Ascending Shadows

by Everet Martins

  She had let her back slump down, shifting the hunk of wood in her side to burn. She wriggled up against the wall, and the pain muted to the point of tolerability. She thought of the Sea Croc. Despite their terrifying forms, they still amazed her. “Such big creatures,” she whispered to herself. That got a few shifting gazes from her cart mates. Attention was not a thing she wanted and thought better of speaking.

  Senka kept her gaze relaxed down the center of the wagon, looking at nothing while watching everyone. She wondered not who, but when one of them would try to touch her. She wondered what form of villainy they’d choose. Rape followed by disembowelment? Maybe they’d opt for a classic strangulation. They certainly had the means with the lengths of chain between their manacles. They had the advantage of more arms too, but she had her needles tipped with Wind Root oil. There wasn’t a lot left on the needles after the disaster in the Far Sea, but there was some.

  A mere scratch of the skin and the touch of Wind Root oil would be enough to leave a man paralyzed, at least a man who hadn’t built up the proper immunity over time like she had. Night after night, she’d dose herself with a bit of her toxins, building up her resistance. Some people took herbs to cure nagging ailments, others applied oils and salves. Senka poisoned herself. Often times, she’d spend her solitary evenings vomiting into a pot while sitting on another, the times when she’d given herself too strong a dose. She remembered staring into a pot of her own bile, wondering if there was more to life than this, bowels roaring and waging war against any remaining food in her body. But it was necessary and unavoidable. What kind of Scorpion would she be if she were to succumb to the common man’s poison?

  She kept two fingers resting against a needle, a twist of the fingers and a deft thrust away from being stuck in her victim’s flesh. Corin surprisingly didn’t find her needles under her bracers. Only two remained, the rest lost in the Far Sea. She appreciated his thoroughness. He did manage to find her two hidden daggers. Sure, she could’ve offered them to Juzo and Isa before they entered the village, but then they wouldn’t have been hidden anymore.

  She winced at the twitching in her calf where Scab had stabbed her, partly grateful for her wounds because they gave her something else to think about. Something besides where she’d find her next dose of Angel’s Moss. There was a dark spot of scabbed over blood at either side of her leg. Thankfully, it was looking like he’d only pierced her muscle and missed tendons. She didn’t want to move because moving only brought pain. At least she’d be able to walk if there was a need. There was no point in delaying the eventual though.

  She worked her jaw around, blood flaking off her cheeks, and realized then that the throbbing pain she felt in her face came from her nose. One of the savages had elbowed her, she remembered. Then she smelled the blood, Derwood’s evacuated bowels, and gagged. Pain lanced up her side, the wood piece still there making itself well known. She coughed a few times, grabbing air when she could to master her rebelling guts.

  She rubbed at the wood in her side, gnarled and slick with a mix of rot and blood. She had to get this out, but she needed a surgeon or ideally a wizard of the Phoenix. She’d be dead before long. She knew she was bleeding on the inside, worried of the impending infection. She’d have to do this herself. The hard part would be removing the object. She could do it, Senka told herself. She had the needles she’d need to work stitches through her side and could harvest a bit of thread from her clothes. She needed Ribwort oil to cleanse the wound, but if she started bleeding uncontrollably, the end might be nearer than she had planned on.

  “Need a surgeon,” one of the three bloody savages said, grinning with a dark mouth lined with too white teeth. He produced a long splinter and started working it between his teeth, scraping at nothing.

  She could only spare them a look of disgust before gagging again, yellow bile spouting from her mouth and dribbling down her shirt. Her armor was gone, but for some reason, Corin left her bracers. Maybe he’d missed them under her shirt’s sleeves. Maybe he was as dumb as he looked and not so thorough after all. Either way, the reaffirming pressure of the flexing steel of her needles gave her a measure of relief.

  Her eyes drifted over the back of the cart, bracing herself to take it all in. Odd things were dangling from the wooden framing below the ceiling. Shining ropes and garlands hung like someone had taken it upon themselves to decorate the place. They swayed and shifted with the rolling wagon. Organs, Senka realized. Offal was strewn over the walls and hanging from long splinters, the wood bathed in Derwood’s blood. They were animals, butchers, savages of the vilest sort. They deserved to be slaves. She clamped her jaw down, eyebrows knitting with tension.

