“Thank goodness you’re okay!” one exclaimed. They were all visibly relieved to see them. A lantern was brought out quickly, and Esset and his guards were quickly checked for serious injury as the rest of the group went forward to stand guard in case any more Reshkin came. Esset could feel his two panther summons still in his head, fighting Reshkin somewhere down the tunnel. He saw no harm in letting them continue—the only creatures down there were Reshkin, and he wasn’t feeling particularly kindly towards them at the moment.
Esset had been set down as gently as possible, and he immediately winced and began massaging his wrenched shoulders. He forestalled the apologies that the pair who’d carried him were trying to make, however. “Thank you for saving my life.”
Both Nadra were clearly relieved that he had suffered no serious harm and harbored no ill will towards them, not for letting the Reshkin corner them and not for hurting him while saving his life.
“How did they get behind us?” Nassata demanded of the second group. The group’s very presence indicated that they’d somehow found out they’d be in trouble. Esset was just glad he didn’t have to ask the question himself.
“One of the offshoots of this tunnel. We had four sentries stationed there, so it should have been safe, but the Reshkin swarmed in greater number than usual, even for that location. All of our sentries are dead. Niyisha, Mayska, Keskana, and Stayvin. Keskana managed to raise an alarm, but she’d already been bitten.”
Esset watched the various reactions of the warriors as they learned of their fallen comrades. They were wartime reactions—anger, sorrow, guilt; not in measures that they would have experienced in times of peace, but rather in measures that showed they been as desensitized as they could be to the deaths of those they knew and loved. They themselves had survived the day, but their kindred had not been so lucky. Esset watched the Nadra comfort each other—not a single one of them stood apart except for the sentries standing guard. All of them sought tactile comfort in woven arms or tails or in outright hugs. Only Esset was not included, and that was not something he minded—he would not have intruded for the world. After a minute or two at most, Nassata extracted herself to come to him.
“I’m so sorry,” she began before could forestall her.
“There is nothing to be sorry for,” he replied. “This is war. We do what we can do and we just keep fighting.” She regarded him seriously and then nodded.
“Thank you,” she said briefly, grateful he understood. She turned to the others. “Come, let us get home, comrades.”
Esset picked up the lantern from the ground where it had been left, all too grateful to comply. The new group stayed where they were, as they were the new sentries for the tunnel. They were already lighting new lanterns and posting them on wall brackets to illuminate the watch-area.
Nassata, Esset, and Esset’s guards made their way at a pace equal to the summoner’s walk back to the main city, a fact for which Esset was also grateful. He wasn’t sure he could summon the energy to go faster. Summon…! Esset finally reached for his summoning ability and banished the two distant summons. While he probably could have relied on them to stay and battle Reshkin, there was no guarantee, and the cats were particularly unpredictable creatures. He didn’t want to be responsible for a Nadran death. There had been enough death already.
Esset had taken his shirt off to examine the damage to his arms. There were matching bruises on each shoulder—very large, very colorful bruises. He was in the room he and Toman had been given. It was smallish, with two single beds, a chair, and a wardrobe, all of rustic make.
“What in the name of Bright Hyrishal happened to you?” Toman exclaimed the moment he pushed the cloth door aside to enter. Behind him, Kessa craned her neck to see around him into the room.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Did you see the healer?” Esset almost jumped in surprise, having not realized she was there. Toman noticed Esset’s flush of red and his shift in body language, suddenly self-conscious. Then again, there was a naked—by their standards, anyways—girl looking at him with his shirt off.
“Ah, yes. They gave me this salve to put on it, but it hurts to reach that far,” Esset replied.
“I don’t doubt it,” Toman responded, moving further into the room and throwing his floppy-brimmed hat on the bed. He was about to offer a hand, but Kessa beat him to it.
“Here, let me,” she said, moving forward quickly and taking the container of salve from Esset before he could respond. The brothers were beginning to notice that the Nadra seemed to have a very liberal view on privacy. Esset intended to object, but Kessa already had her hands in the salve. The moment she touched him, he changed his mind. The salve had an immediate numbing effect that provided instant relief, rendering him unable to speak a word of objection.
