by Kara Timmins
“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how things are down there tomorrow,” Malatic said. “Can’t wait.”
Neasa looked at Eloy. “Will you sleep tonight?”
“I’ll make myself,” Eloy said. “We’re going to be in the middle of it soon enough, and I can’t be at my best if I keep myself awake.”
Neasa looked out at the dots of orange below. “I’m pretty sure we’re in the middle of it now.”
34
Neasa took the lookout for half of the night and gave Eloy, Malatic, and Goodwin extra sleep. She may have let them sleep longer, but she woke them up sometime in the middle of the night. They had set up their camp close to a small drop-off—a depth no more than a foot-length higher than Eloy was tall—on the decline of a steady slope.
Neasa shook Eloy. “Wake up. There are fighters,” she whispered and pointed toward the drop-off.
Malatic was already sitting up on the other side of the now-dead fire. He was closest to the edge. “They’re stumbling and throwing up,” Malatic whispered. “These two fighters are well into a jug of the hot stuff. There’s no need to worry about them as long as we don’t draw attention to ourselves.”
The sick fighters moved on, their gurgling and heaving sounds dwindling as they moved away toward Anso’s mountain.
Once they were gone, Eloy looked at Neasa sitting next to him. “You should get some sleep.”
“I’m okay.” Her heavy eyes gave her away.
“I won’t be able to go back to sleep,” Eloy said. “Rest.”
She was reluctant, but after a little coaxing, she dropped down to sleep.
None of the four looked refreshed in the morning, but they were all rested enough to have sharp senses for the task ahead. They resumed their formation: Malatic in the front, Goodwin behind him, then Neasa, and Eloy in the back. Unified, they walked down into the forested area below.
The area could have been beautiful were it not for the detritus of Anso’s careless fighters. The snow had let up in the last few days, but it didn’t fall as much the lower they descended. Only a few clumps of white bunched in small mounds among the yellow tufts of grasses. The woodland lacked the vibrant hues of Valia, the trees free of the soft mosses, and the density couldn’t compare, but without the current inhabitants, Eloy sensed a latent peace in these woods. He hoped it would find it again.
Neasa dropped back to Eloy’s side at midday. “He keeps muttering stuff up there.”
“Who?” Eloy asked.
“Malatic,” she said.
“What’s he talking about?” Eloy asked.
“I don’t know,” Neasa said, “but it’s along the lines of something not seeming right.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Eloy said.
Eloy sped up to a slow jog and closed the gap between him and Malatic. He gave Goodwin a pat on the back as he rushed past and got a friendly smile in response.
“What’s going on?” Eloy asked as he reached Malatic.
“Huh?” Malatic looked over at Eloy now at his side. “What do you mean?”
“Neasa said you were muttering to yourself,” Eloy said. “Anything the rest of us should know about?”
“It’s just too quiet down here,” Malatic said. “It’s the same as I was saying last night. There should be more people.”
“Any idea why there aren’t more fighters?” Eloy asked.
“Not one,” Malatic said.
“Are we walking into a trap or an ambush?”
“It’s possible,” Malatic said, “but I don’t think so. Why would they go to the trouble for four people? I don’t think they could’ve known we would be on our way here, and even if they did, that’s not how Anso does things.”
“We should turn around until we know more,” Eloy said.
“Maybe you’re right.” Malatic looked over his shoulder at Neasa, who was now walking next to Goodwin. “As far as I’m concerned . . .” Malatic looked forward again, and his sentence trailed off.
Malatic broke away from Eloy, jogging ahead toward whatever had caught his attention.
“What is it?” Eloy called after him.
“Only one way to find out,” Malatic said over his shoulder as he ran, his words cold.
Eloy jogged after Malatic and stopped two strides short of where Malatic stood. Eloy brought his shirt up to his nose. He knew this smell. Neasa and Goodwin ran up behind him. Goodwin halted with a gasp, and Neasa gave a disgusted grunt. The four stood in a half circle and looked down at the two dead bodies whose bloated stomachs were pushing at the seams of the clothes that looked almost identical to the ones the four were wearing.
