Lovers in the Woods (14 page)

Out of the beast’s left front
leg, a thin needle appeared. It split from the main leg like a part
of a pocketknife to examine Sajitar’s abs, ignoring the man’s
whimper that turned to screaming when the needle poked the skin.
Unruffled, the needle moved along the side and found the entrance
hole the bullet had left days ago. Again, Sajitar could not hold
back the scream, and, staying a few feet away, Rayenne found it
hard to hold ground. Her hands clenched tight to a branch before
her. Everything she knew about Horlyns was connected with fear,
pain, disappearing people and death.
How could I be so stupid to leave Sajitar
to this killer?
The Horlyn made Sajitar believe it would be his savior, but
that beast could just prepare him for dinner, cut him in slices and
take him away piece by piece.

Rayenne choked so hard she feared she’d
throw up.

The needle traced back to the center of
Sajitar’s stomach and pierced the skin. Sajitar bent his back and
the Horlyn placed two of his limbs on his chest and legs. That
stopped the movement at once. Balanced on his hind pairs of legs,
the Horlyn pushed the needle deeper into Sajitar’s body.

Rayenne feared he would die, if not from
the incision, then from the shock of being under surgery without
anesthesia. Now she understood why the beast had wanted him tied
up. He would have gotten up and run away. She wanted to close her
ears to his screams and wished that she had gagged him. Now the
pain was hers and she had to listen.

The needle
stopped and the mighty head of the Horlyn lowered to almost touch
the skin. Though there were no visible nostrils, it appeared to
sniff the blood oozing out of the wound. Slowly, the needle turned.
Sajitar let out one last scream before he fell unconscious.

Rayenne was grateful for small
mercies. Banned like the
observer of an accident, she watched through her
fieldglass and saw the needle reappear. A small object stuck to the
tip, golden and dripping with blood. The Horlyn swung the needle to
the right side and the object fell beside Sajitar’s body. The beast
cleaned its needle meticulously with two tips of his legs while it
scrutinized the man’s face, tweeting and whizzing like a mother
with her sleeping child.
Or a cook whistling a tune while thinking about
the herbs to go with the roast.

Rayenne’s stomach ached, but she held her
ground. To throw up what little food she had had during the day
would certainly give away her position. When she felt better and
could look again, the Horlyn still stood beside Sajitar. Its
antennae touched him at his neck and chest. It tweeted quietly, as
if to ask if he was all right. When Sajitar did not reply, the
first Horlyn turned its mighty abdomen and disappeared into the
wood.

Rayenne looked down, but the
second Horlyn still held its position. She could not leave the
tree
—she
cursed wordlessly. To busy herself, she searched the sky
for a Flying Cordell, but could not find one. Even the last birds
had settled somewhere and the night sky was velvety
black.

She pointed the fieldglass back at
Sajitar.

His head had lolled to the side
and she feared he was wounded more severely than she had
anticipated. The hole above his navel was big enough for a finger
to fit in and oozed blood with every heartbeat. She
swallowed.
What else is damaged?

She desperately
longed to go and pull Sajitar from the clearing and nurse him back
to health. Instead, she had to stay out of sight. Briefly she
wondered why the second Horlyn had not chased the B-horses, but
before she could follow that thought, the first Horlyn
reappeared.

Repelled but at the same time
fascinated, she watched the Horlyn apply a handful of a sticky
white substance to the wound, then smear it adroitly until it
covered Sajitar’s chest and stomach. From somewhere
on its body the
Horlyn fetched a thin item that looked like a thick straw and put
it between Sajitar’s lips. Rayenne wanted to shout that you could
not feed anything to someone unconscious, but Sajitar stirred. His
chest moved with one heavy intake of breath. He coughed and Rayenne
wondered what the Horlyn had done. Her heart palpitating, she
waited for Sajitar to open his eyes, and when he did he tried to
turn his head in her direction. The Horlyn prevented the movement
and put the item back between his lips, softly whistling. It
attached a dark red piece of root to the open end and squeezed.
Sajitar whimpered, but swallowed the juice, shutting his eyes once
more. He lay motionless while the Horlyn examined him once
more.

