The duelist 2, p.18
The Duelist 2, page 18
“That sounded like--” I started to say just as I saw the barn lean disastrously to the left like a Jenga tower ready to collapse at any moment, and the familiar scream pierced the air again.
Zoie and I turned to each other at the same time, and with dawning horror, we both recognized who the scream belonged to.
Rylan.
Chapter 12
“Rylan?” Zoie whispered in a fearful voice, and we continued to stare at each other in shocked dread for a solid beat before we both snapped out of our terror and scrambled down the terrace ladder.
Zoie and I hit the inner courtyard and flew through the gate just as Mel and Bodin jogged out of the carriage house wearing similar expressions of concern. They were holding dual Omite rock-lanterns, which I was grateful for due to the fact the moon was finally waning and the light was only half as powerful as it normally was.
The raccoon brothers lit the way over the rocky downward slope, and I couldn’t help but wish my feet could grow wings like Hermes from Greek mythology so I could transport myself to the barn faster.
Especially when I was just close enough to hear the heart-wrenching sobs coming from inside the half-toppled structure.
“Rylan!” I hollered as all four of us raced to open the doors.
“A-Alex!” he cried back, and I nearly went insane with the need to get to him as soon as possible.
Because the structure was leaning worse than before, it made it difficult to pry the rickety doors apart as their awkward angle dug them into the dirt. The rusty hinges gave a creaking wail, and dust rained down as the entire structure shook as if it was a pile of matchsticks just waiting for one strong gust of wind to bring it down.
“Mercedes, this thing’s going to fall apart any second now,” Mel graveled out in his rough voice.
Distressed grunting and crashing noises could be heard just on the other side of the door, and I remembered the poracks, Ben and Jerry, were also inside.
“Bodin, Mel,” I gritted out through clenched teeth as the four of us continued to struggle with the door. “The door jamb’s too warped. We need to break through. When we do, get the poracks, and I’ll try to get Rylan.”
“What do you want me to do?” Zoie asked as one of the wooden planks broke away from where we were all pulling on the door.
“Go around back,” I huffed and ignored the wooden slivers biting into my palms. “See if the back door will open in case we need to exit that way.”
The lithe cat-woman took off without anything further, and the rest of us made short work breaking through the doors.
When there was finally a gap big enough, I shouldered my way through and stumbled into the crooked barn dimly lit with more rock-lanterns hanging from the leaning support beams. Only a few were still standing after the hay-loft had apparently collapsed, and sitting in the middle of the spectacular wreck was none other than Rylan sobbing and holding his leg, which stuck out at a funny angle.
Something about this very scene sparked a niggle of recognition deep within my brain, but for now that was shoved to the back burner as the structure gave another groan, and I was reminded this place was about to fold like a house of cards.
In fact, the reason the barn was still somewhat standing was because of the wall Bodin and I reinforced earlier, but now instead of the structure leaning to the right, it was leaning all the way left as if the opposite wall just couldn’t make it another second, and the rotted hay-loft was the only thing that kept it together.
“Rylan!” I called out, and the boy only sobbed harder as he reached his hand out to me. I immediately ran and crouched next to his shivering form. “Hey, bud. What did you do to yourself, hm?”
“I’m s-sorry, Alex!” he wailed as his face screwed up into a rictus of pain, and my heart twisted in my chest. “Bodin told me the barn was off-limits, b-but I n-needed to--”
“Alex! There’s too much debris to get through the back door. Do you have Rylan?” Zoie’s urgent voice floated from the back of the barn, and I saw she was right. Most of the fallen hay-loft was in the way, which made it impossible to access the exit.
“I have him,” I assured her. “Wait for us outside, and stand clear of the barn!”
“Yes, husband,” my cat-wife replied.
I looked back over my shoulder at the raccoon brothers as I squeezed Rylan’s hand. “How are the poracks?”
