Chapter 4. "The smirking basilisk"

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The moon had not yet set, and the sun had not yet risen, so the large silver disk seemed to be dissolving, melting into the pale sky. The edge of the sky was a pinkish color, heralding the coming of day. It should have been getting colder by morning, but Lena didn't feel much change. For respite and orientation, she climbed onto a rocky "tongue" to survey her surroundings and catch her breath. The gray stripe of supposed mountains seemed to be getting a little closer, and that "a little" was depressing.

Thinking about what time of year it was here, Lena turned around, peering into the monotonous plain, and suddenly noticed movement in the direction from which she was coming. The breeze swayed the grass giving the sheaves an undulating motion as if the gray-yellow sea were rippling. But in one place, the wind seemed to be blowing in the opposite direction. It was like the movement of a periscope, which itself is invisible to the observer, but leaves a stormy trail. Something was moving in broad zigzags, hiding in the grass and choosing the thickest parts of the tallest feather grass as if it feared the attention of others in advance.

She rubbed her eyes, hoping it was just an illusion. The movement didn't stop, but it blurred, faded. So it could have gone either way. To be on the safe side, Lena gripped the sticks more comfortably and took a few tentative swings. The air whistled under the swings, encouraging. At least she wasn't completely defenseless. The unknowable thing, meanwhile, had gotten so close that there was no doubt that it was no mistake of tired eyes. Someone rather small but brisk was walking briskly and quickly in her wake.

I wanted to quote the immortal lines from "Blood and Concrete" as translated by Gavrilov. The feeling was twofold. On the one hand, a great threat in the grass simply could not hide. On the other, when you're clearly being stalked, it's better to be prepared for trouble. The hidden threat, meanwhile, had come very close, and now she could make out something gray-sandy, with faint streaks and spots, moving in the grass. Lena exhaled involuntarily with some relief. After the grave in the crate and the mermaid of the night, she could expect anything here, including vampires and zombies. She didn't want to face any humans, either. It was as if the stalker realized he'd been exposed, and in one long, beautiful jump he swung out into the open, five meters from the stone.

It was a clear and definite member of the feline tribe, but it was about as different from a cat as a purple mermaid was from a fairy tale character in a book. The beast resembled a lynx, mostly in the complete absence of a tail and its overall size. But while a lynx has a long body and relatively short paws, this animal, on the contrary, moved on disproportionately long limbs with a short broad body with a powerful thorax.

The yellow eyes were squinting, leaving only narrow slits with yellowish oval pupils, the tasselless ears pressed tightly against the head. The lower jaw was oddly hypertrophied, too narrow, like a crocodile's, with taut lips. Clearly visible fangs protruded from the mouth, not as much as those of saber-toothed tigers in the picture, but considerably farther than is the case with felines. In cats, you see this kind of "expression" on their faces when they are angry and ready to attack, but it seemed to be permanent for this creature. The beast seemed assembled from different parts, like a chimera, but, like the mermaid, it did not give the impression of a cadaver. Its movements were smooth and dangerous; the creature was clearly in its usual element.

The grinning basilisk, the girl's thought flashed.

Lena ducked a little, putting one branch in front of her, and taking the other in a swing. The beast didn't seem dangerous; it was too small for a hunter. On the other hand, the "cat" was clearly not going to retreat. And it moved very, very fast, crawling over the ground and jumping like a jerboa on all four spring legs in any direction. The animal circled in front of the stone in a complex network of movements, like a shark in the waves, and there was an eerie, clear sense of purpose in this movement. The creature definitely saw the girl as legitimate prey, not embarrassed by the difference in size and testing the victim's reaction. At the same time, its speed of movement was truly cat-like, and thanks to its long paws under its broad body, the beast could move in any direction without turning its body. This made the chimera's movements completely unpredictable.

