Novels2Search
Corrupted Coil
Corrupted Coil: Book 1: Chapter 18

Corrupted Coil: Book 1: Chapter 18

Yann sat up and looked around at a different part of the riverbank. Wesh, Yvan, and the other Watchmen lay asleep on the grass under the trees where they’d come through Eliska’s portal yesterday.

She was the only person awake besides Yann. She sat against her tree over there feeding sticks into the fire.

Her eyes kept snapping around the group from one man to another. She didn’t seem to pay Yann any extra attention except that he was sitting up and looking back at her now.

How long had she been sitting there watching the men sleep? She kept insisting that they didn’t have to leave right away and that they could stay here and rest for a change. How long would that last?

She also kept insisting that the group shouldn’t stay in one place for very long. She said this was only a reprieve to catch up on some much-needed downtime after their last series of catastrophes.

She didn’t say this was the calm before the storm started up again. She didn’t have to say it because everybody already knew it.

Wesh never contradicted anything she said or overruled her decisions about anything. If she told everyone they had to move today, the whole Watch would go along with it, including Yvan.

Yann didn’t know how to feel about someone taking command in his father’s place. Following Wesh didn’t seem like too much of a leap considering how much older and more experienced he was.

None of the Watchmen had his magic, either. They would all have been dead without him to protect them.

Yann didn’t feel the same way about Eliska doing the same thing. He didn’t understand why he had a problem with her doing it. She had more magic and more experience even than Wesh.

Yann did have a problem with it, though.

He wasn’t the only one. He caught the other Watchmen all glancing at Yvan and Wesh every time Eliska made any kind of decision or gave anyone an order to do anything. None of the other Watchmen wanted some girl from the middle of nowhere to take their Watch Commander’s place.

Yann deliberately looked in the other direction while the other men woke up and eventually dragged themselves off the ground.

The group spent the night sleeping on the bare grass around their fire. Yann fell into a senseless sleep. He didn’t stay conscious enough to keep track of who kept the fire going overnight. Maybe Eliska stayed awake all night keeping watch over everyone.

He couldn’t fathom why she would take so much care over a bunch of strangers she thought would be too useless not to get her killed. She sure changed fast.

Something must have happened between when she left the group on that frozen lake and when she followed the Barbarians back to the Watch. He didn’t like to think about what might have happened, but something must have.

He really hoped nothing happened to hurt her. His temper started rising when he thought about anyone hurting her.

He gritted his teeth and forced himself to inspect his glaive instead of looking around. He didn’t want anyone reading his unspoken thoughts, especially not her.

He felt her staring at him even when the other men started talking. She wouldn’t be looking only at him, but he didn’t want to sit here with these thoughts coursing through his mind.

He pushed himself to his feet. “I’m going hunting for something to eat.”

“Don’t stray too far away, son,” Yvan told him. “Don’t make us come looking for you.”

Eliska stood up. “I’ll go with you. You need someone to keep an eye on you.”

His gaze shot up and he discovered her grinning at him. He flushed in spite of himself and looked away. “Or I’ll keep an eye on you—one way or the other.”

Barsali and Rien both laughed.

Yann headed down the riverbank. She tagged after him until they turned a few corners. Another stand of trees separated them from the group.

He stopped there and used his glaive to hack a long stave from one of the trees. He trimmed it down and sharpened the end into a pointed spear.

He and Eliska kept walking in silence for a while. Yann scrambled in his brain to come up with something to say to her.

Now would have been the perfect time to smooth things over with her—or to smooth things the rest of the way to where he wanted them to go.

He wouldn’t have to smooth things over with her because nothing had gone wrong between them—not since Middleborough.

He would have to find some way to advance things in the direction of….something other than them just being traveling companions.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

He might never get another chance to talk to her alone. It was now or never.

They rounded a few more corners. She didn’t open the conversation nor did she use her magic to find anything to eat.

The silence grated on Yann’s nerves. He didn’t want her to think he was too timid to talk to her.

They passed through another stand of trees and came out behind an outcropping of rock between themselves and the river.

Yann spotted a long-tailed gar digging in the dirt under one of the rocks.

He eased his glaive down to the ground, crouched low, and crept a few paces closer. He raised his spear, angled his approach the way he judged would give him the best shot, and launched his spear at the creature.

The point grazed the gar’s shoulder, scratched a line through the creature’s fur, and stabbed into the soil right next to it.

The gar let out a squeal of pain and surprise, leapt away, and took off scurrying into the rocks.

Eliska laughed at him. “Nice shot. You wouldn’t survive out here on your own.”

He meant to glare at her, but when he saw her eyes shining, he wound up grinning instead. He couldn’t stay mad at her, not even when she teased him.

“You might at least pretend that you came out here for my company and not to babysit me,” he returned. “Why did you come anyway—to make a joke out of my hunting abilities?”

“Of course,” she replied. “My life has been way too serious lately. Who would I laugh at if not you?”

