When it was over, he reached down and gave Merle a pet.
"Well, boy, that hurt worse than a kick in the nuts, but at least we're still sucking wind."
Chapter 14
Leon's boots squelched with each step he took as he scaled the steep bank of the river as quietly as he could, which wasn't exactly quiet at all. But the fighting was over and, even if it wasn't, he was so bone-tired it just didn't seem to matter anymore.
While navigating the muddy incline, he did his best to protect the small skin of water slung across his shoulder. Despite the cool evening air, he was covered in sweat by the time he finally made it back to what was left of his small group. It was his third such trip down to the water’s edge in search of Shana and Coop and his legs continued to shake, even after he slumped to the ground. Exhaustion was an understatement, though the filth of the mud, blood, and smoke continued to aggravate his already strained nerves.
Lifting his ball cap, he scratched his curly blond head. It was hard to process everything that had happened over the last few hours.
We’re literally up a creek without a paddle!
At least Reed looked to be pulling through, slowly but surely. He was still too groggy to be of any help in planning their next move. Though he did give an amused grunt when Leon wiggled several fingers up and down in front of his face and asked him how many fingers he was holding up.
Sved’s leg was something different though. It looked bad. His face was pale, and his eyes were closed. Leon could tell he wasn’t asleep by the shifting grimace beneath his beard. He was just hanging on, hoping the pain would ease.
Leon had been certified in one short first aid course back in high school. He wasn't exactly a wealth of knowledge on the subject. Therefore, cutting away the purple cloth from around the wound, rinsing it with some water, and continuously applying pressure to the injured area was the best he knew to do. The arrow didn’t appear to have hit bone, but he worried any attempt to remove it by force might nick an artery.
Then there was still the question of the shadowy figure who just happened to jump down out of nowhere to take out the last archer, just in the nick of time. He could tell there were two bodies lying next to one another, out in the forest where they fell, but the shadows were thick that far back. He took a few moments to rest until he was no longer sucking wind.
Cowboy up, Leon. Time to get a better look at what we’re dealing with out there!
Gritting his teeth and creeping back into that cursed forest didn’t seem like a good idea, but it was something he knew needed to be done. So, he pulled his shoulders straight and stepped forward into the darkness once more.
Thankfully, Merle had no such qualms and jogged out ahead to sniff out their quarry. As he moved closer, Leon was better able to make out the vague silhouettes of the two bodies in the undergrowth. They were both still unresponsive. The archer was obviously the one with the long straight whitish-blond hair. But who was the big, dark-haired guy? There definitely hadn’t been anyone over five feet nothing with the horde earlier that evening, apart from him and his companions.
Reaching down to check for a pulse, it was quickly apparent the dark-haired stranger was still breathing. He turned and fumbled around to check the archer, but none too soon realized his hands were touching a corpse. Leon jerked his fingers back and tumbled over onto the big guy.
A few seconds later, and he finally released a ragged breath he was holding like somehow the man's condition was contagious. Leon had never before been exposed to as much death as he had over the past few days, and he still wasn’t quite used to the reality of the finality it brought. Even worse, the notion of touching a corpse in some dark spooky woods carried the creepiness factor through the roof. Regaining his composure cost him some time but it wasn't like he was on a schedule.
Dragging the big fella out of the smoke-filled forest was another matter entirely. If his legs were shaking before, they were practically jelly by the time he got him out into the light of the moon, currently playing peekaboo between batches of clouds.
When Leon saw the man’s face all his annoyances melted away. He literally dropped him as he fell to his knees. Merle’s savior was none other than the last surviving Hootsi warrior, Dimples!
Leon scratched his head frantically once more. He really needed more time to figure things out. Returning to Sved’s side, he fished out some rope from the man’s pack.
This Hootsi may have helped us out but I’d be a fool not to hog tie him till I know what he was up to with that stunt. Time to put Gus’s knot-tying lessons to the test!
# # #
Testing the bonds on the Hootsi once more and grunting in approval, Leon finally took a breather. Other than the condition of the folks around him, he had two significant problems to ponder.
Number one, the fire they started a short while back was now raging just to the west of him, spewing dark smoke everywhere. The only reason he hadn’t yet been forced to take a plunge into the river below because the wind had changed and was presently gusting from the river at his back. The wind was a fickle ally though. He was holding tighter to the hope that his nose proved true in regard to the faint scent of rain in the air.
The second, and perhaps more serious of the two problems at hand, was the fact that the goon Sved initially stuck with his Blade was now nowhere to be found. Leon had only just recently realized the man-thing had vanished sometime after he had returned from hauling water. There was no sign of that puckered scar in any of the shadows he searched.
They had been extremely lucky twice already that night. He doubted their luck would hold a third time if Scarface managed to make it back with reinforcements before he could figure out a way to escape with all the injured bodies around him.
This wasn't the first occasion he'd had reason to wish for Gus, but it was certainly the sort of pickle the old man would have sorted with his own brand of pragmatic efficiency. With a heavy heart, Leon conceded the fight. He was no Gus Silberman.
