Jashandar's Wake - Book Two: Unclean Places

by L. S. Kyles

  Chapter 23

  Jaysh lay in the grass and listened as the sounds of the Sway changed in his ears. He heard the gagging of melted biters slowly replaced by the sound of his own name whispered in the night, heard the scraping of teeth and stone gradually replaced by the sound of something rustling through the grasses, something weaving without purpose.

  “Here,” he groaned at last, his throat still sore from screaming. “I’m here.”

  There was a silence as Serit stood listening to the dark, then Jaysh heard the general whisper his name again, unable to locate the woodsman on the first attempt. This went on for several more moments—a heated, “Young Jaysh,” followed shortly by a somewhat disinterested, “Here.”—but eventually Jaysh was peering up through the reeds at the black oval of Serit’s face.

  Jaysh studied the thick bars of the general’s mustache flanking the gaunt outline of his head. He waited for the old man to spy the gap in the weeds where he lay.

  “I hear you,” Serit said, his head now motionless against the night, “but I cannot see you. Can you call out once mo—”

  “This is me,” Jaysh said, and tapped the side of the general’s boot.

  Serit made a girlish wail and shambled backwards several steps, not so far that Jaysh couldn’t see him, but far enough to evade any further tapping. When he’d finally composed himself, the black oval of his face came a little closer.

  “Why are you lying down?” Serit asked, the outline of his head trembling against the lighter hues of the sky. “Have you been injured?”

  “Li’le bit,” Jaysh said, and listened as the general sucked air between his teeth.

  “Oh, young Jaysh,” Serit moaned, sounding like a mourner at the bed of the dying. “Oh, I knew this would happen.” He pushed a skein of grass to one side and entered the body-shaped depression. “Is it serious?”

  Thinking back to his failed attempts at regurgitation when the pain was at its worst, Jaysh said, “I s’pose so.”

  Serit squatted down beside him. “Ohhh, young Jaysh,” he moaned. “Oh, what are we going to—” the whining broke off and he exhaled sharply. “It will be okay. We can do this. We can. We’ll have a look, a quick look…,” he seemed to remember his infamous skittishness around blood, “…make certain the affected area hasn’t, um…that you haven’t, eh…,” he trailed off again, whimpering softly, “…but before I do, why don’t you tell me what happened…exactly?”

  Jaysh did not answer right away. He waited to see if the old man would pass out. When the old man did not, he said, “You member that thing we saw moseyin up the hill?”

  The outline of Serit’s head nodded.

  “You hear them others come out of the east when it called to em?”

  The head nodded again. “I believe so.”

  “Well,” Jaysh said, “one of them things up’n bit me.” He glanced down at the darkness of his side and stared at the place where the pain had begun to throb like a heartbeat. “On the hip.”

  The scarecrow outline with the massive mustache radiated silence for a time, then said, “I heard the commotion when you left, the running, the shouting further on…,” he seemed to have more to say, but only stood there, staring. “I assumed you escaped unharmed.”

  Jaysh shook his head. “Nope.”

  “I see,” Serit said, and slowly began hyperventilating, his hairy lips once more mumbling about how they could do this and how they had to be strong and how they needed to remain focused on the task at hand.

  Jaysh opened his mouth to tell the old worrywart that he was making a mountain out of a molehill, but stayed his tongue as he watched the general lay a pack and bedroll in the weeds beside him. He glanced up at the dark humps on the general’s back, down at the gear in the weeds, and allowed the powers of deduction to run rampant.

  “Them mine?” he asked, flicking a finger at the gear beside him.

  “Yes,” Serit said, now wrestling his boots and calf muscles beneath his body. “I picked them up as I left my concealment. I had absolutely no intention of returning for them.” He wriggled his knees a little more then lifted his hands in the air between them. “Where are you hurt?”

  Jaysh didn’t say. He lay there in the feather grass and stared dazedly at the old man, still trying to cope with the fact that Serit had gathered up his things and still wondering why the squeamish old coot would try to examine a wound he obviously didn’t want to see.

  “Young Jaysh?” Serit asked, sensing the tension forming between them. He lowered his hands to his side.

  Holding very still, Jaysh said, “I think I’m ah’right.”

  Serit’s silhouette jerked back from him. “But… But you said you were injured?”

  “Yeah,” Jaysh said, thinking he’d rather take a bath in worm-ridden dog manure than let Serit lay a hand on him. “I’ll get it.”

  The black of the old man’s head appeared to be studying him. “If that is what you prefer,” he said. “But if you need any assistance at all, young Jaysh—and I do mean any—please do not hesitate to ask. I’m right here.” The outline of his head was nodding. “We cannot afford for you to contract blood-rot.”

  Pulling his pack towards him, Jaysh paused to shoot a glance at the general. “No,” he said. “Wou’nt want that.”

  “No we would not,” Serit agreed, the outline of his head tilting towards the pack. “Do you have everything you need? Bandages? Clean water? Cauva root?”

