by Deck Davis
He cast a look at the sky. Maybe he had enough time for this, maybe not. But making the time might be what got him through the next few days.
With that in mind, Jakub put the snake meat in one of his larger artificed pockets.
Items received:
Snake Meat
Snakeskin
Item group created: Food
He pocketed the skin because he’d already done the hard work of skinning the animal, and he had no idea what he would and wouldn’t need out here. The skin could stay in his inventory pockets until he figured a way to use it. He left the guts and organs where they were on the ground, and he retreated thirty feet away.
Then he watched. And he watched. He watched some more, but the sun was becoming unbearable now.
“Nothing’s coming,” he told Ben.
He’d hoped that the scent of the guts would draw other animals to them, but it wasn’t to be. He cut a five-inch piece of snake meat and put it on his tongue. It smelled bloody, and when he chewed, he found that the texture was rubbery, but not unpleasant.
Swallowing it, he could almost hear his stomach thank him. As much as he wished he could eat it all, he held himself back. Not only did he need to ration himself, but eating too much after being hungry for so long could hurt him.
With his hunger temporarily solved, he had a bigger problem.
His throbbing head, dry mouth, and dulled mind were symptoms of dehydration, and eating would exacerbate that. He needed water, he needed lots of it, and he needed it now.
Water was the only thing that Ludwig hadn’t found.
Jakub checked two things now; he checked his map first, and he checked the sun second. He had a long way still to walk and a lot of sunlight to walk in. Lacking any alternative, he rubbed some of the heat-leave-me salve on his exposed forehead, neck, and shoulders. He used as little as he could and spread it as thin as possible, but even that effort only left 3% of the salve. He guessed the loss was better than getting sunstroke.
That done, he started out again. He would have been more worried about the lack of water, except that he had an idea.
Ludwig, for all his qualities, wasn’t the brightest of animals, and he didn’t know much about the desert. That wasn’t his fault; why would he need to know?
What this meant was that he’d told Jakub he couldn’t find water, but when Jakub looked at his map markings, he read three glorious, glorious words.
Prickly Pear Cactus.
Ludwig had marked them because they were potentially food, but Jakub guessed otherwise. Heading further north, he arrived at the map marker Ludwig had made, and there he saw just a single cactus.
Shin high, dark green in color, and lined with hundreds of thorns. On the top of it was a dozen red balls that Jakub’s dehydrated mind decided resembled Ben the bison’s testicles, both in shape and color.
His heart was hammering now that it was time to test his theory. If he was right, he would live through the night. Wrong, and he’d shrivel into nothing and he’d die in an unmarked spot in a rarely visited desert, and a sandstorm would cover him and preserve his corpse, and he’d never be seen or known in the world again.
It felt like such a grand consequence for so small an action. Kneeling beside the cactus, Jakub plucked one of the fruits from the top. He put it on his tongue. His pulse was beyond control now.
He took a deep breath and he bit down, and then he raised his hands to the gods and thanked them in his mind as he felt juices flow over his tongue.
The cactus fruits were full of juice! Not a massive amount, sure, but there were twelve fruits, and it would be enough to get him through the night.
He ate six of them there, popping each on his tongue one at a time so that he could savor them as fully as possible. When it was done, he wanted more, but he battled with himself and won out, putting six fruits in his bag.
Item received: Prickly pear cactus fruits x6
The difference was tremendous, as though his body gave him a clap of appreciation and released energy for him to use. His head cleared a little, though the stubborn throbbing clung on.
When that effect died, he was still thirsty. If anything, he felt thirstier, but at least he’d rewarded his poor, poor body with water. Now he needed to find more.
The sun had already risen to its peak and then begun falling in the time he spent marching north, taking a diversion here and there to visit more cacti marked on his map. It was almost evening by the time his would-be shelter loomed into view.
He approached it with a feeling of gloom when he saw that although Ludwig warned him that it was small, his friend had been generous. Jakub was going to have to spend the night curled into a ball.