“We just managed to calm them down!” Bodin called to us as he soothed Jerry’s flank. “You take the boy, and Mel and I will follow behind with the poracks.”
“Okay, you hear that, Ry?” I said to the weeping boy clinging to my tunic, and then I carefully picked him up.
He cried out and turned his face into my chest when his leg was jostled, and my heart drummed funnily again when I thought of how close he came to being crushed by the rotted loft. In fact, it was a miracle he wasn’t trapped underneath the rotting joists and moldy hay, and I held him just a bit closer and marveled at how fragile he seemed, almost like he weighed nothing.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Rylan murmured, and I could feel the dampness of his tears bleeding through my shirt.
“Shh, it’s alright, you’re going to be okay.” I eyed the creaking slanted ceiling as it continued to rain dust on us and kept my pace steady. There was something menacing about the collapsing barn, as if moving too fast would anger it, so just to be sure, I took it one sedate step at a time.
“M-my leg really hu-hurts,” Rylan hiccupped, and I experienced a fierce stab of protectiveness for the little ragamuffin who had somehow wormed his way into being a fond pain in my side.
“I’ve got you,” I soothed him, and I walked us out through the broken barn doors to where Zoie was waiting with one of the rock-lanterns.
Her eyebrows were pinched together, and she reached out to run a hand through Rylan’s wild hair as if she needed the physical confirmation he was okay.
I could relate.
“Heave!” came the sound of Mel’s voice as he tried to pull the second porack, Ben, out through the slanted doors that kept refusing to budge now that the structure was well on its way into the arms of gravity.
Since Ben was the bigger of the two beasts, the sides of his carapace scraped against the crooked door jamb and almost lodged him tight like a cork, but the combined efforts of the raccoon brothers had Ben popping out right as the whole barn folded and collapsed on itself like an ironing board.
Now that we were all safe, cattle-bugs included, the fear I’d felt since I first heard Rylan’s helpless scream finally dissipated and left me feeling hollow with relief. If he would have still been in there when the barn fell, he would most likely have been killed.
As the dust cleared somewhat, so did my previous haze of panic, and in place of my earlier shell-shock, a quick flash of anger suddenly flared through me. I clenched my jaw and carried the little brat over to a small stump so I could set him down and look him over for any more injuries.
“What were you thinking, coming here when Bodin told you not to?” I couldn’t help but reprimand the foolish boy as a continuous stream of tears poured silently down his pale cheeks.
“I-I left something in the hay-loft,” Rylan said as he hung his head and stared down at his knobby knees. “I wanted to get it before you tore down the barn.”
“What was so important you just had to risk your life for?” I demanded and tried not to raise the volume of my voice too much, but it was difficult because I recognized why I was reacting this way even though the feeling caught me off guard.
It was the slightly sickening lurch of relief that made me feel like I narrowly escaped almost falling into the Grand Canyon.
It was a dark and razor-sharp fear waiting to tear me apart with its claws the moment I let my mind even entertain the dangerous thought of ‘what if?’
Mainly, what if I had been too late?
“Well?” I barked, and the part of me not simmering in rage felt guilty when the dejected boy flinched at the tone of my harsh voice.
Rylan hung his sandy head even lower as he dug around in his pocket for something while I scowled down at him with my arms crossed over my chest much like a disapproving school teacher.
“I didn’t want this to get lost,” he mumbled as he held out a miniature wooden carving of a canterfly with a leather cord strung through it. “I wanted you to have something when you got back so…”
Rylan’s words dropped off as he held the carved pendant even higher in his trembling hand, but he kept his eyes averted.
That hurt expression, as if the kid fully expected rejection but held out his offering anyway like it was his very heart on a platter, was what caused the anger to slough off me like water, and I knelt back down to his level so I wasn’t towering over him.
“You got this for me?” I asked gently and took the carved figurine from his fingers.
“I made it myself,” he said and timidly met my eyes with his brown ones still shining with tears.
