by Thomas Green
Nancy raised her eyes, wearing a warm smile. “You too.”
Lieutenant Redeye cleared his throat. “We need to go.”
They detached, split into the squads, and headed out, soon losing track of each other among the tall trees.
The moment the lieutenant disappeared out of sight, Chief Bull unbuttoned his collar and sleeves, earning himself a sharp glare from Luna. He met her gaze, calm. “Spare me the formalities, kid. I’m not into them.”
Luna’s eyes narrowed. “By the codex you made me read, disrespecting the uniform can earn you up to fifty lashes of a whip, chief.”
Rod laughed. “Told ya Stilts is gonna fucking read the fucking codex.”
Luna smiled. “Disrespecting the codex, that’s ten lashes of a whip and a week of bilge duty.”
Chief Bull sighed. “Alright, Stilts, let me fill in some context. We are former pirates, who were captured by Admiral la Grace, and allowed to serve in his legion in exchange for our lives. And by we, I mean almost the entire 47th Company, starting with Lieutenant Redeye, formerly Captain Redeye of the Thorn Pirates.”
Thugs. Luna’s face split with a poisonous smile. “That makes sense.” She noticed Daniel became pale, so she turned to him. “Are you okay?”
“The priestly fucker’s wondering how he fucking got to be with us fuckers,” Rod pointed out.
Daniel shook his head, his voice trembling, “no.”
“We do.” Chief Bull chuckled. “The story of you refusing to wield a weapon during the boot camp is a legend of its own.”
Daniel turned red. “I hope you would forgive me asking how I ended in this company.”
The Chief nodded. “Lieutenant hates paperwork, so he wanted someone to write the reports for him and, well, there were only so many former priests in the boot camp, and so he won you in cards from Captain Hellwind.”
“Won… me?”
“The lieutenant wasn’t the only one who wanted to get his own report-writer, I mean chronicler, so they played cards over snatching you.”
Daniel smiled, his expression relaxed. “That’s not what I expected.”
Luna turned to the chief. “How did I get into the company?”
Chief Bull rubbed his chin, frowning at the memory. “During the serpent attack, our company lost the most men. You were supposed to join the company of Captain Hellwind, but the lieutenant argued you would be better placed with us. And then he won the subsequent game of cards played to decide the conflict.”
Luna ran her hands through her hair. “Does the lieutenant ever lose at cards?”
Chief Bull’s expression twisted into an awkward smile. “He did once, and that’s how we got Nancy.”
Luna slapped her face with her palm. “Why are company placements decided by games of cards?”
“Because fighting a duel over every fucking conflict was too fucking time consuming,” Rod said.
Speechless, Luna walked ahead. I’m surrounded by idiots. They crossed the wood, arriving at a sharp mountain ridge that struck out of the ground akin to a spine of an ancient monster. Where the ridge descended into the sea stood an old, stone watchtower, yet one with a firelight shining from within.
The fleet was docked beyond the forest, so the sentries didn’t see them approach and they were split into two groups to be harder to detect up close. Luna rubbed her chin. “Why is the lieutenant going on a scouting mission?”
“Good fucking question.” Rod nodded. “The fucker’s got an aether manifestation perfect for fucking scouting, so he always fucking goes when it’s fucking important.”
“This town will be the first battle of this campaign, so it would be good to start with a crushing victory,” Bull added.
Luna eyed the cliff before her. “If we tie our ropes together, I can get up and tie the rope so you can climb easily.”
Everyone reached for their backpacks to pull out the rope they had brought. Rod shoved them away and tied the ropes himself, murmuring something about incompetent landlubbers. Luna had never seen knots like those he made, but the ropes held together well.
She fixed the rope around her waist, prolonged the tips of her fingers into vicious claws and leapt at the stone face of the mountain. By catching her claws into the cracks, Luna scaled the hundred feet tall cliff within minutes, using only her arms to lift herself as her armored body felt weightless. Without as much as panting, she tied the rope around a nearby rock and tugged onto it to signal the others they could climb.
Chief Bull climbed up the cliff by the rope with ease. He greeted her with a smile. “Dan will need help.”
