by Deck Davis
“I’d eat dung if you found an edible pile of it, and I’d complement its maker on their cuisine. Keep an eye out for the caravan, too. I don’t know if anyone made it out but tell me if you see them. Even if you just find wreckage. I’ll take anything I can use. If I get lucky, a wagon will have made it through the storms with its wheels intact.”
Ludwig nodded. “I’ll find everything. Just you see. And…Jakub?”
“Yes?”
Lud nodded at Ben now, who watched their exchange without remark, his stare glassy and unblinking.
“The bison isn’t your new best friend, is he?”
“He’s a friend, but you’re the best,” said Jakub, not wanting to hurt Ben the bison’s feelings.
And then realizing how ridiculous that was.
Ludwig opened his mouth and gave a doggy smile. “I’ll be back before you can say dehydration. Before you can spell it, too,” he added, winking.
With that, Jakub’s friend bounded off, staring across the desert with a speed that Jakub envied. He only wished that Ludwig’s physical presence in the world was just a level higher, and then Jakub could have ridden him around. Still, at least he’d have food soon.
CHAPTER 17
“Here, here, here, and way over there,” said Ludwig, his snout glistening wet as he nodded at various sections of the map.
It was midday now, a particularly unforgiving time in a place like this. It made it seem even more endless than before, and he almost looked back with fondness to night-time when the darkness helped him forget just how big Toil was.
The sun had woken up, stretched its limbs, and it was ready for a full day’s work drying every remaining drop of moisture from every pore on Jakub’s skin. His head felt like it had a brass band beating their drums inside it now, and he could barely concentrate on his map as Ludwig pointed out everything he’d found.
“Jakub?”
“Sorry, Lud. So, you found shelter?” he said. The excitement he felt was much stronger than he made it sound, but he was so tired he couldn’t put it across in his voice.
“Maybe,” said Ludwig. “It’s ten miles away. As far as you told me to search. And it’s small. It’s two rocks that look like giant meatballs and there’s a rock balanced on top that looks a little like a sausage, but I thought you could crawl under and maybe have Ben block the wind from one side. I don’t know what you’ll do with the other side. I’m sorry, Jakub. I did bad, didn’t I?”
Jakub rubbed Ludwig’s head, feeling his rough fur between his fingers. Ludwig pressed his head against his palm.
“You did great, Lud. No sign of the caravan?”
“Nothing. Could they be hiding?”
“You can’t hide twenty wagons, eighty bison, and over a hundred people. I knew that dust storms could be bad, but…”
“Were there any mages there? Someone who could open a portal or something?”
“A storm oracle, but he’d struggle to open a milk jar. No, Lud. We got hit by two dust storms. When a bitch of a dust storm gets fast enough, it eats through everything in its path. Stone, wood, steel. You sure you didn’t see anything? Not even any wreckage?”
“I might have missed small things, but you told me how quick I need to be.”
“I did. What about water? Tell me there’s an oasis waiting for me to suck it dry.”
Ludwig’s eyes narrowed now. It was rare that Ludwig’s optimism failed him but when it did, Jakub knew things were bad. Right now, the look on his friend’s face sent flutters of nerves through him.
“There’s nothing, is there?” he said.
“Nothing that I could find,” answered Ludwig. “And I tried really, really hard.”
“Okay, bud. You did great, okay? You might have just saved my life. But I’m going to have to-”
Ludwig’s eyes were serious now. Stern, even. His tail hung between his legs. “Don’t send me back. I can’t go back to the Greylands knowing you’re up here alone. I’ll worry and pace and I won’t be able to rest.”
“You know I have to. I lost another couple of essence bars while you were gone, and that leaves me with four. I’ll need the rest of it.”
“Ben gets to stay, and I don’t?”
“Ben doesn’t cost me essence to keep. Besides, you wouldn’t want to be like him, trust me. His existence isn’t…full.”
Ludwig nodded. “You promise me you’ll get out of Toil?”
Jakub never made promises he couldn’t keep. It was something that instructors drilled into every necromancer, because their job often involved having grieving parents, sons, daughters, husbands trying to extract promises from you. A necromancer quickly learned that you never promised to do something, you only promised to do your best.
But since graduating from the academy, Jakub was learning that a large part of his necromancy training had been training him how to hide. How to hide from emotions, from feelings, from being human. There was nothing inherently wrong with that; his training had kept him alive more than once.
He figured that sometimes it was better to go against his training if your reason was good enough. His reason now was that he couldn’t let his friend worry.
“I’ll get out of here,” he told Ludwig. “And as soon as I do, I’ll summon you.”
Ludwig approached Jakub and then reared up and put his paws on his shoulders. Even at semi-physical presence, Jakub felt his legs begin to buckle. “Take care, Ludwig,” he said. “See you soon.”
“Promise?”
Jakub nodded.
“Well, be careful. You’re clever when you try to be,” said Ludwig.
He spoke his word of unbinding, and a portal opened on the ground. Ludwig wanted to resist it, but its draw was too great, and he was sucked down, down into it until the portal devoured him completely.
Jakub watched the spot on the ground where his friend had just stood, and he felt the complete emptiness of the desert, and he had never felt more alone.
