21
The crash of battle sounded behind him as he limped broken into the foliage. Night and its' darkness had finally settled on the forest, leaving his surroundings as troublesome as the fighting he fled from. Screams from both the Brindled Men and Ghiscari intermittently sounded amongst the shrieking steel and roaring flames in the distance. As he searched for the path his captors took bringing him to their camp, the light from the spreading fires was the only shred of illumination guiding him with a faint orange glow that highlighted the shapes of the plants and rolling forest floor.
His throbbing face and burning muscles clouded his thoughts as he tried to decipher the pitch black labyrinth in front of him. Quick short strides carried him as quickly away from the camp without crashing and falling into invisible danger. The whish and snaps of thin grass beneath his feet reminded him of the edge of the forest he'd come from. He was getting closer, but the thick cloud of black around him grew darker and darker the further he scurried away from the flames.
If she had been following, Nahknani couldn't be far from the path they'd taken and would have surely heard the commotion, but how could he find her in the dead of night? Aegon crept further into the foliage and all light faded into nothing. Even the moon proved useless, as it too was shaded in total darkness.
His eyes became irrelevant as he stepped with his hands stretched out to feel and his ears attentive to the sounds of the forest. The air was calm, cool, with the distant sounds of the battle mostly drowned out by the low hum of insects. The whish of grass changed to the crunch of leaves and twigs. The briny air of the sea mixed with the earthy smell of shrubs, and the pitch black canopy sparkled with the flecks of luminescent bugs to dim to light the forest in front of him.
His foot soon found the crushed gravel the Brindled Men dragged him over on their march into camp. The path. His gait broadened as his short steps increased to a brisk jog, his muscles burning with every thump on the forest floor. It wasn't like Aegon to run from a fight, but with his face broken, his body battered, and his energy all but drained with no food or water since he'd been captured, his focus was less on his honor and pride and more on surviving the night.
Time in the dark allowed his eyes to adjust somewhat, and the outlines of the forest began to take shape. Dark leaves rustled in the wind and branches swayed in the clear night sky. Beads of dew reflected the ray or two of moonlight left from the mostly darkened sphere. The stars blinked at him, distant but still as clear as the dancing lightning bugs that fluttered above, but he still couldn't see his feet below him, or most of the terrain before him. Jogging, he felt the ground change a few times and had to readjust his course to stay on the beaten path, as he continued away from the Ghiscari attack and hopefully towards Nahknani.
As he ran, his head hurt too much to think, though he tried to plan his next move. His immediate order of business was to survive the attack and alert the remaining Brindled Men in danger of attack. Mainly, Nahknani and her tribe, or clan. But without Nahknani, his message would be similarly received by any of the tribes, and he was only clear on which section of land between branches of the Zamoyos were her father's, not where in that large section they settled and if they spoke Valyrian. He tried not to think about the hunger and thirst that made his already painful existence that much more miserable, but with every step, his stomach howled and his throat clacked begging for relief.
Mid stride, he heard a rustle in the foliage to his right and stopped. He crouched low to the ground and scanned the shapes to see what moved. It wasn't as big as what he saw his first day, but it wasn't a lemur or bird. The shrubs swayed though what moved them had kept going. He waited until his heart slowed and the throbbing pulse he felt in his face subsided, then continued his escape.
Each low branch that caught his cheeks as he ran passed sent a flash of pain through his head. Each sway from his shoulders burned through the tendons like wildfire. Each step re-opened a blister in his boot, but the voice in his head kept his legs moving, attacking the forest one step at a time. Though thoroughly set back, his mission remained. He needed to warn the Brindled Men of the impending attack from the slavers, but as his thoughts spun painfully in his swollen head, he began to question Ootrahk's and Nahknani's stories.
Nahknani's painted her uncle as the barbaric usurper hell bent on gaining power. Ootrahk's words made him to be the victim whose righteous fight was with the true enemy and not his kin. The truth, as it always is, had to be something more. But if Ootrahk lied, why would he free Aegon to warn Nahknani? And if Nahknani was complicit with her uncle's exile, why agree to seek him out to warn him?
His will to keep moving fought bravely against the exhaustion in his legs as he blindly bounded further and further away from the camp and into the dark. As hard as he fought, after an hour, he lost, and collapsed to the floor, his muscles cramped and his mouth as dry as desert sand. His battered body crumbled slowly enough to avoid rattling his brain even worse, but the ground met him with the stiff sharp edges of twigs and the hard, rough edges of gravel. Aegon had grown accustomed to overcoming pain. Pain was cutting the skin around the bites from the killer fish in the pool, or burning the wounds closed. Pain was the crushing bruise from the flat fish that engulfed his arm, or the hahkyeen bite through the cloak on the same bruise. Pain was powerful, but fleeting. One could overcome moments of agony with the thoughts of it soon subsiding.