“Thank you,” Esset said instead, but only after a minute of silence.
“So what happened?” Toman asked. He’d thought Esset and his entourage would only be sniping from a distance—there was no reason why Esset should have sustained injuries at all. Esset launched into a description of the day’s events—their various attacks and how the last one had gone wrong. Toman studied his brother covertly as he spoke, and he noticed the strain. Esset’s injuries were inconvenient, but very minor. No, something else had taken a toll on him, a psychological toll. Toman guessed it was the conditions—Esset had never been fond of insects and arachnids and the like. The summoner handled himself just fine in their presence, but afterward, they got under his skin. Add that to the darkness in the tunnels… Toman glanced at Kessa. He’d talk to Esset when she left.
Wrapping up his explanation, Esset brought up something that had been bothering him since he’d gotten back. “Toman, I’ve noticed that the Nadra have practically no defenses. The tunnels are wide open—they just set up sentries and rely on them to keep back the swarm. You saw how widespread the tunnel network was—imagine how spread thin they must be to cover all that territory.” Toman nodded, seeing Esset’s point.
“We need to seal off some of the tunnels,” Esset continued. “I was thinking that if you could animate something like a giant snake, it could curl in the narrower points of the tunnels and block them. We and the Nadra could get them to move if needed, but otherwise they could block the tunnels from the Reshkin by sealing it right up.” Toman nodded again.
“I could do something like that,” he agreed. “We’ll have to mention it to them tomorrow. I’ve got nothing left in me tonight.” In fact, the surprise of seeing Esset’s condition was all that was keeping him on his feet at the moment.
“I could take your idea to the warriors tonight,” Kessa suggested. “That way they will have come to a decision by tomorrow morning.” She finished smearing the last of the salve on Esset’s shoulders and wiped her hands on a small towel before securing the lid on the container and passing it back to the summoner.
“Thanks,” Esset murmured, both for the container and the help with the salve.
“Thank you, we’d appreciate that,” Toman added, for the offer to pass on the message.
“I will see you both tomorrow morning,” Kessa said. She sort of half started to reach out to them, then tucked in on herself before fleeing out the door. Esset very belatedly realized that she’d been reaching out in that tactile Nadran tendency. Toman made the realization even later.
“They are a strange people,” he commented. He held his arm out towards the table and the excess of belts that he wore flowed off of him like so many snakes to coil atop the furniture.
“I kinda like them,” Esset replied, pulling off his boots.
“Me too,” Toman added with a grin. They both got ready for bed and covered the lantern; fire wasn’t the light source of the lantern, and closing the shutters on it seemed to be the only way to put out the light. Esset was so tired, he didn’t even try to figure it out. Once they were in bed, Toman listened to his brother’s breathing for a while before speaking, knowing they were both still awake.
“I
t’s pretty brutal, huh? Fighting those things in the darkness down here?” The animator and the summoner knew each other too well—that question was all it took for Toman to open the floodgates to Esset’s fears.
It was an hour, at least, before they stopped whispering, before Esset had vented and calmed enough to sleep.
Morning seemed to be a very relative concept underground. Without the sun to remind them and with exhaustion dampening their internal clocks, Kessa had to come to wake them. She did so cheerfully, coming into their room with a lantern and unveiling their own to add yet more light.
“Good morning!” she greeted them cheerfully.
“What the—gah!” That was Esset, scrambling under his covers in half-wakeful confusion. Toman opened his own eyes blearily, managing to retain some composure.
“Come, it is breakfast time!” Kessa urged them, going up to Esset, who was closer, and putting her hand on his foot to tug on it.
“Oi!” Esset jerked his foot back. “Can we get dressed first?”
Kessa blinked her reptilian eyes at them. Given that she saw her own kind completely unclad every single day, it really wasn’t surprising that she didn’t notice they weren’t clothed. “Oh.”