Lena's soul stirred up the ancient natural fear of the humanoid ape before the worst enemy of the primates. And the "cat" began to narrow its semicircles, approaching the stone itself, pressing its ears even more against the triangular head, chewing and exposing its fangs half a finger long. Elena realized that what was waiting for her now was not punishment with a twig of bad kitty but a fight to the death with a deadly predator, which, judging by its confident habits, was not the first time it had hunted a human.

Lena missed the first jump, despite all her readiness for defense. The only thing that saved her, perhaps, was that the "cat" itself had not expected a quick success and jumped rather try it out. The gray-yellow shadow spread in the air in a wide swath and immediately spun back. The branch waved idly through the air. The claws grazed Lena's arm only at the very tips, but the denim beneath them parted like it was razor-thin. One not only grazed her sleeve but also clawed her wrist.

In the heat, the girl waved the stick again after the beast, and the beast stopped two meters away and hissed. His ears flattened against his head to the point of indistinction. His eyes squinted even more so that there was scarcely anything catlike about his muzzle. The muzzle now resembled a snake, and the way it moved was like a crab or a spider. The "Basilisk" no longer smirked but hissed, not taking his eyes off Lena's left arm, where the scratch had already swollen into a large red blob.

Elena swallowed, almost swallowing a button. Her heart was pounding as if it wanted to kick out her ribs and run free. But there was no fear, almost none at all. It was displaced for a few moments by the adrenaline, the drive of the fight. Lena changed her stance, stretched her right arm forward like a rapier, and pulled her left back, hoping to catch the next throw on a counter-punch and add a second one if possible. Here was where she wished she had studied historical fencing with a parrying dagger for the left hand.

The Basilisk, meanwhile, got closer, gathered his tense muscles into a clump, and trembled finely, like a cat before it jumped. And he jumped. This time he almost got it, and Lena almost got it. The claws flapped idly, and the branch only brushed the short, thick fur. The beast quickly ran around the rock, forcing its prey to turn as it went. One lap, two... Elena wanted to smile triumphantly - she remembered that solitary raptors are strong in short, powerful jerks, but they have no stamina and tire quickly. And running in a wide enough circle was more costly than just turning in place.

But before she could open her lips to smile, the basilisk sprinted in the opposite direction, like a crazy second hand. Lena lost her rhythm and stumbled, missing another jump. This time only a miracle saved her. The "cat" seemed to take the unbuttoned jacket as part of the victim and cut the free-hanging floor into three long flaps, clean and smooth, like the steel claws of a famous maniac in a red-and-green sweater.

Now it was really scary. Her instincts united with her mind in a coherent chorus, whispering of imminent death. And only - as strange as it might seem - a sense of the incongruity and savagery of what was happening so far had kept the girl from panic. Well, a small creature a little taller than the knee can not kill and eat a man! Feral dogs in a pack, yes, they can. But a disgusting parody of a cat is stupid.

In her hindsight, Lena knew that she had made a fatal mistake. The first thing she should have done was to take off her jacket and wrap it around her arm when the creature first appeared. That would have given some protection, despite the razor-sharp claws. Now it was too late. The wide, oval pupils caught every movement of the victim, and the basilisk would not let her undress.

The "cat" climbed to the edge of the rock with deceptive slowness, scraping against the granite with its full-length claws. She should have attacked herself. Try to throw the enemy off, but... it was too scary. To have attacked her attacker on her own. When it is so fast... Every second of hesitation felt like a life-saving moment, and every movement against the basilisk felt heavy with the weight of the weights. Blood was already dripping from the fingers of her left hand in cheerful red droplets, and her sleeve was wet.

The creature ducked again and hissed, ears twitching. A bifurcated tongue fluttered from beneath its long, narrow mouth, and innumerable rows of tiny claws unfurled. The creature seemed to be tasting the air, which was saturated with the stench of fresh blood.

