← Samuel the Rogue: Where the Feathers Fall

Chapter 4 - The Serpent’s Embrace

The humidity weighed on me, and my blood-soaked tunic hung wet and heavy against my skin. Every step was work. My boots sank into the tangled undergrowth, and my thighs burned with a deep ache that wouldn’t quit.

My breath hitched, and my lungs couldn’t pull in enough air. Sweat ran into my eyes and stung until everything blurred. Beneath the ruined gambeson, my chest wound throbbed in time with my heart. Blood still oozed down my ribs, warm and sticky, and I tried hard not to look at it.

“Damn it,” I grunted, shoving aside a curtain of thick vines. A fresh lance of pain shot through my chest.

The bugs and the birds shut up all at once, and the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.

I froze with my dagger raised, my pulse pounding in my ears. “Great,” I muttered. My voice came out thin and wrong. The trees were big, twisted things in the gloom, and I kept checking the branches over my head for whatever had scared the birds quiet.

I swallowed my nerves and forced my legs to move again.

I took another step, slow and careful, with every muscle tight and my dagger still raised.

My boot came down on something that moved.

The undergrowth erupted at my feet, a blur of wet scales and coiling muscle lunging out of the shadows. It was on me before I could even think the word snake. “Shit!” I choked out, the sound crushed in my throat as a coil clamped around my chest, right over the claw marks, and pinned my dagger arm against my side. Air shot out of my lungs in a whoosh, and my ribs creaked.

It was the biggest goddamn snake I’d ever seen.

The scales, cold and slick as river stones, pressed against my skin and wouldn’t give. I couldn’t get any air in, and the jungle started going dark around the edges. I clawed at the coils with my free hand, but my nails slid right off.

“Oh my GOSH, you’re so WARM!” came a deep, enthusiastic voice that buzzed right through my bones. “I’ve been waiting ALL DAY for a cuddle buddy!”

I blinked and quit clawing for a second. Cuddle buddy? The damn thing was crushing me to death.

The snake’s body was thicker around than I was, and it reeked of wet dirt and rotten fruit. It had me locked up tight, and it was going to squeeze until I popped.

Its head, wider than my shoulders, swung around to face me. Its eyes were gleaming gold discs with vertical slits for pupils. They blinked slowly and never left my face, and I was pretty sure it was deciding which end of me to eat first.

“You’re so TENSE,” the snake complained. “That’s not how cuddling works. You need to RELAX.” To make its point, it squeezed harder.

“Can’t… breathe…” I squeaked, clawing uselessly at the wall of muscle.

“Oh! Sorry!” The coils loosened just enough for me to snatch a desperate, burning gasp of air. “I’m Sylvester, by the way. I get excited when I meet someone new. It’s been SO LONG since I had a boyfriend.”

Boyfriend? I tried to remember anything the old drunks in the Willowbrook tavern had ever said about talking snakes, but it was hard to think with my ribs creaking. I still had my dagger in my fist, but that arm was stuck tight against my side.

“Shh, don’t ruin the moment,” the snake hushed me, bringing its head down to mine. A forked, black tongue, long as my forearm, flicked out of its mouth. It slid across my cheek, soft and dry, tasting the sweat and grime. The last one to touch my face like that was Maya, and now it was a snake. I flinched and shuddered all over.

“Why so QUIET?” Sylvester pouted, its massive head swaying closer. “Playing hard to get? I LOVE that game!”

My fingers stayed locked around the dagger hilt. I strained to lift that arm against the coil, and the coil didn’t budge an inch. Fight. Survive. Have to. I was not dying in the arms of a horny snake. “Let go, you bastard,” I hissed.

“Bastard? That’s not very nice,” Sylvester sniffed. “I’m just looking for someone to share my nest with. It gets so LONELY down here.”

Its muscles rolled and shifted under the scales while it sulked, and the coil over my knife arm slid loose a few inches.

I wrenched my arm free with everything I had and slashed blindly at the coils. The blade skidded off the scales, and the jolt nearly knocked it out of my hand.

“OW!” Sylvester yelped, its coils jerking in surprise. “That HURT! Is this how you treat all your dates?”

I might as well have been trying to stab a damn mountain. My chest heaved and burned, and my ribs felt ready to give.

I clenched my jaw, and my head spun.

The snake squeezed harder. One of my ribs snapped with a wet crack, and the pain went white-hot.

I let out a strangled noise, my whole body jerked, and all I could think was no, no, no.

“Oh! Was that too tight?” Sylvester asked, easing off a little. “Sorry, I don’t know my own strength sometimes. My last boyfriend said I was too clingy, but I think that’s just because he couldn’t handle a snake who knows what he wants.”

