by BJ Hanlon
He saw the reflection of light from the black eyes. Then he smelled the breath and saw the pink mouth. Edin dove forward as the crillio pounced. He tucked his head and rolled, coming up on his feet while the crillio crashed into a large tree.
The leaves rustled and branches clattered to the ground but Edin was back on his feet.
“Arianne!” he shouted into the night and heard a cry back somewhere ahead of him and off to the right. He angled that way and sprinted faster. The ground was rather clear of cover though there were things that he barely saw until the last second, forcing him to leap or circle.
Something small, a rodent or a rabbit, scurried up a tree. There were howls, like the monkeys of the ancient land as hard objects rained down around him. Something solid and round hit his shoulder and caused it to sting for a moment as another object whizzed past his face.
Then he heard someone up ahead running. He couldn’t make out who, but the body was too big to be Arianne or Duria.
He bent his head and raced on. A minute later he was on the man. It was a big guy with a square head and square jaw. He looked to have been put together by a child with his set of blocks.
Edin slashed. The sword took off that square head and the body collapsed to the ground and into a shallow ditch. Dinner for the crillios hopefully.
Great feline roars came from ahead followed by screams. The screams were both female and male and Edin’s heart sank. He leapt a fallen tree and then saw the flash of a blade appearing from its sheath. It was ten feet away; on the ground before it was a person, a woman, and the blade was coming down toward her.
Edin summoned an ethereal knife and whipped it at the dark mass holding the blade. There was a choked gargle and Edin saw the man collapse to the ground.
But a moment later, Edin saw he’d been facing the other way. Fighting off something. A dark shadow pounced on the man and Edin saw the teeth digging into his skull. The man’s final cry rang in Edin’s ears.
Edin ran forward, he spun Mirage and saw the look of the crillio as it glanced up and became confused. Its pupil-less eyes were twitching like a dog with an annoying flee it can’t quite get at.
Edin spun the blade and came down, stabbing into the beast’s skull and then through it into the man’s head. He yanked the blade out and both collapsed.
Edin dropped to the woman’s body. He flipped her over and saw it was Duria. Her eyes were open and she was staring at him with fear. A lot of fear but she wasn’t moving.
Then he heard his name being called out. It wasn’t far away but it was instantly muffled.
Edin leapt to his feet and fingers gripped his ankle.
“Don’t leave me!” Duria screamed. There was such terror in her eyes and her quivering jaw and hands that Edin almost didn’t.
But he had to. There was no choice. He yanked his foot out and ran off in the direction of his name.
He crashed through bushes, slashing vines and low-hanging branches. After a few hundred strides, he leapt into a small open area. Ahead of him was the mouth of a cave with small bits of firelight coming out.
Someone appeared from the right and he got the glint of a steel blade coming toward his heart. Edin lifted his own weapon and parried the attack, swinging it back up and around and then slicing down to take off the man’s arm.
The attacker screamed and dropped.
Then pain erupted in the shoulder of his sword arm. For a moment, he didn’t realize what happened, but he then saw his sword was on the ground and there was a wet liquid dripping onto it.
Edin fell to the side as something whizzed past his head from near the cave entrance. He blinked and fell to the turf unable brace himself.
Then he saw the man with the bow pulling another arrow from the quiver. He stepped in front of the cave and was completely backlit.
Blood was rushing from him and he felt a bit woozy.
Above the man was the rocky roof of the cave.
They were precarious looking rocks.
Edin reached out and up toward them. He felt it in his body, the stones were hard and wedged together. They’d been there for millions of years Edin guessed.
There was a cracking like an earthquake and the archer glanced up as a huge rock splattered his head. The body dropped.
Edin looked at the body on the ground. He heard the moaning of the armless guy, but that was faint now and incoherent. Then he heard Arianne inside and then there was a wild, unknown cry of pain. It continued on. A constant screaming-crazed pain.