Needing something to lift his spirits, Jakub pressed the tattoo on his thumb and commanded a list of his new inventory to appear in front of him.
Items Received:
Prickly pear cactus fruits x3
Saguaro cactus flower x9
Agave plant seeds x35
Agave plant flowers x8
Not only had he gathered a few more watery fruits and some other edibles besides, but he’d found two dead jerboas. These were rodents with mouse-like bodies and two inexplicably long legs. If he’d tried to catch them it would have been a great way to waste time and snake-meat fueled energy, but luckily these were dead.
When he saw their bodies his first thought was to wonder how much meat he’d get from them. Not a lot, probably, but the tiny portion of snake meat had awoken a furious hunger in him. He decided that because he didn’t know how they died or how long they’d been dead for, he couldn’t trust their meat.
Instead, he spoke his Essence Grab spellword, expecting that they’d been dead long enough that their souls had already gone to the afterlife. He was amazed when not only did essence drift from them, but he earned a full tally of soul essence. That was a great bounty from such tiny creatures.
Necromancy EXP gained!
EXP to next lvl: [IIIIIIIIIIIIII ]
Soul essence gained!
Essence Remaining: [IIIII ]
Next, it was time to deal with his shelter. Just like Ludwig said, it was two tall rocks with one lying across the top. Shelter was about as optimistic a word as he could think of for this, and it was going to take a hell of an effort for him to summon his sunniest disposition when he thought about sleeping here. Still, he did the best he could.
After directing Ben to cover one side of the rocks, Jakub hung his fur over the other, and he stood under a darkening sky and looked at his home for the night.
At least it was shelter. At least he didn’t have to fight a bear to win it. At least no damn coyotes were prowling around. This was okay. This was good.
After finding food, a small amount of water, fur, and gathering essence, he was in better shape than yesterday. He would live through this whole mess of crap and then he’d brag about it in every tavern he ever visited. He’d write a book called Snakes, Storms, and Snug Shelters; How to Survive in the Desert.
After lying to himself enough that he felt happier, he ate chomped four more pieces of snake meat, popped a few cactus fruits, and then climbed into his shelter.
CHAPTER 18
The Bear, the Slaver, and the Slave
Pup had been gone too long. He liked the night, yes, even though Bear hated it. Pup liked to go out under the stars and hunt the crawlers and creepers that slept during the day. Last night Pup had tracked the man, and he promised he would only track, not hunt.
Bear wouldn’t believe Pup had killed the man and eaten him. Not when Bear was so hungry. But the stars had gone and the sun was home since he left, and now Bear watched the horizon he knew so well and he waited to see his only friend appear and run to the cave and tell him quickly and excitedly about his adventures.
He wished that would happen, but he had a dark feeling. The last time he had this kind of feeling he met the hunter, and he almost died.
Bear greeted the morning sun with a stretch that made his a
rms hurt, and it was painful to lift them above his head. He felt heavy even though his fur sagged over his bones like never before. His mouth tasted like dirt, and he wished he were back at their last cave before the nearby oasis dried.
There was none of Pup’s scent in the air. Bear didn’t catch the smell of much anymore. The things that once made him so strong were dying one by one. First his smell, now his eyes were growing weaker. His strength was soon to die, too. He knew he was getting slower, and with every sun and moon, his paws felt heavier.
With no smell to follow, Bear paced around the shelter and found marks in the dust. Good; the wind hadn’t carried Pup’s paw tracks away yet. Bear could follow them but he had to do it soon and do it fast before the desert tried to hide Pup’s prints from him.
He looked all around him and saw the two claw-shaped mountains one side of the world, and on his other side was a ridge that had once been full of water. Lots and lots of it. Bear missed it. Pup’s smell came from the direction of these ridges, and as long as he kept these on each side of him he wouldn’t lose his friend.
