Ryan Hughes - The Darkness Before the Dawn

"Ow!" he yowled. "Yes, it still hurts."

"Shush. Something might hear you." She held the foot in both hands and concentrated on it, and presently the pain began to ease, but the bleeding continued unabated. "That's strange," Kayan said. "There's something interfering with your blood's ability to clot. The cactus must have injected it with something. I wonder why it would do that?"

"Spite," Jedra said.

Kayan laughed. "It's a plant."

"So?"

She shook her head and bent back to her work. She had to work at it for a couple of minutes, but eventually the bleeding stopped and the pain lessened until it was more like a bee sting than a gaping wound. Jedra watched, fascinated, as the hole the thorn had ripped on its way out closed up, healing at hundreds of times the normal rate.

"That's good," he said at last. "Stop! You'll wear yourself out again."

"I hope not," she said. "I still have your other foot to do." She let his right one go and scooted around to do his left.

Jedra watched her stop the bleeding again, but this time he felt a wave of uneasiness pass over him. He looked away, but the sensation continued to grow. It wasn't nausea; this was more like alarm. Something was wrong. He couldn't imagine what it could be, though. The pain was going away just like in the other foot.

Even so, he couldn't shake the sensation of impending disaster. Maybe it didn't have anything to do with his foot. It felt a little like the feeling he sometimes got when someone was watching him, but out here in the desert? There wasn't anything for miles around.

Or was there? Jedra scanned the sandy horizon beyond Kayan, then twisted around to check behind him.

"Hold still," Kayan said.

There. Just around the edge of a wind-hollowed dune about thirty feet away, Jedra sensed a presence. "Something's out there," he said.

Kayan looked up. "What? Where?"

"Over-" But Jedra didn't need to point. The moment its cover was blown, a b'rohg leaped out from behind the dune and charged toward them, screaming a ululating war cry that sent shivers up their backs.

Jedra had seen b'rohgs before in the arena. They were four-armed humanoid giants, mutations or throwbacks to an earlier age. Not particularly bright, but vicious fighters. This one was about twice as tall as Jedra, heavily muscled, and fast. It carried a crude stone-tipped spear in its upper right hand, poised for throwing.

"Run!" Kayan screamed. She leaped up, pulling Jedra to his feet, and took off directly away from the b'rohg. Jedra followed her as soon as he got his balance, but he realized instantly that they would never outrun the creature. At least he wouldn't. Kayan hadn't had time to finish; his left foot still flared in agony with each step. They didn't have time to mindlink and fight the b'rohg psionically, either. And without weapons, they were as good as dead.

The b'rohg was even faster than he expected. Jedra had to put on a burst of speed to keep the creature aimed in the right direction, and even so it looked like he might not make it. He turned harder to the left, running directly across the b'rohg's path. If this didn't work, the b'rohg wouldn't even have to use its spear; it could just grab Jedra in its massive arms when they collided.

The distance between them closed to twenty feet, then ten. Jedra was about to turn and face the b'rohg in a last desperate stand when the creature shrieked in pain and whirled around as if something had grabbed it by the leg.

Something had. Jedra had led it right over the sand cactus.

The b'rohg tottered on one foot, flailing its arms for balance. Jedra knew it was strong enough to pull free once it regained its footing, and maybe even strong enough to keep chasing him. He couldn't lose his momentary advantage, so he did the one thing he could think of: He concentrated his psionic power and imagined pushing the creature over.

It hadn't done much good when he'd fought Sahalik, but now maybe it would be enough. Jedra shoved with all his might, and the b'rohg flailed its arms even more, then finally it shrieked in terror and fell over into the patch of cactus needles.

At least four more penetrated its skin, holding it fast to the ground, and as the giant humanoid screamed and thrashed around it impaled itself again and again until it could barely move.

Then the cactus began sucking it dry.

Kayan came back to stand beside Jedra, and they watched in horrified fascination as the b'rohg's burnt-orange skin turned pale and its flesh slowly shrank around its bones.

"It's carnivorous," Kayan whispered incredulously. "That's why your blood wouldn't clot. The cactus drinks blood, so it secretes something to keep it fluid."

The b'rohg shuddered once more, then lay still. The spear fell from its grasp and thumped to the sand.

Jedra shuddered, too. He was just as responsible for the creature's horrible death as the cactus was. The fact that it had attacked him didn't make him feel much better about it. He had used his psionic power to kill another intelligent being. Not a very intelligent one, to be sure, but smart enough to use a spear. The b'rohgs Jedra had seen in Urik had been able to understand a few spoken commands.

Why had it attacked them? he wondered. Probably for their water, given that the b'rohg didn't have a waterskin of its own. It didn't have much of anything, just a scaly reptile skin of some sort wrapped around its waist, and the spear.

Hmm. The spear.

"We should try to get that," Jedra said. Trying to ignore the desiccated corpse, he crab-walked toward the weapon, sweeping the sand in front of him with his robe as he went to detect any more thorns. When he reached the spear he grasped it by the haft just below the stone point and dragged it back out, careful to step in his same tracks.

The spear was nearly ten feet long, and three inches thick. The haft wasn't solid wood; it was a hollow tube honeycombed with holes. Jedra suspected it was the heartwood of one of the long, skinny kinds of cacti he'd seen farther back where vegetation had been more plentiful. Whatever it was, it was lightweight and strong. The heaviest part of it was the stone point that had been flaked to a sharp edge and bound to the haft with rawhide thongs. The whole thing had a weight and a balance to it that felt right. Though Jedra had no idea how to throw a spear, it felt good in his hand.

"Maybe we should put some distance between us and this place," Kayan said. "Something else might come to investigate the noise."

"Good idea," Jedra said. He wanted to leave anyway. He made a wide detour around the sand cactus and its captive, limping a bit on his not-quite-healed left foot, and led the way toward the west. He winced with each footstep, not just because of the pain, or because of the small but noticeable hole in each sandal, but because he expected to encounter another invisible patch of thorns at any moment.

Despite his fears, they made another mile without mishap, and when they had put a couple of large dunes between them and the hapless b'rohg, they stopped to rest again. Kayan finished healing Jedra's left foot, then they shared another of their honeycakes and washed it down with a drink of water. They had ten cakes left out of the twelve Galar had given them, but they were going through water fast; Jedra figured they only had enough for another day and a half at this rate. They needed refreshment now, though, to help recoup the strength they had lost to the sand cactus.

"Oh, I don't know," Kayan said with a grin. "As long as you walk in front, I don't mind healing you."

"Right." He knew she was joking, but something about her attitude still irked him. Then he remembered some advice an old veteran of the streets had once given him, and he laughed. "You were pretty quick to take the lead when the b'rohg attacked," he told Kayan.