  Jaysh pulled out an old rag he used to clean the guts off his skinning knife and arrows, then a bladder of water and a tin of keeper’s salve. Setting them on the ground, only half-listening to the old man, he said, “Uh-huh.”

  Serit’s head tipped back and appeared to assess the night sky. “Now, young Jaysh, naturally you won’t be able to see the afflicted area—and I strongly advise against a fire considering what it might attract—so please be thorough, while disinfecting I mean.” His head nodded. “A secure bandage is in order as well, I’m afraid. That’s how the blood-rot begins…foreign contaminants.”

  “Huh,” Jaysh grunted, untying his belt and rolling onto his side. With his right hip elevated, he pulled the waist of his pants to his upper thigh and exposed his flesh. Next, he untied the water skin and poured some of the contents over the aching half-moon of his wound.

  “Ahhheeei,” he cried, knowing he was breaking their cover but unable to stop himself. The fluid entered the wounds and made them feel as though the needles had come back.

  “What? What is it?” Serit hands were up and ready to probe.

  “Nothin,” Jaysh said, speaking in an octave above normal. He let himself breathe for a while, then said, “Burned a little.”

  The black shape of Serit’s head considered this in silence. “Do you think it’s clean?” he asked, lowering his left hand and keeping the right where it was. “It didn’t sound like enough water for a thorough cleansing, and it needs to be thorough, young Jaysh.”

  When his muscles relaxed enough for him to extend his arms, Jaysh tied the mouth of the bladder and set it in his pack.

  “It’s clean,” he said, and opened the tin of salve.

  Serit cleared his ample throat. “Young Jaysh, I don’t think you fully appre—”

  “It’s clean,” Jaysh said, scooping out two fingers of slave and dabbing it onto his stinging hip with all the delicacy of a man testing the door to a cook stove.

  Serit cleared his throat again, a quick and offended sound. “You need plenty of salve on the affected area,” he said, the shape of his head tilted at the blackness around Jaysh’s naked buttocks. “Do you want me to—”

  “Here,” Jaysh said, handing him first the salve tin, then the lid. “Why doan’ yeh put that back on?”

  Serit body language suggested that he had been handed a child’s play thing and asked to explain its use, but he hid any petulance he was feeling as he said, “As you wish, young Jaysh. But if you change your—”

  “You can put it in
the pack when yer through,” Jaysh snapped.

  Slipping the tin inside the pack, Serit said, “I can help with the ban—”

  “The water, too,” Jaysh said, tossing the skin at him. He waited for Serit to make another inappropriate remark, but the old man took the bladder as he was bid, slid it inside the pack with the keeper’s salve, and sat there quietly while Jaysh tore the gut-rag into strips and tied it around his hip. It was not until Jaysh had finished and was pulling his pants back on that the blissful silence was ended.

  Watching him tie his belt in a knot, Serit cleared his throat and said, “Once we are on our way and moving through the prairie, I want you to use me when the need arises. Should you experience any difficult with the terrain—lose your balance, trip in the reeds,” he shook his head to imply there was no need too great, “—I want you to use my shoulder for support.”

  Jaysh stopped tying his belt and frowned at the general. There it was again, that uncharacteristic philanthropy from a man whose best friends were gathering dust on the many shelves of his bed chamber. It was like watching a tom cat try to whistle.

  “Think I’m good,” he said, lowering his head to the knot.

  “But I…,” Serit began, trailing off and sounding as though he’d been punched. “Young Jaysh, I heard the sounds you made while dressing your wound. You are obviously in pain. I am only saying that, should you experience any difficulty along the way,” he gestured to the scrawny jut beside his neck, “my shoulder is here for the taking.” He gestured now to the Sway. “This section of the kingdom, as you know, is nothing but inclines and burrows and,” he sighed wearily, “leagues of tiresome grass.”

  Jaysh finished the knot and grabbed his pack. “I thank yeh fer it,” he said, slinging the pack and bed roll over his back and rolling onto his left knee, “but I’ll be ah’right.”

  With that, he crawled atop his feet, shifted the weight of his gear to his good hip, and slid his right foot out in front of him. He applied weight to the right side of his body and his hip felt as though it were being bit once more.

  “Young Jaysh!” Serit screamed, grabbing the woodsman by the pack and taking the weight from his shoulder. He waited for the woodsman to relax his body and start breathing, then said, “How bad is it?”

  Jaysh swiveled on his left leg, his good leg, and fixed the old man with a glare that the shadows of nightfall would never allow Serit to see. “How about you stay close?” he said, and turned back around.

  Needless to say, Jaysh’s progress through the Sway was slow going at best, each rise in the soil shoving his leg at his hip, every tangle in the weeds tugging it back down. It felt as though he were engaged in a high-stakes game of tug-o-war with the vegetation, and the vegetation was winning.

