Night of the Rithin

I woke up to the sight of a purda perched on my chest. I shouted something inarticulate and the lizard scampered away to a nearby rock. It turned and gave me what might have been a nasty look. I sat up and rubbed at my eyes, trying to clear away the fog that was more in my head than my eyes. I glanced over at the purda and felt a little guilty. They were harmless, curious creatures. Many families kept them as pets. In my defense, they looked fearsome with their oversized jaws and strange, lizard beards. This one was nearly a foot long. Still, I probably frightened it even more than it had frightened me. 

“Sorry,” I muttered to the lizard. 

I looked around and tried to remember where I was. There was nothing around me but forest. That didn’t make any sense. The last thing I remembered was being at that dingy pub with Elsamere and Hannock. We’d met Dradin to sell that absurd painting he’d wanted so badly. We got paid. I remembered that much. Then, there was only a blank patch of nothing in my memory. I looked around again and a sick feeling settled in my stomach.  

“They didn’t,” I whispered, not wanting to accept the truth.

I lurched to my feet and took a few stumbling steps. Then, I stopped. Where was I going? I had no idea where the road was or even what direction to go to find the nearest civilization. The purda hopped off the rock and raced along the ground. It stopped next to my foot and looked up at me. I think it thought we were playing a game. Except, it wasn’t a game. Elsamere and Hannock had left me to die. The Great Alkeon Forest stretched for hundreds of miles between cities in this part of the world. The traffic along the Trade Roads had pushed back the most dangerous animals, but only just. I looked down at my belt and felt a surge of anger. They’d taken everything. My purse, the pouches that held so many useful little items, they were all gone. All they’d left me was my short sword. It was an adequate defense in the cities, but not out in the wilds. 

I realized with a sudden shiver of fear that I’d come to rely on the safety Elsamere’s magic provided when we found ourselves forced to camp. Of course, I’d also relied on my tent, and the small shovel, and my flint, and all the other things I kept safely stored in my saddlebags. All of that was gone now too. Without her magic or those more basic tools, I was doomed. I stared down at the short sword that hung placidly at my hip. It felt like a cruel joke meant to prolong my demise. My heart pounded in my chest as panic overwhelmed me. I might have done something foolish if a familiar voice hadn’t risen from my memories. 

“Shelter first. You can live without food for a long time. You can even live without water for a few days. It’ll be miserable, but you can do it. Without shelter, the elements will kill you if an animal doesn’t. So, always start by building a shelter.”

It was my father’s voice. The calm, assured voice of a man who spent his life on the frontier with nothing but knowledge and skill to protect him. My panic eased away a little as that old advice surfaced. It was a dim hope to cling to, but I clung to it with desperate fervor. I rubbed my face with my hands and took a deep breath. I looked down and the purda was still there. Its head cocked first one way, and then the other. 

“Looks like it’s just you and me. Want to help me build some shelter?”

The lizard kept looking up at me, as though waiting for me to get started. I smiled at it. 

“If you’re sticking around, I should probably give you a name. How’s Satchin sound to you?”

The purda cocked its head back and forth a few more times. 

“You really need to work on those conversational skills, Satchin,” I said. 

I glanced upward to gauge the time. It was early afternoon. Assuming I could find what I needed, I could build a decent shelter before it got dark. I’d need a decent one because I’d be stuck out in that damned forest for a few days to gather supplies. I set off in a circular pattern working outward. I’d want to be able to find the spot I’d woken up again to look for signs of passage. Alsamere and Hannock had brought me out into this forest. Maybe I could use their tracks to find my way back to the road. It took nearly half an hour to find a clearing that was flat and relatively clear of deadfalls and undergrowth. The canopy overhead looked thick enough to at least partially shield the spot from rain. It would have to do. I picked a direction and started walking in a straight line. I needed to find the right kind of branches. Something long, preferably with a fork on one end. I’d settle for something I could make into fork if it came down to it. After nearly two hours of ceaseless walking, I’d managed to gather what I hoped were enough sticks. 

