Night 2 / Day 3

“I’m surprised,” Perkins muttered softly in a way Emm had never observed before. “And grateful. This was smart.”

Surprised. Yes. Emm was that too. He and Perkins should’ve been dead. First of all, Siddy had pushed Emm into a Silent Hollow, then Emm found out that someone had kicked his companions out of the Tusk, into the night. Presumably, the same man who had saved Emm earlier pinning him to a root. What exactly was it that this man had thrown Emm had no idea. A tool or a weapon, it allowed Emm to climb up before the cold air from the darkness below killed him.

Things that happened later, they should not be. No matter how Emm approached this in his head, he couldn’t comprehend it. Did forest wish to see my life spared? This line of thinking was a trap. I’m not special. I am Emm. It was purely by luck that I noticed an animal using blueblood berry juice to hide from an amakor.

He was in the middle of putting the juice on himself when Perkins came running. The amakor toyed with the older bandit, letting him run for a while before going for a kill. Predators of this caliber could allow themselves such a frivolous gesture. A coincidence brought the two men together. Emm shared a handful of blueblood berries, though he felt regrets now. Knowledge like this was not meant for bandits. Not even tribesmen deserved it. An amakor, the king of the jungle, couldn’t be bested by ... blueblood berries. It didn’t sit well with Emm.

They found a way to the top of a heartfell tree. It was comfortable to stay a night there, though a fall meant certain death.

“What about Siddy?”

Perkins shrugged, once more reacquiring his quietude. Emm wondered about the other bandit somewhere in the jungle below, then his thoughts turned to a more severe matter – a man in the Tusk. From what Perkins let out, this man wasn’t an ordinary human being.

“What do you intend to do about this bounty hunter?” he whispered. Perkins cracked an eye, but his lips remained sealed. Nothing unusual there. Emm weaved thin tethers around his waist, securing himself in place for the night when Perkins uttered a soft, “nothing.”

This was an odd one. As far as Emm knew, Perkins had been defeated several times and had always managed to find his way back to the top, killing his opponents. Only three brothers and Butcher have remained undefeated. Was the bounty hunter like them or more like ... Butcher? We’d worked for these coins for weeks and he gave up on getting them back so easily...

*

Emm couldn’t tell when his body had shut down and he’d fallen asleep. He didn’t care about it because something inside his head was pounding against his skull. Where did the pain come from? It was tearing his sanity apart. Emm groaned loud enough to bring a flash of his childhood before his eyes, then he was back to the present. A downpour came down at him. A Drowner Mansoon was at least a week or two away. It drowned out the noises he made at least. This must be the blueblood berry workings... He sharply looked up to see if Perkins fared any better. The older bandit was no longer here. It was shocking and disconnecting to know that he’d missed the moment of Perkins’s departure. Pain. The acute headache was not an excuse when death brushed you from each side. What if ... he fell? Heartfell trees grew apart from the others of its kind and reached heights of four hundred feet. Their branches turned downward like a loving mother wanting to shelter its offspring.

Climbing down with a splitting headache was like asking for death. On the bright side, the overgrown canopy kept the rain at bay. Emm was slow and deliberate, the day was barely past sunrise and the tree cast a deep shadow inside itself. He eventually reached the ground. An amakor and lesser predators usually retreated to hiding before sunrise to feed on their prizes.

At the bottom of the tree, Emm found disturbed foliage and snapped twigs. He tried to assess it but the headache was too much. Still ... why was Perkins so clumsy? The older bandit was a tribesman like Emm and the way of the forest wasn’t alien to him.

I better follow him. He’s a healer. He’ll find a way to take this pain away

Emm hesitated as he found himself at the threshold of sheltering arms of the heartfell tree. He felt weaker than usual, his hunter’s knife went missing. Even without nighttime predators, the jungle was full of perils. And I can’t concentrate. What if I stumble into poison hemlock or nightbee flower? Emm clenched his fist, searching for the strength and finding it eventually he stepped into the heavy rain. The pain blinded him, the pounding water didn’t help here. He stumbled, falling on the face. What’s wrong with me? His consciousness wavered ... and then, the pain started to lessen. Just a little bit. From a moment to a moment, the headache retreated, although the weakness remained.

Emm regained a shaky foothold, the rain thundered, blanketing everything in shades of gray. He was now able to follow Perkins. They’d decided to part their ways, why was he going after the bandit then? Although Perkins told him he’d do nothing about the man from the Tusk, Emm had a hunch.

Finding Perkins turned out to be too easy for Emm’s taste. Almost as if the older bandit wished to be found. He settled in a dry spot at the base of a wide-leafed palm. Water streamed down in several places, pooling where it fell, then hastily flowing away. Perkins sat on a knobby root, breathing heavily. Darker patches on Perkins’s shirt showed unwashed blueblood berries juice. His jaw slowly ground something.

He didn’t look surprised, so he did expect Emm to follow him. For various reasons, the young scout didn’t find this particularly comforting. If Perkins wished to kill him ... he would’ve done it on the tree. So what was this about?

“I didn’t realize it last night,” Perkins said. “But we put a blueblood berry juice on ourselves.”

This sudden openness from the usually quiet bandit was worrisome. Emm didn’t like when people acted out of characters. It meant trouble of some sort. He braced for it but first, he needed to ask about the meaning of Perkins’s remark.

“What’s wrong with blueblood berries?”

Perkins’s breathing slowed down and he stopped chewing, then glanced at his right hand, it was empty.

“It’s highly toxic.”

“What? Impossible.”

Coldness coming from Perkins was equivalent of a sneer.

“Don’t assume you know everything, kid.”

But ... Emm suddenly felt like a fool. He was doing exactly what he feared—thinking he was better than others. He was not. He was Emm – a scout. Though it still irked him to be reminded of this.

“These particular berries exhibit their toxicity through prolonged contact with skin. Eating them is harmless. I know this only because long before I joined Butcher, a girl fell into a bucket of this juice. No one bothered wiping her up. She died a terrible death.”

It wasn’t clear to Emm what shocked him more – a perspective of such death or the fact that Perkins talked like a normal human. When he gathered his wits about he asked.

“What is going to happen to us?”

A gleam in the older bandit’s eye told him that he was expecting this. There will be time to deal with my incompetence. I must figure this out. Perkins threw a crushed leaf Emm didn’t recognize and said to chew on it and take deep breaths. He was doing it when Emm found it. The scout decided to trust the other man. If Perkins wanted him dead, he’d be dead. As he popped the leaf into his mouth, the older bandit spoke again.

“We’re lucky the rain came.” All of sudden, Perkins’s expression soured, the first raw emotion Emm had seen on this particular face. “Don’t get me wrong, I am as far from faith as one can be. I despised all gods uniformly and yet—you should’ve been dead thrice. First, the Silent Hollow didn’t claim you, then an amakor turned its head the other way, and finally this.”

Perkins stood up, his body shuddered from the effort. So, the headache and weakness came from the blueblood berry juice. How many other secrets did the jungle hide from him? Hundreds? Thousands?

“The jungle may have its reasons to keep you alive but you should keep your head down. Now, it is time for us to part ways. Find yourself a better life, kid.”

With that Perkins left the shelter of massive palms. Find yourself a better life ... if I only could. Nonetheless, he felt a little lighter. Maybe it was the unnamed leaf, or perhaps not. However, before I start looking for another path. I need to take a look at the man who saved me. Somehow it was important to him.