Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Heart of a Virgin
Splash!!
With a tremendous burst of water, the three people and their horse plunged into the river. Fortunately, this was the upper reaches; though it was the dry season, the riverbed here still held a fair amount of water. Had it been elsewhere, such a fall would have turned them into nothing more than a pile of flesh.
No sooner had they hit the water than a powerful downward force dragged them straight to the bottom. Shaya struggled desperately, feeling water gush into his mouth and nose. He thrashed about, only to realize his legs were tangled in the stirrups. The harder he fought, the tighter the entanglement became. Panic seized him, and he instinctively opened his mouth for air—only to swallow a mouthful of water, nearly choking to death then and there.
Water kept flooding in, weighing down his limbs, weakening his body, and clouding his mind. His struggles grew feebler and feebler.
At that critical moment, a hand reached out beside him, drew the fire fork from his waist, and with a swift motion, sliced through the stirrup. Then, grabbing Shaya by the armpit, the hand hauled him upward...
The instant his head broke the surface, Shaya was blinded by a glare of light. He was dragged, barely conscious, onto the riverbank and dumped on a stone.
The pitiful fellow, hair dripping wet, turned Shaya over with an effort, then delivered a sharp punch to his stomach.
“Blegh!!”
Shaya retched, spewing great mouthfuls of river water, and after another violent bout of coughing, finally managed to catch his breath.
The pitiful fellow looked at him with concern. “Hey, are you all right?”
“Stuffed…” Shaya managed to croak after a long moment.
After a while, as he caught his breath, Shaya raised his head to see both the pitiful fellow and Orcs nearby. The three of them now lay at the bottom of the gorge, with the river beside them, sprawled on a rock barely as wide as two dining tables pushed together, surrounded on all sides by water.
From the opposite cliff came the distant shouts of men and the neighs of horses. The pursuing soldiers had arrived, circling their mounts at the edge of the gorge, peering down in frustration. But the cliff on that side was sheer and perilous, its walls polished smooth by years of flowing water—impossible to scale unless they were monkeys.
At last, after some time spent scouting, the pursuers left, likely to ride downstream in search of a more passable ford. Shaya remembered well that along the way, the riverbed was treacherous everywhere; to find a crossing point, they’d have to return to the very place they’d camped last night, and even then, it would take hours on horseback for such a detour.
With the pursuers gone, at least for now, Shaya relaxed a little. After another bout of coughing, he glanced at the pitiful fellow with a strange expression. “Was it you who fished me out of the water just now?”
The pitiful fellow shot him a glare. She too was drenched, hair plastered to her head, twisting it to wring out the water. She snapped, “You’ve got some nerve! You can’t even swim, you sank like a rock the moment you hit the water! And yet you had the gall to jump off a cliff on horseback?”
Shaya smacked his lips and gave a sheepish laugh. “Well… I’ve heard many stories—you know, the heroes pursued to a cliff’s edge, leaping on horseback and somehow making it to the other side, no matter how wide the gap. Why didn’t it work for us? Must be because you’re too heavy!”
At those words, the pitiful fellow’s temper flared—after all, no woman, young or old, beautiful or plain, is ever indifferent to remarks about her weight.
But faced with this bumpkin, she couldn’t be bothered to argue, rolling her eyes instead.
Shaya was no fool. Thinking back, he understood what had happened. When he leaped off with the horse, the pitiful fellow and the goblin queen, being merely perched on the horse, had quickly surfaced after falling in. He, however, caught in the stirrups and weighed down by the horse, was dragged to the bottom. Though raised in the mountains, he was utterly unable to swim; without the pitiful fellow’s help, he would have lost his life then and there.
“They’ll be after us again soon. We need to find a way out of here,” Shaya said, sitting up. A sharp pain shot through him, and his brow furrowed. An arrow was still lodged in his shoulder. In the chaos, he’d forced himself to ignore it, but now that things had quieted, he found the pain unbearable. Gripping the arrow’s shaft, he cursed under his breath.
The pitiful fellow, seeing his grimace, let go of her anger and moved closer in concern. “You’re badly hurt. We need to get that arrow out.”
After a moment’s thought, she picked up the fire fork and undid Shaya’s jacket. He was wearing the leather armor he’d stripped from the burly Nigu’er, one of the Four Young Masters of the capital. The pitiful fellow sliced through it with the fire fork, the supposedly blunt and rusted weapon proving surprisingly sharp.
The arrow was deeply embedded, but fortunately had not passed through his body. The pitiful fellow’s heart quailed at the sight of the mangled wound, but she forced herself to steel her nerves. “Hold on, this is going to hurt.” She began to cut open the flesh around the wound with the fire fork.
At the first touch of the fork, Shaya let out a blood-curdling scream. The pitiful fellow, unfazed by the blood but nearly undone by the scream, glared at him. “Why are you yelling?”
“Of course I’m yelling! You try getting stabbed and see how it feels!” Shaya retorted, utterly unashamed.
“Funny, when you were fighting for your life, you looked fearless. Now you can’t even act the hero?” she said, amused.
Shaya rolled his eyes. “Nonsense. Who says heroes don’t feel pain? Fighting is one thing, but getting hacked and shot hurts like hell! I’m no hero, so why pretend to be one?” He shivered again.
“Well… bear with it,” she said. She wanted to tease him further, but remembering that he was injured saving her, she couldn’t bring herself to mock him. Her voice softened, and she leaned in, carefully widening the wound with the fork.
Shaya was about to scream again, but this time, the cry caught in his throat.
Why?
As the pitiful fellow bent over, her face came so close it nearly touched his; her breath, soft and sweet, brushed against his skin. There was a faint, indescribable sweetness in that breath, and Shaya’s untouched heart thudded instinctively, a strange, tingling sensation rising from deep within.
His mind grew hazy, and a ridiculous thought occurred to him: “She hasn’t brushed her teeth in days, and yet her breath isn’t foul at all…”
Such things defy explanation; it is simply human nature, the primal attraction of male for female.
Startled by this feeling, Shaya took a deep breath—only to draw in more of her subtle scent, sending his heart racing faster still. At that moment, the pitiful fellow, sensing his slight movement, turned her head irritably. “Don’t move, I—mmph!!”
As she turned, her lips inadvertently brushed across Shaya’s open mouth…
For an instant, both were stunned.
It was only the briefest contact; her lips merely grazed his, as if they had touched, or perhaps missed by a hair’s breadth. Yet both felt, with startling clarity, the reality of that accidental touch.
In that moment, Shaya was dazed: No wonder this one speaks so softly—her lips are so tender…
A second later, both cried out and sprang apart. Shaya gaped, staring wide-eyed at the pitiful fellow, while she flushed scarlet, furiously scrubbing at her lips.
The pitiful fellow was inwardly aghast: Ruined! My first kiss, and it’s wasted on a bumpkin…
Shaya was equally appalled: Damn it! First I got an erection holding this guy, now I’ve been kissed! I just got kissed by a man!!!
He opened his mouth to roar in outrage, but before he could utter a word, he felt a strange sensation in his shoulder. Looking down, he realized that in their frantic separation, the pitiful fellow had yanked the arrow from his shoulder!
His eyes bulged, and he let out a scream that echoed through the gorge.
A spurt of blood shot from his shoulder, arcing through the air…