Chapter 15 #2
The king’s guard has unmatched training outposts and resources.
They know how to build muscle and keep it.
Stellan taught me everything he could, but my own instruction was nothing compared to Raker’s.
My nails dig into my palms, remembering the one time I tried to get access to that training and where that got me.
My hatred of him has had years to simmer. How many nights have I fallen asleep, dreaming of gutting him with his own blade? Of being strong enough to hurt him at all?
I glare at his back, imagining a dozen swords buried in it.
That’s how I pass the time. Imagining the various ways I could kill him. I picture a thousand sparkling knives going through that armor. An ax chopping away that hood. A lance going into his chest.
My sword hums on my back, almost with approval. It makes me smile.
I’m definitely not smiling hours later when my legs feel like they’ve been reduced to clay, and my feet feel like they’ve decided to merge with my boots. Maybe working with Raker wasn’t the best idea.
He doesn’t take breaks. He never slows. His posture never slips. I might be impressed if I wasn’t in so much fucking pain.
I nearly whimper with relief when the sun dips toward the horizon and Raker begins to deviate from the path, toward the faint sound of rushing water. Finally.
As we get closer, that whispering water turns into a roaring. Then the forest clears, revealing a riverbank with white, foaming crests, streams of water hastily moving in various directions. There’s a small strip of land at the center of it.
I clench my jaw, remembering how quickly a similar river swept Kira away, and how rocks just like these, sticking out of the water like fangs, shredded her leg.
Surely, Raker doesn’t mean to camp here.
Without a single glance at me, he steps into the rushing current and walks straight through it, his armored form cutting across the thrashing water like a blade. He steps onto the bit of land as if it was no trouble at all. He puts his stuff down. His back is to me.
Figure it out.
Figuring it out means me making camp at the edge of the river, hoping my proximity to the water will keep me safe.
A moment later, I hear a sharp click, followed by a roaring. I turn to see Raker has made a fire. In less than a minute.
It was a skill I taught myself, before coming to the Centennial. But even in the best conditions—not next to a sputtering river—it took me several tries and over ten minutes. I watch him slip something back into his pack.
A flint rock. I scowl. Of course, a king’s guard would have one. They’re rare and expensive.
It’s not even that cold out. But as Raker stalks to the edge of the piece of land and peers into the water, I see the fire isn’t for warmth. He slides the sword from his spine. Lowers it in front of him.
With a speed that makes me jolt, he stabs it into the river.
I almost laugh that he would actually think that would work. That he would think he would be fast enough to—
That laugh dies in my throat as he turns around, and I see the large, pink-scaled fish impaled on his blade.
Well, fuck.
He expertly descales it. Cuts it. Then begins to cook it on the fire. Of course, he doesn’t offer any to me. Not that I would take it. I’ve never had fish before. Best not to test my gut when I’m not even that hungry.
My traitorous stomach grumbles at the smell anyway. I turn away from him and his roasting food, toward my bed for the night.
It doesn’t matter that it’s dirt and a few patches of grass.
The moment I’m off my feet, my entire body melts into the ground.
Not even the river, roaring in my ears, nor the stars glimmering brightly overhead, nor the danger lurking nearby can dull the pull to sleep.
I tell myself I should stay awake, I should test this theory about the water, but it’s not long before my eyes close, and everything fades away.
I’m not even an hour into sleep when I’m jolted out of it by a slow scraping, like a claw grating across tree bark. My eyes open immediately. And the sound … it stops. As if it was never there at all.
It could have been a dream; it could have been nothing. I lay very still, listening beyond the river. Beyond Raker’s steady breathing.
Nothing. Nothing but quiet for several minutes, and my eyes slowly close again. Sleep rushes in like a hungry tide, washing over me, pulling me under.
That’s when I hear it again. And this time, there is no doubt.
I sit up, hand clenched around the hilt of my blade. Heart racing, I squint into the darkness of the forest.
Nothing. I see nothing.
But I feel … I feel the hush of the woods. The breath it holds. On shaking, tired legs, I stand. My arms ache with exhaustion as I haul my sword in front of me, the metal pierced into the ground. I wait. And wait.
Until a single foot steps out of the trees. It’s made of flayed, putrid flesh. Its smell hits me at once, and I nearly gag.