Edin pulled himself up and reached up toward the arrow stuck in his shoulder. He knew better than to pull it out, so he broke it off and then picked up his sword.
He grunted as he stumbled as blood dripped down his arm. Edin blinked away burning sweat and entered the cave.
He was met with a damp miasma. A smell of dirty water mixed with choking woodsmoke and fire. He wiped his forehead.
The painful cries was constant. There was fear and words that were mumbled together. Maybe it was the wound or shock but Edin was sure that it was a man crying.
As he entered the cave, he saw there was a small manmade wall and beyond it a long cave that swung first left and then right behind another protrusion. On the ground there were blankets and waterskins and jugs.
Bones with tooth marks were scattered about and a small firepit was unlit. Edin rounded the second protrusion and saw a large open room with at least four wooden huts, beds and tables and chairs and a large fire pit that was burning with a huge flame.
Atop the flames, seemingly suspended in midair was the leader of the thieves. The fire was lapping at his boots and he was crying now. Weeping like a child.
He didn’t see Arianne and felt panic as he cried out her name.
“Here!” she said from behind him and to the left. The man dropped into the fire with a whoosh and a crack. He screamed as he tried to scramble out of the flames.
Edin turned away and saw Arianne with her tunic half torn off and tears in her eyes. She was standing in a nook of the wall. Edin ran to her and threw his good arm around her as she began to cry into his shoulder. She squeezed and it stung like heck but Edin just gritted his teeth.
Slowly, Edin lowered her down to the ground and held her close. He sat up against the rock wall and squeezed with his one good arm as she cried. Then, she moved her arm. It rose up and clipped the arrow shaft that was still in his shoulder.
Edin moaned and that seemed to wake Arianne from her tears.
She looked up at him, scared with red eyes and then she saw it. “You’re hurt!” she exclaimed. All of the fear or pain or whatever she was feeling for herself seemed to disappear. Arianne reached out and touched it again.
“Don’t.” Edin groaned and then she looked at him then tore open his tunic to get a better look at the wound.
“I need water.”
Edin glanced over and saw the dark red of crusting blood around it as well as a few streams of still-flowing blood. It’d been clotted but was now ripped back open after her touch.
He was a bit lightheaded but still able to sit up. She stood up and ran around the room for a moment. When she was on the other side of the fire, she let out a ‘yelp.’
Edin was in and out of consciousness and barely noticed it. Then suddenly, she was back and pouring water over his wound and wiping it away with a cloth. She was slow and methodical, never touching the actual arrow shaft again.
“It is deep,” she said. “Too bad it didn’t go through.”
Edin lolled his head back and looked at her with incredulous eyes.
“If it went through, it’d be easier to get out. My mother taught me about that.” She paused and pulled out a small knife, it looked almost like a fish filleting knife. “Mother said, ‘if it goes all the way through, just cut off the tail and pull it out. That way you do not break anymore skin.’”
Edin swallowed but his mouth was dry. He wasn’t sure how much blood he’d lost and he only hoped it wasn’t a lot. It couldn’t have b
een, right? “And if it did not make it through…” he said trailing off.
Arianne took the filleting knife and put it next to the arrow shaft and he was watching it with a mild form of curiosity. At least at first.
Then she dug it in and Edin screamed. The pain was burning as it sliced through, more like sawed through his skin for an inch or so. His eyes were clamped shut so hard that they began to throb. He couldn’t think of anything but the hurt and the desire to stop it. But he was too weak.
Then he felt it again, more burning and then something worse. It thrummed and pulsed in his body as he felt like a being was inside him and trying to get out.
He screamed again and cried out and then the pain overwhelmed him and he knew nothing.
The odor of overcooked flesh, meat, came to him and his mouth watered. Edin had the feeling of warmth, being toasty really, when he woke. He was leaning against something hard and there was a twinge in his right shoulder.
He remembered the pain and then nothing. He dropped his eyes to it and saw the bandage that was wrapped around the shoulder and onto the back. It continued into a sling that held his arm.