Its tongue flicked out again, this time darting down to the gash on my chest. It licked carefully at the blood welling from the panther’s claw marks. I’d been trying not to even look at that blood, and now a snake was licking it up. My stomach rolled over.

“You smell AMAZING,” Sylvester sighed dreamily. “Like sweat and fear and… is that blood? Are you hurt? Let me see!”

Its jaw flexed open, and for the first time, I saw its teeth. Rows of needle-sharp teeth curved backward into its mouth, made for grabbing a meal and keeping it. One kiss from that mouth and I’d be the meal.

Those teeth scared the hell out of me.

“You know,” Sylvester was saying, nuzzling my ear, “I think we could really have something special. I’ve got a lovely nest just down the river. It’s not much, but it’s home. We could cuddle ALL DAY LONG.”

It squeezed, and the blackness crept in again. I was done.

My mushy brain finally caught up. It doesn’t want to kill me. It wants to keep me. The poor bastard was so lonely it’d hug a dying man, and that was the only thing about it I could use.

I stopped struggling. I let my body go limp, my head lolling to the side. “Alright,” I wheezed. Even that took everything I had. “You… win.”

Its grip eased. “Win? What do you mean, ‘win’? This isn’t a fight, silly. This is foreplay.”

“I’ll… relax,” I gasped, forcing the air out. “Cuddle.”

The snake’s entire body shivered with delight. “REALLY?! Oh, this is the best day EVER!”

In its excitement, its coils went almost slack, shifting to rearrange me into a more comfortable cuddling position. It was the only chance I would get.

I didn’t bother aiming for the head or playing the hero, because I just needed it off me.

With all the strength I had left, I drove my dagger sideways, plunging it deep into the thick coil wrapped around my waist.

It let out a hiss so loud my ears rang. The pressure vanished as the snake bucked and thrashed in agony, and the dagger tore out of my hand.

“OW! OW! OW! You LIED to me!” Sylvester wailed, its voice cracking. “You said you wanted to cuddle!”

I fell to the forest floor, landed wrong on my ankle, and gulped down air that tasted of damp earth. Above me, the snake whipped its head around, and it had the same look I must have had the day I found Maya with Brutus in the village square.

“I thought we had something SPECIAL! I was going to introduce you to my mother!”

With a final, heartbroken sob, it slithered off into the underbrush.

I lay there, staring up at the canopy, hands trembling, too broken to move. Somehow, I was still alive. As soon as the snake was gone, the bugs started buzzing again, and some bird up in the branches cackled at me.

The whole damn jungle thought I was a joke.

Every breath came slow and hurt going in. The fight had burned out of me and left me shaking and so tired I could barely lift my head. “Fuck,” I croaked. “That… that was fun. Can’t wait to do it again.”

I lifted a hand to wipe my face, smearing blood and jungle filth across my cheek. I hurt all over.

I groaned, forcing myself upright. Big mistake.

Pain exploded through my chest, the gash from my shoulder to my belly button burning like someone had pressed a hot brand against it. The broken rib stabbed me with every breath. I clamped my hand over it, wincing as my fingers came away slick with blood. It wasn’t stopping either.

I needed to patch it up fast. I glanced down at myself and immediately regretted it. I looked like hell.

What was left of my gambeson hung off me in useless flaps, and I couldn’t afford to replace any of it. The snake had left black-and-purple bruises across my arms and chest. My ankle hurt too, from that landing.

I turned it a little, slow and careful.

My leg lit up so bad it blinded me for a second. I sucked in a breath through my teeth, hands clenching into fists.

It was only sprained, I hoped, but it was pissed off beyond belief, just like the rest of me.

From somewhere in the distance, I could have sworn I heard a faint, sniffly voice: “I just wanted someone to hold…”

“Can’t die here,” I rasped. “Not yet. Not till I find that Harpy nest.” For now, I just needed to breathe. Vines and leaves walled me in on every side, and I had a nasty feeling I was being watched.

“Not too deep,” I lied to myself. “You’ve survived worse, right? Well… maybe not worse, but definitely as bad.”

My dagger lay half-buried in the dirt where it had fallen out of the snake, with blood streaked down the blade. That little knife had saved my life, which was more than the crossbow ever did. My crossbow was gone, and when I looked down at my bare, filthy feet, I realized that somewhere in all that thrashing I’d lost my godsdamned boots too.

I peeled off what was left of the gambeson and the tunic under it, which were more blood than cloth by then, and left them in the dirt. All I had left was the knife and these stupid pants, which had lived through all of it.

I patted my pockets out of habit. Supplies? Gone. Bandages? Ha. Hope? Rapidly dwindling.

But I still had the Guild’s map. “At least I’m not naked,” I muttered, letting out a shaky, pathetic laugh. “Small mercies, right?”

In the distance, a mournful hiss echoed through the trees. “Call me if you change your mind about cuddling…”