“They’ve been dead long enough that someone should have noticed them so close to camp,” Malatic said, “but they’re still here.” Malatic squatted next to the head of one of the bodies and picked up the stained red flag that had slipped to the ground.
“Mal,” Neasa said. “Don’t.”
Eloy moved closer and looked down into the dead man’s bulging eyes and swollen tongue.
“I don’t see any cuts,” Eloy said through his shirt.
“Yeah,” Malatic said. “I don’t see any either. The maggots would’ve eaten away at wounds enough to see them, no matter how small. Actually, it doesn’t look like they have fought a battle in some time.”
“It could be an illness,” Neasa said.
“It could be,” Malatic said, dropping the red fabric and taking a step backward. “I don’t see any outward signs of that, but I’m not saying you’re wrong.”
“Should we turn back?” Goodwin asked.
“We heard people down here last night,” Eloy said. “Right now, all I see are two people who could’ve died from anything. They could’ve been killed by the others. That happens, right? You’ve said as much.”
“Anso’s fighters don’t kill without marks,” Malatic said. “It’s not their way. But you’re right about the others we saw last night. I just don’t understand.” Malatic wiped his hands on his pants.
“We’re going to keep going?” Goodwin asked.
“We have to see what’s going on there,” Eloy said. “If we see signs of anything contagious, we’ll get out as soon as we can. Neasa, do you know any illnesses that might cause this?” Eloy motioned toward the dead.
“A few, I guess,” Neasa said. “We should get away from these bodies if it’s a possibility they’re contagious. I don’t know everything about sickness; I just know what’s useful from the forest, and this is not my forest, but I’ll do my best. We should move.”
“You’re right,” Malatic said. “Let’s get going. These two aren’t going to tell us what happened.” His forehead softened as he looked at Neasa and took on a more concerned slope before he turned toward the mountain again.
As they started forward, Goodwin sidled up to Eloy.
Eloy looked at Goodwin at his side and saw a pensive grip in his forehead. Eloy had seen it on Malatic and even felt it on his own face, but he hadn’t realized how much Goodwin had adopted the expression until now. Goodwin’s face had thinned out over the weeks and his hair had grown out, which made him look so much older than he had when they had met. Perhaps that’s why Eloy saw the look on his face so clearly now.
“Do you think we’re going to be okay?” Goodwin asked, his eyes scanning the forest, looking for movement in the muted colors.
“I don’t know,” Eloy said, “but I can tell you that I’ll do what I can to get all four of us out of this place alive. Do you believe that?”
“Yeah.” Goodwin looked at Eloy. “I do.”
Goodwin took a deep breath. Making any promises about what would happen was irresponsible. Every step of uncertainty was a risk on all of their lives, but Eloy reminded himself again that he didn’t have a choice. They had to move forward, and if they didn’t, they were accepting that the worl
d they knew was set to fall.
Neasa and Malatic were three strides ahead of Eloy and Goodwin when Malatic stopped. He put his hand on the crook of Neasa’s arm. “Shhh.”
They hadn’t made it more than a few hundred steps away from the dead bodies before Malatic stopped them. Eloy moved to the front and looked past Malatic. One of Anso’s men was slowly stumbling across their path. The man was far enough away that they didn’t draw their swords but close enough that the man should have noticed them crouched and waiting. Malatic moved first, his steps cautious. The man continued his chaotic movement despite the crunch of their footfall against the forest floor. Malatic opened his mouth to call out to the man, but before the words could come, the fighter gripped his stomach and retched a stream of foamy yellow bile. Eloy took an instinctual step back.
Malatic took three long and quick backsteps to rejoin the others.
Neasa put her shirt over her mouth. “I’m going to go talk to him. Maybe I can find out what’s going on here.”
