LONG ROAD AHEAD

17

The night was long and cold. His ribs ached, and his skin felt like ice. Craven was so tired from the ordeal. He had been unable to stay awake as he trembled against Phoenix. He was far too cold even to enjoy the feel of her nude body pressed against him. His sleep was disturbed by the memory of his ordeal beneath the water. The fifty-foot-long beast dragged him beneath the icy surface. Trapped beneath the murky water struggling to get free while the monster rolled him and smashed him against the bedrocks below.

            His chest felt heavy, and his ribs ached from the vice-like grip that had been crushing him until he could not take a single breath in. If Phoenix had not killed that beast, he surely would have expired. They stayed close to the fire all night. Phoenix left his side only to keep the fire going. When dawn crept over the mountains, Craven woke. A light warm breeze caressed his bare skin.

            Craven opened his eyes and looked around. Phoenix was dressed and roasting something over the fire. She had been hunting, and Craven wondered if she had even slept at all. He sat up. His back felt dirty from sleeping on the ground. He reached for his jeans, which now were dry. Craven pulled his jeans on, and Phoenix glanced back at him with a smile. “How are you feeling?” She asked, coming to her feet with a small roasted animal on a stick.

            “Better thanks to you,” he said, please to see she was smiling. “Without you, I’m sure I would have died.”

            Phoenix crouched beside him and handed him the meat on a stick. “Eat something, and we will get moving again,” she said with a halfhearted smile.

            Craven accepted the meal she was offering and noticed she seemed to know something he didn’t. “What is wrong?” He asked. Phoenix picked up the leather satchel and tipped it upside down. Nothing came out, and Craven quickly crawled over and snatched it from her hands. He threw the flap open and reached inside, finding nothing. “The book! The maps!” He felt his heart speed up. “Where is it?” He asked.

            The look on her face did not fill him with confidence. “It’s gone, Craven,” she said sadly. “We must have lost it in the river.”

            Craven sat down, the whole weight of the situation hitting him. They were lost in the middle of nowhere. Thousands of miles away from any civilization with no way to tell where they should go. “We’re lost.”

            “We’ll keep heading north, as you said. We are bound to find something. All the maps were going north.”

            “We don’t even know where we are now. How will we ever know which way to go to get back on the right path?”

            She shrugged her shoulders. “We have come so far. We almost died four times. We cannot turn back, so we may as well push forward,” she said. “I’m going to find Cyprus or die trying. Are you coming with me?” She asked.

            Craven sighed this whole trip had been a suicide mission, to begin with. There was no sense in sending her on alone. He picked up the roasted animal and nodded. “We will set out after breakfast,” he said, taking a bite of the meal she had made. “What is this?”He asked, his expression soured from the taste.

            Phoenix smirked. “You really don’t want to know.”

***

            Adam stood over the rotting Moleark corpses behind the inn. They had been dead for weeks. An arrow embedded in two of them. He turned his attention up to the second story window, which was open, the shredded curtain waving in the breeze. They must have been shot from that window.

            Adam placed his boot on the body and wrapped his hand around the shaft of the arrow, yanking it from the corpse. He studied the arrow in his hand. That sensuous little thief had been carrying a bow the night he met her. He snapped the arrow in half and tossed it to the ground. They had been here for at least four to six weeks, judging from the state of decomposition of the corpses, the

            He walked around to the door of the inn and went inside. Looking around, he found the stairs and went up to the second floor, pushing each door open to be sure they were not still there. He came across two more Molearks, one decapitated, lay dead and bled out on the floor. The smell of the room was putrid. It was the smell of death and decaying flesh. 

            Adam moved in closer to inspect the bodies. The decapitation was a clean cut. He then rolled the other over and held his hand over his nose so he would not vomit. He examined the lethal wound. A straight-edged blade had done this damage. It would take a lot of strength and power to lop off a head. There was no way the thief had done this. She was too small and too slim. A man did this. The assassin had killed these ones and at least four in the pile outside.

            He stood up and kept looking through the other rooms. He came to one room where the decades of dust had been disturbed. This had been where they stayed. The window was open, and the curtain waved. Adam crossed the room to the window and looked out at the bodies below. Judging from the freshly disturbed dust, they had not been gone more than a week. 

            Between the dead bodies and the disrupted room, he determined that they must have stayed in the inn for a few weeks, at least. What would make them stop for so long? They were both healthy people. He was sure they had the stamina to keep going. A smile curved his thin, pressed lips. One of them must have been hurt. They could not be too far away. He was catching up to them.

            Adam left the room and headed out of the inn and back on the road. He was tired, but he was not going to stop until he overtook them. He was close. He could almost feel that little thief’s neck in his hands. Killing them was going to be so sweet.