interest in him.
In disappointment, Slater almost dropped his sugary treat as Talha stood oblivious to the world. Engrossed in reading tracks, he didn’t notice the barefoot Salik creeping toward him.
Too bad, Master, it was fun. I guess this is how our contract ends… Indifference drained his heart from the weird agitation he had been feeling since Talha’s eyes linked with his in the night. Losing his interest in Talha altogether, Slater spat the now unfit, sweet taste of locum. Slater chose wrongly. Master didn’t fit. Too young, too careless. Who should Slater approach next?
He was about to hop off the branch, when the bloodthirsty blade cut the air, spraying mud over Talha’s white shirt. In the last second, Talha ducked under Salik’s hand and elbowed the man in his stomach. The now useless bow slipped from his shoulder and hung on his forearm. Talha cast it aside.
The dirt splashing under Salik’s foot, he stabbed forward, aiming at Talha’s stomach. Forced to retreat, Talha shook off the quiver and tossed it close to the bow.
“Drop your knife, and for the sake of old friendship I’ll kill you fast and painless. Fight me, and I’ll feed your liver to ants,” Talha’s voice, so soft and calm, demanded attention. “You can recite the Shahada[27] if you want, I’ll wait. But this is as far as you go.”
“Huh?” Unable to suppress a gigg
le, Slater licked sugar dust off his fingers, his interest spiking again. Talha looked confident, maybe too confident. Once again, Slater thought that he loved arrogance in people. Unlike Salik’s, Master’s was delicious. It had that potent, oily scent to it—the scent of the battlefield, overheated metal, and desert.
According to Slater, only a noob would lose against an unarmed opponent, but Master, obviously, had another opinion. Slater wanted to see him in combat to study his skills. In a situation like this, to stand a chance, Master should not only be more skillful but also had to be faster. Salik’s stance and the way he held the knife didn’t come from any martial art but screamed of jail time. The blade migrated from one hand to another, constantly disappearing in the shadows of his wrists.
Slater caught himself thinking that attacking Salik barehanded was an extremely stupid idea. Slater wouldn’t risk it, and there was no way Master was faster or more skillful than Slater. Maybe only more stupid.
“ARRRRGGHHHH!” Rushing forward in bull-like fury, Salik shoved his left palm up, aiming at Talha’s face, distracting him, his armed hand ready to stab. Talha leaped aside.
“Run, Master, run,” Slater whispered. “There is no victory for you.”
The scrawny man launched again with a series of straight jabs and wide flicks of a knife designed to cut Talha’s forearms. Eyes on his opponent Talha retreated in quick, careful steps, and Slater remembered the first rule of self-defense against a knife fighter: if you can’t see a knife, you have already lost.
Yet, Talha acted like he owned the space. Tearing his shirt off his shoulders, he eliminated the opportunity for Salik to grab his shirt and control the distance between them. Slater nodded his appreciation, when Talha didn’t throw the shirt away, but wrapped it around his left fist and forearm, creating a simple cloth shield. It wouldn’t save him from a stab but might help with slashes.
Slater regretted his inability to come closer. He considered to provide Master with anything for self-defense but refrained. If Master dies, c'est la vie. Also, if Slater showed himself, Master might start relying on Slater. That won’t be fair, would it?