Those Who Walk the Flame Road
Balsa stared at the blood on the blade of her spear, but she couldn’t identify who she’d just killed. She didn’t even have time to wipe the blood off her face before another enemy came at her from behind. Her body twisted instinctively to the right; she leveled her spear at the new attacker and felt it in her shoulder when the spear pierced him deeply in the side.
Another man tried to trip her when she was low. She leaped back and kicked him down, feeling his body under her feet as she sprang at the next man, and the next; there seemed to be no end to them.
Balsa’s vision dimmed around the edges. She couldn’t remember when she’d started fighting. She wasn’t injured yet, but she was exhausted; it was only a matter of time before one of her enemies broke her guard.
Damn it.
Balsa ran to the right, out of range of her closest attackers, and surveyed the battlefield. To the left was a high rock wall that was chipped in places and had a jagged upper edge. Farther right there was a ravine; the land sloped downward towards the river. The main road was that way, but the footing there was dangerous because of the uneven ground.
Jiguro must have observed the same things as Balsa; he was standing in the middle of the road, protecting the terrified caravan merchants from bandits. There was no good cover here. The rock wall was shaped too irregularly to climb or hide behind, and the ravine was an environmental hazard. Under ordinary circumstances, fighting out in the open was a terrible idea, but now, it was their best option.
Jiguro’s spear keened as he whirled, felling foe after foe, but there were still so many. Balsa counted ten still standing and holding their weapons.
Someone out there must really hate these merchants, Balsa thought. This attack was different from the ones she was used to. The bandits were numerous, well-armed, and at least a few of them were trained to fight. They also showed no interest in the caravan’s cargo. Their goal seemed to be to kill as many of the merchants as possible.
Hiring a force like this assail a caravan would have cost a fortune. Balsa felt grateful that she and Jiguro didn’t seem to be the direct targets of their malice--though Jiguro was certainly attracting attention at the moment.
That was because all the other caravan guards were dead or gone. Balsa and Jiguro were the only ones left. This caravan had only hired five guards for the journey. Obviously, that was nowhere near enough to repel and attack like this one.
Were we set up? Were the other guards in on it? Balsa couldn’t see any of their bodies. She re-entered the battle, dodging blades and jumping over blows as she raced toward Jiguro. One man swung wildly at her with his sword and made her bend over backward; she came back up with a stone in her fist and threw it as hard as she could at the swordsman’s forehead.
He went down, and the way to Jiguro was clear. Jiguro was on the road, which meant he was downhill toward the ravine. Balsa sprinted, being careful not to trip as the marshy ground slanted sharply down.
They had to escape. There were still too many bandits. If she and Jiguro stayed here much longer, they’d be killed, too.
Arrows flew at Balsa as she ran. The muddy ground became rocky and uneven. She was forced to slow down, which made her grit her teeth. Going too slow right now might prove fatal.
They should have stopped to camp earlier, in a safer place. If the caravan had done that, this wouldn’t have happened.
Balsa stopped moving close to where she’d retreated before, surrounded by shouts and enemies and flying arrows. Then she snapped herself out of her brief paralysis and kept running. She had to keep going. If she stopped again, she was dead.
Suddenly, a piercing pain shot through Balsa’s right leg, and it went out from under her. She landed on her back and rolled to her side. There was an arrow sticking out of her right thigh.
Gritting her teeth, Balsa broke the arrowhead--mercifully, it had gone through her leg without impacting bone. She bit her tongue so that she wouldn’t scream.
Dad, don’t look over here. Don’t focus on me. Don’t...
Jiguro would rush to protect her if he noticed that she was in trouble. She didn’t want his help. He shouldn’t abandon what was left of their employers for her sake. She ripped her clothes for a tourniquet and tied it tightly above her gushing leg wound and took a few deep breaths. Then she stumbled to her feet.
She’d lost her spear. Balsa had nothing but the broken arrow in her hand when the next bandit faced her with his weapon. She got in close before he could strike her and shoved the splintered arrow into his gut.
After that, Balsa was barehanded and injured on a battlefield. She froze again, not sure what to do...
Then her body took over. Sights, sounds, and smells reached her as if through a fog as she dodged opponents and searched the blood-soaked battlefield for a weapon. She found her spear again, but it was too hard for her to carry it and stand at the same time, so she crawled along the ground like a brown bear cub seeking its mother, tripping who she could and rolling to avoid blows.
Balsa’s breathing was too loud in her own ears. Her lungs felt like they were on fire, and there was still blood in her eyes from when it had sprayed at her earlier. The spear she was dragging along felt indescribably heavy.
A hand seized Balsa’s shoulder and spun her around. A bandit was about to skewer her with his own spear; she brought her weapon up with both arms and used it to protect her stomach. He was so strong that she lost her grip--
--and then another man came up behind her attacker, smacking him across the head with his spear. He was saying something, but Balsa couldn’t make out words. She had to look at his mouth to understand him.