The sight sobered the girl. The very thought of licking the flesh off her corpse, or maybe even her still-living body with that disgusting appendage, struck fear into her mind. Exactly enough for Lena to look at the hopeless situation with an almost sober gaze. The girl tossed aside the shorter branch and intercepted the longer one with both hands like a spear. She crouched down, covering her vulnerable belly, and stepped toward the cattle, forcing the basilisk to jump back into the grass or attack. A strayб and the only sensible thing in her head was to poke it as hard as she could and grab its head, trying to knock its eyes out. Stupid, useless, but... everything else was worse.

The hiss soared to the top tones, almost disappearing into the ultrasound, and the basilisk lunged toward her. The heat of its hot body hit the girl in the face, a strange smell, more like the stench of an unwashed dog... and the stick went into the void. Lena whirled around, waving randomly, blindly, already aware that she had not had time, and now she would be nailed in the side or leg. She struck two or three more times, turning on her trembling - so slow and awkward! - legs. Until she realized it was over. The Basilisk had gone without finishing its victim and had simply fled. Only the grass moved where the gray shadow had gone, in the same direction it had come from.

Lena dropped the stick and sat down. Or rather, she just collapsed, unable to stand. A hysterical cry burst from her chest, and the girl muffled it by biting down on the sleeve of her jacket until her teeth ached. It was no good because now the taste of her blood was in her mouth. A bitter lump came back to her throat, and Lena leaned back against the rock, breathing heavily and shallowly, trying to fight nausea. It worked, partly from an empty stomach, partly from proper breathing, but mostly from relief. Her blood was boiling in her veins with the mighty cry of her survival instinct.

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She's alive. She's alive!

And in the midst of this tumult, a simple thought slowly made its way to the realization.

What scared away the small predator? Who was so scary? And who would she have to deal with now?

The cart was creaking. Horse Number Three wasn't moving too fast, but not too slow either. And it was too early; the animal would need its strength when the brigade got closer to the Gate, where anything could happen. Bizo was in the cart, in his own right, like an alchemist, sick on his feet and all. Codure was still loaded on top of the meager Profft, but Santelli was grimly optimistic that the vagabond would likely have to be discarded and slaughtered by nightfall to spare him the agony of his life. The "daily" spell was nearing its end, so it wouldn't be long before the blunderbuss's venom would take effect. And the leg itself looked bad. From the looks that Viall and Kai exchanged from time to time, they knew that too. And Сodure himself, when he came to, tried to keep his moaning down, biting his lip or a cloth soaked with water, trying to look less "heavy".

Shena was the only one not looking at the wagon, glancing around for danger with an Ahlspiess on her shoulder. Santelli was sure she had at least one more vial of "milk," but the foreman neither pressed nor demanded it. For an old tried-and-true member of the brigade, the lancewoman would be as good as they were for her. But for an outsider who hadn't even been tested in battle... it wasn't fate, then.

The place was quiet and relatively peaceful. It was the first time Santelli had cut a path here, and so far he hadn't regretted it. The Cursed Grave was out of the way, and there was no need to pay off the Lower Seas during the day, but at night if you walked by it, you'd have to pay for it. The only inhabitants of the area were taguars, but the vicious creatures only attacked singles. Biso was supposed to protect me from the usual ambush.

Now, in the light of the rising sun, the brigadier, not forgetting to look around, was summing up the overall balance of the quest. And he came to the conclusion that if they reached the Gate in one piece, they had not gone to waste. Not as good as he would have liked, and Codure would be lost along the way. But he had worse.

"Sergeant,"[1] Kai called softly as always, drawing his sword from its sheath.

The "cartman" always addressed the brigadier in an emphatically polite manner like a real fighter of the knight's "spear". Unless, of course, there were any real nobles nearby. But his gesture told the brigadier more than a word, making him tense. A sword - especially if it's not a ceremonial piece of iron for dusting one's eyes - is an expensive thing, and it's good if there's even one for a regular brigade. And Kai had not even a simple single-handed infantry sword, but the real fighting weapon of a knight of the Kingdoms. The warrior kept it safe and didn't use it in vain. So if the cartman drew his blade, it was a serious matter.

"Where?" asked Santelli briefly.

"Straight ahead and two fingers to the left," the swordsman replied succinctly.

