Yvan walked over to Eliska. “Are you all right, young one?”

  She jerked away so she wouldn’t have to look at him or see him looking at her. “No!” she growled more harshly than she should have.

  “Come over here and sit down.” He raised his arm like he might want to put it around her, but he stopped himself. “We need to talk.”

  She didn’t want to talk to him or go anywhere with him, but what choice did she have?

  Her survival depended on these men. Their positions reversed in a matter of seconds. Now she was the one who wouldn’t last a minute without these men protecting her.

  He guided her to the river’s edge and sat down on a stack of bones. He waved at the pile next to him. “Sit down.”

  She sat down and stared into the water for lack of anything else to look at. She sure as hell couldn’t look at him.

  Out of nowhere, he rested his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “I know you aren’t used to this,” he murmured. “Just remember that you saved all of us many times before. We owe you our lives and that didn’t change when you lost your magic.”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you really knew how to survive in the Coil,” she choked. “You can’t afford to drag around a liability who will only jeopardize your men even more than they already are.”

  “You aren’t jeopardizing us,” Yvan murmured. “Something might happen where we would need you again. If Wesh is right about the Voyant coming after us—and if you’re right about Dark forces inhabiting this landscape—then the Darklings will come after us here, too.”

  “And I won’t be able to do anything!” Her voice spiked. “I’m as likely to get you all killed.”

  “No, young one,” he breathed. “The Darklings would shatter this landscape and we would fall into the Layers the way we did before. Then we would need you as much as ever. This is all just a moment in time—a brief moment that will pass as quickly as it came.”

  She gulped down the lump in her throat. She hated him for trying to make her feel better—and at the same time, she wanted to bury herself in his care and protection.

  Now she understood how Yann got to be the way he was. What would it be like—to be raised by someone like this?

  He squeezed her shoulder again. She stiffened every time he did it. She always avoided touching anyone.

  Now her heart and soul screamed for his touch—for any sign from him that he might care about her. She didn’t want him to stop—and yet she just couldn’t bring herself even to respond to it.

  He took his hand down immediately. “You can do more than you think you can if you only try. Standing off to one side and letting the men do everything will only make you more afraid and helpless.”

  “But I don’t know how to do anything—not without magic! Don’t you see? I would never survive out here.”

  “Then it’s time for you to start to learn. Try. That’s what I’m telling you. If you start to try, you’ll stop being afraid. It doesn’t matter what you do. It doesn’t even matter if you fail and make a mess of things, but you have to do something—not for us but for yourself. If you got stuck in this Island, you would need to learn, so you might as well start now. Come on. You can start by helping the men build the shelter.”

  He stood up and walked back to the rest of the Watchmen.

  The men worked steadily to gather as many of the largest bones as they could find. Some of what looked like Darkling bones were massive.

  Eliska stayed where she was staring into the water. She didn’t want to break out of this stasis of fear and helplessness.

  She definitely didn’t want to fail and make a mess of things—not in front of the Watchmen. That would be worse than doing nothing.

  Yvan’s words drove her to her feet. He might by some miracle care about her as much as he pretended to.

  If he did, she couldn’t let him down. She had to do something if for no other reason than to prove herself worthy of his consideration.

  She never thought she could be before—not without her magic. Her magic was the only thing making her worth the Watch’s time. They wouldn’t keep her with them for any other reason.

  Wesh was the first person she’d ever met who ever acted like he wanted her to stick around. She told him and everyone else that he was the more powerful wizard, but they both knew it wasn’t true.

  He was the first older wizard she’d met with anything close to her power. Meeting him tempted her to hope he might be able to teach her a few things she hadn’t been able to learn on her own.

  The idea of actually learning from someone—of developing some kind of mentor relationship with him—it intoxicated her into investing too much feeling into him.

  She started to care about him, too. Now he was gone along with any hope that he might be able to help her.

  He wanted to. She knew that, now that he was dead and out of her reach. He really wanted to help her the way Yann and Yvan did.

