---Blazes---

---Victor’s perspective---

The kid performs, almost dancing as he tells the story! I definitely think he could have a career as an actor if he wants!

I lean down to Thran and mutter “You speak Polish, right?”

Her eyes move right but she nods without turning her head to me.

“What’s it like? This language he’s speakin’? How easy is it for you to get?”

She shakes her head “I only understand about half of it… I’m sure, if it was written down for me and I could take all the time I needed, I’d get more but there’re words from German, Czech and Slovak, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Latvian and Lithuanian all mixed in and, even though I speak all of those languages, my brain just can’t decipher the context quick enough… I’m only getting the gist.”

“Interesting…” like listening to thick Jamaican Patois as a fluent English speaker, maybe? Or the first time I encountered Lallans Scots… straddling that line between distinct dialect and closely related language to English.

“…Hier, in Nowe Mazury, Pilecki sztël... soha tobbet a pune zborul. Hier myśmy wyżyli perez te wsye gody. Hier myśmy vartak na Ratunek. Hdy Mutter Terra najde swe strachane dziatwy, sprowadzi ona nas wieder zusammen pod swą peche… Gdy Wrócim pod jej pieczę, cała ludzkość zapłacze z radości odzyskanych synów Ziemi!!!" concludes the kid.

I applaud with everyone else.

It was a good story or, at least, a well told one… didn’t get a word of it, myself(!)

We did bring translators but… well, not only do I not want to risk permanently screwing up his developing temporal lobe or whatever but, if he already thinks we might be Demons, I don’t like to think about what he’d think if we tried to put some (to him) strange device on his temple(!)

I frown as I realise something “Hey… could I speak to you, Xon and Tuun behind the shuttle before we go?” I say to Thran.

She turns to me, curiously, but walks where I asked her to.

I go to where my girlfriend and the tall Tshwane woman stand and beckon them in. I look up at them to ask “Could I just speak to you guys behind the shuttle?”

Tuun looks surprised, Xon doesn’t.

I tell everyone else that we’ll set off in a few minutes, as the three of us rejoin Thran, out of sight, on the other side of the Swift Claw.

Thran and Tuun are looking at me puzzled, Xon looks expectant.

“I think… it might be a good idea… if you three stay behind… What do you think?” I say, trying not to do what I did before the mission to Melinoë and just tell them they aren’t coming.

“If you hadn’t said anything, Victor, I would have!” answers Xon “It made sense for us to come when the goal was not to be seen but, if you’re taking that kid home with the intention of showing yourselves to his community, I think we ought to make ourselves scarce.”

Thran looks confused and a little hurt as she asks “Me too?… I understand Xon; her species didn’t exist when their ancestors were stranded, and I understand Tuun; since she’s a nonTerran and we hadn’t made Contact when they were… but they’ll surely know what Neanderthals are, won’t they?”

“He didn’t, did he?” I say, gesturing to the group to indicate the 8 or 9 year old we need to take home “There definitely were Neanderthals about in the late 23rd Century but, if there were any onboard, they’ll’ve been assimilated in the Sapiens population within a generation or two. That’s long enough ago that they might never’ve heard a description or even the word… I just don’t wanna do too much too fast. We should ease ’em into the history they missed and the history they might’ve forgotten… Alright?”

Thran frowns but seems to see the sense, nodding.

I turn to the love of my life, looking like she’s doing her best not to look wounded “How about you, Tuun?… Is that alright with you?”

She fakes a mirthful puff “I’m fine, Victor! Really!… Of course, it makes sense…!”

“…Alright.” I say, gesturing for us to rejoin the group.

Thran and Xon walk away but I catch one of Tuun’s hands and give it the gentlest of tugs to convey I want her to stay for just a moment.

As the other two disappear, I pull her into a warm hug, standing on my tiptoes to try and get the height I need to kiss her without making her bend.

We spend several long moments locked in eachother’s embrace before our lips part and I whisper “You know I love you… Right, babe?”

She smiles at the reassurance and nods “I know… I know it’s not personal.”

“OK, good!” I grin.

---Pawel’s perspective---

The redheaded giant who leads the Demon band took the three most blatantly nonHuman Demony behind the flying house, before we left.

When they reemerged, those three stayed behind!

