by EM Kaplan
“One more night’s walk, I think,” she said, not feeling optimistic or hopeful, but calmly assessing her primrose discovery. No, the jumping feeling in her belly was due to other feelings. But she had no time for the idle meandering of her silly, romantic mind. She was head of her household. As such, she had responsibilities and commitments that far outweighed her girlish fantasies.
“Should we tell them?” Deni asked, gesturing to the little girls ahead of them who were already dragging their feet, walking like soulless creatures described in the tales from their elders. The gollet were once men, women, and children like any others, according to the stories. Some had their souls stolen by devilish creatures, some by other greedy humans who wanted more than one. For whatever reason, and many stories existed, the gollet had no souls. Some could walk undetected among people. Others were marked by decay and their foul stench as their bodies died.
Her sisters trudged along in rows of two, each having been assigned a partner with whom to hold hands for safety. From here, she could see that even the stiff, proud shoulders of her sister, Lena, drooped with exhaustion. Zunee didn’t want to give them false hope if she were wrong. What if it were just a tiny pocket of moisture that had allowed the primrose seeds to fasten themselves to the soil here? What if it was a fluke? Watching her sisters’ dusty brown feet shuffling in the twilight, her heart sank inside of her chest, almost down into her hollow stomach.
Leaving Deni and jogging alongside the line of her sisters, Zunee clapped her hands for their attention. “Good news, little ones,” she said, loud enough for them all to hear, but not enough that her voice would echo in the now-gathering darkness. “Deni has told me that when he was on on the ridge, he spotted water less than a day ahead. Our journey is almost over. Before long, we will be finished walking for a while. And just maybe we will find a place to build our new home.”
From the back of the line, she heard Deni’s distinct groan of disbelief that she’d pinned the false hope on a supposed discovery of his, blaming him if things went wrong. But it was soon drowned out by the voices of her sisters whispering, happy and relieved. Their small feet picked up, energy restored for now. After all, they were almost home.
So her lie was worth it, she thought, at least for now.
Chapter 21
Behind Ott, explosions continued to thunder, rocking the ground underfoot. He’d counted at least a dozen booms, and they still came, percussing against the sky. Twelve explosions meant at least that many buildings had been destroyed…from the bottom up. Countless people in them had been injured or killed. Navio would be changed forever this night. Ott led his companions toward the edge of Navio, hoping to reach the woods before they were buried under the charred remains of the buildings that were collapsing around them. If his memory hadn’t failed him, they had three more dusty intersections to cross until they reached the forest line.
A tavern with a picture of a cat on its sign was on their left—he remembered venturing into it once and had always regretted it. The Yowling Cat. Less than halfway through a tankard of watery ale, he’d lost his chair to a brawler and gained some gruesome, disfiguring facial bruising as well—temporary marks, thank Lutra, or his sister would have killed him. He’d looked like a rotten squash for a week afterward. Aha, the pub was still standing. Like a minion of the bug god, Insectoj, the miserable place would remain standing while all else burned to the ground, he thought with disgust.
“Come this way,” he said, trying to keep the urgency out of his voice—somewhat impossible considering the charred bits of roof thatching and glowing embers that showered down on them. Each explosion behind them, which rocked the ground under their feet, spurred him onward. Reminding himself of Marget’s short stature and Rav’s extra cargo—namely the child—he had to force himself to keep a moderate pace. If Mel had been alongside him, she would have outrun him on her long, lean legs. He fought the pang in his chest and kept moving. It was no good wishing she were here beside him if he didn’t manage to keep himself or their friends alive.
Two steps past the nasty pub, Marget yelped when it collapsed into the ground. Another gaping sinkhole opened up to swallow it, billowing the sulfurous stench of trogs. Bookman gave a strangled shout and jumped out of the way, scrambled over the crumbling edge. Ott gave him a hand up, hauling the man with ease onto firmer footing. They stood panting a minute as they recovered, exchanging horrified but relieved looks. Ott tipped his chin, and they were off again. Two more streets to the south, he was sure of it. He swatted the smoke and dust out of his face as they jogged along. “Well, at least one good thing has come out of this. That place was vile. It should have been burned down decades ago,” he said, brushing a burning cinder off his shoulder.
