From Across the Clouded Range (67 page)

The creature’s mouth opened to an
impossible angle and flashed down. Jaret could do nothing to defend
himself and felt the teeth sink into the flesh of his bicep. The
gnashing pain of the bite was followed by the most intense pain
that Jaret had ever experienced, far more than any wound of that
type should have been capable of producing. The pain spread across
his entire body, making his other injuries a memory. It felt like
his blood was on fire, and for a long time he convulsed, unaware of
how the shaking made the manacles bite into his wrists and pulled
his shoulders out of socket.

Just as the unspeakable pain was
beginning to subside, he felt the teeth digging into his thigh, and
the pain returned, worse than before.

Again and again, Thagas'kiula bit him
with the same unbearable result. Finally, the pain stopped long
enough for Jaret’s eyes to focus and his mind to clear. The
creature’s face formed in front of his. The thing smiled in pure
ecstasy, showed its red teeth and dripping chin. It leered at him
with an expression of fanatical desire as if it received
unimaginable pleasure from his pain. It stared at him that way for
a long moment – a lover caught in the moment of rapture – then
returned to its loathsome work, leaving that image as the last
Jaret would remember through the unimaginable suffering that
followed.

Chapter 30

Dasen had had better weeks than the
one the followed the Muldons. Every day was the same monotonous
grind of walking from sunrise to sunset, sleeping under trees,
bathing in streams, and eating whatever tasteless things they could
forage or kill. He spent most of it feeling wet, tired, sore, and
inadequate. Teth saw to the last with seemingly continuous lessons
on all the “manly” skills he had never learned. To this point, she
had attempted to teach him to shoot, hunt, track, navigate the
forest, forage, walk quietly, “read” his surroundings, start fires,
find shelter, climb trees, and cover his trail. None of them seemed
to have taken, much to her apparent satisfaction. Dasen could only
imagine that she was trying to prove his deficiencies as a man as
if that would somehow displace hers as a woman. He was not sure how
that would change anything once they reached the city, but if it
was her goal, she had certainly succeeded.

At the same time, his sheer
incompetence had foiled her attempts to maintain their proper
roles. He had lost his right to lead an hour after they left that
initial trail. Hunting had lasted until the second night without
meat. And luckily, they had not tested his ability to defend them
from an attack. The tasks he was still forced to perform were
menial but demanding: gathering wood, carrying the pack, breaking
trails through heavy brush. As a result, he had at least become
stronger over the last week. He could now maintain even Teth’s most
strenuous pace. His feet had grown accustom to the rough terrain so
that he could watch the forest around him without tripping. He was
so used to the weight of the pack that he felt disconcertingly
light without it. And his muscles were only slightly stiff even
after especially hard days.

Through it all, there was Teth. They
spent every moment together, often very close together, but the
affection from a week ago was gone. She did not kiss him, did not
hold his hand, did not allow him near her while she slept, barely
spoke to him outside the lessons. Yet he could not get those things
from his mind, could not forget how she smelled, tasted, felt. And
he could not forget her eyes that night at the Muldon’s, her words,
her tears. He still believed he had been right but wondered why the
price had to be so high and often considered how next time could be
any different. To this point, he had not come up with any
answers.

A few feet ahead of him, Teth came to
a stop. They were walking along a narrow deer trail through an area
of widely spaced deciduous trees. The thick branches above blocked
all but the occasional streamer of light, kept the summer sun from
being overpowering, and limited the undergrowth to a few scraggly
bushes, vines, and moss. The forest had been getting less dense and
more deciduous for days, and Dasen had to believe they were finally
nearing its end.

The sun was well past its height now,
and Teth had strung her bow a few minutes before. The stop now
could only mean that she had found their supper. He wondered what
it would be this time. The forest had a bounty of small game – and
larger, though Teth refused to kill anything that they could not
eat in a day or two. To this point they had eaten rabbits,
squirrels, grouse, a woodchuck, fish. Some were better than others,
but without salt or seasoning, they all tasted basically the same,
and Dasen had lost any enthusiasm for food beyond its ability to
keep his stomach from rumbling.

