Chapter 21 #2
Prak’ox shifts his stance, bracing, using his weight. I kick, scrape for footing, try to twist free, but the rock is slick with spray and steam and I can’t get leverage.
“Don’t fight,” he breathes against my ear. “You’ll wear yourself out.”
His hand moves again, forcing deeper, searching, taking what it wants while I strain uselessly against him.
“Ah,” Prak’ox says as his hand burrows into the hole he ripped in my dress and goes further down. “Here is something nice—” His head snaps around.
There’s an opening in the flood of bloodwings. And it’s shaped like a man. There’s fur, dark and torn, barely visible through the thick layer of flesh-eating alien locusts. Loose leather pieces are flapping in the wind. And there’s blood. Lots of it.
The figure staggers forward into the calm air on the lee side of the screen, bent into the wind even here, as if it still presses against him.
Small, dark bodies cling to him, dozens of them.
Their thin wings are folded in, mandibles working, tearing at fur and leather, at anything they can reach, frantically chirping all the while.
His hand comes up and rips one free, flinging it aside. Another replaces it at once.
He lifts his head.
“Nator’ax!” I exclaim, horrified at the sight of him, with blood dripping down the chewed-up fur, completely covered in bloodwings.
He sees me too, and the fury in his blue eyes makes me blanch. Someone’s going to die here.
Prak’ox throws me off him and reaches for his spear. “Outtriber!”
Nator’ax crosses the space in two strides and seizes him by the back of the neck and shoulder, hauling him away from me with a force that rips him completely off balance. Prak’ox crashes sideways into the rocks, scrambling, trying to recover.
Nator’ax doesn’t give him the chance, but Prak’ox doesn’t go easily.
He slams his elbow back into Nator’ax’s ribs and twists, clawing for the ground, for the screen, for anything he can grab.
Nator’ax grunts with the impacts, his footing slipping on the wet rock for a heartbeat as the bloodwings strike him in a frenzy, clinging and tearing.
For a moment it looks like they might both go down, dragged into the swarm together.
Then something in Nator’ax snaps tight. With a furious roar and a savage heave, he wrenches Prak’ox upward again, ignoring the creatures chewing into his neck and arms, and forces him higher into the churning stream of millions of ravenous alien locusts while dark blood runs down him.
Prak’ox screams and kicks and punches, but Nator’ax stays there, frozen like a statue despite the hits he absorbs.
Prak’ox has no fur on, and after a couple of seconds his head is covered in bloodwings. The screams get louder, then suddenly muffled as one of them flies into his mouth.
Nator’ax throws the sexual predator into the deadly stream, behind the rock screen.
For a moment I just stand there.
The swarm roars overhead, a solid, living current. Something thrashes beyond the stones, a shape swallowed almost at once, and then there’s nothing but the sound again—endless, grinding, deafening, lethal.
My breath comes in short, broken pulls. I can’t seem to fill my lungs.
Nator’ax is still there, motionless, his hands and arms black with clinging bloodwings. They crawl over him, biting, tearing, their wings flickering in frantic bursts. He doesn’t react, just looks at them as if mystified.
“Nator’ax!” My voice comes out thin, lost under the noise. That jolts me loose. I stagger to my feet and rush to him, my hands shaking as I grab at his furs, yanking them loose where they’re already torn. “Get into the water! Quick!”
He looks at me, and his eyes are blank, as if he’s still somewhere else, still inside the storm.
His chest rises and falls too slowly, as though he’s forgotten how to breathe properly, and for a moment I’m not sure he even sees me.
The blood on his skin doesn’t seem to register with him at all, nor do the creatures still clinging and biting, wings flapping.
He just stands there, unmoving, like something pulled out of the blizzard and not fully returned.
For a second I’m afraid he won’t move. Then he gives a small, almost careless shrug and lets the heavy fur fall from his shoulders. It hits the rock with a wet, heavy splat.
More bloodwings cling to his skin, and I slap at them, ripping them free, feeling them tear away with a sickening resistance.
“Move!” I shout, grabbing one of his hands with both of mine, dragging him with me and ignoring the creepy feel of the locusts.
