by Traci Loudin
“Jorrim?” he whispered.
A hand landed on his shoulder. “I can’t believe you’re awake.”
“Hush now,” Soledad said. “Not a moment too soon, Korreth. It’s time to go.”
Together they helped him to his feet. Korreth blinked until he could focus on Jorrim’s worried expression. Soledad had disappeared.
“That can’t be right,” Jorrim muttered. “Lift up your shirt.”
“What do you mean?”
Jorrim motioned him to be quieter and ran his pale hands over the dark skin of Korreth’s stomach. When he met Korreth’s eyes, Jorrim looked bewildered.
“I thought she was going too far, saying you’re ready to travel. She must have taken your bandages off yesterday. The wound—and your infection—are already gone.”
“They were just some shallow cuts from a cat’s claws.”
Jorrim shook his head. “Trust me. Your wounds were much more serious than that.”
Korreth tapped his forearm. She is Ancient. And her spell is strong. Now tell me what is happening.
Korreth saw no break in the forest in any direction. He’d been sleeping under a lean-to concealed by logs and leaves. Beside it lay a makeshift litter, made of tree limbs and reeds.
Jorrim continued in a barely audible voice, “Ever since we left the grasslands, we’ve been chased by what we believe to be mutated wild boar. They’re fast and can even climb if the trees are big enough.”
His friend’s worried expression confirmed the gravity of the situation.
“Help me load the litter with supplies,” Soledad said. She piled a stew pot and four bags atop it. Jorrim added several large canteens and one of the SCLs. The other he slung over his shoulder.
They must have found somewhere to steal or trade for supplies while he slept. “Anything we need from inside?” he asked.
“No,” Soledad said. “Leave it. Let’s go.”
Jorrim grabbed the two tree limbs on the front of the litter and motioned for Korreth to do the same on the back side. When Korreth bent down to lift it, the weight surprised him.
“You sure you’re okay?” Jorrim asked. “I don’t want you to tear open your wounds.”
“He’s fine,” Soledad said before he could answer. “Let’s go.”
They crept through the forest, watching for undergrowth that might make too much noise in their passage. Korreth had trouble imagining how far they’d traveled while he was out, but he didn’t dare voice the question.
Korreth took a deep breath, enjoying the crisp flavor of the forest despite the tension in the air. Compared to the desiccated air of the drylands, the forest was alive with a thousand scents of trees, flowers, animal dung, and standing water. The temperature remained cool under the canopy. He shivered as a breeze skimmed his arms.
Soledad’s voice barely carried. “Hurry up.” The birdsong nearly drowned her out. “It’s not much further to the edge of the forest.”
A brighter spot emerged in the forest ahead where the trees thinned out. Korreth breathed easier until he heard a crashing sound behind them.
“Run.” Jorrim pulled Korreth ahead with the litter.
He struggled to keep hold and match Jorrim’s pace. They crushed undergrowth to catch up to Soledad, in a dead sprint far ahead.
From behind came guttural growling, reminiscent of a bear.
No longer trying to keep quiet, he shouted up to Jorrim, “Is that the boars?”
“Yes,” he shouted back.
Soledad aged into a young woman as she started to pant. When she sidestepped a dense patch of bushes and thistles, they followed.
“I thought they would sound more like pigs.” Korreth glanced back and glimpsed bear-like shapes in the underbrush behind them. The growling, groaning noise increased.
“Stop wasting your breath,” Jorrim called. “Drop it.” He nearly pulled the litter from Korreth’s grip.
“What?” he said as Soledad kept running.
A fallen tree crossed their path, and Jorrim tossed his end of the litter toward it. “Leave the litter.” He unslung the SCL from his shoulder.
Korreth dropped his end of the litter. It couldn’t be long before the beasts caught up to them. Shivers ran up his spine as he imagined the boars drawing closer, and he grabbed the SCL.
