From Across the Clouded Range (36 page)

Lying on the ground with his teeth
clenched so hard he could not even scream, Dasen barely heard the
creature beside him. "You put up more of a fight than I had
suspected.” It spit the words, sending Dasen’s own blood flying
from its mouth to his face. “I admire that. I admire it so much
that I am going to extend our time together for another
day."

The creature pinned Dasen beneath its
knees and bent over him so that its blood-soaked face was inches
from his own. "Do you enjoy my poison, boy? Don't worry. It won't
kill you. It just allows you to enjoy your pain all the more. I
think that you will soon learn to appreciate it."

The creature lifted his head and
opened his huge mouth until it appeared that the back of his head
would touch its neck. The mouth raced toward Dasen. He did nothing
to stop it. He was too overwhelmed to even close his
eyes.

#

A heart-stopping scream ended Teth’s
slumber. She bolted out of her blankets. And smashed her head on
one of the logs that formed the roof of the shelter. The blow sent
her back to the floor in a daze. She rubbed the growing lump, until
another scream dispelled any thought of her aching head. She sat up
again, careful this time to avoid the low clearance, and listened.
She heard a struggle then a voice, a voice that was not
Dasen’s

Teth grabbed the bow hanging from the
logs above her head, strung it using the wall of the shelter, and
pulled three arrows from the quiver next to it. She leapt from the
shelter, but the blankets had formed a tangle around her legs, and
it seemed to take an eternity to free them. Once she had, she acted
without thinking. She found Dasen lying on the ground. Another man
was on top of him. That second man seemed strange, but Teth did not
take the time to consider. In one clean motion, she notched an
arrow, found her mark, and released the bolt into the top of the
assailant’s mouth as it plunged down. The arrow flew fewer than ten
feet and struck with enough force to throw the attacker back. He
flailed in a blur of black, stumbling backward to the first of the
trees before crashing to the ground between two bushes at the very
edge of the camp.

Feeling her hands
beginning to shake, Teth drew a deep breath.
By the Order, I just killed someone.
She drew another breath and notched another arrow.
It had to be done
, she
told herself.
You had to do it. He was
attacking Dasen. You would have been next. It was him or us.
With a final breath, she recovered enough to
stand.

Bow half-drawn, she walked
cautiously to Dasen. She scanning the trees for threats, saw
nothing. W
as it a lone scout? If so, when
would he be missed?
She glanced in the
direction of the man. No one could survive that shot, so it was
only enough of a look to confirm that he was not moving. She
examined the trees a last time before releasing the tension on her
bow and focusing on Dasen.

He was badly hurt. Blood ran in
streams from his arm and was splattered across his chest and face.
He was shaking with his eyes clenched. Teth watched the trees as
she dropped her bow and knelt. She felt her stomach churn as she
smelled the metallic blood that soaked him. She reached out to his
cheek, but Dasen moved before she ever touched him.

With startling speed, he grabbed her
wrist and pulled hard. Unprepared, she tumbled to the ground next
to him. She had not considered the possibility of Dasen attacking
her and was still stunned when he climbed blindly on top of her and
moved his hands toward her throat.

Teth’s instincts took over. Her right
hand found Dasen's abdomen just below the rib cage. She drove the
heel of her palm into the soft spot there and heard the air rush
from him. His eyes popped in shock, but she did not stop. She
grabbed his right hand with her left and pushed it through and out.
He fell toward her then away as she rolled from beneath him. A
second later, he was on his back, panting for air. Teth sprang to
her knees and wrenched his hand back from the wrist at an angle
that would reduce even Pete Magee to a helpless mass.

Looking down, Teth realized what she
was doing and let go of Dasen’s hand. She placed it gently on his
chest and patted it reassuringly. She removed her weight from him
so that he could catch his breath and tried to assess his injuries.
His good hand had gone back to clasping his wounded forearm, his
face was distorted by pain with his eyes clamped shut as he wheezed
for air through gnashing teeth. Teth’s first thought was that
something needed to be done about his arm. From the amount of blood
that covered him, and now her, it was a dangerous wound, and she
would have to act fast to stop the bleeding.

She jumped to her feet, bounded to the
other side of the fire, and grabbed Dasen’s blanket. She pulled his
hand away from his arm, wrapped it in the blanket, and squeezed
hard on the wound. She expected to feel the blanket grow wet with
blood, but it did not feel as if there was any blood at all. She
continued to press, but the blanket felt like it was wrapped around
whole flesh, not the pulpy mass she had seen a moment earlier. She
looked at Dasen. He was much calmer, as if the wound no longer
hurt. Something wasn’t right. She unwound the blanket and saw that
it was, in fact, whole skin that she had bandaged. Dasen’s arm was
red and sticky with blood, but there was no apparent damage. She
dropped his arm in fright and stared at him as if he were
bewitched. She knew what she had seen, and that was not
it.

Just as surprised, Dasen sat up and
jerked his arm away. He looked at it in disbelief then turned to
her. His eyes bounced between her and his arm. "What . . . what . .
. what did you do? I don't understand. It was . . . I mean there
were . . . the thing, it . . . I mean . . . . Look at the blood!"
He held his arm out in frustration as if that would explain what he
was trying to say. He continued to stammer like a lummox, and Teth
started to wonder if he was permanently damaged. Finally, he took
several deep breaths, looked at his arm again, and asked, "What did
you do in all this?"

Teth was not expecting that question,
especially with that tone, and she showed her displeasure. "I only
saved your life. Again! I don’t know what that guy was going to do,
but I’m pretty sure you were losing, so I shot him.” Another wave
washed through her at the thought. She felt bile rise but forced it
down. She had just killed someone. And Dasen’s not even hurt. She
took a deep breath then returned to Dasen. “What’s wrong with you
anyway? You don't look like you’re hurt at all."

