More of the creatures were following them, and it sounded like frog-things were not the only inhabitants of the mist. Eerie groans and hoots reverberated in the dim, endless wetness, and there was no telling the size of the lurking creatures that made them or how close they might be. The clinging mist was denser than any fog Tarek had ever seen. On the one hand, that made it less likely that Xochil would find them if he ventured into the mists, but on the other, it made their trek a jumpy one. Every swirl and eddy in the mist left them staring into nothing, wondering if they’d actually seen something.
They pressed on as fast as they could, resuming the run-walk-run cadence they’d used earlier but not making nearly as much progress. For one, they were already exhausted. Zulimaya staggered as if she’d had three horns of beer and clutched at her head wound, and though she maintained that she was fine, she sounded distant and confused. The other problem was the increasingly sandy soil underfoot. It pulled at their feet and slowed their steps. All of them except Tarek were sweating heavily in their furred skins despite the wet, chill bite in the air.
And then one of the frog-men leapt screaming out of the mists, and they were running again. The creature snatched at Tarek, who ducked and turned to let its claws scrape harmlessly off the thick leather cape. As it caromed past him, he lashed out with the knife he’d borrowed from Tavvi, slicing through its fragile, mucosal hide. The monster stumbled to a stop in the sand just before where the mists would swallow it and turned to leap again.
Tarek raised the blade to his lips and, bracing himself against the bitterness, licked the slick blackness along one side. “Go kill!” he said, and with a toothy snarl it darted back the way it came, barreling into another just as it leapt for Bachi. The friends ran on, heedless of the hoots and gurgling cries that echoed all around. Tarek led them, looking back every few heartbeats to make sure they all kept pace.
A snarling frenzy erupted behind them where the compelled beast had fallen, and Tarek’s sense of its life flared and winked out in a mere handful of heartbeats. “They’ve learned!” he cried. “They killed the one I sent back.”
“Oh, look: I can run faster,” Bachi said in his gravelly, broken voice. “Thanks.”
The gurgling, barking cries grew in volume and number. It sounded like there were dozens of them on the hunt. That was when the sand underfoot turned to water and Tarek went down in front with a splash.
“What is this?” Tavi cried.
Tarek hauled himself out of water more than a hand deep as it sluiced past him and retreated.
“It tastes like flood water, but worse,” Pahtl said, his muzzle wet.
They ran forward several more steps and the water crashed into them again, rising nearly to their knees this time. Tarek managed to keep his feet under him this time. Looking out, he saw waves of black water in all directions going forward for perhaps three arm’s-lengths before the mists closed over it.
“Maybe it’s not that far,” he said, desperate. “We could cross it.”
“No,” Bachi groaned. “It’s the forever water. The end of the world.”
No less than a dozen frog monsters burst into view, wet slaver hanging from their tooth-furred jaws as they shambled forward.
“Into the water!” Tavi cried.
“No!” Zulimaya barked, pointing. Less than a body-length further into the black waters, a spiny-finned, sinuous body broke the surface in multiple coils. The body looked to be as big around as Tarek’s leg.
“Out of the water!” he cried.
They charged shoreward, Pahtl barely able to keep his head above the wavetops as they crashed. They angled away from the approaching frog-men, but with the water dragging at their steps, trying to outrun them was hopeless. With a feral cry, Tarek launched himself at the nearest one, breaking free of the sucking water and leading with his knife.
The canny creatures parted on both sides of him, making sure to stay clear of his blade. They leapt on the others instead, claws extended and jaws gaping. All of his friends went down under an avalanche of gray-green skin and dark slime while still ankle-deep in water. Tarek was left alone and gaping on the shore with no one to fight. He heard hisses and grunts out in the mists, but no more of the creatures came forward.
Running back to the water, he came upon the two that had dragged Tavi down and punched his knife in its back where one would find the breath chambers on a human. It shrieked and thrashed, falling backwards into the wet sand. Tarek didn’t bother with blood commands this time – he just hacked at any green skin he saw. There were too many to waste time taking blood. He thought of that long tongue slithering into the depths of his head and knew he couldn’t stop them all.
Another one went down as Tarek pulled the blade roughly across its throat. The beasts were so intent on their predations that they didn’t even attempt to hold him off. Tavi was free, sputtering and wiping at his face as the salty water splashed over him. Tarek bounded over to Zulimaya, who had four of the things grouped around her. Another quick knife thrust and one fell away, but another was already crouched over her face, and she was screaming.
We’re going to die here, he realized, looking back to the mists swirling ominously on shore. There are too many.
