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29 - Right Where I Wanted Him

* * *

Suni

“Never thought I’d see a crazier pair of suicidal morons,” Elpida said, shaking her head as Senesio and I rejoined the rest of the group. Was that a hint of pride in her eyes? I wasn’t sure, but right about then, I wasn’t sure of much.

We were beyond the Thick now, in some sort of in-between forest of pine trees, palmetto, and scrubs. The canopy above let plenty of sunlight through, thank the ancestors.

“You mad son of a swindler!” Gabar shouted, then clapped me on the back. The blow sent me stumbling and for a moment, my movements reflected my mind. Unbalanced, confused, stumbling just to keep up.

What the hell had happened? What had possessed me to charge a wendiguar?

“Whoa there, hero!” Demetrias laughed, catching me mid-stumble. “You all right?”

“All right? This hero in the making’s more than all right!” Theo grabbed me by the shoulders and gave a friendly shake. “I’m starting to wonder if your courage isn’t wasted as a naturalist.” She laughed, then turned her eyes to Senesio next. “And you! Running off like that. Pure insanity. And yet, we’re alive thanks to you.”

Senesio positively beamed. The look was tempered by the slightest of winces as he bowed with a flourish.

“Well, you know how it is. Hadn’t had my morning jog, and frankly speaking, I was growing quite weary of those mimics’ chittering chatter.”

I was in a daze. What I’d done had worked, but it’d been near suicidal. A single misstep and I would have been clawed open from neck to stomach.

Something had come over me. That was the only explanation. Adrenaline, maybe? Fueled by the anger of seeing Senesio in trouble after having saved us? Yeah, that had to be it. Not that it mattered. I’d never be doing anything of that sort again.

Though, if I was being honest, it had felt good. Everyone had said I didn’t belong out here. Wasn’t ready for it. Maybe they’d been—

No.

That was the kind of thinking that would get me killed. I wasn’t here to be a hero.

“Senesio, my friend.” Sergeant Kyriakos’ voice pulled me from my thoughts. He was standing just in front of us now, hands fidgeting as he spoke. “This whole thing was my fault. I endangered the entire group, but you saved us.” He shook his head as if that would control the emotion rising in his voice. “I know we’ve had our differences, but on this score, at least, I owe you.” He extended a hand and waited for Senesio to take it.

Senesio made him wait one long, painful moment, then burst into a smile.

“My dear sergeant, say no more.” He slapped his hand into Kyriakos’ and clasped tight. “We’ve all made mistakes here and there. Attracted a pack of wendiguars and nearly gotten the entire group massacred, thrown a captain to the waiting jaws of a komodo.” He waved with his other hand as he spoke. “Simple mistakes. Of course, none of us are perfect.” He raised his eyes to the sergeant’s and smiled wide. “But the past is the past. Let us move forward as wiser, better men.”

It was clear from the sergeant’s look of surprise that he hadn’t expected all that. Hadn’t planned to agree to forgetting what Senesio had done. But before the sergeant had a chance to say anything, Senesio had pulled him close in a manly hug.

“So glad we could see eye to eye on this,” he said, giving the man a squeeze, then holding him at arm’s length.

“The only thing either of you are going to see is the inside of a shallow grave if those wounds get infected,” Elpida said, cutting in and pushing them apart. “Gabar, get Senesio’s cuts cleaned and wrapped. Theo, you’re okay? No mortal wounds? Good. Take a look at the sergeant. I don’t like what I’m seeing there.” And she was right. Now that I looked closer, both men were in bad shape. Senesio was clawed from scalp to stomach, including a portion of his face that’d been cut up, but the bleeding was already slowing. The sergeant, on the other hand, had been bitten by a wendiguar. A dozen distinct puncture marks were bleeding from his shoulder. For whatever reason, the wounds had failed to coagulate, and the blood was running thin as water.

As if on cue, the sergeant stumbled to the side and began shivering. It was then I noticed just how pale he’d grown.

“Maritza! I need a stick, long as your hand. Now!” Theo shouted as she pulled the sergeant into a sitting position.

The veteran helmswoman reacted instantly, searching the ground quickly but with a practiced precision. She was clearly used to pressure.

“There’s rope in my pack, Demetrias. I need it,” Theo said next.

He panicked, head whipping side to side as he searched for it.

“There!” she snarled, releasing pressure on the sergeant’s wounds for a moment in order to point it out.

