From Across the Clouded Range by H. Nathan Wilcox
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Dasen woke to the sensation of the morning sun glinting through the trees and into his eyes. Despite being just a few sparse inches above the horizon, it had heated his blanket with surprising thoroughness, and he was wet with sweat. He threw off the ratty covering, sat up, and stretched the sleep from his muscles. They protested loudly but not as profoundly as the previous morning. His injured knee was the only thing that appeared to have gotten worse. It was stiff, aching, and swollen tight in his pants. It fought his effort to stand, and he worried that there might be permanent damage. He tried to work some of the stiffness from the joint before remembering the higg bark he still carried. He pulled the bark from the pocket of his pants and retrieved the short knife from the ground near the fire. A long drink from the bladder a minute later washed some of the bitterness away.
He added a few sticks to the coals of the fire and blew to get them smoldering. He congratulated himself for thinking to add the logs when he woke in the night. The thin sticks soon ignited, and he added a few stouter ones from his diminishing pile. Seeing that the fire had recovered, he hobbled toward the shelter. He hoped that Tethina was feeling stronger, maybe even well enough to start their journey. Feeling his own aches, he wondered again how they would cross the river. He did not feel like he was in any shape to swim across that torrent, especially if he had to support Tethina the entire way. But maybe there would be food and real beds in the logging camp, maybe some loggers who had not been in the village, maybe horses or a wagon to carry them on their journey. It all sounded so tantalizing: wagon, a soft bed, real food.
The thoughts of their journey so entrapped him that Dasen did not notice the dark shape moving through the trees. It circled the clearing through the shadows, watching him wander about unaware. It just watched, as it had for a long time, waiting for the perfect moment to make its presence known, the moment its victim was feeling most secure but least able to grasp the unbelievable. Only after dreams had been washed away and the day’s plans were being formulated, only when the mind was entrenched in reason did it step from the clearing and make its unreasonable presence known.
The movement of something black caught the corner of Dasen’s eye as the thing stepped from the trees. He looked back expecting nothing and almost collapsed at the sight before him. He rubbed his eyes to be sure that he was not still asleep, but the image did not fade or turn into something believable. It smiled at his confusion.
Dasen's first thought was that the thing was some kind of small bear because its entire body was covered with oily black fur, but the creature had the build, clothing, and weapons of a man. It wore knee-high leather pants and a simple vest covered with brown designs. In its furry, yet otherwise human, hands, it carried a cruel curved sword with a serrated blade and a long meat hook with three barbed prongs. The creature’s bare feet ended in long toes with thick talons like those of an eagle. But most frightful of all was its face. Its eyes were black beads that were only visible through the night-black fur because they caught the morning sun and reflected it off of their glassy surfaces. It did not have a nose or ears that Dasen could see but made up for those inadequacies with a gapping mouth that looked like the thing’s round head had been torn in half and hinged at the back. Framing that mouth, thin black lips stretched into an impossibly broad smile, revealing rows of pin-like teeth.
Dasen had no idea what this creature could be. Nothing this horrible could exist in nature without having made it into one of his books. It was too terrible even to have come from a legend. He shook his head, trying to convince himself that he must still be sleeping, but if so, it was a resilient and very realistic dream.
His stupefaction seemed to entertain the creature. It gave a hissing laugh as it circled the clearing with a swinging gait that reminded Dasen of a snake slithering through the grass. It closed until it came to a stop three paces from him, standing between him and the slowly building fire. It studied him with its glistening black eyes, its face expressionless as if it were pondering a serious problem.
"I am glad that I have found you, my pet,” the creature said. It spoke! It is intelligent! This is not an animal! Dasen was aghast. The creature’s voice was a harsh rasp that was slurred by the incredible size of its mouth. “My name is Nathu’lanau of the Curava Deilei Tuhar’za.” The thing bowed low after its introduction but never took its eyes from Dasen’s. After that, it waited, but Dasen could not tell for what.
“Are you not going to introduce yourself?” It waited again, but Dasen was paralyzed. “No? How rude. Lucky then that I already know who you are. My master said there will be a great reward for whoever finds you, and I have always liked rewards.” The creature made a mocking strike with its barbed hooks. Dasen jumped back reflexively, drawing a cackle from the creature that made his skin crawl.
"Do not worry, my pet, I won’t take you to him right away. What fun would that be for me?” The thing laughed again then seemed to ponder something. “I think I can spare a few days. Perhaps you were difficult to find. Perhaps you ran. I’m sure my master will not notice a few days, enough time for you to have screamed yourself out of a voice.” The creature’s voice became harsh and slurred. “I know ways to make you feel things you did not even imagine possible. When I am done, you will beg me to kill you, but that decision will be up to my master.” The voice returned to innocent, and the thing shrugged. “Life cannot be all fun and games."
The creature laughed again, and between shudders, Dasen realized that there was something strange about its words. They were not spoken in any language he had ever heard, but he could understand them perfectly. It was as if the language had been born inside him but never used. He could not hope to explain. In all his reading, he had never even conceived of such a thing, and it made the creature all the more inexplicable.