As he slumped down beside Merle to further consider their dilemma, no good answers sprang to mind. Instead, thoughts he had successfully put off for over a week escaped from the corners of his mind, where he had, so far, managed to keep them in exile.
If those creepy white guys were skin-changers, and Ben and his men are skin-changers that make wolves look like poodles, and Gus is the sort of skin-changer that makes a cougar look like a house cat, what kind of man-creature-thing does that make me? And what's happening to my dog?!…He's getting huge, and he just killed that dude! …
Once he started with the questions in his head, they didn’t seem to have an end. In all of his short life, he hadn’t had much cause to consider death on a personal level, but for the last few days, death lingered closer to him than white on rice. It was crouching in anticipation, waiting around every corner he turned.
He suspected he had only minutes before death would come calling one final time. This time he would be on his own, and he was all out of ideas on how to put it off his trail.
At least, maybe Shana made it somewhere safe.
It was a pitiful thought to cling to, but at least it was something. His feelings for Shana went back so far that he couldn’t tell what was real versus what he’d built up in his mind. Did he really care for her, or did he simply covet the idea of being someone somebody like her could come to care about?
Regardless, when it came to the topic of Shana, the only sure thing he could put in the bank was that he would fail in the unspoken promise he made to Gus. He wouldn’t be around to help her find a way home. He wouldn't be around to see the pride in Gus' eyes or the gratitude in Shana's.
A tear slid down his cheek. He couldn’t decide if it was there on behalf of Shana or his own miserable ineptitude. Either way, it seemed a pointless gesture, and he wiped it away before he gave into a trickle of hopelessness that could become a torrent.
His new reality was becoming starkly apparent to him at last. Ben and his men were clearly outgu
nned in this new world. Sure, they were scrappy, deadly even, and smart, but it was only a matter of time before they were all eventually brought down by the harsh nature of the dark world in which they ventured. He clenched his fists as he fought off a twinge of anger over the injustice of it all. But, being raised a rancher, Leon knew day-to-day injustices had nothing to do with life or death. Everyone and everything eventually had to face an end. Oddly enough, the thought of failure struck harder than the threat of imminent demise.
Sitting there in a far-off-world, knowing time was short, Leon realized just how precious he valued his life. He hadn't ever really known what he wanted out of life. Sure, he knew he wanted to live, but he had no inkling of what he wanted to live for when all his chips were about to be called. The absurdity of such piss-poor timing made him chuckle.
Timing's never been my thing.
He remembered saying that very thing to Shana just a few hours ago. His chuckle morphed into a belly laugh. He laughed until his eyes watered, and his gut hurt. He laughed until tears ran down his cheeks, and he could laugh no more.
Hopelessness may weigh him down, but he knew he couldn’t let it freeze him solid. He buried his morbid thoughts, struggled back up to his feet. Not knowing what else to do, he decided to salvage what he could from what he saw around them.
When Leon stooped to grab the ornately curved sword off the dead leader, Sved’s breathless whisper from behind stopped him, “Don’t grab that…when you can take this.”
Leon looked back at the man. He was laying on his side, slightly propped up on one elbow. His free hand was lifting his bone-handled Blade in Leon's direction. How he’d managed to get it back from the fella he stuck was beyond baffling. The fact that he was feeling strong enough to be more like his disagreeable self was good, though.
“Yeah thanks, but keep your Blade bud, you're still gonna need it. This one should work fine enough for me…even if I haven’t got a clue how to use it. Better you lay back and get some rest while you can.”
“No, Leon.” Sved paused and squinted up at him. “No one’s ever explained it to you, have they? You don’t understand what I’m offering you? This is so much more than just a Blade.” There was no accusation or condescension in his tone.
“What do you mean? What is it that no one has bothered to tell me about that stinking Blade?” Leon couldn’t keep the cynicism from his voice. No one had bothered telling him anything, much less anything about the Blade.
“This Blade, it is many things to us who take it. But primarily, it is meant to shield us from the corruption that inflicts our world; the corruption that inflicts us, yes?”
“I get that, but what is it? What makes it so special?”
“It's hope? It’s a shard left for us from a legendary hero who stooped to free us from the result of the corruption. He was something so much more than you or I could ever be. He’s gone now, but he left us this shard of his power in the form of a Blade.
"You can take it too, Leon. It won’t completely remove the corruption from your body, but it can circumvent the corruption’s power over you.”
Sweat was pouring down Sved’s brow. It was obvious the effort of explaining these things to Leon was taking a toll on him in his current condition. But Leon was finally getting answers, and he pressed him for more as he knelt beside the little man.
“What about needing to know how to use it beforehand? I get that it’s a special tool, but I wouldn't know the first thing about how to use it Sved. Reed says we need at least two years’ worth of training. I doubt it would do me any good to take your Blade from you now, even as banged up as you are.”
Sved’s eyes held a touch of anger at that. “No, Leon, don’t worry about all that, you just need to admit you need help, yes? You just open yourself to the Blade's power. Trust it to do what you can't do for yourself. It will change you more later, but this is the first step. You don’t have to try to prepare yourself to wield it. If so, none of us would ever be ready at all!”