Checking his friend’s paw tracks on the ground one last time, bear roared up into the sky ‘don’t worry pup, Bear’s coming for you!’
“Two horses can’t pull a wagon of twenty people. That’s a fact,” said Marleya. She wore a shirt that exposed her shoulders and part of her chest, and she was rubbing alchemical heat salve on her exposed skin.
Forget that it smelled like goat crap eaten by a cow and then crapped out again; watching her rub the ointment all over was hypnotic.
Hips had to force himself not to look. It wasn’t fair to stare, because he wouldn’t look at any of his other crew like that. Ponytail Bob was rubbing the salve on his back arch just above his arse right now, and Hips didn’t feel the need to stare at him.
Instead, he looked away from Marleya. He looked at the half-dozen tents a few paces away, the fabric wind-battered and green and entirely inappropriate for the climate. Hips had bought them at a discount from a unit of the queen’s army who had just lost all but eight of their men in a skirmish with the Killeshi.
He was lucky to have found them. One morning, when the sparrows sang their morning tunes, word came down that the unit was being disbanded, not rebuilt, and Hips happened to be nearby. He got tents and provisions at a beggar’s price, and he’d strutted around with a smile on his face that day. Pity that the queen’s army built their tents to shelter from rain and snow, not wind and tropical heat. Now, after nights in the desert, the tents looked ready to rip apart.
Not to be reminded of his poor purchase he looked at Marleya again, and he felt a warm glow in his stomach. To counter it, he grabbed a whiskey bottle from Stern Hugh who was walking by, and he swigged the liquid back until lit burned his throat.
“Hey,” said Hugh.
“I’m invoking the captain’s code,” said Hips. “This whiskey might be poisoned, and I won’t let my men get hurt.”
Hugh muttered under his breath and walked off, leaving Hips alone with the bottle.
I’m not in love with Marleya, Hips told himself. I’m just a guy who hasn’t known the touch of a woman in two hundred and thirty-eight days and six hours.
It was only when he really concentrated that Marleya’s words found their target, and he felt panic rise.
“Two horses…You’re right, that won’t work with our cargo. Can we pull a few horses off some of our guys’ wagons?”
“For a while. But we always pair two horses to a wagon, and if you pull one then you’ll overwork the other, and they’ll drop. Then the guys will have to pull their own wagons, because we can’t leave them on account of freezing to death at night.”
Hips rubbed his hand through his hair, and it felt thin. Too thin. He was definitely losing it. Suddenly, the wind felt too strong, like it would start plucking his remaining hairs away.
“Then we either lose cargo, or we lose men,” he said.
“Cargo is a fine way to talk about them if it makes you feel better that we bunch them up so tight,” said Marleya, “But when you talk about their lives, we have to drop the word cargo. I signed up for slavery, not murder, and there’s a moral difference.”
“Honey, there’s no difference. Go ask some of the cargo we’ve processed in the last few years whether they’d prefer slavery or death.”
“All the same, we can’t…hang on a fucking second, Hips. You said we lose cargo, or we lose men, didn’t you?”
Hips knew she’d get prickly about this. “Our options are leave here with cargo, leave here with nothing, die here…or some of us make it out with cargo and our lives. Everyone knew the risks when they came here, Marleya.”
“I can’t watch you kill our own men. I don’t want to believe I’ve given five years of my life to the kind of man who would do that.”
The words stabbed at Hips, more so because he could see they were true. He saw disgust in Marleya’s eyes. The feeling was so ripe he could taste it on his tongue, and he wanted to spit it out.
“Then we’ll sort through the cargo. Find the old and the sick, and we’ll spare them from having to travel through Toil. We’ll do it humanely. This will be better for the rest of them.”
Marleya was quiet then. Hips hoped he said the right things, but it was always hard to tell, given that he almost entirely lacked a moral compass and thus didn’t know what was good or bad. Sometimes he just had to fire an arrow blind and hope he struck the target.