“Just wait outside a second, we’ll be right out,” Toman said, having woken up faster than Esset. He stifled a snicker at his brother. He looked distinctly ruffled—Esset’s hair was rarely tidy even at the best of times, but it was sticking out at some rather ridiculous angles at the moment, and his expression only reinforced the rumpled image.
“Okay!” Kessa agreed readily, vanishing out the cloth door. Toman immediately emerged from beneath the covers and started dressing—Esset took a second or two longer to rub his eyes and yawn before following suit. Thankfully, by the time they joined Kessa, he was considerably more alert—and he’d straightened his hair out, sort of.
“Good morning,” Toman said, greeting her properly this time as he stuffed his floppy-brimmed hat on his head.
“Mornin’,” Esset echoed.
Kessa greeted them with a bright smile. “Good morning. I took your suggestion to the council, and they said that if you think it will work, you should do it. They hadn’t thought of getting you to do something like that, I think,” Kessa informed them.
“Excellent. I’ll get started right away then,” Toman said, rubbing his gloved hands together.
“Breakfast first,” Kessa said, taking both their wrists in her hands and leading them down the path. Toman and Esset both exchanged glances. They’d tried Nadran food already. It was heavy in mushrooms and other fungi, in bugs, and in some unidentifiable meat that Toman suspected to be some kind of rodent. Neither of them liked it very much. They knew they needed food, but…after days of trying to choke down the Nadran fare, it had become almost too much to bear.
“Is there…anything else to eat? Your food is rather…alien to us,” Esset said delicately.
“Oh… Nassata said something about that. I will have to ask her again. Is that all right?” Kessa looked rather uncertain.
“One more meal is perfectly fine,” Esset assured her with a forced smile. Hopefully it looked genuine, although both Toman and Esset felt their stomachs snuggle up a little closer to their throats.
“You remind me of Gretchen the first time she visited here.” Nassata had found them, and she’d come up behind them unnoticed.
“Nassata!” Esset exclaimed, jumping a little and wincing as the movement jarred his bruised shoulders. She hissed at him, a little laugh.
“She did not care for our food either, and thankfully she remembered that when she designed your contract. I know I had forgotten. We are a due a delivery of food you will appreciate some time today,” she assured them.
“Thank you,” Esset replied, knowing that didn’t even begin to cover the relief both of them felt at learning they wouldn’t have to eat Nadran food for the entire campaign. Not that they looked forward to this particular breakfast any more than before…
“Now, the council very much liked your plan,” Nassata said, shifting her attention to Toman. “We tried blocking some of the tunnels in the past, but we were always swarmed before we could complete an effective barricade. You see, we have no efficient means of sealing tunnels. We can’t get enough material in place to block a tunnel before the Reshkin swarm us. We even lost five of our Shapers—our magic users—in one attempt, and we cannot risk more of them. If you can indeed seal off the tunnels in a non-permanent fashion, it would be a great advantage, and it would free up many of our sentries. We would likely still leave guards, but only one instead of the two to five in some places.”
“Do you want I should create the seals on location, or should I go above and make them up there and bring them down when I’m finished?” Toman asked.
“If you made them on location, you would be taking stone from the walls there, yes?” Nassata asked. Toman nodded.
“I could take the stone from this main place or places on the way,” Toman offered.
“That…may be best,” Nassata said. “The sooner our defenses are tightened and warriors freed up, the better.” Toman and Esset were nodding their agreement.
“I also think it best if you come along,” Nassata continued, looking at Esset. “We had planned on giving you a period of rest, as we intended to rethink our plans, but with this new approach…”
“Of course,” Esset responded. Rest was always nice, but it wasn’t necessary yet. Sore shoulders wouldn’t stop him from summoning. “If there’s another ambush like yesterday, I need to be there.”
“It is almost as though they are becoming more intelligent,” Nassata said. “They work together now like they never have before—even more so yesterday. At the least, it’s obvious in how they swarm us when we try to seal the tunnels. They’ve also captured some suspiciously key points. But that ambush yesterday… That was on a whole new level.”