I thought back and tried to remember my father showing me how to build one of these shelters. I needed to lock a few of the forked ends together to form a stable frame. It sounded easy but turned into a frustrating exercise. After the fifth time that two of the long sticks fell before I could place the third, I grabbed one of the sticks and threw it out into the forest. I sank to my knees. 

“I’m so hungry,” I said to the unfeeling trees around me.

Satchin scrambled up onto the loose pile of wood that was meant to fill out the exterior of the shelter. The lizard regarded me with its alien eyes. I felt a moment of petty envy. The lizard had feasted on random insects that I’d frightened into the open while gathering my wood. The envy faded after a moment or two. I wouldn’t have wanted to eat those things anyway.

“At least you won’t starve,” I said. 

I made myself get up and trudge out into the forest to retrieve the stick I’d thrown. As I bent down to grab it, I saw the most glorious thing in the world. There was a small patch of beron melons hiding beneath a dense growth of ferns. My father’s voice rose in my mind again.

“Beron melons are safe to eat. Not much flavor, but they’ll keep you from starving. Help keep thirst at bay, as well.”

I grabbed one of the melons and jerked it free from its vine. I came up short, staring at the vine. I’d found the solution to a couple of problems. I used my short sword to split the melon open. I scooped handfuls of it into my mouth. My father was right that they didn’t have much flavor, just a hint of sweetness really, but I devoured two melons before I made myself stop. Beron melons were supposedly common, but this was the only source of food I had at the moment. I had to use it sparingly. I stopped long enough to cut a couple of lengths of vine before I headed back. 

I tied the vines loosely around the forked ends of the three branches. I pushed the bundle until it stood straight up. I used my feet to slowly push the three branches out into a vaguely triangular shape. Once they would stand on their own, I carefully turned the branches until the forks locked together. A few more gentle pushes at the bottom of each branch and the area beneath them was big enough for a grown man to sleep comfortably. It took most of an hour, but I leaned the rest of the branches I’d gathered against the crossed point at the top. There was an open section for me to climb inside. I glanced up again and felt my stomach clench a little. I had maybe another hour or two of useful light left. The shelter wasn’t as finished as I’d like, but it would have to do until tomorrow. 

I jogged back to the ferns and grabbed two more melons. Satchin trailed after me, briefly investigated the melon rinds I’d left there earlier, then disappeared into the fern patch. He came back out a moment later with an insect leg sticking out one side of his mouth. The insect leg disappeared in a gulp. I was shocked that the lizard could still be hungry. I took the melons back to the shelter before gathering kindling and wood for a fire. I used a flat stone to clear a sizable area down to bare dirt. The last thing I wanted was to accidentally kill myself by starting a forest fire. I set up a loose ring of stones. Finally, I made a small pile of dry grasses and twigs. I pulled out my short sword and regarded it unhappily. It was the simplest way, but it would destroy the edge. That was a problem I couldn’t fix with what I had on hand. Still, it was better than freezing. 

I picked up a loose rock that I was pretty sure was flint. I positioned my sword over the little pile of grass and sticks. With a sharp blow, I hit the sword with the rock. It sparked, which was a relief. Unfortunately, it took half a dozen blows with the rock before the sparks caught on the grass. I pulled the sword away and crouched down. I blew as gently as I could on the smoldering grass. 

“You can’t force fire,” I heard my father saying, “but you can encourage it.”

I’d all but given up hope when the grass ignited into a cheery little flame. The twigs caught next. I spent a good half hour feeding progressively bigger sticks into the fire until I had a bed of coals. I set a chunk of wood that seemed mostly dry onto the coals. There was a lengthy bout of smoke and some hissing I didn’t like, but flames started curling around the underside of the log. I sat there for a long while, basking in the heat and the accomplishment. It felt strange to consider things as simple as shelter and fire as accomplishments. I usually took them for granted. I also took evening activities for granted as well. Candles and lanterns meant that day could go on as long as your stamina would hold out. Out in the forest, alone, the day ended when sunlight gave out. 

