We Don't Have Time

It chased them.

They ran.

Whether or not they would be able to escape it was never really a question.

They couldn’t.

When you are crashing through the woods late at night, barely able to see, barely aware of your surroundings, and barely able to care, everything around you becomes part of the predator on your heels.

Every snapped twig becomes the sound of pursuit, even when you know you made the sound yourself. The rustling of dry leaves at your feet becomes the most terrifying background noise imaginable. It was entirely likely that they would never be able to appreciate fall weather and a well-raked lawn ever again.

That’s what kept running through Milbank’s mind as he and his prisoner, Liri, ran through Fendrake Forest that night. At least, she was supposed to be his prisoner. Now that they were being hunted together by that thing back there, Milbank was having a hard time seeing the small girl as being under his control.

A part of his mind wanted to trip her, maybe mangle her ankle somehow, and hope that their pursuer would be happy with the smaller meal. Milbank was sure she was older than he’d been led to believe when he took the kidnapping job. Not only was she sharp-tongued and quick-witted, but the soft violet color of her eyes said there was something Elfish in her blood.

The thought of the pile of gold coins he had been promised for her delivery kept him from being too quick to take that option, however.

“A little, pale wisp of a girl for enough coin to buy back your boat from the Regency and still sail out of here back to Southern Colonies,” his contact had promised.

The idea of reclaiming the Pridesong and getting out of Manchech appealed to Milbank so much that he hadn’t bothered to correct the old scallywag about her being a ship, not a boat, or that the Southern Colonies had claimed independence and had been called New Mordia for nearly fifty years.

Tearing through the woods was a far cry from crewing a ship on the open sea, however, and Milbank had never seen well in the dark. That was one more sign that his prisoner might be more than human; the pitch black forest offered her no trouble as she dodged tree branches and brambles.

Yet she seemed as hesitant to leave him behind as he was to sacrifice her for a clean getaway. Once, he had stumbled on a root, and Liri had even taken the time to make sure her kidnapper reclaimed his footing before peering into the shadows behind them and urging him on in a panic.

Could she have an ulterior motive?

Milbank dismissed that idea immediately. The girl had no idea he would be ambushing the merchant caravan carrying her through the forest north of Manchech. She couldn’t have been prepared for him to kidnap her, let alone make any sort of plan to somehow use that to her advantage. On top of that, Milbank was not an easy man to trick.

Besides, they had spent most of their time together crashing through the dark being chased by whatever gods-cursed thing they had stumbled on out there.

Liri finally stumbled and fell to her knees. With her wrists still bound, she had no way of properly breaking her fall. Five years as a privateer and eight as a ship for hire told Milbank to keep running. There would be other jobs, other scores, to get the Pridesong out of the Regency’s custody.

But she had helped him.

She had warned him that his campsite was close to the beast’s den. She had kicked dirt in its eyes to allow them a head start.

She had helped him off the ground when he stumbled on the root.

And she had done all of that with her hands tied while he had promised to sell her off like he was entitled to do so.

“Damnit!”

He nearly slipped on the thick forest undergrowth and he turned back to the fallen girl. She wasn’t hurt as far as he could tell, but she was clearly out of breath. He could hear her gasping for air and knew every breath burned with effort. Her ribs probably screamed.

Having paused, Milbank started to feel fatigued as well. They couldn’t keep outrunning this thing, but they had no other choice. They had easily outpaced it thus far by choosing denser patches of the forest it had a harder time getting through, but he doubted the thing was even close to tired. Milbank had never known predators that couldn’t go the extra mile when provoked.

Not that he knew a ton about forest monsters. He preferred the ocean breeze, even if it was sometimes disrupted by the odd sea troll, hag, or ravenous fish monster.

He had been on land almost a year and this was the first time he had even left the city.

“Get up, kid,” he whispered, “that big ‘un is going to start catching up. I promised to get you out of here alive.”

“Oh yes *gasp* you are so *cough* concerned for my welfare.”

She whipped her head around to glare at him. He could barely see her in the fragments of moonlight peeking through the canopy, but he thought a look crossed her face like she regretted the harsh tone.

He reached down and grabbed her by the elbow to pull her to her feet. She squirmed out of his grasp and rolled through the leaves away from him. She came to a stop lying on her back. The move had been so sudden, Milbank stumbled backwards and landed on his rear.

“I can’t keep running,” she managed to say before she coughed again.