The Horlyn dropped the straw and carefully
cut the ropes. While the second Horlyn appeared from the shadows
under the tree, the first one slipped two legs under Sajitar to
lift his limp body and carry him away.

Rayenne bit her lips to not scream that the
beast should leave Sajitar to her. She watched with tears in her
eyes as the Horlyn marched across the clearing to disappear in the
wood.

The second one stood up and slowly
followed.

Rayenne was down from the branch in a few
seconds, threw the saddlebags on the ground and rushed through the
wood, hoping to find a detour to follow the Horlyns without being
caught. Her heart hammered against her ribs.

Suddenly the second insectoid blocked her
way. She had not even seen it come! Flitting in different shades of
purple, the Horlyn spread its legs wide, watching the woman in
front of him noiselessly.

“
I just want to be with him,” Rayenne
explained. When she sat one foot before the other, the Horlyn
lifted its first pair of legs. Up close, the Horlyn was tall as a
house and strong as any giant she had ever imagined. It could crush
her with those long, hard legs effortlessly. Its size alone
intimidated her until she stumbled back and sat on her butt, close
to tears. “I won’t do any harm! Just tell me where you’re taking
him!”

The Horlyn stood, and when she retreated,
lowered his legs again. Yet it eyed her and waited until the first
one had reached a safe distance. Then, upon an unheard command, it
turned and followed the other deeper into the wood. Its thumping
steps ebbed through the forest’s ground. A moment later it had
disappeared.

Rayenne slumped on the ground, tears rolling
down her cheeks. She did not know how to find and save him and
that, she knew, was the most miserable twist in this wild
journey.

Chapter
Seven

With closed eyes Rayenne sat in
the semi-darkness and tried to cope with the situation. She was
alone, her partner hurt and gone, maybe to be healed, maybe to end
up in a cooking pot with Horlyns sitting around licking their legs
and claws anticipating some exquisite fodder. Maybe all the stories
were true and the Horlyns had found out that men made them stronger
and bigger
—just like men killed Larolydis to ground their bones and
use the potion to enhance their strength in both physical and
psychological ways.

She clambered to her feet,
undecided what to do. She remembered the Horlyn had dropped the
bullet, so she stepped out from the shadows to search the clearing.
The spot was easy to find, marked with four stones that still held
the rest of the rope. She knelt to search the grass-covered ground
carefully with her hands. She realized that there was little blood
and wondered how the Horlyn had done that. Again, the miserable
thought of the eating habits of Horlyns came unbidden to her
mind.
They
like their prey fresh and with a lot of blood. Stop it, Ray, or
you’ll lose it!

Her hand came
on something slimy and cold. She shied away, but her fingers were
already covered with the substance. It was the stuff the Horlyn had
used to cover Sajitar’s wound. Unable to get rid of it at once, she
searched on until her fingers touched the bullet. She held it
before her eyes. Though covered with dried blood she knew it was
the same kind she had found in her jacket, a transmitter to whoever
listened and wanted to find Sajitar. She rolled it her hand,
pondering. Two small animals, no larger than the Dikis they had
seen earlier, entered the clearing, nibbling on the fresh grass and
leaves sprouting from a young bush.

Rayenne pursed
her lips. The substance was like glue. She wrapped the bullet in it
and waited as still as she could for the next animal to get close
enough.

It was a long
wait. She felt terribly exposed, not knowing if predators roamed
the area when daylight was gone. Finally, more hearing than seeing
the animal, she threw herself forward and patted the bullet to the
animal’s black fur. It stuck, the animal grunted and when it turned
to bite, Ray had already pulled her hand back.

