“Maybe she went closer to the Expanse,” she says. “Fewer Murkovin dwell out there. That’s where I’d go.”
Larn turns his face to the west. “That makes sense. Why don’t we spread out and travel towards the Eternal Canyon.”
Spacing ourselves about ten miles apart, the five of us zigzag to the west. Every hundred miles or so, we each stop on the crest of a different hill and holler Tela’s name. After roughly five hundred miles are behind us, I glide to the top of a low hill. Less than half a mile in front of me, a shirtless Murkovin with his spear slung over one shoulder and a backpack over the other is walking towards a valley. While staring at him, I realize he’s the same beast that I lured away from the Murkovin camp before stealing the transport.
Before he enters the valley, he looks over each of his shoulders. When he sees me on the hill behind him, he immediately runs away. As I sprint down the hill, my muscles tense with fresh bloodlust for revenge. If I was right about him before, he can’t blend his light. I set my sights on him and explode into the beams in his direction.
He twists his neck to look behind him. When he realizes I’m closing in on him, he rumbles to a stop and spins in my direction. I time my exit from the light so that I’m almost by his side. He has zero time to raise his spear in defense before my forearm slams into his face.
The force of my blow lifts his feet off the ground. Losing his balance, he flails backwards until his back pounds to the dirt. Sliding to a stop, I swing my spear over the top of my head. The end of the shaft smacks against his forehead. He tries to lift his head from the ground, but he’s too dazed to get up.
After dropping my spear, I leap to his side and roll him onto his stomach. Pinning him to the ground with a knee in the center of his back, I rip the belt off my waist. He tries to get out from underneath me, but I slap an open palm against the back of his head and smash his face to the gravelly dirt. Before he can make another move, I knot my belt around his wrists.
I snatch my spear with one hand and a clump of his hair with the other. Angling his head to the side, I dig the tip of my weapon into his neck. A trickle of blood runs down his skin.
“Where is she?” I shout.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“You’re full of shit!”
I let go of his hair, pull my spear out of his neck, and drop my weapon to the dirt. After gripping one of his pinkies in my hand, I wrench it to the side. When his finger snaps at the middle knuckle, he shrieks in agony.
“I’m gonna’ cut you,” I snarl, “and then I’ll break another finger. Over and over until you bleed to death or tell me where she is.”
“I never saw her again after you took her from the canyon!”
“You’re lying!”
I seize my spear in one hand and jump to my feet. As I rear back my weapon, a body crashes into mine. I stagger away from whoever attacked me and wildly jab my spear in that direction. When my assailant blocks it away, I coil with the urge to unleash my wrath on another Murkovin. Puzzled by the face in front of me, I freeze in place.
Chapter 25
“What are you doing?” Larn yells at me.
“Why did you hit me?” I shoot back. “He’s one of the assholeswho attacked us. He knows where Tela is.”
“I didn’t see her again after you took her,” the Murkovin grumbles.
Never taking his eyes off mine, Larn shakes his head. “Nothing warrants the torture of another living being. You need to get control of yourself right now.”
As I glower at Larn, his words slowly sink in. I won’t try to justify it as an excuse for what I did to the Murkovin, but I realize that I must have gone ballistic because of the wild sap still in my blood. Suddenly repulsed by my act of cruelty, my lack of restraint, I close my eyes.
When I open them again, I notice Sash standing on the side of a hill behind Larn. Velt and Jeni are beside her, all three staring at me with shocked expressions on their faces.
“I don’t know what happened,” I ashamedly admit to Larn.
“I told you that you might still have problems with the wild sap,” he says.
“That’s not an excuse. I’m sorry for what I did and how I behaved. I just want to find Tela.”
“Not like this,” he replies.
Sash, Velt, and Jeni walk down the hill and stop beside Larn.
“What did you think you were doing?” Sash asks me.
I chip away at the dirt with the tip of my spear. “I was trying to find out where Tela is,” I answer. “I went too far.”
Larn unclips a flask from his belt and kneels by the Murkovin’s side. After helping him sit upright, he rubs a handful of sap on the wound in the creature’s neck. Holding his flask to the beast’s mouth, he tilts it up for the Murkovin to take a drink.
“Have you seen the female Traveler?” Larn asks him.
The Murkovin finishes a gulp and then pulls his mouth away from the flask. “Not since she was face down at the bottom of a canyon.”
“Are you sure about that?” Larn asks.
“I left the area,” he answers. “I can’t travel. It took me several morrows to get out here.”
Larn stands up and motions for Sash to come closer to him. “Have your spear ready.”
Sash takes a few