He tore through it like a madman until finally pulling the rope free right as Maritza brought a handful of sticks.

Theo snatched the rope from Demetrias and looped it around the sergeant’s shoulder once. His blood covered her hands, but she worked on. Lining the rope up above the wounds, she pulled it tight, cinching it down against his bicep. She tied both strands of rope to the stick, then turned it like one would a ship’s wheel. With each turn, the rope tightened. The blood flow was slowing.

“He’s going to be okay, right?” I asked, stunned by the scene in front of me. Why was his blood running so thin? Was there some sort of venom in a wendiguar’s bite? It looked for all the world like there was some sort of anticoagulant. That could be handled, but it left the more worrying question: what else would the venom do?

I was interrupted by Elpida slapping her flask into my chest.

“Drink, Suni. You need it.”

I took the small, metal container in shaking hands, then paused.

“I don’t like—”

“Drink.”

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I rolled my eyes; fumbled with the cap a moment. When I’d finally undone it, I brought the flask to my lips and eased it back.

The rum caught me in the mouth like a fist. A fist that tasted like stomach acid and too-sweet nectar. It left me spluttering and coughing, throat burning in its wake.

“Heh.” Elpida chuckled as I handed the flask back. She took a long drink from it. “The taste grows on you. But more importantly, it’ll calm you down. Steady the nerves. And most things out here hate the smell of it.” Then she pulled me to one side, away from the others, and leaned forward.

“I don’t know what the hell you think you were doing back there, but it’s the last time you do anything of the sort.”

The rum was kicking in now, and stronger than I’d expected. The burning in my throat had been replaced with a pleasant numbness and my head was light; airy. My heart, previously pounding so hard I’d half expected to break a rib, had calmed. Now it was back to a gentle, normal pace. In the wake of all this, it was all I could do to nod at Elpida’s words.

“I don’t care if it’s Senesio or your mother herself in danger. The next time you get a hankering to do something stupid, don’t.”

I nodded. In response, she pointed to Oz, who was poking at a spider the size of his hand, seemingly unconcerned about anything happening around him.

“Hey! Senesio’s wounds,” Elpida snapped at him. “See to them.”

“Oh! Right.” Oz rushed over to do just that.

“He’s a good lad,” Elpida said, turning back to me. “But his ain’t a path you want to walk, you understand me?”

I nodded again, finding no words. But I was feeling better now, more like my old self. How strong was that rum?

“There’s something about this place. Has a way of... changing people. And not always for the better.” Elpida looked me dead in the eyes. “I’ve seen enough people ruined by this place; you’re not joining them.”

What was that supposed to mean?

Elpida stood up straight as if everything was clear, then offered the flask again. “Do you need another swig or was the first enough?”

Absolutely not. I shook my head. One had been by far enough. I’d never been one to drink anything much stronger than wine and at that moment, I was pretty sure gorgam rum qualified as borderline lethal.

“Fair enough.” Elpida took another drink, then tucked the flask back into an interior pocket. “Stay sharp, Suni. And stay scared. It’s what’ll get you out of here alive.” With that, she pulled away and walked back to the rest of the group. “Gabar, stand lookout with me. We’re out of the Thick, but we’re not out of the shit yet. And we’re not gonna waste this daylight, either. Soon as everyone’s bandaged, we’re heading for Clearwater Outpost,” she said, shouting the last bit to the group.

“Sounds like we’re almost there!” Gabar said, a smile stretching across his face.

“‘Almost’ doesn’t count for much out here,” Elpida fired back. “There’s plenty of mouths looking for a meal between us and the outpost.”

“That’s a pleasant thought.”

“Pleasant’s a luxury we don’t have,” Elpida said, then led him off to keep lookout. I was left alone for a moment, recovering from whatever the rum had done to me and watching the others tend to Sergeant Kyriakos’ wounds. An excited shout from Oz turned my attention toward him.

“Ancestors above, those wendiguars carved you up like a roast,” he said, shaking his head as he poked at Senesio’s wounds. “Incredible, aren’t they? I mean, claws like cleavers. And such speed!”

He wasn’t wrong. About the injuries, that was. Senesio had been covered in mud and blood earlier, a combination which made it hard to tell exactly how badly wounded he was. Now Oz had cleaned him up somewhat and it was obvious the wendiguars had done some nasty work.