Without another word, he steps into the pool. He drops beneath the surface, vanishing in a single motion, curling in on himself as the water closes over him.
The effect is immediate. The bloodwings release him all at once, drifting upward in a slow, dark cloud. Some twitch, beating their wings weakly against the surface before going still. Others float, legs curled, carried toward the edge. The water clouds around Nator’ax, turning faintly pink.
I drop to my knees at the edge, reaching in blindly until I find his arm under the surface, solid and real. “Come up!”
For a heartbeat there’s nothing.
Then he rises. Water sheets off him as he straightens, his skin streaked with blood, small bites marking wherever the creatures found purchase. Pink rivulets run down his chest and arms.
“They don’t like water,” he says, his voice flat, almost distant.
“It’s the heat,” I say, grasping for something, anything. “They stay high over the springs. They don’t come down…” My voice breaks.
Up close, I can see how much blood there is, how torn the wrappings are around his neck, how many bites he’s taken. “Oh, Nator’ax…”
I move before I think. I step into the water and wrap my arms around him, holding on hard, not caring about the blood, the heat, or the trembling starting in my hands.
For a moment, he doesn’t respond. Then his arms come up around me, slow, heavy, but certain. “I asked you to stay in the cave.”
“Yes, I know,” I sob against his chest. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know…”
“You didn’t know if I would protect you,” he says flatly. “You thought I would break my oath.”
“No! But… you were so… different…” I have trouble making the words. There’s a good chance he got half eaten by locusts because I doubted him.
His grip tightens around me, not enough to hurt, but enough that I feel it. “I was pretending. For them. For the Gar tribe.”
“I didn’t know that.” My voice shakes despite myself. “You didn’t tell me anything. You shut me in and just… walked away.”
“I told you to stay. You would have been safe.”
I let out a shaky breath and pull back just enough to look at him. “I would have stayed. If I’d known what you were doing… I would have trusted you.” My fingers tighten against his arm. “But you didn’t give me anything to hold on to. You just disappeared into it.”
He doesn’t answer at once. His gaze drifts past me, unfocused, like he’s still seeing something else. “Because you would’ve hated what I was going to do,” he says at last, his voice flat. “I know you would.”
A small chill runs through me that has nothing to do with the storm. I hesitate, not sure if I want to know this. “What… what did you do?”
His jaw tightens, just a fraction. “Not what I had planned,” he says. Then his mouth relaxes into a tight smile. “Thank the Ancestors for that.”
For a moment we stand there as the storm roars above us. It seems to me it’s less intense now.
“Why come here?” he asks.
“The wind pushed me this way. And the springs… they made sense to me. They’re warm and the storm couldn’t reach me.” I hesitate. “He was just here. I thought he was safe.”
Nator’ax’s jaw tightens. “He didn’t look safe.”
“And he wasn’t.”
The swarm still rushes overhead, but it’s beginning to thin, breaking into shifting bands. The sound eases from a crushing roar to something just short of it.
He studies me, then looks me over quickly, checking. “Are you hurt?”
I shake my head. “No. Just… shaken.”
“This was not the plan,” he says. “But it may work out anyway.”
“They’ll come looking,” I say, glancing out into the storm. “Once the storm is over. They won’t let us go just like that.”
“But they may think we’re dead,” Nator’ax points out.
“They’ll look first. They must know that this is the only other place that might be safe during a storm. Prak’ox took a chance on that.”
“They will not expect us to move in this,” he says. “That gives us an advantage.”
I let out a shaky breath that almost turns into a laugh. “You want to leave now, in the middle of this?”
“No, but before the end of it. We have to pass close to the village, and I want to do that while the wind is still blowing. But I only want snow in that wind. Not those.” He points to the bloodwings that are still flying above us, now much more spread out.
Now the only noise is the howling wind through the rock screen.
“Let’s rest a little first. The fire’s still burning. And I think there’s frit.” I point to Prak’ox’s pack.
“I think we may find several useful things around here,” Nator’ax says as he sits down stiffly and puts his legs into the pool where the bloodwings are still floating.
He exhales slowly, as if the simple act of sitting has taken more out of him than he wants to show.
“But by all means, let’s get some frit.”