Taken together, Dasen wanted nothing more than to run, to run in any direction as fast as he could, to just get away from this . . . thing, but he was frozen, unable to think, unable to move, unable to look away from the beady black eyes. He did not know what he would do even if he could act. His only weapon was a tiny knife not much bigger than his thumb while his opponent looked strong, fast, and sure with its grisly weapons. He recovered enough of his senses to hold out his knife defensively. The gesture earned a snicker from the creature.
A motion that looked like sniffing interrupted the laugh, though the creature had no nose that Dasen could see. "I thought that I sensed another,” it chortled after a few false sniffs. “I would guess that she is beautiful. I can feel it about her. What a nice treat she will be. Perhaps she will be my reward. She could become my toy, to do with as I please.” Dasen's fear grew as he remembered Tethina. He felt sick at the prospect of this thing getting to her as well.
“Do you know the best part, my pet?" The thing moved a step closer to him and smiled, creating a huge crack in its face that seemed to wrap around the whole of its head. Silver teeth glinted ominously from that smile. "The best part is that you will watch, unable to help her. My master will take you away, and you will know that you have left her to suffer on at my leisure for as long as I find her interesting."
The creature left Dasen with that thought as it drew its weapons out in front of it and sauntered toward him. Dasen circled away, searching for an escape, praying for anything that would get him away from those teeth, those eyes, and that coarse black fur. All of his life, he had been told that no creation of nature could be truly evil. Animals, plants, the weather were simply part of a divine order. Their actions were controlled by that order in patterns too complex for humans to understand, but those actions were neither good nor evil, they simply were. Humans, it was taught, were different from those agents of the Order because of freewill. Freewill allowed humans to perform acts that were outside the Order’s divine plan, but doing so only brought about discord and misery. That is why humans required laws and study,
Those devastating thoughts were expelled from Dasen’s mind by a serrated sword racing toward his gut. The creature brought the swing up short, but Dasen still barely avoided the glistening blade that sought to tear him open. The blow had not been meant to hit him, he realized. The creature had said that its master – who or whatever that was – wanted him alive. It can’t kill me. It wants to frighten me, to torture me. The thought did not provide Dasen with the slightest comfort.
The creature swung again, striking lower toward his thighs. Dasen threw himself back but did not expect the hooks that followed. They grazed across his chest leaving two ragged tears that nearly doubled him over in pain. He screamed. His hand went to the shallow gashes and came away red with blood. The pain, the sight of the blood almost finished him. This is real, he told himself. This thing is really trying to hurt me. He felt lightheaded. His knees wobbled.
"First blood, little one.” The creature pulled Dasen from his shock. It smiled, seemed to find pleasure from his pain. “How do my hooks feel?" It paused as if expecting an answer then laughed when nothing came. "Do not worry. They will hurt even more when they are buried deep in your flesh. They will draw out quite a bit of that beautiful red blood that you are so concerned about." The thing was so amused by its taunts that it threw its head back, overcome with laughter.
He was not sure how he mustered the courage, but Dasen did exactly what his every sense told him not to. He ran straight at the creature, wrapped his arms around it, and drove his shoulder into its chest. Stunned by the ferocity of the attack, the creature did nothing to avoid it. Dasen hit it with all the force he could muster and upended them both.
They landed hard. A loud hiss and the acrid smell of burning hair rose a second later punctuated by a scream from the creature. They had, by purest luck, landed on Dasen’s fire. Taking advantage, Dasen drove the thing down onto the coals and maneuvered to sink his knife into its chest.
Victory was within his reach. Dasen brought the small knife around.
A terrible, ripping pain flooded him. The creature dragged its hooks across his back. Dasen screamed and reeled back as his skin was torn apart. Then, as his weight came up, the creature opened its gaping maw and bit into his arm with all of its might. It took his entire forearm into its mouth and gnashed its teeth until blood ran down its face.
Dasen’s scream built to a howl. Crippled by the most intense pain he had ever experienced, he rolled off the creature, hoping only to escape the unbearable agony. The creature loosened its jaw, pulled the hooks out of his back, and pushed him to the side where he lay on his back writhing, unable to do anything but roll on the ground clutching his mangled limb. His entire arm felt like it was on fire. It pulsed with the most excruciating, all-encompassing pain he had ever known. Blood ran down his arm, over his hand, splattered onto his face and chest, but he did not notice the life flowing from his ravaged veins. He could not care about anything beyond the torment that raged through every nerve in his arm and then through the remainder of the body until he was convulsing in anguish.
Lying on the ground with his teeth clenched so hard he could not even scream, Dasen barely heard the creature beside him. "You put up more of a fight than I had suspected.” It spit the words, sending Dasen’s own blood flying from its mouth to his face. “I admire that. I admire it so much that I am going to extend our time together for another day."
The creature pinned Dasen beneath its knees and bent over him so that its blood-soaked face was inches from his own. "Do you enjoy my poison, boy? Don't worry. It won't kill you. It just allows you to enjoy your pain all the more. I think that you will soon learn to appreciate it."
The creature lifted his head and opened his huge mouth until it appeared that the back of his head would touch its neck. The mouth raced toward Dasen. He did nothing to stop it. He was too overwhelmed to even close his eyes.