Luna arched an eyebrow.
“He’s trying to hide it, but he almost pissed himself when he saw the mountain, so I don’t think he ever climbed anything before.”
“Okay.” She peeked down to see Daniel was already climbing, tightly squeezing the rope among his fingers, barely advancing. Luna dropped her backpack and caught her claws by the cliff to start sliding down. She forced her aether into the claws, making them screech as they scratched the stone, which allowed her to control the speed of her descent.
Luna dug the claws of her right hand into a crack to stop when she reached Daniel. Despite being five feet above the ground, he held the rope as if his life depended on it, panting, his eyes wide. “First time climbing?”
“I’m fine,” he stammered.
She met his hazel gaze. “Come here.” She grabbed him with her left hand and turned to move him to her. “Hold on to my back.”
“I can handle this,” he said.
Luna sighed. “Look, you don’t have to act tough before me or anyone else on the ship. We are all good at something, but nobody is good at everything, so grab my back and let me carry you up.”
Hesitantly, he caught a hand around her neck, then the second one, and then he wrapped his legs by the waist. An unfamiliar warmth filled Luna. Not knowing what to say, she scaled the cliff and let Chief Bull help the utterly embarrassed Daniel down from her back.
Rod climbed up after them with a wild grin on his face. They crossed the ridge and saw the town of Vlatton spreading in the bay beneath. Counting about five to ten thousand lives, it was hugging a port full of fishing ships, calm and peaceful in the moonlight.
Chief Bull motioned to Daniel. “It’s your time to shine, for we need a sketch of what we see, as accurate as possible.”
Daniel sat down by a rock, pulled a papyrus, a vial of ink and a quill from his backpack and put the leather-bound tome he carried on the chain over his shoulder onto the stone, using it as a table.
He spread papyrus over the book, dipped the quill and started drawing. Luna marveled at the speed and precision with which he drew. Every line he made was as long and as curved as it needed to be. The sketch was turning into an image of the town before them at a breathtaking pace.
Bull and Rod sat by the side and started playing cards. Luna joined them to let Daniel work in peace, yet she couldn’t tear her eyes away from him drawing. She wondered if she could ever do something like this. To create instead of laying things to waste. To do art.
Chief Bull cleared his throat. “Have you ever measured how strong you are?”
“What do you mean, Chief?”
“With the full gear, Dan weighs over two hundred pounds, yet you carried him up the cliff as if he weighed nothing.”
Luna shrugged. “I don’t know. I was always strong, and I use a lot of strengthening aether, why?”
He nodded. “It’s good to be aware of where things come from.”
***
Daniel finished the drawing within a few hours, turning the papyrus into a lifelike painting of the town. They packed their belongings and prepared to descend.
Chief Bull stopped them. “I glimpsed a group of local soldiers moving east from the city, so we aren’t going down yet. With a bit of bad luck, they ran into Lieutenant Redeye, who might use our help to get out.”
Luna noticed nothing. She guessed the others paid much more attention th
an she thought. She grinned. “Insubordination. That’s up to a hundred lashes of a whip and a demotion, Chief.”
Daniel, Rod, and the chief burst out into laughter.
“Good one.” Chief Bull motioned forward. “Now let’s move.”
They crept by the ridge, turning a quick pace into a slow crawl as they noticed the local soldiers, dressed in black-gray uniforms, combing the countryside by the mountain ridge. The area itself was a forest, but not as dense as the one they passed before.
Chief Bull pointed at a tree with two symmetrically broken branches across the meadow that lay beneath them. “See that?”
Luna nodded.
“It’s a symbol we use, and it means the Lieutenant is stuck somewhere in that patch of forest with a wounded man.”
Luna counted the soldiers, seeing they were about thirty. “Chief, can we kill them?”
“We have to.”
“If we want them not to alert the town, then it would be best if I went by myself.”
Chief Bull gave her an appreciating stare. “Go do your thing, Stilts.”
Daniel gaped at her. “Are you sure?”
