Page 59 of Storms & Sacrifice
“Very...clever,” he tells me as we take the long way around another steep hill.
“Not that clever,” I grumble. “There’s a good chance either my back or your arm is coveredin jizz.”
He laughs kind of goofily at that. Which is concerning. Then he laughs again.
“My puppy…barked at…the other puppies,” he giggles.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” This would be cute if I wasn’t worried about the poison. “Does this stuff usually make people act weird?”
“I think that...may be the...lack of...oxygen,” he finishes wheezing out.
“Oh gods.” I try to moveus faster.
“You should have...listened to...me earlier.” Sir decidesnowis the appropriate time for a lecture. “Why must you...always put...yourself in...danger?”
“Excuse me,Iput myself in danger? Mister ‘leave-me-here-to-fight-three-angry-wolves-while-I-am-barely-able-to-breathe’? Are you fucking kidding me?” I spit out with a lot more venom thanI intend.
Khazak stops moving, forcing me to stop as well. A pair of green fingers carefully pulls away part of the blanket so that he can look at me. “You are...angry...with me.”
“You tried to order me to leave you for dead!”Ofcourse,I’m angry!
“I only...wanted to...protect you.” He looks confused at myoutburst.
“I wasn’t the one who needed protecting!” I kind of want to drop him now.
“I... I am...sorry…” The sad way he looks at me is the only reason I don’t.
“We can talk more when we’re back at camp.” When I know he can breathe again.
We walk the rest of the way in silence. It takes at least forty minutes, and it’s almost completely dark by the time we reach the campsite. Before we even cross the threshold, the officers and Druid Darkwolf appear. We barely have a chance to warn them not to touch Khazak.
Once we are both cleaned off and healed up, the two of us sit around the campfire to rest, the two of us forgoing any further patrolling tonight. The other rangers are still off on theirs, and Druid Darkwolf took off to take care of the flowers and the dead wolves. She seemed just as surprised as Wu’dag was a month ago when we found the other patch.
“I only wanted to keep you safe.” Khazak is the one to break the silence.
“Again, I wasn’t the one who needed to be kept safe.” I turn to look him in the eye. “We both know you didn’t stand a chance. You act like I was supposed to be fine leaving you there to die.”
“We got lucky tonight, David. You could not have known it would go the way it did.” He looks at me, almost pleading. “Things could have just as easily ended withneitherof us making it back heretonight.”
“I’d rather die trying to protect someone than spend the rest of my life wondering whether or not I could have saved them.” These are the kind of morbid thoughts you have late at night when you’re preparing for your future as a knight, folks. “I get that you’re looking out for me, and that I’m supposed to listen to you, but there isn’t a single thing I would have done differently tonight. And I wish I could promise you that it won’t happen again, but we both know that wouldbe a lie.”
“I suppose it would be.” He looks down for a moment, smiling, before looking back up at me. “As happy as I am that we are both here tonight, I also cannot say I would have done anything differently.”
“So... does that mean we call it even and skip the punishment?” I give my best cheesy grin, eager to dropthe topic.
Khazak rolls his eyes, but before he can respond, Darkwolf re-entersthe camp.
“Found the wolves and took care of them and the flowers.” She’s got no basket with her, so I assume she just destroyed them. “Wolves like that should not be anywhere near this area this time of year, especially not to look for food. Something in the north must have disrupted their normal hunting grounds. You said there were threeof them?”
“Yeah, three.” I nod my head, and then remember my dream from last night again.Three black wolves.Was it some sort of warning?
“That is very strange,” Khazak agrees with the druid. “Perhaps we should reach out to our contacts in Pákannon and—”
Khazak is cut off by the sounds of a loud explosion, powerful enough to shake the ground beneath us. Then there’s another. And another.They’re all coming from the direction of the city. As more explosions go off, I see pillars of smoke billowing into the sky, the clouds lit dimly by the fires burning below them.
Oh no.
Chapter 12
