Chương 62: Too Dirty to Come Back

The sky did not make things simpler. It only made them larger. In Rhel-Fosse, every danger had a close shape: a tunnel, a voice, a value in the dark, a filament in a wall, a mouth behind a crack. Outside, danger had a horizon. Zayn moved between two lines of rock, bent under the wind, one hand against the wall to take weight off his leg. His makeshift splint creaked with every step. Two badly cut planks, dirty cloth, rope stolen from a dead Ash soldier. Not enough to walk well.

Enough to keep his ankle from becoming a completely separate problem from the rest of him. He looked like a survivor. No. Even that word was too clean. A survivor was someone you imagined covered in dust, shaking, but still recognizable once washed. Zayn no longer knew if he would still fit that category. His clothes were torn, stiff with blood, sweat, and black dust. His skin carried cuts in too many places for him to sort them all. His cheeks had hollowed out. His lips were cracked.

His fingers sometimes trembled without warning, then closed as if they were still looking for a throat, a rock, a grip, something to hold so he would not fall. And his mouth... He ran his tongue across his teeth. The mark burned. He stopped at once. Not now. He did not want to give that gesture a shape. Not yet. He had understood that some habits are born first as accidents, then become chains once you let them name what they soothe. He did not need another chain. His satchel knocked against his hip.

Too heavy for what it carried. Not in weight. In meaning. Remains wrapped in cloth. Pieces taken from what he had swallowed, killed, used. Provisions that would have made a normal man vomit at the thought of carrying them. He no longer vomited at the thought. That was the problem. He stopped behind a scree slope and looked down. The patrol was still there. Three men. A tracking beast. A short banner tied to a spear. They were inspecting the foot of the cliff, where the exit from Rhel-Fosse opened between the rocks.

Their values were blurry from this distance. The animal, though, remained readable. 38 Dangerous enough to kill him if he approached badly. Not high enough to be impossible. That thought bothered him less than it should have. The Zayn from before would have thought: do not fight it. This one thought: not yet. A nuance. He pressed himself against the rock when the beast's muzzle lifted toward his direction. The animal pulled on its leash, growled, then scratched at the ground with its forepaws.

One of the soldiers spoke. The wind carried away half the words. Zayn waited. The second man stepped closer, close enough for the voice to carry between the rocks.

"... smell's too strong. Not just a simple survivor." Zayn lowered his eyes to his sleeve. Yes. A charming summary. The man with the banner spat on the ground.

"Commander's orders: observation only. No engagement without direct validation." The second soldier gave a short laugh.

"The commander. Of course." The tone was not loyal. Zayn froze. The first man tugged on the beast's leash.

"And Ash-Breach?" Silence. The answer came lower.

"Not reported yet."

"Not yet?"

"You want to explain to Ash-Breach that we let a contaminated fifth summoned hero walk out of Rhel-Fosse after sixteen days underground?" Sixteen. The number hit harder than expected. Zayn stayed still. Sixteen days. He had not known. In the mine, time had rotted like everything else. He had counted sleeps, pains, impossible bites, drops of water, rules written on stone. Not days. Sixteen. More than two weeks. He put a hand against his stomach. That perhaps explained the thinness. The weakness.

The way his head sometimes floated when he stood too quickly. The way his body had stopped being an ally and become a debt. And yet he was here. Outside. One of the soldiers spoke again:"If he really lasted that long, then he's not just a summoned hero anymore." Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. The banner bearer answered:"Exactly. If he's visible, the orders change. Capture if possible. Kill if he resists. And if he shows mutation..." He did not finish.

There was no need. Zayn smiled faintly behind his rock. Immediate bleeding. The phrase traveled well. Even off the plate. The second soldier said:"The heroes are going to ask questions."

"The heroes don't command the Marches."

"The one with the spear might not like hearing that."

"Then he'll learn." Zayn felt something lock shut inside him. Not bright anger. A cold bolt. Elias could learn what he wanted. Lena too. Mira too. But at the end of the roads, there would always be men like these, with orders, seals, and clean words for deciding where to put a blade in an inconvenient body. He looked at his own hand. A tremor passed through his fingers. He thought about activating Flesh Assimilation. Just for a moment. Plates over the skin. Short claws. A surge of violence.

