Brian McClellan - The Face in the Window

“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.

“No fire,” Taniel said, dropping his kit. He felt his eyelids droop. He needed to rest, or take more powder. “Can’t risk them seeing the smoke.” He got to his feet, only for the girl to push him to the ground with one strong shove of her palm. “Ow.” Pit, the girl was strong.

Twenty minutes later she had a fire going and was feeding it dry twigs. She rummaged around in his kit without asking and came away with his small cookpot.

Taniel was too weak to raise a word of protest.

She put a pot of water over the fire and headed off into the swamp, giving him a hand-signal to stay. He chuckled at that. “I’m not going anywhere, girl.”

She was back sometime later, sporting a cut piece of vine about as thick as her wrist. She lay it on the ground and sliced it open lengthwise with her machete, expertly plying the white, soft pulp from the center.

Taniel watched her work. This vine was some kind of local medicine, perhaps?

Natives always know the land better , his father’s voice came to him. They can find fresh water in the desert, and they know which animals are poisonous. They have herbal remedies you’ve never heard of.

Careful, though. They can also kill you while making it look like they were trying to help.

Well, this girl had already had her chance to let him die, and he wouldn’t get out of this Kresimir-damned swamp without her.

Taniel cleaned the wound with the boiled water, then cut away charred and torn flesh with his knife, taking a hit of powder to help with the pain. The girl packed his wound with the innards of the vine, then used the skin of it like a bandage, wrapping it around his chest and tying it on the other side.

He sat back, watching her as she went to throw rocks at a swamp dragon creeping up their piece of dry land. A numbness spread through his side, and Taniel clutched his pistol to his chest. He needed to stay awake.

No telling how many Kez were patrolling this swamp, or if the Kez Privileged was out here, scouring the basin for him herself.

Taniel woke some hours later. By the sun shining through the cypress overhead, he guessed it was past four o’clock.

The pain in his side was gone, the numbness having spread to leave his left arm only passably useful. The narcotic the girl had packed into his wound was a strong one.

The girl herself was nowhere to be seen, and the swamp was uncharacteristically quiet. He pushed himself to his feet, finding his pistol already in his hand. He checked to be sure it was loaded, the barrel clear and the charge dry.

A small hit of powder set his mind ablaze and his blood pumping, but he could still feel sluggishness in his limbs.

A strong narcotic indeed.

He knew he should preserve his powder, but the trance would give him strength and help him think, and the allure of the heightened senses that came along with it was too strong to ignore.

A noise brought Taniel’s head around. Up in one of the trees, above where he’d been sleeping, the savage girl perched on a branch like an owl, with her machete sheathed. She held a reed in one hand about as thick as the charcoal Taniel used to draw in his sketchbook and was slowly tapping it against the tree trunk, head cocked as if listening to something.

She pointed at him, then gestured at the ashes of the fire.

Taniel snatched his pot and stowed it with his kit, then kicked the ashes into the water.

The girl shimmied down the weathered grey trunk of the cypress, landing lightly on bare feet. She held up four fingers and pointed toward the south, then scurried off the high ground. Taniel didn’t have a chance to respond before she disappeared beneath the water. Nothing remained but a few ripples and the long, trembling hollow reed that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

The distant splashing of someone approaching through the swamp caught Taniel’s ear. He moved to the far side of the cypress once he’d pinpointed their location, then crouched and waited.

They were coming right toward him. He tapped out a line of black powder on the back of his hand, snorting it to bring his powder trance to a vibrant hum, then leaned back around the tree.

There were four of them. Three Kez soldiers, spread in a triangular formation with one of them on point picking his way carefully through the water. A fourth man trailed along behind the trio, his hands bound and linked by a rope to one of the soldier’s belts.

The prisoner was a savage. Taller than the girl by far, with a wiry build and thin bony shoulders, Taniel guessed him to be about twenty-five years old. He had short, pale-red hair cut above his ears and the same ashen, freckled skin as the savage girl.

The trio of soldiers traveled in silence, their concentration focused on watching for swamp dragons and snakes. Their bayoneted muskets were held at the ready.

Taniel waited for them to come, from his hiding place behind the big cypress. He had his pistol and nothing else. Should he let them pass, staying hidden like the girl? Or should he try to capture them, and save the savage? He could ignite the powder in their muskets with a thought, killing or wounding all three at once, but he wasn’t particularly skilled at directing blasts, and that risked hurting their prisoner.

If it came to a fight, the three were better-armed. They might be able to best him.

Taniel pressed his back to the cypress and slowly moved around the trunk, keeping it between himself and the three soldiers.

The splashing suddenly stopped.

“Someone has been here.” one of them said in Kez. “Are those ashes?”

The splashing drew close to the hummock. “There was a fire. See this bootprint? Someone’s been here recently. One of those damn rebels.” He switched to Adran. “You, savage. Who else would be coming through here today?” A pause, then, “You hear me, boy? I know you understand.”

There was the dull smack of a musket butt striking flesh, and someone grunted but did not cry out.

“Are they warm?” one of the soldiers asked in Kez.

Taniel heard one of the soldiers climb onto the hummock, mud squelching beneath his boots. Taniel’s breath came fast and short, and the man suddenly stepped into view. Slowly, so as not to attract attention, Taniel leveled his pistol.

The soldier bent over the remains of Taniel’s fire; stuck his finger in them. “A little warm. They were here just a few hours ago. I…”

His head twisted and his eyes grew wide at the sight of Taniel.

“Set it down,” Taniel said in Kez.

The soldier dropped his musket.

“Who’s there?” one of the others demanded.

“A rebel,” the Kez said. “He has a pistol on me.”

“Put down your muskets!” Taniel shouted.

The soldier licked his lips and met Taniel’s eyes. “There’s just one!” he yelled as he dove to the side. Taniel tracked his movement, watched him snatch up his musket and turn to aim.