Page 4 of Argurma Warrior (The Argurma Chronicles #1)
Several weeks later
M eg crouched down as she yanked the thick root out of the ground where she had partially dug out the dry soil from around it. Using some of the water from the canteen, she rinsed it off before crunching into it, her stomach growling eagerly with the anticipation of being fed. She grimaced slightly at the earthy, slightly bitter taste of the potato but chewed diligently. Foraging day to day didn’t always turn up palatable meals. The first two snares she’d checked had been empty and so she’d reset them and moved on, but she had hope for the third and fourth that were still a short distance away.
At least she had that going for her, though it had been many years since she’d had the opportunity to use it regularly while being largely confined within the Red Reaper camp first and then The City. Unlike many people who barely managed to survive subsisting on old, mostly expired, canned goods, Meg had been taught to snare hunt when she was a young age since it was something manageable for her small size and she had been able to quickly get the hang of nimbly setting the traps. It was also the most practical way for her to hunt since she’d never gotten the hang of bow hunting, and rifles were difficult to find ammo for anymore. The small critters she caught in snares and box traps were easy enough to dispatch with nothing more than the knife at her belt.
Finishing the potato, she took a long sip of water and squinted up at the sky through gritty eyes. The sun beat down on her but the temperatures were thankfully cool with the onset of winter. She didn’t look forward to sundown, however. Clear skies meant frigid nights that left her shivering under her thick blanket even when laying as close to the banked fire as she did. For now, however, the temperatures were comfortable and the arms of her jacket were wrapped around her waist though it would be pulled snuggly around her later.
Meg sighed and brushed off her hands. She had been certain that she would have run into one of the migratory bands by now. Although established groups were almost always suspicious of newcomers, they would have likely seen her fed and allowed her to travel with them and sleep on the outskirts of their own camps where she might enjoy the protection of being among their numbers. After a while she would have been accepted into the group or she could have chosen to part ways with them in favor of trying her luck to join up with another. Being alone for so long had been unexpected. Just because she wanted to start over away from the city didn’t mean she wanted to spend the rest of her life alone without anyone to talk to. How long would she even last like that before she started going crazy without contact from others?
Just where was everyone, anyway?
The coastal landscape was so vast that there was a good chance that she missed them on her southward trek. It was an unavoidable possibility since there was no way to know where exactly she needed to be to encounter them. There was only one thing she was somewhat certain of—if she kept moving, she was bound to run into someone eventually. It was for that reason that she didn’t stay in any one place too long, even when the game seemed to be relatively more plentiful in some areas than others.
Stripping the remaining stalk of the potato plant, she cleaned her teeth with the fibers and discarded it. Raising her hands over her head, she slowly stretched the muscles in her shoulder and back before adjusting the weight of the straps of her back and continuing on at an even pace. The landscape dragged on ahead of her in all directions. Sometimes she would stumble across a small town or some loan buildings in which she could make camp for the night, breaking up the endless wasteland of sand and stone, and the few scrubby plants that managed to survive out there.
Her eyes strayed to a cluster of large, weathered stones as she passed them, instinctively searching for any small pools of water that may have accumulated. Instead of water, however, her eyes fell on a sun-bleached skull. Though it was missing its lower jaw and the rest of the skeleton was fragmented with large section missing, no doubt from being carried away by scavengers, that it was the remains of a human stretched out as if seeking some reprieve of shelter from the stony crevice made her stomach drop and she drew to a stop beside it.
She couldn’t tell from looking at the bones if it had been a man or a woman who had taken their last breaths on that same space of sand, but it still unnerved her. Meg promptly spat over her left shoulder with a muttered prayer against the ill spirits of the dead. Even so, she couldn’t help but to feel as if something were walking over her grave as she stared down at it.
Was this a reason why she hadn’t encountered anyone? Had this stretch of land become too inhospitable to continue traversing, or worse, did something kill this person and change the migration route of the group they belonged to? If so, was she in the territory of some unknown predator now? Meg shivered at the thought. She knew that her imagination was getting the better of her but the what ifs kept popping into her mind and her stomach clenched with a sickly feeling.
“Not good,” she muttered to herself as she tore her gaze away from the bones and hunched her shoulders. “Just keep moving, Meg. You’ve no idea what killed them or how long they’ve been dead. Doesn’t do any good freaking out over it.”
She inched by it, her eyes falling to the ground in search of tracks or any sign of predators in the area. She hadn’t noticed any as of late. In fact, the whole area seemed void of life outside of a few hardy plants, scrawny rabbits, and insects. It had been days since she’d even seen a hint of a coyote.