She was sure. Nancy might have been in trouble, so she was not willing to risk involving the others. Especially not Daniel. “Yeah, killing is the one thing I’m good at.” She caught the face of the cliff with her claws and slid down, silent as death. Once on the grass, Luna drew her shortsword since she did not want to leave behind her signature claw marks.
She reached within to draw her aether, strengthening her entire body, weapons, and armor. With a swift crawl through the high grass, she found the backs of the two nearest soldiers. She sprung her muscles to leap up and slashed their napes, sending them to the ground without noise while disappearing back into the grass.
A group of four soldiers approached to examine what made the thudding sound. Luna bolted to them, stabbing the closest man’s throat before he screamed. The others shouted and tried to attack her. In vain. She weaved between their blades while introducing her sword to their throats.
Luna heard steps approaching. She leapt to a tree, caught herself by the bark and swung around to reach the backs of another group of soldiers. They whirled to defend themselves, but their swords bounced off her armor as they weren’t strengthened enough to pierce through her defenses.
She cleaved through the men and dashed toward the next group. The soldiers scattered to run as they noticed her approach. They ran fast, but she was faster. Luna blasted through the forest, taking one life after another until she neither saw nor heard any soldiers to kill.
The surrounding woods stood stained in blood that poisoned the air with its stench. She withdrew her aether back into her heart. Like a thousand-ton hammer, tiredness hit her, forcing her to catch herself by the knees, panting.
To maintain maximum strengthening was too exhausting to use in anything other than a duel. This was what, ten minutes? Yet she was almost out of aether. She glimpsed Lieutenant Redeye standing up through bushes from a dugout by an old willow. Luna straightened her back to salute. “Lieutenant.”
“At ease.” He reached down lift Willem, who had a broken shin with the bone sticking out through his trousers.
Luna’s leg hurt from the mere sight. She approached to help the lieutenant carry the wounded man. “Where are the others?”
“At the ridge.” Lieutenant Redeye motioned forward. “And be careful how much strength you use. Battles take hours, so if you gas yourself in the first fifteen minutes, you will die.”
Luna nodded. “Thank you, sir.”
They walked among the trees and soon saw Bull and Rod helping Sparks and Nancy with scaling the ridge. Luna’s heart leapt when she saw Nancy struggling with the rope. She exhaled, the pressure falling from her shoulders.
“I will take him up,” Luna said and pried Willem out of the lieutenant’s hands.
Willem forced out a smile. “I’m fine. I can get up by myself.”
“Shut up and stop bleeding on the uniform.” She moved him to her back, making him wrap his arms around her neck and legs by the waist. Luna leapt at the stone wall and climbed up within moments. Once on top, she put Willem down, and Daniel rushed to him.
She slid down to where Nancy was climbing, stopping in front of her. With a broad smile, Nancy leaned forward, wrapping herself around Luna. With heart pumping in a frenzy, Luna scaled the cliff to get onto the ridge. Luna’s knees wobbled, making her fall. Nancy caught her before she hit her ground and placed her down as gently as she could, almost falling beneath Luna’s weight. With a dreamy smile and absent gaze, Luna watched Nancy as she went to Willem.
Daniel was the one to examine the wound. “I will need to put this back, for the longer it stays like this, the harder will it be for the healers to fix you.”
Willem gritted his teeth and nodded. Daniel moved his hand along the broken leg and pushed. The bone popped back into the leg and Willem released a shout of pain.
Daniel made a makeshift splint to hold the leg while using the cloth that initially held his rations to wrap the wound. Nancy reached into her backpack for a balm to rub into the injury. After Willem’s leg was fixed and wrapped in bandages, they crossed to the other side of the ridge where they lowered the rope once more.
Luna gritted her teeth and sprung to her feet, catching up in a moment. She didn’t bother asking and grabbed Willem to slide down the cliff while holding him. Once done, she climbed up and helped Nancy get down as well before she did another round with Daniel.
Her arms, legs, and back hurt, searing with pain while her mind became cloudy. Yet there was this strange sensation of heat spreading through her body, the feeling she had never known and refused to lose.
