Savage (10 page)

BADLANDS

BAZUR silently led Kyra through the badlands. Again, he’d woken up with the vixen snuggled up against him, and the memories of her warm body against his was filling his mind. It wasn’t the physical aspect of Kyra cuddling up with him during the night that was troubling Bazur, it was the feelings she stirred within him. He was starting to care for her. Since the death of his family and his expulsion from the orc community, Bazur had been alone. Sure he spent some time in Pera, and occasionally enjoyed the company of some of the local females, but he’d always been detached emotionally. It was better not to have emotional connections with other people. It could only lead to heartache and disappointment. It was one thing to be physically attracted to Kyra. Any rational being would be. Her body was a temple built to pray to the gods upon. Yet the more time he spent with her, the more his emotional wall started to crack. He’d always seen Kyra as an attractive smartass. Her quick wit and flirty nature along with her physical attractiveness was something he’d always been drawn to. From the first time they met, and every other occasion they’d worked together, he’d felt the attraction to her. But the both of them had maintained boundaries. The flirting between the two of them had been mostly banter and innuendo. Also, the jobs had been short. He’d never spent nearly as much time alone with Kyra as he had on this job. He was starting to learn more about her and every little bit he learned left him wanting more. He’d always known her tongue was sharp, her quick wit had gotten the best of him many times. However, she was much smarter than he’d assumed. He’d always been aware of her impressive forgery skills, but the way she was able to make deductions about the prince’s case was even more impressive. Three separate investigators had tried to figure out the attacks. None had made any headway. Kyra had been able to figure out the pattern that trained professionals had missed. Bazur knew on his own he would never have been able to put the dots together just by reading the prince’s notes. But there was something else beyond her brains and the sexual tension between the two of them. There was pain in her past, something she hadn't yet shared with him, but he could feel that she had suffered great losses. Her sassy, tougher than nails persona wasn’t the real Kyra. There was darkness and pain hidden in her eyes, darkness that reminded him of his own. It drew him towards her in a way he never expected, and it made him nervous.

Bazur shook his head and pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind. He would be better served thinking about what was to come. The badlands were filled with dangers and crossing them at the best of times was treacherous. Going into a location where they expected to meet a large enemy force was not the time to have his mind filled with doubts and thoughts of a woman. If they were to survive, they needed to be sharp. They were hunting a predator. The man behind the attacks was a dangerous man with a talent for desert warfare. If they weren’t careful, they would go from hunting him to being hunted. The three previous investigators the prince hired had suffered that fate, Bazur didn’t intend for Kyra and himself to be the fourth and fifth names on that list.

While Mauri Planche and his mercenaries were traveling to Pera, Bazur and Kyra were taking a different route to the watering hole at Westmere. Bazur was trusting his instincts about where the attack on Mauri would happen. If he was wrong, they would gain nothing from this trip into the desert, but if they followed Mauri and his men, they risked being spotted by their unknown enemy. In order to track the enemy or interrupt the act they needed to be invisible. To do that, they needed to be ahead of Mauri and his men. Going to the Devil’s Arm was a gamble, but it was a chance they needed to take. So by cutting across the desert and avoiding Pera, they gained a day of travel time. But it was a full day of travel away from any water. Bazur, long acclimatized to living in the badlands, could travel days at a time without water. Kyra was a different story. She’d need twice the water he would in order to make the journey to Westmere. However, between the two of them they had two full goatskin water sacks, more than enough to keep her hydrated until they arrived at the next watering hole.

Bazur stopped for a moment. A few yards up the trail was a human skeleton, the flesh was completely gone, but bones were freshly picked. Further off the trail Bazur could see more bones. They had stumbled into the feeding grounds of one of many dangerous predators that called the badlands home. “Kyra.”

“I see them,” Kyra replied. “What killed them?”

