by Deck Davis
He made sure his shirt was buttoned and he tried twisting the collar so it stopped the wind creeping down his neck, but it was impossible. The more he walked in this the less he could feel his own body, and the cold worked its dark magic on his feet and soon he felt like they were two lumps of ice.
The more he let his body temperature drop, the more chance of getting ill. Maybe the icy winds would start to taint his mind. Convince him to sit for a little. To even close his eyes for a spell.
No. That would be the end of him.
“Ben, stand still a second.”
Jakub removed his dagger from his sheath. He grabbed a handful of Ben’s hair. His hair was only two inches long but there were lots of it, enough for Jakub to stay warm. He tucked his shirt tightly into his trousers and then began cutting Ben’s hair and stuffing it inside his shirt. The itch was unbearable at first, but with layer after layer of hair insulating his skin, it was soon worth it.
Item received: Bison hair
Ben looked a little glum without the coat of oil-black hair on his head, but Jakub knew he was just humanizing him. Ben was a reanimated creature, barely alive. Good company, sure, but not a sentient creature. He wouldn’t care that Jakub had shaved his head.
Besides, there was still a rug-like coating of it on his back and torso. Ben wouldn’t get to keep it for long, since Jakub had plans for that in the morning, but it meant the beast would have time to enjoy his existing hair while getting used to the idea of being bald, which was a luxury denied to many men as they got older.
Feeling a little warmer with his bison hair vest, Jakub stared into the darkness ahead and saw the moon and stars begin to peek from the clouds and light the way a little. He saw miles and miles of barren desert ahead of him. Summoning every ounce of determination, he pushed on.
CHAPTER 13
Desert Bear and Coyote
He was an old bear who had lived in the desert for so long that he knew almost every part of it. He could see it when he closed its eyes; he could see the half a dozen oases spots, some that he drunk from as a young cub with his mother, others in parts of the world that he’d traveled long ago and hadn’t returned to.
World was his name for Sun Toil because he knew nothing else, and his mother had taught him to be wary of its borders, just as her mother had taught her, and so the chain of warnings went.
Bear had never understood, until he met the man with the stinging sticks many, many suns ago.
The man who seemed to be able to smell Bear, to follow him miles and miles. The man who had wanted something from Bear, and even after Bear had straightened as tall as he could and showed his claws and teeth and roared for him to leave, still the man had pointed something at him and then there was stinging pain all through his body.
He should have killed him on first sight.
Normally he would have done that. He would have torn the man into strips of flesh. But Bear had Cub with him, and Cub was sickly and the last two oases had been dried up. So, Bear had to do what he never did, and he fled the man as much as he was able.
But the stinging pain. The things the man could do; the needles that made Bear sleepy. The constructs of iron he left hidden on the ground, disguised by dust. He had seen a fox step on one, and oh, how the poor thing howled up to the sky. Bear had earned an easy meal when he saw that, but he knew the iron teeth were meant for him.
When Cub was caught in metal teeth, Bear stayed to free him. And when the man approached from the distance, this time clad in metal, he knew there would be no more running.
He and the man met in the desert under the heat of the sun, metal versus claw, strength versus wile. They fought. Bear’s claws, normally enough to tear his enemies apart, hurt when they glanced off metal sheets covering the man. One of them hit the metal on the man’s chest and snapped off fully.
His muscles, undernourished and dehydrated because of the cruelty of Toil, began to ache. He could not fight forever.
But Cub cried in the background. Cried because of the pain of the metal teeth around his leg, and so Bear fought with a fury that he’d never felt even in the most desperate of hunts.
Still, the man was too much for him. He had things that Bear could not explain, things that caused pain without the man touching him, sometimes from twenty paces. Things that exploded and then burned his skin.
Finally, he caught the man with a savage blow across his neck in a place where his metal fur didn’t protect him. Blood welled at the bald parts of his white-pink flesh, and Bear could smell it. He felt saliva fill his mouth, he felt his mind narrow on the scent.
The man started to run away as fast as he could. All Bear could think was meat and blood. Meat and blood.
Pa, said a whimper behind him. When he turned, he felt a shock of worry such as he’d never felt before. Cub was dying. The metal teeth had bitten deep, and his blood-stained the desert.
The man was running. Blood and meat were running. But Cub would die without Bear helping him free.
Bear made the only choice he could.
Even then, even after he let the first source of blood and flesh that he’d seen in days leave, even after he’d lost a full claw to his metal, even after he stayed to wrench open the metal teeth, Cub still died.
Bear never saw the man again, not in the last twenty summers, and now he was an old, old animal.
Smell it? said the growl.
Bear shuffled for comfort. The cave was too small. Too small for one bear, much too small for a bear and coyote. It was warm for him, sharing his space with his friend, but he was an old, old bear and his back ached and when he slept so squashed that his legs wouldn’t work in the morning until he stretched and let them wake.
Not only that, but Coyote could be selfish sometimes. The killer’s paws must touch the meat first, that was the rule. But Coyote always wanted to gorge first.
I’m young. I need it more, he would growl.
And I’m old. I need it more than you, Pup.
