by Jim Galford
“That one, he was a good man—a badger, though you cannot tell anymore. Rinvet treated us well and kept us safe from other slaves who were not so kind, or tried to be a little too friendly. He was the one who shielded me from Arturis when we came here. Threw himself in the way and tried to fight the man.
“Over there is Escon,” she continued, pointing to another body nearby. “She was a vulture wildling. She found the deserts quite pleasant, though her sense of humor was…odd.”
Estin hung his head as Lorne went on a little longer, identifying fellow slaves and even a taskmaster that she had reasonably fond memories of. Even after she went silent, he let her kneel by the corpses, staring sadly at them.
“Do you like my museum of the fallen?” came a smooth voice from somewhere nearby, making Estin jump.
Lorne let out a shriek and flattened out on the ground, trying to stay below the height of the corpse piles.
“Show yourself,” Estin ordered, drawing his swords slowly. The ring of metal on the leather sheaths echoed through the cavern. “Is this only a game for you, Arturis?”
“So true,” answered the Turessian from somewhere nearby. His voice’s echo in the room made it impossible for Estin to pinpoint him. “I do enjoy this game, though. Now why is it that every time I leave this place for a few hours, I come back to find it infested with wildlings? Are your kind so overpopulated that you seek death?”
Estin glanced down at Lorne and she gave him a terrified “what now” stare in return.
“I figured since your ghouls hadn’t been able to kill me, I should stop by and thank you for the exercise,” remarked Estin, trying to sound jovial. He could not even convince himself that the words sounded vaguely like anything more than an attempt to buy time. “Did you bring me another? That last one was looking pretty bad when I let it limp away.”
“Oh, it’s you,” Arturis said with a bellowing laugh. “You know your kind are difficult for me to recognize. I had thought you were just another little vermin trying to scavenge off of my collection. Who would have thought that you were an old friend? What was your name again, slave? Endin? Ostin? It was something that your parents came up with to make you sound Altisian, even if you were just unwanted baggage for the city.”
Tucking one sword under his arm, Estin unfocused his mind, letting the voices of the spirits whisper across his consciousness. Funneling their energy into his fingertips, he ran the pads of his fingers along one sword, then the other, leaving a faint glow along the metal. He had previously found the effect cut through undead rather nicely and hoped that it might serve against Arturis as well. Anything was worth a try.
“Would that you were born to a better lineage, wildling,” Arturis told him, this time the voice seeming to come from another direction. “Magic like that is not so common these days. Your resourcefulness and stubbornness would have made you a fine Turessian…if I could have tolerated you as one of my people. I’ve offered it to you and waited, yet you spurn the few chances you will have.
“The girl that wanted to change you, who I’ve humored to this point, was an imbecile,” mused Arturis. Then he laughed. “That child likely could not have made you much more than the zombies we send to do our chores, anyway. It takes an elder to make one of our kind that is worth keeping around for a few centuries. I simply need you to accept the gift before your heart stops, or you will have to wait with all the others for the day when I can raise a legion. My master is not happy that I’m offering, but I find a certain humor in this.”
Estin turned again, trying to make sure that Arturis was not sneaking around him somewhere along the edges of the room, where the light was faint. When he did, he found that Lorne was gone.
“What amuses me is that I can still see those last moments of Varra’s life in her own mind, before she managed to block the rest of us out. I will always wonder how that child managed to obsess over you to the point of ignoring that fox as it snuck up on her, yet it was so vivid, even without being able to use her eyes…”
Estin clenched his jaw. Previously, Arturis had not known what his mate looked like, giving him a degree of assurance in her safety. If he had figured it out, Feanne and the kits would be a target for the crazed man.
“A fox,” noted Arturis, this time sounding closer. “Why would a fox defend you at the risk of her own life? Were you a meal to be saved for later, I wonder? Or maybe…oh my. This does change things, my little vermin friend. I believe my ghouls have been looking for all the wrong things. A shame for the gypsies, but at least it’s been resolved now.”
