by Mark McCabe
Even as they bounded forward, Rayne knew that they wouldn’t make it. The two spare horses tied behind him would ensure that what little chance he had of outrunning the sligs was doomed to fail. As Sara drew level on Nell, Rayne suddenly spun Ned about, calling out to Sara as he did so. “Fly Sara, fly and don’t look back.”
Drawing his sword, Rayne determined to make a stand in an attempt to give Sara what chance he could. Slashing futilely at one of the sligs as its horse veered around him, he knew it was hopeless. The slig had ignored him, intent on racing after Sara. Before Rayne could make any attempt to turn and follow the warrior, he screamed out in pain as the second slig crashed into him, springing from its horse and knocking him to the ground in one movement.
Rayne felt a searing burst of pain shoot up his arm as he fell. It seemed to him as if everything had slowed down. As his shoulder crunched sickeningly into the floor of the forest, driven down by the weight of the slig on top of him, Rayne experienced an unexpected sense of calm. As darkness swept over him, he realised he was blacking out. His last thought as he lost consciousness was one of relief. It was finally over.
Chapter 12
Swirling tongues of flame surged up from the crackling logs, thrusting up into the darkness, like the hands of some infernal demon, desperately straining upwards, ever upwards, in a futile attempt to grasp a hold of the very firmament itself. Their seeming endless struggle threatened to mesmerise Sara as she sought to lose herself in the chaotic rhythm of their dance. Try as she might, though, she could not achieve her aim. The dread circumstances she now found herself in stubbornly resisted all her attempts to deny them.
Not for the first time during her brief stay in Ilythia she found herself bound and at the mercy of others. She had thought that nothing could be worse than returning to the clutches of Tug. That was before she’d had a close encounter with a slig warrior.
Nothing in Rayne’s description of the sligs had prepared Sara for what they actually looked like. The slig warrior that eyed her sulkily through the shimmering heat that rose from the flames that separated them looked like something out of her worst nightmare. Like Rayne, his long hair was pulled back into a short ponytail at the nape of his neck. That was where the similarity ended, however.
He was tall, at least a head higher than Rayne, and his broad chest was covered in a shirt made from small metal rings, linked together over a padded, dun-coloured vest. Sara guessed it was a form of chain mail. His breeches were made from toughened leather, as were his long boots, which were laced up to the top of his shins. Where his skin was visible, which was only his arms and his neck and face, it appeared to be scaly and was greyish in colour. It was his face that really frightened her, however.
It looked closer to that of a boar than a man. The end of his short nose was flat and his two nostrils pointed forwards from either side of its surface. His brows stood out like ridges below a forehead that rippled with corrugations of skin right up to the line of his greasy, black hair. His deep-set eyes seemed to glimmer in the firelight. She’d seen them earlier, in the daylight, and knew that the irises were yellow, like those of a beast of the forest. When he spoke or opened his mouth to eat, he revealed sharp, interlocking teeth that reminded Sara of a wild dog.
All in all, the sight was a thoroughly frightening one. Her skin prickled and the hairs on the back of her neck rose whenever she looked at him or his companions. The memory of the coarse touch of their skin on hers rekindled a dread, empty feeling in the pit of her stomach. She’d wanted to shriek in terror when they’d dragged her from her horse. Now at least she could look at them, though her pulse rate still quickened whenever she chanced to make eye contact.
Sara found it hard to distinguish the four sligs from each other as they sat around the fire, chewing away at the meat they’d been roasting. slight differences in their clothing or their weapons were all she could see that identified one from the other. They paid her little attention as they sat there eating and talking, an occasional glance the only indication that they were even aware of her presence.
She knew that struggling against the bonds that held her wrists behind her back was useless. Her attempts to free herself had already brought her one teeth-jarring smack to the side of her head and she didn’t relish another. In any event, her more subtle attempts to test the efficacy of her bonds had already proved that further exertion was futile. Even should she have been able to overcome that hurdle, her ankles were bound as well. Sara tried not to swallow, despite her hunger. The vile taste of the cloth gag that had been forced into her mouth was bad enough as it was. A moan from nearby drew her attention away from her own problems.
