← Samuel the Rogue: Where the Feathers Fall

Chapter 3 - Shadows in the Jungle

The morning air was just as suffocating as the evenings, thick with the smell of rot and new growth, and I hated every breath of it.

Each step through the dense underbrush was a fight. Thorny vines caught my arms and legs and snagged my clothes, and I spent half the morning unhooking my sleeves.

I swatted at another insect that kept buzzing in my ear.

“Damn it all,” I muttered, wiping sweat from my brow with my forearm. My gambeson was sturdy, sure, but in this humidity the padding soaked up my sweat and hung on me, heavy and wet.

The jungle went quiet.

One moment the insects were buzzing and the leaves were dripping all around me, and the next, every bug in the jungle shut up at once. I froze, my hand drifting to my dagger. In every story I’d ever heard, this much silence came right before something with teeth jumped out at you.

I looked around. The ferns and the trees stood still. “Where did everyone go?” I whispered.

I heard a new sound, a low, guttural moan that sounded, of all things, like pleasure.

A smart man would have backed away. I’m an idiot, so I crept closer, parting a curtain of ferns with the tip of my dagger. I peeked through.

In a small, sun-dappled clearing stood the panthers from the journal. And “stood” was a generous term. They were massive, more so than I’d imagined, their fur a shiny deep black, their muscles rolling under the fur. They were, uh, fucking.

The larger one was flat on his back with his legs sprawled open, golden eyes half shut. His paws twitched and dug at the moss, and his cock, monstrously thick and throbbing, stuck straight up out of his fur.

The smaller one, still huge but leaner and faster-looking, was on top of him with his front paws planted on the bigger one’s chest, face-to-face, like people. I’d seen barn cats go at it behind Hemlock’s place, and it never looked like this. His cock was buried in the bigger one’s ass, and he was pumping into him so hard their bodies smacked together, wet and loud enough to echo through the clearing. His claws raked down the bigger one’s chest, leaving wet trails through his fur, and he let out a long, shuddering moan, his tail lashing back and forth.

I was horrified, and I kept staring anyway. In a sickening flash, it reminded me of Brutus and Maya: the same earth-shaking pounding and the same screams of pleasure that I could never draw out. Once again, I was the pathetic, inadequate observer.

They were both panting, wild with rut, too far gone to notice a skinny kid in the ferns.

They both came at once, their bodies going rigid together.

The larger panther’s head arched back, a roar tearing from his throat loud enough to shake the leaves, and his cock spasmed, jetting white ropes that splattered up his own chest, onto the smaller panther’s belly, and down in messy globs to the moss below. I flinched so hard I nearly dropped my dagger.

The smaller one let out a high yowl and dug his claws into the bigger one’s shoulders, and he came inside him, so much that I could see it gushing back out onto the moss.

Oh, gods, I thought. They weren’t just hunting partners. They were hunting partners.

Of course, that was the exact moment I stepped on a twig, and the crack carried across the whole clearing.

Two pairs of eyes swung in my direction. The smaller panther slid off the larger one with an annoyed sigh, his eyes on me the whole time.

“Well, this is awkward,” said a silky, purring voice. It was the larger one, who was now calmly licking a patch of the mess off his own chest, which was more than I ever needed to see.

The smaller one stretched out on the moss. “Did we invite you to watch, little morsel?”

My mouth was dry. My witty retort, something along the lines of “Aaaargh,” was stuck in my throat.

The larger one took a step toward me, a low, amused rumble in his chest. “Don’t be rude, darling. Perhaps he wants to join in. He looks a bit… tense.”

That did it. Running away from things that wanted to kill me, or worse, was the one skill I’d ever been any good at.

I turned and ran, and two steps later I remembered the journal’s warning about running.

“Ooh, a chase!” the smaller panther squealed. “I love it when they’re shy! It’s so much more fun to make them scream.”

Branches slapped my face, thorns raked my arms, but I didn’t care. My boots hammered the earth. I had to get away from their claws, and from what I’d just watched them do, which I was going to see every time I closed my eyes for a month.

“Don’t run so fast, sweet thing!” the larger panther purred. “We haven’t even properly introduced ourselves.”

I still had the crossbow!

I panicked and ripped the crossbow from my back, fumbling with a bolt. My hands were slick with sweat. I spun mid-stride, aimed in their general direction, and fired.

The string jumped forward with a loud twang.

The bolt whistled straight into a tree, and I shoved the crossbow back over my shoulder without breaking stride.