Dasen looked at her in confusion,
scanned his arm again, and then sat up and allowed his hands to
drift to his back and chest. Teth glanced at his torn shirt then
over his shoulder and saw cruel gashes on his chest and back adding
their stains to his already blood-soaked shirt. The cuts on his
chest proved to be little more than scratches, so she dashed around
him to inspect his back. Those were serious, ragged tears, and she
was soon busy keeping his hands away. "Don't touch them! You'll
just make it worse!” The cuts were vicious but not life
threatening, and she was happy, at least, that things were starting
to make sense. “Take off your shirt. I’ll get some water to clean
it, then we’ll see what we can do about mending it.” She searched
for the water bag then yelled back over her shoulder, “And don’t
touch it!”

She grabbed the water bag from the
ground near the shelter, used the small knife to turn the blanket
into several long bandages, and then darted into the forest. She
returned with a handful of a bright-blue moss that was used to
fight infections. Dasen was sitting in the same place still
marveling at his arm as if he had never seen it before. At least he
had taken off his shirt, she thought as she uncorked the water bag
and began pouring its contents over his back.

He let out a hiss as the water ran
over the jagged cuts, but she did not stop. In her experience, the
infection that came after was far more dangerous than almost any
cut, and she would see these properly cleaned. “These aren’t that
bad,” she assured as she wiped the dirt and blood away with a
corner of the blanket – she would have sworn that they looked worse
a moment before. “What the heck kind of weapon did this,
anyway?”

Dasen gestured toward a terrible set
of hooks lying a few feet away near the smashed and scattered fire.
“Those hooks,” he grunted.

Teth glanced at the cruel
weapon then raised her eyes to the attacker lying half-out of a
bush. Her eyes remained on the man for some time, trying to make
sense of what she saw: black fur, claws, leather clothing, a
strange sword. Her mind ran through possibilities.
A bear – that wears clothes and carries weapons?
A person – with an animal’s fur and claws? A dream? A
hallucination?
Finally, she rose from
Dasen and walked toward the thing. When she got close enough to see
its face, she had to choke back a scream. She took several steps
back and held the pieces of blanket up defensively. “What in the
Order’s name is that?” she panted.

"I . . . I don't know what it is. It
told me its name, but that was just a blur. It said that its master
had sent it to capture me.”

“
It talked?”

“
Yeah, but in a language I
had never heard.”

“
But you said it. . .
.”

“
I know. It doesn’t make
sense to me either. It spoke a language I had never heard, but I
could understand it.”

Teth looked at him skeptically. He’s
been through a lot, she figured. He’s probably in shock, not
remembering properly, confused. She nodded. “Okay, so it wanted to
capture you. And you fought it?”

Dasen made a sour face at her obvious
pandering. “I pushed it into the fire. I almost had it until it
raked those hooks across my back and bit my arm. That’s where all
the blood came from. I thought I was finished, when suddenly, it
was gone. That must’ve been when you shot it.”

Teth pondered. None of it made sense.
She needed time to think about it, so she returned her attention to
Dasen’s back. She walked around him prepared to wipe away the
remaining blood but didn’t make it that far. She dropped the
blanket and stepped back, stammering.

Dasen spoke before she could find
words. “What did you do back there? I can’t even feel the . . .
.”

“
What in the name of the
Holy Order is happening?” Teth whispered over him. “You can’t feel
the cuts because they’re gone. All that’s left are
scars.”

Chapter 18

“
So we agree it’s one of
those devils from the village?” Tethina asked, still clearly
searching for her balance.

“
Someone sent it to find
me,” Dasen answered. “Who else could that be?”

“
But you’ve never heard of
anything like it?”

“
Nothing even close. I
mean its appearance is strange enough – too strange to be human,
too intelligent to be animal – but what about the poison, my
injuries, and . . . and the language?” Dasen remembered the
creature saying that its bite was poisonous, which explained the
extraordinary pain, the way it had coursed through him like his
body was on fire. Even now, it didn’t seem real, as if his mind had
intentionally faded the memory. But could that same poison have
also healed him? The only thing he knew for sure was that not only
were the bite and cuts healed but so were his swollen knee, burns,
headache, sore muscles, and every other cut, scratch, and bruise he
had received.

Tethina looked at him dubiously. “I
already said, it probably sounded like a different language because
of its deformed mouth. There’s no way you could understand a
language you don’t know. That doesn’t even make sense.” Dasen knew
what he had heard and opened his mouth to protest, but she held up
a hand to stop him. “Either way it doesn’t matter. What is really
strange is the healing. . . . So you think it’s the effect of some
poison in its bite?”

Dasen nodded. “That’s the only thing I
can think of.”

“
But why would an animal
have poison that heals its victim? It goes against every principle
of nature.”

Dasen could only shrug. “How else do
you explain this?” He held out his arm to show the rows of round
scars peeking out from the flaking brown blood.

Tethina drew a long breath. “There’s
only one way to know.” She ran to the creature still lying in the
bushes and bent toward it.”

“
Tethina, what are you . .
. ?”

A muffled cry cut off Dasen’s
question. Tethina fell to her knees then her back. She clutched her
right wrist as if that was the only thing keeping her hand
attached. Dasen ran to her side, but there was nothing he could do
but watch her writhe, teeth clenched in pain. Her face was frozen,
eyes squeezed tight, with only a line of tears coursing down her
cheeks. Dasen tried to comfort her, brushing back her hair, but
could think of nothing more to do.

Finally, after what seemed an
eternity, her face softened, her jaw released and she drew in a
shaking breath. After a few more, she sat up and wiped the tears
from her cheeks with the hem of her dress. “By the great and holy
Order,” she gasped. “How can one little prick possibly hurt that
much?”