by Jim Galford
Though Estin believed it could have clawed or bit at her at any time, the thin creature had her held face-down with its filthy and broken fingertips dug into her throat. It kept its mouth open, ready to bite her shoulder. The corpse’s white eyes stared at him expectantly, challenging him to try and save her.
“It doesn’t want you,” Estin said slowly, easing himself back onto his feet. “Do not fight it, or it will bite you.”
The ghoul made a fake lunge with its mouth, brushing Lorne’s shirt with its cracked teeth. She whimpered and shook, making the creature grin all the more. As though enjoying Lorne’s fear, the ghoul stroked the back of her head with its fingers, grinning more broadly as she began crying.
“What does it want?” she asked shakily, trying to turn her head enough to see, but the ghoul pushed her flat again. “Why is it doing this and not killing me?”
“It will, once it kills me.”
Estin got up slowly, standing upright and testing the weight of his sword.
There was easily ten feet between himself and the ghoul, making it unlikely he could so much as touch the creature before it tore into Lorne. It might not really want her, but he doubted it cared at all about killing extra targets, if it helped finish its mission. Healing her afterward was entirely possible, but Estin had no desire to let her be badly injured or even killed, based solely on the gamble that he could fix it later.
“I’m going to run away now, Lorne,” Estin told her, watching the ghoul’s eyes narrow. It understood him.
“What?” demanded Lorne. “How could you...?”
“I don’t even know you,” he told her, feeling a slight pang of guilt. He had to make her believe he would do it, or the ghoul would not believe either. “I’d rather keep myself alive.”
Estin took off, running hard away from the ghoul. He counted in his head as he went, trying to pace himself properly and guess at what the ghoul would do. It was something Feanne had made him learn in order to survive the wild animals near Altis. A ghoul was not much different, despite being more dangerous.
A breath for it to realize he meant what he was doing and get angry about it. Another breath and it would leap off of Lorne to chase him. One more breath and the ghoul would be running at full speed, far faster than Estin. A fourth breath and Estin spun, flinging himself backward into the sand as the ghoul ran after him on all fours, like an animal.
Unable to stop in time, the snarling corpse slammed into Estin, rolling across him and away. It slid across the sand and tumbled back onto its hands and knees, hissing angrily.
Estin swung his sword hard at the ghoul, but the creature grabbed the blade mid-swing. The edge of the sword cut deep into the bones of its hand, but the ghoul appeared entirely unconcerned as it stood upright, tugging at the sword, trying to free it from Estin’s grip.
“Not smart,” Estin growled at the creature, bringing his free hand up, palm-first. “The sword isn’t my best weapon.”
Bracing himself for the rush of the spirits’ voices in his head, Estin drew together his magic, forming a bright light in his mind. This particular pattern he knew was highly destructive to the walking dead and had saved him more than once over the last few years. He could only do it a few times a day without exhausting himself, so he tended to save it for moments like this one. Using it more often would leave him vomiting and helpless.
The voices that came to him from the use of his magic took to their more traditional background whispering, rather than the more recent intelligible conversation, making the spell far easier to form.
Power coalesced into reality and though it felt it took seconds in his mind, Estin knew that the entire process had been nearly instantaneous, or the ghoul would have killed him while he created the spell. With a flash of energy, the creature flew backward, tossing Estin’s sword aside into the dune beside them both.
Charred and shaking, the ghoul crawled back to its feet as Estin picked up his sword. The creature hissed, looking around for an escape route.
“Go tell your master that I’m getting tired of this game,” Estin told the ghoul, pointing his sword at its face.
At first pawing at its face, rubbing off the burned flesh there, the ghoul finally looked up and stared at the sword, and then past it at Estin. Screeching, the creature lunged, impaling its chest on the sword as it reached for Estin’s face.
That was not exactly the reaction Estin had hoped for and found himself stumbling backward, trying to free his weapon. When he could not, Estin kicked the ghoul’s midsection and released the hilt of the sword, letting the snarling ghoul tumble away with it.
Flicking his hand out at the ghoul, Estin pulled together a simpler bit of magic that was similar to the first, but less taxing, hoping it would be enough to finish off the injured creature. The magic flickered and the ghoul stopped, staggering slightly before collapsing.
“That is why you shouldn’t be following me around,” Estin said over his shoulder at Lorne as he yanked his sword free of the body. The weapon made a sickly slurp as it came free, leaving a trail of thick black blood. “These come after me too often for me to be watching after someone else.”
Abruptly, the ghoul lurched and caught Estin by the ankle, knocking him over. It was on him in a second, its claws biting deep into the fur of his chest and shoulders, tearing through his shirt and leaving bleeding scratches. Almost before he could feel the sting of the cuts, Estin felt the burn of the ghoul’s poisonous touch.
Estin’s limbs felt heavy as he drove his knee over and over into the ghoul’s side, until it stopped clawing at his chest to try and grab his leg. When it did, Estin hooked his long tail around, looping the ghoul’s shoulders to yank it off of him.