“So what? You rather be monster chow?”

Something crashed in the darkness. It was probably a tree. The monster was gaining on them.

Liri’s response was to just thrust her bound hands up into the air and wait. Milbank dusted himself off and went to her. He grabbed her wrist and started to pull her up, but she again twisted out of his grip.

“Stop grabbing me, pirate, and untie me.”

“I have too much riding on delivering you. I’m not letting you go.”

“Look, I swear on my family name that I will go with you, but I need my hands, so untie me.”

She thrust her arms back up.

The sarcasm dripped from his voice when he said, “Oh yeah, sure, and what family name is that?”

He prepared to make another grab at her wrist when they heard the monster call out. The sound was part roar and part shriek. It chilled his bones.

“My family name is Valentine.”

Milbank didn’t have to reconsider as he pulled out his dagger and cut her bonds. Everyone knew the name Valentine, and good guy, bad guy, or some guy in between, you knew there was no one more known for honesty than Allen Valentine. Somehow, he didn’t even consider that she would be lying. This time, she let him help her to her feet.

He turned to run, but instead she turned to face the sound of the monster that pursued them.

“Are you daft, kid?”

“I told you. I can’t keep running, nor can you. We have been running deeper into Fendrake, not out of it. Even if we stay ahead of it, we will be running into something else. And I assure you, it isn’t even winded yet, just angry.”

“I don’t get paid and get my ship back if we stay here and become–”

“Monster chow, I know.”

Liri knelt on the ground. When she ran her open palms over the leaves around her, Milbank thought he felt a breeze, but that would be nonsense.

The monster roared again. It was much closer. He still couldn’t see it, but he could follow her gaze into the darkness and feel it getting closer.

She took a deep breath and bowed her head. The forest seemed to go still.

“We don’t have time for this, kid.”

Liri didn’t move. Something in the darkness did.

Milbank took a step back and again thought about running. Almost on some kind of reflex, he took two steps forward so he was standing directly behind her.

“We don’t have time for this,” he repeated.

She still didn’t move. The ground trembled as the monster roared again. He knew then it had spotted them. Did everything see in the dark but him?

“Kid…”

“I am making time.”

Despite the crashing sounds, she remained calm and focused. No, not entirely calm, Milbank noted. She trembled ever so slightly. Suddenly, she wasn’t his meal ticket anymore. She was a little girl sitting in the woods with a monster charging at her. Once he saw her that way, it all changed.

He drew his sword and quietly cursed the gods for making him enough of a good guy to do stupid things.

Even in the darkness, he saw when the monster charged closer. Its huge, fur covered body might not be clearly visible, but the stark white feathers that surrounded its head gleamed as it crossed a stray moonbeam. He watched it snap a branch in half with its beak right before it roared again.

Milbank didn’t have time to move by the time it towered over them.

The leaf covered ground sprung to life as winds crashed in on them from all sides. He felt Liri grab his leg to keep from being swept away with all the dry leaves now swirled the monster and buffeted it furiously. He tried to find an opening to stab at it through the dervish, but he couldn’t see.

Liri must have seen his hesitation. She held up one hand, palm outstretched at the thing that was both grizzly bear and feathered raptor. Something like fire sprang to life on the monster’s hide. It was the same violet color as Liri’s eyes and it seemed to ignore both the whirling wind and the tornado of tinder. Instead it coursed over the thing, highlighting its silhouette in the darkness.

Milbank couldn’t see much of anything else, but he could see the monster as it stumbled and tried to bat away the barrage of dead leaves. He lunged forward, driving his sword into the chaos. He connected and barely ducked under the claw that blindly swept his way in response. He lunged again, and again. Each time he managed to hit his mark, but the monster still stood.

The winds died down suddenly. Milbank could see the exhaustion on Liri’s face.

He lunged a fourth time. The monster roared and finally knocked the sword from Milbank’s hand as it flailed its counterattack. Milbank dropped to the ground and crawled after where the sword had gone. He spun back around, still sitting in the dirt, prepared to see the thing as about to eat one or both of them.

It ate neither.

Milbank watched as it stumbled away and dropped back to standing on four paws. It almost fell over from the weakness in one limb where it had been stabbed. Milbank got to his feet and was relieved to see Liri was alive and unharmed.

The monster made a groaning sound that was among the most pitiful noises Milbank had ever heard, then it turned away from them and started limping off into the forest. It was still surrounded by tiny purple flames, however, and that meant he could follow it.

