The shelled behemoth didn’t look so menacing with one horn blown off and its brain leaking out of a cantaloupe-sized hole in its skull.
From his perch atop the dead turtle’s shell, Malik looked down at his handiwork with grim satisfaction. His desire to coexist with native wildlife had gone straight out the airlock when his search for the missing drone led him into the massive beast’s lair. There was no way he could’ve taken the short swim to the island in the center of the lake with a turtle this size prowling the waters. It would have been like serving himself up on a silver platter.
“Blame the yata garasu,” Malik said as he gave the shell beneath him a firm pat. Thoughts of the oversized crows sent his blue eyes drifting over the mess of blood and black feathers clinging to the shell a meter away from where he sat. “They had a pretty bad day, but they deserved it. Maybe next time they’ll think twice about taking something that isn’t theirs.”
From the looks of the island in the center of the lake, Malik’s property wasn’t the only thing the yata garasu had confiscated. He couldn’t make out exactly what the jumble of material was, but there was no mistaking the gleam of worked metal beneath the afternoon sunlight. The question was, where did the other treasures come from?
Malik didn’t care for the implications of the question, much less some of the answers that cluttered up his mind like cobwebs in a dusty attic.
He wouldn’t be able to make the trip out to the island to find his answers until he was confident it would be safe. He’d sent the yata garasu fleeing toward the far end of the island and the king of the swamp lay dead at his feet. But there was one other survivor of the Battle of the Bog, and it was to that lonely carbuncle that Malik now directed his attention.
His blue eyes studied the sole surviving carbuncle as he stripped off his waterlogged boots. The cat/raccoon/fox had limped its way through the ankle-high muck to stand beside one of its kinfolk. The creature’s bushy tail lay limp in the murky water, wilted like a flower deprived of sunlight. Likewise, its long, floppy ears hung about its face like the veil of a grieving widow.
Malik tried to tune out the soft whimpering noises the fearsome predator made as it licked the filthy fur of its fallen comrade.
Mal let himself intrude in the moment for a sympathetic heartbeat before he tore his eyes away. A snarl of frustration twisted his lips and he had to resist the urge to fling his empty boot into the lake. There was something about seeing the carbuncle, wounded and alone, that struck a cord deep within Malik’s very soul.
Worse, there was a pragmatic voice that was calmly weighing the pros and cons of ending the carbuncle’s misery.
I can’t take the chance to swim across the lake while the carbuncle is still prowling around. It’s a short swim, but I learned from fighting the coatls that I am not suited for waterborne combat. So what do I do? Should I wait for it to leave? It's heavily injured. Maybe even mortally wounded. Putting it out of its misery could be the humane thing to do.
Malik wrestled with the decision until his eyes slid back across the battlefield to the injured carbuncle. He watched its five heavy paws shuffle through the muck to reach the still form of the third member of its pack. There was something about the way it began dutifully cleaning the fallen beast’s green fur that reminded Mal of the funeral rites common among the cultures of ancient Earth.
He knew, after watching the way it behaved around its fallen comrades, that he’d never be able to attack it unprovoked.
“Well, Freddy,” Malik said as he leaned over the edge of the turtle’s shell to scowl down at the murky water. “I hope you didn’t work up too much of an appetite. I need to cross this lake and drag a few things back from that island over there before these fumes finally kill me. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t eat me while I gather our loot.” Mal paused, giving the expanse of water separating him from the small island a sour look. “I’ll tell you what,” he continued, directing his blue eyes back toward the carbuncle, “if you let me handle the retrieval, I’ll split the take with you, 50/50.”
Freddy the Carbuncle seemed far more concerned with its injured leg than the loudmouthed human. It had finally turned its attention to itself, laboriously cleaning the fur matted against its wounded leg with steady strokes of its tongue. If it had any thoughts on how the loot should be split, it didn’t share them.
Malik was unsure if this was a positive sign.
A reluctant groan vibrated past Mal’s lips only to be immediately stifled when the carbuncle’s long, floppy ears shot up like the antenna on an old vacuum tube TV from Earth’s industrial era. Seeing the reaction, Malik lifted his hands in, what he hoped, was a soothing gesture.
“Don’t be so jumpy, Fred. I just tend to make noises when I get nervous. Sometimes those noises sound like words, but other times? They’re just pointless. Like the sound, you make when you pass gas. Only less smelly.” Malik could only assume that he’d gotten his point across when the carbuncle’s ears drooped like pasta at a roiling boil.
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Unwilling to take his chances a second time, Malik quickly checked his gear. His rifle was laying on the shell beside him, right next to his soggy boots. He’d laid out his damp shirt as well, seeing no reason to take it with him during the quick swim. That left him with only his synthetic shorts and utility belt. He briefly considered shucking off his shorts, but they were already soaked through so another plunge into the water wasn’t going to do them any harm.
