She had to have air. The tentacle around her wrist released when she cut deeply, but the one gripping her waist kept tightening. Her mouth burst open and bubbles of air escaped, and she managed, only just, to clamp it shut again as it filled with water. She gave one more mighty kick with her bad leg, and the tentacle clutching her ankle gave way.
One remained. The fiend kept jerking and thrashing about, so she knew Sellis and Koyt still battled it on the surface. But she couldn’t count on them to kill it in time to save her. She held the dagger out as far from her body as she could manage, and drove it right toward herself. The point stabbed into the tentacle. It tightened more in response, and the world started to go black. She pushed harder. Hot blood mixed with churning water. She kept pushing until she felt the tip of her blade emerge and poke into her own belly.
Only then did she draw the blade out. The tentacle let go, and Myrana pulled for the surface with every muscle that still functioned.
Koyt’s strong arms were around her, tugging her from the water. Sellis stood hip deep in it, crisscrossing the air with both swords, cutting the fiend into bloody chunks that splashed into the water like thrown rocks. Koyt dragged her onto shore, several feet from the water’s edge, laying her down on her back.
“Are you …?”
“I’m alive,” she said. “That’s as much as I can say.”
“Good.” He turned his attention back toward the fight, nocking and loosing another arrow before dropping the bow and pulling a dagger. He dashed into the water. Myrana wanted to raise her head to watch, but she couldn’t. The thing’s poison had spread through her, and her muscles were no longer her own to control.
It didn’t last long. Scant minutes had passed before Koyt and Sellis both stood over her, soaked and bedraggled, coated in the dark green slime that was the fiend’s life’s blood.
“Myrana,” Sellis said. “You’re well?”
She tried to answer, but now not even her voice worked. She couldn’t so much as blink.
“She spoke moments ago,” Koyt said. “Before I joined you in the pond.”
“Paralysis, then,” Sellis guessed. “It will wear off, Myrana. The damned thing is dead now, so we’ll make camp here tonight and you should be better by morning.”
Koyt broke out in laughter. Sellis stared at him as if he had gone mad. “What?” he asked.
“That’s what she wanted all along,” Koyt said. “To camp here in the oasis, under the shade of the palms.”
A smile creased Sellis’s face, and that contagious laugh burst from him. “Ha! So she did. I had no idea of the measures she’d take to ensure that we did. Good job, Myrana.” He went to one knee beside her, resting his hand comfortingly on her shoulder. “And good job fighting that thing—if not for you, we’d never have bested it.”
Myrana wanted to smile, to thank him, and most of all, to laugh at how she had gotten her way. She had to settle for laughing on the inside.
The mood in camp was tense.
Aric had stopped counting days and nights—there were too many of them, and they ran together in his mind, long hot days of walking himself to exhaustion or riding inside a steaming, stinking, rattling, rocking argosy full of soldiers, and cold, uncomfortable nights during which he tossed in his sleep, dreamed frightening, fitful dreams.
And that was before people started to die.
The first was the night after he had gone off by himself and found himself lost in the desert. A soldier had wandered away from camp, to empty his bladder, he told one of his fellows. He had barely disappeared into the darkness beyond the firelight when everyone in camp heard a cry of sheer terror. A search party, hastily thrown together, carried torches into the darkness and found his bloody remains. Damaric was part of this party. He told Aric and Ruhm that they had located the soldier’s head some twenty or thirty long paces from the body. They never did, Damaric swore, find his heart.
Since then, they had gone at a rate of one or two a night, with only occasional nights of peace. Some were never found, others not located until morning’s light made searching the desert’s vastness easier. Trails of blood often led to the bodies, or what was left of them.
Several times, Aric volunteered to accompany the search parties, but Kadya would have none of it. “Not you,” she told him privately, standing in the shade of an argosy one morning. On the journey, she wore a leather leggings and a loose top, and she kept her brown hair piled up on her head. Behind her, the mekillots belched and fidgeted, ready to get going. “You are too valuable to this expedition. Stay in your wagon and take no foolish chances.”
“But some of these people have become my friends,” he protested.
“I don’t care if they’re your brothers and sisters,” she said. The expression on her face was one of barely controlled rage. “You don’t go out there. Nibenay wants me to keep you safe. I can’t do it if you’re away from the caravan.”
“Very well,” Aric said. He would get his chance, he decided—if the slaughter continued—sometime when she was otherwise occupied. He would just go out with one of the search parties, and deal with her anger when he returned.
Kadya, satisfied that she had won the argument, was walking away from Aric when this morning’s party returned. They bore the remains of yet another goliath soldier in their arms. The day’s travel would be delayed long enough to dig her a shallow grave.
One of the soldiers, a human, broke off from the other searchers and strode up to Kadya. He stopped before her with clenched fists resting against his hips, chin thrust toward her. “Templar,” he began. “There’s been enough death. Let’s return to Nibenay while there are enough of us left alive to make the journey.”
“I’m sorry,” Kadya said, barely restraining a laugh. “Did my husband put you in command of this expedition without telling me? How unusual.”
“You know he did not,” the soldier said. He stood his ground, but Aric detected a falter in his voice. “But we’re losing people every night now. How long can this go on?”
“Until we’ve found Akrankhot and retrieved what Nibenay wants from there,” Kadya said.
“It had better be small, lady, because there won’t be many left to carry it.”
Others had gathered to observe the confrontation. Even those who held their mutilated comrade stared with rapt attention. Nobody stood up to a templar in this way—not if he expected to survive the encounter.
At the same time, Aric was glad someone had found the courage. He suspected the same was true of most of the people making the journey. Kadya had used magic on several occasions already. Between that and the ongoing, almost nightly deaths, people were ready to rise up against her leadership. But they all knew it was suicide to try, and that had held them back.
“I don’t know what you’re so upset about, soldier. Yes, there have been some killings—people caught by sand cactus, that one who strayed too close to a hungry mekillot. Whose fault were those deaths? Surely not mine. You’re soldiers, killing and being killed is what you do. So stop arguing and do it before I lose patience with you.”
Aric felt a presence at his shoulder. Ruhm loomed over him, bending toward his ear. “Only reason she hasn’t struck him down, she knows we’ll need every sword arm we got.”
“You might be right,” Aric said. He wished he knew what to think of her. She showed precious little concern for the dead. But she had, for the most part, been decent to him. And her husband Nibenay had sent him on this trip, promising rewards. For all he knew, Nibenay really was the one who had watched over him for most of his life—he couldn’t truly believe that, but he couldn’t make himself completely discount it, either. Anything was possible, and who knew the secret heart of the Shadow King?