  After a time, he had Serit dig the cauva root from his pack (something he had not needed until he’d tried walking) and that had helped. Cauva root was an amazing herb. It worked like vine in the woodsman’s system, only the other way around. Instead of revving him up and making him go, the cauva deadened his body from head to toe and made his brain feel sleepy.

  The root also dulled the Jaysh’s inhibitions, but he wasn’t aware of this third side effect. He didn’t use it enough to recognize the hazy pall of indifference that fell atop him.

  Unlike the vine, which was in his cheek most of the day, he’d only used cauva two times in his life: once when he’d slipped on loose stones in the Kilashan and busted his head on a boulder, and once when he’d twisted his ankle in the Shun and the blasted thing swelled up on him to the size of a melon.

  What Jaysh did recognize was that he was taking advantage of Serit’s shoulder with greater and greater frequency and not even worrying about how awkward it felt. He wasn’t grimacing as he braced his weight against the old man, wasn’t feeling cold and sick in the pit of his stomach, wasn’t wiping his hand on his shirt afterward to get the feel of flesh from his palm.

  He couldn’t explain it—didn’t care enough to explain it—but all of a sudden touching wasn’t so bad. It was almost like physical contact with another human being was okay.

  He made a mental note to give this more thought in the morning, after they’d reached their destination and had a good night’s rest, because right now he was having no end of trouble making deductions.

  His thoughts were like misshapen things hiding in the fog. He could see them out there in the thick of his mind, ethereal images floating in the mist, but they never came near.

  That was a shame really, because it seemed like there were several items of business in need to his attention, items of business like the fate of the kingdom and everything he held dear. It seemed like these items had something to do with the place he and Serit were travelling, but he couldn’t remember that either.

  He was still stewing over these missing items when his moccasins met with another gradual rise and he found himself reaching for Serit’s knobby shoulder. It was a chain of events, actually; the increased exertion placed on the leg, the muscles in the leg straining the hip, the wounds in the hip stinging like fire.

  “Nnngh,” he moaned, sinking fingers in the general’s shoulder.

  “Almost there, young Jaysh,” Serit said, using that deplorable caretaker-tone. “Almost at the top,” he added, breathing heavily now that Jaysh was leaning on him.

  At the top, Jaysh took a moment to position his legs beneath his body and released his hold on the old man’s shoulder. Then, while Serit waited for his lungs to stop heaving, the woodsman gave him a long and appraising look from the corner of one eye.

  Serit, Jaysh was afraid, had become one of the many items of business upon which he needed to reflect. This old man was acting like someone who cared about other human beings, and the General Branmore Jaysh knew only cared about human beings once they were dead and gone and he could drone on and on about what they’d done and where they’d lived and how they’d impacted other dead human beings from the same era.

  Jaysh resumed walking, but continued to monitor his partner’s behavior, secretly gauging the general’s energy as he scurried through the weeds and quietly evaluating his mood as he offered to shoulder Jaysh here or test the ground for him there. It wasn’t until they had cross two more hillsides that the light of understanding flared to life in his mind.

  He thinks we’re goin’ north, he thought. He thinks we’re goin’ home.

  Jaysh found himself thinking about his erudite companion’s emergence from the blind. Serit had admitted to coming out after the yelling and fighting. He must have come out hopelessly disoriented as well. Because had he known they were travelling east instead of north, Jaysh doubted very strongly that Serit would have been so eager to get there.

  To be honest, the woodsman had his own misgivings about where they were going. He was acutely aware of whom he was with and how they were armed and he knew perfectly well about the eerie terrain into which they travelled…but what was he to do?

  A move towards the horses in the north was not without its own risks. He had no way of knowing the horses hadn’t been slaughtered and the reeds to the north weren’t teeming with biters. The north had been the direction where Mister Whitehead emerged.

  The kryst went east, he thought flatly, an’ we got no chance without it.

  Ahead of him, Jaysh watched the pitch black of the land sloping up against the softer black of the sky. He reached beside him for the old man’s shoulder, so enveloped by the effects of the cauva that he didn’t even think about how this had bothered him. He merely grabbed the elderly fellow about the arm and began using him like the rail in a staircase.

  “Yes,” Serit said, already panting. “This one appears rather steep.”

  You got that right, Jaysh thought, gritting his teeth against the pain.

  “This might be,” Serit said, pausing to suck at the air, “the steepest one yet.”

  Jaysh would have agreed, but his teeth were fused shut.

  “Young Jaysh,” Serit said
, now gasping for breath like a drowning man, “I may need a bit of a rest…at the top of thi—”

  Jaysh felt Serit’s shoulder jerk to a halt and lifted his head, the deep stinging sensation in his pelvis completely forgotten. The old man beside him had become an inky pillar in the reeds, his body ramrod straight and his panting suddenly gone.

  Jaysh couldn’t see the old man’s face in the gloom, but he didn’t need to. He knew what he was looking at.

  It was the thing up ahead of them, the thing that looked like a wall of black cotton sliding sideways across the pasture.