39. One Foot After the Other
Chapter thirty-nine
One Foot After the Other
Dappled sunlight shafted through the kaleidoscope of green leaves arrayed over Rerdas’s head.
The forest here was different from the ones he had haunted in the North.
Broad leaves, wide as his shoulders, fanned out beneath towering trees choked with vines.
Bright flowers bobbed among overgrown ferns.
An earthy, pungent smell invaded his lungs.
The further in he went, the more the damp air seemed to weigh.
Sweat gathered at his temples, pooled in the hollows above his collarbone, and ran down his back.
Etiana tromped just ahead of him, and he kept his good arm half-extended toward her.
It seemed like she was about to topple over at any moment.
Eternals knew she was strong-willed, but they were both in terrible shape.
For the thousandth time, he ordered himself to think of something else. Wall it off.
The last time he had felt true safety, or something like it, had been in the attic in Drida.
He had fallen asleep with Imalroc beside him.
He could still remember both of them breathing like one person, Imalroc’s limbs tangled with his own.
That feeling was a tether that pulled him onward, toward what he could not help but want.
The pathless jungle closed in tight. It had a near-constant sound, a whispering of leaves and insects and creatures that melded into a hum. Every step was treacherous. His curls plastered to his head, dark with perspiration. His throat stung, wanting water.
Etiana staggered beside him, and Rerdas slowed. She looked drained, and Rerdas could feel his own fatigue creeping into his limbs. But there was no time to stop.
“Keep going, Eti.”
“I need water,” she panted, pressing the heel of her hand to her forehead.
“We’ll find some. Keep… keep heading south.
” Gods, he hoped they were still heading south.
He shot a futile glance upwards, but the sky was barely a splotch or two of blue through the trees.
If he wanted to mark their progress by the mountains in the west, he’d have to climb up for the view, and he had no energy for it.
The sun wheeled higher in the hidden blue, and the air grew stifling.
Rerdas gasped at it like a fish on a dock.
His whole body protested every step, his head and stomach ringing hollow.
Etiana’s head drooped beside him, and more than once she missed her mark with the crutch and pitched toward the earth.
He swallowed back a pained cry when he caught her again, wrenching his shoulder.
And then, a song straight from the Eternals. The music of running water. He pulled Etiana after him, batting aside leaves and half-falling down an embankment. Directly below him ran a small, pebbly creek. Little more than run-off, but enough to be salvation.
He fell onto hands and knees in the mud and plunged cupped hands into the tiny stream again and again. Etiana hunched beside him, scooping up water frantically.
He sat back on his heels and forced them both to slow down. Lifted palmfuls of water so that it soaked his head and trickled across the flame-field of pain that was his shoulder. Alive for now. Eternals, let their luck hold.
They had taken up their trek again when a falling diospyros fruit almost hit him on the head. It rolled in front of his boot, and he picked it up with trembling fingers. He’d never encountered them growing in the wild. The last time he’d even seen one had been in a marketplace in Kibo.
“Eti, here. Eat this. I’m going to climb up. See if I can get a handle on where we are.”
His exhausted cousin leaned silently against the trunk of the tree while Rerdas clambered up it. Gnarled limbs formed a sturdy enough pathway, and Rerdas broke into the sun-drenched world of the canopy.
Clouds of birds swooped above the rolling landscape of trees.
To his right, he could see the distant, arcing shadow of the Syrral mountain range, sloping south.
He looked across the green carpet of the forest and knew that he was staring at the land of the Eternal Sun.
The Southern Felds sprawled in the low valleys ahead of them.
He slipped carefully back down the tree, stopping only to knock more diospyros fruit from the branches. The sound of his boots striking the ground felt emphatic, as though they could not be stopped now.
“We’re going the right way,” he told Etiana, smiling as he saw the relief break over her face. “We should take the fruit with us and keep walking.”
“And… did you see and sign of… of them?” She helped him toss the loose fruit into the medicine bag he still carried.
“No. But it’d be nearly impossible to ride horses through this. They’ll be walking too if they’re still behind us.”
“Eternals stay with us,” Etiana breathed. In silence, Rerdas echoed her prayer.
It was only a bit of food and water, but it was enough to keep them moving as the afternoon waned.
He led the way, pushing aside the fanning leaves and dodging spiky trunks.
Eventually, he could feel the pull in his legs increasing.
They were going downhill now, entering the first of the valleys.
