3: Pride & Shame

Her bow thwacked as the arrow released. The narrow shaft hummed across the meadow, taking the jackal in the throat. It spun to the ground where it lay jerking in its death throes.

The clearing erupted into chaos. 

Jackals yipped; the lion roared; the adversaries clashed. But not all the beasts had been fooled. Half a dozen jackals had seen where death flew from, and they sprinted down the hill—making directly for her.

"Fesht!" she cursed as she drew another shot. The next arrow took one in the eye; her third, close to the heart. Distantly, through the blood pounding in her ears, she heard Tadeo crying out, trying to draw attention to himself and away from her. 

She'd have laughed had she not been breathless. Between them, it was always a competition of who could sacrifice themself for the other.

The remaining four jackals were nearly upon her. Up close, their size didn't seem so diminutive, nor their tusks small. Any one of them could kill her if she gave them an opening.

Heaving the string back one last time, Leiyn put an arrow down one of the beasts' mouths before throwing aside her bow and dropping her hands to her left hip. There, she found well-worn leather grips and pulled the weapons free: twin blades, mirror-bright and almost as long as a Suncoat's short sword. They'd been forged by the weaponsmith in Folly, the closest town to the Lodge, upon her cloaking as a ranger. "Don't be rash," Tadeo had told her then, with a significant raise of his eyebrows. 

But rashness could be a strength as well as a weakness. As the jackals barreled toward her, Leiyn didn't hesitate. She'd been honed as sharp as her knives, and not even death could make her lose her edge.

The first tusked jackal approached on her right, the second not far behind. Her right knife met the first beast as it leaped, whipping across its jaw and splitting it wide open. As it choked on its blood, the jackal crashed into her, tusks scoring her leather jerkin and sending her careening.

At that moment, its ally joined the attack. Leiyn tried regaining her balance, but knew the hit was inevitable. She threw up her left arm and bared her teeth as the jackal's jaws closed about it. Swathed in a thick leather armguard, the canines didn't pierce as deeply as they might have, but it still hurt like Legion's hells.

Snarling, Leiyn reversed her grip on her knife and whipped her arm around to slam the jackal against a nearby tree trunk. The blade pierced its neck even as her second knife worked between its ribs. The growl in the jackal's throat died to gurgling, though its jaws remained locked into her flesh. Even dead, the devils didn't yield.

Prying the beast off, Leiyn looked up to see another trio charge down the hill. She gritted her teeth against the pain and backed deeper into the brush, hoping the foliage might funnel them toward her.

It worked better than she'd hoped. The first two tusked jackals ran into each other as they tried pushing through the same narrow gap, and for a moment, they stopped to snap at each other. The third leaped nimbly over the other two, then went for her leg. 

Leiyn stood ready. Dancing out of the way, she countered with a bite of a knife, finding the base of the beast's skull and pounding through. Fresh blood sprayed over her gloves.

She'd unsheathed her blade from the jackal by the time its companions rallied. This time, they worked together, leaping at her from either side. Leiyn's hands worked independently as she met their attacks. Her left knife scored an ear, the right, an eye. Neither wound was enough to kill.

As the jackals ripped through her jerkin and into her sides, something within her snapped.

A sensation seared her, like someone touched hot embers to the wounds, multiplying the pain. Leiyn's senses were scrambled as she reeled. The world had gathered a different shade to it. Living things glowed, their inner fires revealed. The jackals burned brightest.

Leiyn lashed out at them with every weapon she possessed.

The knives felt cold and lifeless in her hands as she plunged them into the midst of those beastly fires. As the steel pierced their hides, their fires grew muted. She didn't stop. A shriek erupted from her throat, so guttural she almost didn't recognize it.

She stabbed them until their bodies were as leeched of life as the knives that had killed them.

The pain dulled, and the fury went with it. Leiyn stared at her arms and the blood filming them. Her hidden sense remained open, and beneath what her eyes saw, she detected the glow of her own esse, brighter even than it had been before.

She'd stolen the jackals' lifefires.

Her stomach turned. She thought she would be sick, but danger hadn't yet passed. With effort, Leiyn swallowed her rising gorge and raised the walls around her mahia. As her innate magic became blind, the fires around her faded, and plants and animals returned to their ordinary appearances.

Though it shamed her to admit it, the world appeared bland without the magic.

Focus. Be the damned ranger you're supposed to be.

She shoved the roiling emotions away and looked beyond the forest toward the continued sounds of fighting. The battle appeared to be coming to an end. The remaining tusked jackals, eight by her swift count, seemed to lose heart before such determined resistance. The thorned lion projected another ear-splitting roar, and the jackals broke. Yapping, they tore back up the hill, returning north to the mountains from which they'd come.

