Charz pointed and laughed as Fist sat up. “Who’re you trying to be? Lenny Firegobbler?”
Fist reached up to find that his upper lip was crusted with tiny seeds. He tugged at them and discovered that Squirrel had used the sap from a nearby pine tree to give him a handlebar mustache.
“Squirrel!” He barked.
Not me! The little beast was sitting on Charz shoulder and pointing at the giant’s face. Fist let lose a snort of laughter despite himself. The giant was sporting a bushy set of seed eyebrows.
Well his is funny, Fist admitted. He began scraping the mustache off of his lip with his fingernails. Just don’t do it to me again.
Please? Squirrel begged, feeling disappointed. He was quite proud of his latest creation. You were really asleep.
“No!” Fist said aloud. The sap was terribly sticky and he knew that it would be a pain getting it all off. But maybe doing it to Charz is okay.
Then Fist heard Puj walk into the camp from the trees. As she had the day before, the ogress pushed her way through the ogres, making a series of angry grunts as she did so. Fist turned at her approach and his brow furrowed in concern. Puj had a split lip and was bleeding from her nose. None of the other ogres that were awake seemed to notice as she weaved her way through them and plopped down onto her furs, scowling glumly.
Fist threw back his blankets and turned to face her. “What happened to your face, Puj?”
“Me?” Puj seemed surprised by his question. She cocked her head and looked closer at him. “What is under your nose?”
“Uh, Squirrel did that.” Fist said, rubbing at his upper lip again. He had managed to get most of the seeds off, but the sap was still so sticky. How had Squirrel avoided getting it all gummed up in his fur? “What happened to you? Your nose? Your lip?”
She looked down in embarrassment. “Nothing.”
Fist frowned and scooted next to her. He reached out one hand and lifted her chin. Now that he was looking closer, he saw that her face was quite swollen. She had the beginnings of a black eye as well as evidence of older fading bruises. “It’s not nothing. You are hurt.”
“It . . .” She pulled her chin away from his hand, refusing to meet his eyes. “I-I did it.”
“You?” he asked skeptically. That didn’t make sense. “How? Did you fall?”
“Yes!” she said quickly, then corrected herself. “No. I . . . hit me.”
“I don’t believe you,” Fist replied.
“I was mad. Mad at me!” she snapped. The ogress stood and turned her back to him. “I am a bad woman.”
“Why do you say that?” Fist asked.
“I am not good,” she said, folding her arms tightly in front of her. “I am ugly. Fist does not want me.”
“That’s not . . .” Fist bit his lip, unwilling to lie to her. Giving her false hope would just make things worse. “You are good, Puj. Very pretty. That has nothing to do with it.”
She looked back over her shoulder at him, confusion in her large dark eyes. “Then why? Why do you not want me, Fist?”
Fist opened his mouth to say that he did want her. It was just a rule of his tribe. But he stopped himself. Fist hated lying to her. It didn’t come natural to him and he knew he was bad at it. But how could he tell her the truth? She wouldn’t understand the real answer. It might even hurt her more.
Guilt welling within him, he stood and he reached for her face. “Let me heal you.” She blinked at him and he added, “With my magic.”
Puj took a step away. “I will put leaves on it. It will get better.”
“But those leaves . . . That will take time,” Fist said. She shook her head slightly and he pressed on, “Please. Let me fix it. The others might think I was the one who hit you.”
That seemed to get through to her because she didn’t back away further. “Will it . . . hurt?”
“No,” he assured her. “It will feel strange, but then your face won’t hurt anymore.”
She gave him a hesitant nod. Fist took a step closer and placed his hands on either side of her head. “Close your eyes.”
He sent probing energies into her face and saw that she indeed had multiple layers of bruising. In addition, one of the bones around her eye had a series of tiny fractures. That was troubling. Ogres had strong bones. It would have taken quite a blow to cause that damage.