Estin fought to keep himself calm, to seek that instinct deep down that he had grown up with: the instinct to run when someone threatened him. Instead, all he saw in his mind was Feanne and the kits being hurt or killed by Arturis’ minions, and in that instant all of the anger, the violence, and the training to be more like the predatory breeds rose to the surface, blinding Estin to any other choice but to fight. He just needed something to aim that anger at.
Movement at Estin’s side gave him a target.
Turning quickly, Estin used the momentum to swing his sword as hard as he could, hoping to at least slow Arturis with his first strike. Instead, he realized that Lorne was the source of the sound, having backed nearly into Estin.
Slapping his sword flat against his arm to keep the momentum of the weapon from cutting the female practically in half, Estin stumbled to maintain his balance and regain control of his sword. Though the weapon very nearly flew from his hand, Estin managed to stop himself, with Lorne still unaware how close she had come to being skewered.
“So there is some fight in you, yet,” came Arturis’ voice at his ear as iron-like hands closed on Estin’s shoulders.
Estin tried to pull free, but within seconds he was airborne, thrown hard to one side. He crashed into the dry stinking bodies of the dead, his swords clattering away somewhere nearby. Pain lanced through his hip and leg, which had healed badly months earlier, injured in a fall escaping from Turessians near Altis.
A snap and a crack accompanied Lorne’s scream behind Estin, the sound of her body thumping into a pile of corpses making it all too clear where Arturis had attacked next. She was hurt and had no way to defend herself…not that he did, either.
Rolling to his feet, Estin rushed at the black robed man, leaping onto Arturis’ back as the Turessian stood over Lorne. She was not moving and blood spread on the floor from the side of her face that he could not see.
Estin tore into Arturis’ back, digging his claws through the man’s robes and tearing at the muscle and bone. With each rake of his fingers, Estin watched the flesh open, covering his hands with blood, but the wound would close before he could strike again. In desperation as Arturis clumsily reached back to grab for him, Estin bit down on the Turessian’s neck, trying to drive his teeth into the bones there.
Finally, Arturis managed to catch Estin’s tail, then his leg, tugging hard enough that Estin’s limbs went numb. Still, he clung with his claws locked onto the man’s shoulder blades and teeth clamped onto his spine.
“Enough of this!” roared Arturis, yanking Estin free by the ankle. “Are you quite done yet, slave?”
Hanging upside-down by the foot, Estin stared down Arturis, while rolling a piece of bone around in his mouth. Spitting, he managed to bounce it off of the man’s face, giving Estin at least some sense of accomplishment.
“Yeah, I think I’m done,” he confessed, trying to find some position that did not make his whole leg throb. Given the vice-like grip on his ankle, Estin doubted he would find one. “Now comes the killing?”
“Yes, now comes the killing. Just this once, I’ll give you what you want.”
Knowing there was nothing left that he could do, Estin closed his eyes and waited, as the blood began pounding in his head from the awkward position.
An explosion shook the cave and Estin tried to look around to see what had happened. As he did, Arturis released his ankle, forcing Estin to roll to keep from
landing on his head.
Flipping over as he came down on the uneven floor, Estin grabbed Lorne, tossing her over his shoulder as he began running. He slid as he cleared a pile of bodies, bringing himself to a stop just long enough to scoop up his swords that lay nearby using his tail, before running again, the heavy weapons making his tail nearly drag on the floor.
“I don’t know what that was all about, but we’re not coming back here,” Estin whispered to Lorne as he reached the edge of the room and began the trek up the dark hallway.
Though she still hung limply, Lorne’s groan in reply gave Estin some hope that there was life left in her. A little life was all he needed to make her well again, once they were safe.
“Hold on, Lorne.”
Despite being blind in the short section of tunnel, Estin kept running, even when he clipped his shoulder on the rough walls. Once outside in the blistering desert heat, he turned and kicked the door as hard as he could, slamming the stone partially back into place.
