And to the stench was added pain.
Pain like nothing he'd ever felt before-a dozen nails jabbing and twisting and ripping through his flesh. He was aware in a distant way that he was screaming; aware that his efforts to tear his tormentor away merely made the pain worse.
One eye was closed against something slapping at it; with the other he saw
Jasmine running toward him, the look of an avenging angel on her face. Her hands reached out-no, he tried to scream, don't try to tear it off-
And then her hands seemed to flicker with light... and the claws digging into his face were suddenly stilled.
"Daulo!" Jasmine said tautly, her hands gently yet firmly pulling the tormentor off him. "Oh, my God-are you all right?"
"I'm-yes, I think so," he managed, struggling to regain his dignity in front of this woman. "It-what happened?"
"You tried to shoot a razorarm," she said grimly, holding his hands firmly away from the throbbing in his cheek as she examined the wounds with eyes and fingertips. "It wasn't a complete success."
"It-?" Turning away from her probing fingers, he looked down at the carcass lying limply beside him.
Its head was gone. Burned away.
"God be praised," he sighed. "That lightning bolt was..." He paused, an eerie feeling crawling up his back. The second attacker... his eyes found where
Jasmine had tossed it. The razorarm's mojo, of course. Also burned.
Slowly, he looked back at Jasmine Alventin. Jasmine Alventin, the uncultured woman who'd appeared from nowhere... and who'd made it through raw forest alone... and whose hands had spat fire deadly enough to kill.
And it all finally fell together.
"God above," he groaned.
And to his everlasting shame, he fainted.
Chapter 21
Daulo wasn't unconscious for more than about ten minutes. It was still plenty of time for Jin to dress his injuries as best she could, move the spine leopard and mojo carcasses away before they could attract scavengers, and call herself every synonym for idiot that she could think of.
The worst part was the knowledge that her detractors had been right. Totally.
She simply didn't have what it took to be a Cobra; not the emotional toughness, not even the ability to keep her focus on her mission. Certainly not the basic intelligence.
She looked down at Daulo for a moment, gritting her teeth hard enough to hurt.
That was it, then-the mission was scrubbed. An hour after he got home half the planet would be out here looking for her. Nothing left to do now but to strike out into deep forest and wait in the vain hope that she might somehow connect up with the next team the Cobra Worlds sent. Whenever in the distant future that might be.
Not that it mattered. At this point it would be better for everyone concerned if she died here, anyway.
Daulo groaned, and his hands twitched against his chest. Another minute and he'd be fully conscious, and for a moment Jin debated whether or not it would be safe for her to leave him here alone. The road wasn't more than fifteen minutes away, and his injuries wouldn't slow him down all that much. And he did have a gun.
Sighing, Jin stayed where she was, giving the area a quick visual sweep. There wasn't much point, after all, in shooting spine leopards and mojos off a man and then turning him loose for the forest to take another crack at. When she looked down again, his eyes were open. Staring up at her.
For several heartbeats neither spoke. Then Daulo took a shuddering breath.
"You're a demon warrior," he croaked. There was no question in his voice.
Nor anything that required a verbal answer. Jin merely nodded once and waited.
Daulo's hand went to his cheek, gingerly touched the handkerchief Jin had tied there with a strip of cloth. "How... badly am I hurt?" He was clearly fighting to sound and act natural.
"It's not too bad," Jin assured him. "Deep gouges in places, but I don't think there's any major muscle or nerve damage. Probably hurts like blazes, though."
A ghost of a smile touched his lips for a second. "That's for sure," he admitted. "I don't suppose you'd happen to have any painkillers with you."
She shook her head. "There are some near here, though. If you feel up to a little travel we could go get them."
"Where are they?-at your wrecked spacecraft?"
Jin hissed between her teeth. So they had found the shuttle, after all. "You're a good actor," she said bitterly. "I would have sworn that none of you knew about the crash. No, the painkiller's in my pack, hidden near the road. Unless your people have grabbed that by now, of course."
She took his arm, preparing to lift him upright, but he stopped her. "Why?" he asked.
"Why what?" she growled. "Why am I here?"
"Why did you save my life?"
"That's a stupid question. Come on-I've got to retrieve those packs before the rest of your army starts beating the bushes for me. You at least owe me a little head start."
Again she started to lift him; again he stopped her. "You don't need a head start," he said, his voice trembling slightly. "No one else knows about you. I followed you in alone."
She stared at him. Truth? Or some kind of test?
Or a ploy to keep her in one place while they encircled her?
It doesn't really matter, she realized wearily. As long as Daulo was alive, the clock was already ticking down. "Well..." she said at last. "We still need to go and get you that painkiller. Come on."
She'd expected to have to support him most of the way back, and was mildly surprised that he made it the whole way under his own power. Either the physical shock to his system wasn't as bad as she'd feared or else the boneheaded male arrogance she'd already seen too much of on Qasama did have its useful side.
They made it back to the road in just over fifteen minutes... and there was indeed no army waiting for them.
"So," Daulo said with elaborate casualness after she'd treated his cuts with a disinfectant/analgesic spray and replaced the handkerchief with a proper heal-quick bandage. "I suppose the next question is where we go from here."
"I don't see much of a question," Jin growled. "I'd guess you're going back to
Milika to sound the alarm, and I'm going to start running."
He stared silently at her... and, oddly enough, behind the tight mask she could see there was a genuine battle of emotions underway. "I see you don't know very much about Qasama, Demon Warrior," he said after a moment.
It was a second before she realized he expected a response. "No, not really," she told him. "Not much more than I learned from you over the past couple of days. That's one of the reasons we came, to find out more."
He licked his lips. "We put a high premium on honor here, Demon Warrior. Honor and the repayment of debts."
And she'd just saved his life... Slowly, it dawned on Jin that it might not yet be over. "I see your dilemma," she nodded. "Would it help to tell you I'm not here to make war on Qasama?"
"It might-if I could believe you." He took a deep breath. "Is your spacecraft really wrecked?"
Jin shivered at the memory. "Totally."
"Why were you going back there, then?"
And there was no longer any way out of it. She was going to have to admit, in public, just what an emotional idiot she was being. "I had to leave the wreck in a hurry," she said, the words tearing at her gut. "I thought it would be found right away, and that there would be a manhunt started-" She broke off, blinking angrily at a tear that had appeared in one eye. "Anyway, I left... but it seemed to me that if you'd found it the authorities would certainly have checked all nearby villages for strangers. Wouldn't they?"
Daulo nodded silently.
"Well, don't you see?" she snapped suddenly. "You haven't found it... and I ran off and left my friends there. I can't just... I have to-"