Puj shivered as he went in with threads of water and earth to repair the split in her lip. He then sealed the cracks in her bone. Cleaning up the bruising was the tough part. There were dozens of tiny broken blood vessels in her face and that required a delicate touch. Justan would have been able to handle it much better, but all Fist could do was repair the larger vessels and clear away inflammation to encourage her body’s natural healing.
When he let go, Puj stumbled back. She grasped at her face. “What did you do to me?”
“I fixed it,” Fist replied. “You are all better now.”
She shook her head, probing at her lip and at the ridge around her eye. “Something is wrong.”
“It’s not wrong,” Fist assured her. “You look good.”
Slowly a smile grew on her face. “Nothing is wrong. You do like me! I will tell Stinky Chief!” she said enthusiastically, then turned and ran towards Crag.
Fist watched her go with trepidation. Had healing her been a mistake? He had felt bad for her, but now things would be even more difficult when the mission was over.
Squirrel leapt down from a branch overhead to take up his regular perch on the ogre’s shoulder. He shook his little head. Lying.
“I didn’t lie to her,” said Fist defensively. “I did before, but not this time.” He hadn’t. He had just sidestepped her question.
Not you, Squirrel specified. Her. She lies.
“About what?” Fist asked.
She not hit herself, the beast said confidently.
Fist thought about it and Squirrel’s assessment made sense. It would have been difficult for her to punch herself in the face hard enough to cause the injuries he had healed. “How do you know?”
I hear her yelling earlier, Squirrel replied.
“With who?” Fist wondered.
Squirrel shrugged. Don’t know. He sent Fist a memory from earlier that morning. He had been searching for acorns and had heard faint shouting. One of the voices was female, likely Puj’s. The other one was gruff and male, but it was hard to make out which ogre it belonged to.
Fist rubbed his chin. If she wasn’t hurting herself, who was it?
Your father? Squirrel suggested.
Fist didn’t like that possibility, but he considered it. Could Crag be angry that Puj hadn’t been able to get Fist to let her enter his tribe? Was that why she was so excited to talk to him about it? Fist watched Puj as she spoke to Crag excitedly, pointing at her face. Crag looked across the camp at Fist and grinned, giving him an approving nod.
“No, not Crag,” Fist replied. The ogre chieftain was lascivious towards the women and treated them like property, but he never hit them. It had to be one of the others; someone who wasn’t happy that Puj was no longer available to them.
Fist searched the camp with his eyes and Burl and his friends came into view. All three of them were watching Puj tell her story with frowns on their faces. Fist clenched his teeth. They were the ones who had most disliked Crag’s announcement that Puj was to be given to Fist. If she refused one of them, they might have lashed out.
Burl was the one Fist instinctively wanted to blame, but the other two were just as likely. The shorter of the three was named Bud, but everyone called him Beard. He had a thick beard and a full head of red hair, an oddity among ogres. Beard had been friends with Burl back in the old days and had always resented Fist. The other one was Glug, a buck-toothed brute with bulging eyes and one missing ear. He was new to the tribe, an ex-member of the Rock People who had known Burl from the war.
Fist didn’t know what to do about the situation. He couldn’t just walk up and accuse them without proof. He w
ished he could talk to Justan. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t be able to speak again until the next evening. He could bring up his concerns with Charz, but the giant’s solution would likely be to just stomp over and beat on the three ogres. Fist smiled at the thought. It was an amusing idea, but ultimately an unfair one and he dismissed it.
The wizard, Squirrel suggested.
Fist nodded. That was right. He was Locksher’s apprentice now. It made sense to speak with his master. But once again, the wizard had disappeared. His bedroll had already been put away. “Do you know where he went, Squirrel?”
In the grass, Squirrel replied. He could smell the stench of the evil wafting in from the plains.
Chapter Fourteen
Fist put on his armor and strapped on his mace, then followed Squirrel’s nose out of the trees. The plains were an ugly sight. In the spring, the area would be blanketed in quickly growing green grasses, but the weight of winter snows had crushed the normally waist-high grass. Now that the snow was gone, the plains were a sodden mess, their hillocks and valleys now looked more like a marsh of brown clumpy islands between temporary shallow ponds.