Korreth and Jorrim jumped over the trunk and made a break for the edge of the forest. Despite their breakneck speed, the open area ahead seemed no closer. Korreth watched his footing to be sure their flight didn’t end with him flailing into the ground, trampled by the mutated boars. In his peripheral vision he saw Jorrim move a red clip to a more accessible slot on his bandoleer.
“I’m going to draw them off!” Jorrim ran at an angle away from Korreth and Soledad. At his shout, Korreth heard the guttural groans veer off as well.
“No, we’re almost there!” he said, but Jorrim kept going.
Two shapes as tall as Korreth barreled through the undergrowth toward him. He stopped and braced his arm against a tree. Struggling to control his breathing, he sighted the rifle. As soon as two huge tusks broke through the undergrowth, he fired.
A red ball launched from the weapon and buried itself in the shoulder of the beast, but the monster came onward. Its grunts and groans continued, not acknowledging the wound Korreth had inflicted. He pulled the trigger again, and the next red ball tore through the creature’s skull.
The second boar closed in on Soledad, and she fired crossbow bolts repeatedly at its face. Korreth fired and caught the beast perfectly through the side of the head. He had a momentary view of the tree on the other side as the boar lunged forward. Soledad jumped to the side, trying to get out of the way of the corpse’s momentum. She almost made it, but its muzzle slammed into her body.
Korreth rushed forward and tried pushing the boar off. Blood pounded in his ears, but he couldn’t budge it—the animal must have been at least twice his weight, if not three times.
Soledad lost years, trying to give Korreth space to work, but its weight pinned her regardless. “I’m fine, I’m fine! I’ll try to get out, but for now I’m safe. Go help Jorrim!”
The force behind that command knocked the air from his lungs, and he wasted no time arguing as the wind surrounded him. His legs pumped, and he plunged heedlessly through the undergrowth toward the last place he’d seen Jorrim.
Following the boars’ trail proved much simpler than fleeing from them. Low, gravelly growls ending in high-pitched groans carried over the distance. Not for the first time, he wished he possessed a Changeling power, even something as simple as superhuman speed. The grunts and grumblings of the boars soon grew louder.
“Jorrim! On my way, Jorrim! Jorrim!” He hoped his shouts might attract some of the boars back toward him, perhaps giving Jorrim a better opportunity to kill a few or get away.
He glanced at his gun to check the ammunition. When he lifted his gaze, he couldn’t help but blink a few times before bringing the gun up to fire.
Couched in the limbs of a lone tree, Jorrim fired down on the mutated boars in the small clearing below. A few of the smaller ones tried to climb the tree after him. Their feet didn’t end in the split hooves Korreth expected to see, but instead in paw-like hands, complete with both opposable thumbs and claws.
Korreth and Jorrim both shot the one that had climbed highest, and the shock of two balls of energy tearing into its flesh sent it flying. That drew the attention of some of the larger boars. Korreth took down the first one easily, but the second sidestepped when he fired.
A boar with a splotchy brown coat came at him from the side, impressing upon him how smart the creatures were. They had become a pack, capable of forming a group strategy.
Korreth fired point-blank into the splotchy brown boar’s muzzle. The red ball tore through its mouth, tongue, and throat. He stepped neatly aside as the body landed. Its partner tried to turn aside, but couldn’t slow down enough to arrest its momentum. It fell against the corpse, giving him enough time to dispose
of it as well.
Jorrim waved at him, and Korreth carefully approached, shooting and killing another boar in his path. He struggled to hear his friend over the remaining boars’ groaning.
“They’re going after her!”
“Let’s kill these and get moving, then!” he shouted back.
Upon hearing his voice, a grayish boar charged Korreth. Before he could aim, Jorrim shot it dead in its tracks. The air around Korreth tightened. He didn’t want to leave his friend behind, but before he could say anything else, his legs took him back the way he’d come. He scanned the forest as he crashed through the undergrowth, gun first.
As the boars behind him grew quieter, Korreth strained to hear the ones ahead. “Mistress! Where are you?”
Thunder rolled through the forest toward him, and Korreth sighted his rifle toward it. Soledad leaped through underbrush with two boars on her heels. He sprinted to the side to get a better angle, keeping an eye out for others.