As the clouds cleared, a familiar odor hit his nose that caused a tremor of dread to crawl up his spine. Poised to run, Ott’s vision flooded with red, darker than the flickering light from the fires. Ott listened for the telltale sounds of trogs, the animalistic snuffing and chuffing of their snouts and the heavy clomping of their hoofed feet. The group paused, frozen in place, but no thunderous sound came from the fresh pit that had opened up in the place of the Yowling Cat. A flashback of the trog attack on Cillary Keep flooded Ott’s mind, making him gasp for breath.
Massive black forms, thick-hided bodies swarming from the pit that had caved in the floor of the ballroom at the Keep. The broken, lifeless bodies of young men and women in their finery strewn among the rubble. Limbs gnawed. Victims dragged into the pit. The noxious fumes stinging Ott’s nose and eyes. In his mind, he could hear their raspy chuffing, the heavy stomp of their hooves so like those of horses. He listened for it now, expecting it.
Instead, they heard a shuffling that sounded faint. Almost…human. A small human at that. Ott heard a murmur, a quiet groan, and then a cry of frustration, all female in nature. Along with a heavy dragging noise, a scrape along the ground that sent shivers up his spine.
“This could get rough. Get ready to run. And stay back,” Ott commanded, putting up an arm. He pointed at Bookman to reinforce his order, knowing full well that the man would throw himself into the fray to protect Rav and the baby girl, despite his diminished stature and reduced physical ability. Though the man had been a trog once, he was just a man now, and an average sized one at that. He didn’t know his own limitations when motivated by the need to protect his mate.
Approaching with caution, one foot at a time, he neared the new pit, trying to avoid caving in the edge, and peered over the side. Reaching back for his axe, he held it ready. Whether it be one trog or many that emerged, he would do his best to protect his group. He scanned the black pit for signs of movement. At last, he saw something. Balancing on the balls of his feet, he crouched, ready to spring.
The shuffling grew louder, but he couldn’t make out the form. Lines emerged from the darkness. A slender body, stooped over, drew closer, dragging something with it. The figure halted, turned toward him, the whites of its eyes looking up at him. Her long hair lay plastered to her head, hanks of it blackened by soot. She carried a mud-spattered dagger in her hand. Behind her, she dragged a body by its arm—a man’s body. She looked up at him again. Though the rest of her was covered in muck, he knew those eyes.
Those eyes had once bored holes in his back when he’d rejected their sable-haired owner, though not out of spite…No, he’d rejected this girl because he’d just met Mel, who was all he’d ever thought about ever since.
But those eyes…he’d first seen them on a northern mountain top, pleading with him for a different reason altogether. She’d been picking up scattered pots and pans from the roadway as pilgrims streamed by, unwilling to stop and help. Her caretaker, Jonas, had been negligent in matters of her well-being. Ott had pitied her then. Now, he was astounded to see her here, muddied and bedraggled when they all thought she had died. But here she was, in a trog pit of all places.
“Help me,” Treyna said.
Chapter 22
Bookman and Ott
lowered themselves into the pit, half-sliding, half-falling, mindful of their precarious situation. An influx of trogs might still be imminent. Burning buildings were crumbling around them. More sinkholes had opened up. In short, Navio was under siege and could be reduced to rubble within a matter of hours.
“Who is this?” Ott said, looking at the man’s body that Treyna had been dragging behind her. No easy feat. She was a tiny woman, and the man was large, not quite as tall as Ott but just as broad.
“It’s Harro,” she told them, as Ott boosted her out of the pit, careful neither to hurt her nor to have his hands on her too long. Rav and Marget reached for her hands to help haul her upward. “Be careful with him. He’s close to death. His legs have been broken, both of them.” She said it as a matter of fact, reminding Ott once again of the harsh hand that fate had dealt her. She’d seen too many ugly parts of life for someone of so few years. Perhaps it was for the best that she’d left her children with Rob and Jenny up north. Even in the ensuing months, Treyna’s children had bloomed and grown active, almost indistinguishable from Jenny’s own boys. Even the mute one had been coaxed to say a word or two. Ott had trouble remembering all their names since his sister had begun giving them identical haircuts. Shorn as sheep, more like. He’d often wondered if they missed their birth mother.