Rayne’s body lay slumped on the ground beside her. He was similarly bound, but with the added imposition of his ankles being drawn up behind him and tied to the bonds at his wrists. Like her, he was gagged as well. The large bloodstain on the arm of his shirt indicated that his wound had re-opened during their brief tussle with the sligs. It was clear he was losing blood again at a rapid rate.
Sara hadn’t known till they’d stopped to make camp whether he’d been killed at the creek or brought with them. The sligs that had captured her had thrown her bound body sideways across the back of Nell and tied her in place like a sack of chaff. The painful trip to their current campsite that had followed had afforded her a view of little else than the side of the horse and the ground as it passed below her. It was only when that torturous trip had finally ended and the sligs had stopped to make camp that she’d seen they’d brought Rayne with them as well.
He had been unconscious when taken from the horse he’d been tied to, or at least that’s what she’d assumed at first. When, after a long time, he still hadn’t moved, Sara had begun to fear he was dead. Although the occasional muffled groan he was now emitting had dispelled that dread thought, Sara wondered how long it would be before they both wished that the sligs had killed them right where they’d caught them.
As she looked down at Rayne, she saw his eyelids finally begin to flutter open. At first, he screwed up his face in obvious pain, and then he groaned once more through his gag. After a brief moment’s respite, another wave of pain seemed to course through him, right on the heels of the first. When it had passed, he peered up at Sara through glazed eyes that showed no sign of recognition. With another heart-rending groan, he began to struggle against his bonds. One of the slig warriors looked up from his meal and called out with a snarl. “Shut up you. And quit your wriggling.”
Rayne seemed not to hear them, continuing to moan as he twisted and turned in a vain attempt to free himself. The warrior who’d spoken threw his meat to the ground in obvious anger. Rising from his place by the fire, he strode over to stand over Rayne. “I said shut up,” he growled as Rayne writhed on the ground at his feet. When he showed no sign of desisting, the warrior lashed out at him with his hard leather boot.
Sara watched helplessly, choking back the scream in her throat as she saw that he’d caught Rayne’s injured arm as he viciously kicked into him two or three times in quick succession. With a piercing shriek, Rayne convulsed in pain, then fell into silence again as his body went limp. Sara hoped he’d merely lost consciousness. She prayed that the slig hadn’t killed him.
“That’s better,” growled the slig, spitting at Rayne’s prostrate body before he returned to his place by the fire. As he sat down, the other warriors muttered something to him, then they all laughed cruelly, looking at Rayne as they did so. Sara watched as the slig took up the meat he’d thrown in the dirt and commenced to chew on it again. She felt sure she was going to be sick.
She cried for a while then as she thought of poor Rayne. His brief moment of consciousness must have been a painful one, especially with his injured arm pulled back behind him. She guessed he must have thought he’d awoken in hell. The knowledge that it was a hell she was responsible for didn’t help her at all. If only she had stayed where she was, with Ruz and Tug and Golkar. She would have been no worse off than sh
e was now, and Rayne wouldn’t have been dragged into her nightmare.
She should have crept away from their camp when she’d thought of it. So much for fighting to the bitter end. The end was certainly bitter, but there had been precious little fighting. Oh, Rayne had tried. Sara felt a lump in her throat as she remembered what he had done. She wondered if there had ever been a braver move than the one that he had made as he’d turned back to face the sligs. Unfortunately, his attempt to give her a chance to escape had been a futile one. The sligs had just snapped her up like a child. She realised now what a fool she had been to think she could possibly escape from the fate this world had reserved for her.
She sat there sobbing and drowning herself in her sorrows like that for some time. The sligs took no further notice of her, or of Rayne for that matter. They continued to talk among themselves, laughing and cursing as they went about their meal.
