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“I could give you a shriek or two before I go. To make you feel better if you like.”
I’m trying to keep this light, but it’s not easy. My life was forfeit before this, and now it is going to end in a thoroughly brutal way. I’m not sure how to process it. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just go into denial. I think I might already be in denial.
Every humanoid creature on this planet seems intent on either capturing me, breeding me, or killing me. I just want to go home. I wish I’d never come to this wild planet. I wish I’d… I don’t know. I wish I had done absolutely anything besides come here.
At this precise moment, I sort of wish that Equs would come back. Except he appears to have abandoned…
BOOM!
An explosion to end all explosions explodes very near me, throwing me off my feet and making my head ring.
BOOM!
Oh, there’s another one…
Seven
Equs
Once those feral little bastards get their hands on something, you have a matter of minutes to save it before they start stripping parts off. I am sure Blaire believes that I have abandoned her, but there was no time to get her out of the pen before the Eponites were everywhere, and she was safer inside the walls of the pen than she would have been loose, a target for their infernal poisoned arrows. We had to retreat in order to mount a full assault, an artillery barrage of explosive arrows best detonated at a distance.
“Stop it!” I shout the order. “You’ve hit them all!”
“Hard to hit one without hitting them all, sire.”
Blaire wasn’t supposed to be hurt. This was never supposed to happen. I return to her, running as fast as I can in the wake of the Eponite assault. The camp has been destroyed. They’ve raided our supplies, stolen our treasures, and fled as they always do under the power of those demon ponies.
Her pen and prison of heavy stakes are broken open. It looks like a loose handful of toothpicks now. I told my archers to stay clear of her, but it was dark and the fires from the Eponites were confusing, and Blaire herself was surrounded by them. It was almost impossible to hit them without hitting her.
She has become collateral damage in her own rescue.
I find her lying in the dirt, well outside the pen, her clothes ripped off her and hanging in tatters over the fit curves of her body. She is breathing, just barely.
“Blaire…” I say her name softly at first, then again with more urgency. Her eyelashes flutter, but there’s no other real response.
I pull her out of the mess that used to be our encampment, cursing under my breath. If she has been seriously injured, I will never forgive myself. We should have retreated to a more reinforced city, but I wanted to keep her out in the wild for a bit, to myself. I wanted to break her in the old way. Now she is broken completely.
She’s groaning, which I take as a good sign.
There are no other good signs.
The explosive arrowheads turn everything they touch into shrapnel when they land. Rocks, shards of wood, pieces of clay from water pots, they all become weapons in turn. The Eponites have armor to repel them, and their ponies are well protected with thick coats of fur and faceplates besides. Blaire had nothing, so even though she was at a distance, she was caught in the blast in a bad way. There’s a gash over her temple, and smaller cuts running all the way down her neck, over her shoulder, and down her side.
“No. My precious. No…” I murmur the words, but the words are useless. I don’t know if I am doing more damage to her by picking her up if she has been injured in some more complete way than I can stomach. I have to get her away from here. This is a place we are going to forever abandon.
I carry her away from the wreckage of the camp, her body lying light in my arms. I wish I had made a thousand different decisions leading up to this moment as I will her to live. No matter what, she has to live.
She continues to moan and groan. For her sake, I hope she stays unconscious for some time, but I also hope she has not been seriously injured. I do not like these hopes. I like certainties. I like control.
My men are waiting nearby, with only the most limited of supplies on their horses.
“Get back there, salvage what you can. Mehdic, I need you. Now.”
Mehdic has been my personal surgeon for as long as I can remember. He is capable of dressing any battle wound. He has saved more lives and preserved more limbs than anybody in my service. Now, he has to save hers.