The first and most noticeable of the wounds was to Senesio’s head. It started at the crown as four long slashes that tore through the scalp to stop just above his right ear. Any further and it would have taken the ear clean off. Luckily, the wound wasn’t particularly deep. Oz had already stuffed it with a mix of scrap fabric and some sort of mashed-up plant, and was now wrapping a bandage over it.

The next area that’d need attention was the right shoulder. There, the wendiguar’s claws had sunk in just above the bone, then ripped down over his chest. The mess of fabric from Senesio’s torn shirt made it difficult to see exactly where the four slash marks ended, but it looked like somewhere around the belt. That one had been close to disemboweling him. Senesio or not, a wound like that, out here, would have been undeniably fatal.

And then there was the last slash mark. This one seemed to have been stopped somewhat by the shield Senesio had strapped to his back before leaving. It was gone now, no doubt torn to pieces by the blow it’d blocked, but its sacrifice hadn’t been in vain.

For the most part, it looked like Senesio’s spine and back were fine. The shoulder was where the real damage began. A deep slash started there and led up into the soft skin around the base of his neck. Several divots had been created where the claws must have ripped out, taking chunks of flesh with them. I winced just looking at them.

Ancestors above. The mess of wounds and still-flowing blood was enough to set my stomach to doing flips. Senesio, on the other hand, didn’t seem to mind. Or if he did, he wasn’t showing it.

“Going to be quite the display, aren’t they?” he asked, smiling down at the damage, then looking up to me. “Will make me look that much more... dramatic!” He tried to throw up a flourish with that, but stopped short with a wince.

“Yeah, a positive veteran, you’ll look,” I said. “Uh, all grizzled and... battle-tested?”

“A veteran? No, no that won’t do. Too... old.” He shook the idea away. “And war’s too drab an affair anyway. No, I’d go more for the adventurer angle. I mean, I am the famous Senesio Suleiman Nicolaou, after all.” He delivered the line with his usual confidence, but something was off. Almost as if, for the briefest of moments, he might have doubted himself. Whatever it was, it passed before I had time to blink.

“So, uh, Suni,” Senesio said, leaning in as close as he could with Oz hanging off him, trying to wipe blood away with a damp cloth. “If you’d be so kind as to enlighten me, and do pardon my asking, but... ” He paused a moment. “What in the actual hell happened back there?” He hitched a thumb over his shoulder. I followed it with my eyes, though I knew where it would lead. Back to the blood-stained grass, still littered with the splinters of the shield I’d broken across the wendiguar’s face. Back to the spot where that surge of... of... insanity had nearly gotten me killed.

“Well,” I said, trying to put words to the thoughts rushing through my mind. “You were in trouble—”

“Oh, sorry for interrupting.” Senesio cut me off with a gesture. “Just a point of order, but I wasn’t in trouble. I had the wendiguar right where I wanted him. He fell right into my hands, really.”

I didn’t believe that for a second, but poking holes in Senesio’s ego, while fun, wasn’t going to get us anywhere.

“Right, well then. Back when the wendiguar had you pinned—”

“Like I planned.”

“Had you pinned like you planned, I, well... ” How did I say this? I still wasn’t really clear what had happened. Though I was sure of one thing: whatever it’d been wasn’t going to happen again.

“I thought you were in trouble, so I did what I had to.” I said it as simply as I could, explaining it as much to myself as to him.

Senesio frowned ever so slightly at that. Or maybe that was just from Oz picking at one of his deeper wounds.

“I mean, I don’t know. You were in trouble, but you’d risked yourself to save us and it wasn’t right. And you’d already saved me twice. I guess, the least I could do was pay the favor back.” I coughed, then cleared my throat. Senesio gave me a confused look. There was a rush of heat in my cheeks.

“Suni,” Senesio said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m very much not into you.”

What? That was what he’d taken from this?

“That’s good,” I said with some heat. “Because the feeling is very mutual.”

“Okay, good, good.” He nodded. “For a moment I was worried this was going to get weird.”

“Not to interrupt,” Oz said suddenly.

No, please. For the love of the ancestors, distract me from this.

“I’m pretty much done with all of this,” Oz said, patting Senesio on the shoulder. “But it’s probably best if I—”

“Son of a mother-loving swindler!” Gabar’s curse exploded from several paces away in the brush. He and Elpida came rushing back, pushing through palmetto fronds in a hurry.

“Skyship,” Elpida grunted. “Looks like the Needlethroat. It’s checking out the smoke from whatever you did in the Thick, Senesio. We need to move, now.”