It was a lesson that Satchin understood well. I’d expected the odd little lizard to run off to its burrow when night fell. Instead, he’d curled up near one of the rocks that ringed the fire. I supposed that all that available heat was just too good an opportunity to pass up. I was eating one of the melons when Satchin sprang back to consciousness. He looked around and then darted past me and into the shelter. I looked back into the shelter, perplexed, when it hit me that something must be out there in the dark. I reached for the short sword. 

“Don’t,” said a woman’s voice from the all-concealing darkness. 

I froze, my hand hovering over the sword’s hilt. She stepped into the light of the fire and all thoughts of my sword vanished from my mind. In fact, thought vanished from my mind wholesale as I stared at her. She was tall, lean, and moved with silent, pantherine grace. She had almond eyes over a pert nose and full lips. A mane of silver-white hair waved lazily around her head in the quiet evening breeze. That hair jarred me back into reality. She was one of the Kanthan, the legendary Sea Folk who wandered the endless stretches of the ocean searching for their lost home. I tried and failed to imagine what could bring one of the Sea Folk so far inland, even as I tried to shake off the effects of her beauty. 

“Sorry, friend,” she said, “but I’m going to need this campsite. Time for you to go.”

It was only then that my mind actually registered the crossbow in her hand. She held it with the steady, certain grip of someone who knew their business. At this range, she wouldn’t miss me. I let my eye wander briefly and noted the sword hanging from the gentle curve of her hip. It was a typical Kanthan cutlass with a heavy guard. The kind of weapon that would prove useful in a battle without getting tangled in the many ropes on a ship. It was also a good foot longer than my short sword, which meant I was doubly disadvantaged in any kind of fight. I wasn’t going to brawl my way out this problem, but I also couldn’t let her send me out into the night. That was a death sentence. I smiled at her and raised my hands. 

“I’ve already been left in the wilds to die once today. Surely, a woman as beautiful as you wouldn’t condemn a man to that same fate a second time in one day.”

“Beautiful,” she said with a snort.

Despite the snort, I caught the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth. “Yes, quite beautiful.”

“Beautiful or not, I still need you to clear out. I’d hate to have to kill you, but I will,” she said, waggling the crossbow a little for emphasis.

“I have no supplies. No tent. Not even a horse. This camp is literally everything I have in the world. I’m happy to share it, but if you force me to leave, you’ll still be killing me. I’ve nowhere to go and no way to get there safely if I did.”

She gave me, the shelter, and the beron melons a harder look. She lowered the crossbow a little. It was still aimed in my general direction, but not right at my heart.

“You do seem to be rather,” she paused, as if unsure what to say next.

“Sadly handsome? Charmingly beleaguered?”

She gave me a half-smile. “I was going to say doomed, but those work.”

I felt a scrabbling on my back and almost screamed in shock before Satchin’s bearded face popped up over my shoulder. He looked at me and then over at the woman. 

She gave the lizard a fond look. “Your faithful pet?”

“I’m not sure. He found me out here. He’s been hanging around all day,” I said, eyeing the lizard. “What do you think, Satchin? Will she let us stay?”

The lizard scrambled over my shoulder, leaped to the ground, and darted over to the woman. He stood on the ground at her feet, looking up, somehow expectant. She offered him one of her half-smiles and then crouched down without the crossbow ever really moving off of me. The lizard took the opportunity to crawl up to her shoulder. She stood back up and made soft noises at the lizard. It made a few noises in return. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought they were talking. 

“Turncoat,” I said to the lizard. “Abandon me for a pretty face, will you?”

