Vines #2
Captain Yihura motioned for Math to join her, and together they approached the tree line. Math forced himself to do so calmly, in spite of how uncomfortable he felt.
“Any thoughts, Novitiate?” Captain Yihura’s gaze was clear and steady.
It was a test. Captain Yihura was one of the people who had hoped to add Math to her section, a hope that remained unfulfilled as long as he failed to manifest a weapon.
Math placed his palm flat against the tree trunk. “I don’t see any sign of violence. No blood, no bodies.” He studied the tree. “The trunk feels warmer than I would expect. Almost like…”
“Yes?”
“Like the tree has a pulse.” The idea sent an icy shiver across his skin. The tree looked normal, but his every instinct screamed that was a lie. It would look normal right up until it didn’t.
Captain Yihura startled at his comment. She set her hand next to his, just for a second, and then drew it back quickly as if she’d been burned.
“Stay away from the trees,” she told the other knights. “Let’s search the camp.”
While she’d looked at the forest, the other knights set up a temporary picket for the horses. The cordon was just a few wooden stakes with rope strung between, but all the horses—even Calamity—had been trained from birth. They’d never wander off under normal circumstances.
The knights didn’t remove the horses’ bridles or saddles—just in case they needed to leave in a hurry. The horses would be brushed down later, when it was safe.
Everyone entered the logging camp.
Math swallowed bile. Few surfaces weren’t painted with blood, now thick, black, and tacky.
Sometimes, he didn’t even realize he was looking at a body.
Mostly, it was just parts of bodies. Globs of flesh left to cook in the sun.
Clouds of flies drifted like black mists between piles of butchered flesh.
“This is…” Lieutenant Nuhzar’s expression mirrored Math’s for once—horrified, disgusted.
Somehow, none of the knights threw up. Possibly because this massacre was so far removed from anything identifiably human, it was easy to pretend it was something else.
Captain Rabu of Swords picked up a man’s foot, still clad in a thick leather workman’s boot, and tossed it to the side. “Hey, Novitiate.”
Math raised his head. “Yes, Captain?”
“This how your family died?”
Math felt his whole body tighten. “No, Captain. They were strangled … and impaled.”
The Captain of Swords grunted. “Kid-glove treatment. Weapons didn’t cause this. Not even beast claws. They were pulled apart, but I’ve never seen wounds like this before.”
Captain Yihura of Forests raised an eyebrow. “You’ve seen that many people dismembered, have you?”
“There was that giant grimmock out in East Castinion, remember? That thing was ripping limbs off with its bare hands.” He shook his head, genuinely perplexed.
“That’s the thing. Dismembered would be normal.
Disgusting, but normal. It’s like tearing apart a chicken.
The wings and the legs—the arms and the legs here—everything comes apart at the joints. ”
The Captain of Forests lifted her eyes to heaven. “Tri-Mother save me. You’re saying these bodies weren’t dismembered…?” Her voice trailed off, as the knight captain more closely studied the remains.
“Yeah, that’s right. I can’t tell how they did it, what made them—” The captain made a breaking motion with his hands.
Math squatted down next to a fleshy mass, examining it with what Captain Rabu had just said in mind. Rabu might not be the smartest knight that had ever roamed the stacks, but he was good at his job, which was slaying grimmocks. If he said these deaths were even more abnormal than “dismembered” …
Math waved away flies as he identified someone’s shoulder, an upper arm, a chunk of the chest, all of it poorly wrapped in the bloody remnants of wool broadcloth.
He could see what Captain Rabu meant. The bones were intact.
The upper arm bone was coated in congealed blood, unbroken and still attached to the shoulder socket.
The soft tissues, the muscles on that upper arm: those had torn apart, too raggedly for saw or sword, too violently for something that had left the bone underneath pristine.
He hunted around until he found a splinter of palisade fence, and then used that to push aside the muscle fiber.
No, it wasn’t his imagination. Nothing had damaged the bone.
What ripped apart muscle while leaving the bones whole?
Mostly whole, anyway. Despite Captain Rabu’s comment about joints, the bones on this arm had separated at the elbow, although he had no idea what had become of that arm, since it wasn’t in the immediate vicinity.
He noticed a flash of green.
Math paused to see if anyone was paying attention, but the knights had split up. Half were combing the camp to see if they could find anything more useful than blood and viscera. The other half watched the tree line. No one paid any attention to him, not even his usual babysitter, Nuhzar.
He pushed aside muscle fibers, saw green again, and this time made a much easier identification. Math’s whole body froze, his breath catching, an icy dread gripping him.
It was a plant vine.
Part of him noted the vine with calm precision. Another part—the part that remembered what this might mean—froze in horror.
He reached for it with the splinter, realized that wouldn’t work, reached for it with his hand, and remembered he was wearing thick leather gloves. He stripped off a glove so he could pull the fragile-looking plant free from where it had lodged in a vein.
He felt like he wasn’t squatting next to a mutilated corpse, but looking over his own shoulder, studying the scene with clinical disinterest. This wasn’t the only vine: he counted seven just on that arm.
Separated from the horror of it all, the sharp sense of personal danger, of shock, he saw this wasn’t the same.
Wasn’t the same as him. Wasn’t what happened to Math when he lost control. His plants didn’t clog up arteries and veins. They didn’t …
They didn’t rip their way out.
Then someone shouted: “We found a live one!”