FOUR

  HUMAN COMBUSTION

  Everyone was screaming.

  Out of all of them, Leihant thought he had the best reason for doing it. The villagers were surrounded by wet mud and rain, they could solve their problems by just rolling around and covering themselves in dirt. Those who were currently on fire would no longer be, the rest would probably be satisfied by a return to the status quo before this furor about a Wizard in their town. They seemed happy enough to be covered in mud, just walking around.

  The Inquisitor was trying to enforce some modicum of control and calm by screaming orders to his guards and servants, who in turn screamed the exact same orders at the villagers around them.

  The cat in the sack around his neck actually had the same or perhaps more justification for screaming as Leihant did, he conceded, but self-interest pushed himself ahead in his own rankings. It was nothing personal.

  Leihant wasn’t really sure why he, himself, was screaming. He knew all the reasons why, from fear, anger, ironic humor, panic, pain or just bit of madness, but it was difficult to single out any particular one. His mind was just a swirling soup of emotions that all tried to escape through the only exit door available, hence the screaming.

  Some part of his mind knew that desperately pulling against his bound hands would not free him, for he simply did not have the strength, but blind panic was in control now and pure reason was all too happy to hand over the reigns.

  This went on for over a dozen seconds, time that seemed to last so much longer to the people experiencing it. A village in a cloudy, starless night, surrounded by a dense forest all around them. Fire jumping from person to person, pools of flaming oil spreading across the ground, a huge wood pile being turned from damp logs into a blazing bonfire in the blink of an eye. A desperate man bound by hands and ankles to a pole atop it all, him wriggling around in fear like an open-mouthed fish that just couldn’t stop making noise.

  If Leihant thought he was screaming loudly, he was not prepared for the offended shriek that left his mouth when the flames licked his bare feet. By pure instinct he tried to life his feet, heedless of the rope still binding his ankles to the pole.

  This is when some fairly interesting things happened in the space of a very few seconds.

  First, Leihant tried to lift his feet away from the fires below him. Without thinking, he attempted to raise both feet at once, bending his knees above, and put a very surprising amount of strength into it. His hands were bound behind his back to the wooden pole behind him, but he pressed against it all the same, pushing into the pole without thinking.

  Then the ropes binding his ankles turned out to weaker than he thought, along with the villagers who tied him up hours ago. With enough force applied, his feet broke free of their bounds, then continued their motion upwards, lifting his knees and legs quite high.

  Next, he pulled his knees and legs against his chest, afraid of letting them drop back down and be subjected again to flames. This action put more force against the wooden pole behind him.

  Now it was revealed that the villagers were not just lacking in knot-tying and rope-craft, they also had a poor eye for finding branches or long wood strong enough to be used as a pole. The embarrassing result of their earlier poor choice in wood-sourcing was that when Leihant applied enough force and lifted his weight high enough, the wooden pole snapped off where it was sunk into the wood pile.

  This all meant Leihant, along with the cat in a sack around his neck, went tumbling down across the bonfire and down into the mud. He was also lit on fire during this process. Fire dancing before his eyes, heat burning across his body, trained instincts told him to roll in the mud, dousing the flames.

  Yelling in triumph, Leihant tried to stand up on the wet ground, rain still pouring from the sky. He struggled to, until he realized his hands were still bound behind his back to the rest of the pole that was still tied to him.

  Raising himself onto his knees, he was surrounded by the bonfire on one side, a half circle of screaming villagers on the other. They were in fear of him, pointing at him, trying to get away. The guards stepping through the crowd however, were instead trying to get closer.

  Without any time to think, Leihant let instinct take over. The pole was snapped short on the side behind him, but the length above his head was still quite long. His eyes searched the people around him, then he saw something. A servant paralyzed with fear, both hands clutching a sizable jug of oil.

  A jug of oil with handles.

  Like a demented mummer stuck in a donkey suit, Leihant did his best animal impression. He charged, leaning his body downwards so the pole formed a lance tied to his body. He ran straight towards the servant with the oil jug, lance aimed for the target.

