Ander - Part 6: Subchapter 126
126
Neither of them moved. Neither of them spoke. They could only stare at the aftermath, each of them, in their own way, trying to decipher what could have happened here. What all this destruction could possibly mean.
There were streaks of drying blood on the ground. Sharp slivers of glass. Wide, sweeping footprints. Bloody clumps of fur sticking to pockets of snow, twitching wildly in the breeze. One of the tents had been ripped clear of its moorings, leaving only a bare patch of earth behind.
Nilia covered her mouth and nose, but it didn't help. The wet, cloying scent of iron snaked its way down her throat like slimy fingers, making her gag. But even worse than that was the more subtle fragrance hiding underneath. That black smell, that growing smell.
The smell of death.
"Kiana!" Ander took off and began checking the tents along the right-hand side, ripping them open in a kind of frenzy. Nilia took the ones on the left, being considerably more careful, giving each tent a proper look (especially the dark and dingy corners) before moving on. That awful stench was growing stronger by the second, and that included all the underlying smells of sweat, urine, and waste.
She came to the next tent in line and reached for the flap, but before she could part it, the two halves flew open of their own accord and a grisly creature of blood and tattered rags came tumbling into her arms, reeking of disinfectant, blasting her in the face with its putrid breath, teeth flashing before her eyes in glimmering shards of red.
Nilia gasped and tried to jump back, but this thing had her in a death grip and was staring up at her with half-lidded eyes, barely conscious.
Nilia pushed the monstrous face away with one hand while pawing for her dagger with the other. Finally, her fingers closed around the haft and she -
"Nilia... issat... you?"
"Wait, Dorin!?"
Ander came jogging over, clutching at his old spear wound. "What happened? What's going on?"
"It's Dorin. He's not doing so well."
As if to emphasize this point, all the remaining strength ran out of Dorin's legs and he flopped against her like a doll. She grabbed him underneath the arms, and as she did so, noticed several other things as well.
First, and most obvious of all, was that Dorin was a complete and utter mess. All his bandages were either ripped to tatters or missing completely and there were horrible wounds all over his back, including his head. There was a nasty lump there, capped off with a crumbly layer of coagulated blood that had gotten all tangled up in his hair. And these wounds weren't even all that fresh either. At least a day old, by her reckoning.
But all of this, as nasty as it was, didn't hold a candle to what was inside the tent. She was smart enough to bite her tongue, but something must have shown on her face regardless, because Ander came forward immediately, as if he could smell the sudden upsurge of bile trying to work its way up her throat.
"Nilia? What's wrong?"
She shoved Dorin into his arms. "Stay right there and take care of him!"
"Why? What's in there?" He tried to look inside the tent, but Nilia pushed him back with both hands.
"Just stay there, damn it! I'll tell you when it's safe!" She really, really didn't want to deal with crazy, panicky, possibly insane Ander right now, and if there was anything that could push him over the edge, this was it.
Nilia stepped inside, letting the flaps fall shut behind her. The darkness encased her in a freezing gloom that seemed to crawl all over her body. She wrapped her arms around her chest and rubbed her shoulders against the chill, not that it did any good. There was a gigantic hole torn into the back of the tent, with a brown tongue of canvass flapping lazily in the wind. Flakes of snow kept drifting in on the breeze and landing in the ocean of blood that had pooled around the dead Wolf lying in the centre of this raggedy tomb, exuding a foul, freshly-killed stench of blood and waste.
Nilia approached the corpse, covering her mouth and nose. The blood hadn't dried to a crust yet, but neither was it completely wet. It was like a layer of black mud beneath her bare feet, squelching up between her toes with every step. Even in the gloom, she could tell that there was something... wrong with him. More than wrong. She crouched down, being very careful not to let her tail drag along the blood-soaked floor, and inspected his face.
"Edo... What on earth happened to you?"
His eyes were wide open and staring straight up at nothing, as the dead were want to do, but the whites had turned red, as if they had filled up with blood right before he died.
That's probably exactly what happened, Nilia thought.
His mouth was wide open, too. There were pieces of broken glass in there, stuck between his teeth and embedded in his gums. The left side of his muzzle was covered in shallow cuts.
Nilia's eyes travelled further down, and although she had already seen the jist of it with her peripheral vision, the sight of his neck still made her want to gag.
Keeping with the theme, it was wide open. No, actually, that wasn't quite right. It was crushed into an unrecognisable hunk of flesh and bone. From the chin down, he looked more like a pulverised piece of fruit than a Wolf.
But the most disturbing thing about this wasn't Edo's staring eyes or even the gruesome wound in his neck. It was the streaks of blood leading away from his body and towards that ominous hole in the back of the tent.
As if something, or someone, had been dragged.
Nilia approached the gaping hole, feeling a ball of stone settling deep inside her heart. The tongue flapped, as if beckoning her closer. If she still held any reverence for the Cora, she would have prayed for a miracle, but since she didn't, she had no other choice but to face the reality of the scent wafting up from the edges of that tattered hole. A deep, invasive scent of puss, rot, and putrefaction, a scent far too vile and old to be coming from Edo.