The brown boar changed targets and charged him. Korreth waited until he could distinctly see its tusks, and then fired between its eyes. He didn’t watch it go down, but fired haphazardly at the gray one, hitting its flank. Its leg crumpled beneath it, and it fell.
As it struggled to rise, Soledad pushed through the underbrush toward him and cried out as a branch lashed at her eye. She slid toward pre-adolescence, and Korreth caught her and flung her onto his back in one smooth motion. He ran.
“They have Jorrim up a tree,” he said. “We have to help him.”
Her pudgy toddler arms struggled to hold on as Korreth pushed through briars and low-hanging foliage. Over the sound of their movements, he heard a crack and a crash from ahead, and then the unmistakable sound of wood creaking and groaning against its own weight.
Through the chaotic crossing of limbs and leaves ahead, he saw a tree fall. Jorrim flew through the air.
With toddler-Soledad still on his back, Korreth burst through the underbrush. Jorrim fell, reached for a branch of a neighboring tree as the one he’d been in plunged toward the ground. His grip slipped, and he landed on the thickly carpeted forest floor. Two smaller boars fell with him. Their legs churned against the undergrowth as they charged Jorrim’s prone form. Korreth lifted his SCL, fired, and fired more wildly.
In his peripheral vision, Korreth noticed another boar coming up on his right and a second closing in from behind. Soledad fired over his shoulder, this time with a small pistol.
“Please be okay, Jorrim,” he whispered.
The small projectiles from Soledad’s gun tore through the face and neck of a brown boar. She kept shooting, the small bullets causing superficial damage. When several tore through its eyes, the brown boar eventually skidded to a stop, much closer than Korreth would’ve liked.
“I’m almost out,” Soledad said in his ear.
He turned toward the other boar and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
Korreth frantically patted his chest. His bandoleer was gone. Soledad fired at the gray beast, with little effect. Its face a ruin of bleeding holes and shredded skin, it continued its charge.
With no other choice, Korreth sprinted away. When he passed a thick bole, he jumped to the side, and then circled back toward Jorrim. The gray boar lumbered past. As it tried to swerve and follow, its front knees buckled and its huge tusks plowed furrows through the ferns and moss.
Korreth didn’t wait to see if it stayed down and dashed toward his friend. Jorrim lay beneath a small boar carcass, probably weighing less than him. The rise and fall of his chest moved the boar’s body. Korreth fell to his knees beside him and pushed it off. “You’re lucky, Jorrim.”
He glanced around, suddenly remembering there could still be more boars. He slipped a clip free of Jorrim’s bandoleer and slid it into his own rifle.
“I’ll watch for boars; you check Jorrim.” Soledad’s toddler voice seemed at odds with the situation at hand. Korreth had forgotten she was there.
Though covered in blood, Jorrim still breathed, so he began checking for broken bones. A long gash extended from his upper chest to his ribs where the boar’s tusk had skimmed across his body. Although the wound still bled, its edges had already clotted, much faster than Korreth would have expected. But grime and coarse boar hairs marred the wound. Jorrim’s face and arms were badly scratched from being propelled through tree branches in the fall.
“How is he?”
“No broken bones, but that cut needs washed and sealed before it gets infected.”
Soledad hopped off his shoulder and grew a little larger. “That’s not good. And he may have a serious concussion.”
“What?”
She looked around. “I don’t know where my satchel of herbs is…” She turned into a ten-year-old and patted herself down, and then stomped a foot. “Nothing. It must have fallen sometime during the chase. We need to get it and the litter.”
“Keep an eye out for ammunition too,” he said. “My clasp broke.”
Korreth pulled his friend’s shirt closed and then covered him with leaves and twigs. After he finished, he and Soledad continued through the forest in the direction where she’d been pinned. Red clips were scattered near the body of the boar. They must have fallen as he struggled to free her from its weight.
“I think all the boars must be dead, or they would’ve found us by now,” she muttered. “If another herd like that attacks us, we’ll be out of ammunition until we have time to recharge. Kaia’s base is across the grasslands. She can help us if I can’t find the satchel.”