Harro. Rob’s right-hand man who had been taken the night of the trog attack on the big house in the north. Another of theirs who had gone missing that night, no remains found and assumed dead. Though it was a relief to learn that the man had not been slaughtered and eaten by the monsters, Ott thought he looked dead enough now. What had he suffered since that night? A quicker end might have been preferable. At Cillary, some of the dead girls had been dragged down into the noxious pit. Some of them had had limbs gnawed off. The thought of it turned Ott’s stomach, and he had to stop to take a breath.
“Can you help me lift him up?” Ott asked Bookman, who nodded and uttered a hoarse yes, even though Ott could see him with his red-tinted vision. If they spent anymore time in this hole, they’d both be meals for trogs, who weren’t picky about the source of their food. They even ate each other in the heat of battle, so Bookman was as fair game as the rest of them.
With Bookman’s assistance, Ott heaved the unconscious man over his shoulder and made his way back to the edge of the pit. He wasn’t sure how he would ascend to the top, but as he assessed the height, Bookman got on his hands and knees and offered Ott a step made from the flat of his back. Ott was doubtful the smaller man could take their weight, but there was no time for reassuring any of them. Stepping up, he heaved Harro over the edge with a monumental thrust. The three women at the top grabbed at the wounded man’s limbs and pulled up, nearly dropping him but for Treyna’s iron grasp. It looked as if she were attached to the man’s very skin and body.
Ott stepped back down onto the pit floor and helped Bookman to his feet. “Nice work. You go up next,” Ott said. He saw on the man’s face the beginnings of protest, but the question was moot as far as Ott was concerned. Bookman needed assistance getting up, but Ott would not. So he grabbed the man by the hips and tossed him straight up toward the edge, where Bookman grasped the side and hauled himself the rest of the way up.
Taking a deep breath, Ott scanned the wall of the pit look for a handhold. Just as he made the first step up, a gust of foul odor hit him from behind. Then, the horrid sounds came.
“Lutra on a spit. They’re coming. Run south for the forest,” Ott shouted up to the rest of the group, his voice hoarse from strain and smoke.
Bookman’s head appeared in the opening above him. Ott appreciated the quiet man’s concern, but if they all died, it would be pointless. “Go, damn you. Take them. Leave Harro. You won’t be able to move fast enough. Just go.”
The sounds of the beasts came up through the hole behind Ott. He cursed again and grabbed for the next handhold, his feet scrabbling in the loose crumbling soil. Clods of dirt hit his face as part of the pit wall came down on him.
Then the sound of heavy footsteps came behind him. A hand, thick fingers and strong grip, took hold of the back of his tunic and his axe sheath, yanking him off the wall back down into the pit. Another rough-skinned hand grabbed the back of his neck and thrust him to the dirt.
“Not this again,” he groaned. He’d been at the bottom of a trog dogpile once before. Only then, Mel had been there to push them away from him. She’d saved him. But she wasn’t here to rescue him now. In fact, she could be at the bottom of the Uptdon River, he thought, anger flaring. Her eyes open and unblinking. Her face pale.
In his mind, her face turned red. Blood red. The faint light he could see coming from the burning fires outside of the pit turned red. The cold, gritty ground under his smashed cheek, also red.
With a roar, he sprang up and shook the trogs off his back. They fell in a tangled mass on the ground around him. Unsheathing his axe, he swung at the closest body. With a satisfying hack, the blade made contact between the neck and shoulder of the beast at his feet. Though his axe didn’t slice through, it had done its job, and the beast lay still. Vision blurring, he knew he was losing control. He would wake up drenched in gore and the blood of his enemies, remembering nothing. But he could not. Not now. He had charges, human lives for which he bore responsibility. They waited for him above and they were depending on him for their survival. He knew that the chances of them making it to the woods alive grew smaller and smaller the longer he was not with them.