Pup was what he always called him, though he was no longer a pup, no longer in need of bear to care for him. As Pup grew older he had risen first to a beast of similar strength, and now he was edging ahead of bear. Neither of them said it, but both knew it; bear was waning. He had more hunts left in him, but there would come a time when Pup would have to care for him.
After caring for both Cub and Pup in Toil, where water and food were hard to find, Bear wouldn’t wish that same life on Pup.
No, Bear would wander off when he felt too weak. Maybe he would just walk in the night without telling Pup, walk until the darkness claimed him. His body would lie still against the ground that had been his world for so long, and his flesh would feed other animals in need and through that he would join the circle and would become one with the world.
Or should Bear stay and let Pup feast on his body after death? Pup would be grateful for the gift. Just as Bear would eat Pup if something happened to him, so would his coyote friend gorge on him.
Questions for other days. Bear still had a few more suns left in him.
In the end, Bear would always agree that Coyote should eat first. He would watch his friend rip strips of meat from bones. He would see the blood darken his muzzle. He would smell it, and it would make his belly feel tight.
Always had it been like that, always would it be. Bear shouldn’t try to trick himself. He had found Coyote when he was just a young pup. Motherless, fatherless, thinner than oasis reeds, eyes crawling with flies.
Bear was starving when he first saw Pup. He could have taken the young one’s meagre flesh. Enough to live for one, maybe two suns longer. But instead Bear found a jackrabbit for Coyote. The next day he found two kit foxes. He did this for four days until he could walk again.
Bear? Do you smell it? Said Pup.
Bear sniffed, but he could only smell the cave. The old stone, the age, the dirt. Smell what? he asked.
Man.
Bear tried to get on all fours, but his legs sang with pain. Sadly, th
at happened more and more as each summer turned to winter. Bear could still run fast, could still chase prey, but only when he had let his legs wake up for long enough.
You smell man? he asked.
Near to the cave.
Is he watching us?
Gone now, Bear. But scent still lingers. One man. Alone.
Bear remembered old faces, old battles, old sadness now. Old man?
No. Scent is young, Bear.
Then we will eat. Follow him, Pup. When legs wake up, I will make up the ground and join you. Do not let his scent stray.
CHAPTER 14
What was that noise?
He couldn’t see anything stalking him from behind, and he was certain that he would hear a bear if it had caught his scent and decided to follow him.
No, he was too tense. That was why he was hearing noises in the night; he was wracked with tiredness and pain and dehydration, not to mention that although his layer of bison-hair insulation saved him from freezing, it didn’t stop the numbness in his feet.
“Did you hear anything?” he asked Ben, more to hear his own voice than expecting an answer. “Grunt if I’m being stupid and should try not to worry.”
Ben grunted in return. It was a comforting sound, this snort made by his only friend, but its reassurance was short-lived.
Why couldn’t he have woken up with an eagle crushing his legs? One he could reanimate and have it scout miles and miles of the wasteland. Or maybe a friendly coyote that could skulk the shadows around him and use its superior senses to notice danger, and then warn him about it?
At least Ben was strong. That might come in useful when he found the caravan wreckage and started salvaging. He was loyal, too, in the way that only reanimated bison could be.
If Jakub had enough essence, he could have summoned Ludwig right now. Ludwig would be able to see in the blackest of nights. He would sense whether anything was following. And if Ben was loyal, then Ludwig took loyalty to godly level. There was no person, no animal, nothing Jakub would trust as implicitly as Lud.
Determined not to start thinking of what-ifs and wishes, Jakub brought up his map. He kept it visible and to his left so that he could still see it as he walked, but without compromising his vision.
He reached the area where the caravan should have been, but it was impossible to see if any of the wagons or the people remained. The stars gave little light, and he was getting weary of wandering in the dark now. There was no telling what kind of potholes were out there, and if he twisted his ankle without having essence to heal it, he was in trouble.
Similarly, he’d pictured it in his head, and he was certain that accidentally stepping on a cobra or python or scorpion nest could go badly for him.
But the wind meant that he couldn’t just stop. Even his bison hair insulation was struggling to help now. Walking kept his limbs from freezing up, but it had been hours since he’d had anything to eat or drink, and he was feeling ready to drop. He began to wish he’d taken his chances with the desert bear.
It was a hard thing to reconcile in his head. This place was beautiful. He’d never, ever seen such a vast starscape back in Dispolis. He’d never experienced this kind of tranquility. In a weird way, this was the exact thing he’d been looking for when he refused the academy’s offer of a job and went traveling instead.
Careful what you wish for, he told himself.
A sound behind him pricked his attention. Out here, noises were bad. Each one could herald some new, awful shit coming to ruin your evening. Was it the swirling beginnings of a dust storm? The howling of heat-leeching winds?
This sound was none of those, but it got his pulse hammering all the same. The sounds were slight and out of rhythm, and they sounded for all the world like footsteps. Pattering ones that something or someone was trying to hide.
If it was a person, they’d approach him. Maybe they’d watch for a while, but they’d come closer eventually. They’d hail him.