  Leihant did it. The blunt end of the pole jabbed into the servant who could only squeal in surprise and panic, but he was not the target.

  The target for the pole was inside one of the jug handles.

  As the guards brought down their halberds to corral and contain Leihant, he made his next move. It was not dignified, it was not complex, it was a bit embarrassing, but it was the best idea he had.

  He began spinning around, cackling with laughter that sounded more than a bit crazed. The jug at the end of the pole began spinning as well, spilling out oil. Arcs of fire began spiraling through the air, the crowd falling over themselves to escape, the guards backing up as patches of flame appeared on their armor. In the corner of his eye, Leihant saw the Inquisitor enraged and shouting.

  With a final spin of the pole, Leihant launched the oil jug at the Inquisitor, impacting his chest. Suddenly he was now aflame, screeching and screaming. All his guards and servants moved to help him, an errant Wizard now a second priority.

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  And with that, Leihant made his escape.

  He tripped at first, kicking away into the mud some tangle of fabric that was trying to stop him. It was only when he had burst through the crowd, running to the forest, that he realized he had lost his pants. Without a belt to hold them they turned from fashion to obstacle. Where his clothing had given up and fallen down, Leihant vowed to keep moving and escape.

  Running blindly through the forest, leaping over roots, ducking beneath branches, Leihant realized he had incredible night-vision. Even without light, with his hands bound, a pole tied to this back, a howling sack-cat at his neck, he was making incredible progress.

  He was clad only in his shirt and underwear, with bits of detritus and trinkets hug around his neck along with a ragged sack containing an even more ragged cat, but he was free. He had no idea where he was going or what he would do next, but he was free.

  This is when he recognized the fact that he actually did have light to see his way. His surroundings were illuminated by flame. There was a small fire burning at the top end of his pole.

  The lit flame he was inadvertently carrying explained the frighteningly less than distant voices behind him and how he was being tracked so easily. He was the only light source in the dark forest. He had a literal target on his back.

  This is when he also realized, in the frenzied, spinning process of his earlier oil-fueled escape, Leihant had accidentally doused himself with a startling amount of flammable liquid.

  He tried to remember what was the proper term for what he had been turned into, as he continued sprinting through the woods. He wasn’t a torch, that wasn’t right, the word, “matchstick,” was close but still felt incorrect.

  There was the sound of rushing water ahead of him, along with insults and shouting from behind him. No matter how hard or politely they asked, Leihant decided he was not going to stop.

  The cat was shouting very angrily now. Leihant had a loud animal to act as a lure to himself, along with the fire creeping down the pole like a lit fuse.

  Fuse! That was the word he had been searching for. With him covered in oil, the fire on the wooden pole, he was very much a living human fuse, less than a minute from full ignition. Despite the imminent death this posed him, it was a bit amusing.

  As he burst out of the treeline, Leihant was confronted with another imminent death. There was a stone gorge ahead of him. The other side was much more than a safe leap across from him, where the forest continued. The river at the bottom of the gorge was very fast, very loud, and quite far below him. The rain was falling even heavier now, making the ground slick and feeding the river.

  Trying to stop himself so he could either turn to the side or begin climbing down, Leihant barely managed to halt his speed, almost leaning over the side of the gorge.

  Now it was time for the cat to make its next great contribution. With what could have been a determined howl of vengeance, it swung around in the sack, just enough to pull Leihant over the edge.

  The stone gorge didn’t just amplify the sounds of the rushing river to near-deafening levels, it also meant everyone and everything in a very wide area of the forest could hear the panicked screams of Leihant as he fell.

  Plummeting down with his hands still tied to the pole behind him, Leihant was once again certain he was about to die. As he fell further and further, the sides of the gorge drew closer and closer. He worried his head would splatter against the stone cliffs before he could drown in the river below him.

  Suddenly, he came to a jarring halt. Both ends of the pole had gotten wedged in the rock behind and in front of him. For a split-second he was suspended in the air. He shrieked in pain as all his weight was placed into his arms bound behind him, almost threatening to pop his arms out of his sockets.