Rot. The demon smells of pure and utter death. It takes another slow step toward me, and a shard of moonlight illuminates its face.
Twisted, mangled features, skin dried into a peel. Similar to the others, but this one isn’t encased in shadow. No, I see every inch of its graying skin and waxen bone.
Its eyes are two pits of darkness, looking at me. Its mouth is scarred tissue, as if it has been sewn closed and ripped open a hundred times before. Was this demon once alive? Is that what the God of Death does? Create armies from his corpses?
Its mouth parts, breaking skin, oozing onyx blood, and emits an ear-splitting scream. Its teeth go back rows and rows.
It doesn’t waste any more time. It lunges forward, claws outstretched toward my neck.
I stumble back. Right into the river.
My spine hits a rock, and light explodes behind my eyelids.
There’s no time for pain. I’m immediately swept into the current’s relentless hold, my body turning, toppling, scraping against the daggerlike stones, sharpened into points by the rough water.
I reach out blindly and manage to grab on to a rock, splitting my palm in the process.
With a desperate jolt, I grip it, nails breaking, and lift myself out of the shallow water, fighting the current, fighting for air. I turn the moment I can and see the flesh-stitched creature, peering into the water. Right over me. Waiting.
Head pounding, spine a lightning bolt of pain, I reach for another rock.
Another. Slowly, I pull myself through the current, sword still clutched in my other palm, toward that narrow strip of land, until I can throw myself onto it, coughing up water.
Whimpering as my tattered hand scrapes against the dirt.
The creature waits for several minutes at the edge of the river, staring me down, before slowly slinking back into the woods.
Trembling with cold, my pants rasped and loud, hot blood dripping all over me, I turn toward Raker. His back is still to me. His glorious sword is still dug into the ground right where he left it.
He had to have heard my struggle. The beast’s scream. He must be awake.
He didn’t move a single inch.
Of course he didn’t. He wants my map—but he must have decided the extra effort of saving me again simply isn’t worth it.
The sound of ripping fabric cuts through the night as I tear the extra length at the bottom of my shirt, and wrap it around my hand, wincing at the pain. Watching it soon turn crimson.
To heal, to prepare for another relentless day of walking, I need to sleep. Body shaking with cold, I lie on my side. Somehow, rest finds me.
The next morning, I’m awoken by the sound of Raker splashing through the current. He doesn’t even turn. Doesn’t even alert me to his leaving.
Heart in my throat, I rush to my feet and throw myself through the water in a hurry, boot slipping against a rock. Pain shoots through my limbs as my knees both hit the jagged bottom.
I grit my teeth and rise, then race onto the riverbank after him. He makes no move to check if I have followed.
Another day of silence. Another day of Harlan Raker completely ignoring me, as if I am below even a moment of his notice.
Good. I don’t want to hear about all my shortcomings anyway. My own voice inside my head is enough.
It tells me I’m too slow. Raker won’t adjust his speed for me. Either I match his pace … or I get left behind.
We don’t have creatures. Not anymore, at least. Most—if not all—of this journey will be made on foot. Just like the swimming, this is a weakness that needs to be strengthened. I need to be strengthened, like pouring high metal into a lesser blade. Like reinforcing it.
I vary between walking quickly, jogging, then resting. Sometimes, I lose sight of him altogether and run at top speed, only to crest a hill and see his unmistakable form below, armor glimmering beneath the sun.
My bleeding hand quickly becomes irritating. I replace the bandage again, using more torn fabric, knowing it could get infected. And then what? I have no medicine. And no illusions that Raker won’t leave me feverish and dying.
No, he won’t leave me. He’ll likely kill me and take my sword.
That’s fucking comforting.
Distractions prove to be their own medicines.
I study the curve of the landscape, how this world is like an endless painting, each mile more sparkling than the last. Right now, the grass is dark green.
Large rocks rise from the ground in sharp angles.
Some form clusters of mountains. We walk by ruin after ruin.
I feel the whisper of their histories as I pass them by, as if there are secrets hidden between those stones.
As if they once formed a magnificent place.
Now they sit in forgotten piles.
The path tilts up and down, alongside craggy mountains, through wildflower-speckled glens. When the sun is shining brightly above, we reach a valley covered in violet.