Clearly, he thinks they’ll give them away for what they are…

Interesting that he’s still coming himself, though! He has a Human face and proportions but… his unnatural height and bulk could give him away!

Perhaps he just doesn’t trust his subordinates to overtake the town without him! Even with their thundersticks and sunswords!

As we walk, I pretend to be entirely at ease… not a boy captive to a Demon band, just a boy walking with some Humans!

It’s OK to lie to Demony, right? They were lying to me, afterall!

As we’re walking, my eyes fly over the bushes to our left.

I’m looking for a gap that I can fit through but they can’t!

I think the one I really have to worry about is the one in the leathers and furs… he’s some sort of Hunter Demon, I think! He managed to find and navigate the brush paths almost immediately after they got here and managed to predict exactly where to be, to cut me off!

He also looks skinnier than any of the others… which rules out a few gaps that I would otherwise be able to squeeze through without worrying about being followed.

There! A gap that looks just the right size for me!

I begin lazily drifting from the group, trying to get as much of a head start as I can. If I botch this, I won’t get a second chance! They’ll know I’m onto them and will be watching me too closely to let me try again!

I take a deep breath and steel myself to prepare for the cost of failing to escape… If they catch me, I have to tell the guards not to open the gate… I have to be willing to let these Demony kill me, for Malbork’s sake!

I burst for the gap, running the 20m or so faster than I ever have before!

“Keed…!” shouts the giant.

I hear every set of feet start after me but just too late!

I dive into the gap and immediately begin struggling through it.

“Keed… yuh fakin hertin yuhsewf! Dount! Stop!!!” comes the redhead’s voice at the entrance to the gap that he’s far too bulky to fit through.

I make it through the dense brush and am sprinting, before I’ve even fully stood up, down one of the paths around the base of Pahorek.

If I can make it to Mecklemburg, I can loose them along the paths of safety!

---Tymancha’s perspective---

“What should we do?” asks Ms Arran “Hack through with plasmas?”

Mr Taylor shakes his head “We’d prob’ly start a forest fire, doin' that! Danger to us aside, it ain’t a great way to make contact with these people, settin' their mountain on fire(!)” then he turns to me and points to the gap “Reckon you can fit through?”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I appraise the gap for a quarter second “Yes but it will be faster to go around.”

“Go!” he orders.

I don’t need to be told twice.

My feet carry me back to the last practical entrance to the path complex I identified.

The boy will end up having a roughly 500m headstart on me in addition to home ground advantage… but… I am the galaxy’s finest hunter and tracker!

I like my chances!

I dive in to the brush and begin flying along the paths.

As I run, I’m constantly having to make decisions about which path is most likely to lead me around the mountain and how much advantage I’ll gain cutting the corner versus how much I’ll lose by having to climb uphill!

I decide that it’s really better to try and find the other side of the escape tunnel and track him from there.

I quickly come to the scuffs in the path’s mud that indicate a small person running along it and smell the boy’s scent on the air, confirming he came this way recently.

I follow them for a few minutes until I come out to a wide open field, a dense forest on the other side and the top of an ancient colony ship visible in the far distance. I glance side to side for any more of those predators we had to deal with, minutes after landing… but see none.

The boy is a quarter of the way across the field, moving strangely.

Why is he weaving and zigzagging like that?

Oh… shit… it’s a marsh! He’s moving along paths either discovered by or made by his people that he knows and I don’t!

It looks like, if I try to walk anywhere else, I’m going to sink and drown in the mud!

Well, that complicates things!

I relocate his tracks and follow them along the banks of the marsh to a point where they disappear.

I look out to the marsh and see something that rekindles my hope of a successful recapture.

A small scrap of cloth lies on the ground, a wooden stake driven through it. The trail is blazed! Marked in such a way as to be inconspicuous to animals but obvious to people!

I jink right and begin tearing down the path that illuminates itself to me, one blaze at a time.

I feel sublime as I run… I realise just how much I’ve missed hunting!

It’s been months now that food has just been so freely available to me that there’s been no need to hunt, even if there had been opportunities, but, now I realise… I’ve missed it!

Hunting always felt like something I did because I had to but, watching the distance between me and my mark shrink, I realise that’s not all there was to it!