As they were making their way to the boat, Willem turned pale and started shaking. They stopped while Daniel put his palm onto his forehead. “He has an acute fever… the wound must have gotten infected.” His shoulders slumped. “I cannot do anything for him, and I am not sure it won’t be too late by the time we reach the boat.”
An awkward moment of silence stole the air. Nancy was the first to speak. “I can make an elixir to stop the infection, but I will need with collecting the plants.”
Lieutenant Redeye nodded. “We do that.”
She described to them what plants she needed. They set a time to return and spread through the forest. Luna could barely recognize her feet, much less individual plants, but she searched anyway. The remainders of her strength vanished, making her collapse by a tree.
The beast within her huffed into her mind. ‘You should have eaten some soldiers to get back aether.’
I can’t do that anymore, Wolfie. Not in front of them.
The beast scoffed. ‘This sentiment is impractical.’
They are the first people to ever see me as a human, not as a monster. I will not lose that.
Luna gritted her teeth and dragged herself to her feet. She roamed through the forest, holding herself by the trunks not to fall. She stumbled upon a meadow. At its midst, Nancy sat on the ground with a dozen snakes rearing before her. Luna’s heart leapt to her throat, the burst of adrenaline clearing her vision.
Nancy glanced at her. “Shh! Don’t scare them.” She turned to the snakes, her lips releasing a hissing sound, one eerily similar to a language.
Luna stared at her, eyes wide, mouth gaping.
Nancy stretched her arms toward the cobra before her. She patted its head and put a small jar to its mouth. The cobra put its teeth by the edge of the jar, letting its poison drip in. Nancy hissed more, and three extra snakes joined the cobra in pouring their poison into the jar.
She turned to Luna. “The elixir involves snake venom.” She blushed. “Sorry, I didn’t know how to tell you.”
Luna smiled. “Don’t be… this is… amazing.” She sagged to the ground, leaning on a tree.
Half an hour later, Nancy hissed something, and the snakes dispersed. She sealed the jar and approached Luna. “Let me help you get back.”
Luna clenched her muscles and clawed her way up to her feet. Her knees gave out, making her fall onto Nancy. She caught her, put Luna’s armpit over her shoulder and helped her return to the gathering spot where she gently laid her down by a chestnut tree. She ran her fingers by Luna’s face, leaving behind an electrifying sensation that made Luna’s heart pump in a frenzy. “You sure know how to make me worried.”
Luna’s face flushed. “I’m… sorry.”
Nancy chuckled. “I forgive you.”
The others came soon. Sparks, Daniel, and Rod found nothing. The lieutenant held three plants, but Chief Bull carried a sack full of flowers.
Rod threw the chief a snarky smile. “Don’t fucking say it.”
The chief kept silence and handed the sack to Nancy. She rummaged through it, finding everything she needed. They all watched her crush a blend of leaves in her mortar while pouring in the mixture of snake venom from a jar. After a while of mixing, she gave it to Willem to drink it. He did, his face twisting at the taste.
Nancy formed an awkward smile. “Sorry. I don’t have the things I would need to make it taste better.”
Willem drank it to the last drop. While Sparks and Daniel half-carried Luna, they walked back to the boats. Even before they reached them, Willem’s fever subsided, and his skin tone returned to normal. Lieutenant Redeye grabbed the map from Daniel, remarking he needed a sketch, not a painting.
They rowed back to the ship where Luna couldn’t climb up the net. Everything was so sore, numb and tired, that it took all her strength to remain conscious. Lieutenant Redeye carried Willem to the infirmary while the rest of them headed to the armory. After they reached the compartment, she crashed onto a bench, covered by a cold sweat.
Nancy and Daniel flocked to her. “You sure know how to overdo it,” he told her with a broad smile after Bull and Rod put their armor and weapons back into their place and left.
Luna wanted to speak, but the idea seemed too tiring, so she nodded instead.
Nancy stared at her, full of worry. “Can you get out of the armor?”
After she didn’t reply, Nancy, Daniel, and Sparks helped her take off her armor and return it and the weapons to their racks. Luna tried to stand up, but couldn’t. They supported her from beneath her shoulders to start taking her back to the sleeping hammock.