“Ben, come here a second.”
The bison dutifully trundled over to him and stood by his side. Jakub leaned on him as he studied the map. “We’ve got a lot of walking to do today,” he said.
He set off on a northern course. He planned to head to the shelter Ludwig had found. It didn’t sound great but lacking other options, it would have to do. He’d have to make diversions along the way to try and gather some of the things that Ludwig had found, so he’d be cutting it fine.
He hoped to reach the shelter by nightfall so that he had time to make it warm and comfortable, but the diversion was essential. There was no point making it there just to waste away.
That was how Jakub found himself spending all afternoon and most of the evening doing things he’d never imagined he’d have to resort to. It was messy work, it was hard work, but it was survival.
For food, Ludwig had marked some interesting spots on his map. The first was a rattlesnake that he’d found just a mile north.
By the time Jakub got there, the snake hadn’t moved far, and there was good reason for that. It had found shade beside a knee-high rock with a slight overhang. It was bloated to the point it couldn’t move, and he supposed it was in the process of digesting a meal.
Thinking about what was in the snake’s stomach made his belly tighten, and he couldn’t believe he was envious of the mouse or hare or whatever desert creature was swimming in its juices.
At first, he wondered how to get near to it without getting bitten. He wasn’t the most agile of people when he was in his best shape, and right now he had the coordination of a drunken ox. Even a rattlesnake in the middle of digestion could still flick its head and bite him deep, and there were no alchemists or healers out here who could help him with the venom.
He considered using the long reach of his vagrant blade to strike it, but the risk was too high.
Next, he thought about throwing the coyote fur onto it and then striking it while it was blinded, but there was still a chance it could bite through the fur.
; Just as he was out of ideas and was considering taking the risk of using the fur, inspiration hit him hotter than the Toil sun.
“Ben,” he said. The bison turned its attention to him. “I have a job for you, pal. It’s not a nice one.”
And it wasn’t, but at least it wasn’t dangerous. Jakub didn’t even need to get closer to the rattler; he stayed twenty feet away and watched as Ben carried out his orders.
The bison stomped across the desert, heading straight for the snake. When the rattler noticed its new company its rattle shook furiously, and Jakub could hear it even from his faraway spot. Though too full of undigested meat to stretch high and threaten Ben, the rattler still looked ferocious, and Jakub was glad he hadn’t gone over himself.
Ben, however, didn’t care. How could he? He had died once already, and his reanimated state didn’t let him have feelings like fear. Neither did it let him succumb to pain or venom. As the rattler struck him, Ben lifted his leg and stomped on it once, twice, and then a third time, squashing the snake’s head into a pulp.
Jakub approached it. “Once more for luck,” he told Ben, and the Bison flattened the snake’s skull once more.
With the snake dead, it was time to turn it into food. He’d never harvested snake meat before, but he hoped the process was like skinning other animals. Using his dagger, he made a slit from its pulped head to its tail and then unraveled its skin.
Next, he had to separate the skin from the meat, and this turned out to be tougher than he thought. He had to hold the meat with one hand and pull the skin with the other, like pulling a very tight pair of trousers off his legs. This left the meat, guts, and organs.
Playing it safe, Jakub cut away everything that didn’t look like meat. He was going to leave them on the ground for whatever carrion lived in the desert, but that gave him an idea.
He cast a look at the sky. Maybe he had enough time for this, maybe not. But making the time might be what got him through the next few days.
With that in mind, Jakub put the snake meat in one of his larger artificed pockets.
Items received:
Snake Meat
Snakeskin
Item group created: Food
He pocketed the skin because he’d already done the hard work of skinning the animal, and he had no idea what he would and wouldn’t need out here. The skin could stay in his inventory pockets until he figured a way to use it. He left the guts and organs where they were on the ground, and he retreated thirty feet away.
Then he watched. And he watched. He watched some more, but the sun was becoming unbearable now.
“Nothing’s coming,” he told Ben.
He’d hoped that the scent of the guts would draw other animals to them, but it wasn’t to be. He cut a five-inch piece of snake meat and put it on his tongue. It smelled bloody, and when he chewed, he found that the texture was rubbery, but not unpleasant.
Swallowing it, he could almost hear his stomach thank him. As much as he wished he could eat it all, he held himself back. Not only did he need to ration himself, but eating too much after being hungry for so long could hurt him.
With his hunger temporarily solved, he had a bigger problem.
His throbbing head, dry mouth, and dulled mind were symptoms of dehydration, and eating would exacerbate that. He needed water, he needed lots of it, and he needed it now.
Water was the only thing that Ludwig hadn’t found.
Jakub checked two things now; he checked his map first, and he checked the sun second. He had a long way still to walk and a lot of sunlight to walk in. Lacking any alternative, he rubbed some of the heat-leave-me salve on his exposed forehead, neck, and shoulders. He used as little as he could and spread it as thin as possible, but even that effort only left 3% of the salve. He guessed the loss was better than getting sunstroke.
That done, he started out again. He would have been more worried about the lack of water, except that he had an idea.