The woman laughed and let the crossbow drop to her side. Loathe as I was to admit it, I think the lizard turned the tide for me. I’d have to keep the thing if it decided to come with me. Let no beast say that I don’t feel gratitude. I let my hands drop back to my lap. When she hung the crossbow from her belt, I let myself breathe normally again. She settled on the far side of the fire, Satchin still on her shoulder. Maybe he really was going to abandon me for a pretty face. 

“You’re a long way from home, Sea Sister,” I said. 

She blinked rapidly for a moment before she nodded. “Yes, I am. Long and far from the sea. Too long and too far, I think.”

“Must be a powerful motivation in that,” I offered, not quite asking the question. 

She dipped a hand into a pouch and fed something to Satchin, who gulped it down. The woman eyed me for a moment. 

“You, it seems, are a man of no land,” she said. 

It wasn’t lost on me that she ignored the implied question. I decided to let it go. There was no good reason to aggravate the woman. She could always change her mind and kill me if she took the notion into her head. 

“No land,” I agreed. “Or all of them. I come from a long line of frontier families. They had more pressing concerns than where someone’s family used to be from.”

She lifted a slender eyebrow at me. “More pressing?”

I looked into those almond eyes for a moment and found myself once again lost for word or thought. Those eyes were a thousand years deep, and a careless man might drown in that eternity. I tore my eyes away from hers and took a steadying breath. 

“Survival was more pressing,” I stammered. “Families that were too proud to mingle, the ones that excluded themselves from the community, they didn’t last long. There were too many things out there able and willing to kill an isolated family.”

She nodded in understanding. “Of course. No one sails alone. Without the crew, the community as you say, you will be pulled under.”

“Yeah, something like that,” I said before a thought occurred to me. “By the way, what is your name?”

She opened her mouth to say something when an inhuman howl cut through the night. I recognized that howl. I wished I didn’t recognize it. It was a rithen. My father always called the foul creatures the gods’ only mistake. It found it easy to think he was right. That howl came from a throat that didn’t belong to the natural world. It was something wholly other and profoundly evil. It was the kind of noise that claws its way inside you to steal your strength and your courage. 

“Storms,” hissed the woman.

The anger and malice she poured into that short word told me that it meant something very different to her than it did to me. She stood in a smooth motion, and poor Satchin was nearly thrown off her shoulder. The lizard didn’t like that howl any better than I did because he scrambled down to the ground and vanished off into the darkness. I only wished I could follow. It was too late for that, not that darkness offered me any promise of safety. The rithen was too close. That howl was too loud and immediate to be some echo. It was out there in the trees. In all likelihood, it could see us. I cursed the fire that left us blind to everything beyond the meager circle of light it cast.

I stood and drew my sword, all too aware that I’d left one edge blunted to start that fire that blinded us. I wondered how much use the short blade would be in the inevitable fight. If I was close enough to use the sword, the rithen would be close enough to use its teeth and claws. I looked over at the woman. She clutched her cutlass in her right hand and the crossbow in her left. I mentally cursed Elsamere and Hannock for leaving me in this position. How could they do that to me? Why had they done it to me? I swore to myself that I’d get answers to those questions if the rithen didn’t end up killing me. 

I stepped over to the woman and tried vainly to pierce the night. “Do you know what that is?”

“Rithen?” She asked.

I nodded. “Ever seen one before?”

She shook her head. 

“They’re big and fast. So don’t hesitate. Don’t let it bite you. If the bite doesn’t kill you, the venom will.”

She shot me a look that told me she felt she could have done without that information.

“Wonderful,” she muttered. 

I watched with a mixture of horror and confusion as she closed her eyes.

“What are you,” I started.

“Quiet!”

I fell silent as she slowly turned her head back and forth. Her face was locked in painful concentration. When the tension of watching her silent motion threatened to crack my fragile self-control, she lifted the crossbow and fired into the darkness. There was a roar of pain and primordial rage. The rithen was no more than twenty feet away in the darkness. I gaped at the woman. Somehow, she pinpointed the thing, but then she managed to hit it with a crossbow bolt fired blind. The woman tossed her crossbow aside and drew a slender dagger. 

