The beast parried the blade with a flick of its arm and swiped at John’s torso, raking its claws across his gut.
Giant John dropped his dagger and crumpled to his knees, clutching his stomach. The beast sprang, flinging him backward and pinned his arms with its claws.
Giant John tried to heave his legs up to dislodge the beast, but his middle burnt with fire, moisture leaking over his hips—blood, guts? He couldn’t tell. Either way, his belly muscles were useless.
The tracker’s black beady eyes focused on him. “Where is the female?” it snarled.
Dizziness swept over Giant John. He shook his head, trying to clear it. The irrational urge to tell this monster about Marlies filled his head. He fought, keeping an image of a sunflower in his mind, refusing to let the beast win. His forehead dripped sweat. Yellow petals, thick stem.
“Play with me, would you? Picking flowers?” The tracker drove a knee into his rib.
Giant John felt it pop. Smash. Another rib.
“Where is she?” The tracker’s spittle flew into his face, making him want to gag. But he couldn’t—oh gods, the pain was too much. And that awful dizziness. Focus on the sunflower—bright green leaves, yellow, dark center.
The tracker released its grip on his arms for a moment. Giant John snatched the tracker’s fur, but it was too late, the beast’s fingers closed around his neck. It squeezed. Giant John gurgled. Croaked. Black spots danced before his eyes.
“You got no chance,” gloated the tracker. “I’m stronger. Smarter.” It laughed. “Zens is making new creatures. To kill every male, female and small human. And all your stinking dragons. Gone. Just you wait.”
Giant John tried to fight but could only gurgle. Darkness crept across the edge of his vision. The world spun.
With a fleshy thunk, a sword protruded from the tharuk’s neck. Dark blood gushed over Giant John’s head. Marlies’ face appeared.
Giant John fainted.
§
Marlies kicked the tracker off Giant John and crouched by her old friend. “John! Don’t pass out on me now. Come on!”
His eyelids fluttered.
Not waiting for him to rouse, she tugged up his blood-soaked jerkin. A gut wound, plenty of blood but no intestines, thank goodness. She whipped her piaua out of her healer’s pouch and dripped juice along one end of the wound site, holding the edges together so his flesh could knit over. Giant John moaned at the burn, but didn’t wake. She repeated the process until the wound was closed.
Lifting his jerkin, she saw mottled bruises spreading on one side of his chest. His throat was also bruised. Marlies dashed back to the wagon and grabbed her waterskin. As an afterthought, she pulled the trapdoor shut in the bottom of the secret compartment, and bolted it, then tugged the horses toward Giant John.
Sloshing water over Giant John’s face, she woke him.
His eyes darted wildly, then his face brightened. “Marlies!” He spotted the dead tracker. “Thank the Egg! You saved me!” He tried to sit up, but winced.
“Ribs?”
Giant John nodded sheepishly. “Afraid so.”
“Here, open your mouth.” Marlies let two or three drips of piaua juice fall on John’s tongue, then rubbed a little over the bruises on his throat and torso. “That should make it easier to move.”
Soon, he could sit up unaided. He got to his feet and flexed his torso. “Piaua is amazing. Thankfully, you were here.”
“Without me, you wouldn’t be in this mess.” She nudged the dead tharuk with her boot. A severed tharuk hand fell out of its pocket. “Ew, gross. We’d better get going in case its friends turn up.”
“Ah, Marlies. We can’t leave the body or the hand here. They’ll be onto us in no time.”
“Good, then we’ll take them with us.”
Giant John stuffed the hand back in the dead beasts’ pocket and lifted its body. But when he flipped the side of the wagon bed down and stuffed the beast into the secret compartment, then gestured to Marlies to get in, she recoiled. “No, John, even I have limits.”
“Well,” he said, “this isn’t one of them. I can’t take either of you in the top of the wagon. If we’re stopped, I’m a dead man.”
She hesitated.
“Marlies, I have a wife, now. A wee littling.”
“Fair enough.” She sighed.
He stuffed some sacks next to the dead brute and wiped its blood stains off the floor.
Marlies climbed in, screwing up her nose. “Never thought I’d cuddle up to a dead tharuk,” she muttered as he flipped the side up and locked her in. Brilliant, the tharuk’s body was now blocking the trapdoor—her only exit if Giant John was attacked.
§
A while later, Giant John stopped the horses and let Marlies out of the wagon. They half-dragged and half-lifted the tharuk to the top of the ravine. Below, the Tooka river churned in a heaving white mass.
“On my count,” said Giant John, adjusting his grip and using his thighs to lift the beast’s torso while Marlies held the legs. They threw the beast into the river.
Its body bounced on a rock, then bobbed once or twice before it was swept down the gorge in a torrent of white wash.
Giant John turned to Marlies. She was heading into the jaws of the viper in Death Valley. He wouldn’t wish that trip on anybody. “There’s a steep chimney at the back of this cave leading to a goat track up the mountainside. The tharuks use a trail about twenty furlongs south of here. Just before Devil’s Gate—”
“That’s the pass into Death Valley, right?”
He nodded. “Before then, the tharuk track and your trail converge. You’ll be sharing the way with tharuks, but the mountain’s so steep, there’s no other way up. I’d save your freshweed for then.” He shrugged. There was so much more to say, so many memories they shared.
Marlies embraced him.