It missed the bigger panther behind me by a good ten feet. “Ha! Bet you didn’t expect that, you oversized cats!” I wheezed. My voice cracked on “cats,” and I forced a grin anyway.

The larger panther’s eyes flicked to the bolt, then back to me. He looked bored, and maybe a little annoyed, which somehow hurt my feelings.

“Darling, if you’re trying to impress me, you’re going to have to do better than that. I’ve seen kittens with better aim.”

“He’s still trying!” the smaller panther giggled from somewhere to my right. “I told you he was fun!”

The panthers kept coming. Shit.

Abandoning any delusion of competence, I veered hard and dove into a thicket of vines, praying to every god that the panthers were too big to follow me through it.

“Running again?” the larger panther said. “At least give us a challenge!”

Vines snagged my ankles, but I kept going, and on the far side of the thicket hung a low branch, and my legs went for it before my brain remembered that cats climb trees.

I jumped for the branch and climbed like my life depended on it, because it did. Bark scraped my hands as I hauled myself higher, my boots kicking wildly and slipping.

“He climbs like a drunk monkey!” the smaller one hooted from somewhere below.

One last heave, and I got a leg over the branch. I hugged it with my arms on fire and searched the jungle below for black fur. The leaves hung still.

I knew better than to trust the quiet. They were still out there, waiting for me to come down, and I was running out of luck. Past the tree, the vines grew into a thick wall, and near the ground I spotted one narrow gap in it, barely big enough for me and too small for a panther. Dropping off the branch and diving for it was a desperate gamble, and it was the only one I had. “Here goes nothing,” I said under my breath.

I leaped, and the smaller panther sprang out of the ferns and slammed into me in midair.

The smaller panther’s claws ripped across my chest, the force knocking the air from my lungs. My gambeson tore open, fire lancing across my ribs, and I let out a squeal I’m not proud of.

“Got you!” he crowed. “That’s going to leave a pretty scar!”

I kicked off the panther’s body, flailing, and threw myself toward the gap. The world spun until the leaves and the dirt smeared together.

“Son of a bitch!” The curse choked off as I hit the ground on my shoulder and rolled, spitting dirt, with sweat stinging my eyes.

“Language, darling!” the larger panther called after me. “There are cubs in these woods!”

But I’d made it past the wall. I lay there dazed for half a second until I remembered the panthers. “Up, up, up!” I snarled, shoving myself off the damp earth. My legs buckled, but I couldn’t afford to stop.

Panthers were fast. If they were still behind me, I was dead.

I tore through the jungle, and every breath stabbed my ribs.

Finally, I staggered to a stop, slamming against a tree trunk to keep from face-planting into the dirt. My lungs burned, and my legs shook under me. I had no idea how far I’d run.

That was when I felt the gash across my chest.

It had been numb at first, just a distant sting under all the adrenaline, but now it throbbed with every beat of my heart.

I touched the torn fabric of my gambeson with two fingers, which was a bad idea. The pain made my eyes water. I sucked in a breath through my teeth, fingers coming away wet and sticky.

Blood had soaked through my shirt, gluing it to my skin in a mess of sweat and dirt. The smell of my own blood turned my stomach. “Well, that was fun,” I muttered. The laugh that followed came out wheezy and more pathetic than I’d like to admit.

The jungle was silent now, and I was sure those cats were out there watching me. But I couldn’t think about that yet.

I looked down at my chest. The gash ran from my shoulder down across my belly, and if it had gone any lower, I’d have had a real awkward story for the next tavern meetup. ‘Hey, Sam, why are you drinking alone?’ ‘Oh, you know, just mourning my favorite body part.’

It hurt, but it wasn’t going to kill me yet. If I didn’t stop the bleeding soon, that could change.

I slid down the tree to the ground, pulling my crossbow off my back and into my lap. The fall had wrecked it. The frame was bent, and the string had snapped. The trigger was smashed to hell, too, and I’d traded my father’s best knife for it.

I let it drop into the undergrowth. “Great. Just great.” I ran a shaky hand through my hair. I was bleeding and alone, and everything in this jungle wanted me dead.

I pushed myself up, testing my legs. They held, but my shoulder had a deep, raw ache that wasn’t going anywhere. At least I had my dagger.

I pulled it free. Holding it made me feel a tiny bit better, which was stupid, because I had one little knife against two giant panthers.

Still, I wasn’t dead yet. As long as I was breathing, I could figure something out.

In the distance, I could have sworn I heard a faint, musical laugh. “See you soon, twig-boy!”