Rolling slowly to his side, Estin tried to pick up his sword but failed, the hilt sliding through his rapidly-numbing fingers. The ghoul hissed at him, rising to its full height above him.
Nearby, Lorne let out a shout, drawing a snarl and glance from the ghoul. It studied her briefly, but then looked back at Estin. Then, silently, the ghoul bounded away, disappearing over a sandy rise as Estin collapsed.
“You’re hurt,” gasped Lorne, appearing over Estin as he struggled to make his legs move. “We need to get back to town.”
“Can’t,” Estin grunted, his jaw frozen as the ghoul’s poison limited his movement. “Need help. Poison in its touch.”
Lorne slid her arm under his shoulders, hoisting him upright on his unsteady and mostly-rigid legs. She held him there briefly, making sure he could at least support a little of his own weight before beginning to practically carry him toward the city.
“Can you talk?” she asked him, struggling to keep him limping forward.
“Yes,” Estin managed to eke out, though the words were thick. His tongue felt as though it were barely working now.
“How long have you been doing this?” Lorne inquired. “I can’t imagine doing this once, but you said this keeps happening.”
“Three months,” he said, though the words sounded to him more like, “Tuh murph.”
Apparently understanding, Lorne nodded and walked on for a little while, getting them well on their way back to the city, before asking, “What happens when you find your family?”
“We run before the kits are hurt,” Estin answered, finding his jaw to be working slightly again. Words were getting easier as his body dealt with the toxins the ghoul had inflicted him with. “It was why I left them in the first place.”
Lorne stopped.
“You left your family to protect them?” she inquired softly, then started walking again, but more slowly.
“Yes. The youngest three kits had just been born. I couldn’t risk anything happening.”
“Where will you go now? I heard you tell Sirella that you were leaving.”
Estin shrugged and smiled at the idea that he could again. His steps were getting surer as they went, but he still needed Lorne’s support to be overly steady.
“I have to find them. If I know Fean
ne—my mate—she’s probably taken them into the most dangerous part of the desert she can find. She’s always felt safer in the wilderness than the city.”
Lorne brought them to a halt, now within sight of the city gates in the distance.
“Then we’re going the wrong way,” she noted. “Not that we have supplies. We should go back and get what we need to travel.”
“I have supplies hidden out in an old den. I was going to go there when you insisted on following me.”
“I still insist,” Lorne pointed out. “If you and I are the only ones of our kind in these lands, I want to at least meet the female that you’re with. I might be able to give her some pointers for how to put you in your place. She should be interesting from what little you’ve said.”
“Interesting is a good way to put it. If we do find her, please let me do the talking until she decides you’re not prey.”
Lorne’s eyes widened.
“What have you gone and done, Estin?” she mused, shaking her head. “Every instinct is telling me to get far, far away from you, but when you say things like that, I just want to know more.”
“Go with your instincts, Lorne. How are you not running after being attacked by a ghoul?”
“I was raised in human lands, so I don’t do that instinct thing unless I’m in immediate danger,” Lorne admitted, smiling at him. “When you have idiots for masters who whip you one day for spilling milk, then expect you to be pleasant and gracious to their house guests the next, you learn to recover quickly.
“By the way, very nice work with your tail. You’ll have to show me what else you can do with it.”
“I’m still mated, Lorne. There’s nothing you can do to tempt me.”
“Don’t care if you are. As long as you’re here, she’s not, and there isn’t a more entertaining male to harass, you’re getting my full attention. Find me a better male to pester and I’ll leave you alone. Besides, you might get paralyzed again and I make no promises about what I will or won’t do with you until you can fight back. Now lead the way.”
Estin glowered briefly then turned and walked into the desert, Lorne following close behind.
*
That night, Estin made one more circle around the old den to search for any pursuers. He kept catching a faint scent on the wind that seemed familiar, but it was mingled with another that was foreign to him. Shaking his head in annoyance, he went back into the den, covering the entrance with a sheet of canvas that would catch the sands and conceal the den’s location from anyone who was looking for them.
As he entered, silhouetted in the light of a small candle bowl, he found Lorne moving slowly around the tiny cave on her knees, sniffing at the packed areas where he, Feanne, and the kits had slept. At Estin’s arrival, Lorne stopped and tried to look more dignified, smoothing her skirt and taking a seat.
“Find anything interesting?” asked Estin, sitting down across from the room’s cold and dark fire pit.
Looking slightly embarrassed, Lorne nonetheless answered, “I did. Since you had been a little evasive about your mate...”
“Because she and the kits are none of your business.”
“...which is natural for you to think. I’m not trying to replace them, Estin.”
They stared at each other a long time in silence, until Lorne cleared her throat and smoothed her skirt again.
“I wanted to know how dangerous she was,” admitted Lorne quietly. “The whole ‘kits’ thing had me on edge.”
“And what did you learn?” he asked, leaning back against the wall.
“She’s not a local breed of fox, but something of that ilk. Given how mild the ones here are rumored to be, the mention of a fox didn’t mean much in and of itself. Could definitely have been worse. I was concerned that you were with a tiger or leopard, given your scars.”
“A what?”