The lion turned his great head back around to stare at Leiyn through the brush. Even with the distance separating them, his gaze made her want to dance with anxiety. She avoided his eyes, but drew herself upright, trying to seem as large as possible. She wasn't small for a woman, but next to a lion, she doubted the display would count for much.

But the lion didn't appear interested. After several moments, he shifted his gaze from her to look to her left, where Tadeo no doubt stood in a similarly defiant manner. Then, with a nonchalant air, he shook his mane, spraying droplets of jackal blood in a pink mist, and began to work his tongue over his many wounds.

Leiyn breathed a sigh of relief, then touched a hand to the injuries the jackals had dealt her.

She froze.

Slowly, Leiyn lifted her left arm and stared at where the jackal had savaged it. Blood had stained the armguard around the punctures, but her forearm no longer seared with pain. Not wanting to know, but knowing she had to, she probed inside the holes with a finger.

Her skin was whole, mended but for four small, white scars.

Her heart migrated to her throat. She tried to swallow and found herself devoid of moisture. Not again. Saints and demons, not again.

But if she'd learned one thing training as a ranger, it was that she couldn't deny the truth of her senses.

"Leiyn?"

She quickly withdrew her hand from her arm, guilty as a child caught stealing holy day treats, and looked up to see Tadeo making his way toward her through the brush. His eyes were full of concern as he looked her up and down. His appearance could be intimidating to those who didn't know him, with a prominent brow, a nose broken many times over, and skin as tough as oak, but Leiyn knew better. When he smiled, he transformed into the man who had sheltered her since she was a girl, guiding her from an immature apprentice into a cloaked and seasoned ranger. He didn't smile now, though.

"Are you hurt?" he inquired quietly. She didn't doubt the lodgemaster had registered every spot of blood and tear in her leathers. But instead of investigating the wounds, he only touched a gentle hand to her upper arm.

"Fine." She looked him over in return. "Though you fared better than I." 

Truth was, she wasn't sure any of the blood spotting his clothes was his. They seemed no more worn than they usually did, though the lodgemaster did wear trousers until they were more patch than original fabric.

He flashed his usual shy smile. "Experience is the toughest armor."

Leiyn rolled her eyes. "Alright, old man. Now's not the time for a sermon. Experience didn't keep you from stepping on that branch, did it?"

At his wince, Leiyn immediately regretted the words. Tadeo was unfailingly forgiving of others, but the same didn't apply to himself. While he remained the deadliest ranger in the Wilds Lodge, his years were beginning to catch up to him. He couldn't step as nimbly as he once had, and the evening's misstep wasn't his first. In the Titan Wilds, any error could be your last.

The lodgemaster quickly recovered. "I made a mistake, Leiyn; I can admit that. But you shouldn't have drawn them off. What do I always tell you?"

She barked a laugh. "You can hardly call that rash. I saved your life, old man. If I hadn't split their attention, you would have been torn apart."

"As you nearly were?"

Leiyn tried to deny the ice crawling through her veins as she noticed again the abnormal brightness of her lifefire. "We both survived to tell our side. That's good enough for me."

Tadeo eyed her a moment longer, then bowed his head. "Perhaps it is."

While they'd been speaking, she and Tadeo had kept a watch on the remaining Wilds beast. The thorned lion, however, appeared content to lick his wounds and all but ignored them.

She inclined her head toward the body-strewn clearing. "Suppose we'll have to wait to drive this one north?"

Tadeo nodded, studying the lion from the corner of his eye. "Before night falls, we'll retreat. He may feel threatened by us in the darkness. We'll return in the morning. Perhaps he'll be ready by then."

"What about the skins?" She gestured with one of her knives toward the bodies. "Have any use for mangy jackal hides?"

"Once they're cleaned, they'll be serviceable, and we must keep the tusks. But don't skin with your anelaces. Always—"

"—keep your weapons sharp, I know."

They shared a grin, but mirth slipped away as they bent to the task. The conflict had been necessary, and she'd never been one to hesitate at a fight. Yet there was a sadness that came with shedding blood, even for her.

"Your spirit touches mine," she murmured as she cut away hide from sinew, the Ranger's Lament rising of its own volition. "Rest easy, you flea-bitten beasts. Had to be you or me."

Tadeo had long ago instilled the words in her, though she often improvised her own. Still, the Ranger's Lament honored creatures that were only living by their nature but had to die for the rangers to uphold their duty. The Ranger's Oath always came first: to perceive, preserve, and protect the people of the Titan Wilds, as only they could.

Still, the task promised to be a long and smelly one, and with the jackals' stench seeping into her skin, Leiyn already longed for a bath. She thought of the Wilds Lodge and the hot food and comforts it would bring upon their return.

Yet whenever she glimpsed the new scars along her arm or sides, she was reminded of her shame, the curse that could never be washed away. And so, she bent to her task and wished it would be enough to atone for her sins, knowing it never could.

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