“That’s it then? Just take it, huh? But what difference does it make now? Honestly, man, we aren’t likely to make it out of this fix we are in, you know that, right?”
“You'll never know until you try. Never underestimate what it has the power to do. Listen, Leon, wars have been fought and nations have toppled over the power this Blade carries, yes? Powerful folks have been attempting to extinguish its presence from this world from the moment it was first passed along.
"Most folk these days don’t think there’s anything wrong with their moonless form. They see the beasts and the twisted monsters we become as powerful pinnacles of our true forms, not as corrupted forms of who we were once meant to be. This Blade won’t make you into something you don’t want to be, much the opposite, it saves you from those effects that twist and corrupt. It at least gives you the option to choose what you become and when. The fact that we have no other option at hand just means there's no reason why you shouldn’t give it a try, no?”
Leon shrugged. Sved was right. What did he have to lose? Gus at least had always carried one, it couldn’t be all that bad. If there was even the smallest hope that that ancient hero’s help was really able to save him now, why not?”
“Okay, Sved, I bite. I can trust this hero and his Blade can cure me. What do I do?”
Sved flipped the Blade around so the handle was extended out toward Leon. “Not a thing. Just take it.”
Leon reached out and hesitated. “What will happen when I do?”
“Only one way to know, yes?” There was irony in his voice as his brows rose in question, but his eyes held an earnest sincerity.
Leon took a breath. He reached out and gripped the handle. It was warm to the touch but didn’t feel exactly the way he somehow expected it might. When he gently pulled it up, he was prepared to feel something…powerful, painful? He was totally surprised.
All he felt was a slight tingling sensation in his hand. It spread down his arm and into his body, right to the core of his chest, to the center of where that electrical pulse always seemed to coalesce. Then, it was as if a tension he didn’t realize he carried dissolved. The sensation was strange, it stole his breath away, and it took several moments before he could look up again.
He glanced at Sved. Despite the pain in his thigh, the small man grinned back up at him through his scraggly red beard.
Then Leon noticed something amazing. Sved was holding his Blade just as he had been when he extended it out to him. Leon compared the Blade he held to the one in Sved's hands, they looked identical, but where had the second one come from?
“Sved, I-I don’t understand? How did this happen?” He held out the Blade in his hand.
“That is the question, Leon! That is the question that has puzzled and amazed learned men for many, many years. That’s the power of the Blade - its power is never diminished no matter how many times it is shared! Just know that that Blade there is now yours. No one can ever really take it from you, and you can’t ever really give it away. If you lose the Blade, it just sort of pops up on you or near you when you need it again. Welcome to the life of the Bladed!”
Leon didn't feel any more or any less himself. He couldn’t tell that anything significant had really changed. But for the first time in forever, he was hopeful. He pushed up his hat and scratched his head as an unexpected smile graced his face.
Then something rustled above. Merle growled low. His snout pointed up, toward a branch extending out from the nearby forest. When Leon locked eyes on what Merle saw, he froze.
From high above Scarface blinked back down at him. His legs were balanced on a limb. His arms held a bow with an arrow drawn.
Leon didn’t even dare breathe. He could almost feel an itch in his chest, right where the arrow would go.
Chapter 15
Leon closed his eyes and took a deep breath, waiting on the inevitable. When the seconds continued to tick by, and the arrow’s bite held off, he glanced back up into the trees.
Scarfa
ce wore a wilted look of astonishment. The arrow was still notched, but the bow was no longer drawn back in imminent threat.
Leon took a chance and cautiously stepped forward. He spread his arms wide to show he wasn’t planning on tossing any more knives around.
“We never intended this to happen. I don’t know why you guys attacked us, but we were only defending ourselves. Take what you want and just leave us alone, okay?”
The man’s expression went from slightly puzzled to extremely perplexed, but when he spoke his voice was deep and steady, “You took the Blade just now and it didn’t hurt you? You feel…no enmity? No bloodlust?”
His statement made zero sense and Leon sensed the questions were rhetorical in nature, but he answered anyway, “No, sir, there was no pain. If anything, I feel better than I’ve felt in a long time, and as to the blood lust, I’m way too tired to fight any more of you tonight.”
The man’s eyes shifted to Sved, “And you, you stabbed me with that Blade! What bewitching spell did you cast to cause it to make me feel such…confusion? Why…why can I not draw on my power? What have you done?” He reached up and palmed the area between his leather armor where the Blade had found purchase during the fight.
Leon still worried the bow might rise again at any moment. Sved, for his part, remained conscious. He waited patiently until it was clear the man would allow him to answer, then he rose back up onto his arm once more, “I’ve done nothing to you myself. I’ve got no more magic in me than this dirt between my fingers, yes? It is the Blade that holds the power, and whatever the Blade’s prick may have coaxed you to feel, I'm afraid it isn’t permanent. If the Blade’s presence temporarily cut you off from your power it's likely because you were seeking something beyond that power, deep down. My guess is there must be a part of you who questions the purpose of such power. The Blade…it persuades you to feel differently about things, no?”
A Choice of Blades: The Blade Remnant, Book One Page 17