The brigade, as a single living thing, gathered around the cart. Bizo pulled out a vial of "fog" from somewhere. Santelli stepped forward, keeping pace with the horse, with his right hand on the axe at his waist and his left on the hilt of the dagger.

Straight ahead and to the left was... nothing. Except for a large flat rock, common in these parts - two or three people could easily sit on top of it and even make a fire.

"There was something there, just now," Kai said confidently.

Santelli silently cursed his eyes, which were not what they were ten years ago. He could see nothing. And horse number three was still shuffling her feet, trampling the grass with her hooves. Horses are clever animals, and they can sense anything bad a mile away.

Santelli silently drew an axe from his belt and walked ahead of the horse. Those who relax here don't live long. Better that Kai should see a false danger and the brigade be afraid for a quarter of an hour than that they should all miss something worthwhile. Shena stepped lightly from behind to the right, the thin point of the ahlspiess catching the sun with its polished facets.

"Sergeant," Kai called out again. "You won't believe..."

"What?" said the foreman without turning around.

"It's a woman hiding behind a rock," the swordsman reported with immense surprise. "Alone."

A crossbow was already fiddling in the cart. Bizo reasoned sensibly that "woman" was a shapeshifter, a witch, or a "deceiver". That is, an arrow is the best choice.

"Hit it as it steps toward us," ordered Santelli.

There were five of them encompassing the massive cart in a jagged arc. Ahead of them all stood, looking warily at Helena, the obvious ringleader. What he was wearing, the girl could not understand. It was something rag and leather, with an abundance of pulls, garters, and small round buttons in the cloth paneling. The man was bearded but strangely shaven, with almost bare cheeks and thick growths starting from the edge of his jaw. The sides of his head, above the ears, were also shaved so his long hair lay along his skull, laid back in front like a thick roll. Two strands were braided into thin plaits that ran down the sides of his face at the temples.

One hand was pointedly on the hilt of a short sword at his waist, while the other held an axe, small but rather ominous in appearance. There was not an ounce of pretense or pose in the movements and posture of the front man. He looked intently at the girl with large dark eyes. There was a fresh bruise under the left one.

The second... the short-haired, dark-haired fighter was a woman, apparently wearing leather armor. She was partially hidden behind the horse, so Lena could only see her face. The kind of face that could be called "thoroughbred," but with a faintly distorted bridge of the nose, as if the nose had once been broken and then carefully repaired, but there was far more diligence than skill. The woman seemed young by earthly standards, Lena would have given her a little over twenty, but the cold and unpleasant look added as much to her age, at the very least. The leader looked on without enmity, with patient expectation, but the woman's eyes held unconcealed anger. And she had a spear, a short shaft but a very long tip, like a faceted awl, at the ready.

Two other men stood on either side of the cart. One was dressed up to his eyebrows in some sort of armor, a thick woolen coat with metal plates stitched on, long and narrow. The jacket looked old and tattered and had been mended more than once with coarse thread, which knitted rather than stitched together the individual flaps. The plates, on the other hand, shone like polished toothpaste. The second man seemed simply ugly, for he looked like a dead man alive, with a bony face, a cloudy gaze, and a half-open mouth that looked as if it were about to spit. He wore about the same quilted jacket, but without the metal plates, but with a half-jacket thrown over his shoulders like a short cape. The dead man's weapon was a sword, seemingly the only one in the whole strange company. It was large, with a long hilt and a simple cross-guard. The man with the face of a feeble-minded ghoul was nonchalantly holding the blade on his shoulder, but somehow that nonchalance seemed at once to be deceptive.

And there was a fifth man on the cart, and it was immediately clear that he was not a fighter. He was fat and wore a sort of cloak, almost rope-like, with a wide-brimmed hat, like those worn by witches and Gandalf. His face was obscured by the hat's shadow, but the fat man held a cocked crossbow.