When he saw a faint light bobbing in the mist, he almost breathed a sigh of relief. Xochil would save them. He’d take Tarek away, but he could live with that. He’d tell the old man that he wouldn’t go unless Xochil brought Tavi and the others back to safety as well. If that meant he never saw them again, so be it – so long as they lived.
But the light was orange, not the lesser moon’s green-white, and it was bobbing as it approached very quickly. Awareness bloomed suddenly inside him. That’s not Xochil.
Kanga burst from the mists, flaming torch aloft, screaming a Catori warrior’s battle cry. His torch was as long as his arm, and he charged forward, swinging the burning end left and right, scattering the monsters. One wailing frog flew aside with a sizzling brand where its black, bulging eye had been, and another fell back with broken teeth and a steaming tongue.
The fire got the frog-men’s attention, and they backed away with hisses of fear and pain. Kanga roared at them, charging at the slinking figures until they fled into the mists.
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“What are you doing?” Tarek asked, incredulous.
“Everything you can’t,” Kanga said.
Tarek couldn’t wrap his mind around it. “They’d have killed us.”
Kanga spat in the wet sand. “Nobody gets to do that but me.”
“Talk later,” Zulimaya said, limping past haggardly. “More still come.”
“I thought you were the tough one,” Kanga said, baring his white teeth at her.
“I will kill them all,” Pahtl said, standing on his hind legs. “You go, or I will kill you too.”
Kanga shook his head. “Toad men and talking otters. This is what you’ve made out of my life, grub.”
A group of ululating cries reached them, and a single frog-monster loped forward on all fours.
Kanga snorted. “Just one? Watch a real man handle things.” He pushed Tarek aside and swaggered toward the approaching creature.
“We really should have killed him,” Tavi said, dragging himself out of the water.
The frog-man was smaller than others they’d seen, with deeply bowed back legs, its gray skin verging more towards purple than green, its belly distended and dragging on the sand. Kanga planted his feet wide and held his torch like a war maul.
“Come on, you ugly rat whelp!” he jeered. “I want some frog legs for dinner.”
The creature pulled up short just outside the reach of Kanga’s swing and opened its mouth wide, wide, and even wider.
It vomited an incredible amount onto Kanga, dousing his torch.
“Faugh!” the big hunter cried, wiping his eyes and spitting. “It’s salty!” Then he saw the black, steaming head of his extinguished torch. “Oh, wormshit.”
“Run!” Tarek cried. Frog men came streaming out of the mists to the south and the west. There were dozens of them.
They pounded along the wet sand parallel to the water, leaving the frog-men in their wake. The creatures were tenacious and hardy, but their legs were short and hinged backward, so over short distances the humans were able to outpace them.
“Where are we going?” Kanga called from the rear.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Tavi snapped. “Go kiss a frog thing.”
“I just saved your life,” Kanga said. “Have some respect.”
“Later,” Tarek panted. “Both of you.”
“You don’t tell me what to do, either, grub.”
“There has to be a bridge,” Tavi said, ignoring Kanga. “A spit of land or something. Wherever the first ones crossed into the Land – it has to still be there. Keep running. We’ll find it.”
They ran until their breath came in ragged gasps and their saliva ran dry. The hoots and cries diminished in the distance behind them, but still the creatures followed. Finally Tarek felt safe enough to signal the others to slow with a wave.
“Walk for a bit,” he gasped. Even Kanga was winded.
“Never been so tired,” Tavi said, his feet dragging in the sand.
“So stupid to have long legs,” Pahtl whimpered. “I know too many slick-skins.”
“Stop,” Zulimaya said. She looked even paler than usual, and her words sounded slurred. “Complaining will not make it hurt less.”
“It might,” Bachi replied.
Tavi made a sound that might have been a laugh, but when Tarek turned, he was gone. It took half a heartbeat to realize that his brother was stretched out on the sand, looking for all the world as if he’d tripped. He looked surprised. One of his legs was buried to the hip in soft sand.
“Come on, Tav, we can’t stop,” Tarek said, stooping down to grab his hand. “No rest yet.”
“I wasn’t resting,” Tavi said, annoyed. “There’s a hole.” A funny look crossed his face. “Pull me up.”
Tarek complied, but Tavi’s hand jerked to a sudden stop as he pulled, and he stumbled backward, letting go.
Tavi gasped. “Something’s got me,” he said. Panic twisted his face. “Help!”
Then he clutched at the sand where his leg disappeared and started to scream. “Help! It burns! It burns! Tarek!”
