by Joseph Lallo
A faint whistle of twirling rope came next. From the trees behind the fugitive flew a trio of heavy leather pouches joined by lengths of rope. It spun through the air and caught his legs, wrapping them tight and sending the slave tumbling to the ground. He tugged at the restraints, but not a moment later a horse and rider crunched up to the fallen runner. The horseman was an older man, well into his forties, and he wore cheap leather armor, little more than heavy clothes made of layered hide. What showed of his skin told the tale of a hard life. His hands were covered in calluses and were blackened with dirt.
Despite the rest of his distinctive appearance, there was one feature that captured one's attention above all. There were four parallel scars beginning at the back of his scalp and continuing across his right ear and down the side of his face, ending at his jaw. The wounds were thick and deep enough to show as hairless furrows across his head and left his ear a serrated and perforated mangle of flesh. His expression sagged unnaturally on that side, as though the slash had severed something that had never been properly restored.
“All right. All right,” said the horseman. “It was a good run, but you're caught. Enough struggling, or I'll have to make sure you don't do any more running. That's something I'd rather not do. It'll cost me money, since a slave with no feet won't fetch much of a bounty.”
There was something about the horseman that chilled Teyn. The sound of his voice, the look of his face, and more than anything his scent brought back half-remembered flashes of the day he had been found and taken by the slavers, and again when he'd escaped the plantation. This man . . . he had been there. He was responsible. A rage rumbled in Teyn's chest, but the icy fingers of fear locked it deep inside of him. The same fear that he had felt as a child. It was a helpless certainty that if he moved, if he was seen, then he would be locked away once more. So he watched, frozen in terror.
The slave hadn't heeded the warning. He fought with the restraint for a few moments, then abandoned it and tried to drag himself away. The slaver simply marched toward him, dispassionately drawing his blade with the same weary irritation of a shepherd about to deliver a motivating thump. With every motion, the anger burned hotter inside Teyn, boiling away more of the fear, and with it the reason and caution. His fingers dug into the soil, his lips curled back, and deep in his chest came a deep, grating growl.
The sound prompted an uneasy shuffle from the horse and drew a sudden cautious glance from the slaver. The realization that he had been heard briefly snapped sense into the malthrope and he managed to silence himself and creep a bit deeper among the bushes. The slaver took a half-step toward the thicket that concealed Teyn, but then thought better of it, turning back to his bounty and delivering a sharp blow with the base of the knife, dazing the struggling man. The slaver then drew a looped length of rope from his belt and pulled it tight around the wrists of his prisoner.
“You aren't worth tangling with a wild animal,” he grumbled, hauling the slave from the ground. “Ugh. It is times like this I wish that idiot Latak didn't get himself killed. No brains, but he could tote dead weight well enough.”
The captive slave was unceremoniously dumped across the back of the horse, and once a few straps had been secured, the slaver rode back from whence he came. For a moment Teyn simply watched, eyes focus intensely in the path through the woods that had brought the darkest part of his life rushing back to him. Then came a sharp tug at his collar, yanking him to his feet.
“What was that?” Sorrel hissed, slapping him in the back of the head. “Growling? Are you a child that cannot control himself?”
“I need to follow them.”
“That is foolish. They were humans. You do not follow humans unless you want to get killed.”
“I need to follow them,” he repeated, finality resonating in his tone and iron resolve in his eyes.
He didn't know what he would have said if she asked him why. There was no answer. He simply knew that this was something that had to be done. It was as though a piece of his mind had been patiently waiting for the slaver's arrival. Now that the time had come, that part of him would not be denied. Fortunately, he wasn't asked to explain it.
“Fine then. Let us go,” Sorrel grumbled angrily.
“You don't have to come with me.”
“I do if I want you back alive. I have seen that look before. That is the look of someone who stopped thinking here—” She tapped his head. “—and started thinking here.” She tapped his chest. “It is the look you get before you do something stupid. Eyes like that see only what they are after, not the things that lie between. So I have to come, or you will walk off a cliff trying to get something on the other side. Let us go. We will do what you need to do. Just do not ask me to like it. And when you are through, when you do this thing, we will come back here, we will find the safe place, and we will talk about why this cannot happen again.”
