The world around him seemed to go in and out of focus, in rhythm with his drooping eyelids. Punch-drunk with exhaustion, he could barely keep track of the order of events that passed between seeing the bleeding saiga, and finally crawling out of the water near the Meadows. He remembered running for a very long time, side by side with Pete, long past the point when their hearts should have burst out of their chests. He remembered jumping into the oxbow lake and swimming all the way to the river.

  And before all of that, he remembered the fight.

  He was no stranger to brutal combat, and he had seen death, up close and personal, many times.

  But nothing prepares a man for the kind of desperate struggle, where a group of terrified men armed with sharp sticks try to fend off a bunch of ungodly strong apemen.

  The memories came in flashes.

  The apemen surrounding them, trying to break apart their formation.

  His boys, skewering one of the beasts with spears, only for another to scatter them like ragdolls.

  Ilya, his skull crushed with a stone axe.

  Pete and Olle, pushing another creature into the bushfire, only for it to crawl out, wreathed in flames and roaring in rage.

  The boys dying one by one, until only he and Pete remained.

  Then the marathon run along the animal trail, with the apemen on their tails.

  He remembered laughing hysterically when he realized that the only reason he was still alive was that he was skinny and lightweight compared to the cavemen who chased them. Even Pete, despite being the size of a shaved Kodiak, was still scrawny compared to these things. Because of that, they could not outfight the monsters, but they could surely outrun them, with their superior stamina and lighter build.

  He heard them panting in exhaustion and falling back. Finally, he and Pete leaped into the water, and the apemen just stood at the shore, roaring and hooting, either unable or unwilling to swim after them.

  Probably unable, with their trunk-thick bones.

  But when he crawled out of the river mud and shambled onto the meadow, he almost wished the monsters got him. With not a single spare calorie left in his entire body, and with the adrenaline already spent, he felt like a walking corpse. Pete beside him, looked not much better.

  The sentries noticed them immediately, and showered them with questions, but he could not understand a single word. He had one mission, one last thing to do before he collapsed, and cut a path through the camp to do it.

  Vikram walked out to face him, but for once was speechless rather than verbose, which was alright by Hashké. he half-grabbed, half-leaned onto the man, and croaked,

  “We must go. Now!” he flailed his arm towards the river.

  “What are you talking about? Where is the rest of the - ”

  “Now, goddamnit!” Hashké rasped. “We need rafts.. and go, across the river… go now!” he felt dizzy.

  “Hashké you are not making any sense! Where is the rest of your team? Where is the food? Did you manage to catch anything?” Vikram tried to push his hands away.

  “Jesus Fucking-Christ, listen to me for once, you arrogant cocksucker! We. Need. To. Go! Right now! They are coming!” He shook Vikram fiercely, making the tall man’s head bob as if it were to fall off.

  “Easy, Hoss,” Pete gently pried his fingers off Vikram’s throat. “Don’ strangle the fucker”.

  Which was the last thing Hashké heard before his tortured body gave up and unconsciousness embraced him.

  He woke up to the sound of busy work. Men passed him dragging chopped-down pine trees, crowns and all. They did not waste time debranching them, just rolled them into the water and tied the branches together forming crude platforms. It looked less like rafts, and more like floating beaver dams. No matter, as long as it would help his people get across.

  A group of women was hauling bags of food onto the platform. He spotted Marike’s husky form and shambled towards her.

  “What’s goin-”

  “Shut up and eat,” she commanded and stuffed a piece of mystery meat into his mouth. Meat! What a luxury. “Boy,” she continued. “You do no work, only rest, and eat, until you are strong again, Verstehen?”

  “Wha..?” he mumbled, masticating furiously, the venison juices making him drunk with sheer ecstasy.

  “Pete told everything. About evil cavemen. Vikram decided we need to go.”

  Hashké shook his head in disbelief. Vikram suddenly not acting like an obstructive bureaucrat, and listening to his ‘inferiors’ was unbelievable. “What convinced him?”

  Marike grinned. “Pete punched him in the face. No more arguing after that.”

  He almost choked on his food. Bear-sized Pete punching Vikram? What a sight to sleep through! “Did Vik survive?”

