CHAPTER THIRTEEN—SCATTERED SCORPIONS
Raz hadn’t even broke a sweat, but Ali and the others were gasping for air with every breath as if they might fall over and die.
“Stop!” he called, raising his hand. “Stop! We must stop.”
“Oh come on,” Raz complained. “You are all so weak.”
Ali gasped along with captains Ushtan and Gohar and the other Scorpions. All in all, their party was quite small, consisting of the two captains, the high vizier, his top-tier adventurer of a brother, the requisitions officer Hashem and the five elite Scorpions.
Ten men.
They could be swarmed by monsters and overrun. But at least they had Raz—and surely that was why Shiro had him accompany Ali back to the camp.
Raz milled about with his hands on his hips and glanced about. “Most of this mist is clearing,” he said. “I can see the hills ahead. I think the camp is not far off.”
A scream erupted ahead of them, not for off.
“Huh?” Raz barked with surprise. “What is that?”
“Not what,” Ali said, still breathing hard as he shared glances with his brother and the rest of the men, “but who?”
“Come on!” Raz said, and he lunged forward into a run. He pulled ahead of the others and ran through the tall grassed and around a rock with thick green vegetation growing over it.
Above thunder rumbled across the sky.
The scream came again as Ali ran to catch up. When he and the others rounded the big rock, they caught Raz hacking the ground with his sword.
“Do not worry!” he shouted. “You are safe man.” The scorpion moaned desperately, but he also clawed up Raz’s leg. “Get off me! What am I, your mother?”
The Scorpion was covered in all manner of abrasions, scratches, burns and his black pantaloons were in tatters.
“The vines!” the Scorpion whaled. “The vines! They came—they—they…”
He passed out.
“Agh!” Raz complained, and kicked the unconscious scorpion. Not hard, but enough to show his frustration.
“Good gods!” Ali said. “The Angor—like Samira said.”
“Yes,” Raz said.
“This is terrible!” one of their Scorpions said.
“Stay calm,” Ushtan said. “We have a job to do. And we have been through worse.”
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Ali nodded. “That is right.”
He had read the full report, of Ushtan and other men’s trial. They had been captured on the Eiphr by savages, hauled to a city where a great pyramid had been constructed, and in part, sacrificed to a shaman to give him magical potency during their rescue effort.
Due to their efforts, the men were saved, and in no small part by the jinni Jessamine. She was always so arrogant contemptuous of Ali and the others, but that she had saved them, revealed, at least to Ali, that she wasn’t so bad after all. That, or she truly loves that swine-eater Shiro.
The thought came unbidden to his mind, but he thought upon the samurai with great affection and friendship.
“Now what?” Raz said. “We carry this sack back with us?”
“Hmm,” Ali noised as he stroked his chin. “We do not have time to stop, but neither should we leave him. He turned to Gohar. “Leave two of your Scorpions with this man until he comes to. They can join us back at the camp. It is not far.”
“All right,” said Gohar, and to the horror of the two men he chose, gave those orders.
“Good,” Raz said. “Now let’s get moving—“
Something moved in the grass head and they all jerked their heads in that direction.
“Is it another Scorpion?” asked Ali, and he pulled out his scimitar.
“No,” said Gohar, “it can’t be. He is not calling for help.”
Raz went forward and then stopped in the grass. He stamped down on something. “What is this?”
“What do you see?” asked Ushtan.
“There is something here—look!”
Ali went to his brother and looked down into the grass, then his heart lurched. “What is that?” It was… moving!
“This is one of the vines,” said Ushtan. “That that woman spoke of, yes?”
“In-deed!” Ali said, his tone like that of a curse as he raised his scimitar and hackled it in half. The vine split and green viscous slime shot out of it while both sides wriggled.
“Where is it going?”
They followed it, then found a hole in the ground where the vine retreated. “Hey!” Raz called back to the other two Scorpions guarding the unconscious fighter. “Be careful, eh? They travel”—he moved his hand in an undulating fashion—“under the ground.”
They looked at him with horror-struck eyes and swallowed.
“Oh, it is not so bad,” Raz continued. “Ali just cut them up with his sword. Be many.”
They nodded uncertainly.
“That’s it!” he said excitedly.
“Hey,” Raz said more carefully, “we better watch out, yes?”
Ali nodded. “I think so. Now let’s go back to the camp.”
They strode ahead several paces, whereupon they found an unconscious scorpion lying in the grass, his body covered in loose and limp tendrils with sticky polyps that looked like flowers.
“Another one!” cried Gohar. “Is he alive.”
Ali touched the tendrils with his sword, but they didn’t move very much. “I think it is dead. “This is the other end from which you cut, right, Raz?”
“Uh,” he noised, scratching his head. “Sure.”
Ali touched the beat up Scorpion’s neck and paused, searching for the thump of his blood through his veins. There was none. What was more, his skin was cold and stiff to the touch. “He is dead.”
The men growled and mumbled.
“I suspect,” said Captain Ushtan, “that we will find many more just like this, being dragged away.”
“You think most are dead already?” asked Ali.
“I don’t know,” Ushtan said with a shrug. “But as I see things—we should not hope too high, yes?”
“Mm,” Ali noised with a nod—and now he was starting to sound like Shiro—“I agree.”
“We should stop wasting time,” Raz said. “We need to get back to camp and help the men there. I am sure the leadership is still intact. They must be. And if it is not…” Raz’s tone became almost cheery, “well, then we have you high vizier.”
Ali looked at him. A pit of bile festered inside his stomach. He was not afraid to lead in the least, not now after everything, but during this kind of crisis… What to do?
And then the idea hit him immediately. When in doubt, pretend.
“What are you smiling about?” asked Raz.
“Nothing,” Ali said. “I just know we will get through this.” He trotted ahead of them all and tightened his grip over his scimitar. “Come!”