Page 19 of Tusk Love

“What about you?” Oskar asked Guinevere. “Any talents I should be aware of?”

“I’m…I’m fairly decent at embroidery,” she said in a small, small voice. He glanced up at her, and the expression on her beautiful face was terrified. Of his judgment? In all fairness to her, he’d been judging her from the moment they met. A pang went through him.

“Good,” he said. “You can teach me how to stitch my tunics. I tend to rip seams.”

She exhaled with a tentative grin. “All right, Oskar.”

Late afternoon rolled in onthe crest of a glacial breeze that sent red leaves scattering across the Amber Road. Guinevere had gone mostly quiet after lunch, and now she was slouched in the saddle, stifling the occasional yawn.

Walking beside her, holding Vindicator’s reins, Oskar was already planning where to camp for the night—there was a serviceable clearing just off the path another hour ahead, but if Guinevere could hang on for a couple more hours, they’d be nearer a water source—when the autumnal bushes on either side of them rustled.

Four figures sprang out. A diminutive purple gnome and a tuft-eared katari with sandy fur and a dark mane on the left, a towering white-scaled dragonblood and an orc with braided black hair on the right. Oskar would have thought them mere bandits, but they all wore the same type of light armor in uniform shades of brown and red, a spider emblem blazing on their leather breastplates.

And they had neatly outflanked him, Guinevere, and the horses.

This was when Vindicator proved he was worth his weight in fancy cups and gold figurines. As soon as the katari reached him, the stallion swung around, and his hind legs sent the leonine humanoid flying back into the bushes with a powerful kick to the chest.

Oskar drew his sword. In a blink, it clashed against the orc’s cutlass.Up close, he noted the willow-leaf shape of her emerald eyes and the porcelain smoothness of her seafoam skin. Not just an orc, then, but one with elven blood. An uniya. Her tusks flashed in the fading sunlight, and she broke their blade-lock, twirling away from him and then crashing back again, her movements as light as air.

Even as Oskar engaged her in fierce combat, part of his attention was always on Guinevere. She was clinging to Vindicator’s neck for dear life; the stallion had grabbed the gnome’s loose chain-mail collar between his teeth and was shaking him like a rag. Meanwhile, the dragonblood was charging at Pudding, who had stopped plodding along and was now blinking at her surroundings in abject confusion.

As their blades met again, Oskar parried, succeeding in knocking the cutlass out of the uniya’s grasp. He slammed the hilt of his sword against the side of her head, and she fell to the ground, dazed. He turned to intercept the dragonblood.

“Bharash!” the gnome yelled. “Grab the trunk!Quickly—” His words devolved into a scream as Vindicator hurled him at his draconic comrade.

Unfortunately, Bharash was built like a small mountain. The gnome bounced harmlessly off his back—and was immediately set upon once more by Vindicator. Guinevere had taken the reins and urged the stallion forward, and he wasted no time in trampling the enemy that he’d been tossing about mere moments ago.

Bharash whirled around, saw Oskar coming, and opened his reptilian jaws, a bluish glow pooling at the back of his throat.

I did not sign up for this.

Oskar dove in the nick of time, dropping his sword in the process. A column of frost energy sailed over his head. He hurried to straighten up, spitting out dirt, fumbling to unsheathe his second blade—only for an enormous scaled fist to slam into his jaw.

By the All-Hammer’s crusty underpants, Ireallydid not sign up for this.

Sprawled flat on his back, his ears ringing, he distantly heard Guinevere screaming his name. Then the dragonblood was looming over him, blocking out the sun.

“Forget him!” the gnome was yelling again as he rolled around onthe ground, incipient sparks of magic flaring from his purple fingers only to be instantly quenched by Vindicator’s hooves. “Bharash, the trunk!The girl!Get—”

Oskar saw red. He couldn’t care less about the stupid trunk, but they were taking Guinevere away over his dead body. He surged to his feet, lunging at Bharash. They grappled and swung at each other and, gods, Oskar wasnotgoing to be able to move after this…but he had no choice except to keep movingnow.Guinevere was steering Vindicator toward him, leaving the now silent gnome in the dust, eerily still. But already the uniya was coming to, and there was a chance the katari would rejoin the fight at any second.

I can’t win against these numbers,Oskar thought.Not with a fucking dragonblood.

He shoved Bharash away with one last burst of strength and slapped Pudding on the rear. The dappled mare took off with a startled whinny and surprising speed, vanishing into the tree line, luggage rattling, just as Vindicator and Guinevere sailed in front of him in a black-and-silver blur. Oskar leapt onto the stallion, one hand clamped around Guinevere’s waist, the other reaching for his remaining sword—which he sank into Bharash’s shoulder before the latter could give chase.

The dragonblood bellowed and fell back, Oskar’s sword sticking out of him. Then came the flight into the forest, Vindicator streaking through shrubbery and low-hanging branches like an obsidian comet that destroyed everything in its path, Oskar trading his mouthful of dirt for a mouthful of Guinevere’s pale hair as it flowed behind her, whipped about by the stallion’s momentum. He heard raised voices, a roar that might have been the katari’s, footsteps in hot pursuit. These faded into oblivion as Vindicator widened the distance, soon catching up to Pudding, but Oskar wasn’t about to take any chances.

“Keep going,” he told Guinevere. He mapped out the terrain in his head. “Until we get to Labenda.”

Where the foliage was thickest. Where it was easy to disappear.

“I don’t know where Labenda is!” Guinevere cried.

“Believe me,” said Oskar, “you’ll know.”

Chapter Thirteen

Oskar

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