He might be able to spring an ambush on an isolated soldier. Steal food. A cloak. A map. Kill the hound? No. Bad. Too many risks. Not enough control. He had been outside for barely a few hours, and his first real choice could not be to throw himself at a patrol with the subtlety of a starving beast. He was not a beast. Not only. Not yet enough to allow himself stupidity. The tracking beast suddenly pulled harder. It had found a trace. Not his body. His blood, maybe. The soldier holding the leash cursed.

"It's picking up uphill." The banner bearer looked at the slope.

"Impossible. With a leg like that?" Zayn looked at his splint. So they had seen it. Or guessed it. The third soldier muttered:"If he got out of Rhel-Fosse alive with a dead leg, I'm not going to bet on what's possible." Good. At least one intelligent man. A shame he was on the wrong end of the leash. The banner bearer gave an order.

"We mark the signal and follow at a distance. No contact. If he falls, we secure. If he runs east, we let the demonic posts take him. If he goes west..." He hesitated.

"Then we alert the inner roads." Zayn understood. West was not a direction. It was an entire problem. Between him and the beastmen's lands lay the human kingdom. Not a line to cross. A continent to go around. Roads, villages, fortresses, relays, patrols, rivers, people who would ask questions of a gaunt, injured man who reeked of demonic flesh. He would have to pass through the margins. Avoid official roads. Go down perhaps through less watched lands. Climb again later.

Cross ravaged zones, border woods, valleys where human maps became less certain. Long. Very long. He almost laughed inwardly. Even flight had a luxury geography. The tracking beast barked. This time, closer. Zayn backed away. Slowly. A pebble slipped under his boot. He froze. Below, the soldier with the leash looked up. The beast jerked forward.

"There, up there!" Damn. Zayn did not run. Impossible. He backed into the fissure, using both hands, then slipped behind a curtain of dry brush. His leg screamed. His side reopened. He clenched his teeth so hard the mark on his tongue scraped against a molar. Burn. Not now. He kept going. Behind him, the soldiers were already climbing. Not fast. The slope was bad. The beast pulled too hard. Men in light armor were not made for scrambling over this kind of rock. Neither was he. But he had no choice.

He reached a small ledge half hidden by a sheet of shale. Behind it, a secondary crack descended into a narrower ravine. A bad passage. Unstable. Too tight in places. Perfect. He slipped into it, pulled his satchel against himself, then took a second to look at the stone around the entrance. Too clean. They would see he had passed. He rummaged in his satchel and took out a piece of wrapped flesh. The decision was immediate. Almost too immediate.

He tore off a tiny fragment, not to eat, but to rub it against a sharp stone at the entrance of the passage. The acrid smell spread at once. Zayn grimaced. His stomach responded despite him. He ignored the reaction. Then he activated Flesh Assimilation on two fingers. Short. Painful. Imperfect claws pushed out just enough to scratch a false trail into the rock, higher up, more visible, aimed toward another slope. After three seconds, the transformation broke. His fingers bled. He hissed between his teeth.

But the lure was there. Demonic scent. Claw marks. False direction. The beast might follow it. Or might understand better than the men. Animals sometimes had that arrogance. Zayn disappeared deeper into the crack. The passage slanted downward, narrow enough that he had to move sideways. Every time the splint scraped stone, he wanted to rip it off and throw his leg away with it for the sake of consistency. Behind him, voices.

"She's taking it this way!" Then the tracking hound growled. A soldier shouted:"Wait—" A light rockfall cut off the rest. Zayn kept going without looking back. No screaming. So they were not dead. A pity. No. Not a pity. Useless. He had to ration hatred like everything else. The crack opened lower down into a dry ravine. The ground there was covered in gray dust, dead branches, and flat stones. Bad for tracks. Very bad. Zayn stopped, looked around, then walked in the rocky bed rather than on the dirt. Slowly.

Every step was a negotiation. At the end of the ravine he found a hollow bush and slipped into it to catch his breath. The patrol was no longer following him directly. Not yet. He took out the waterskin. Almost empty. He took a swallow. Then regretted the size of the swallow at once.