He found himself laughing along with her. Being alone with her gave him new energy. Maybe, just maybe she enjoyed spending time alone with him as much as he enjoyed spending it with her.

He pulled the spear out of the ground and retrieved his glaive. “Don’t use your magic to find another one. Let me do it.”

She turned bright red and her eyelashes dipped. “All right. The rest of the Watch might starve before you find something. Then you can tell them you said that before you come crawling back to beg me to save you all.”

“Cut it out. I will not.”

He skirted the rocks looking for another gar. Instead, he found the hole into which the last one ran to hide.

He tried to poke his glaive into it, but it didn’t fit. He didn’t have any better success with his spear.

She stood off to one side watching. “A gar isn’t big enough to feed everyone anyway,” she told him. “Why don’t you go for something bigger?”

“What else is there? No, don’t tell me. I need to prove to you what a skilled hunter I am.”

She burst out laughing. “I’m waiting.”

He laughed, too, and climbed down from the rocks. They set off walking up the river again, but he didn’t really look for anything to hunt.

He didn’t want to hunt. He just wanted to talk to her…..and walk next to her like they might actually have come out here to spend time with each other.

“So what did you do with yourself all these years—besides wander around from Layer to Layer and Island to Island?” he asked. “Did you have any particular activity you did to keep yourself occupied?”

“I could ask you the same question. Did you do anything in Middleborough besides train, fight, and avoid looking at the local girls?”

The blood rushed to his cheeks and he laughed again. “Ouch.”

“Did you really plan to spend the rest of your life in the Watch? Did you really plan to swear off having a family of your own?”

He shrugged. “I never really thought about it at all. My father did it. I guess I always thought I would do it, too. Middleborough always needed Watchmen. The town needed Watchmen a hell of a lot more than it needed more families. No one would be able to raise families at all without the Watch.”

“So did you do anything in particular? Do Watchmen have interests and hobbies like real people?”

He chuckled. “Real people. That’s a good one.”

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

“You didn’t answer mine, either,” he pointed out.

She looked away and her smile slipped, but her cheeks didn’t stop glowing. She really looked beautiful when she smiled like that. He never imagined she could come out of her shell this much.

Her eyes captivated him. He stopped walking and turned to face her so he could look at her straight on.

She didn’t encourage him to keep going or tell him to go back to his hunting. She looked straight back up at him from inches away.

“Why do you ask about me looking at other girls?” he asked and took a step nearer. “You aren’t jealous, are you?”

Her grin cracked a little wider. “What is there to be jealous of if you never look at anyone?”

“Besides, the Watch is finished. We aren’t the Black Watch anymore as you keep pointing out so many times. Middleborough has been destroyed. I can marry, build a family, and live an imp life that Wesh says is so wonderful.”

He stopped right in front of her—close enough to kiss her—but she turned away this time and kept walking.

“No one will ever build anything with me,” she mumbled over her shoulder.

He hurried after her. “Why not? You might have been alone all this time, but you don’t have to stay that way. You could…..”

He broke off when he heard rustling in the bushes ahead.

Yann stepped around her and eased a little closer. He couldn’t see what was in there. It was something alive—something he and the Watch could eat. He didn’t need to know anything else.

Whatever it was migrated to his right. He wasn’t having any luck with his spear, so he dropped it on the ground and raised his glaive instead.

He tracked sideways keeping pace with the rustling sound. The leaves trembled in the undergrowth.

The bushes ended at another big rock embedded in the riverbank. He stopped there and tensed every muscle. The creature couldn’t go anywhere else without showing itself.

He clamped his hand around his glaive shaft and lifted it over his shoulder. Any second now….

The branches parted and another biturong blundered out of the bushes. It didn’t see Yann and Eliska standing there. The creature walked right along the lower edge of the rock where it stuck out of the ground.

Yann hurled his glaive and impaled the creature through the torso. The blade severed the top half of the creature’s back and bounced off the rock.

“Ha!” he gloated when the creature lay dead. “What did I tell you? Now you can go back to the Watch and crow to the others about how mighty I am.”

She dissolved in laughter. “That biturong is definitely not big enough for all of them to share. The men would only end up fighting over it.”

“Then you and I can eat it here and tell them that I missed.”

She laughed again and beautiful color washed over her cheeks. “You’re supposed to be self-sacrificing.”

“I told you the Watch is finished. Isn’t this enough to prove my devotion to you?”

“Selling out your fellow Watchmen? Not really.”

He picked up his glaive, wiped the blade on the grass to clean off the blood, and picked up the biturong. “Anyway, it’s better than nothing. We can at least stave off our hunger before we leave for wherever it is we’re going to leave for.”

He could have taken the biturong back to the Watch, but he didn’t want to cut the walk short.

The other Watchmen would already assume he was out here flirting with her. He better make it count.

End of Chapter 18.

Previous Chapter
Next Chapter