He nodded, drew in the scent, and followed the trail.
Compared to a herd of deer or a frightened rabbit, tracking a human on a horse was simplicity itself. Man was a beast unused to being hunted, except by other men. Thus, if he could not be seen, he believed he could not be followed. And so he would continue forward, his path straight and obvious. This man was no different. Even with a horse to speed his travels, the slaver may as well have been leading the way.
The journey took days, bringing them beyond the edge of the forest and well into the plains surrounding them. As they moved into the parts of the land that humans called home, Sorrel became increasingly uneasy. Small towns bustling with life and activity dotted the roadside, and soon it seemed that before one ended, the next began. The slaver traveled only during the day, forcing the malthropes to do the same, and before long there simply wasn't enough cover to conceal them. Any other time, Teyn would have eagerly turned back, retreating to the safety of the woods while Sorrel chided him for his nervousness. Not this time. Now the roles were reversed. The normally fearless Sorrel wanted to turn back, while Teyn wanted only to press on, to reach the end of the path. And so they spent days darting desperately through alleys and moving along the bases of walls.
The longer they traveled, the more obsessed Teyn became. Too often Sorrel had to catch him by the arm and haul him back, lest he be seen.
Finally, just as a driving rain began to fall, the slaver peeled off from the main road and approached a secluded valley. It was precisely the sort of place favored by those engaged in the more unsavory professions: easy to reach, hidden from view, easy to defend, and easy to escape. The entrance to the valley faced the plains and would certainly be under constant watch. There was an exit on the far side which might be easier to infiltrate, but without spending hours scouring the landscape, it was difficult to know how to access it. None of that mattered to Teyn, though. He didn't want to enter—he just wanted to see it with his own eyes, to hear it, to smell it. With his sharp senses, he could do all of that from afar, so long as the rain didn't get much worse.
He and Sorrel climbed the steep slope to the top of the valley, then crept low to the muddy stone until they reached a sharp drop-off that led down into the wide, low valley floor. Sorrel remained far from the edge, huddled in a leather cloak she'd drawn from her pack and keeping her eyes and ears open for danger. Teyn, wearing a matching cloak, slithered along the rain-slicked ground until his gaze fell upon the slave camp below.
His breathing quickened. It was all the same. The hastily-erected tents, the wheeled cages . . . all of the things that had haunted his dreams for so long, he'd forgotten they were real. He shuddered, the chill of the cold rain combining with raw, burning emotion. He focused, trying to hear past the patter of rain. Voices came in half-heard whispers: the name Dihsaad, a price, the name of a mine to the east.
He took a deep breath, sampling the air. Even in the rain he could smell the sweat, fear, and filth below. He could almost taste the swill they'd fed him, and feel the lash of the strap. Beside him, Sorrel had made her way to the edge and was staring w
ith quiet disgust.
“No wonder they treat us the way they do. Look how they treat each other,” she murmured. “Come. You've followed the man. You've seen what you came to see. Let us go. It is not safe here.”
Teyn didn't answer. He was still staring at the slave camp below, but he was no longer seeing it. Deep inside his mind, all of the pieces were coming together: the distant uneasiness that plagued his mind, the certainty that he had a job to do that he'd been neglecting. He understood now. He knew what he had to do, what he should have been doing all along. He quietly stood tall and bold against the gray sky.
“Do not!” Sorrel gasped.
The words fell on deaf ears. With a step forward, he dropped off of the cliff's edge, catching his heels on the loose rocks and skidding down the slope like an archangel descending on a village of sin. This was not the madness of his dark day on the farm. This was something else. Something that had been missing from his life since that day. This was purpose. Voices rang out as he reached the ground, his hood billowing in the wind and his red fur drenched. Swords were drawn and bows readied, but none of the slavers had faced a foe able to move so quickly. He was little more than a blur to them as he dashed through the heart of the camp, charging for the man they called Dihsaad.