Sticking out the end of the sling, was his hand. A hand that looked a little too pale.
Edin squeezed and his fingers moved though they tingled. He looked around the room but didn’t see anyone.
Then he stood and a dizzy spell came over him. Edin swooned and put a hand out to the hard stone wall and rested his forehead on the backside of his hand. He waited until his heart had stopped pounding and throbbing in his head and his chest.
It took a few minutes, at least that was what Edin thought, before he got moving again. He pressed back and took a few steps and nearly stumbled over Mirage.
Edin bent over, picked it up, and stood. Then, as strong as he could, he yelled “Arianne?”
There was no response. Edin began to walk around the room taking a bit more interest in the wooden structures than the mundane beds, tables, chairs, and other utensils of home that were scattered about. He wondered if she was in there.
The rooms looked like sheds and each was about ten by ten by ten. One had a lock on it, the others didn’t. Two were bedrooms or sleeping chambers at least. The third was some sort of meat storage locker that was about a quarter full. Hanging from the ceiling were deer, rabbits, squirrels, and a couple of hogs.
A lot of tasty meat, he thought and his stomach gurgled concurrence with the sight and the smell of smoked flesh.
He saw no one was in here and started to get worried. It’d been just them when he came in. Well them and the leader being roasted like a pig on a spit.
Did she go back out there? What if there were other thieves that came in? Other crillios?
Edin turned toward the cave entrance. It was impossible to see out there as the manmade walls blocked the sightlines and gave cover to the cavern.
As he crossed, something caught his eye. The burnt torso of a man. It was halfway out of the fire and seemed to have been crawling. There was a single blue eye that was open and it was looking up at Edin.
Somehow, he thought the blue against the gray and black charred remains made it even creepier than if it had been any other color.
That was the cooking flesh.
Edin looked away and quickstepped toward the entrance. As he reached it, he saw that the man who’d been crushed by the rock was gone. So was the arm and the armless man, who had to be dead now. Edin stepped outside and into the cool night air. There were few sounds and the moon was nonexistent. He was in a U of firelight.
A branch broke and Edin’s heart stopped. He looked toward it and saw four figures coming out of the woods. Three taller ones and one shorter one, though the last wasn’t much shorter.
Edin instinctively lifted his sword in his off hand and dropped into serpent stance with his arm throbbing and his heart pounding. He wasn’t sure he could handle this many at once.
But then a voice said. “Edin, it is me. Us.”
Arianne. He stood quickly and dropped the sword. He jogged over toward them and saw that it was the family. The family without Nona.
“Where is…” Edin trailed off, he remembered seeing her fall, he remembered that man plunging the blade into her back.
Edin wiped his face and sighed. Melian and Vickers had haunted looks on their faces; Duria was trembling and glaring at him. Edin wouldn’t meet her eyes. He’d left her in the woods, alone, and with crillio and blotards running about.
There was a small crackle of electricity in the air.
“Come,” get inside a much more assertive Arianne said. She began pushing the two other women and the boy toward the cave entrance. Then she looked at Edin. “How are you? I couldn’t—”
Edin pulled her in and kissed her. The strong, hard thank you kiss that she deserved. He felt her smile with their lips together. “I missed you.”
“I’m never leaving you again,” she said, “and you better never leave me.”
“Never,” Edin said and meant it.
They massed in the center near the pyre but on the other side of the torched corpse of the criminal. Above them, he saw an opening in the cave ceiling. A dark chimney where the smoke coalesced and then exited.
Melian raided the meat locker and brought out a few rabbits. Three in total. She also found salt and pepper to flavor the animals with.
“Duria, can you help?” Melian asked, her voice was quiet and pleading as if she had no idea how to cook the rabbits.
The farm girl did not answer.
Edin saw she was staring into the fire. Large bands of her hair though, were standing up and frizzy. Like static.