My eyebrows arched, and I looked back down at the canterfly so I could observe the details. Up close, I could tell the fine touches like the billowing mane, its spread wings, and six galloping legs frozen in mid-flight had been done by a skilled hand, and I couldn’t help being impressed.
It was really well-crafted, and the fact Rylan had put so much time and thought into this little gift caused my heart to turn over again in my chest as if the stupid organ was trying to make more room for itself in my ribcage.
“Hey,” I said and placed my hand on his head. “I’m sorry I yelled. I shouldn’t have done that. I just… didn’t like seeing you in danger.”
“I’m s-sorry!” he said again as more tears spilled over and traced silvery tracks down his dusty face.
I just couldn’t let him cry like his toys were being broken right in front of him, especially considering I might have contributed to some of those heartfelt tears, so I pulled him in by the back of his neck so he could cry into my shoulder while I hugged him.
“Rylan, bud, everything’s okay,” I tried to soothe him, even though I was flailing inside. I wasn’t really good with kids, but comforting the distraught stable boy didn’t feel as awkward as I figured it would be.
In fact, after realizing just how fond I was for the urchin while simultaneously experiencing the icy bolt of fear of what it would be like to suddenly lose him, the hug was kinda for my benefit, too.
Sneaky brat making me like him and stuff.
I grimaced as I wondered if I was hugging him properly, but when I glanced at Zoie over the top of Rylan’s shaggy head, the rest of my uncertainty faded at the expression on her face.
Her eyes sparkled, and she smiled at me as if I’d painted the sky itself. Then she nodded her head, placed her hand in the middle of her chest, and mouthed the words ‘I love you,’ and my blood sang in my veins.
“What be this?” a screech came from behind me, and I turned to see Madam Midgen hurrying down the slope from the manor. “Imagine me, finally ready to put my poor runners up for the day, and the old wonky bone in my bad wing sets to be a’tingling once more. Who be the hurt one?”
“Madam Midgen,” I said as Rylan peeked out from my shoulder. “I know you’re technically off duty, but do you think you can see one more patient?”
The stern bat-priestess wiggled her right arm so her attached leathery wing jiggled back and forth.
“Of course, or I’ll never be able to sleep otherwise. Broken leg?” She tsk’d when Rylan nodded shyly. “Come. Bring him to the second floor where the other one is. I will make it better.”
“Thanks, Madam,” I said. “We’ll be up in a moment.”
She nodded her frizzy russet head, and then she took off in a gust of flapping back to the manor.
“What would you like us to do with the poracks, sir?” Mel asked as he and his brother waited with Ben and Jerry. The ox-roaches seemed to be fine now and back to their lazy grazing.
“We can keep them in the courtyard until the barn gets fixed,” I said.
“But where will they do their business?” Rylan blinked up at me with his splotchy face.
“Yeah, it’s gonna get messy, but it’ll all be there waiting for you when your leg gets better,” I said with a grin and waited for him to process that.
I didn’t have to wait long, and the growing horror on his face was so priceless I wished I could have taken a picture.
“Aw, but there will be mountains of dung when I get back!” he whined.
“Yep,” I said as my shit-eating grin got wider. “That might make you think twice about not listening when someone tells you a place is off-limits.”
The kid’s eyes lowered in shame again, but to take the sting out of my words, I made a show of discarding the leather cord the carved canterfly was threaded through, and then I pulled my Duelist Stone out from around my neck.
“Hold this,” I said and plopped the Stone into his hands while I worked on untying the knot in the cord my Stone was on. It was difficult to hold my laughter in at the sight of his awe-struck expression as he reverently held the Stone like it was the Holy Grail or something.
When the cord was untied, I slipped the leather through the hole bored through the canterfly’s wing so Rylan’s pendant could rest next to the Stone. Then I retied the knot and put the whole thing over my head, and I was pleased with the way the wooden figurine tinkled against the Stone.