“Hunting cats. They don’t exist around here, either.”
“Like a lion?”
“Sort of, yes.”
Estin smiled broadly. “Feanne’s mother was part lioness and her father was a fox.”
An almost imperceptible tremor went across Lorne’s face before she could hide it.
“I’m sure she’s quite nice,” was the best she could muster, her jaw barely moving as she spoke.
“She was our pack leader back home,” Estin went on, almost without thinking about it. “Feanne had to fight to keep the wolves and bears from rebelling against her. They didn’t think she was strong enough to lead...especially when she chose to be with me.”
“But you are prey to their kind. Why did she…never mind, I’m not sure I want to know.”
“It wasn’t easy,” Estin said with a laugh. “Her mother insisted on having her train me to fight like their breeds. It was a requirement before she would teach me to heal others. That gave us time to get to know each other.”
Lorne frowned and looked around at the bedding and then back to the candle.
“You wonder why I find you fascinating enough to follow,” she told him, pulling her tail into her lap in a large pile of fur. “I have never known one of us who could use magic for more than lighting a candle. You have that and you are comfortable among the predators. This is not normal, but it is intriguing.”
“Normal is a lie, Lorne. Knowing what to do by instinct tells us who nature thinks we should be, but what does it really mean for our survival?”
“What does bedding down with and having children with someone who would kill you out of her own instincts do for your survival?”
“It teaches me to be stronger than my instincts so that I can protect my family, as though I were no different from the predators. To the Turessians—Arturis included—we are all prey. I would rather be who I am, mated to someone who will never fully understand my instincts, but accepts me anyway, then to be prey to one more creature in this world.”
Running her fingers across the fur of her tail to brush out the sand that had gotten caught there, Lorne nodded knowingly. “You’ve thought things through. I’d rather keep away from all forms of danger, even if they want to share my bed, but this seems to work for you. That, I can respect.”
“Glad I got your respect on that, otherwise I might not have been able to sleep,” Estin joked wryly, curling up on the hard ground.
A minute later, he was jarred from near-sleep with the realization that Lorne was sitting practically over him, watching him doze off.
“Sorry,” she told him, looking sincerely concerned as she wrung her hands. “I really am not trying to make you uncomfortable. I just have never actually been alone. I had the other handmaidens when I was young, then fellow slaves—or overly touchy masters—after that. I really don’t know how to be alone.”
Grumbling in his throat, Estin patted the ground alongside him.
“This is nothing more than sleep,” he said firmly as Lorne curled up beside him.
“I know. I’m sorry about last night, but it was the only way I could think of to be close to another wildling without admitting I can’t sleep alone. I could see Sirella would find it amusing, so I used that to try and get my way.”
Estin closed his eyes and tried not to think how bad the situation would look if Feanne returned. Still, he would rather have to face that argument with her then not to have her around. For the moment, he would allow Lorne her limited comforts.
At first, Estin thought that having another female so close would put him ill at ease, but he found his mind drifting to his long-lost family as he neared sleep. The scent of another of his kind reminded him of his mother and sister, rocking him to sleep as a child.
*
Waking early, Estin groaned as sunlight poured in on him from the open entrance to the den. The realization that they might be under attack made him snap fully awake, searching the room for movement.
Estin was alone in the dawn light that came through the ajar canvas tarp.
Frantic, he sniffed and looked around, trying to figure out what had
happened. Lorne’s scent was faint, as though she had left several hours earlier.
Thinking perhaps he had been tricked and Lorne was gone, Estin ran outside, nearly tripping over Lorne as he did. The female sat in a shady area, sipping water from a clay cup that had not been in the den when Estin had gone to sleep. She looked up slowly at him, smiling.
“Nice of you to wake up, Estin.”
Estin checked the slopes around the area of the den, trying to determine if anyone had come or gone. Faintly, he could make out Lorne’s tracks returning, though her departing footprints had already faded from the sand, blown away by the wind.
“Where did you go?”
Frowning and taking another sip of her water before answering, Lorne told him, “I went back to town. You didn’t have enough water here for a long journey into the deserts. While I was there, I found a few other things we needed.”
“We had no money.”
Lorne giggled faintly. “No, you had no money…I searched your bags to be sure. I had my wits yet. All it takes is a few tears, a little dirt on the face, and you can easily collect enough coins to buy most things.”
“You have no shame?”
She looked up at him, her annoyed gaze reminding him of Feanne. “I was a slave, Estin. My own master forgot to feed me most days. Begging is merely asking someone in a different way. It’s not like I stole anything.”
Remembering his own days as a thief, Estin let the topic drop and sat down nearby.
Near Lorne’s pawed feet, he saw a small pile of miscellaneous goods. Most of it consisted of canteens that were strapped to each other for ease of carrying. There were also two swords in sheaths, as well as a small stack of clothing, tied into bundles with string.
“How does one beg their way into weapons?” Estin asked, poking the hilt of a sword with his toe-claw.
“I got those for you,” Lorne told him, though she watched the drifting sands, her eyes lost in thought. “You broke one freeing me, so I felt it was the least I could do.”