The animal fled
the clearing and Rayenne smeared the rest of the glue in the grass.
Quickly, she ran back to the cover of the wood. With the help of
her small light, she found the tree and the saddlebags again. To
her surprise the B-horses were close by. She pitched her tent, too
weary to care for more than a gulp of water. While she unpacked her
sleeping bag she heard the low sound of a Flying Cordell. Attracted
against her will, she crawled back toward the clearing and checked
the sky with her fieldglass. It was a small version, a drone that
could fly for ten standard hours. It hovered above tree height,
flew circles and moved on westward.

Relieved that
her diversion had worked, she crept into her sleeping bag and
closed her eyes. She was tired, but sleep did not come. She should
have been glad that she had escaped the Horlyn, though her attempt
to follow Sajitar had been stupid. She could call herself lucky to
be alive, yet Sajitar’s unknown fate caused her a restless
sleep.

In the morning, Rayenne folded
Sajitar’s clothes neatly, as if he would come and claim them in an
hour and banter with her over crinkles. She tried to subdue the
pain of losing her companion by stoically hoping he was still alive
and that she would not think of his death until she saw his dead
body.
Which
is a rather stupid approach, since the Horlyns might have gulped
him down in suitable eating bites.

Ray, stop it. Right
now!

That first
night at the bar—it seemed the encounter had taken place a moon
phase ago—she had asked Felberi to stay behind and only interfere
if Sajitar tried to escape. The captain had been grumpy, being
displeased with her methods, but had accepted. And then she had
thrown all her charm and female attraction into meeting Sajitar
Haju. She had seen him in pictures taken at the spaceport, but his
appearance in person had been much better. His hair had been cut,
the beard gone and the shirt and tight pants had emphasized his
muscled built. Talking with him had been fun and she had lost
herself in his dark brown eyes. Dancing had made her laugh and
enjoy the evening. She had kissed him, and he had kissed her back,
giving her a fuzzy feeling of being wanted and loved on the
spot.

In the end, he
had been so drunk, she had easily guided him out of the bar and
into their room, and even that had been entertaining in a way she
had not experienced in a long time.

The handcuff
had not been her idea, but Felberi had insisted, stating that no
one knew how fast he would sleep it off. She agreed that his wild
look in the morning had been worth the extra effort.

It came to her
mind that if she had undressed him completely that night, she would
have already known of his connection to Sanjongy. Her approach
would have been different then.

I was
discreet, like a squeamish girl!

She saddled the
B-horses and took them by the reins to follow the track the Horlyns
had left. The ground was dry and the beasts so heavy they had left
a trace a child could find. However, while she walked mile over
mile she had no clue what she would do once she found the Horlyns
and maybe more of their kind.

If her father were here, he would tell her to
stand her ground and enjoy the irony. If her brother were here he
would tell her to stamp on the ground and shake every tree to fight
gleefully whatever fell to her feet.

Rayenne sighed.

If she survived this adventure,
she would tell her family how she had mastered Belthraine’s most
dangerous woods to bring a criminal to court.
Wasn’t that true devotion to her
job?
Her
father would grunt something unintelligible and her brothers would
hang on her words to hear more details about what kinds of animals
there were to hunt and catch.

I’ve never longed so much to meet them
again.

There was still a chance to save
Sajitar
, and
from experience she knew that chances came when you searched them.
If she did not find and rescue him, she could tell the judge that
the Horlyn Transport Service might be late, but trustworthy. She
could just not guarantee that the witness would appear in one
piece.

A bitter laugh welled up. She wondered if she
would make it out of Emerald Green alone. There was no sense in
trying to search for Sajitar week after week. There would be the
time to turn around and head back to Belson Park.

She dreaded that decision.

A movement straight ahead caught her
attention. She had her gun out and at the ready in one fluent
motion. Leaving the B-horses behind, she stalked closer, carefully
watching her step to avoid any noise. Something scraped over bark.
She changed aim, getting closer slowly. Irrationally, she was
unafraid of whatever waited for her. If the Horlyns were the
largest predators around, there was a slight chance that other
predators were by far more harmless.