She wondered about the sligs. What possible motivation could they have for deciding to take her and Rayne captive rather than kill them on the spot?
Rayne had told her little about the fell creatures other than that they were involved in raids on the Algarians’ eastern frontier. He had also been vague about where they came from; somewhere out beyond the eastern mountains, he had indicated dismissively when she had asked. Although she had thought at the time that he’d been reluctant to let on how little he actually knew of the world beyond his own experience, it occurred to Sara now that perhaps he had actually been unwilling to share with her the real horror behind the sligs. For all she knew, they were cannibals and had taken her and Rayne captive as a source of fresh meat. Sara felt a moment of terror as she tried to shake off that notion. She couldn’t afford to believe that was the case. She’d go mad if she allowed herself to seriously entertain that thought.
Regardless of what they planned for her and Rayne, her situation was clearly a hopeless one. Even if she could have been able to free herself, Rayne was so seriously injured that they would never be able to escape. With that thought, Sara began to despair again . She didn’t want to die; she was so young and had so much she still wanted out of life. What had she done to deserve this nightmare?
Her previous existence seemed so far away that she was beginning to wonder now which was the real world and which was a dream. This place she was in seemed so real it made her wonder if the parents and friends she missed so much were, in fact, the dream. Did they ever really exist, and if they did, would she ever be likely to see them again? She had long since given up hope of awakening from this nightmare existence. For now, it was as real as anything got. With that forlorn thought, she fell to sobbing again.
Sara had almost cried herself to sleep, her eyes felt heavy and she was trying to work out how to lie down, bound as she was, when a movement on the very edge of the fire-lit area caught her attention. Looking out into the darkness, the forest around the campsite seemed as impenetrable as ever. It must have been some small animal moving about in the undergrowth on the periphery of the firelight. The sligs were chatting softly between themselves now and they didn’t seem to have noticed anything unusual.
After a while, the need for sleep began to drag her eyelids down once more. A flicker of movement off to one side drew her drowsy head up again and slowly around to the right. As she turned her head, she was astonished to see an old man step out of the darkness beyond the campsite and into the light. It was as if he had suddenly appeared out of thin air. The slig warriors had seen him too and they quickly scrambled to their feet, drawing their weapons as he approached them.
The man was old, so old that he stooped as he walked, relying on a short, gnarled walking stick to support him. He was dressed in a long gown that was belted at the waist. The garment was a simple one, faded brown in colour and plain, with long sleeves that ended just above the wrists. Below its frayed and dirty fringe, Sara could see that he wore leather boots. The skin on his hands was wrinkled and cracked, and his face was lined and mottled. His head sported a shock of white hair above a thin but kindly face. He seemed quite unperturbed by the sight of the four armed slig warriors that stood before him.
“I’ve come for the girl,” he said slowly in an even voice. As he spoke, he raised his stick, waving it vaguely towards the fire.
All of a sudden, a piercing light flashed out from the flames. Sara’s body reeled back in an instant defensive reaction. With a shock, she realised that the flash had blinded her. Swirling shapes swam across the void that had displaced her vision. She was aware of yells and curses from the direction of the sligs. Struggling to rise from where she had fallen, she flinched as something touched her, an involuntary gasp escaping her lips as she did so. A moment later she felt a hand, more gently this time, passing over her eyelids. At the same time, she heard someone say something, a few mumbled words, unexpected and indecipherable, from just above her.
As the hand drew away, she opened her eyes, finding, incredibly, that her vision had been restored. The old man was crouching over her and looking down through crinkly eyes with a kindly smile. “You’ll be all right,” he whispered. “Let’s get you out of this.” As he spoke, he took a knife from his belt and cut the bonds at her ankles. He did the same for her gag and then eased her forward and reached over to cut the bonds that secured her wrists behind her back. As she rubbed the soreness from her wrists, she saw him glance back at the sligs. Following his gaze, she was amazed at the wild scene being played out on the opposite side of the fire.