Tension eased slowly out of her. No signs that she could see of any predators in the area. If something had killed him it was long enough ago that the creature had long since abandoned the spot for better hunting grounds. If it was from starvation or dehydration…Meg swallowed and clutched the strap of her pack a little tighter. The terrain was fickle and constantly changing so there was a good possibility that she would not encounter similar conditions. Especially not that time of the year when light frosts left small deposits of water behind. Still, she would be as conservative as possible with her supplies just in case.
Meg picked up her pace, striking out over the dusty landscape as she tried to kick up as little sand and dust as possible. She lifted the lower edge of the large swath of cloth covering her head and tucked around her mouth to breathe in as little debris as possible. She stopped, her legs bracing far apart as she crouched low while the earth pitched beneath her. The frequent earthquakes were at least mercifully short and in little time she was on her feet again and heading further south, praying for a milder climate, some sign of other people, or even a semi comfortable place to hole up for a while.
Gradually, the sun began to sink over the desert, darkening the sand into deep golds laced with deep blue shadows. A cool wind replaced the heat of midday but thankfully she had little perspiration left on her body to chill her. That was a quick way to become sick and one that she wouldn’t be so lucky to keep avoiding for as long as she continued to expose herself without shelter. She didn’t even have a rudimentary tent since such provisions had not been accessible for her to just take and leave the city with.
She was going to have to find something soon before winter drew in even closer. It was that knowledge that kept her walking long past the time that she usually made camp so that she was traveling deeper into a terrain dotted with tall, rocky rises as the color of the sky deepened in fiery hues. With the waning light, Meg walked cautiously between them, her eyes scanning the hillsides warily as her skin prickled. With the deep shadows gathering between the crevices of the rocks, she had the distinct feeling of being hunted by whatever creature her imagination had created to haunt her thanks to the hunting stories she was regaled with in her youth.
It was the perfect set up for a mountain lion to jump out and attack her—if any such thing still lived out there. Many of the large animals had slowly disappeared over her lifetime, but the opportunistic predators had hung on longer than many others. It was possible for there to be half starved mountain lions somewhere out there.
As the horizon grew a more brilliant shade of red, the higher heavens darkened from pink into a velvety purple dotted with countless stars making their evening appearance. Her eyes drew up to them as they so often did as of late and she paused, her breath catching as she saw the brilliant flash of a shooting star arching over the sky. The mystery of everything that was out there seemed too vast and beyond anything she understood or imagined, but it also created an undeniable beauty from her point of perspective as it painted the world in a glittering frost with their thousands of pale lights clustered together as they spanned over the dark and barren world below. Somehow it made everything appear more magical and even larger as the sky darkened.
She blew out her breath in a long, irritated hiss.
“Stop daydreaming, Meg!” she chastised herself aloud, her voice hoarse with strain of speaking with how dry her throat was. She scowled at the dark hills and rock formations around her. “Not going to get out of this as soon as I’d hoped. Best just to find someplace to bed down.”
She glanced among the larger crevices for an ideal spot to take shelter. She didn’t need much, just somewhere that she could wedge herself in so that she was potentially safe from attracting the attention of anything hanging around that might want to eat her. She paused as a tight crevice between two thick wedges of rock to inspect it closer and froze when a cold chill ran up her back. Instinctively, she raised her eyes to meet twin glowing pinpricks from something crouched just above. The light briefly extinguished as they blinked and it struck her that there was something almost familiar about the violet-blue glow when something clattered sharply on the rock beside her.
Spinning toward it, Meg’s mouth fell open in shock, her eyes blindly seeking the source of the sound even as every muscle in her body tightened to flee. Her thoughts were immediately thrown into a haze as a loud hiss greeted her ears and the air filled with a thick smoke that it was too dark to see. Blindly, she turned her eyes back up to the rocks above her, seeking out that unknown gaze as she gasped against the burning sensation filling her lungs as she grasped the rocks to steady herself with the way the world was suddenly tilting and wavering dizzily, but they were gone.
A muted cry left her as she stumbled back, her legs buckling under her as she fell, crumpling to the ground. She stared up at the blurry stars above her, her chest heaving with rapid pants as she attempted to breathe the smoke-thickened air. A shadow slowly extended over her as a dark form blotted out the star light, and within that darkness two glowing violet-blue pools stared down at her bracketed by numerous glowing lines like fractures carved into stone. A soft hissing sound filled the air but this time it seemed to come from the thing hovering over her as the air was displaced by numerous little whips of motion. There was a chittering, clattering sound and another vibrating hiss like a pit of angry vipers but those glowing eyes didn’t move, they continued to stare down at her, blinking sedately every so often until the world around her darkened and even they faded from her awareness.