Malik’s thoughts turned to the first coatl he’d slain. It’d caught him naked and the memory of fighting for his life without a stitch of clothing to preserve his modesty had left an indelible scar on his psyche.
Never again.
He did take a moment to load a fresh magazine of ammunition into his pistol. There was no sense in taking his safety for granted. Knowing his luck, he’d only managed to kill the baby turtle and a big angry momma was only a few minutes away from crashing his victory party.
And then, suddenly, Malik had no more reasons to procrastinate. He furtively glanced toward the preoccupied carbuncle as he summoned up the courage to abandon the high ground. Careful to avoid any sudden movement, he clambered his way down the side of the shell and stepped into the murky swamp.
He immediately felt mud squish up between his toes, making him think of warm, lumpy jelly.
A disgusted shiver worked its way up his spine, etching a pained wince across his face when the motion aggravated the trio of gashes that ran across his back. Initially, he’d worried about the threat of infection from his dip into the putrid pond, but he’d cast those worries aside because he simply had no alternative. He would just have to hope that the antibiotics in the survival kit
A grimace twisted the corner of Malik’s lips. Not because he was worried about his wounds getting infected, but because he was stalling. A part of him didn’t want to find his drone because so long as it was still missing he could convince himself that it would still be operational when he found it.
The reality might well be different.
“Oh hell,” Malik grumbled as he bent his knees and sank deeper into the muck. A half dozen waddling steps later and he felt the mud rapidly fall away beneath him. In the span of two meters, he went from being waist-deep in the mire to treading water. He had to bite his tongue to restrain a bark of pain when the murky water ignited a bonfire across the gashes dug into his back. Before the pain could rob him of his momentum, Malik’s arms cut through the water in a powerful stroke. The flex of his arms ratcheted up the pain in his back from discomfort to excruciating, but rather than turn back he grit his teeth and forced his way forward.
Two agonizing minutes later Malik was hauling himself up onto a tiny island made of mud and silt. Even above the waterline, the island’s loose dirt was so moist that it felt like clay beneath his scrabbling fingers. His ascent would have been far more difficult had he not caught hold of a slick metal shaft buried in the rotten debris.
That metal pole was the first piece of loot he unearthed. He gouged away large chunks of mud with his hands until he managed to wiggle the captured item. Once he managed to start working it back and forth, it was only a matter of time until it pulled free with a wet, gurgling sound.
What he ended up with was a smooth cylinder, roughly a meter in length, and the thickness of both his thumbs. Malik was certain it was some sort of metal, though after wiping away the grit and filth, he couldn’t place anything that had quite the same blue tint. More interesting still, one end was capped in a double-edged blade that tapered to a spear point. On both flat sides of the blade, jagged hooks curved back toward the butt of the staff, reminding Malik of a harpoon’s design.
He regarded the weapon for a long moment, absently testing its weight and balance as he did. Whatever the metal was, it felt lighter than steel and so smooth that he nearly dropped it twice while trying to examine it. After the second time, he nearly impaled his foot, Malik decided to set the spear to the side and search for the real prize.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to search for long. At the center of the island, perched atop a thick chunk of driftwood, sat his drone in all its dark tritanium glory.
“You are a sight for sore eyes, Ayespy,” Malik murmured as he began to carefully work the drone clear of the debris.
Malik’s relief grew as he checked the quadcopter’s propellers and found them to be undamaged. The camera, which had been sunk into the mud, would have to be checked when he got back to the pod, but a cursory inspection didn’t expose any signs of a cracked lens. In truth, the plasteel lens should be able to stand far more abuse than a yata garasu dropping it onto a mud ball.
Hauling it back across the lake would likely be a problem. The drone was bulky enough and heavy enough, that Malik was unsure if he’d be able to just tow it to the other side. This led to some quick brainstorming and, eventually, to digging some of the larger pieces of driftwood out of their muddy prison.
After pulling a particularly stubborn piece of wood from the muck, Malik caught the flash of sunlight against metal. Unwilling to leave behind the spoils of war, Mal carefully dropped down to his knees and began to excavate his treasure. His fingers worked against the mud, clearing dirt and muck away from a square shape that he was certain had to be a box.
Like a kid at Christmas, an eager smile slashed across his lips. “We’re gonna be rich, Freddy,” Mal muttered as he anxiously worked to free his prize. “We found an honest-to-God treasure chest.”
Except, when Mal finally pulled it free he could immediately tell that it was no chest. It wasn’t even a jewelry box. Opening the flat metal cover had proven that.
What Malik Rosen found was a book.