“I know how to cook rabbit,” Vicker said. “Nona…” he trailed off.
Edin watched them for a while as they began to cook. The wind howled by the front entrance like in the scary ghost stories of so many bedtimes past.
They found a water barrel and served up water. There were no alcoholic beverages, which made Edin both upset and confused. Every story of highwaymen he’d ever heard, had them filled up on booze and smelling awful.
They ate and, slowly, he began to get sleepy.
Edin wondered at the time and their location. Either late at night or very early in the morn, and what concerned Edin was he wasn’t sure if there were any more bandits out there.
Despite his exhaustion, he needed to stay awake.
The two women and Vicker began to lie down in bedrolls to the far end of the fire. Arianne curled up next to Edin and closed her eyes but Edin didn’t get comfortable.
He smiled at Arianne and she back at him.
She was looking better. Stronger than she had in a long time. Not only was the color back but there was something in the way she laid there, the way she’d carried herself.
When that man had grabbed her, or tried to, she seemed weak and almost childlike.
Arianne closed her eyes and rubbed her face into his stomach.
What did he try to do to her? Edin wondered watching her as her golden and white locks sparkled in the fire. Something must’ve lifted her from whatever funk, maybe a depression, she was in.
Arianne torched that man, holding him over the fire like a roasting hog. His terrible screaming, his crying, still was echoing in Edin’s mind and he looked away.
She’d changed then, she was strong and merciless at that moment. But then she saved Edin and went searching for the others. People she barely knew because she’d been unconscious for so much of their journey.
How she’d found all of them in the darkness, Edin could only guess. To him, it seemed to be like playing hide and seek in Olangia without any unending fires.
He held Arianne until she was asleep. Then, looking at the others, he saw them to be asleep as well so he slowly stood and pulled himself from her grasp. He laid her head gently on a pillow that once had been owned by someone named Bla or something like that; there was a tear after the A.
Then he started toward the entrance to stand guard.
; They wouldn’t be caught napping again, literally. Though he did have a feeling there wouldn’t be any thieves coming home tonight. Maybe not ever but he wasn’t about to chance it.
Edin held his sword and moved toward a rock that was about knee height. With no sheath, it was still back at the cart, he had no easy way to carry it so he set it down.
All of their things, the horses and Nona’s body, were back at the cart. They’d have to go back there and soon. He wondered about the animals. Were they crillio chowder now?
It was dark outside, extremely dark, and Edin sat down on the rock and closed his eyes. He’d have an easier time listening for trouble over seeing it so he tried to listen for a crillio’s footpad, a bow creaking, or a sword being pulled.
There was nothing but the howling wind when it gusted past the cave entrance. There were not even anymore night animals howling, screeching, or cawing. The moonless night, all of them would be that way from now on, had put everyone to bed.
The world was asleep and unawares as the king of the underworld rose.
Edin wanted to flee, so much he wanted to just get out of there. To run away somewhere with Arianne. Maybe get her out of this place and to one of those laid-back beaches. The ones with the coconut-husk drinks and the fresh fish, though he didn’t really like fish.
But he was with this family. He had watched Nona leaping at a man trying to kill her grandson. She threw herself at the blotard and sacrificed herself for the ones she loved.
Edin swallowed and heard feet coming up from behind him. He looked back and saw a large shadow coming around the corner.
A huge shadow whose head was the size of a boulder.
Then Vicker appeared. He stood in the center of the cave entrance and looked up at Edin. In the eyes, he saw red, but Edin wasn’t sure if it was from fury or from tears.
The kid took a few more hesitant steps toward Edin and stopped. He looked up and wiped his face with the hem of his tunic. “Master Edin,” he whispered, his voice barely above a trickling stream.
Edin said nothing and then saw the kid was looking at Mirage. The sword was in Edin’s grip and pointed in Vicker’s direction. “Sorry,” he said and lowered it, putting the blade even with his leg. “You should be asleep. Your mother would be wor—”