  “Dragon’s breath,” she breathed, bringing a hand up to wipe the slop from her mouth and chin, smearing it on the floor.

  “No Dragons here,” someone said from the last two-thirds of the cart, dark with blood and shadow.

  “Why’d you attack us?” Senka asked. Maybe she could befriend them, and they wouldn’t have to fight. Hours had passed since they killed Derwood, yet they’d done nothing to her. That was a good sign. “Why not just overrun Scab and Corin?”

  One of the savages sitting in a sticking pool of black smiled at her. “Cause if we failed, don’t do what he says, we’d look worse than him.” He nodded at Derwood’s mangled remains, guts torn open, jaw hanging unnaturally low. He had a curly beard heavy with blood, curly hair that might have been beautiful once that partly obscured his eyes. She was in a Sand Wolf’s den, prey waiting to be consumed. Were they toying with her? Like prey that couldn’t fight back?

  “I said before, and I’ll say it again, once she wakes…” the savage killer across from Curly snorted. He had the bulging belly of a man well-fed with a strip of thin hair hanging from his bald pate. “Wouldn’t mind sticking my cock in that one. No, I wouldn’t mind at all,” Fat Belly said.

  “Aye. Will have to be quiet about it. She’s Scab’s and all,” a man made of bones and flesh said, all muscle wasted away, long hair draped over his bare chest.

  “Let’s get to it then, shall we, boys?” Curly rose up, working his hands like pincers. Long Hair regarded her, stripped her bare with his pus rimmed eyes, then shuffled over to Derwood’s body.

  “We did him good, didn’t we?” Long Hair said, staring at Derwood. He dropped low and cupped Derwood’s chin in his hand. Long Hair made Derwood’s mouth click open and closed while he spoke through the side of his mouth in a mockery of his gravelly voice. “I want to go back to my ship. Don’t hurt me.” And he snickered. “We had an agreement, Scab. You scoundrel, we were to make a thousand marks selling slaves.” He laughed. “Please don’t kill me, slaves, all I wanted to do was make a living. What’s so wrong with that?” Derwood’s bloated tongue flopped from his mouth, got caught between his teeth and started to weep blood. “I want my momma. I’m scared. When my friends find me, they’ll make you pay.” Then he sighed and released his hold on Derwood’s jaw.

  Fat Belly and Curly stood staring at him, arms limp by their sides.

  “Sorry. Thought that was going to make you all laugh. Seemed funnier in my head.” Long Hair frowned. He looked for something to wipe his hands on, and chose the ceiling, dragging dark stripes of blood across the middle. “Think Scab will still want to sell him?”

  That got a few chuckles from Curly and Fat Belly.

  “Maybe ole’ Corin will want to eat ‘em,” Fat Belly muttered.

  “Animals. Worse than beasts of Shadow. What have you done?” Senka whispered, staring at Derwood’s corpse. If she hadn’t known he was a man once, it would be mighty difficult to tell now. She was glad she’d worked as a butcher then, mostly desensitized to the sight of gore. A few years ago, she wasn’t sure how she might have reacted being so close to a man in such a state.

  Long Hair let a pleased smile spread across his face, a smile of a man who found this all very enjoyable.

  “My cocky cock’s getting hungry for this whore. Never had me a dark
skin. Wonder if her cunt will feel different?” Fat Belly wondered, rubbing the sides of his pregnant gut as he came for her. Curly was at his flank, grinning like a demon.

  “No,” Senka hissed. “No!” She was in no position to fight, she knew. She was badly injured, and her fighting style more conducive to open space. But one had to make do with what they had. She inched back, snatched a glance through the bars, no sign of Scab or Corin to save her. She should have expected that though, given what they’d let them do to Derwood.

  She flicked her wrist. Curly paused to feel at his neck. “What the devil?” he plucked the needle from it, eyes blinking uncontrollably, one eye going up. “Where’d you get—” he dropped onto the floor with a thump. There was indeed enough poison, not that it took much for men. Death Spawn were another matter entirely. Long Hair’s jaw hung open, arms dropping and rattling his chains.