The space between he and Teyn, combined with the cries of warning from his fellow men, had given the slaver time enough to have his sword ready. He met the charging form of the malthrope with a slash. Teyn rolled beneath it and drove his shoulder hard into the man's stomach. The momentum was enough to lift the man from the ground, forcing the breath from his lungs with a guttural wheeze. A moment later man and malthrope tumbled to the ground. Teyn had no weapons but his claws and teeth. Scrambling atop the fallen man, he put them both to use. Unfortunately, the thick layers of leather armor were more than a match for them. He'd only just managed to open a hole in the defenses when a boot met his shoulder, knocking him sprawling to the ground.
Instantly, the whole of the camp seemed to be on top of him. Slavers too near to each other to put their blades to use chose instead to batter him with their fists. Others were more reckless, jabbing at him with swords, knives, and pikes. Teyn struggled, distantly aware of the attacks, but his only concern was that they would keep him from his task. If death would prevent him from doing what he had to do, then he must not die, not yet.
A lifetime of dodging attacks allowed him to shift away from or knock aside the deadliest of blows even while pinned to the ground. Finally a twist and roll managed to throw free enough of the men for him to slip out from beneath and spring back to his feet. He heard a blade swing, and he felt a tug at his cloak, but Dihsaad was still on the ground, and his sword was free from his hand and out of reach. Teyn swatted the hands of a man between him and his prey, managing to jar the blade from his fingers. With a deft snatch, Teyn plucked it from the air and continued his bounding sprint toward Dihsaad. Another dodge and three more strides brought him to target. The older man had rolled to his knees and was crawling for his weapon, but Teyn kicked him to his back again.
“Look at me!” he roared at the dizzied slaver. “Look at me!”
Dihsaad locked eyes with those gleaming from beneath the rough-hewn hood. When Teyn saw the look of fear and hate of a man staring into the eyes of a monster, he drew the blade in a quick swipe across the man's cheek, opening a gash.
“This is what you made of me,” Teyn hissed, blade rising for a final blow.
He paused, eyes smoldering with hate. Never in his life had he wanted so badly to see a weapon meet its mark, to plunge the stolen blade hilt-deep into Dihsaad's chest. But deep inside him, a voice he'd been able to silence until now reminded him that he had felt this way once before. He'd felt this need in the moments before he lost control. Though he was driven by purpose now, the blood lust was straining against his will, screaming for him to take his revenge a hundred times over. Yes, he could take the life of the man who had taken his freedom, but what of the others? How much blood was he willing to have on his hands?
“Never again,” he murmured, driving the blade into the ground beside Dihsaad's head with a single swift stroke and snatching up Dihsaad's sword instead.
There was a more important task to be done. He stood and bolted, dashing toward the nearest of the slave pens. The cages were cheaply built, little more than trimmed lengths of wood lashed to one another. Three quick slices managed to cut a crossbeam loose, and the cage began to buckle. It was more than the slaves inside needed to break free. A dozen men flooded out, and in the chaos Teyn managed to hack away at another cage, and another. When the last of them had been breached, he dashed for the mouth of the valley. The remaining slavers had their hands too full with the escapees to give chase.
The rain came down more heavily as Teyn fled the valley. With the intensity of the moment past, the consequences revealed themselves to him one by one. One eye was almost swollen shut already. Bruises and welts were forming everywhere his attackers had landed blows. There was a searing pain in the small of his back. He felt the warm trickle of blood from his nose. Worse, it was still day, and the rolling plains held no fewer than three roads, all heavy with traffic. He and Sorrel had made it this far only with extreme care, and even then only because no one suspected that there were malthropes about. Any one of those men could have seen him for what he was, and Dihsaad certainly had. They would be after him. They would raise the alarm. Soon the only place they could be certain that they would be safe would be deep in the Great Woods, in familiar territory with endless cover, but they were days away.
