Krayzor's Arc

Chapter 8 of 16

Krayzor hit the waterfall path with blood on his hands and the sun sliding low. The vines at the cave mouth had been splashed with his own red where he'd grabbed them coming through the gorge, every leaf marked by his torn palms. He pushed past them and stopped. She was where he'd left her, curled against the back wall behind the wilting poison flowers, the golden scale still tied at her throat. The kitsune lifted her head. Her tails moved once and went still. A pile of old bandages lay beside her, brown and crusted, peeled off and stacked like a small marker of every hour she had survived alone. She tried to stand. Her legs folded under her before she got halfway up. "Sundown," Krayzor said. "We have to go now." He knelt and his knee screamed. He could not lift her. He could barely lift himself. He looked at her, and she looked back, and neither of them had anything left. His eyes caught the shadowed corner of the cave — the pile of old weapons left behind by whoever had used this place before him. Bent swords. Cracked shields. A long spear with a sound haft. He dragged two shields out and a length of leather strap from a broken scabbard. He lashed the shields together end to end with the spear between them. A flat sled. A drag. He laid his cloak over the metal and lifted her onto it. She weighed almost nothing. He looped the strap across his chest and leaned forward. The shields scraped, caught, then slid. One step. Another. His knee buckled and held. Behind him she gripped the edges with both small hands and did not make a sound. They came out through the bloodied vines together, one dragging, one carried, the sun a finger above the trees. Krayzor set his jaw and started the long pull toward the meeting ground. He had promised to bring her back by sundown. He had not promised how.