Lovu

  “I can’t keep going,” Lovu muttered, leaning against the wall of the tunnel underneath Kamvor. He had pushed his body well past what he thought was possible, but it was finally catching up to him.

  “Just a bit further,” Topal said, urging him on. “Once we’re safely out, I can carry you for a bit, but I need my hands free right now.”

  Groaning with effort, he stopped talking entirely as he focused on moving. That meditative state had become upsettingly easy to fall into since meeting her. Luckily, only a few minutes later, they emerged into the cool night air.

  “Took ya long enough,” their drunken guide from earlier that night said. “Was startin’ to think I wasn’t gonna get paid.”

  “No worries,” she said, tossing him a handful of coins. “Now, which way is the shortest path to the wildlands?”

  “Hmm…” he said, looking up at the sky before pointing off into the distance. “Probably that way.”

  “Sounds good,” Topal said, starting to walk off in that direction, dragging Lovu with her. Before they made it too far, she turned back. “By the way, I’d recommend you lay low for a while. Once they start putting the pieces together, it won’t be that hard for them to trace it back to you.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, waving her off as he staggered back toward town. “If you ever wanna toss more money my way, feel free to.”

  Instead of continuing to move, her eyes watched him go until he was out of sight. It wasn’t until Lovu tugged on her sleeve that she finally broke her stare.

  “Shouldn’t we keep going?” he asked, glancing back over his shoulder. “They can’t be too far behind us.”

  “You’re right,” she said, starting to move, but her face sprouted a mischievous grin. “But I think we’ll be fine for now. It’ll take them some time to figure out what happened.”

  “And what exactly did happen?” he asked, recalling the explosion from inside the tunnel.

  “I brought a hayta down on their asses,” she said, but his subsequent silence made it clear that didn’t answer his question. “It’s a vit attracted to viwa flour that hates fire. If you light a torch in a closed space with a lot of flour in the air, it’ll try to get out of the room and destroy everything in the process.”

  “Oh wow,” Lovu said, terrified by the prospect of witnessing a vit like that running wild.

  “Plus, I closed the secret door on my way out. It may have been damaged enough for them to find once they put out the fires, but worst-case scenario, it should buy us half an hour at least.”

  “Good,” he said as his legs gave out from underneath him and he collapsed forward onto his face. “I am sorry, but I can’t keep going.”

  “No apology needed,” she said, scooping him up onto her back and trudging forward. “You’ve been through enough to justify it this time. Plus, this whole thing was my fault.”

  “What are you talking about?” he balked. “If anything, you saved me. I know you insist I not thank you, but this is-”

  “Nope, stop that. It’s my job to get you to safety and I delivered you straight into the hands of the people who wanted your head. I knew something was off, but I let you go in anyway.”

  “That is just as much my fault as yours. You told me your concerns, but I talked you into ignoring them.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t know any better and it’s my job to know better for you. I should have waited until I had everything in front of me before making a move. Won’t happen again.”

  “Maybe you are right… but thank you anyway,” he said, the resolve in her voice gripping at his heart. “Thank you for not l-leaving m-m-me…”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  The weight of everything that had happened, no longer held back by urgency, crushed him from every direction. Pressing his face into her back, he sobbed dry tears, his eyes already tapped out of moisture. No matter how pathetic, he clung to the warmth of her back and bawled like a baby as they marched out into the wildlands yet again.

  *** *** ***

  The next morning, Lovu awoke from a new wretched dream haunted by the foma. The sight of Sirs Itkilmo and Wangom dying faded away, replaced completely by Tama hitting the ground. The sound of her face crunching inward played on a constant loop as he watched the decapitated head slam into her over and over again.

  No matter how unpleasant it was, he at least felt relief knowing that he was frozen in that moment instead of any other. But just as his mind registered that, the head stopped falling. The crunch kept ringing in his ears, but he was staring down at Tama’s limp body, her face a bloody mess. He approached, wanting to heal her wounds despite everything that had happened. Before he could say anything, her hand lashed out and caught him by the ankle.

