Page 160 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

I dropped my rock and stumbled forward, ignoring the squishy feeling beneath one of my feet as I stepped on something organic.

Reaching Fierce, I hurried to dump my meager supplies from my belt pouch so that I could use the square piece of fabric to press against his wound and stop the bleeding.

“Oh shit, Fierce, this is bad!” He was bleeding a lot, and we had barely any medical supplies at all.

The best I could do was keep the pressure on it.

He swayed, his ax thudding to the ground at our feet, and then I could see that his knees were going a little weak.

I tried to keep the pressure on his wound while also helping him sit down against a nearby rock in a still somewhat clean area.

His blue, marbled skin didn’t flicker or change, but his face had gone paler.

I had a feeling this was as close to his natural skin tone as I’d ever seen him.

“Hina,” he rumbled, his yellow eyes going over my shoulder to scan around us, still alert even though his expression was pinched with pain.

His hands took over holding the wad of fabric to his wound, pressing it more tightly against the injury with an in-drawn hiss.

I saw the effect immediately, though: the blood stopped pouring from beneath the fabric.

Since he looked stable enough, capable of holding that wound closed, my heartbeat slowed a little, and my panic cleared.

Okay, he was badly hurt, but we could get through this.

I rushed to the edge of the water to wash the slippery red blood off my hands before turning to dig into Fierce’s bag in the hopes he did have medical supplies of some kind.

Fluffy had scampered up his body and was pressing her slight frame against his belly, heedless of the blood she was getting on herself, and purring loudly. I wondered if, like cats back on Earth, Fluffy’s purr was meant to be soothing and healing.

Inside Fierce’s bag, I discovered that, besides more hard ration bars and another flask of water, he had packed little else.

I eyed the improvised bandage he was keeping pressed to his wound, desperate to find a way to fix him up.

Eventually, all I could do to affix the makeshift wound cover was wrap those cables around him.

Good thing I hadn’t yet stripped them of their insulating outer cover, or the copper wire would have gotten sharp.

As it was, at least the bandage stayed tightly in place, and Fierce gave me a grateful nod.

“Anything else I can do? What do you need?” I asked him.

He didn’t reply—not that he could say much that I would understand—but he pointed at the water flask, so I hurried to help him drink.

I tried not to think about sitting right next to the dead bodies of all these naga; we’d have to get out of here as soon as we could.

This would attract predators—or worse, more of these snake creatures.

If they were hostile before, they were definitely going to be hostile now that we’d killed some of them.

While Fierce drank his fill of the water and petted Fluffy with one big hand, I tried to figure out what our next step needed to be. I was sure Fierce was going to make himself walk in a moment, no matter how weak he felt, but before that I should scavenge for anything useful.

My eye fell on a long, black-tipped spear, and I wondered if Fierce would be willing to use it as a walking stick.

I picked it up, shocked at how heavy it turned out to be, and put it down next to his stretched-out leg.

“You should use this to walk with later, okay?” He actually rolled his eyes before smirking, showing off a hint of those very sharp canines of his.

“Fine, act all macho, see if I care,” I shot back at him, which earned me a husky chuckle followed by a wince.

Snarl was at my hip then, sniffing at the body of the nearest naga.

No, wait—he was nosing something on the creature’s belt.

Kneeling, I checked the gear the downed snake had on him, discovering a sack of some kind of dried jerky and a pouch with what was clearly a small fire-making kit, flint and tinder.

There were flasks of water, too, but I wasn’t sure if any of that would be safe to drink.

We still had Fierce’s own bottle, and I had miraculously managed to hang on to mine, so I left these.

I did take the small leather bag one of them had to pack our things into, now that the fabric I’d used as a pouch had ended up as an improvised bandage.

All in all, I scored a few knives, more jerky, and a few pouches of dried herbs.

I took those because they smelled good, and I hoped it was some kind of tea.

Snarl was pulling the corpses that I’d checked to the edge of the river, dumping their bodies into the flowing water.

Their long snake tails meant the creatures were anything but light, the naga were all muscle.

The hound didn’t seem to have too much trouble with them, though, and while I wasn’t sure if contaminating the water was a good idea, I approved of getting rid of the corpses.

Maybe it would cover our tracks a little.

Packed with what I felt was useful, I came back to crouch next to Fierce.

With my fingers, I checked his temperature, pressed them against the pulse in his throat, and was reassured on both counts that he seemed normal—for him, that is.

He made another huffing sound, his hand leaving Fluffy’s bright fur to curl around my cheek. “Hina, safe.”

I shivered at those words. He kept saying them, and each time, I felt like he was swearing that he would keep me safe.

Now, he was almost saying it as if to reassure me that he was fine.

I could only hope so. Maybe his alien physiology meant that the injury was far less severe than it would be for a human. I could only hope.

When he leaned in to rub his head against mine, kind of like the rough affection a big cat might give you, I felt a little more of my fear leave me.

He was going to be okay. When he rolled to his knees, picked up the spear, and used it to heave himself to his feet, I could almost believe it.

His face was still a paler blue than the rest of his body, but he didn’t wobble on his legs.

I slung both our bags over my shoulders, ignoring the hand Fierce held out for his.

“No way, buddy, you just focus on walking. You’ve carried me enough as it is.

Let me do this.” Come to think of it, it was almost embarrassing how often Fierce had been lugging me around.

I knew I wasn’t big—I barely reached up to his damn nipples—but I was in good shape.

Fierce set the pace, walking carefully along the rocky path while he used the spear for extra support.

I didn’t want to admit it, but almost drowning had sapped me; I was nearly as weak in the legs as he was.

Especially now that the last of the adrenaline was fading from my system.

I feared that if we couldn’t find some safe place to sleep soon, I was going to crash pretty hard.

I was dismayed to realize that, despite that horrible injury and the blood loss, my alien warrior already appeared to be doing better than I was.

When we rounded a bend in the river, I noticed a dark cave opening at the same time Fierce did.

It could be an entrance to a cave system as vast and expansive as the one we’d escaped previously. It was still our best bet for shelter.

Snarl darted inside it, a wraith of a shadow that disappeared eerily into the black.

Briefly, I saw the glimmer of two red eyes, and then Fierce stumbled inside.

With some relief, I watched as he sank down against the nearest rock wall, his arm waving at me to sit down next to him.

I couldn’t see much beyond his shadowy outline and the yellow glow of his eyes, but I knew he saw better in the dark.

I trusted him enough to know he wouldn’t relax if this cave wasn’t safe.

Curling into his side, I pulled our blanket from his bag and draped it over him, then offered him water from our remaining flasks. It wasn’t until Snarl returned, his red eyes blinking at me in the dark, that I felt truly safe, though. The hound would be our guard while we rested.