Tarek scrambled forward, heart in his throat. Putting a hand in each of his brother’s armpits, he hauled upward as hard as he could. Tavi rose two handsbreadths out of the sand and jerked to a stop. His screams ratcheted a notch higher.
“Help me!” Tarek cried to the others. “Pull!”
The humans crowded around, even Kanga, all latching onto the screaming boy and pulling with every last bit of their might. Pahtl raced circles around them helplessly.
“Stop stop stop!” Tavi screamed, and with an awful sucking sound he pulled free from the sand. His screams devolved into wordless cries.
The furs he’d spent so much time making were gone up to mid-thigh where his leg had disappeared into the sand. The leg was sheathed in blood from the knee down. Tarek backed away, screwing his eyes shut and clamping his hand over his nose. Not Tavi. Ones Beneath, I’ll die before I take his blood.
“What happened?” Kanga said, retreating in disgust.
Bachi glanced down into the hole in the sand and gave a broken yelp. “Something’s moving down there!”
Tarek pulled up the corner of the cape Bachi had given him and held it in front of his nose and mouth. He risked a glance at Tavi, who lay flat on his back, his hands clenching great handfuls of sand as he gave short, urgent cry-breaths like a woman giving birth. His bare leg wept blood from dozens of evenly-spaced, perfectly circular holes a thumb’s joint in size. Tarek’s bloodlust surged and he took an involuntary step forward, but his fear and worry trampled the feeling just enough to let him hang onto his self-control by the fingernails.
He held the hilt of his knife out to Zulimaya, who was still doubled over and breathing hard. He hadn’t heard her vomit, but a wet patch of sand glimmered between her feet, and a string of saliva hung from her lips. She looked confused. “Cut me,” he said urgently.
She blinked at him as if she hadn’t heard right, or as if she wasn’t sure she knew him.
“Cut me!” he said again, insistently.
Her gaze traveled from the knife to his face ever so slowly.
“Do it!” he cried.
She tried to reach for the knife, but as her hand came off her knee, it went instead to the ugly gash on her forehead. Her eyes crossed and rolled back into her head, and she slumped into the sand.
“Bachi!” Tarek cried urgently. “Cut me!”
Bachi’s eyes were wide. “I don’t –”
Tavi was thrashing in the sand and making mewling noises. The back of his blood-soaked leg was coated in sand.
“Cut me or I’ll cut you,” Tarek snarled.
Bachi took the knife gingerly and drew it across Tarek’s offered palm, the one with only three fingers.
“Deeper!” he screamed.
Bachi did it again, and this time he felt the blade bite deep. He gasped and clenched his half-fist, feeling the warmth and wetness of his own blood well between his fingers. There’s not going to be anything left of my hand if I keep this up.
Then he slapped the hand down on Tavi’s leg, drawing a fresh scream from his brother.
The blood magic worked immediately. Wherever his blood touched, the gushing wounds stopped, replaced by cool, hard flesh. It was the work of perhaps thirty heartbeats to coat the front and back of his leg to the knee, and another ten to slather all sides of his foot. In at least three different spots Tarek saw white bone peeking out of the depth of the cup-shaped wounds, but he ignored it, wiping his blood all over with his bad hand while keeping the cape to his nose with the other.
Tavi’s cries quieted and died, and Tarek looked to his face in sudden fear. But Tavi wasn’t dead, he’d merely fainted. Tarek fell back on his hindquarters in the sand, breathing heavily. He filled his crippled fist with the leather of the cape, trying to wipe bloody granules of sand out of the cut and stanch the blood at the same time.
Kanga stepped forward, peering at Tavi’s leg. It was hideous. The blood magic had done what it could, but it apparently couldn’t replace missing flesh. Tavvi’s right leg was a patchwork of healthy skin and well-ordered cup gouges full of unsightly red scar tissue. Tarek could have hidden half a finger if he tried to touch the bottom of some of those scars. It looked less like a leg and more like a stick whittled by a bored hunter.
Kanga touched the heavy scars bisecting his own brow. “Is this how you healed me when crazy girl over there attacked me?”
Exhausted and unwilling to waste words, Tarek simply closed his eyes and nodded.
“Let’s move away from that hole.” Bachi whispered. “We don’t know if that thing can climb out.”
Tarek nodded, wishing he could pour fire and wrath down onto whatever lurked under the sand. He wanted to reach down and pull the thing out, to tear it to pieces. It had hurt Tavi, and he would kill it. But he had no way to harm the hidden creature – no spear, no bow, no poison, nor anything but a belt knife. Sometimes we don’t get to win; we just have to escape. Tarek was getting awfully tired of escaping and leaving bits and pieces of themselves behind.