Fist stomped through ankle-high water and sucking mud with a growing scowl. Bettie’s runework would keep the mud from destroying his boots, but his feet were already getting wet. The ogre troop would have at least two full days of travel through the plains and he could already tell that it would be a rough slog.
They found Locksher in a dry patch at the top of one of the smaller hillocks. From the traces of red and gold magic left behind in the grass, Fist could tell that the wizard had a hand in drying the area.
Locksher was sitting cross legged with his back to them and the chest was sitting open next to him. He had that ancient leather-bound book open in his lap and was alternating between reading it and monitoring something on the ground in front of him. Fist noted to his amusement that Locksher was wearing the bright blue and yellow scarf that Mistress Sarine had been knitting back at the Mage School.
“Good morning, Master,” Fist greeted.
Locksher jerked in surprise, placing a hand on his chest. “You shouldn’t sneak up on a wizard, Fist! I might have attacked you.”
“Sorry,” Fist said, though he didn’t see how what he had done could be called sneaking. He had been stomping through the mud quite loudly. He looked at the three little gray lumps on the ground in front of the wizard. “What are those?”
“Dead mice,” Locksher replied. “I’ve been experimenting.”
“Oh . . .” Fist said. Now that he looked closer he could see that they were indeed three dead mice laying on their backs, their stiff little paws in the air. He wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “But-.”
“Why are you here, Fist?” Locksher asked. “Is it time to go already? Sometimes I lose track of time when I’m working.”
“Uh, not quite yet,” Fist replied, his eyes still on the still forms of the mice. Squirrel hopped down from his shoulder and scrambled over to them, inspecting them.
They are dead, Squirrel agreed.
“I came to ask your advice, Master,” Fist said.
For a moment, Locksher seemed surprised. Probably because Fist had never asked his advice before. “Ah. Good. Regarding what, exactly?”
“It is about Puj,” Fist said. “I don’t know what to do about her.”
“The ogre female?” Locksher cocked his head. “And you think I can help with that kind of advice?”
Fist nodded. “You are my master now. I would ask Mistress Sherl, but she is not here.”
“I . . . see. Uh, I have noticed the trouble you’ve been having with her.” The wizard smiled. “She seems to be quite a persistent woman, but I’m afraid I’m not any sort of expert on the subject. I have thus far managed to avoid those types of entanglements.”
Fist reached up and scratched his head. “But I thought that with the way things were going between you and Mage Vannya-.”
Locksher’s eyes widened. “Well what’s going on with Mage Vannya is . . . There’s nothing going on between us.”
Lying, said Squirrel with a slow shake of his head.
“Everyone at the school thinks there is,” Fist replied. It had been obvious to everyone that something had begun between Locksher and his prized student during the war. Fist had witnessed a few tender moments between them himself. His roommate Jezzer was positive that the two had begun spending their nights together.
“That’s a . . . ridiculous notion!” Locksher scoffed uncomfortably. “I-I am old enough to be her father, after all. At the very least, I am one of her father’s colleagues.”
“Okay,” Fist said with a shrug. “I guess I heard wrong.”
“I told her these rumors would start,” he grumbled. “Now it’s true, things were uncomfortable for awhile, especially while she was ‘in mourning’ over Sir Edge and Qyxal, but that was a completely different matter. I have discussed it with her since then and we have come to an agreement. She understands that I am her professor and she is my pupil.”
“Vannya agreed to this?” Fist asked. That was surprising. The mage hadn’t been acting at all crestfallen. In fact, she had seemed more chipper than usual.
“Yes, I have a specific set of rules spelled out. We speak to each other using formal terms. No unnecessary touching and even if she needs comforting, no more than two embraces daily. As for kissing . . . only rarely,” Locksher said as if that was a common arrangement.
Squirrel snorted. Lying again.
“It has been working well.” The wizard raised a finger. “Perhaps you could agree on a similar set of rules with this ogress of yours?”