No... she knew this scent. She knew it well. It was the same scent they had been chasing after for the past hour. The same scent that had vanished without a trace, only to resurface here.
A voice drifted up from behind, dry and cracked, like a ghost's. "I tried to protect her..."
Nilia turned around and wasn't all that surprised to see Dorin standing there with his arm slung over Ander's shoulder. His eyes were unfocussed and glassy, a constant flow of blood dribbled from his bottom lip, but even he looked better than Ander did in that moment. His uncovered eye was wide and staring, almost vibrating. It darted from the dead Wolf to the trail of blood to the gaping hole in the tent, ringed with frost. His breathing was rapid and uneven, whistling in and out. All the cracks were there, fanning out like a spider web, ready to shatter into a million pieces.
If Nilia could have seen her own face in the moment she pulled the blankets aside and stared into the dead eyes of her parents, crawling with flies, she was positive she would have looked just like Ander did now.
No. She wouldn't allow herself to think about that. There was no time. "Dorin, what happened here? Speak fast."
Dorin swallowed back a mouthful of blood. "She wanted to help... She wanted to give everyone blankets. She -"
"Skip to the important part, Dorin."
Dorin took a moment to gather his thoughts, then continued, constructing his sentences in careful bits of information, each one bracketed by a shallow intake of breath. "We were attacked... Three, I think. Kind of fuzzy. I fought them off. Kiana helped. And then... then... I can't remember... I think she took care of me, but I passed out. When I woke up... it was... it was this. Just this. Edo dead. Kiana gone. Hole... in the side... and that smell... that godawful smell... like a dead thing. It was him. It was Banno."
The moment he said that name, something in Ander changed. Nilia couldn't exactly see what the change was, but she could sense it, the way you could sometimes sense something big looming over you even if you had your eyes closed.
This is it. He's diving off the edge.
He started forward, and although he didn't make any aggressive moves, Nilia found herself almost dropping into a fighting stance on pure reflex. Even Dorin, who was so out of it his feet simply dragged along the floor, looked like he wanted to jump right off his shoulder, if only he could.
Nilia held out her hands. "Ander, think for a second, you can't -"
"You were right, Nilia," he said, not looking at her, but at the hole. His feet made little slapping sounds as he walked through puddles of semi-coagulated blood. "Sorrin was right. Sarah was right. Kiana was right..."
"Ander, you need to calm down, okay?" That request was ludicrous, and she knew it the moment it left her lips. And why? Because Ander was calm. He was calmer now than at any other point this entire night. She had been preparing herself to restrain him in case he went all crazy berserk like he did at his trail, but this was something she had never seen before. The shakes were gone, the jitters were gone, that panicky look in his eye was gone. In fact, if it wasn't for that small frown, his face would have been completely blank.
"She blew the horn. She saved me from shouldering all that pain by myself. She took half my burden because she couldn't stand to see me suffer, because she loves me so much. And now..."
"Ander, what are you saying?"
He shoved Dorin into her hands. "Take him to the medical tent. Pray that Bethany or Layla is still there. Find Hezzi. Make sure he's okay. Please, Nilia. Keep them safe."
"Ander, no!" she said, awkwardly manoeuvring Dorin (who wasn't very good at cooperating) into a more comfortable position. "You are not going after him alone!"
He didn't answer. He just kept staring at that hole.
"Damn it, Ander!"
"If you don't take Dorin soon, he will die."
Nilia couldn't exactly argue with that. Leaning against her like this, she could feel the warmth of his blood, the shallow pull of his breath, and even the frightfully weak beating of his heart. "You take him, then! I'll go after Banno and -"
Ander looked at her, and Nilia knew immediately that she wouldn't be able to talk him out of this. He was going after Banno, and there was nothing she could do to stop him.
"Listen, just -" The urge to grab her necklace was almost insurmountable, but both her hands were full with Dorin. "Just wait for me and we'll go after him together, okay?"
"We can't waste any more time, Nilia. Banno has Kiana and my unborn child. I am not going to stand around while he -" He closed his eye and took a slow, shuddering breath, as if to calm himself down, but when he opened that eye again it was blazing with a white-hot anger Nilia had never seen before. Never. "If he so much as touched a single hair on Kiana's head, I won't hold back. I will do whatever it takes. I will hunt him down. I will strangle him. I will stab him. I will rip his throat open with my bare teeth. I will kill_him." He turned to face that dark, empty hole in the side of the tent, ringed with frost and splatters of blood. "_I will get my family back."
Nilia sighed. "All right, Ander. I understand. But before you go..." She readjusted her grip on Dorin and pulled her dagger from its sheath. "I want you to take this. It's not much, but it's better than nothing."
Ander took it without any hesitation at all. "Thank you, Nilia."
"I know it won't do any good to ask this, but I'll ask anyway. Please, please don't try to fight Banno on your own. Track him down if you must, but keep your distance. Mark the trees you pass along the way. I'll come to back you up as soon as I can."
"I understand, Nilia. Again, thank you for everything." He put the dagger between his teeth and climbed through the hole, into the harsh, snowy darkness outside.
It was like watching him getting swallowed alive by a blackened throat.
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