“You think there’s something—or someone behind this,” Toman responded, studying Nassata and reading between the lines.
“I do, but I have no evidence other than the changes in the Reshkin. This worries me,” she replied. Off to the side, her presence forgotten for a few moments, Kessa began to look very alarmed.
“Oh, Kessa!” Nassata exclaimed, suddenly remembering her presence. The Nadran warrior slithered over to her cousin and wrapped her arms around her. Toman and Esset stopped to wait, a bit embarrassed that they, too, had forgotten that the other Nadra was there. Even they were aware, to some extent, of how delicate she could be.
“It’s okay. I will protect you, Kessa,” Nassata soothed her, stroking her hair. “We will protect our people.” Kessa snuggled in against her chest, looking very child-like.
“I believe you,” Kessa replied, gazing up at Nassata’s face with simple trust. “But it is frightening.”
“Yes, it is,” Nassata agreed. “But you must be strong too, yes? Can you do that for me?” She loosened her embrace and they drew apart slightly, their hands still on each other’s arms. Kessa nodded, her innocent smile returning.
“Good. You’re so brave, Kessa.” Nassata gave her one last, quick hug before letting her go. They resumed their travel to the common eating area of the Nadra.
“Do you mind stopping a moment? I told Tseka I’d wake her up,” Nassata requested a moment later, pausing next to a curtained doorway.
“Tseka?” Esset asked with a slightly pained expression, but Toman was already saying, “Not at all,” and stopping to wait.
Nassata pulled back the curtain wide, and Toman and Esset got their first look at a typical Nadran dwelling.
Had they stopped to think about it, they probably would have realized that the room they were staying in was not typical, but made especially for bipedal guests. But they hadn’t thought of that—they hadn’t really had a chance to—and so they were somewhat surprised. The room was very round, the floor smoothly curved and depressed into the room. Flowing patterns of color splashed across the walls, lending addi
tional brightness to the room. Two lanterns in the room shed light on the occupants, who were gathered in one spot. A Nadra’s bed, apparently, consisted of a smooth, deep depression in the stone floor that was filled with pillows and blankets in no sort of order. The “bed” was rather large, and there were four Nadra tangled in it.
The bodies of the four Nadra were so entwined and wrapped around each other that “tangled” truly was the only word to describe them. Dull scales mixed with painted, but even so it was difficult to tell which appendages belonged to whom. When the curtain opened, four heads popped out of the mix, blinking with varying degrees of bleariness to see who was calling. There wasn’t a shred of self-consciousness among the four.
Toman glanced at Esset, knowing his brother would probably be a little scandalized by the sleeping arrangement. The animator wondered if the Nadra in the room were kin, but he doubted it, and even so, such an arrangement would be bizarre in their own culture—to say the least. Here, it seemed normal. Sure enough, he found Esset’s expression mildly humorous, and he elbowed Esset before their hosts could see it.
“Ah, Nassata, that time already?” Tseka asked, disentangling her arms with perplexing ease to stretch.
There was some writhing movement in the bed as her companions shifted around to let her out. Tseka had no problems helping them along, either, it seemed, as she unceremoniously shoved a few coils out of the way as she extracted herself.
“Ah, our saviors,” Tseka said when she emerged, eyeing Toman and Esset.
“Good morning,” Toman greeted her. Tseka just kept eyeing him for a moment, not deigning to respond, while Esset blithely wondered if it really was morning or not. Finally, the red warrior looked away, placing a hand on Nassata’s shoulder and giving her a nod of greeting before looking down the hall.
“We have somewhere to be, yeah?” Tseka grinned, pushing past them to head in the direction they’d been going. Toman couldn’t help but notice that Kessa and Tseka didn’t greet each other. In fact, Kessa had shrunk back a bit, as if trying to avoid notice. Then again, if this was what Tseka was normally like, Toman didn’t blame her.
Calling On Fire (Book 1) Page 16