“Perhaps,” Fist said. It was obvious that the wizard wasn’t going to be any help in that area. “But the advice I wanted wasn’t about that. It’s-.” The wind changed, carrying the stench from the open chest right past Fist’s face. He wrinkled his nose and Squirrel darted into his pouch to avoid it. “Do you need to keep that chest open?”
“It has to do with the experiments I have been running.” Locksher said. He raised an eyebrow. “Let me show you. This will be a good learning experience. Come, sit.” Locksher pointed to the ground across from him.
Fist looked at the slightly damp patch of ground. He didn’t want to be that close to the chest. “Do I have to sit?”
“Of course. You’re far too tall for me to explain it while you’re standing there. I’m already developing a sore neck from looking at you ogres all day.”
With a sigh, Fist sat down facing the wizard, the three dead mice on the ground between them. The rotting stench was even stronger here. Fist breathed through his mouth and tried to ignore it.
Fist could feel the anger of the evil prodding at the edge of the bond. The inside of the chest was issuing a soft glow that he could see even in the morning light. “Are you sure you should leave it open like that, Master? It’s going to affect you.”
“Ah, but it won’t.” Locksher smiled and lifted one end of the garish scarf tied around his neck and Fist saw that intricate designs had been knitted into the material. “These are bewitching runes. Mistress Sarine made this to protect me from the effects of the larvae. It’s also quite warm. I wear it whenever I’m working with the contents of this chest.”
“Oh,” Fist said. He could understand why the professor hadn’t been wearing it around the others. The ridiculousness of the bright colors made it hard to take him seriously. “What are the dead mice for?”
“They are at the crux of my experiment this morning. You see, I have been learning a lot about the nature of the ‘evil’ that has been plaguing the mountains to the north of us during the past few days. For instance, I ran an experiment yesterday to determine the strength of the magical attack of each individual larva. First I took out an individual specimen and tested its power output. Then I tested the output of two and then three and so on. What I determined is that the spirit magic power produced by each larva is weak, but constant. It neither waxes or wanes. Therefore the s
everity of the threat depends on the number of larvae involved.”
Fist nodded, his brow drawn in thought as he processed Locksher’s wordy way of explaining. “My father says that there is a lake of these things in the mountains.”
Eww, said Squirrel. He was still in his pouch and had stuck his head into a pocket filled with honstule flowers, trying to drown out the maggot’s stench.
“Yes. Crag described the same thing to me,” the wizard replied. “He said that when he approached the place, his men felt an overwhelming urge to jump into the mass of larvae.”
Fist and Squirrel shuddered.
“What I am trying to discover this morning is what happens when the larvae encounter a host body,” Locksher continued. “I happened upon these dead mice as I thawed out the hillock we are sitting on.”
“You’re going to put those maggots on the mice?” Fist asked.
“Indeed,” Locksher replied.
“Why not use live ones?” Fist asked. The plains had to be full of little dens of rodents hibernating for the winter. Surely the wizard could use his magic to locate some.
“Eventually I may,” Locksher said. “But the ogres have told me that the ‘evil’ can animate the bodies of the dead. By watching in person and studying it, I may better be able to understand the depth of what we are up against.”
“Okay,” Fist said, feeling uneasy. “But what if they just get up and run away?”
“I am going to set shield wards around the corpses to make sure that they can’t go any where.” He lifted his hands over the mice. “Has Sherl shown you how this is done?”
“Yes,” Fist said. “But I’m not very good at it yet.”
“Then watch,” Locksher instructed. Using flows of air, the wizard created a sort of box around the three mice. Fist saw the walls of the box shimmer with a golden glow as the air solidified. Locksher then added a ward to the box, linking it to him. Now he would be able to move his hand in and out of the box, but the mice inside would be unable to get out.
Then, using a small silver ladle, Locksher scooped a small pile of squirming maggots out of the open chest and poured them out next to the mice. Fist watched with sick fascination as the white maggots squirmed their way over to the stiff corpses and began burrowing into their fur. Moments later, the little bodies began to tremble.
The Ogre Apprentice Page 23