  She almost wanted to laugh, felt the smile forming on her lips. All her days toiling at the Scorpion’s and her father’s craft for the past few years had finally paid off. She spent every night working the ways of the Scorpions, making poisons and forced to dispose of them in the gutters lest they fell into misguided hands.

  Maybe Isa was right. Maybe they weren’t the most honorable way of fighting, but they were effective. They leveled the battlefield, gave the more cunning opponent the better chance. She couldn’t see fault in it then and certainly not now. You had to use every advantage available to survive. Wizards used fire, air, electricity, and telekinesis. Swiftshades had their pain tolerance, strength, and speed. She had her poisons.

  Fat Belly twisted from her to Curly and gave his head a scratch. “What are you smiling about? And what are you doing on the floor?” Fat Belly gave Curly a nudge with his toe.

  Time felt like it crawled. Fat Belly slowly turned to face her, and she could see his every shifting expression. Senka drew her arm back, felt the subtle weight of the next needle clutched between two fingers. Her side screamed like it was being burned, sweat streaming down her temples. She gave the needle a hard flick. She saw it travel, thin as a spider’s web, saw it glinting from Fat Belly’s cheek.

  “Something biting me— you bitch!” He tore the needle free. “Think that’s gonna stop me.” He reached down, and for a reason she could never explain, he grabbed at the needle still held between Curly’s fingers but missed by about six inches. The poisoned sometimes did strange things. He took a step and fell lifeless as a child’s doll on top of Curly, ass piked up as if he were ready to take it from behind. If Senka were a more vengeful woman, she might have been tempted to shove something up there, something sharp and metallic.

  “What the fuck’s the matter with you lot?” Long Hair peered down at his fallen brothers. “Out of the way, fucking idiots. What’re you doing? Thought now would be a nice time to—” Then he saw the needles. “You!” He lunged at her, hands clawed to choke her, lips snarling.

  Senka pushed away from the wall and rolled onto her upper back. She came down, and with the momentum, planted her uninjured heel while vaulting her other into his shin with a crack. He fell with a cry, pain darting up her leg, his legs kicking out from under him and landing on his face. He landed at her side, hair flopping over his head. He started to rise up, and Senka drove an elbow into the back of his neck with a grunt. “Stay down.” She hammered the back of his neck three more times with her elbow, bashing his forehead into the wood.

  Pain roared through her side, made her let out a shriek of anger as she threw one leg over his hips to straddle his back. She slipped her chains under his neck, twisted her wrists around thrice to make them tight. She jerked his head up, arching his back, veins standing like cords from his neck. Blood wept from his neck between her chain-links. He let out a muffled shout, and she squeezed her arms up to her chest, muscles burning until she heard something in his back crack.

  “I should gut you like the animal you are,” She hissed into his ear. “I’ve gutted so many animals, far bigger, far uglier than you. It’d be so easy.”

  “Urgh,” he choked, eyes whirling around, leaking tears and seeking forgiveness in the blood-spattered walls.

  But no forgiveness came. “But I will let you die as a man properly should.” Minutes passed as Long Hair’s legs flailed and fists thumped weakly against the floor. Once his twitching and flailing stopped, Senka held on for a minute longer in case he was only faking his demise. Once satisfied, she crawled off of him and back to her section of the cart, mostly untainted with gore.

  Her chest was heaving, legs shaking with adrenaline, wood stabbing at her side with every breath. She wasn’t sure why, but she thought of the Shadow princess then. Had she escaped? Had they completed their mission? Maybe she crawled off to find some place to die. Isa had said she vanished, and he wasn’t a man you could easily hide from. Not a man to say the wrong words. How could he have lost her? She had to get back to the Arch Wizard to report her findings.

  She closed her eyes. Her fingers curled into aching fists, wrists sore from choking Long Hair, sore with the call of Angel’s Moss. She swallowed, her dry throat scratching, making her cough. Her thighs started uncontrollably twitching, and it became stiflingly hot, hard to get a proper breath. Hot blood throbbed up her neck, tendrils of heat reaching around her face and under her eyes. She scratched her neck, rubbed her eyes, heat traveling on unabated. Sweat glistened from her temples and beaded down the center of her back.