Every aching footstep carried them closer to safety.
Closer to Uralta and Hammond. To Imalroc. His heart swelled at the thought.
But the birds, he realized, had gone silent. His skin prickled, and he reached back for Etiana.
“What is it?” she murmured, still stumping forward.
“Don’t know. Something’s caught the birds’ attention. We’ll have to be very careful once the sun goes down. Lots of animals in a forest like this.”
“Should we stop at night?”
“Not if we can help it.”
He turned to brush a low-hanging branch out of their path, and behind them, he heard a sound.
Rerdas looked back. The sound came again. His mouth fell open, ears ringing, lungs barely dragging in air.
Etiana steadied herself against his shoulder. “Is that…”
The sound, familiar, as if from a different lifetime, a sound somewhere between a howl and a bark. They were listening to the far-off baying of hounds.
He seized her forearm and stumbled through the undergrowth, heedless of thorns ripping at his outstretched hands and the jagged rocks that caught his feet. The incline steepened, but Rerdas yanked Etiana along with reckless speed.
Ahead, he saw glimmers of lazy afternoon light sinking through an opening in the trees. The jungle grew more sparsely here.
“Etiana,” he gasped. “Can you run?”
Her jaw clenched. “I think…” He felt her pulling at him, tugging backward as she slowed.
“Rerdas, I think you should… you should go.”
He jerked around so hard he could’ve sworn the bones in his shoulder shrieked. “What?"
“Go on ahead for help. I can hide. You’ll come back for me.” She slowed further.
“We are not stopping, and we’re not fucking separating.”
“I can’t keep—”
Rerdas slipped one arm around her waist and nearly scooped her off the ground as he pushed them both forward.
“Rerdas, we won’t both—”
“I’m not leaving you. I’m not leaving you. I am not leaving you.” He chanted it like a spell that would bind them together. She had never left him behind.
He ran, half-carrying, half-dragging his cousin. The world flashed by him, green and gold and warm. Somewhere behind them, dogs howled. He could picture them. Tireless, bounding legs. Tugging at the ends of ropes held by their masters.
There had to be something, some way they could escape. But those were hunting hounds on the chase, and they would run through the night in pursuit of their quarry. Nightfall would doom them.
A frenzy of barking echoed through the trees. They would not have until nightfall. Etiana let out a small sound.
His breath rasped in and out of his lungs. His tongue was swollen and stuck to the roof of his mouth. His back was slick with blood and sweat. He could not tell if Etiana’s trembling came from her fear or his own shaking body.
“Please,” she said. “Just come back for me. They can’t get us both!”
“I am not fucking leaving you,” Rerdas said, panting with effort. Even the words seemed to take more strength than he had. He staggered. Desperation shredded every nerve.
“Ahead!” a voice bellowed. “Ahead! I see them!”
“Get up into the trees,” Rerdas gasped, letting Etiana slide from his hold.
The nearest copse of trees with branches low enough for them lay further down the hill.
He staggered toward it and lifted Etiana up the trunk to the nearest branch.
She clung to it, one hand outstretched to help him. His boots slipped on the smooth bark.
No footholds.
He backed up to give himself room to run and jump.
Etiana’s shout was his only warning. He whirled to face an onrushing pair of guards. They slammed him against the tree, and white-hot pain bloomed across his back.
By the time the spots had faded from his vision, two more guards appeared. One of them picked her way closer, a pair of hounds yanking at the chains she held clamped in both hands. And behind her came one last figure.
His lips were as cracked as Rerdas’s own. His hair was scraped across his forehead in lank, red strands. His normally wax-pale face was dotted with sweat, but his eyes shone with triumph. When he spoke, the memory of the Wishing Well crashed through Rerdas, and he couldn’t breathe.
“You,” Melgreth Hize said, “are not strong, Master Toriem. But you are fast. I’ll grant you that.” His gaze flicked up toward Etiana, and his teeth flashed in the sunlight. “Get her down,” he snapped, flinging one gloved hand up in a signal.
The guards who had Rerdas pinned to the tree kicked his feet out from under him and dragged him away from the trunk. The others stepped toward Etiana.
He twisted in their grip, trying to stand. One of them cracked him across the kneecap with the flat of her sword. Pain flashed through him, and the horrible realization that this was only the beginning. His leg buckled, and he collapsed back toward the ground with a strangled groan.