With the exception of the fat man, all the natives didn't seem very big, almost stunted from Lena's point of view. Even the leader, who seemed to be the tallest of the group, was about her height. But it was impossible to call the people small. Rather, they were "compact," compact, and wiry.

"It's definitely not a shifter," Viall whispered loudly. "A witch, I guess..."

Quietly Horse Number Three snorted and bowed her head to the ground, flaring her nostrils and sniffing out some grass. Santelli thought intensely, trying to figure out what to do next.

The woman was strange. Not dangerous, which would have been normal but strange. She was tall. The tangled, uncombed red hair wasn't even covered with a comb, just like a "single" or an aristocrat's. But it was not shortened as it was supposed to be. Nor is it long, as in the usual respectable matrons and maidens. Too white-skinned, soft arms, even from here. And all kind of... big. She looked shapely, but her hips were too narrow for her chest, and there was something wrong with her proportions. She looks like a fighter, who from childhood was well-fed, so she put on a lot of muscle. And at the same time, not a fighter. Her face was covered by a layer of dust, and there was a bloody smear of a wounded hand, but her eyes were as wide as a Southern girl's. Pretty. Probably... would have been. Washed up, in a different place, and decent clothes.

The clothes confused Santelli the most. He had never seen or even heard of anything like it. Some kind of frivolous outfit, like the bards at the traveling circuses, only sillier and more useless. All light, thin, unserious. It would have done well in a brothel. Especially that shirt with the lettering that tightens and stretches like it's knitted from a spider's web. Except that the last brothel here closed down about two hundred years ago. A witch wouldn't wear such a thing, of course. "Deceiver" all the more so. He needs to be appeased, to force them to let their guard down so that the other members of the gang will attack at the right moment. And shifters generally wear what they've taken off corpses or do without rags.

"Who are you?" finally asked the foreman.

"Cò a tha thu?"

The leader frowned, uttering words slowly and loudly. Lena could have sworn she'd never heard the language before. But the resonance looked familiar. And it wasn't hard to imagine what a man in such a situation could ask.

The girl held her arms out to her sides, showing her stick, obviously useless against spears, and her empty, bloody palm. The blood was already drying, leaving a sticky, nasty coating on her skin.

Then she pointed her empty hand at herself and answered.

"She's witchcraft!" hissed Shena. "She's about to wave a stick and cast a spell!"

"Or splash poisoned blood," seconded Viall.

"Shut up," muttered Santelli, and he was right because when danger is at hand, the foreman is like a god. Though the priests, of course, should not be told about it.

The situation, on the one hand, was entertaining, and where something is interesting, there can be gain. Besides, Santelli was inquisitive in his own right. On the other hand, it dragged on. The stranger seemed to call herself, though what wilderness you had to be from to call yourself "Hel" was something to think about. And she didn't seem to intend to attack.

"Let's go around her," the foreman finally decided. "Let's go past it. If anything, we'll hit it hard."

Shena gritted her teeth in a way that even Hel seemed to hear. But she remained silent. It might not be the wisest decision, but it was a sensible one. If it doesn't promise prey, don't take it. Don't attack, don't touch. Of course, the girl could be sold at the Gate for a good price, but reasoning sensibly, why would she be here, who couldn't understand human language and dressed as if from the words of a bad bard? Maybe she's crazy.

No, the foreman made the right decision. And out of the bones of the greedy fools who wanted to take all the good of the world, the ghouls make whistles at night and sell them to the Marines.

The cart moved, and the horse, short but sturdy, was pulled under the bridle by a haircutting warrior with a spear-awl. The others gathered on the left side as if to shield the wagon from Helen. A fat man with a crossbow sat on the edge of the wagon, glaring angrily from under his hat and clearly ready to fire. It seemed that the natives had simply decided to go around her.

"What a heck," the girl whispered.

She was not prepared for that. Apparently, the locals were as frightened of her as she was of them and decided not to mess with her. That is, to leave her in the middle of the wasteland. A barren, hungry, waterless, dangerous wasteland.

And what is she gonna do now?

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