Eloy pulled his shirt up over his face too. “You stay. I’ll go.”
He was already moving before anyone could protest.
Even through his shirt, he could smell that the air had the aroma of deep and debilitating sickness. Whatever caused the man’s ailments wasn’t a passing problem. The smell of his leaking fluids had the undernote of death. As Eloy got closer, the man turned his head up from his crouched and arched posture to look at Eloy, his eyes red with burst blood under the surface. The yellow of his skin and the destruction of the whites of his eyes made him look like a creature that bore a resemblance to a human in form alone.
“Eh, what do you wan—” The man bent over to vomit again, while a rumble escaped from the back of his already stained pants.
Neasa, Malatic, and Goodwin moved up behind Eloy.
“What happened here?” Eloy asked.
The fighter responded by aiming his vomit closer to Eloy’s feet.
Malatic stepped around Eloy and moved the knot of the flag around his head from the back to the front.
“Mal, no,” Neasa said.
“It’s okay,” Malatic said. “This man is out of it, and I don’t see anyone else around.” He stepped forward. “Fighter, what’s going on here? Are you too sick to raise your sword? What are you doing outside of the healing tent?”
“Healing tent, ha!” the man said. “Been a while since you been back. Bad news, brother. The new batch is bad.” The fighter, who was slumped against a sapling that bent from his weight, was looking up at Malatic.
“What batch?” Malatic asked.
“What do you mean ‘what batch’? The batch.” The man was weakening with every word, every exertion enough to be his last.
“Explain yourself,” Malatic said.
Whatever the man meant was important enough to damage the believability of their lie and the fighter, even through his sick delirium, began to doubt.
“You’re not . . .” The man opened his cracked mouth to scream, but his eyes dropped low, and no sound of alarm came out. He was fixated on something, and his already distended eyes widened enough to look like something strong had squeezed him from the middle. His eyes locked on Malatic’s waist. “What’s that you got there?”
Eloy followed the trajectory of the man’s gaze, but he couldn’t immediately identify what had caught the man’s attention.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Malatic said.
“The pouch?” Eloy reached for the pouch full of the strange dust they had taken from the men Neasa and Malatic had killed. Eloy almost had his fingertips on it when a flurry of motion changed his attention.
The fighter was no longer hunched over. Light flashed off metal. The blur of motion cut into Eloy’s vision. Eloy grasped for the sword strapped to his back, but he didn’t move fast enough. The shift had been too unexpected. He hadn’t even had time to pull his sword out of its sheath when he heard the familiar sound of a steel cutting into skin and scraping against bone.
Hot liquid ran its course down one side of his body as the mad fighter slid to the ground. Eloy turned to see the blood-coated hilt of Goodwin’s sword.
Neither Eloy nor Malatic had had enough time to draw their weapons and protect themselves from the attack, but Goodwin, who had been watching over their shoulders had been ready.
“I didn’t think he had that kind of movement left in him.” Goodwin sounded dazed.
Malatic let out a crazed stream of laughter before grabbing Goodwin by the shoulders and pulling him in for a rough and enthusiastic hug.
“Woo!” Malatic cried. “I should’ve been ready for that. He was like an animal. Quicker than a man that close to death has any right to be.” Malatic let Goodwin go.
Eloy stared down at the man with the wound through his neck and tried to ignore the energy coursing through his body that made his flesh prickle and tighten. The moments and observations of oddity came together like a reassembly of fragments of something blown apart. The sick man had reached the point of acceptance of his illness and death up until he saw the pouch. He was adamant that there had been a bad batch of something.
“Can I see the pouch?” Eloy held out his hand to Malatic.
“Yeah, here.” Malatic undid the knot that kept it tied to the rope around his waist and handed it to Eloy.
