Eliska didn’t seem in any great hurry to get back to the Watch, either. Neither she nor Yann looked too hard for any other game.
They circled the rocks and returned to the river. Yann would have liked to sit down somewhere and get close to her, but walking turned out to be just as nice.
“Have you been in this part of the Ancestral Empire before?” he asked.
“A few times. It isn’t that much different from a lot of other Islands. It’s just bigger and has been around longer. That’s why it has so many different kinds of people living here. Everyone migrates here for safety.”
“Too bad it’s so lawless,” he remarked. “It would be perfect if there weren’t so many Barbarians and thugs running around.”
“The Barbarians have to make a living somehow.”
“They don’t have to do it that way.”
“Yes, they do,” she replied. “It’s the only way they know how to do it. It’s their culture. It isn’t their fault.”
“You only say that because you can defeat them. You might feel differently if they came close to killing you and everyone you care about.”
She only smiled at him, but just then, they turned another corner and Yann heard a grunting noise first. A crested sailor hog broke through the nearby undergrowth.
The creature rooted its curved tusks into the soil plowing up a long furrow between the rocks. The hog kept stopping, grunting under its breath, and digging around whenever it found something interesting.
It either didn’t see Yann and Eliska or it didn’t realize they might pose a threat to it. It kept right on plowing as though they weren’t there.
Yann dropped the biturong. He didn’t care about it anymore. The hog would definitely be a prize worth taking back to the Watch.
He raised his glaive by the shaft. He would have to hit the hog right in the most vulnerable part of its chest. He would have to kill it with the very first shot before the thing turned on him and Eliska.
If he only injured it, it could charge and try to kill them both. They wouldn’t be the first to meet that grisly fate.
The hog accommodated him by turning sideways. It presented its shoulder to him. It was a perfect shot.
He cocked back his arm to throw his glaive, but right then, Eliska stepped in front of him. She shot him a cruel grin over her shoulder, raised her staff, and fired at the hog.
A jet of white light erupted from the end of her staff and hit the hog exactly where Yann had been planning to kill it.
The creature exploded off its feet when the shot hit it. It let out a piercing, high-pitched shriek mixed with a furious roar.
Before Yann or Eliska could move, the creature burst out of its skin, swelled to ten times the size, and transformed into a Darkling looming over both of them.
This Darkling didn’t get as big as some of the others Yann had seen in the Coil recently, but it was big enough to kill them both with ease.
Eliska tensed with her hands on her staff. She stayed in front of Yann and aimed her staff at the Darkling to kill it.
The creature roared at her in a voice of thunder. Tentacles slashed from its back and it bared a mouth full of fangs.
Three tentacles came at her from both sides. Yann started to lower his arm and took a step forward to her side. He rotated his glaive to one side to fight the Darkling hand to hand.
The creature’s tentacles slashed the air. She fired her staff at them and severed each one where it joined with the monster’s body.
They distracted her from seeing another two tentacles winding out of the creature at the same time.
She severed the third tentacle, and the next second, a fourth cracked her across the side of the head. It flattened her instantly.
She sprawled across the grass and her staff fell out of her hands. Her hair scattered across the grass. She must have been either stunned or knocked unconscious.
Before Yann could move, the Darkling’s last tentacle spiraled out of nowhere, seized her by the ankle, and hurled her limp body aside.
She smashed into another boulder at the edge of the river and collapsed on the gravel beneath it.
The Darkling turned in her direction even though she wasn’t moving anymore. The monster must have sensed that Yann didn’t have any magic to fight it. She was the only threat here.
The thing rumbled deep inside its massive, misshapen body. It looked nothing like a hog anymore.
It lumbered toward her hissing and snaking its tentacles all over the place. Every instinct told Yann to charge over there and protect her the way she tried to protect him.
He wouldn’t be able to protect her. If he got between her and the Darkling, it would kill him and then nothing would stop it from doing the same thing to her.
He reacted without thinking, raised his glaive over his shoulder again, and launched it at the Darkling with all his strength.
The glaive sang as it wobbled through the air and then dove headfirst into the side of the Darkling’s head.
Yann rushed the thing even before he saw the effect of his throw. He sprang off the ground as high as he could leap, grabbed his glaive shaft, and let his own body weight carry him past the creature’s yawning mouth.
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He wrenched the glaive aside exactly the same way he killed the Barbarians. He let his weight fall against the shaft and the blade cracked the creature’s skull in half.
He fell toward the grass on the creature’s other side, tucked, and yanked his glaive free as he rolled away.
He somersaulted onto his knees and spun around with his glaive raised to meet the Darkling when it came after him again.
It didn’t. It buckled on the spot and crumpled in on itself to become a hog again.
He crouched there panting hard until the creature stopped twitching and lay still. Blood poured from the crack in the side of its head. The hog didn’t look right anymore with its head in the wrong shape.
Yann had to shake the tension out of his muscles before he could stand up. He stared down at the thing. It really was a hog. The Dark must have taken it when Eliska’s magic hit it.
Thinking that reminded him of her. He shot the hog one last menacing glare over his shoulder and knelt down next to her.
He used one finger to comb the hair out of her face. She was out cold, but at least she was still breathing.
He sat down on one ankle, picked her up, and cradled her while he finished pushing the hair out of her face. “Eliska!” he whispered. “Eliska, can you hear me?”
She didn’t respond right away. Yann wouldn’t be able to heal whatever was wrong with her. He needed to take her back to Wesh.
He laid her back on the sod and put down his glaive. He made one quick survey of the spot before he made up his mind. He would have to leave his glaive, the hog, the biturong, and her staff behind while he carried her back to the Watch.