As he laid in place, covered in coats of unnerving darkness with the calls of the shrouded forest ominously sounding around him, he felt something similar but less intense than pain. Every inch from the blisters on his burning feet; to the raw scrapes on the backs of his legs; to the bruises, cuts, and gouges that covered his skin from multiple run ins with wildlife; to the stabbing pain from his empty gurgling gut, to his swollen, throbbing face irked with an incessant discomfort that incrementally built into a maddening irritation. What incensed him, was the seemingly never ending hurt, unyielding mild soreness that stayed consistently bad enough to keep him from truly finding any solace in his rest. He laid in place feeling every inch of his body as his mind slipped into insane rage.
He rolled, adjusted, itched, and rubbed, but all the sensations from his body persisted despite any effort to control the feelings. An illogical anger took over him as he shuffled blindly in the dark suffering. He felt a guttural roar building inside as the nagging pains continued to add to his misery. He knew if he screamed out, the consequences could be dire, but he couldn't control the urge inside him to release. The subtle but constant physical pain exacerbated the stress he'd been able to suppress since the wreck, and he felt his mouth open as if to yell out.
His face stretched and his throat sounded, letting out an intense and voluminous shriek of emotion and agony. He held it, screaming until his dry mouth had no air left to release. For an instant, he felt better, calmer. A heartbeat later he heard a thin twig snap.
His mind perked to the noise but his body couldn't respond. He rolled from his side to his back and tried to crunch into a sitting position, but his core failed him. He reached like a cripple for his knees to pull himself up, but the strain was too much and he fell, smacking his head on the ground.
A flash of white and pain shot through his skull on impact, and for a second he forgot the noise he'd heard. Then he heard it again. No more time to mope. He rolled to his stomach and pushed himself up to a crouch. His face grimaced seething in pain.
Snap. SNAP. A shadow bounded toward him. He braced, curling into himself just before an attacker's claws dug into the shield he'd formed with his arms, landing on his chest with a pounce, Aegon's head, again crashing to the floor with a flash.
Still conscious, somehow, he felt the attacker bearing down on him. His arms lifted themselves to catch its neck as its jaws crunched down at his face, drool flicking onto his face as the teeth snapped inches away. He could make out the broken tooth and felt the slice in the leader hahkyeen face as they struggled, Aegon for his life, the leader hahkeen for revenge.
Aegon coiled his legs, kicking with both to the leader's body. A yelp sounded.
Another from a distance.
In the pitch black, he felt the leader leap away as Aegon's legs pushed him off. He lost his shadow, hearing the attacker shuffle for another attempt. The kick left Aegon nothing left. Reaching for the ground, he felt for a rock he could use as a weapon, but in the rush of the fight, all he felt was grass.
The leader huffed, and leapt. Aegon heard it and tried to catch him again, but his arms had no strength left and the attackers teeth grazed his shoulder as a warm spill flowed over his skin, dripping down his arm. His jaws opened and closed again on him, but shock kept Aegon numb. His shoulder felt cool and the nagging discomfort all but faded. He pushed against the leader's face with the rest of the strength he could muster, only for the hahkyeen to snap at his left hand, crunching into a finger on his left hand. Which one, he couldn't tell from the pain, but he heard the bone crunch between the attacker's jaws.
Snap. SNAP. Another form burst through the brush, colliding with the leader and Aegon with an audible crash that sounded like a barrel bursting. Two simultaneous yelps followed as growls and snaps circled his limp body as the two bodies around him wrestled and bit at each other. They barked and yelped in between savage sounds of impact and slashing flesh. A spurt of blood sprayed on Aegon as he lay, seemingly near death as he felt the burning from the bites he'd just taken and his body slowly cooling.
"Yeeeeeee Yeee Yeee!" Aegon heard the voice from above him, screeching through the night. He saw the glare of steel fleck in the dim light of light bugs as Nahknani slashed down into the leader with Lem pinned under him, still bravely snapping back at his former abuser. Aegon couldn't see it, but he pictured it, as he heard the blade sliding in and out of the leader, the leader's yelps soften, and Lem's snaps and growls sound more triumphant.
They came back for me.
He stopped straining to see and relaxed, laying back. He felt Nahknani's footsteps as she ran over to him.
He looked up to where he knew she was, though he could barely see her. "Where've you been?" He smiled as much as his swollen face could spread and slipped out of consciousness.