“It is very handsome work, Rylan. You should be proud.” Zoie finally stepped forward and put a hand on the stable-boy’s shoulder, which caused him to finally smile a genuine smile.
“Thank you,” he murmured, and he was unable to say anything more as his face flamed with a combination of pleasure, pride, and embarrassment.
“Now, let’s get that leg fixed, hm?” I carefully lifted Rylan back up and made the trek with Zoie up to the manor and to the second floor that was quickly becoming the manor’s infirmary.
“What is the problem this time?” Jenner grumbled as he turned down the bed in the small room so I could settle the stable-boy against the pillows.
“It’d be a broken leg, ooo!” The batty priestess shuddered and shook out her ‘wonky’ arm as she walked into the room carrying a small bowl of fragrant incense. “It is good you are still here because I will need you to hold the boy down.”
“Why?” I asked with growing dread as Rylan clenched my wrist in fear.
“Because I can tell I will need to aggressively set the bones, and I’m sorry, boy, but it will hurt,” Madam Midgen said and placed a thick leather strap between Rylan’s teeth. “Bite down. It helps.”
What came next was a horrifying fifteen seconds in which there was a sickening crack, the feeling of Rylan’s fingernails digging into my palm, and finally the split-second muffled scream the poor kid let out before he fainted dead away.
“Is he okay?” I asked as the kid’s head lolled to the side.
“He will be fine, now it is time for you all to go so I may help heal my patient,” the bat-woman said and made a shooing gesture at all of us.
As much as I cared for Rylan, it was a relief to be told to leave. Hearing him scream like that was…
“Alex.” Zoie’s cool water voice pulled me out of the static in my head. “He’s in good hands. You did well.”
“Huh?” I raised my head from where I was staring at my hands as they flexed. I felt a strange sort of powerlessness pass through me like a winter wind, and my head was suddenly buzzing with everything from the day.
Was it really only this afternoon when the demon sun came? That seemed like eons ago. And now Rylan getting injured on the heels of Horus almost dying made everything feel so surreal, and I suddenly had an existential moment of panic.
“Alex,” Zoie said again and cupped my face between her warm palms, and her voice sounded like it was emerging through water. She peered at me with her clear ocean eyes, and I blinked at her, startled to be back in the present. “Come with me, my love. I know what you need.”
“Okay,” I said numbly as I let her lead me by the hand until we entered the corridor on the lower floor where the armory was located, and I vaguely wondered why she was taking me there.
Instead of leading me through the double doors of the armory, however, Zoie turned right into a room I’d never been in before.
“Woah,” I said dully as I took in the large space. At first, it looked like a ballroom with its floor to ceiling windows, glowing chandeliers, and lacquered wooden floors, but on further inspection, the things scattered around definitely didn’t belong in a ballroom.
For one, there were empty crates and bales of hay scattered around the space, as well as wooden pillars wrapped with padded burlap like punching bags, a large lumpy-looking floor mat, and racks of weapons all against the back wall.
It was the weapons that clued me in on the purpose of the transformed space, and I turned to my wife as she stood by and silently watched me take everything in.
“What is all this?” I finally asked.
“I wanted to do something for you, but I am not the best at crafting with my hands like our Rylan is,” Zoie said with a nervous little grin. “So, I decided to get you something practical instead, and I thought this space wasn’t being used, so why not make it into a fighting room?”
“You built me my own gym?” I asked and looked around the space again and marveled at Zoie’s thoughtfulness.
“You told me sometimes you would go to places back in your world and train your hand-to-hand skills, and I wanted you to have a place where you could also do that here,” she said and bashfully lowered her eyes to the floor. “I know, at least for me, when I can’t feel anymore because I’ve felt too much, just training, practicing techniques, or even beating a sparring dummy to death helps me come back to myself.”
I gaped at my cat-wife as I was struck utterly speechless by her insight. It was like, with one glance, she saw right into the open book of my soul and recited something verbatim off its pages.