He didn’t care about any of that as long as Wesh healed her. She was more important.
He bent down to scoop her up in her arms, but when he shoved his hands under her, she stirred.
She groaned and rolled away from him before she opened her eyes. She squirmed and then jolted upright in a flash.
She winced and her hand flew to her head. She swooned and her eyes lost focus for a second before she fell over again.
Yann eased a little closer and squeezed her shoulder. “Take it easy,” he murmured. “You fell hard. Just lie down for a second until you feel better. Then I’ll take you back to Wesh. He’ll take care of you.”
She whipped around fast and her eyes popped open when she saw him sitting next to her. “Yann……”
“You’re okay,” he told her. “The Darkling hit you and you crashed into the rock. Do you remember?”
Her eyes darted around….and she saw the hog.
She pushed herself up on her hand, stared at it, and then looked around everywhere else. Her gaze eventually came to rest on his glaive covered in blood.
“What happened…..to the Darkling?” she stammered.
“I killed it. I saw it coming after you, so I killed it with my glaive. It fell and turned back into the hog. How much do you remember from before you got hit? Maybe your fall affected your memory.”
“I remember. I just…..” She turned around and winced again. “You….you killed a Darkling?”
He opened his mouth to say something else. Then he realized. He really did kill a Darkling.
He didn’t think at the time that he was doing anything special. He just wanted to protect her.
He shrugged it away and looked at the hog instead. “Well, I couldn’t let it kill you, could I?” He frowned at her. “We should take you back to Wesh. You could have gotten more hurt than you realize.”
She didn’t respond right away. She kept looking back and forth between the hog, his glaive, and her staff lying over there where she dropped it when the Darkling first hit her.
Her silence was really starting to worry him. What if Wesh couldn’t fix whatever was wrong with her?
Yann got ready to stand up. At least she would be able to walk back to the Watch.
Before he could move, she slipped her hand into his and squeezed.
He spun around in surprise and gaped at her in disbelief, but she didn’t let go. She tightened her grip on his hand in one more quick squeeze….and then she burst into the biggest, most beautiful smile he’d ever seen.
“Thank you,” she murmured. “I won’t forget this.”
He blinked at her trying to understand that she was really holding his hand. She was.
Her fingers felt small and vulnerable and soft in his, but they radiated warmth up his arm.
That rush of warmth carried a tremor of excitement with it. She was holding his hand. She took the first step.
He never would have dared to take her hand. He would have expected her to swat him away. Now she was the one doing it.
He couldn’t move. He just sat there in shocked silence. The feeling overwhelmed him. He never dreamed taking a walk with her would end like this.
He stared into her shining face. She looked fine. Her eyes shone up at him with all the warmth and understanding with which she’d been smiling at him before the Darkling attacked.
He would have liked to kiss her right now, but he didn’t want to spoil the moment. He didn’t want to push her farther than she comfortably wanted to go on her own. Holding her hand was enough.
They sat like that for what felt like hours, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute.
She finally gave him one last squeeze and pulled her hand away, but that minute changed things for him. It brought them closer than talking and joking around ever could.
“We should go back so I can tell everyone how mighty you are,” she teased.
He laughed, and without discussing it further, they both stood up. “At least we’ll have something to eat.” He went over to the hog. “Would you mind carrying my glaive? I’ll carry the spoils of war.”
She laughed when she picked up her staff and then his glaive. She also picked up the biturong.
He rolled the hog onto its back and pulled out his knife to cut its head the rest of the way off. He needed to find any way to lighten the load for the trip back. The creature would be heavy enough to carry as it was.
“Wait a minute,” Eliska told him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She put down the glaive and the biturong and approached the hog from the other side. “Let me help you.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked. “Are you going to make it float and follow us the way the gypsies made those trunks follow us?”
“That wouldn’t show off how mighty you are. Hold it up by the back legs.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Just hold it up.”
Yann heaved the hog off the ground by the back legs. It weighed a ton. He didn’t look forward to carrying it back alone.
He was just about to suggest much more seriously that she did make it float.
Instead, she used her staff to strip the skin off and then gutted the creature right there on the grass.
The entrails blooped out onto the ground and left the remaining stripped carcass light enough for him to heft it onto his shoulder.
“Is that better?” she asked.
“Yes. Thank you.”
She picked up the glaive, the staff, and the biturong again. The two of them started to wind their way back up the riverbank to where they left the Watch.
Yann balanced the hog carcass on his shoulder with one hand. He tried not to think about the fact that he was probably getting blood in his hair and down the side of his neck.
He started to hope she didn’t tell the others about him killing the Darkling. He wanted this to stay between them.
He also didn’t want the other Watchmen to give him a hard time about protecting her.
Would they think less of her because she needed an imp Watchman to save her life?
That didn’t concern him as much as her reaction when she realized what he did. She held his hand. He wanted to keep that secret all to himself and never share it with anyone, not even his own father.
Right then, she slipped her hand into his again. He didn’t notice her shift the biturong and the two weapons to her other hand—the one on the side away from Yann.
Her tiny hand slid into his and she squeezed. She didn’t let go this time, either.
He looked up at her at the same time she looked up at him. She smiled and blushed.
“Don’t think this changes anything between us,” she told him.
He found himself grinning back at her. It changed everything. She didn’t have to explain that to him.
Whatever direction he’d been hoping to take things with her on this walk, he never imagined they would go this far. He never thought he stood a chance in hell with her.
Now he felt pretty good about it. Now he knew things were going in some particular direction even if he didn’t know what direction they were going.
End of Chapter 19.