61. Through The Valley

61. Through The Valley

Skylenna

“Oh, my baby boy! Oh, I love you, DaiSzek!” I cry into his thick coat of fur. “I missed you so much! I’m so sorry we left you behind.”

Adding to the painful throb in my heart, DaiSzek whimpers against my chest, pushing his head so hard against my sternum, I collapse on my butt.

“I know, buddy,” I whimper with him. “I know.”

He feels so good against my tender, pruned flesh. Warm and soft, throwing his full weight into my lap. I laugh with tears dripping down onto his head, scratching his belly, and leaving a thousand kisses across his snout.

“We’re going to get Dessin back, I promise you. He’ll be so happy to see you again. He needs you to save the day for him, too.”

I wish to God I could take him back to the prison now and storm it together. I wish I didn’t need an army. I wish I wasn’t so damn dehydrated and weak.

With the edge of my cloak, I clean his mouth of the clotting blood and ropes of skin hanging from his chin. He looks up at me attentively, lovingly, full of adoration and a tenderness most humans may never see in an animal of this great destruction.

“How I’ve missed those big, cinnamon eyes,” I coo.

An object thumps in the sand next to us, sounding off with snarls and growls. An animal. It attacks the dead bodies around us. I turn my head with DaiSzek, blinking rapidly to make out what has invaded our special moment.

A smaller dog-wolf with copper fur and pointy ears like a little gremlin.

Knightingale shakes half of a dead Blood Mammoth the same way she’d play with a chew toy. Her whole muscular body whips back and forth to shake that corpse in a fit of anger.

“Knightingale, stop! They’re already dead!”

DaiSzek barks at her like he’s translating for me.

The stocky Ginger Wrathbull turns to us with perked ears, then drops the body with a thud. After a moment of staring at us, she wiggles her butt and tail frantically, and with that, she skips over to us in joy.

“Hi, little girl,” I laugh, petting the top of her heavy head. Her fur is short and sleek, unlike DaiSzek’s. She’s smaller, feistier, and apparently out of breath.

I laugh again. “Did he leave you behind? Is that why you’re tired?”

She curls her upper lip and snarls at DaiSzek in response. My sore frame relaxes being around these two cuddly creatures. A rush of dopamine floods my senses as I sag against them, feeling a heaviness tug at my eyelids.

“Dessin should be here,” I tell them sleepily. And before I can adjust to what’s going on, Knightingale is nudging her wet nose against my shoulder, pushing me onto DaiSzek’s back. I drape over his broad shoulders and elongated spine like a limp weighted blanket.

We’re walking now, with Knightingale occasionally poking her snout against my fingers to make sure I’m okay, into the valley of the East Vexello Mountains.

And with these two by my side, I haven’t felt this safe, this protected, in a very long time.

~

The vibrations wake me up.

The deep grumblings against my chest and cheek startle me actually. The feeling is all too familiar. An animal growling at a nearby threat. I’ve felt and heard it come from my boy all of the many times Kane and I would play alone in the forest. Even as a pup, DaiSzek was always looking out for us.

My eyes are sticky and sore as I bat my lashes, forcing my lids to peel back. And immediately, I can see we’re surrounded. They aren’t close enough for Knightingale’s frantic snapping and showboating to seriously harm them, but they’re there.

Men and women dressed in multicolored layers of wool and fur, with massive axes strapped to their backs. And these people are huge. Tall, even the women over six feet, and the men reminding me of bears.

I sit up from on top of DaiSzek’s back, straightening hesitantly.

“Deveëxeq nioëx beaxious be ne qeúsez!”a man with long braids and dark skin shouts to me with a hard scowl and proud stance on a hill to my left. We’re in the center of the valley between the two mountains now.

A woman that looks like his daughter jabs her axe in Knightingale’s direction, trying to tame or frighten my Ginger Wrathbull. Only she doesn’t know that Knightingale has a bad temper, an eagerness to prove herself, though she is smaller in size.

“I wouldn’t piss them off if I were you,” I say with a raw throat. “You may manage to kill us with your numbers, but provoking them will only ensure that they will take down at least half of your people first.”

“You are from Demechnef,” the leader says.

I sigh in relief. “Yes.”

“Why are you wearing the clothing of a Persecuting Caretaker?”

I look down at my uncomfortable red leather bodysuit.

“I…” Should I tell them the truth? “I escaped.”

The leader lifts his chin, looking to his daughter to silently communicate something.

The young woman with matching braids steps forward and says, “Do you know Helga Bee and Gerta?”

My eyes shift between the many faces staggered through the valley, still holding their weapons, crossbows, torches, and some even camouflaged in the greenery.

I nod once.

“Prove it.”

I look away, thinking about my time spent with them.

“She told me about Bunny Moon Tag,” I say. I hear Ruth’s laughter and Niles’s snide humor as we’d catch each other on that stage.

Collectively, the people of the rebellion start to smile, laugh, slap each other on their backs. I take it that our prison friends mean a great deal to this large family.

“Are they alive?” she asks now, losing one side of her smile.

“Yes.”

Her strong shoulders relax. “And you are their friend?”

“I am. They’ve helped me more than I will ever be able to repay.”

“Then you are a friend of ours!”

The people around me throw their axes up, whooping their celebration, and I slump a little against DaiSzek’s back.

“I need your help.” My cracked, raspy voice hardly makes a dent in their outburst of conversation. However, the leader holds his hand up for those around to be silenced.

“I’m on my way to any army on the shore, maybe you’ve seen them already. My friends are in the Vexamen Prison. They’re important to ending this war, this reign of terror from the Mazonist Brothers.” At this point, I may faint if I don’t get something in my stomach, but that isn’t important right now.

“You are brave enough to start a battle with the Vexamen Breed?” he asks with narrowing eyes.

“And I am strong enough to win. God is on my side. I have the last living RottWeilen fighting with me and the armies of the seven ancient colonies that come from the other side of the Midnight Sea.” I lick my chapped lips, beginning to shiver in the crisp breeze of the lowering sun. “Helga Bee told me of your rebellion. And if you’re anything like her and Gerta, you aren’t afraid of raising your swords. You aren’t afraid of looking the devil in the face and fighting alongside your brothers.”

The leader hops down from the jagged hill he was perched on, walking to get closer to me. I hold my hand up to Knightingale, prompting her to stand down. Though she releases small, annoyed growls anyway.

“If we strike at the Breed, we will effectively be breaking our treaty. Our homes will be invaded. Our people thrown in prison. Our lives become theirs.” The leader is only an inch taller than me, but he’s solidly built with a square jaw and prominent brow that makes him look mean and angry.

I pause. “Only if we lose.”

He cracks a smile, nodding like that answer was what he hoped to hear.

“When do we ride?”