So he dislodged his axe from the trog’s flesh, sheathed it, and in one fluid motion, jumped. Legs bent, muscles flexed, knees sprang. Fingers grabbing for the highest handholds flew over them, and his hands grasped the edge of the pit. With another roar, he heaved himself up over the lip.
Treyna, her face streaked with black mud, stood over the body of Harro, trembling at the sight Ott must have made, red-eyed and bellowing like a beast. Still gripping the bloody, soiled dagger, she spread her small hands out over Harro, as if protecting him. From Ott. “I won’t leave him,” she said, though her voice trembled, and her muddy fingers shook. “We have been through so much together already. If he stays, then I am staying with him. I will not let him die alone. But I cannot carry him by myself. And I am too tired to drag him farther.”
Though the red had not receded from his vision, Ott spoke. His voice came out coarse, harsh like an animal’s and not at all like his own. “Then I’ll help you.”
Chapter 23
Far south, Zunee sat in the shade of a sandy rock outcropping and watched her little sisters play in the knee-high, clear water. The girls had to be minded with an eagle’s eye—not a single one of them could swim. In fact, none of them, herself included, had ever seen so much water in one place. And this was not even the Uptdon River, but a small trickle of water that led from the great flowing mass of the Great Sea.
They had reached the stream the previous evening, and none of them wanted to leave it. Here, the water was clear, and small chips of gold shined in the river bed where the sunlight beamed down on it. Yes, they were awake and active during the day now. They’d camped not far from the stream two days ago and were adjusting to sleeping during the night again. The water made the air cooler during the day than at home, so Zunee found it more than pleasant. Smooth red rocks, higher than the height of three men faced the water on the west side of the creek, creating an ideal buffer against which to set up camp.
By the small offshoot river, they’d found some puffheads, bitter greens, wild onion, and some pale yellow roots to eat. That first day, Lena had made a broth from them that had contained more chewable food than water. And for the first time in a long time, they’d had full bellies, though the littler ones were bursting into giggles over the stomach gas the meal had induced.
As soon as dusk fell, Zunee and Deni left to hunt for meat. After spending so much time in the company of her sisters—all of them at once, heaven help her—she had been looking forward to this time alone with him more than she wanted to a
cknowledge.
Water was sure to draw animals to drink. Hopefully, they’d be able to fell at least one beast for the next meal. Mouth pooling from hunger, Zunee sent up a small word of hope and praise to the Great Mother, the creator and destroyer of all things. Stories said the Great Mother would call her children back to her in the end, and they would be cleansed. Zunee was never sure what that meant. She’d never thought of herself as dirty in the first place, even covered in red desert dust. Sand was clean and dry. Dirt wasn’t evil. But then again, she’d never given it much more thought than that.
“Should we stay in this place?” Deni asked her as they crept—without a sound, until he had spoken—along the edges of the sandy rocks.
She shook her head. The river, while pleasant, hadn’t yielded as much sustenance as she’d hoped, unless there were hidden stores that she was unaware of. Certainly, they could begin to cultivate gardens from seeds that they gathered, but they needed readily available foods until crops could mature. After all, she’d paid attention to the endless stories her father had told them around the fires at night. Greedy Simen the farmer who had eaten all his sheep and not left any to procreate for the next year. Foolish Hennah who had not laid any seeds aside to plant for the next season’s crop. Zunee had listened to each word of every story, held in thrall by these tales with their heavy-handed morals, lessons memorized by the dancing light of the fire reflected in her father’s eyes. Yes, he had been a man of great excess himself, but he had not built his earthly empire, his family, on stupidity.
“I am just giving the girls—and us—a little time to rest, but we will have to move on within a day or two,” she said, giving words to an unsettled feeling that had come over her now that they were not starving to death. Food should have brought contentment, but instead, her hunger, sated and pushed to the background, revealed other anxieties that had been hidden behind it. Watching the girls now, she dreaded having to uproot them again so soon. Or maybe it was her own reluctance to leave so pleasant a place.