Liri reached up and put her tiny hand on his when he started to walk past her.

“No,” she said, “let it go. We’ve done enough.”

“We? To that thing?”

Liri didn’t respond. Her eyes fluttered closed and she sank the rest of the way to the forest floor. In the distance, the flames vanished and so did the monster.

“Oh, kid…”

Milbank checked on Liri. She was breathing, but now slept from pure exhaustion alone.

He put away his sword and picked up his prisoner.

“Well, guess Liri Valentine is a girl of her word.”

He cradled her in his arms as he picked his way into the darkness in search of the road to Manchech. He had a bounty to collect. Only now, he felt incredibly guilty about it.

By the time she awoke, they were sitting along a stream under the stone bridge near Manchech’s north gate. It was mid-morning and she was again bound at the wrists. Milbank felt guilty about that, too.

Liri didn’t say a word. She did her best to pull herself into a sitting position, nodded solemnly at her kidnapper, and just waited.

If his contact came through, they wouldn’t be waiting long, Milbank thought to himself. The customer should be here with a mountain of gold any minute.

Milbank sat and watched the water bubble past his boots and tried to focus on all the things we would need to do in order to get the Pridesong ready to sail home.

He was startled out of his thoughts when something small and feathered darted past his head. He looked up to see a small, disheveled looking barn owl fly under the bridge and out the other side. He looked at Liri.

“Hey, kid, those are normally night birds, right? What’s it doing making fly-bys at this hour?”

Liri just shrugged.

A man in heavy wine-colored wizard robes stepped into the view under the other side of the bridge.

“He was making sure you were here, as arranged.”

Milbank jumped to his feet. If he were to judge by the quality of those robes, and by the fine gold inlay and crystal topper on the staff he carried, then this wizard definitely had the money to make good on his promised payment.

Aside from the finery, there was nothing remarkable about the wizard’s appearance. Indeed, without the fancy robes and staff, he would have just blended into the crowd of human workers in the city streets nearby. The owl came back into view and settled on the crystal at the top of the wizard’s staff.

Milbank expected to see Liri looking terrified, or angry. Instead, when he went to help her to her feet, he saw her squinting at the wizard suspiciously. It was almost as if she might know him and was trying to remember from where.

“Don’t worry, child,” the wizard said after making the same observation, “I was a friend of your father.”

Liri’s violet eyes grew wide in panic. Milbank barely had her on her feet before she ran behind him and made herself as small as possible against his back.

“Ah, children,” the wizard said with a chuckle.

From his robes, he produced two large sacks that were practically bursting with coins.

“All yours, young man, for a job well done.”

Milbank felt a lump in his throat. Suddenly, everything felt wrong. In the distance, he heard thunder rumble from a storm he had not yet seen clouds for.

“Please, don’t,” Liri whispered behind him.

“Why?”

“Because he’s no friend to anyone. That’s the Prince of the North.”

Now it was Milbank’s eyes that went wide. Even in sea lanes, he had heard of the North’s most evil wizard. Suddenly, the deal didn’t seem like the great bargain it had originally seemed.

“Run!”

Milbank charged the wizard, hoping to tackle him before he was turned to embers. Liri turned to flee, quickly slipping the bonds which Milbank had tied more loosely, just in case.

The wizard sighed as though he were bored.

“Oh, we don’t have time for this.”

He tossed the bags of coins on the edge of the stream between him and the charging kidnapper. Both bags burst open and erupted to small ropes that immediately coiled around Milbank and pulled him to the ground.

Liri tried to pick her way up toward the road running over the bridge, but a flutter of small wings put the owl in her face. She fell back and nearly smashed her face against a rock. The only thing that stopped her was a sharp word from the wizard. Liri now hovered in the air just inches about the water. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t move.

“All this when I have gone out of my way to help you,” the wizard smirked.

“For your own gain, I’m sure,” she replied.

“Is there any better kind?”

He stepped over the slithering mass of ropes that contained Milbank as the owl returned to his perch on the wizard’s staff. When he reached Liri, the wizard lifted her up as though she weighed nothing. Helpless in his grasp, she said nothing.

“Shall we?” the wizard said to the owl, who flapped its wings in enthusiastic reply.

In a flash of light, they were gone. Smothered by enchanted rope, Milbank had no choice but to lay there and just wait for his time to be up.