“Balsa, it’s me!” Jiguro called out.
No one else was moving. She and Jiguro faced one another as she struggled to get her breathing under control.
Jiguro crouched down next to her. “It’s over,” he said. “It’s done.”
As the idea that she was finally safe sank in, Balsa’s vision went dark at the edges. Jiguro shook her shoulders. “Balsa, stay awake. You can’t pass out. Not yet. Pull yourself together!”
The shaking restored Balsa’s awareness, but it also hurt. She set her jaw and nodded.
Jiguro placed Balsa’s left arm around his neck and helped support her as they walked. The arrow wound in Balsa’s leg sent shooting pain through her entire body at every step.
Some of the bandits they passed were still alive, though none of them were in any shape to fight. Balsa and Jiguro kept walking downhill back to the road toward the ravine. That was where the caravan wagons were, but Balsa didn’t think Jiguro was trying to return to the caravan. These bandits probably had more allies, and when they learned what had happened here they’d send more men to steal the cargo and pick off survivors. If Jiguro and Balsa wanted to live, their best option was to take refuge in the deep forest on the other side of the ravine.
Jiguro and Balsa walked past the caravan wagons and made their way carefully to the riverbed at the bottom of the ravine. “We were set up,” Balsa said hoarsely. “Weren’t we?”
“Yeah.”
“Who betrayed us?” Balsa asked. “Do you know?” She assumed that one of the caravan guards--or several--had been in communication with the bandits. How else would they have known where to attack?
“I don’t,” Jiguro said. “The merchants fled across the river at the first sign of trouble. We can’t rule them out as suspects.”
Balsa looked confused. “But they already paid us half. Why would they try to kill us off now?”
Jiguro chuckled. “Easy enough to take back their advance payment after we’re dead,” he said.
“Cheapskates,” she said. “No amount of money’s worth a life.”
Jiguro didn’t say anything to that. Not for a while. When they passed under the shadow of the trees, he said, “If you can’t trade money for lives, you might want to look for a different line of work.”
For Balsa, there was no other way of life. Since she was six years old, her own life was constantly under threat from Kanbalese pursuers. She didn’t think that would ever change. And her own personal enemies weren’t after money--just her life. The only way to deal with that problem was to kill anyone who came after her.
Balsa wasn’t capable of that. Some bandits had nearly done her in. She needed to be better, stronger, faster...
Balsa lost consciousness while thinking about the mistakes she’d made during the battle. Killing to save herself felt like a contradiction, but she couldn’t figure out why, and she saw no other path for her own life.
***
The wind carried the scent of blood and the sound of singing voices into the forest. Balsa couldn’t tell if she was asleep or awake. The voices kept singing, but they weren’t soothing.
There was someone talking to Jiguro--a doctor. “I’m not hurt,” Jiguro said quietly. “This blood belongs to the people who attacked us. My daughter took an arrow in the leg. I don’t know how deep the wound is.”
The doctor probed the edges of Balsa’s wound, making her sit up with a start.
“It’s deep, but it’s not too bad. I’m not hurt otherwise.” Balsa said this, but neither Jiguro nor the doctor reacted. Was her voice that quiet? Balsa forced her eyes open and looked at the doctor.
It was a woman. Balsa hadn’t expected that. She looked into the woman’s deep brown eyes and felt her curiosity and concern. She was beautiful, with dark hair and pale skin. She held a length of silk in her hand that looked like a bandage: it was all wadded up.
“It’s dangerous for you two to be alone in the woods with this injury,” the doctor said primly. “But the nearest inn is two days’ journey. Hmm...”
The doctor turned and faced several other women standing a little ways behind her in the trees. Their clothing was bright and colorful, and they were carrying instruments like flutes and drums. Traveling musicians, maybe?
“We’ll stay here tonight, if that’s all right,” Jiguro said. “Would you prepare a tent for us? We’ll pay you for the trouble.”
Commotion among the musicians. “We can’t stop here. We won’t make our concert in Aharan tomorrow if we do.” They were all appealing to the doctor, who seemed to be their leader.
Jiguro listened to their complaints, then said, “Leader of the Sadan Taram, please don’t concern yourselves with us. Thank you for your consideration. Please be on your way.” Balsa learned later that Sadan Taram was the name of the group of musicians. Jiguro had met them before, long ago.
“But...”
Jiguro put up his hand so that the woman wouldn’t protest. “If you have a little time and resources to spare, I’ll pay you for some food and medicine.”
The woman narrowed her eyes, then nodded. “Of course we’ll give you food and medicine. There’s no need to pay us.”
Jiguro tried to pay anyway, and the woman’s face became stern. “Now, now,” she said. “We have a reputation to uphold, good sir. What would people say of us if we charged a man for medicine to tend to his sick daughter?”