“I don’t know but we’d best be careful or we’ll be next on the menu.” Bazur pulled his war scythe from its sheath on his back. The trail they were following was a shallow ravine, likely an ancient riverbed long dried out, which winded and twisted through the desert, limiting their visibility to the next turn in the path ahead. They now faced a choice. Turn back and travel around the area or continue along the trail. To turn back might be safer, but the ravine was relatively hard and flat ground, making it easy to traverse. Going a different route would slow them down significantly. Also, at this point they had no idea what had been the cause of death of the skeleton on the trail. It might’ve been dehydration or an injury that brought death to the unknown wanderer. However, the signs of more skeletons, human and otherwise, further up the trail indicated that his original presumption was likely correct. Someone was waiting to jump out of the shadows in orc like fashion to club them. They would go forward, but warily.

As they passed the first skeleton, Bazur looked for signs of struggle. Had the wanderer died here? Or had something dragged it here? The badlands were an unforgiving place, and whatever had killed this man was worthy of paying attention to. Any little detail Bazur could find was important. The answer came a few feet past the skeleton. Bazur found the remains of a boot, half torn to shreds and likely dragged off the body. Something had dragged the body to its feeding grounds. Whatever the beast was, it was big enough to drag its prey. Bears were not common in the badlands, occasionally one could be found in the higher mountain regions but not in this region. Wolves and vraber were big enough to drag a corpse, but he saw no signs of either creature.

A movement off to the left of them caught the corner of Bazur’s eye. He turned to see a claw coming out of the sandbank at the edge of the ravine. With one hand, Bazur pulled Kyra to his right. Placing himself between her and the animal.

“What the hell is that?” yelled Kyra as the beast emerged from its hiding place in the soft sand and rocks at the side of the ravine.

Bazur could hear the surprise and fear in her voice. He couldn’t blame her. The creature, a sciane, was an awful looking thing. Scianes, giant flesh eating crabs that weighted upwards of fifty pounds, looked like a combination of a massively oversized crab and a fanged grubworm. The fleshy head with a double row of razor sharp teeth looked out of place on the shell-covered cousin of a crab. “It’s a sciane.”

As if to acknowledge his naming of the beast, the creature took a swipe at Bazur with one of its huge claws. The pinchers clicked together loudly as it snapped at Bazur.

Bazur avoided the pinch and thrust the tip of his war scythe into the mouth of the beast, killing it. You could strike a sciane’s hard shell all day and not do any damage, but its head and mouth were vulnerable to attacks.

“Gods alive! What an ugly creature. It came out of nowhere.”

Bazur whipped his head around, scanning all the sand banks along the edges of the ravine. “Yes, scianes burrow into the sand. They’ll wait for days for prey to come along. There must be a natural well or an oasis in one of these nearby canyons.”

“Bazur… why do you keep saying they?”

Bazur glanced at Kyra, noted the worried look on her face. She was studying him, watching how carefully he was scanning the sandbanks. “Scianes hunt in groups. We were lucky, this little one was over eager.”

Kyra’s head whipped around as she looked for more of the ugly crablike creatures. “That is a little one! It’s the size of a dog. Its pinchers are the size of my arms. It looks like it could lob my head off with one chop.”

“No. Those little ones are strong. It would take at least three chops to take your head off,” replied Bazur. “Now a full sized sciane, that is something else. Just stay behind me and we’ll try to avoid finding out if they can or not.”

“You’re not inspiring confidence. At least lie to me and tell me it’s going to be okay.”

“Those pants make your ass look fat, and it’s going to be okay,” said Bazur as he took three slow steps away from Kyra.

“Really? You pick now to develop a sense of humor? I hope you get a sciane pincher stuck where the sun don’t shine.” Kyra wrinkled her nose at Bazur.

Bazur tried not to smile. He purposely was goading her, trying to draw her ire. Annoyed and irritated, Kyra was much more aware of her surroundings and less likely to panic when the attack came. He just needed to keep her focused, but not get her so angry she pulled her knife on him. The woman did have a fierce temper when aroused. “It’s not so much the pants that are the problem.” Bazur noted a few sand particles shifting in a couple of the dunes. The scianes were about to launch their attack. All they were waiting for was him to move further into their planned trap. Bazur rolled his neck and shrugged his shoulders up towards his ears, stretching out his back and shoulder muscles. He tensed and relaxed his hands around the handle of his war scythe. He took another three steps forward.