  “Unfortunate tragedy!” She shook her head in mock distress. “That he survived, after all. Making himself useful now, triaging the sick to be loaded.”

  He sighed. This was the exact opposite of where he wanted Vikram to be. Counting every last edible berry and every single piece of tinder, like the good corporate jockey he was, that was a job for Vik. Deciding who goes on a rescue raft? Definitely not.

  “I’ll check up on him.”

  He found Vikram managing a particularly bizarre activity. He was supervising a bunch of women tying their weakest sick and wounded into bunches and stacking them on a raft, like firewood on a pallet. Some of the sick groaned in pain at this manhandling. Plenty were not lucid enough to complain.

  “What in the Lord’s name…” he pointed at the bound people. “What the fuck is going on, Vik? What’s with the BDSM fuckery?”

  “Hello again Hashké, nice to see you conscious again.” As usual, Vikram was his completely robotic, stoic self, despite a giant bruise covering half of his face. It did not seem like pain or discomfort would distract him from doing whatever he deemed ‘needful’ at the moment.

  Hashké did not speak again, just pointed at the bound people in silent exasperation.

  “Oh, this is for efficiency.” Vikram, as usual, was blind or indifferent to Hashké’s rage. “You see, these people are too weak to swim, and cannot paddle. We cannot sacrifice the strength of our best to haul our sickest, so I ordered them palletized so that they would float if they fell overboard.”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “You palletized people?!” he felt the energy from the consumed venison prop up his righteous fury.

  “Yes, you seem to disapprove?”

  “Hell yes, I disapprove. The ones at the bottom will drown or suffocate!”.

  Vikram nodded curtly. “Yes, this is possible if a raft capsizes. But they will provide buoyancy to the ones above them, saving their lives. I had it calculated, it maximizes their survival rate, without jeopardizing the chances of the healthy people who need to focus their strength on pushing the rafts.”

  “Have these people untied, or you’re getting another bruise,” Hashké whispered through clenched teeth.

  “I do not condone violence, nor will I be intimidated,” Vikram shrugged, “Harm me if you wish, It does not change the fact that my idea is correct, and you do not have a better one.”

  “Pete’s punch did change your mind though,” Hashké smirked.

  “Facts changed my mind. Peter’s story about being attacked by a hostile tribe simply made sense, in the light of your injuries and the deaths of your fellows. It was completely superfluous for Peter to hit me, but it seemed to make him feel better, and break him out of mental shock.”

  “How nice of you to think of his mental wellbeing. How about the wellbeing of the poor fucks you palletized at the bottom, who will either suffocate or learn to breathe water in about an hour?” Hashké no longer had the strength to argue. Worse still, he could not think of a good alternative solution to the problem. Not in the short time they had left if the apemen tracked them.

  “I care for the general wellbeing of the people under my management. I assure you I regret the necessary sacrifices.”

  “I wonder what Billy will say about that,” he sat wearily on the edge of the raft. A half lucid man from the bottom of the pile eyed him pleadingly, as if silently begging for help. Or maybe not seeing Hashké at all, just staring at the fever-induced pictures in his own mind.

  “I expect him to eventually agree with the logic of my actions, after his customary bout of fuming, cursing, and stomping,” Vikram added, unceremoniously pushing an unconscious girl towards the bottom pile as if she was just a log of wood.

  Their verbal sparring was cut by a series of shrill whistles coming from the hillier part of the Meadow. he could barely parse the message through the cacophony, but it was clear that it was a panicking signal of danger sounded by dozens of sentries simultaneously.

  The apemen found them.

  Hashké leaped to his feet and whistled back, thrice for the men to fall back, and then seven times in quick succession for them to form around him. The camp descended into chaos, when the people, depending on their personal morals, either ran towards the rafts to save themselves or towards the meadow to save the others.

  “Vik, my javs!”

  Vikram wasted no time pulling a bundle of stone-tipped javelins out of a pile of supplies, and handed him a spare atlatl.

  “On me! Pete, Pavel, Abu…” he looked around frantically, trying to stop fleeing men with his gaze. Amazingly, most of them stopped, found their courage, and picked up spears. “Vik, I’ll buy you guys some time, haul ass!”