Confirming his suspicion,
Teth pulled an arrow from the quiver across her back.
So what will it be today
, Dasen wondered,
a chipmunk, crow,
snake, what else will she make me eat
. If
she had seen it, it was as good as roasting over their fire. Teth
was an undisputed genius with a bow. She almost never missed no
matter the size, speed, or distance of her target; and her ability
to draw, aim, and fire in one breathtaking heartbeat was almost as
impressive as her accuracy.

Dasen watched her eyes, searched for
the source of her attention, and eventually identified the covey of
grouse under a nearby bush. A week ago, he never would have seen
them – the bush where they hid was dense, and their brown speckled
bodies matched it perfectly – but Teth had shown him how to look
for slight anomalies in the undergrowth and identify them as
animals. He watched the birds, thankful that they would be eating
something normal that night, until Teth turned to him with the
bow.

“
Here,” she whispered, “do
you see the birds under that bush?”

Dasen moaned. She hit him with the
bow, and he accepted it without complaint. He took a deep breath.
The grouse were small and almost twenty paces away. He had improved
with the bow, but there was almost no chance that he would hit one
of the birds. He glanced at Teth, hoping she would spare him the
embarrassment, but there was no reprieve. He lifted the bow, drew
the taught string, and sighted along the length of the shaft. He
took a deep breath, held it, and released.

The arrow flew into the bush close
enough to rouse the birds, but not anywhere near hitting them. They
took flight, rising slowly from the ground, wings beating madly.
Dasen could only watch, so Teth ripped the bow from his hands. She
had an arrow drawn a heartbeat later and fired without even seeming
to aim. The bolt flew faster than Dasen’s eye could track until it
met the breast of the last bird. It tumbled to the ground in the
center of the trail they were following. It flopped, but the arrow
had gone clean through, and in only a few seconds its struggles
ceased.

Despite having seen countless shots
like that, Dasen was amazed. And Teth acted as if it were the most
normal thing in the world. She deftly unstrung her bow, placed the
string in her pocket, and tapped him on the chest with the shaft.
“You think too much. It is good to prepare yourself, but sometimes
you have to stop thinking and give yourself up to the
task.”

“
But you told me to pause
and take a breath before I shoot.”

“
That’s because you were
not properly bracing. Now you’re waiting too long. When you hold
too long, the bow wobbles. You can’t hit anything when that
happens. You have to create a solid foundation. Too fast or too
slow and it won’t work.”

“
So how did you learn to
shoot?” Dasen asked with a mix of frustration and awe. He didn’t
think he would ever be able to do what Teth did effortlessly almost
every day. How was it possible for an orphan girl from a remote
village to do that, to do any of this? Obviously, her aunt had
taught her a lot on their trips to gather herbs in the forest, but
Dasen doubted that Milne had ever hunted, slept under pine trees,
or hidden trails.

Teth gave him a cautious, sidelong
look. “Why do you think I should tell you? Trying to find the root
of my decent in to chaos, are you?” She smiled mischievously,
obviously pleased with the turn in conversation.

Dasen forced a laugh. “If you want to
put it that way, sure. How was it you became a chaos-worshipping
demon in the first place?”

Teth spun and growled at him, hands
extended as claws. “I’ll drag you into the Maelstrom, little
boy.”

Dasen was so surprised that he
actually jumped, which only made Teth laugh harder. “Seriously,
I’ll tell you, but first I have a question for you. If everything
that happens is part of the Order, then why does my ability to
shoot a bow have to be outside that Order? Maybe the Order made me
this way for a reason. Did you ever think of that?”

“
If you were a deer or a
bear, I’d agree, but you’re not. You’re a person. You have
freewill. You define yourself through your decisions.”