"Idiot," he muttered. His voice shook. He wanted to hit something. Instead, he took out the Ash plate and looked at it. The bent metal reflected a piece of his face. Not enough to see the mark on his tongue. Enough to see his eyes. Sunken. Ringed. Too bright. A low laugh escaped him. He barely recognized himself. Which was practical. The others might have the same problem. He put the plate away. Then he heard other voices farther off. Not those of the soldiers pursuing him. Others.

He slipped out of the bush and climbed a few meters up the ravine wall to look. A secondary road cut through the lower hills. Not a great military road. A neglected or little-used supply path, bordered by old signal posts. A small group was moving along it: two carts, four soldiers, maybe three civilians, and a thin mule. Weak to moderate values. Humans. Possible food. Possible clothes. Possible information. Zayn watched for a long time. The first reflex was simple: take. Not everything. Not head-on. But something.

A sack of grain. A waterskin. A cloak. A knife. A map. He could wait for night. Move closer. Frighten the mule. Create a diversion. Isolate one guard. Perhaps kill the weakest if necessary. The thought was complete before he had even finished looking. He felt how easily it had formed. It should have stopped him. It interested him. He studied the group. One of the civilians was an old woman. Another was a boy of fifteen or so. The third had a bandaged leg. Refugees, perhaps. Minor traders.

Survivors from some displaced hamlet. The cart bore a mark: a grain circle crossed by a road line. Civilian supply under escort. Not Ashes. Not Clergy. Not College. Just humans. Zayn stayed still. His stomach tightened. The satchel against his hip still weighed on him. He needed food. The carts had it. He needed water. They almost certainly had it. He needed clothing. A dead man always provided it. He put a hand on his short blade. Then the old woman raised her eyes toward the ravine. Not toward him. Farther off.

She said something to the boy. The boy laughed. A short laugh. Ordinary. The sound crossed the distance. Zayn had not heard an ordinary laugh in a long time. Not his. Not Jonah's. Not the imitations. Not the broken bursts from the mine. A normal laugh. With no visible trap attached to it. His hand stayed on the blade. For a long time. Then he removed it. Not out of kindness. He told himself that at once. Not out of kindness. Too many witnesses. Too many risks. Too soon. The soldiers higher up might still follow.

An attack would create an alert, a description, a direction. He did not have enough strength to deal with the consequences. A strategic reason. Correct. Complete. Almost enough to hide the fact that another part of him had simply recoiled from that laugh. He hated that part. A little. Then he moved away from the ravine. Without attacking. Not today. The road west would be long. He would have other chances to steal, kill, lie, choose more filthily. No need to begin with a refugee cart on the first day.

The sentence should have reassured him. It did not. Because it contained a no need. Not a never. He walked until evening. Or until the sky started closing over. The hills grew colder. The gray earth took on a blue cast. In the far east, the demonic lands remained visible, like a dark stain in the world. To the west, the human ridges stretched in successive layers, too vast, too watched. Zayn found shelter beneath a slanted slab, barely large enough to crawl into. He reinforced the entrance with branches.

Set two stones as alarms. Kept the short blade under his hand. Tied the satchel against his stomach so he would not lose it in his sleep. Then he took out a piece of black ration. Looked at it. His stomach objected in advance. Then he took out the flesh. The mark on his tongue burned. He stayed between the two. Human. Monstrous. A bad choice against a worse choice. He laughed weakly.

"Tonight's menu: die slowly or hate myself efficiently." In the end, he ate a fragment of ration. Very small. He kept it down. No immediate vomiting. A victory. He put the flesh away. Not out of disgust. Out of reserve. The word returned. Provisions. He closed his eyes. The wind passed between the stones. In the dark under the slab, he saw again the patrol. The orders. The carts. The boy's laugh. The road west. The demonic lands behind him. He could not go back. He could not go east.

He could not cross the human kingdom as a traveler. He would have to become a rumor between the roads. A scent the hounds lost. A shadow in the ravines. A man too weak to fight a patrol, but foul enough to survive between them. His fingers closed around the blade. The mark on his tongue pulsed softly. Zayn did not really sleep. But for the first time since Rhel-Fosse, he spent the night under an open sky. And even that felt like a threat.