Panic burned his mind—and, mixed with the darkly familiar horror and shame conjured up by the sight of the blood he'd drawn, he hadn't wits enough to do anything but run. Ahead, he saw a carriage trundle out from behind a grassy hill. He skidded to a stop, eyes wild and breath heaving. He couldn't go back; the slavers would surely catch him. He couldn't go forward, or the people in the carriage would see. Before he could venture another thought, though, there was a rough tug at his arm.
He turned to see Sorrel dragging him desperately away from the road. The pair of malthropes scrambled a short distance through the roadside field until they reached a narrow brook, then followed it to where it met a side road. A simple wooden bridge spanned the water, and Sorrel and Teyn crawled into the dark, damp shadows beneath it.
Several tense minutes passed as the two sat, listened, and waited. Twice they heard the heavy wheels of a cart rattle the boards over their heads, and once the pounding hooves of a horse did the same. Then there was no sound but the drumming of rain against the planks.
When she was sure that the danger had passed, at least for the moment, Sorrel turned her attention to Teyn. He was a miserable sight. His fur was matted down with rain. Blood still dripped from his nose, and it had gathered at the swollen and split corner of his mouth. One hand was pressed to his side, blood leaking through his fingers from a blow that had sliced its way through his cloak and vest and carved a shallow gash along his side and lower back. The other hand held the grip of the stolen sword so tightly that it was shaking.
“Is it bad? Do you need anything? Anything that I can fix?” Sorrel asked, radiating concern and anxiety.
“I'm fine. It . . . it is nothing. Nothing serious,” Teyn answered, pulling his hand from his back to find that the bleeding had nearly stopped.
“You are sure of this?”
“Yes.”
“What is wrong with you!?” she barked, delivering a fresh smack to the head now that she knew he wasn't at death's door. “I warn you about stepping off a cliff, and you do that exact thing! Do you have any mind left at all?”
She dug through her pack and pulled out a rag. After dunking it in the brook, she began to dab at the many patches of blood that Teyn's assault on the camp had earned him. All the while, she muttered with increasing intensity in her native tongue. Despite the fact he'd learned quite a bit of her language, Sorrel had never stopped reverting to it when she wished to say some
thing she didn't think he would want to hear. When the rag was saturated, she rinsed it and resumed her ministrations. It took nearly a dozen rinses before she seemed satisfied. She then passed the rag to him to hold to his back injury. Thus cleaned, he looked a good deal healthier. More than once, he'd returned from an ill-fated hunt in worse shape.
“Well? You have nothing to say? You just sit there?”
“It has to end,” he stated, eyes turned low.
“Yes, it has to end. What you did today, it will make life hard for us. You cannot do that again!”
“No, I mean what we saw today. That camp. The things they do there. The reasons they do it. All of it. It has to end.”
“This is madness what you are saying. This not our concern.”
“It is my concern.”
“There were no malthropes down there. Let the others fight their own battles. It has nothing to do with you. You need to think about yourself. About us. Worry about your own people.”
“They are my people, Sorrel,” he growled, throwing open his cloak and revealing the brand on his arm. “It has everything to do with me. You've never lived that life, you don't understand. Even I didn't understand until I learned what life was like out here. Imagine waking every morning, seeing a fence, and knowing that your world will never extend beyond it. Imagine spending the rest of your life in a place that you can walk from end to end in a few minutes. And imagine knowing that before the sun has set, you will have worked yourself to the bone in exchange for a meager meal and a night's respite before doing it all over again, day after day, until your body is ruined and they have no more use for you. Imagine that at any moment a strap or a whip could lash into you for being clumsy, or disobedient, or simply because the slave handler didn't like the way you looked at him. And all the while knowing that it can never be any other way, that there is no hope of anything better.
“Everything am I that I wish I was not, I owe to that place. All of my nightmares, every dark blot on my memory, every stain on my soul, every drop of blood on my hands was born in that place. If I am a monster, and I know that I am, then it is because that is what they made of me. And every day, those cages find new people to fill them. Every day, more people are thrown into that life. I can't allow it. I must stop it. Any way that I can.”