A Soldier's Life - 8 - Bulette for the Win

Chapter 8: Bulette for the Win

Felix woke me, and I tried to stand, but my the muscles in my legs would not cooperate. I collapsed to the floor and used my arms to pull myself up. Mateo chuckled at my discomfort. I slowly got my legs working and could feel every raw area of skin from yesterday’s ride.

Felix offered some advice. “Use the horse salve on your sore muscles and chafe marks. It has a pungent smell, but it works just as well on you as on your horse.”

I started packing, but Felix stopped me. “No need. We’re just going along the southern range and looking for signs of the griffins. If we’re lucky, someone will spot one flying around, and we can track it to its nest.”

I waddled outside and saddled Ginger, with some help. Setting the girth straps took some skill. Too tight, and the horse would get chafed. Too loose, and you were not going to remain in your saddle. Breakfast was a meaty mashed potato porridge. Only fifteen of us rode out with Mage Castile.

Mateo rode next to me and explained, “The others will ride in the other direction with Adrian, looking for signs of griffins and the baron’s party. This is our second day searching. The griffins were last seen about nine days ago, taking a sheep from a flock not far from here.”

I wanted to cry when Mage Castile took our column into a gallop. My body was being pounded day after day and hadn't had time to heal. I wished I had a healing spell for instead of the stupid dimensional space. Luckily, after about six miles, the road ended, and Castile slowed her horse to a walk as we stayed parallel with the mountains. Now, at a walk, Felix could talk to me again.

“Damn, Eryk. If I didn’t know better, I'd think an ogre was turning you into his wife, judging by that look on your face,” he joked, causing a few others to laugh at his comment and my misfortune.

I responded in a clear voice, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were an expert on knowing what it is like when you get fucked by an ogre.” Félix gaped and couldn’t think of a comeback.

After the men processed my words, all the laughter was directed at Felix, and Mage Castile turned around to see what was so funny. Delmar, who was nearby, spoke up. “The new recruit just gave Felix the harshest verbal retort of his miserable life.” She simply nodded and kept her focus forward. It was quite a while before things calmed down. We all took to scanning the mountains for signs of the griffins.

Another soldier spotted a carcass. We rode toward it and dismounted. Five legionnaires moved to set up a perimeter. I wasn't sure what to do, so I followed Castile and the four legionnaires to the carcass. One of the legionnaires knelt nearby, and I got close enough to catch a whiff. Visually, I could handle the sight, but my sense of smell was unprepared for the onslaught, and I quickly vomited my breakfast. Apparently, losing my breakfast was not unexpected. The others looked green but held it in.

The kneeling man spoke, “Four days old…good chance it was a griffin. It ate the organs and chewed off a haunch. Probably to bring it to the nest.”

I got enough of my faculties back to move upwind and asked, “What the hell was that?” I was talking to myself, but the tracker stood and answered me.

“It was a stone bear—fairly common around here, probably about 1200 pounds. Most likely killed by a strike at the base of the neck from above,” he said. I moved closer, and he took some time explaining the details that led him to his conclusions. Everyone else had drifted back to their horses, and Castile appeared to be thinking about which direction to take.

We were riding along the same path we had been following a short time earlier, and I ate my last two apples, giving the cores to Ginger. It was midday when our group stopped for lunch. Everyone had packed a small lunch except for me. My roommates had told me to leave my gear behind, but I was supposed to pick up a prepared meal from the company’s cook—I did not.

At least I had my satchel and plenty of rations in my space if I truly got hungry. Mateo took me to stand sentry while everyone relaxed and ate, and the horses drank water at a stream coming down from the mountains. Seeing my predicament, Mateo gave me some slices of sausage and cheese from his own lunch. He offered a few pulls from his canteen as well, which I accepted.

“So, how long will we search for griffins?” I asked as he explained how to maintain the watch and which direction I should be focused on, based on the other sentries’ positions.

“Castile doesn’t give up. She’s probably using her divination magic every few hours. She will find either the griffins or the body of the baron’s son,” he said. He suddenly stood and focused on something in the distance. I looked where he was looking. The ground was surging into a mound about a quarter mile away.