My heart is pounding like a shaman’s ungtuvun as the boy reaches the entrance to the forest.

He disappears but I’m not far behind.

I dodge and weave my way down the narrow paths and quickly catch sight of the boy… he turns, sees me and shrieks at how close I am.

I’m nearly on him, the end of the tunnel in sight but… then I hear something… music…?

I realise the [holopad] that the ODR gave me, when they recruited me, is playing its call song… how long has it been doing that?

The boy practically in my grasp, I let him go… and answer the call.

“Abort! Abort!!!” comes Taylor’s voice, my [holo] translating his words to Evenki for me.

“I’m sorry?”

“Chrissakes, Tymancha! STOP!!! It’s too late! Let him go if you’ve caught him! It’s gonna look too much like a hostage situation if we go with him now! Come back… we’ll work out what to do, back on the Bright Plume…”

I turn to see the boy make it to the open ground outside the town, shouting “Demony! Monstry!!!”

Bells ring and there’s shouting from the walls.

“Alright, I’m returning now…” I say, my heart sinking at not having completed my hunt.

---Witold’s perspective---

“And… cough for me?” I say to the five year old girl, my ear pressed to her back.

She coughs and I hear an extremely foreboding rattling from her lungs.

I stand up and look to Kornelia, one of the very few people in town old enough for me to have known since childhood.

I give the subtlest of nods confirming her suspicion.

She doesn’t react except to flick her eyes to Stefania’s mother.

Kornelia and I agreed, some time ago, that… this kind of diagnosis ought to be given by me, instead of her. It helps her maintain a positive relationship with those she treats and, though she is far more knowledgeable than I in matters of medicine, it helps certain people accept the diagnosis more readily if it’s delivered by the Bzowy than the Uzdrowicielka.

Far in the distance, I hear the zmora alarm bells sound but… there’s little I can do about that, being a frail old man. I simply have to trust that the guards can deal with it.

“Zuzana… may I speak with you outside a moment?” I say, gently, to the young woman who’s had dark bags under her eyes since her husband was killed, a few months ago.

“Of course, Bzowy.” she answers, smiling with her mouth but not with her eyes.

The two of us step from Kornelia’s hospital.

I turn to face her with lead in my stomach. It never gets any easier.

“Zuzana… I am… sorry to need to tell you this but… your daughter has pneumonia… I would guess the time she has left to be measurable in weeks.” I say, solemnly, gripping my walking staff.

She’s dumbstruck, looking at me as if I just sentenced her daughter to death… which, from her perspective, I suppose I did!

Eventually, she manages “…No… Bzowy… there must be something we can do? If there’s anything at all? Please…! If it’s money, I’ll find a way to pay! If it’s herbs, I’ll gather them! Just tell me where to look!!!” she gets increasingly desperate, as she speaks.

I hold up my hand and she falls silent.

“I’m afraid, Zuzana… there is nothing that it is within my or Kornelia’s power to do.”

Her voice cracks as she says “So, that’s it then? She’s just definitely going to die…?! Nothing you, Kornelia or I can do about it!?”

“She will very likely not survive, yes.” I say, trying to balance the reality that her death isn’t actually certain with the fact that it is the overwhelmingly more likely outcome.

“So… what should I… do?” she asks, desperately looking for any guidance.

“I would advise making her as comfortable as you can… I don’t think it’s advisable for her to be brought home, just now, but would happily let Kornelia overrule me on that matter… It’s…”

At this point a guardsman appears, running in the direction of the Pilecki and, spotting me, says “Bzowy…!”

A little irritated at having the delicate moment barged in on, I ask “What is it, boy?”

Out of breath, he relays “Pawel… Lukas’s son… he came running to… the walls… shouting about… Monsters!…”

“If zmory are attacking, then I feel that you ought to be on the Palisade and I ought not to be, lad(!)” I say, dryly.

He shakes his head “No zmory… says they were… Demony that walked… on two feet!”

“Demony?” I ask, cocking an eyebrow.

He nods “Says he told you… about some… blue lightning?… A new star?… A little hysterical… wasn’t making sense!”

I gesture the boy to lead on and turn to Pawel’s mother “Are you coming? You can stay here, if…?”

“I’m coming.” says the woman, determination on her face.