One of the sligs was blindly stumbling about, recklessly swinging his broad axe before him in a vain attempt to connect with their attacker. A second was on his knees, crawling on the ground, groping with his hands in desperation, trying to establish where he was. As she watched, a third stumbled into the fire, screaming as his clothes caught alight. As he lurched away from the fire, the first warrior caught him a glancing blow across one arm with his axe, drawing another scream that seemed to reverberate right down the length of Sara’s backbone. The fourth was nowhere to be seen.
“Quickly now,” said the old man, turning his back on the mad scene before them. As he helped Sara to her feet, he whispered in her ear. “Help me with Rayne.”
“Who are you?” whispered Sara in return, stooping to loosen Rayne’s bonds and trying to keep an eye on the sligs at the same time.
“Time enough for explanations later.” As the old man spoke, he sliced through the last of Rayne’s bonds and together they managed to lift him to his feet. It took all of Sara’s strength to support him under one shoulder and she could see that the old man was wheezing as he struggled to do the same on his side. Somehow, they managed to drag him away from the fire and the sligs and into the shadows of the forest.
Sara had no idea where they were going, but she knew that they wouldn’t get far. Rayne was too heavy for her. The old man was struggling too, seemingly barely able to stay afoot under the dead weight of Rayne’s body. After they’d gone a short distance, he spoke again, panting for breath as he did so. “I can’t go any further with him,” he gasped. “We have to stop here.”
Once they’d stopped and lowered Rayne to the ground, the old man bent over from the waist, sucking in air in long, wheezy gulps. Leaning heavily on his wooden stick, he coughed a few times and then slowly began to straighten, grimacing from the effort as he did so. Sara looked on in amazement, wondering at the contrast with how easily he’d dealt with the sligs.
“Wait here,” he whispered once he had regained his breath. Without waiting for a reply, he turned and walked away, quickly disappearing into the darkness.
Sara didn’t know what to do. She had no idea who their strange benefactor was or what his intentions were. As she kneeled nervously beside Rayne in the darkness, however, she realised she had no choice but to trust him. She would have no chance of escaping alone, on foot and at night in the forest, with no idea of where she was. And she couldn’t leave Rayne, at least not in the condition he was in. If the stranger turned out to be someone that Golkar had s
ent to retrieve her, she would just have to try to convince him to first of all help her to get Rayne to some place where he could be cared for; or, at the very least, to take her and to leave Rayne alone.
The old man had been gone for some time and she had begun to wonder if something had happened to him when she heard the sounds of someone approaching. Letting Rayne slump to the ground, she quickly threw herself down beside him, trying to lie as flat as she could. To her relief, it was the old man again. This time he had three horses with him. Recognising Nell’s dappled grey, she could see that two of them were hers and Rayne’s. He must have gone back to the camp to get them.
With the old man’s help, she managed to get Rayne up again and, after a good deal of effort, they finally got him onto Nell. Sara climbed up behind him, struggling to hold him in place as she did so. The old man mounted the third horse, a sorrel with a striking blonde mane. With a wave of his hand, he motioned for Sara to follow him. Then, turning his mount, he headed off through the trees, away from the slig camp.
Although the rain seemed to have stopped, the sky still hadn’t cleared and the interposing clouds muted what little light the moon and the stars would normally have provided. Sara could barely make out the old man’s shape as he rode off into the dark of the night. For a moment, she hesitated, knowing that this might be her last chance to escape. The occasional cry of anguish from the direction of the slig camp indicated that pursuit was unlikely from that quarter for some time. She and Rayne could turn and ride off now and hope that the old man wouldn’t be able to find them again in the dark.
As she urged Nell forward, following him, she knew that would be pointless. He had already managed to find them once in the dark. If what he had done back at the slig camp was any indication, he would have little difficulty finding them again. Besides, she already had enough enemies here in Ilythia. She had to hope that maybe she’d finally found another friend.