Estin flicked his tail to toss aside his swords, clenching his jaw as he felt the blades slice across the thin skin halfway down his tail.
“We don’t have long before he comes after us again,” Estin told Lorne as he sat her down on the sands. When he lifted her right eyelid, however, he could see by her unfocused eye that he was really just talking to himself.
Checking her pulse and her breathing, Estin found that Lorne was weak, but not dying. More likely than not, he thought, the blow to her head had knocked her unconscious, and the blood-loss was taking its toll.
Estin turned Lorne’s head slowly, wincing as he saw the damage to the left side of her face. It had not been the fall that had caused much of anything.
Where Arturis had slapped her, his fingers had left long gashes through fur and flesh. Her jaw line was mangled as if struck by a mace, with teeth splayed oddly, telling him that much of her jaw and cheek bones were shattered. Her eye had already swollen shut, covered with matted gore that kept him from knowing if she had also lost the eye. Had Arturis hit her any harder or at a different angle, Estin guessed that her neck would have been broken.
It was then that Estin saw the blood on his own arm and hands, thinking at first that it was from Lorne. As he watched though, blood dripped off his elbow.
Checking himself, Estin found that his shoulder was bleeding profusely from where he had hit the wall on his way out of the tunnels. Additionally, he found that his ankle and foot were covered in fresh blood from where Arturis had held him. Somehow, none of it hurt yet. Soon enough, he was willing to bet it would hurt a lot.
Far below the sands, Estin felt a rumble of another explosion and instantly forgot about his wounds.
Estin knew he had precious little time before Arturis dealt with whatever was happening and came after them. Likewise, he also had very little time to help Lorne before her injuries could only be minimized, rather than outright healed. That gave him a short window to help her before they would need to run again and having her run under her own power would make that far easier.
Cradling Lorne’s broken head in his hands, Estin closed off his mind to the distant rumbles and the howling winds that had picked up across the desert. The heat and his own pain faded first as his concentration slowly allowed him to center himself.
Voices rose from the dark of his mind, whispering amongst themselves in the unsettling drone he had long ago learned to ignore. The louder voices that had plagued him lately were also there, but blended in among the others, making it far easier to concentrate.
Energy flared and Estin felt his own strength wane slightly. Under his hands, the blood-loss slowed and the structure of the bone and flesh began to shift as teeth returned to the correct positions and the wounds themselves closed. In seconds, the gruesome injury had faded to a section of fresh pink skin with a fine layer of short new fur. Had she been another race, there would have been a visible scar, but Estin thought she might be free of even that reminder of the injury.
“Lorne,” he said, patting her other cheek to try and rouse her. “Wake up.”
Groaning, Lorne moved but did not come fully awake.
“I wouldn’t want to get up, either,” noted Estin.
He quickly slid his swords back into their sheaths then picked up Lorne again. Checking the door a final time, he took off at a full run into the desert, hoping to get some distance between them and Arturis.
If Estin was lucky, Arturis would be busy for a little while with whatever had happened down in the chamber. But he wasn’t counting on it.
*
It took until the night of the following day before Lorne woke with a snort. She stared around dazedly, clearly trying to make sense of where she was and what had happened. Her glazed eyes drifted lazily around the den, passing Estin twice.
Estin watched her carefully as he stirred a small pot of soup that he had been warming over a low fire in the old den. He had seen others with severe head injuries wake up with lost memories or just end up a little “off,” despite being healed with magic. He wanted to wait and see what condition she was in before adding to what she had to think about.
“We’re back here?” Lorne asked eventually, blinking hard and staring at the inside of the den, her eyes finally starting to lock onto individual objects. “I thought for a moment we were still down there with all the bodies. That wasn’t where I wanted to wake up, if I woke up at all.”