These footsteps sounded like they were circling him, and the idea made him feel sick. There was only one answer; the desert bear had caught his scent after all, and it had following him, and now it was prowling around in the shadows.
Jakub didn’t have the strength to run, never mind outrunning a desert bear, which was impossible. Those things could charge like horses.
Nor could he fight it. Growing up as a necromancer, his training had been magic-based. Even so, since necromancy was fieldwork, he’d been given training with swords, daggers, spears, and rudimentary bow handling.
He’d pawned one of his swords to fund his travel, which left him with his vagrant blade and his dagger. The vagrant blade was blunt and more use for hammering things than for killing. While his dagger would be superior when fighting a man, it wouldn’t help him kill a bear.
Neither would his necromancy magic have helped, even if he had the essence to use it. Most of his spells assumed that death had already occurred and was quite useless in creating the state of death. A drawback of being a necromancer, really, even if the clue was in the name.
He couldn’t run, couldn’t fight, and he had a bear circling him.
This wasn’t his night.
CHAPTER 15
If he couldn’t escape from it and he couldn’t kill it, there was only one possibility; drive it away. Every single living creature in the world had survival instincts, some of them woven so deep into the core of their beings that the use of them was instinctual.
The bear was acting on one of two instincts, Jakub guessed; either hunger or protection of their cubs. There was every chance this was a mama bear who had been sheltering her cubs in the cave, and catching Jakub’s scent in the wind would send her into a protective frenzy.
Or it was a lonely bear who was hungry. A simple, understandable reason to stalk Jakub through the desert and kill him, but not one that he wanted to see have any success.
Lacking the ability to kill a bear with just a dagger, and since even at his physical prime he had no chance of outrunning one, Jakub’s only way of surviving this was to change the bear’s instinct from protectiveness or hunger, to fear.
Fear was the most powerful instinct. Didn’t matter if you were a man, bear, cow, cod, your body and mind worked in tandem to accomplish one thing; keep you alive. Fear was born from a perceived threat to your life, and this was what Jakub would use. Lacking the ability to kill it, he just needed the bear to think it might die.
He thought he knew how.
He got to work. First, he listened. It was hard to hear the footsteps above the wind, but he did, and he knew it was still circling. Good – that meant it was being careful. That it wasn’t so hungry that it would attack without caution. It meant he had time.
He licked his fingertips to test the wind, but his dry mouth made even that action a chore. After coaxing spit onto his finger, he held it up and felt a northerly wind.
“Ben, lie down here,” he said, pointing to get cover from the bison.
Next, he laid the vagrant blade, a bottle of firelick, tumbleweed, a handful of brush, and the flint on the ground. He arranged the brush as close to Ben as he could so that the wind couldn’t get to it.
“Sorry, my friend,” he told him. “It might get hot, but you won’t feel it.”
More steps came from behind. He wanted so badly to turn and look, but he couldn’t. The steps sounded far enough away that he knew the bear was still circling. To look at it, to meet its stare, would be the push that turned this into a fight, and Jakub wasn’t ready for that yet. For now, as much as it made the hairs all over his body stand on end, he had to work in feigned ignorance of the predator lurking nearby.
His hands shook as he packed the brush closer together and closer to Ben. He struck the pieces of flint and steel together above it, barely feeling each jolt and each bang through the cold-induced numbness in his fingers.
He hadn’t used the steel and flint much since his academy days when instructor Irvine had taught him the skill. Even so, after parting w
ith a sword, two of his academy necromancy books, and selling his academy gown to a theatre troupe to fund his travel, there were some things he’d never considered selling, and he was beyond thankful for that now.
Though it was a while ago, he remembered learning how to do this, and it was that memory that made him keep going even after striking the flint against steel twenty, thirty, forty times and getting nothing.
Fire came from a spark, and that spark was governed by mistress chance. An experienced outdoorsman might have deep conditioning that let him strike the pieces more effectively, but even he or she had to hope that chance assisted them.
“Come on,” he said, striking them again. “Just a spark…”
The footsteps were to his right now. Closer, but still lurking rather than attacking. Every inch closer meant it was growing in confidence, sussing Jakub out and deciding his meat was worth the risk.
His fingers were so numb he couldn’t feel them. If he closed his eyes, he’d have no idea if he was still holding the flint or not.
Another strike. Another absence of spark. He struck again, this time missing the steel piece completely and drawing blood from his index finger, but his flesh numbed out the pain.
With blood running down his finger, with steps getting closer to him, Jakub began to feel the worry at full force. He eyed the vagrant blade, wondering whether to use its bluntness because of the better reach it gave him, or whether to risk his dagger skills even with numb hands just because its blade had an edge.
It only took a second of thought to realize that blunt or sharp, the result would be the same.
Lacking the option to fight or run, he concentrated the way only a man with a bear prowling his vicinity can. Because he couldn’t feel the flint, he had to stare at it without flinching, commanding his hands as if they weren’t even his own.
The howl of the wind was stronger now, almost screaming, and the way it rushed into his ears made it sound like it was just for him. Ben was blocking most of it, but it wasn’t enough. He moved position, switching sides to give the kindling more protection. That was when he saw it.