“Now we do it the hard way,” she said. 

I never heard it. The rithen simply exploded out of the darkness like a great mass of demonic fury. I swung my sword hoping to get in a lucky strike. I barely started my swing before the thing’s arm connected with my chest. I was knocked aside as it focused all of its rage on the woman. As I lay there in a stunned heap for a moment, she ducked, dodged, and parried away blows. As my senses reorganized themselves, I realized that it wasn’t all skill on the woman’s part. The rithen seemed off balance. Its blows went wide of her as often as they got close.

The woman backed away a few steps, and I got my first good look at the rithen. It stood at least seven feet tall. The insides of its legs were covered in a pale fur, along with its stomach and chest. Where the fur ended, all that was left was a thick, mottled skin that looked gray in the firelight. It had massive arms that ended in all too human looking hands. At the end of each finger, I saw a long, curved claw that could split flesh as easily as my sword had split the beron melons. It turned briefly to look over at me and my flesh crawled. It had no ears and the barest hint of a nose, but its face pulled forward like the snout of a dog. Jagged, overgrown teeth sprouted from that snout, so long they were almost tusks. Sticking out of the place where its right eye used to be was the crossbow bolt. 

The sight of that bolt in its eye socket froze me in place. Maybe that’s why it didn’t linger on me but turned its attention back to the woman. I’ll never know. All I knew was that awful thing had to die. I pushed myself up even as I struggled for breath. I hoped none of my ribs were broken, but there was no way to tell. My entire chest blazed with pain that made spots appear in front of my eyes. I staggered over to where my sword landed and bent to retrieve it. I almost passed out as blood rushed to my head. I lurched a few steps before I caught my balance again. It took a precious second before I realized the woman was screaming something.

“Look out!”

I spun and swung the sword. There was no art or grace to the move, just the last reserves of my strength. I connected that time. Luck smiled on me because I hit the creature’s arm with the side of the blade that was still sharp. I fell onto my back as blood sprayed from the severed stump just below the creature’s elbow. It reared back with another howl of enraged pain before it fixed its remaining eye on me. It was going to kill me. I was helpless on the ground before its wrath. Then, the tapered blade of the woman’s cutlass swept through the rithen’s neck. Its remaining eye look widened for a moment before the beast collapsed. The head rolled off its shoulder during the collapse and came to rest next to me. The dead eye peered at me and my stomach lurched. I pushed myself away from the severed head and tried not to vomit. I failed in that endeavor, but at least I made it to the edge of the clearing first. 

After my stomach finally settled enough that I trusted it, I walked back over to the woman. She stared down at the dead rithen with a mixture of pity and loathing on her face. I made myself look down at the body. Even in death, it mocked the natural order. 

I quoted my father. “The gods’ only mistake.”

She gave me a sharp look. “No. Not their only mistake.”

“What do you mean?”

She waved a hand as if to brush away something that could wait. “Shelya.”

“What’s that?”

“My name. My name is Shelya.”

I rubbed at what I was sure was going to be a massive bruise on my chest. I heard a faint rustle in the darkness and my blood ran cold. I couldn’t face another fight. Then, Satchin appeared out of the night. He ran an excited circle around the two of us before he climbed up my leg, my battered chest, and perched on my shoulder. As tired as I was, he felt heavy enough to drive me to my knees. I gestured to the lizard. 

“This is Satchin, and my name is Temoran.”

Shelya nodded at the lizard. “I’m surprised he came back after all of that. He must like you.”

“We’ll have to keep him.”

“We?” She asked with an arched eyebrow.

I smiled at her. “Why not? Otherwise, he’ll just abandon me for a pretty face.”

She stayed coolly impassive for another moment. Then, she smiled back at me. 

“Well, we can’t have that.”

~End~