“We got back here without pursuit,” explained Estin, sniffing at the makeshift soup. It was unpleasant, but it was the easiest thing he could make with the limited resources of the desert, without digging into their supplies very much. “You’ve been recovering ever since.”
Lorne’s nose wrinkled and she looked at the soup. “How long was I out? I feel like I haven’t eaten in days. Whatever awful thing that is smells wonderful as a result.”
“Aside from the water I managed to pour down your throat, you haven’t eaten,” Estin told her as he took the soup off the coals. “It was yesterday that we went to the cave and now it’s almost night again. It also doesn’t help that healing those kinds of injuries drains you more than it does me, as your body tries to fix itself.”
Touching her cheek, Lorne looked lost in thought. “How close was I to dying? I remember the pain…”
“If blood loss didn’t kill you—which it would have—the infection that followed would have gotten you within a couple days.”
She nodded gravely, fingers tracing the patch of new fur on her face. Carefully, Lorne checked each of her teeth with her tongue as well. She began to smile slowly as she confirmed everything was in its proper place.
“Is it normal for the skin to burn and my teeth to ache like this?”
“Yes,” Estin told her as he tossed a pinch of spice into the soup in hopes of making it more edible. “Your body is trying to perform months of healing in a day. Things get…itchy...wherever there was a lot of damage. If it still hurts this long after healing, it was probably something that could have killed you.”
Crawling slowly to the opposite side of the glowing coals, Lorne sat down, looking miserable. She barely looked up as Estin handed her a bowl of the soup, though she took it and cradled it in her lap.
“How often?” she asked as Estin raised a bent spoonful of soup to his mouth.
“What?”
“How often have you been this close to dying that you would know what it feels like?”
Estin laughed and set aside his bowl. “That’s a long list,” he told her, jokingly counting on his fingers. “Dogs mauled me, got stabbed on a regular basis, clawed and bit dozens of times by the undead army, had my face crushed by a wolf wildling, been thrown around by Turessians in two lands, broke my hip and fell down a mountainside in the same misstep, and of course swallowed by the mists…so I guess once or twice.”
Lorne’s face gave no indication of humor. Instead, she just stared at the soup, shoulders and ears sagging. Gently, she touched her face with her left hand again. “Eigh
t years of slavery and I have never been treated worse than an occasional whipping,” she mused aloud, picking up the spoon that lay on the floor in front of her. “Until now, I just put it out of my mind if someone else was hurt, but how do you deal with someone trying to kill you and those around you?”
“You adapt, or you run until they catch and kill you.”
Lorne lifted a spoonful of the soup, but eyed him oddly as she asked, “I am what I am, Estin. I don’t know what you mean to adapt. I am a woman first, a wildling second, and our breed third. Where is there room to adapt?”
Estin held out his hand, showing her his slightly sharpened claws and the scars along his palm-pads.
“We become the predator if we have to, but only if and when we have to,” he explained, patting the hilt of the swords alongside him. “Feanne taught me that, as well as how to fight to survive.”
The look Lorne gave his hands told Estin that she was far from impressed. She appeared mildly disgusted, likely by the scars that crisscrossed his palms—a parting gift from his own time as a slave.
Lifting the spoon to her mouth, Lorne spit the first bite across Estin and the coals, causing them to smoke.
“What is this?” she demanded, poking at the soup with her spoon. “This is disgusting.”
Estin shrugged and looked into his own bowl, trying to remember what he had managed to mix together. When he was cooking out of desperation, he had a tendency to pick random items and then promptly forget what they were.
“Some vegetables—I can’t pronounce the name of most local plants—some juice from cactuses to tone down the bitterness of the vegetables, a little spice I picked up in Corraith…”
Lorne held up a spoonful of meat and glared at it.
“…and some meat from those little mouse-looking things that run around the desert.”
“Ginths are poisonous,” Lorne warned, eyes wide. “You don’t eat them. Besides…we shouldn’t eat them anyway. Are you insane?”