“What is that?” I asked, baffled. Mateo blew a whistle around his neck. I would need a whistle. Everyone looked where Mateo pointed.

The mound started moving toward us. Mage Castile screamed, “Bulette! Get on your horses and spread out. Make for Formica!” A few seconds later, we were rushing to our mounts.

I mounted a nervous Ginger and started galloping back the way we came. What the hell was a bulette? If it was scaring the mage, then it had to be dangerous. I didn’t have anyone to ask; our group was spread out as per orders. I looked back, and the damn thing was getting closer.

Many of my companions were pulling away—actually all of them were. I was dead last—the weakest link and the straggler for the predator. I urged Ginger to a run, and she complied, sensing the danger coming at us. I tried desperately to find a different riding rhythm at a faster pace. At least my surging adrenaline completely muted the pain.

My growing fear made it hard to focus, and I started bouncing out of sync with my mount. Ginger leaped expertly over a large shrubbery. When she landed, I went forward, not ready for the jarring landing. I did not know exactly what happened next, other than I was on the ground rolling, and Ginger continued to race away, now free of her burdensome passenger. My first thought was that I had given her all those damn apples, and I thought we were friends.

I stumbled to my feet, not finding anything broken, but I was alone. Everyone was at least a quarter mile away and opening distance. I turned to face the mound of earth moving toward me. Something that resembled a shark fin emerged in the center. Was this an elemental earth shark? I pulled my only weapon out of my belt, a short, curved dagger. All my other weapons were secured to Ginger.

The ground erupted in a shower of earth and stone, and a massive creature flew through the air, planning to crush me. Time seemed to slow as my death was clearly before me, my muscles paralyzed at the terrible sight.

An armored quadruped that looked like a mix between a rhinoceros with the massive head of a snapping turtle soon blotted out the sun. I met my fate by opening my ten-foot dimensional cube, waiting as long as I could, and then shifting as much of the bulette’s underside into my dimensional space as possible. The earth thudded around me, everything went dark, and I was covered in fluids and knocked to the ground by the force of impact. I was alive and somehow inside the cavity of the beast.

The beast seemed uncertain about what had just happened. Its mass twitched around me in the dark, and it tried to move. I had gutted it, though. I was trapped in its hollowed chest cavity, slightly dizzy from the amount of aether I had just used, but the beast no longer had essential organs—like a heart. My dimensional space would not activate, as the cost of pulling in so much bulette flesh had drained all my aether. Whether this cost was due to the mass or the creature resisting, I did not know.

After a short time, I started digging in the earth with my dagger to tunnel my way out. Thankfully, the fluids softened the earth and made it easy to gain my freedom before suffocating.

I squeezed out from under the hard shell, gratefully breathing the fresh air, and looked at the armored beast. It was a lot bigger than I remembered. The beast had an armored hide, short stubby legs, and massive black digging claws. It reminded me more of a tank than anything else. I could see why the mage had decided to retreat.

I oriented myself to the mountains and started walking back to Formica. When I had recovered enough aether, I dumped the 10x10x5 feet section of the bulette guts on the ground. It spread out like a squelching, deflating balloon.

I didn't think bulette blood was considered a good topical agent for all my raw and bleeding chafe marks. When I reached a wide stream and decided to wash up, I remained vigilant as I stripped naked and began washing and cleaning everything. I focused on my armor, since I had plenty of clean clothes to change into. I managed to scrub almost everything out of the material. It seemed our uniform was treated with something that made removing blood easier.

This got me thinking about a lot of the clothes I had taken at the fort. They were well-worn, so I guessed they had come off dead legionnaires. As long as they were clean now, I could handle the thought of wearing a dead man’s clothes. When I finished, I dressed in my damp clothes and armor.

The bulette’s stomach had occupied the top half of my dimensional space and had not disturbed anything I had placed in the space. It was getting close to sundown as I sat on a rock, wet, tired, bruised, abused—and alive. I took out a ration bar and munched on it, getting prepared to leave when Ginger came trotting up to me and drank unconcerned at the stream next to me. I shook my head. “Oh, now you show up! Well, I’m out of apples.”

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