“
Thank you, counselor. Are
you going to get that arrow?” Dasen took a few strides off the
trail to the bush they were just now passing. Teth continued on,
bending only slightly to pick up the arrow with a bird skewered
across it. “If we didn’t need the arrows, we could roast the bird
just like this.” Dasen slid the arrow he had retrieved back into
Teth’s, now half-full, quiver. She handed the bird to him, and he
secured it to his pack using the arrow.

“
So you were going to tell
me about your decent into chaos,” he reminded when he had the pack
on his back again.

“
Don’t push it, counselor
boy, or you’ll remain just as celibate as one of them.” Teth
laughed again at Dasen’s shock. She was obviously in a rare good
mood. “I’ve been wondering when you’d finally start to understand.
I could just as well ask when you decided to stop learning how to
provide for yourself and hide away in a library. It’s not that much
different, you know.”

Dasen wanted to protest – learning,
understanding the Order, was a very honorable role for a man – but
Teth did not let him. As he drew the breath, she turned and
scowled. “Do you want to hear the story or not?” Dasen nodded, so
she continued, “I started shooting soon after the fire. When they
were clearing out our house and selling off my parent’s things, I
latched onto my father’s bow, and for some reason, I had to have
it. I still can’t explain it. It’s not like he ever even used it. I
suppose it just felt right, made me feel safe, made me feel as if a
part of him was still there to protect me.” Her voice betrayed her
emotions with the slightest crack. “In any case, I eventually
decided that if I was going to carry the thing around I should
learn to shoot it. So I snuck into the woods behind my aunt’s house
and fired at stumps for hours. At first, I could barely draw the
string, but eventually, I could hit my targets center with every
shot. Hunting came naturally after that.

“
The new shop owner
wouldn’t sell me arrows, so I used the money Ipid sent to buy them
from the caravans. I told them they were for my father, which I
pretended was true. I think Milne knew it was wrong, but after the
fire, she basically let me do anything that made me happy, and she
never complained about having meat for the pot."

Teth stopped and looked back. Dasen
was silently amazed. She made the story sound as casual as if
describing how she had learned to bake bread, but he could only
imagine how much additional ridicule, resentment, and abuse she had
brought upon herself. It became clearer and clearer that this was
not a passing fancy, was not some childish attempt to rebel. He
stopped and watched her walk, gliding effortlessly through the
trees, and realized that her skills had been a lifetime in the
making. This had started with a distraught little girl and become
an identity. And he began to understand what his father had said in
the coach that day a lifetime past.

Considering that, he jogged a few
strides to make up the distance he had lost, and was just about to
ask another question when Teth abruptly turned from the trail. She
wrapped her hand around his mouth and pulled him behind a nearby
tree. The move was so sudden and unexpected that Dasen lost his
balance, and Teth allowed him to crumple to the ground behind the
broad trunk of a beech tree. She crouched beside him, studying the
forest. Moving to his knees, he joined her, peering around the
other side of the trunk. He held the one-tined pitchfork tightly –
somewhat surprised that he had not impaled himself on the thing as
he went down. Teth had her bow out, but she had not strung
it.

"There’s a clearing up ahead,” Teth
whispered, breath tickling across his ear. “I think I saw a line of
horses along the outer trees."

Dasen’s heart jumped at the mention of
horses, and he frantically searched the trees in front of them. In
the back of his mind, he knew that they had been traveling
undisturbed for too long and had become complacent as a result.
They had not seen any signs of other humans in days, let alone
invaders. Not since they had crossed the main road – an operation
done in the dead of the night with great caution – had they seen
anything that would indicate an invasion was taking place. There
had been no freeholds, no creatures in the sky, no horsemen,
nothing but trees and animals. Dasen had begun to believe that
either Teth was right about them stopping to regroup, he was right
about them concentrating on Wildern to the south, or both. In
either case, he had hoped they would have an easy trip to Thoren
once they finally emerged from the trees and found a village. Now
he saw that was just another convenient fantasy. If not for Teth's
sharp eyes, they would have walked right into the invader’s camp.
Now, they would have to find some way around the camp and hope that
a sentry had not seen them.