A Soldier's Life
chapter-8

Felix woke me, and I tried to stand. My legs would not cooperate, and I collapsed to the floor and used my arms to pull myself up. Mateo chuckled at my discomfort. I slowly got my legs working and could feel every raw area of skin from yesterday’s ride. Felix offered some advice, “Use the horse salve on your chaff marks. It smells mighty pungent but works just as well on you as your horse.”

I started packing up, but Felix stopped me, “No need. We are just going along the range to the south and looking for signs of the griffons. If we are lucky, someone will spot one flying around, and we can trace it to its nest.”

I shambled outside and saddled my horse Ginger with some help. Setting the girth straps took some skill. Too tight, and the horse would get chaffed. Too loose, and you were not going to remain in your saddle. Breakfast was a meaty mashed potato porage. Only fifteen men rode out with mage Castille. Mateo explained, “The others will also ride in the other direction looking for signs. This is our second day searching. The griffons were last seen about nine days ago taking a sheep from a farmer.”

I wanted to cry when mage Castille took our column to a heavy gallop. My body was being pounded day after day and had not had time to heal. I wished I had a healing spell instead of a stupid dimensional space spell. Thankfully after about six miles, the road ended, and Castille slowed her horse to a walk as we remained parallel with the mountains. Now at a walk, Felix could talk to me again.

“Damn, Eryk. If I didn’t know better, I would say an ogre was making you his bitch by the look on your face,” he chuckled as a few others heard and laughed at his joke.

I responded in a clear voice, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were an expert on the subject.”

After the men processed, the laughs started raining in, and mage Castille turned around to see what was so funny. It was Adrian who spoke nearby, “The raw recruit just gave Felix the verbal beating of his sad life.” She just nodded and focused forward again. It was a good amount of time before things calmed down. We were all looking to the mountains for signs of the griffon.

Another soldier spotted a carcass that we rode toward and dismounted. Five legionaries moved to make a perimeter. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I followed the mage and four legionnaires to the carcass. One of the legionnaires knelt close, and I got just close enough to get a whiff. Visually I could handle the sight, but my olfactory senses were unprepared, and I quickly vomited my breakfast. Apparently, losing my breakfast was not unexpected. The others looked green but held it down. The kneeling man spoke, “Four days old…good chance it was one of our griffons. It ate the organs and chewed off a haunch. Probably to bring it to the nest.”

I got enough of my faculties back to move upwind and asked, “What the hell was that?” I was talking to myself, but the tracker stood and answered me.

“It was a stone bear. Fairly common around here. Maybe 1200 pounds. Most likely killed by a strike through the spinal cord at the base of the next from above,” he spoke, and I moved close, and he spent time explaining what details led him to his deductions. Everyone else had wandered back to their horses, and Castille looked to be considering what direction to head.

We were riding a short time later on the same path, and I ate my last two apples and gave the cores to Ginger. It was mid-day when our troupe stopped for lunch. Everyone had packed a small lunch except for me. My roommates had told me to leave my gear behind, but I was supposed to pick up a prepared meal from the unit’s cook—I didn’t. At least I had my satchel and had some apples earlier. Mateo took me to stand sentry while everyone relaxed, and the horses drank water at a stream coming down from the mountains. Seeing my predicament, Mateo gave me some slices of sausage and cheese from his own lunch. I took a few drafts from his canteen as well.

“So, how long will we search for griffons?” I asked as he explained how to maintain the watch and which direction I should be focused on based on the other sentries’ positions.

“Castille doesn’t give up. She is probably using divination magic every few hours. She will l find either the griffons or the body of the baron’s son,” he said. He suddenly stood and focused on something in the distance. I looked where he was looking. The ground was surging into a mound about a quarter mile away.

“What is that?” I asked softly. Mateo blew a whistle around his neck. I guess I needed a whistle. Everyone looked where Mateo pointed.

The mound started moving toward us. A few seconds later, we were rushing to our mounts. Mage Castille was screaming, “Bulette! Get on your horses and spread out. Make for Formica!”

I mounted a nervous Ginger and started galloping back the way we came. What the hell was a bulette? If it was scarring the mage, then it had to be bad. I didn’t have anyone to talk to as our group was spread wide apart as per orders. I looked back, and the damn thing was getting closer.

Many of my companions were pulling away…all of them were. I was dead last, I urged Ginger to a run, and she complied, sensing the danger coming at us. I tried desperately to find a different riding rhythm at a faster pace. At least my surging adrenaline completely muted the pain. My growing fear made it hard to focus, and I started bouncing out of synch with my mount. Ginger leaped expertly over a large shrubbery. When she landed, I went forward, not ready for the jarring landing. I do not know exactly what happened next other than I was on the ground rolling, and Ginger continued to race away, now free of her passenger. My first thought was I had given her all those damn apples, I thought we were friends.

I stumbled to my feet. I was alone. Everyone was at least a quarter mile away or more. I turned to face the mound of earth moving toward me. Something that resembled a shark fin emerged in the center. Was this an elemental earth shark? I pulled out my only weapon, a short curved dagger in my belt. All my other weapons were secured to Ginger.

The ground erupted in a shower of earth and stone, and a massive creature was flying through the air and planning to crush me. Time seemed to slow as my death was clearly before me, my muscles paralyazed at the sight. An armored quadruped that looked a mix between a rhinoceros with a massive head of a snapping turtle soon blotted out the sun. I met my fate by opening my ten-foot dimensional cube, waiting as long as I could, and then shifting as much of the bulette’s underside into my dimensional space. The earth thudded around me, everything went dark, and I was covered in fluids and knocked to the ground by the force of impact. I was alive and inside the cavity of the beast.

The beast seemed uncertain about what had just happened. Its mass twitched around me, and it tried to move. I had gutted it, though. I was trapped in its hollowed chest cavity, but the beast no longer had essential organs—like a heart. My dimensional storage would not activate as the cost of pulling in so much bulette flesh had drained my aether. The fact that either mass or a creature resisted being forcibly pulled into my storage was good to know—albeit after almost being crushed. After a short time, I started digging in the earth with my dagger to tunnel my way out. Thankfully the fluids softened the earth and made it feasible to quickly gain my freedom before suffocating.

I squeezed out under the hard shell and looked at the armored beast. It was a lot bigger than I remembered. The beast had an armored hide, short stubby legs, and massive black digging claws. It reminded me more of a tank than anything else. I could see why the mage had decided to retreat.

I oriented myself to the mountains and started walking back to Formica. When I had recovered enough aether, I dumped the 10x10x5 section of the bulette on the ground, spreading out like a squelching deflating balloon.

I did not think bulette blood was considered a good topical agent for all my raw and bleeding chaff marks. I came to a wide stream and decided to wash up. I remained vigilant as I stripped naked and began the process of cleaning everything. I focused on my leather armor as I had plenty of clean clothes to charge into. I managed to scrub almost everything out of the material. It appeared our uniform was treated with something that made cleaning blood out of it easy.

This got me thinking about a lot of the clothes I had taken at the fort. They all were well-worn, so I guessed they had come off of dead legionnaires. As long as they were clean now, I could handle the thought of wearing a dead man’s clothes. When I finished, I dressed in my damp clothes and armor.

The bulette stomach had occupied the top half of my dimensional storage and had not disturbed all the other things I had placed in my dimensional storage. It was getting close to sundown as I sat on a rock, wet, tired, bruised, abused, and—alive. I took out a ration bar and munched on it, getting prepared to leave when Ginger came trotting up to me and drank unconcerned at the stream next to me. I shook my head, “Oh, now you show up! Well, I am out of apples.”