As she continued searching for her satchel, Korreth left her behind to return to the litter. Once he found it, he picked up one end and dragged the other through the underbrush, steering around bushes when he could and glancing over his shoulder every few seconds.
Something crashed through the underbrush, making him jump.
“It’s just me,” Soledad said, now a young woman with beads clacking in her hair.
Korreth hurried toward the undisturbed mound of tree limbs and leaves. He pushed the foliage off Jorrim and laid the litter beside him. Soledad moved the supplies, and together they gently rolled Jorrim onto the litter.
While Soledad piled supplies and canteens around Jorrim, Korreth tried to remain alert as exhaustion set in. His hands shook when he grabbed the front of the litter. Soledad slung a few packs across her shoulders, and they set off to the east.
Korreth pushed through the foliage, letting leaves and limbs smack him in the face and shoulders as he dragged the heavy litter behind him, its legs leaving ruts in the dirt and moss. He marveled at how resourceful Jorrim and their mistress had been. He couldn’t imagine Soledad pulling the heavy litter—but it was hard to imagine her risking herself leading the boars away, either.
The forest thinned out, as did the undergrowth, until they trod on thick grass. Soledad dropped the bags she’d carried. “Let’s clean his wounds.”
With part of Jorrim’s clothing and a canteen, she scrubbed, making Korreth wince with sympathy. Jorrim didn’t even moan in his sleep. Except for the fresh blood oozing from every scratch, she appeared to be washing a corpse.
Soledad rinsed out the cloth and rubbed it over Jorrim’s torso again. “Take off your shirt. I’ll need it to bind him.”
He did as she asked. Her eyes gravitated toward his naked chest, causing his hairs to stand up.
“Glad to see you’re all healed up, at least. Without the satchel, there’s not much I can do for Jorrim.”
She’d been looking at his old wound. Korreth felt like an idiot for thinking stupid thoughts at a time like this. He wondered if her spell beguiled him into liking her—he’d never been able to hate her entirely. If so, its manipulation gave him all the more reason to despise her for everything she’d put them through.
She tore off part of his shirt and then bound it to Jorrim’s body by wrapping other strips of both men’s shirts around his chest. Korreth helped prop him up as she did so.
As she tied the last
one, she said, “We need to avoid using any more ammunition unnecessarily. The SCLs are our best bet against Zen, and he could show up any time.”
She laid the spent clips around Jorrim to let them recharge as Korreth took up his position at the front of the litter again.
“Why did you do all this?” Korreth blurted.
Soledad picked up the remaining bags of supplies and led the way. “What do you mean?”
“Why do you care for us like this? Why do you heal us? Why not just leave us behind?”
“I need you. We’ve been over this.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Tell me the real reason.”
Paralleling her path, Korreth let the silence weigh on her, sensing she might give him a real answer for once.
Soledad’s eyes lit on his for a split second before she went back to watching her step. “Jorrim was also suspicious of my motives. The spell is very specific. You can’t kill me, and you can’t kill each other, and you can’t commit suicide. But if one of you were to die from some other means…”
She hesitated. Korreth found himself holding his breath.
“I’d lose you both,” she said.
His hands tightened around the litter’s arms. “What do you mean? The other would die as well? What a horrible sp—”
“No, no,” she interrupted. “If one of you dies, it breaks the spell. The other is freed.”
Korreth was taken aback. But then he supposed he shouldn’t have expected magnanimity from her. Her motives were far simpler: she refused to let one slave die and one escape.
“And if you were to die?” Though Korreth heard his voice rising, his dismay made him ask, “What then? Would we both be freed?”
“Does it really matter? You can’t kill me, and the spell forces you to help me survive.”
He ground his teeth together. “But the spell permits me to wish you dead.”
Korreth concentrated on dragging the litter through increasingly tall grasses without dumping Jorrim off. He couldn’t expect their mistress to lend a hand and help carry the other end of the litter.