But it wasn’t Marleya who spoke first. Instead, it was one of the cargo in the nearby wagon, peering out from a gap where the tarpaulin didn’t reach.
Gunar had been in worse situations than this.
At least the slavers lit fires at night and they fed them and they even gave them mugs of heated whiskey to share. They kept as joyous atmosphere as they could, following the example of Hips, their leader, who was always laughing, singing, dancing. It helped because it distracted the kids in the prison cart.
Yes, this was nothing like some of the pits of darkest hell he’d been in. Once, way before his Toil days, he’d been traveling into Bishkark, and the ultra-orthodox Karkers had accused him of smuggling anti-religious propaganda into their state. They stripped him, searched every cavity, and locked him up in a pitch-black cell filled with roaches and spiders, and Gunar spent weeks listening to the scuttles coming from places he couldn’t see.
He’d take a cage like this over his past imprisonments, and just like he’d gotten out of those, he’d find a way out of this. He had to, he couldn’t cope with feeling responsible, and he couldn’t stomach the way Helena ignored him. She’d barely looked his way for hours now.
To pass the time he watched the slavers carefully, and he noted silly decisions they had made. Like their tents, for one. They looked like they belonged to a damn army or something. Completely unsuited for the heat. Sure, they kept the winds at bay, but every second they were exposed to such harsh sunlight, the fabric was weakening.
The slavers, too, were gorging on their whiskey and beer. In a place where the sun was so hot it could suck the marrow from your bones, that was stupid. His people always said Gunar was being too harsh by only allowing them to drink alcohol when they reached Equipoint Rock, but he did it to keep them safe. Alcohol dried a man out from the inside, and this was a place where that could kill.
As buffoonish as these people were, they were still their captors, and Gunar and his people were still prisoners.
It was down to him. Not just finding a way out of this for what remained of his people, but the blame for it happening in the first place.
Sure, they were all adults. Or, in the case of the children, they had their responsible adults make their decisions for them. And they followed Gunar not through love but because he paid the most. They had weighed the gold versus the risks and made their choice.
But there were things that Gunar hadn’t said. Like how he’d heard of the storm oracle’s reputation before he hired him, and he’d gone ahead anyway. And
how for years now, every Toil trip had been riskier than the last. More casualties, more storms, almost like the desert was starting to resent Gunar and would show this against anyone who traveled with him.
When the storms had died and the slavers wagons suddenly appeared, Gunar had thought they were saved. That a miracle had been bestowed, and friendly faces had come to carry them out of Toil.
After the slavers subdued and captured them, Gunar fell into a silence. Even Helena couldn’t coax him out of it, and Lords, had she tried. Nicely, first. Then with her patented directedness.
Gunar had been deep in thought. Questions and memories accumulated over the years churned in his mind, and it was as though this imprisonment was the first chance he’d gotten to lay them all out and see them for what they were. It had been a grim business. It always is when a man really gets to know his own mind. Soon, though, Gunar found himself looking at a simple truth.
It was his fault this had happened because he’d always treated his caravaners as if they were inventory. No, not inventory. Tools. But if he was the one to get them out of it, the scales would balance out.
“Hey,” said Gunar, trying for all the world to keep the fear out of his voice. Fear was a disease, and it’d spread through the rest of his people until they lost their minds. And twenty-something people, all crammed together in a space like this…it could get brutal.
The slaver looked his way. At first glance, Gunar saw evil in the man’s eyes, but the longer he looked, the more he realized that wasn’t there. Gunar was projecting the evil based on the evil things the man had done, but the man himself didn’t look like a demon. He had a sharp jaw and a receding hairline that he’d tried to cover up artful combing, and the other, smaller details that told Gunar a lot. Calluses on his hands. Pale skin either unused to the sun or heavily guarded against it. A good posture, a leader’s way of keeping his head high, shoulders straight.