  “How? Who’s going to push the rafts out if these men stay behind?” Vikram worked feverishly fast, loading people and supplies on the last raft, but his voice was eerily calm as usual.

  “Fuck!” Hashké looked around and dismissed most of his spearmen to go with Vik, who was trying to push out one of the rafts, glacially slowly. The whistles of the sentries turned to blood-curdling screams, then silence.

  There were still people in the meadow.

  The ones Vik deemed too weak to bother loading on a raft.

  The dead weight, soon to be actually dead.

  The only ones left standing were Hashké, Pete, Pavel, the former accountant turned grim-faced spearman, and Abu, a deceptively nice potato farmer whom he once saw kill a wolf with a sharp stick. And Marike, who loaded the last person on the raft and picked a spear as well.

  “I help buy time,” she said, her thick German accent harsh with determination. “Can’t swim anyway. Bad knees.”

  The bushes at the edge of the meadows exploded with inhuman ululation.

  “Here they come-” Hashké whispered, staring into the green shadow at the opposite edge of the clearing, which was why he was blindsided by a trio of Apemen who skulked through the undergrowth by the shore and exploded onto the last raft.

  “No!” they heard Vik scream at one of the Apemen, who paused, astonished.

  The pause lasted only a second, and then the stone axe rose to cleave Vik in half.

  It never fell, because Hashké put a javelin through the Apeman’s flank.

  A second later, Pete, Pavel and Abu reached the raft and pushed the creature off with their spears.

  It did not go down without a fight.

  The shallow water turned into a red whirlpool when the men tried to push their enemy down under with their spears, only to get into the range of its axe. Pavel shrieked and fell, with his thigh split to the bone. The skewered Apeman rose, overpowering Pete and Abu, despite two feet of ashwood going through its stomach.

  Hashké could not snipe it down with another javelin, with Pete in the way.

  And did not have to.

  Marike, roaring like a hoarse Valkyrie, pushed past Pete and rammed her spear into the creature’s face.

  The push, however, placed her within the reach of another Apeman, which already stood on the raft. It grabbed Marike by the hair, and yanked her up in a tight embrace that ended with an audible snap.

  “No! Fucken no!” Pete bellowed, and they all rushed the monster barehanded, not bothering to try to take the spears still embedded in the first creature.

  The sudden motion of three men climbing onto the raft pushed it off the shore, and onto the river, where it immediately spun flowed with the current.

  The last Apeman nearly fell overboard, but steadied itself by grabbing the tied-up people. Pete slammed at its hand, trying to break the grip to no avail, only to be laid down with a haymaker.

  Hashké feinted a strike with the atlatl, and when the creature ducked, stabbed it in the forearm with the last javelin.

  The Apeman just grinned, tore the javelin out of the wound, and rammed it into Pete’s chest, causing the unconscious man to fall overboard.

  And then it burst out a melodious cackle, and spread its arms wide, as if inviting Hashké and Abu to fight it.

  For a second, they just stood a few feet apart, separated by a heap of half-conscious and terrified people, with Vik spread atop of them as if trying to shield them with his skinny body. The raft spun lazily in the current, further and further away from the shore.

  “Abu.” Hashké said in a low, steady voice. “On three, I rush it, and you go for the legs. We throw the fucker off. Fight it in the water.”

  “What?”

  “These assholes can’t swim. Bones thick like that, this thing’s gonna sink like a fuckin’ anvil. We got a chance.”

  “...no.” said Vik, with a soft resignation. “Not you. You are valuable Hashké. For survival. ”

  “The fuck you sayin’ Vik?” Hashké asked through gritted teeth. The Apeman stared at them in confusion, not understanding why nobody was attacking it.

  “One…Two…Thr-” As Hashké and Abu were about to leap into action, the Apeman rushed forward to intercept them, swinging its giant fists.

  And missed them entirely, when Vik sprung up, tackled its legs, and used the creature's own inertia to push it overboard, into the rolling water.

  The last they saw of Vikram Gupta, the most pragmatic man they had ever met, was his utterly calm face as he was pulled into the dark depths by the drowning monster.