Page 18 of Besotted
6
Kresten
The workweek endedtoo rapidly, and we didn’t reach our quotas, which was no surprise. Regardless, on our day of rest, we started the trek to Birchwood with bundles of wood piled high upon our backs.
An hour into the trip, Jorg halted suddenly.
With my head bent under the loads upon my back, I nearly bumped into him. “For the love of the saints, Jorg—”
“Basilisk.” His tone was low and urgent.
He didn’t have to say anything more. The one word was all the warning I needed.
I followed his attention, peering through the foliage to a blackened patch of earth that appeared as though it had been destroyed by a wayward campfire spark or lightning strike. A reptile-like creature stood at the center of the area on its thin legs, its head raised and its crest rounded and full.
No bigger than a hunting dog, the beast hissed, its long, forked tongue flicking out as though to warn us to stay away.
“Cover your mouth and nose.” Jorg ripped off a strip of his tunic.
Already sensing the dulling of my mind from the poison in the air, I slipped out my knife and slashed mine too. We worked rapidly to cover our mouths and noses, and at the same time, backed up.
The basilisks weren’t known for attacking outright. Instead, if the creatures felt threatened, their hissing expelled more venom. They waited for their victims to fall unconscious from their deadly vapors, then closed in and administered a lethal bite.
As we crept away, the basilisk darted toward a hole in a blackened stump. Only then did I see what it had been standing upon. A human body.
I held out a hand and stopped Jorg. “Wait. Someone’s there.”
A brawny man lay facedown in the leaves and windfall within the basilisk’s burned-out territory. Though I couldn’t see much of his body, I glimpsed an axe attached to his belt.
A fellow woodcutter?
“We need to get him.” I began to loosen the straps on my shoulders. “He might still be alive.”
“If he is, he won’t be for long.”
I lowered my bundles of wood to the ground. Then before I changed my mind, I darted forward.
“No!” Jorg’s fingers grasped at my tunic, but I wrenched away.
With my axe and knife both at the ready and my eyes on the basilisk burrow, I did nothing to conceal my approach. Speed was more important in this instance than stealth, and as I reached the body, I dropped to one knee and rolled him over.
Immediately, I recoiled. ’Twas the young woodcutter who’d guided us when we first arrived at Inglewood Forest. His blue, bloated face was hardly recognizable. The bruising and swelling continued down his neck to his torso and limbs. His fingers were so distended they were double their normal size.
“He’s dead.” Jorg spoke from beside me. “Now let’s go.”
I sheathed my weapons. “We cannot leave him here for the basilisk to feast upon.” Grabbing hold of the man’s arms, I tried to lift him, but a wave of dizziness hit me, and I wavered on my feet.
Jorg’s brow creased, his worried eyes trained upon the basilisk’s lair. But as I dragged the woodcutter backward several paces, he took hold of one arm, and I kept a grasp on the other. Together we stumbled to put as much distance between ourselves and the basilisk as possible.
With every passing second, my mind turned fuzzier and my vision blurred. Fatigue overwhelmed me, making me want to lie down and go to sleep. When I fell to my knees a moment later, Jorg shook his head curtly and motioned for me to keep going.
Only when we reached a point far beyond where we’d dropped our wood did we release the woodcutter. Jorg and I collapsed to the ground, tore off the coverings over our mouths and noses, and gasped in the clean air.
When our minds cleared and we regained our strength, we hastened to retrieve our wood and finished the hike into Birchwood. After delivering our paltry cuttings to Walter, we went back for the woodcutter, then brought him to town so Walter could inform his family of his death.
This week, even with Walter’s invitation to stay for a meal, I had no desire to linger. After purchasing a few supplies, we returned to our territory and attempted to hunt but to no avail. As the afternoon waned, Jorg suggested we use the remainder of daylight hours to provision ourselves with fish for the week. At the prospect of facing hunger in the week ahead, I acquiesced.
Initially, I didn’t want to go back to the ravine area. After two days since last seeing Rory, I was still too consumed with thoughts of her and had no wish to stir up my heartache by returning to the spot where I would only think of her more. But we needed to fish, and the river near the ravine never failed to give us what we needed without the threat of basilisks.