  Then he was free. The pain was gone. This time, the pole had held where the ropes did not. His hands broke free of their bindings.

  He barely had time to yell in triumph before he plunged into the river.

  * * *

  Crawling onto the pebbly riverbank with exhausted limbs, Leihant let himself rest. Whatever swimming lessons his past self had taken were forgotten with the rest of the memories, but their ingrained instincts were not.

  Heaving with breath, he felt the heavy rain beat against him. He was feeling a lot of things, but for right now, it was triumph.

  He realized the cat was being surprisingly quiet.

  Pulling open the sack with weary hands, Leihant’s mood plummeted worse than him falling over the cliff.

  The cat was not breathing.

  Lifting the animal that now seemed so small, Leihant placed it on the ground. It wasn’t just rain running down his face. It wasn’t fair that after so much, an animal should escape all that then die like this.

  Then his mind took over, bits of half-formed memories and training leaking in. The cat had definitely been howling and yelling as usual when he was first in the river. Leaning down, pressing his ear to the animal’s body, he heard a faint heartbeat.

  With no hesitation, Leihant lifted the cat, squeezed to dislodge water, then began breathing into its nose, waiting, then breathing again.

  Tangled knowledge of feline biology and anatomy began forming in his head, very little of it currently useful. Just like how he escaped before, Leihant let mental instincts take over, trusting himself to save the animal.

  Then it breathed. With a hacking cough and a spattering of water, the cat was breathing again.

  It was a mangy black cat, thin and wiry, bits of fur missing and old cuts to the ears, but for one moment, as Leihant cried in victory and pressed his forehead to the confused cat’s head, it was the most beautiful animal he had ever seen.

  Then it scratched him.

  He fell back onto the pebblestone shore, pain flaring from yet another wound to his face. The cat yelled in disgust, then ran into the forest, vanishing into the night.

  Leihant was feeling a lot of things, but for now he laughed. The cat probably had the right idea of what to do next.

  Stumbling forwards, he walked into the forest.

  * * *

  An hour later, he was shivering inside a small cave. The rain was falling in sheets outside, blocking any vision, overwhelming any sound. There was a pile of wet wood, dead branches and small twigs piled in front of him.

  Apart from the sack and rope that came with it, all of the trinkets the villagers had tied around his neck were useless. He did thank them for the string, which he stored in the sack, along with bits of rusting metal and potentially useful scrap. Hopefully, The rest would burn if he could only start a fire.

  Since crawling out of the river an hour ago, survival lessons had been germinating and crystallizing inside his head. All of them said he was in a very bad situation that any sensible, civilized person should not have found themselves in.

  One useful memory was that small bits of shaved branches could dry quickly if shaved off and kept away from moisture. So this is why he had accumulated a small pile of shavings in front of him, scraped away with the sharpest stones he could find, which were not very sharp at all, which meant a lot of effort for barely anything.

  He could now remember how to make a snare, how to remove strips of bark, but none of his restored memories told him how to start a fire.

  Then, almost unconsciously, he patted his shirt. There was a pocket on the left side. There was something there. It was a small box of thick paper, thin in width, but could unfold and open.

  It was a book of matchsticks. There were over a dozen left.

  Like reflex, he lit one, striking it against the sandpaper on the casing. Then he pressed it into the pile of wood shavings, spreading the flame.

  He laughed.

  With some huffing and puffing, moving around and positioning of branches and twigs, he had his fire going. Thick, tear-inducing smoke came from the wet wood he had collected, but it was lost against the rain.

  Curling up around the fire, Leihant considered his situation.

  He had no food. He had no real clothing. He had no tools. He had no idea where he was or even who he really was.

  But he had warmth, and he had hope.

  And just before nodding off to sleep, he realized he had a guest.

  The cat had returned, lying down on the other side of the fire.

  Each of them regarded each other with tired, half-lidded eyes, before they fell asleep.