“Are you seriously suggesting my ass is too—” Kyra stopped talking abruptly as six scianes simultaneously shot out of their hiding places in the sand to attack Bazur.

The moment the attack started, Bazur spun to his right and ran towards the sciane on his right. Before the dangerous creature could fully escape the soft sand Bazur leapt and brought his war scythe swiftly down slicing into the exposed sciane’s head. Bazur landed on the animal’s shelled back and immediately used the hard shell as a platform to leap back into the air, landing on top of the next sciane. Again, his scythe sliced down, parting the beast’s soft head.

Bazur had encountered scianes before. He knew how they hunted. Forming a circle around their prey and quickly closing until there was no escaping their deadly pinchers. Luckily, the young sciane’s premature attack had broken the circle. Knowing that the sciane at his back was dead, Bazur was able to leave Kyra’s side and attack. By attacking the two beasts on one side, he bought time before the others could cross the ravine and create a new circle. Now the remaining four scianes were all in front of him with Kyra safely off to the side. As the four scianes scurried across the ravine, Bazur started running towards them. He needed to keep on the attack, dictate the pace of battle, and not let the dangerous creatures get behind him. As he ran forward Bazur reversed his grip on his war scythe and threw it like a spear into the mouth of the closest sciane. Still running forward, Bazur drew his sword and angled at the next closest sciane. As he drew close, the sciane jabbed forward, both deadly pinchers snapping at Bazur’s chest like a pair of shears chopping a twig. Bazur ducked and rolled under the pinchers and as he sprung out of the roll, his sword sliced up in a vicious uppercut, penetrating the sciane’s bottom jaw and into its neck. But Bazur had misjudged the angle of his attack and the tip of the sword penetrated deep into the sciane until it was lodged into it. Instead of trying to free his stuck sword, Bazur let go of the blade and focused his attention on the two remaining scianes. The scianes were trying to flank him, one on each side. Bazur used the carcass of the sciane as cover, crouching as close to the dead animal as possible. When the two remaining scianes made their attack, Bazur jumped over the carcass and ran to the next dead sciane where his war scythe was. With a weapon in hand, Bazur turned and faced the remaining scianes.

As the two scianes approached Bazur, Kyra suddenly jumped on the back of one of the beasts, stabbing it in the head with her sword. As the other sciane turned to try protect its companion from Kyra’s sneak attack, Bazur once more launched his war scythe, killing the last sciane.

Kyra was still stabbing the sciane in its head as it collapsed to the ground. Bazur watched as she violently hacked away at its head. When she finally stopped, she looked over at Bazur. “What? I’m making sure it doesn’t get up.”

Bazur shook his head. Kyra had once again surprised him. Attacking a full grown sciane was not for the weak of heart. If she wanted to hack away for a month, he wouldn’t say a thing. “I was just admiring your technique.”

“You were surprised my fat ass was able to jump on top of this ugly brute’s back, weren’t you?” Kyra’s eyebrows furrowed and her eyes sparkled dangerously.

Bazur looked carefully into Kyra’s eyes. He couldn’t tell if she was joking or had truly taken offense to his comments about the size of her delectable derriere. Now that the danger of the scianes had passed, he would tread lightly. With the need to distract her from her fear gone, he no longer felt there was anything to gain by arousing her anger, lest he wanted to be hacked at like the beast at her feet. “If there is a more perfect pair of buttocks in all of Draisha, they never crossed my eyes.”

Kyra nodded. “That’s more like it.”

Bazur returned to the sciane with his sword lodged into its maw. He gave the blade a hard yank, freeing it from the inside of the creature. He then pushed the creature over so that it was laying on its back.

“What are you doing?” asked Kyra.

Bazur drove his sword into the side of the dead creature. “Sciane’s top shell is all one piece, but its underside is a series of pieces of shell attached by muscles. As he used his sword to pry loose one of the pieces of shell, he continued to explain. “Although they're dangerous and have the ugliest mugs ever seen, sciane have some of the tastiest meat.” Bazur popped another chunk of shell loose. “Tonight we’re going to dine like kings and queens.”