I walk on, briskly, and she follows.

We cross the First Palisade and, over on the Second, I’m able to make out the blurry, indistinct shapes of people.

As we draw closer, my eyes resolve young Pawel, speaking frantically to young Ratimyr… though, that latter not so ‘young’ these days.

As Zuzana, the messenger and I climb the steps I hear Pawel saying “No, you have to believe me! They were giant!… One of them killed the leader of a pack of zmory like it was nothing! One of them was a 2.2m tall woman with blue skin and four arms! They were…”

*Smack*

Pawel’s words are cut short by Ratimyr backhanding him across the face.

“Don’t make up stories, boy! The alarms exist for a reason! You can’t just raise them whenever you feel like making yourself the centre of attention!” shouts the blond man, furiously.

Zuzana rushes to put herself between her son and the man who’s been unsuccessfully trying to court her, since her husband’s funeral.

“What’s going on here!?” she demands of Ratimyr.

Clearly surprised at her being here (I don’t think he would have struck her child like that if he’d known she could see), he answers “…Ask your boy, Zuzana! He seems to have thought it would be a jolly jape to sprint across the Killing Field, shouting about Demony!”

At this point, Pawel sees me and pleads “Witold…! Tell them! I came to you this morning about the blue lightning and the star!” forgetting to call me ‘Bzowy’ when around others in his desperation.

Everyone looks to where I stand, supporting myself with my staff.

I nod “It’s true… he did…”

With a disgusted sneer, Ratimyr responds “That just means that he planned this…! What would the connection even be between these phenomena (that only he saw) and Demony appearing!?”

Instead of answering, I turn to Pawel and ask “Pawel, would you hold out your arms for me?”

Confused, he does as I ask, showing me his scratched up arms.

“Pawel…?!” says his horrified mother “…What happened!?”

Seeming to only just now be noticing the marks on his arms the boy answers, uncertainly “…When I… got away from them… I dived into a narrow gap in the bushes… it must have happened while I was crawling, I guess…?”

I step to him, hold up his right arm with my left hand and gesture to it with the index finger of my staff hand, turning to face Ratimyr “Do you think he did this to himself…? Without cause…? To what end? Attention?”

Eying up the marked arms of the boy, the Guardcaptain answers “OK… so maybe he’s mad, then!”

I smile “There’s an easy way to settle this… Pawel…?”

“Yes… Bzowy?” he answers, remembering my title this time.

“You say you saw these Demony kill a zmora?” I ask, calmly.

“Yes, Bzowy.” he confirms.

“Where was this?”

“The Northwest bank of Lake Śniade, Bzowy.” he answers, immediately.

“How did they kill it?”

Again, without having to think about it, the boy answers “The Leader had a sword made of sunstuff. He drove it through the zmora’s skull! There was an explosion of steam! It left a big, charred hole between its eyes!”

“Did the Demony look like they wanted to… take the zmora’s carcass?”

He shakes his head “It was more like they just killed it because it was in their way! They didn’t seem interested in it other than that!”

I return my gaze to Ratimyr and smile “There you go…! Go to the Northwest bank of Śniade and if there’s a dead zmora with a hole burned through its skull then he was telling the truth, wasn’t he!”

With a look of immense frustration, the Fojtordenter answers “*rrrrh*…FINE!… But not today!” he looks up at the sky “…by the time we get there, Chors will be setting… Tomorrow, we’ll go and, when we find nothing, I’ll be having a little talk with your mother about appropriate discipline, boy!”

The mother in question steps back between her child and the man snarling venomously at him, defiantly.

“Agreed!” I smile with a tone that tells all that the matter is settled, for now at least, before genially adding “Come now Zuzana, young Pawel, I shall walk you home!”

Ratimyr stares daggers at the boy as we go.

“I’m sorry, Mamo…” says the boy, once we’re out of earshot “…I didn’t mean to make trouble for you.”

She cuddles and shushes the child who’ll soon be the only family she has left, kissing the top of his head as we walk.

We walk for some minutes until we reach the house built by Lukas and Zuzana, when they were in their late teens.

I turn to the boy and his mother and say “I know it’s terrible manners to invite oneself inside but… I was wondering if I might come in…? I would like to hear more about these Demony from young Pawel…”