is gone. My hair is tangled around my neck and face. My left side is mashed against something hard and cool and unyielding, and I’m held in place by a tight binding that presses against my hips and shoulders. I try to raise my head, but I’m completely enclosed. I try to tear at the fabric, but a grinding wave of searing heat scorches its way down my arm. I scream.
Pain stops chewing. And then he curses.
The binding around my hips loosens, followed by the release of the tension at my shoulders. The world spins and I’m falling, but my collision with the ground is surprisingly gentle. Something pokes at my head, and then the scratchy material is pulled away from my face. I wince as daylight jabs at my eyeballs. The blurry green-orange-yellow blobs around me slowly become trees. The wind gusts, and a few colorful leaves spiral down. The air is filled with a scent I can only describe as green. In the temple gardens, there were a few trees, but nothing like this.
Someone leans over me. I blink, trying to bring him into focus. A young man, perhaps a few years older than I am. Granite-gray eyes and dark-brown hair pulled back into a tail at the base of his neck. A few strands have worked their way loose and hang around his face. He has deeply tanned skin and some of the broadest shoulders I’ve ever seen.
“Thirsty?” he asks, his voice deep but hushed.
What? My lips move, but no sound comes out. My captor loosens the top of my cocoon and pulls it wide. Horror wells up as my gaze rakes from his leather boots to the knives at his belt, one a straight blade, one curved with a sharp barb at its end.
When he reaches for me, I slap at his face with all my strength. But since I have almost none, he easily catches my flapping arms and holds me by the wrists. “Cut it out,” he snaps. “You’ll start bleeding again.”
“What—what—what—,” I stammer, my voice so dry and hoarse that it sounds more like the squawks of a crow.
“Relax,” he says, looking down at my right hand and frowning. “I’ll get you some water.”
I glance down at my hand as it throbs with hot, fresh pain. It’s tightly wrapped in crimson-stained wool. “No,” I moan. Because I remember.
“Two fingers. Clean off at the knuckles,” the young man says, pulling a water skin from his satchel, along with several strips of dried . . . something. “You were lucky you didn’t lose the whole hand.” He scoots back over to me. “Either you were stupid with hunger, or you’re just stupid. Elk stick?”
“Elk . . . stick?”
He holds up a shriveled stick of brownish-red meat. When I hesitate, he pokes my lips with it. “Come on. It’s pretty tasty. And obviously you make terrible decisions when you’re hungry.” He grins as I open my mouth and tear off a piece of the dried meat with my teeth. It’s salty and chewy and greasy, and stars, I could eat a mountain of it. He feeds me half the stick, bit by bit, and then tugs the last section away as I try to snap my jaws over it. “Slow down. I don’t want to make you sicker than you already are. Especially not while you’re in my game bag.”
Game bag? Fear prickles across my skin, cold and sharp.
He cups his hand behind the back of my head and lifts me a few inches, pouring a tiny splash of water between my parted lips. I swallow, and he lets out a low chuckle as he gives me a little more. “Was it your trap?” I ask in a gargly voice.
He scratches at the dark stubble along his jaw. “No. I never use that kind. More?” He holds up the water skin.
I shake my head. “Why am I in a game bag?”
“Because you’re too weak to escape it, I imagine,” he says, then takes a few long pulls from the water skin. He lowers it from his lips and wipes his mouth with the back of his worn woolen sleeve. I look again at the material around my destroyed hand and then back at him. There’s a large swath missing from the side of his tunic. I can see the hard ridges of his ribs and stomach through the hole. Three slashing, silver-pink scars mar his side. He sees me looking and tugs at the fraying fabric