Eloy was more careful with it than he had been when they first removed it from the dead men. Whatever the green powder was, it had enough power to prompt a man who had been ready to die to spring into fighting action. Eloy spilled a few grains of the powder onto his fingertip and rolled its grittiness between his finger and his thumb. The signs indicated that the substance was something consumable. He lifted the residue on his finger to the tip of his tongue.
Neasa grabbed the crook of his arm. “Don’t.”
“I think it’ll be okay,” Eloy said. “We took these from the men who attacked us a while ago, and they didn’t have any sign of the sickness this man had.”
She didn’t say another word of protest, but she tightened her lips in a puckered line to let him know her opinion hadn’t changed.
A metallic twinge bit at the place the powder touched, and even though he had only taken a minute amount, he felt the sense of elation immediately. The feeling was similar to the sense of energy he had after the dying fighter had attacked, but it lacked the sickening sense that came after almost dying. The colors of the growth and rocks seemed more vibrant. What had seemed drab before looked colorful and lively.
“Well?” Malatic asked. “Are you about to explode fluid from both ends?”
“I don’t think so,” Eloy said. “I hope not. It’s . . . it’s interesting. I feel energized. I can see why he would want it. If only a little bit makes me feel like this, these people must be out of their mind if they’re taking a lot.”
“But what’s happening to them?” Neasa looked down at the pouch at her own waist.
“I don’t know,” Eloy said, “but having these pouches might help us find out.”
“Let’s maybe keep them a little more hidden,” Malatic said.
Eloy tucked the pouch into the folds of his shirt and pants. “Good idea.”
Goodwin stared down at the man he had killed. “Should we do anything about him?”
“We need to get moving,” Eloy said. “If no one cares enough to do anything about the other two bodies, I doubt they’ll be concerned about this one.”
“Okay,” Goodwin said, his attention still fixated on the man’s bloodied face.
“You saved my life,” Eloy said. “If you had been a moment slower, I would be the one on the ground. It isn’t easy to kill a person—I know from experience—but hopefully it helps to know that a choice of one or the other had to be made. Thank you for being there.” Eloy put a hand on Goodwin’s shoulder.
Goodwin gave a weak smile, but Eloy knew it wou
ld take more than a few kind words to wash Goodwin of the sickened feeling he was undoubtedly dealing with.
“I thought him looking sick was hard to deal with,” Goodwin said, “but once he saw the pouch, he got so much worse. As if something had gone into him, something bad. Whatever that stuff is, it brought something out of him. I don’t even remember getting my sword out. My body took over.”
“Let’s leave him,” Eloy said. “Whatever had him in this life doesn’t have him now.” Eloy led Goodwin to follow Malatic and Neasa.
Ahead of them, Neasa reached over to Malatic, spun the fabric tied around his head, and put the knot back at the nape of his neck.
35
Through their progress, the regular sounds of misery reminded them of their dire situation. The four moved together at any sign that one of the fighters could be close. Bloated mounds of fabric peaked up on the forest floor around them, but they never moved closer for examination.
It had been a while since Eloy had seen so much death in one place—not since the salt flats. He didn’t like the feeling of relief he got from the mayhem he was seeing. He tried to push away the thoughts that told him that the more bodies of Anso’s fighters he saw, the fewer there would be to get past. He didn’t want to feel satisfaction in knowing that so many had died, and died horribly from what he had seen, but the feeling grew with every body he passed.
Abandoned campsites grew larger as they moved on. Crude swords and shields leaned useless and broken against trees and stones, much like the people they were made to protect. Individualized shelters of branches and leaves seemed to be next to every tree and nook Eloy saw, all abandoned and crumbling now.
“We’re getting close to the entrance of the camp,” Malatic said. “Things are going to get a lot more unpredictable after we’re on the other side. We should talk this through.”
“What else is there to say?” Neasa said.
“I don’t know,” Malatic said. “Maybe someone thought of a question in between when we last talked about it and when a man tried to kill us.” Malatic’s mouth was making the sticky sound of dehydration as he spoke.