  Every instinct told her to push them away to protect herself. She couldn’t let them see her needing help.

  She couldn’t push them away—not anymore. She needed them—all of them. She needed all these men—even Rien.

  She needed Wesh, but he was dead. He would never be able to help her ever again.

  She couldn’t stand the pain of that, so she shook it off and turned away from the river. She started to climb over the bone mounds to where the men were busy rummaging through the piles.

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  Just then, Neils came walking back from somewhere. Eliska didn’t notice before that he wasn’t with the others. Even Anríq helped the Watchmen gather bones to make a shelter.

  Neils pointed across the landscape in the direction the waterbuck herd ran. “There’s almost an entire Darkling rib cage over there,” he told Yvan. “The ribs are still attached to the backbone. We should use that as a shelter.”

  “Excellent.” Yvan clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go. Bring your buck, Niyazi. We’re moving.”

  Niyazi hefted his skinned carcass back onto his shoulder. He carried the hide in one hand.

  The Darkling skeleton lay on top of the bone fields a few hundred yards from where he killed the buck. He laid it nearby and left for some reason.

  The rest of the party got to work stacking more bones around the rib cage to close in the walls.

  Eliska hesitated watching them, but after a few minutes, she realized that they weren’t doing anything too exceptional. They mainly gathered up the ribs from different skeletons lying around.

  Vidal took over and directed everyone to stack the ribs around the Darkling skeleton to close in the gaps. Eliska could handle that. She didn’t even have to decide where to put each bone. Vidal told her what to do.

  The process took a long time, but Eliska kept working alongside the others until they finished. Even Yvan helped and obeyed Vidal’s orders on where to put everything.

  The walls started to rise off the ground. The party built the walls to head height before Marine came over. She scampered between the Watchmen, darted inside the skeleton shelter, and stayed there while the group finished working.

  “Great,” Rien muttered. “She’ll keep us awake all night with her howling and muttering.”

  “Leave a gap at the top for air,” Vidal ordered.

  The group got close to finishing their shelter when Niyazi came back carrying an armload of dry brush.

  He grinned at everyone when they made a big deal about it. “Where did you find that?” Neils asked.

  Niyazi jerked his chin over his shoulder. “We need some way to cook this meat and I figured those bucks must be eating something, so I followed their tracks. It wasn’t hard. They left a path of disturbed bones knocked out of place by their hooves. There’s another branch of the river over there with vegetation. We should go over there tomorrow. It isn’t much, but it’s better than this river.”

  “Good idea,” Yvan replied. “Well done.”

  Marine shrieked when Niyazi dumped his armload of brush inside the shelter. He left everyone there to finish work while he went back for a second and third load.

  The group put the finishing touches on their house by the time he came back. Eliska glanced inside.

  Marine huddled in a corner watching Niyazi squat in front of his pile of sticks. He snapped a bunch of them off, arranged them into a cone, and then used three others to construct some kind of bow.

  “What are you doing?” Eliska asked.

  “I’m lighting a fire.” He shot her another grin. “I bet you never did it this way.”

  “How do you do it?”

  “Watch.” He extracted a twisty vine from the stack of brush, hooked it around his bow and another stick, used the bow to saw the stick into a different piece of wood. Smoke billowed out of it.

  He blew on it and it ignited. “Whoa!” Eliska breathed.

  He laughed at her. “You didn’t think you were the only one, did you? You make a spit for the meat while I do this.”

  Eliska fumbled through the pile looking for sticks big enough to make a spit. Her first three efforts fell apart just in time for the other Watchmen to come in and see her making a fool of herself.

  None of them even mentioned it. Rien sprawled on the floor to one side and threw his arm over his face. “Wake me up when we have something to eat.”

  “We should have brought water from the river,” Vidal remarked. “None of us will want to walk all the way back there every time we get thirsty.”

  Yann stood up. “I’ll go get it.”

  He left. Niyazi went outside and came back with one of the buck’s legs quartered off the rest of the carcass. He boned it right there in front of everyone with his knife.