  “Water,” she croaked. “Water!” she screamed it this time. Dragons, why couldn’t she get any water? How were any of them supposed to live without water?

  Scab rode up. “Problem, Senjak?”

  “Water, please.” She reached her hand out, expectant. “Please.”

  “Sure, anything you want, Senjak.” Scab chuckled and rode off. A minute or so later, he came back with a small wooden cup, slopping over with the clear nectar of life. He slipped it between the bars, and she grabbed it from him, gulping it down, uncaring of its quality and whether or not if it might have been poisoned. It wouldn’t matter much anyway.

  She nodded and almost thanked him. Almost thanking your captor, now that was something she never thought she’d experience. She had heard of the ransomed befriending, defending, and even falling in love with those who took them. Now she understood. She felt some of the life flow back into her, filling her muscles with lost energy. She couldn’t help but feel a bit of gratitude for the water, but had to remind herself he was the enemy.

  “Got yourself a new tattoo?” Senka found herself asking after noticing the swirling black marks on his intact arm. It looked a lot like some form of spell script if her memory endured.

  Scab flinched, tugged his half-raised sleeve down to cover it. “A reminder of something I owe someone,” he said in a low voice. “I see you’ve made swift work of your cart mates. No matter, will fetch you a greater price. Knowing you have such stamina! Though I wonder… does everything else have such endurance?” Scab laughed and tugged on his horse’s reins, clopping off.

  Senka let out a great sigh. “Mad bastard,” she whispered. She looked beyond the gore in her cart and at the back of the man pressed against the cart trailing behind. It was Isa’s back, weeping pus, motionless. He would need a lot of rest to recover from such bad wounds. If only he could’ve put his pride aside, he might’ve been in a better situation, she thought. She wondered how Juzo was faring, if he’d decided to consume his cart mates. If Scab knew anything about him, he knew to put him some place away from other men. He likely was alone. Otherwise, he would have already escaped with the strength he gleaned from blood.

  She wondered where these savage men came from. If she hadn’t killed them, she might have been able to ask, but they forced her hand. She wondered what sort of life would make a man do that to another man, even if they were wronged in such a vile way. They weren’t ordinary men, certainly not the look of men from Zoria. Perhaps they were from another realm, sold into slavery by some foreign conspiracy. She saw the three of them had the s
ame close-set eyes and small mouths. Maybe related, maybe from another land.

  There was some commotion ahead, the horse team dragging their carts along, whinnying. The squealing of the carts slowed, pulling over to a stop and brushing the edges of the forest. A mix of broad and long leaves slipped between the bars on one side of the cart, some brushing against her. There was an odd thumping coming from ahead, echoing from the earth below.

  “Good evening!” Scab called. “May we offer you sustenance?”

  Something answered in a tongue that was all hisses and growls to Senka’s ears. The light of torches reflected from the broad leaves of vegetation. The light grew brighter and brighter, the thumping louder. Something was softly growling, snorting coming from a chest that must have been as broad as a barrel.

  A swinging lantern came into view beside the bars of her cart. It was held by a Tigerian riding the back of an incongruously large cat, the source of the pounding ground. The beast was almost a third of the size of the cart, thick with striped fur, its head holding a pair of teeth as long as swords and looking just as sharp. It was about as big as a horse but far more fearsome. The beast had a saddle over its back with tens of sacks hanging from its muscular flanks. The beast had eyes that glowed with a soft yellow, head gently bobbing as it marched on. The Tigerian rider didn’t spare her a glance, its gaze fixed farther down the path.

  “By the Dragon,” Senka breathed, putting her hand over her mouth to keep herself quiet. Her stomach squirmed with terror, reminding her of the first time the Death Spawn had raided her village to take the Black Furnaces.

  A few more of the beasts of burden plodded by her cart, carrying Tigerian riders who held lanterns hanging from broad sticks. She counted six of them. Their paws were as big as a wagon wheel, nails like daggers. They were the biggest animal she’d ever seen besides Shattered Wings. They seemed unarmed, but she thought that their forms were weapons enough against men.