“Here, I…” Taniel looked away for just half a moment, and the girl was gone.
There was shouting behind them, and Taniel knew he had two choices: move faster and risk stepping in a sinkhole, or take it slowly and let the Kez soldiers catch up with them.
A quick glance back showed that the Kez had entered the swamp about a hundred yards behind him. They carried lanterns, hooded against the rain.
Taniel would have to outrun them, risking the sinkholes and swamp dragons.
There, up ahead. The savage girl again. Taniel fought his fear with anger. Who the pit was she? What did she want? Why was she haunting him?
“There’s a girl,” Taniel hissed.
Dina clutched at him. “What did you say?”
“A savage girl. She’s up ahead, watching us.” He wanted to say the word “spirit” but fought against it. He didn’t need to scare Dina. Priests were notoriously excitable about this kind of things. “I’ve heard stories…”
“This is no time for superstition,” Dina said. “She must be one of the tribe, here to guide us. Follow her!”
Taniel stepped forward, only to feel his leg sink into the mud up to his knee. “Sinkhole!” He tried to step back, but too much of his weight had been on his front leg, leaving him with no leverage.
“Don’t move,” Dina said. Her raspy breathing filled Taniel’s ears, and he could feel her grasp him by the shoulder. “I’ve braced my feet,” she said. “I’ll pull on you now. Just wait until…”
Light suddenly blinded Taniel, searing Dina’s face into his vision. He felt the grip on his shoulder disappear, and he fell back into the mud, arms flailing for purchase. His right arm sank through the murk and he thought he might be sucked down forever, before one fingertip touched something solid.
He forced himself to freeze. Struggling would only make it worse. He focused on floating in the water above the sinkhole, one hand with a firm grip on a rock beneath the water. It was the only thing keeping him from being pulled down.
Pushing with that one hand, he felt his face break the surface and took in a ragged breath.
Calm, he reminded himself. He had to breathe slowly and work his way away from the sinkhole.
He remembered Dina’s face in the lightning-mouth open, eyes wide, features ashen-and he knew that she had likely been dead by the time she hit the water.
His eyes were caked shut by mud, and there was a pain in his side that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Had he been shot? Perhaps he had twisted something when he fell.
He could hear the splash of footsteps near, and his heart thundered like a volley of musket fire. All his training and his magery yet here he was, helpless to move in the mud and water. Someone could just walk up and push him down.
“Look at that, my lady,” a male voice said in Kez. “Cut right in two. Excellent aim.”
Another voice, female, and educated by the enunciation, said, “Is it the powder mage?”
“Hard to tell, the body is sinking fast. Can’t see the face.”
The body. Dina.
The woman sniffed. “There were two out here. Did I get them both?”
A few moments passed, and Taniel knew they were looking for him. From their voices, they had their backs to him. Taniel forced himself to breathe as quietly as possible and prayed to Kresimir they wouldn’t turn around.
“This is a deep sinkhole, my lady. Can’t feel the bottom with this pole. He must have been sucked down into the mud. See how quickly the corpse disappeared?”
“I want evidence of the powder mage’s death. Mark the spot. I’ll come back in the morning and raise the corpses.”
“The swamp dragons or snappers might have them by then, my lady.”
“Just mark the spot. We have more hunting to do.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Taniel waited, barely able to breath, and tried not to imagine the mud slowly sucking him under.
The two left, their boots splashing in the water, and Taniel listened to other soldiers shouting in Kez. The search carried on for at least an hour, and he remained still, only years of practice standing at attention allowing him the discipline to do so.
His side ached fiercely, and he knew he was losing blood. How much, he couldn’t be sure. The pain grew as his powder trance wore off. He shivered in the chill of the swamp water.
The sounds of searching soldiers were not long gone when Taniel felt something move past one foot. It was a soft feeling, like satin sliding across his skin, and he immediately thought of everything that they’d told him lurked in these swamps: snakes, snappers, and swamp dragons.
No more waiting. He had to get back to solid ground, find his rifle and kit if he could, and then work his way further into the swamp before morning. He moved slowly, pulling his leg toward him. With his whole head finally above the water, Taniel scrapped the mud from his eyes. The world was dark, his powder trance gone. His clothes were soaked and his muscles stiff, and something touched his leg again.
Even half-blinded by mud and cloaked in darkness, Taniel could see the figure of the savage girl standing on the bank, not three feet away.
Fear shot through him. Several moments passed, and Taniel forced himself to look her in the eye as he reached out with one hand, searching for firm ground. Then something snagged him by the leg and pulled. The scream didn’t have time to leave his mouth before he went under.
“Where are you leading me, girl?”
It was early in the morning, and the swamp teemed with life. Taniel limped along ten paces back from the savage girl, scanning their surroundings. He spotted a pair of swamp dragon nostrils poking up from the water and shuddered, remembering the teeth that had seized his leg last night.
The savage girl had already adjusted their path in order to go well around the creature.
She’d been silent all night, watching him carefully whenever he spoke but never replying. He wondered if she understood Adran, or if she could speak at all. Had she made any sort of war cry when she’d dove into the mud and killed the young swamp dragon with two strokes of her machete?
Taniel couldn’t remember. He’d been too busy struggling to get away.
He was lucky the beast had only snagged his pantleg. Otherwise the gash in his side would be second concern over a missing foot.
Taniel’s powder trance was wearing off. He’d maintained a trance all night, sniffing from his last bit of dry powder every half hour or so, but he knew that if he took any more he risked not having enough to fight Kez if they ran into any patrols.
He still clung to the hope of finding survivors from the militia, despite not having seen any sign of them all morning. His questions about them to this girl had all gone ignored.
He stopped to catch his breath, sitting on the bowed old roots of a cypress tree. His clothes were dirty and soaking, his rifle lost in the swamp; only his kit, wet knapsack, and a single pistol to help him survive.
And this savage girl.
“Wait,” Taniel said.
The girl turned and shook her head sharply, gesturing ahead. It was the first indication that she’d understood anything he said. She pointed between herself and him then made a walking motion with her fingers.
“I need to treat this wound,” Taniel said. “It’s going to be a problem if I don’t.” It was already a problem. He risked disease, infection, and bloodloss with every step he took; he only pushed on because he knew he had to get as far from the Kez as possible.
The girl splashed toward him, and he pulled his shirt up to show her the wound.
It wasn’t pretty. Mud-caked and angry red, it crossed his left side just below his arm, almost six inches long. The mud might have saved his life, preventing him from bleeding out over the last seven or eight hours, but infection was his greatest worry now.
The girl motioned for him to follow and led him to a hardwood hummock-a rise in the land about three feet above the water and fifty paces long. She began gathering dry sticks immediately, pulling down dead tree branches and plucking them from the highest point of the hummock.