Trojian Horse
Chapter 12

He woke to the smell of wet dirt invading his nostrils, and a thundering headache. The pain seemed to intensify the more he tried to pry his eyes open. Keeping his eyes closed, he used his hearing and smell to familiarise himself with his current surroundings while the pain subsided.

There were the distinct sounds of grunting and mumbling from behind him. His face was sweaty or wet, he couldn’t tell. He lifted his hands to wipe his face only to replace that his hands and feet were tied together with a rope made from dried hurakui stems, which he definitively identified when he managed to open his eyes, and he was attached to a tree with the same stems that had been crudely wrapped together to form a rope. The first step, he thought, was figuring out how long had he been out for and so he looked around to replace the positions of the suns in the sky. The canopy obstructed most of the sunlight but enough made it through for Arien to make out most of what was around him though it was still much darker than he would have liked. It was impossible to make out what time it was nor how long he had been in this position so the next step was to replace out why he was here and who had taken him. He gingerly turned his head and body, making sure not to attract any attention on the twigs and leaves that littered the forest floor.

Crouched around a fire were two creatures Arien had never seen before. Although he really had not seen many creatures from beyond the confines of the camp and it had always been with a companion. They seemed to be cooking something over the flames communicating with each other in grunts and hisses. Grey scaly skin covered their bodies which looked very much like he did, two legs, two hands though they had very large black eyes that seemed to cover half their faces and menacingly sharp rows of teeth covering the other half. His heart seemed ready to leap out of his throat when he pondered on the question of what the two creatures were feasting on. Escape was his only option at this point although he could not think how he would manage that. A shadow seemed to cross his eye in the distance, in the darkness of the tree boughs beyond the creatures.

Nura! He hadn’t seen her since he had been taken. He could see no indication that his captors had taken her and only hoped that she had escaped somehow. His heart rate doubled. Would he ever see her again he wondered? The ropes were too tight and his head had begun throbbing again. Maybe if he got the attention of his captors he could devise a plan of escape or at least replace out what their intentions were to him.

“Eh!” he shouted.

They continued their feasting, eager to ignore their latest victim.

He continued shouting until the creatures decided he had irritated them enough. One of the grey-scaled creatures stomped toward him, baring its frighteningly sharp rows of teeth at him, saliva dripping from its mouth, and let out a growl obviously meant to intimidate Arien into silence. Arien shirked away at the sight of the creature though he noticed that there was an uncharacteristic blankness in the creature’s stare though he was uncertain having never encountered them before.

“Wait your turn,” the creature hissed. A thump on the head for his troubles was his reward before the creature walked back toward the fire and continued hissing at its companion.

He had no idea where he was nor why he was taken but from what he could guess he would soon be a meal, light though it may be, for one (or both) of the vile creatures that huddled around the fire.

Arien began tugging at the restraints that held him captive, lending his teeth to the task of loosening the ropes around his hands but the knots were too tight. There was shuffling again closer to him this time just behind the tree that he was tied to.

Out of the darkness jumped a figure who quickly placed her hands over his mouth, shaking her head vigorously. He understood. She moved her hands from his lips and took to cutting the ropes slowly and deliberately while maintaining an observant gaze in the direction of the creatures. Eventually she managed to free his hands then moved onto his legs which took twice as long but soon she was leading him one painfully slow step at a time into the shelter of the tree trunks. A few steps into their escape Arien stepped on a twig that snapped so loudly he was sure it was an explosion. The sound of the snapping twigs reverberated in the forest and alerted his captors of his intended escape. At first there was silence, even the hissing stopped, but then they heard loud footsteps stomping on the wet earth and bellowing rushing in their direction.

“Run!” his saviour shrieked in his ear before she darted deeper into the forest.

He darted after her, struggling to breathe and run, eventually wheezing loudly but never stopping no matter how painful his legs and chest got. He had no idea where they were going but he had to trust that his saviour knew how far they had to run to avoid being a meal for the ravenous beasts that hunted them. They darted this way and that, swinging under this low branch and leaping over another. He had to pick himself hurriedly from the ground more than once after tripping over a root and carry on running following as fast as he could. The hissing grew farther and farther away as they ran on. He now saw the strategy employed, there was more undergrowth in this part of the forest which meant that the clumsy creatures pursuing them would replace it increasingly difficult to navigate the forest the deeper they went into it. That, added to the numerous rock outcrops that lay all over the forest floor made it a perfect place to hide, or lose someone pursuing you.

Eventually he was led into a shallow but very dark cave. His saviour shoved him into a dark corner and stood at the entrance listening intently first with her ears into the air then putting her ear to the ground. When she felt satisfied that they were no longer being pursued she threw herself in a heap on the floor and started a fire with some twigs and branches that lay in the cave. His chest was still heaving up and down long after they had settled in the cave mostly from fatigue but a little part of him was unsure whether he was truly safe. His legs felt like they would spontaneously combust. He felt sad that having escaped such a close encounter with the intestines of some strange Trojian creature he would then die from exhaustion.

Partly because of the exhaustion and partly because of the warmth in the cave, he soon drifted off to sleep. It was an untroubled sleep with no dreams, helping him escape from the harsh reality that he now found himself in, lost in the forest with another random creature as a guide, or perhaps looking to do him more harm. There was no way to really tell what her intentions were.

“Arien, wake up,” she said, whispering in his ear.

He was startled to hear her call him by his name.

“Wha…what’s wrong? Are they back?” he asked, whispering back.

“No,” she said, smiling. “I just needed to make sure you weren’t dead. You didn’t sound like you were doing too good when we first got here and your breathing right now sounds forced.”

“Oh,” he said. That was the only reply he could manage. Any creature that smiled seemed less intimidating to him. He still couldn’t be sure but he felt a little safer.

She busied herself with adding more firewood to the fire. He watched her carefully for a while, in silence.

“How do you know my name?” he asked at length.