Crecheling by D. J. Butler Page B

poke one right through a girl the day before, and it didn’t seem funny now.
    “Wait,” Dyan said. She didn’t know to whom.
    Cheela stomped—
    thwack!
    Jak spun the spear and cracked the butt of it into Cheela’s forehead with a sharp blow that sent her reeling backward. She rebounded off the stone wall behind her and charged, growling, as if she might headbutt the Landsman. Jak kicked her in the face from his position on higher ground and then jumped down to their level.
    “Stop,” Dyan pleaded.
    Jak pushed her with one hand, knocking her sprawling. As Cheela raged and stormed at him again, he swept her feet out from under her with the butt of the spear, dropping her onto her back with an oomph! of air rushing from her lungs. He pointed the spear tip into her face.
    “Are we done?” he asked.
    “You don’t expect me to just give in, do you?” she wheezed between painful-sounding grunts.
    “Funny,” Jak said, his voice flat. “That’s exactly what you seem to expect from me.”
    “Kill me, then,” Cheela pushed him.
    “I’ve got a better idea,” Jak said. He dug into Eirig’s purse at his belt and came out with the little canister of painkillers. “I should have done this last night.” He knelt, straddling Cheela’s stomach to pin her, and set aside his spear. Shaking out a handful of pills into one hand, he dug under Eirig’s blanket and produced a flask of water. “Breakfast time,” he deadpanned.
    Cheela spat at him, pointlessly. She was almost his size, but he had her tied up and trapped. Jak forced the pills into her mouth, clapping the water to her lips immediately after. She gagged and struggled, but had no choice but to swallow or drown.
    Watching her Crechemate forced to drink, Dyan realized how thirsty she was.
    When the flask was empty, Jak stood up.
    Cheela gasped for air, and rolled over onto her side and retched, but the pills stayed down.
    “That was four times what I gave Eirig,” Jak observed, “and he’s still out cold.”
    “Umm umm mot,” Eirig objected sleepily, but he didn’t so much as roll over.
    “She could die,” Dyan pointed out. “She could overdose and never wake up.”
    “True,” Jak agreed, flashing a grin that showed all his teeth. “Or someone could drag her out of her home under false pretenses, lead her out into the desert and try to chop her in half. Life’s hard like that, isn’t it?”
    Cheela cursed him as he stooped and worked at waking Eirig, but he ignored her, and after a couple of minutes of struggling, she passed out.
    “I had weird dreams,” Eirig confessed, when Jak pulled him to his feet and shook off the last of his painkiller-induced slumber.
    “Oh yeah?” Jak asked. “Were you on the run in the Snaik River valley?”
    “Worse than that,” Eirig said. “Someone chopped my arm off.” He raised his stump as if to do something with his missing hand and shrieked.
    Jak laughed. “Curse you, Eirig,” he said to his friend. “Can’t you take anything seriously?”
    “What would be the fun of that?”
    Dyan felt a sharp pang in her heart. She looked down at Cheela, snoring on the cave floor. Cheela wasn’t her friend. At best, she realized, Cheela was her Crechemate, companion, and team member. Often, she was a rival. At worst, she was openly Dyan’s enemy.
    But Wayland and Deek were her friends, she thought stubbornly. And what was Shad? She missed them all, and she missed Magister Zarah.
    “We take this one with us,” Jak said.
    “My name is Dyan,” she reminded him.
    “I don’t care what your name is,” he told her. “You don’t have a name, as far as I’m concerned. You’re our hostage and our shield.”
    “What about Cheela?” she asked.
    “If you mean the other one,” Jak said, pointed at Cheela’s snoring form, “we leave her here. She won’t wake up before we’re back, and if we get into trouble, just maybe we can still use her as a bargaining chip.” He picked up one of the microfiber blankets and