  Eliska found herself marveling at the expert skill with which he did….well, everything. She never gave any of these men a chance to do anything before. She just did it with her magic first.

  He put the meat on the spit and warmth filled the shelter.

  Almost as if someone made it happen that way on purpose, the sky started to darken as soon as the group got under cover.

  The sky turned black by the time Yann returned. He’d used his glaive to split open a much larger skull and turned it into a bowl to carry water.

  He set it in the corner. “That should keep us going until morning if we all use it only for drinking.”

  “Well done, son,” Yvan told him. “Good thinking—all of you.”

  “So what’s the plan for tomorrow?” Omer asked.

  “We have no way of knowing how long we’ll be stuck in this Island,” Yvan replied. “We could be here for years. We’ll go over to this other river Niyazi mentioned and see what it’s like. If it looks somewhat habitable, we’ll set up over there and plan to stay as long as we have to. That will give us time to scout the terrain and see if we can find any other resources. If we can find a place with food, water, and shelter, I don’t see any reason to go tramping across the countryside searching for anything else.”

  “If there are any people in this country, they’ll be near food and water, too,” Vidal pointed out. “Which could be a good thing or a bad thing.”

  “We’ll just have to deal with them,” Yvan replied. “We can’t go without food and water, so we would have to go there anyway.”

  Niyazi took the first piece of meat off the spit. Neils unfolded his hog hide on the floor and Niyazi put the meat in front of him. Neils divided up the food while Niyazi got to work cooking the next haunch.

  Neils went around the circle handing out meat to everyone. Yann left again while Neils worked.

  Yann returned with another smaller skull fashioned into a bowl. Neils deposited Marine’s portion into that.

  Yann placed the bowl halfway between Marine and the rest of the Watch. Then everyone turned their backs on her so she could eat without them watching her.

  The Watchmen talked while they ate. They kept it casual, discussed different options for directions they could go, and also related waterbuck habits that could lead the party to more plentiful hunting grounds.

  Eliska listened in silence. She chewed her food to make it look like she couldn’t interject.

  The men knew a lot more about the outside world than she realized. Vidal, Omer, and Niyazi knew every detail of waterbuck behavior and activity.

  The three men even discussed previous hunting trips they’d engaged in when they hunted waterbuck over multiple different types of terrain.

  Eliska took in every word. These three men must have gone outside of Middleborough sometime or other. From the sound of it, they’d spent a lot of time outside Middleborough—maybe even years.

  Their talk trailed off eventually and Niyazi turned around to put some more wood on the fire. “We should take turns staying up to keep this going,” he suggested.

  “You did all the work of bringing it here,” Omer told him. “I’ll go first.”

  Vidal shifted in his seat to move closer to Neils. Vidal glanced over his shoulder to where Marine sat hunched against the back wall.

  For some reason, she didn’t snarl and hiss and gnash her teeth and invisible enemies. She just sat there with her face turned toward the wall so she wouldn’t see anyone.

  “You could come over here and lie down,” Vidal told her. “You would be warmer here.”

  She didn’t respond.

  Yvan did the same thing on his other side and moved closer to Barsali. “You lie down, too, Eliska. Lie down right here next to the fire. Take off your cloak and use it as a blanket.”

  She couldn’t look at him. Yann scooted farther away on her other side. Both of them made a space there for her to curl up.

  She distracted themselves from their attention by taking off her cloak and covering herself with it. She shut her eyes so she wouldn’t see if the others were staring at her.

  She must have been a lot more exhausted than she realized. She fell asleep the instant she shut her eyes, but not before she became aware of where she was and with whom.

  All those men stopped talking stopped talking when she lay down. Only the faint crackling sound of the flames filled the little shelter.

  The Watchmen’s presence cast a protective halo over her. They were still there. Nothing could happen to her as long as they were still there.

  End of Chapter 3

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

  I post new chapters of The Corrupted Coil series on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday PST.

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