Chapter 4
Osid
The remnants of my war party found us not long after we resumed walking.
All of them looked worse for wear, dripping with sweat, and their faces were so coated in soot that I didn’t notice that young Hakri was the one leading them until he drew close enough to see tattooed ivy curving around the base of his horns.
Hakri dismounted and rushed toward us. “Sire, thank Azuumual you’re safe! ”
“Hakri? Jivorn should be leading the rest of you to Riverbend. Why are you here?”
“Lord Jivorn was thrown from his horncrest in the blasts. He broke the rest of us up in smaller groups to search for you while he returned to Thornward to come back with a fire-control team. We’ll need to put out the fire before it spreads to the rest of the grove.”
“And again I ask, why are you here? Your orders were to kill the marauders in Riverbend.”
“We thought you might be dead, and the fire—”
“Have you lost all sense?” I asked, flicking his horn. “First you accuse me of being weak enough to succumb to such a lazy assassination attempt, and now you can’t feel the storm coming?”
He closed his eyes and stilled. “You’re right.”
I could understand Hakri making this mistake; he was one of the youngest of my men at twenty and had to spend most of his youth fighting monsters on this crapshoot of a planet rather than honing his magnetic sense.
It was to be expected. This planet’s weather was fickle to a fault, but the storms back on Sankatul could vaporize a man on the spot during storm season, and if you didn’t learn fast how to sense the subtle changes in the air, you were toast. In the most literal sense.
There was no excuse for Jivorn, however.
He had several decades on me and had fought alongside both my father and me in the Broken Plains War.
He should know the importance of protecting farmland.
The Rumbling season was almost upon us, and if we lost access to our main food stores before we were able to collectively finish the harvest, then we’d lose out on several tons of wheat.
With the endless stampede of monsters, we wouldn’t go hungry.
But without any wheat to fill our bellies, we wouldn’t be able to produce fire. And there went our long-range attacks.
“Of course I’m right. This place will be a marsh by morning. Now instead of celebrating a victory with my new lucky charm, I need to clean up your mess.”
“Your…lucky charm?” He turned his attention to my companion, his eyes widening.
“This is Blair, she pulled me from the flames and saved my life.”
He placed a fist over his heart and bowed. “Thank you for saving our king. We owe you a great debt.”
“She doesn’t speak like us. I’m still working out a decent way to communicate.” I touched her shoulder and pointed at him. “Hakri.”
She lifted a thumb at me.
“I’ll assume that’s a positive affirmation. Look at us, we’re in sync, we’re bonding.”
“Did the Biwban drop her here too? Vos said he saw what looked like space pods falling out of the sky this morning.” He gave my charm an appreciative glance. “She’s a bit cute, isn’t she?” He reached out to touch her hair.
I smacked the overzealous little shit’s hand away.
She’s mine.
“She bites.”
Hakri nodded and moved to retrieve my armor and slung it over his mount. “Take my horncrest. I’ll ride with the others while we escort you back to Thornward.”
“We’re not going anywhere until those raiders are taken care of.
” Turning to address the rest of the men, I said, “Silyu, ride ahead and gather up the others. Tell them to regroup with us at the hunting cabin down the road to Riverbend. Avoid taking the main road, they’ve probably loaded it with bloated button. ”
The tracker cursed. “Are you sure it was BBs? I didn’t think they grew this far inland.”
He was right. Bloated buttons grew on an aquatic vine found only in swamplands.
The parent vine used the fruit to store the flammable gas it produced as part of its respiration process.
Underwater, the fruit was harmless, as the gel reacted with water to remain inert.
If you removed them from the water, the fruit got unstable fast. If left out in the sun or hit with any kind of spark, the gel rapidly vaporized, causing the fruit to expand and eventually explode.
They made the perfect bombs if you used them within a few hours after plucking them.
Any longer than that and the cursed thing would just get more unstable until it popped because some unlucky idiot looked at it wrong, whether you had it in water or not.
It was almost unheard of to try to transport them over long distances.
“They don’t grow here. But there’s no mistaking the green flash they make when you set them off. ”
Hakri returned to my side, wringing his hands together. “Lord Osid, are you sure about this? You’re injured.”
“Yes. And thanks to your delays, our enemies have surely figured that out by now. We need to move before they grow even bolder.”
Suddenly, Blair screamed. Her coat was half swallowed by Hakri’s mount while she desperately clung to it by the sleeves.