The other women nodded; a few smiled.
Jiguro shrugged helplessly. “Well, then. I thank you ladies kindly for your compassion.”
More smiles; a few giggles. A manservant fetched supplies for Jiguro and Balsa while the women gathered firewood from the forest. They built a fire and boiled water for a medicinal tea to give to Balsa.
“Fetch more water,” the leader/doctor said. “This girl has lost a lot of blood. She needs more water if she’s going to feel better.”
Jiguro shook his head. “I’ll take care of that. You’ve done more than enough for us. Please be on your way.”
“But we--”
“--I’m fine,” Balsa said, cutting in before Jiguro could say anything. “I lost some blood, but I won’t die. I should be well enough to walk to the river myself by morning.”
The woman stared at Balsa for a while with her eyes wide and her head tilted, like she was trying to figure out what Balsa was thinking. She shrugged, then smiled. She gave orders for departure, and she and the other musicians packed their things in a wagon and headed for the road.
Before she left, the woman faced Balsa and Jiguro one last time with a bright smile. “The next time we meet, let’s share a full meal and drink together.”
Jiguro bowed his head deeply. “Yes. I’ll treat you and your musicians to whatever you would like in repayment of your kindness.”
Balsa tried to get up and bow, too, but her limbs felt as heavy as lead.
She woman waved to Balsa, bowed, and then followed her companions into the trees. The world around was much more still and quiet with them gone.
“I saw that you broke the arrowhead,” Jiguro said. “I have to pull out the shaft now.”
Balsa focused her attention on Jiguro. He examined her wound in the light of the fire with a critical expression. “The good news is that it missed the major blood vessels...”
Jiguro made a better tourniquet for Balsa’s leg with twine, tying it so tight that it hurt. He gave Balsa alcohol to drink in the hope that it might dull her senses to the pain. It was so strong that it burned the back of her throat as she swallowed it and kept burning as it went down, spreading heat to her entire body.
“We need something for you to bite,” Jiguro muttered.
Balsa’s eyes lit on the length of silk that the woman had left next to her bedroll. When it was all wadded up, it would be cleaner and softer than a stick.
Jiguro noticed the silk as well and put it carefully in her mouth. Then he poured all the remaining alcohol in his jug onto Balsa’s wound. Balsa writhed and groaned as the agony of disinfection warred with the sharp piercing pain of her injury.
It was difficult to remove the shaft at this stage because she’d broken off the arrowhead before, and her flesh had constricted around the wood. Jiguro tried to yank out what little of the shaft he could grab until sweat stood out on his forehead, but he couldn’t budge the splintering wood so much as an inch. He paused often to pour hot water with herbs in it onto her leg to keep the area clean, but Balsa barely noticed. Her perception shrank to include her pain and nothing else. She wept bitter tears more than once before Jiguro finally managed to ease the first piece of the shaft out, then the next, bit by slow bit.
When he was finally done, Jiguro bandaged the wound, and Balsa spat out the wad of silk in her mouth. “You’re a butcher.”
Jiguro snorted. “You’re welcome,” he said wearily. “Next time, don’t freeze in the middle of a battlefield and get yourself shot.”
So Jiguro had been watching her. He’d been watching her the whole time. She glanced down at her bandage, which was nearly soaked through, and closed her eyes. She really should have guessed that he’d been keeping an eye on her.
Jiguro set up nets in the trees around them like he was planning to catch birds, but Balsa thought he probably had a different purpose. They had to be alert to many threats here. Nets wouldn’t kill any enemies that stumbled on their camp, but they would slow them down.
He kept wandering around the camp further and further afield until Balsa couldn’t see him anymore. He often left her alone at camp to hunt or gather wood, so she didn’t worry at first, but when he was gone for hours, anxiety gnawed at her gut. She was hurt and still needed help. She couldn’t defend herself like this. Where had he gone?
Balsa slept fitfully. Every time she awoke, she scanned the trees around the camp looking for Jiguro, but he didn’t come back all night. The sun was high in the sky by the time he returned.
He was carrying water in a leather satchel that the musicians had left food in for them the night before. It was completely full of water, and Jiguro sat with her to help her drink it. The water tasted faintly of leather, but was so cool and refreshing that she gulped it down eagerly.
After she’d drunk her fill, Jiguro took up a clean rag and started washing the blood off of her face and hands.
“I can do that,” Balsa said irritably.
Jiguro kept cleaning her face as if he hadn’t heard her. She tried to take the rag, but she couldn’t grip it easily. She glared at Jiguro, showing her displeasure plainly.
She couldn’t tell what Jiguro was thinking. His expression was blank and his eyes were on her hands, not her face.
Balsa closed her eyes. She wanted to be better five minutes ago. She didn’t think either of them had the patience for a long convalescence.
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