Ludwig, for all his qualities, wasn’t the brightest of animals, and he didn’t know much about the desert. That wasn’t his fault; why would he need to know?
What this meant was that he’d told Jakub he couldn’t find water, but when Jakub looked at his map markings, he read three glorious, glorious words.
Prickly Pear Cactus.
Ludwig had marked them because they were potentially food, but Jakub guessed otherwise. Heading further north, he arrived at the map marker Ludwig had made, and there he saw just a single cactus.
Shin high, dark green in color, and lined with hundreds of thorns. On the top of it was a dozen red balls that Jakub’s dehydrated mind decided resembled Ben the bison’s testicles, both in shape and color.
His heart was hammering now that it was time to test his theory. If he was right, he would live through the night. Wrong, and he’d shrivel into nothing and he’d die in an unmarked spot in a rarely visited desert, and a sandstorm would cover him and preserve his corpse, and he’d never be seen or known in the world again.
It felt like such a grand consequence for so small an action. Kneeling beside the cactus, Jakub plucked one of the fruits from the top. He put it on his tongue. His pulse was beyond control now.
He took a deep breath and he bit down, and then he raised his hands to the gods and thanked them in his mind as he felt juices flow over his tongue.
The cactus fruits were full of juice! Not a massive amount, sure, but there were twelve fruits, and it would be enough to get him through the night.
He ate six of them there, popping each on his tongue one at a time so that he could savor them as fully as possible. When it was done, he wanted more, but he battled with himself and won out, putting six fruits in his bag.
Item received: Prickly pear cactus fruits x6
The difference was tremendous, as though his body gave him a clap of appreciation and released energy for him to use. His head cleared a little, though the stubborn throbbing clung on.
When that effect died, he was still thirsty. If anything, he felt thirstier, but at least he’d rewarded his poor, poor body with water. Now he needed to find more.
The sun had already risen to its peak and then begun falling in the time he spent marching north, taking a diversion here and there to visit more cacti marked on his map. It was almost evening by the time his would-be shelter loomed into view.
He approached it with a feeling of gloom when he saw that although Ludwig warned him that it was small, his friend had been generous. Jakub was going to have to spend the night curled into a ball.
Needing something to lift his spirits, Jakub pressed the tattoo on his thumb and commanded a list of his new inventory to appear in front of him.
Items Received:
Prickly pear cactus fruits x3
Saguaro cactus flower x9
Agave plant seeds x35
Agave plant flowers x8
Not only had he gathered a few more watery fruits and some other edibles besides, but he’d found two dead jerboas. These were rodents with mouse-like bodies and two inexplicably long legs. If he’d tried to catch them it would have been a great way to waste time and snake-meat fueled energy, but luckily these were dead.
When he saw their bodies his first thought was to wonder how much meat he’d get from them. Not a lot, probably, but the tiny portion of snake meat had awoken a furious hunger in him. He decided that because he didn’t know how they died or how long they’d been dead for, he couldn’t trust their meat.
Instead, he spoke his Essence Grab spellword, expecting that they’d been dead long enough that their souls had already gone to the afterlife. He was amazed when not only did essence drift from them, but he earned a full tally of soul essence. That was a great bounty from such tiny creatures.
Necromancy EXP gained!
EXP to next lvl: [IIIIIIIIIIIIII ]
Soul essence gained!
Essence Remaining: [IIIII ]
Next, it was time to deal with his shelter. Just like Ludwig said, it was two tall rocks wi
th one lying across the top. Shelter was about as optimistic a word as he could think of for this, and it was going to take a hell of an effort for him to summon his sunniest disposition when he thought about sleeping here. Still, he did the best he could.
After directing Ben to cover one side of the rocks, Jakub hung his fur over the other, and he stood under a darkening sky and looked at his home for the night.
At least it was shelter. At least he didn’t have to fight a bear to win it. At least no damn coyotes were prowling around. This was okay. This was good.
After finding food, a small amount of water, fur, and gathering essence, he was in better shape than yesterday. He would live through this whole mess of crap and then he’d brag about it in every tavern he ever visited. He’d write a book called Snakes, Storms, and Snug Shelters; How to Survive in the Desert.
After lying to himself enough that he felt happier, he ate chomped four more pieces of snake meat, popped a few cactus fruits, and then climbed into his shelter.
CHAPTER 18
The Bear, the Slaver, and the Slave
Pup had been gone too long. He liked the night, yes, even though Bear hated it. Pup liked to go out under the stars and hunt the crawlers and creepers that slept during the day. Last night Pup had tracked the man, and he promised he would only track, not hunt.
Bear wouldn’t believe Pup had killed the man and eaten him. Not when Bear was so hungry. But the stars had gone and the sun was home since he left, and now Bear watched the horizon he knew so well and he waited to see his only friend appear and run to the cave and tell him quickly and excitedly about his adventures.
He wished that would happen, but he had a dark feeling. The last time he had this kind of feeling he met the hunter, and he almost died.
Bear greeted the morning sun with a stretch that made his arms hurt, and it was painful to lift them above his head. He felt heavy even though his fur sagged over his bones like never before. His mouth tasted like dirt, and he wished he were back at their last cave before the nearby oasis dried.