  “Ip it ishn’t my prished pig,” she sputtered, blood splattering across his feet. No matter how much he wanted to pull away, her iron grip wouldn’t let him as she climbed up his body. Clinging to him like he was her only lifeline, she hoisted herself all the way to face level. He tried to scream, but no sound left his mouth. Opening her own, as if mocking him, she leaned in until everything in sight was shattered bone and bloody flesh. As it closed around him, plunging him into darkness, he felt the grass in his fingers.

  “AGH,” he yelled as he opened his eyes for real and scrambled away from the person beside him. It took him a good few seconds to remember where he was and how he had ended up there. As he looked up at Topal, he felt immediate relief and regret over his reaction to her help. “G-good morning.”

  “Is it?” she scoffed with a sad smile.

  They were in the wildlands a few hours outside of Kamvor, camping by a stream. Despite only stopping around midnight, she had woken him up before the sun was even above the horizon. They got just far enough away to buy a few hours rest, but they were far from safe.

  Instead of dull fatigue, he was covered in screaming bruises. Pulling up his shirt, he found that his stomach and chest were a mottled mix of purple and black splotches. His arms and legs weren’t much better and his face was the worst of all. Without looking at his reflection in the water, he could feel his puffy lips and his eyes nearly swollen shut. After poking at them a few times, he realized he didn’t necessarily want to see how he looked.

  So, he rose to his feet instead. The only thing left to do was keep moving. However, Topal was still sitting. “Shouldn’t we get moving?”

  “We probably should,” she answered without moving. “The only questions is ‘where’?”

  And then it set in. His sole goal was reuniting with Akil, but the meeting place they agreed on was compromised. As Akil’s parting words rang in his ears, he felt a new wave of anxiety well up.

  There’s no way he would have just not gone home after promising me that. Did something happen to him?

  There was no way to know, but as he said a prayer for Akil’s wellbeing, he recalled what the Honor said the night before about sending… about trying to reach Akil.

  “I- I don’t know how much to trust this, but last night, one of Tama’s guards mentioned that Akil is in Ngopeman. They wanted to use me as bait to lure him back to Kamvor.”

  “Ngopeman?” Topal said, bowing her head in thought. “A month away, but doable. We’ll have to cross over the Yai, so we won’t be able to stick to the wildlands completely.”

  Nodding in acceptance, she stood to join him.

  “We’ll start that way now and collect information once we’re closer. The fucks back in Kamvor clearly have a pretty good grip on information coming in and out of it the area around here, so anything we hear nearby will be suspect. We’ll keep out of cities as much as possible until we’ve put some ground down between us.”

  Without an ounce of hesitation, she started marching forward, but this time, Lovu couldn’t bring himself to follow.

  “Wait,” he said, stopping her in her tracks. He tugged at the sleeves of his cloak as he stared down at the ground between them. “I am sorry to say it, but… I do not know if I will be able to hold up my end of the bargain.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean… if the Vor estate has been compromised, I do not know how much power my family still holds. As much as I want to compensate you for everything you’ve done, I have no clue whether or not I can. It would not be fair to you to continue as we have when I cannot guarantee your payment, and I am sorry that I only realized after you have already done so much for me. If… if you wish to leave me to my own devices, I will understand.”

  Her cold, calculating eyes took a moment to process what he was saying before she came over and grabbed his arm. Metal pressed into his palm as he opened it to find his mother’s ring.

  “You’ll be good for it,” she said, before pulling out a small pouch. “At least, for everything from here on out. Those idiots thought I was turning you in for the bounty and paid it out in full after we split up. Consider your tab closed for now, but I’m not the kind of person to leave a job half finished. Whatever you can muster up once this is all over will be fine by me.”

  Staring at the worth of his life in her hands, the fear of being left alone flushed out of his body as an involuntary chuckle. “I never thought I’d be relieved to hear someone brag about stealing on my behalf, but… fuck them.”

  “Yeah,” Topal said. Her smile, hidden by the scarf, reached all the way up to her eyes. “Fuck ‘em.”