Also, this was the first time Corcoran had someone else on hand to help load the cart. Lynus was unaccustomed to that.
“You needn’t trouble,” he said, looking up at Kinik. “I’m sure I can manage it from here to the cobbles.”
The ogrun sized him up, or rather down, arching her heavy brows, and for a moment Lynus worried that she would sling several hundred pounds of food on top of him and his armored greatcoat.
“You would be making two trips, maybe,” she said, a thick Molgur-Og accent muddying her Cygnaran. “Or five.” She strode out to the street. “Professor Viktor Pendrake is here?”
Her accent couldn’t be any thicker if she hailed from the Wyrmwall.
“No, he’s back at the university stables.”
“We will not keep him waiting, then!” She reached back to Corcoran’s door and grabbed a massive polearm from where it had been leaning.
“Wait a minute,” Lynus said. “What’s that for?”
“Corcoran said I will meet Pendrake. I worked three weeks for room, board, provisions. Now Pendrake takes trip, and I am ready!”
This was not how “not dilly-dallying” was supposed to go. Not at all.
“No, no, no,” Lynus said. “I don’t care what Corcoran told you. Viktor Pendrake is in a big hurry, and he’s waiting on me.” Lynus pointed at the back of the cart. “Just put everything in there and be off.”
“No.” Kinik scowled so deeply Lynus thought her brows would rub against her lower lip.
“Look, I’m sorry, but Pendrake is busy.” He fished around in his purse and came up with a shiny Cygnaran half-crown. “Far too busy to meet with people today. We’re headed out this very hour. Pendrake will be back in town in a couple of weeks. Please just take this for your trouble?”
Lynus silently scolded himself for turning that into a question.
Kinik leaned her polearm against the cart and accepted the coin. She smiled. “For this crown, my trouble is to carry.” She shrugged, rolled her huge shoulders to settle the bundle, and picked up her polearm again. “You drive the mule. I will walk behind.”
He didn’t seem to have much of a choice in the matter, so Lynus climbed onto the bench of the empty cart and drove. Kinik followed on foot.
He fumed and fretted, alternating between biting his nails and whipping Mooger the mule, who nevertheless seemed content with the arrangement. Behind the cart, an eight-foot she-monster carried all the provisions and a frightfully large weapon. He was sure that everyone else on the road, whether on foot or horseback, or in carts and wagons, was staring at him.
Lynus steered Mooger wide around an idling steamjack that carried sawed timbers under its arms and barrels and boxes slung in netting over its shoulders. It was part of a construction team finally getting around to repairing one of the buildings damaged when the skorne army had marched their giant beasts down this avenue three years ago. But it wasn’t idling properly. The fire was too hot, and it emitted a whistling sound.
“Hey!” he called out to the laborers on the team. “That sounds like a bad release valve! You’re idling it too hot.”
“Shut it, whey-face.”
“I’m serious!” Lynus bunched the mule’s reins in one hand, slid over to the right side of the bench, and pointed at the steamjack. “That whistling. The release valve wants to let go, but it’s stuck. The boiler is already too hot. It might crack, or worse!”
Lynus’ father was a steamo, so Lynus had learned a thing or two about ’jacks at an early age, though he’d lacked the strength to grip the wrenches and hammers that were the tools of that trade.
The foreman strode over to Lynus and glared up at him, holding just such a wrench. “Look behind your wagon, junior. You’re holding up the whole street, so whip the mule, or I’ll whip . . . uh.” The foreman’s eyes went wide as he looked past Lynus to the left side of the cart. Lynus turned, following his gaze.
Kinik loomed there with a frown. “Whip what?” she asked.
Oh, great. This backwoods ogrun was going to start a fight, with Lynus right in the middle of it, and why wasn’t the foreman paying attention to the whistling, which was now very loud? Lynus turned back to the steamjack just in time to see the boiler explode.
His first thought was relief that he was still alive. Boiler explosions are bad news, even small ones.
His second thought, very close on the heels of the first, was thank Morrow the ’jack was facing the street, arms full, with the boiler turned away from everybody. The fire and steam washed over a lumber pile and only sent the ’jack forward a half step before it toppled.
His third thought, which interrupted the second with a jolt, was panic, because suddenly he was racing away from the explosion. Mooger had spooked, and now Mooger, Lynus, and the empty cart were very quickly twenty paces away. Traffic had bunched up behind them, so there was plenty of room for a frightened mule to run.
Lynus steadied himself by grabbing the bench with both hands, and watched as the reins he’d released slid forward and off the cart.
Mooger poured on the speed. Lynus bounced on the bench as the wagon rattled over the cobbles. He grabbed the back of the bench with one hand, leaned forward looking for the reins, and almost went top-over-teakettle when the wagon slowed abruptly with a distressed “hee-HAWNNN“ in front and a grunt of exertion behind.
Lynus looked back. Kinik held the cart with one hand and her polearm in the other. The bundle of provisions lay on the cobbles a few paces behind her.
“I can carry supplies, or I can carry the cart.“ She grinned. “Not both.“
Lynus dropped to the street and grabbed the reins. Kinik’s smile was genuine, her accent somehow disarming. It was hard to stay angry. “Thank you,” he said gruffly. He sighed. “You might as well put the stuff in back.” He climbed back onto the bench.
Kinik loaded the provisions in the cart and then climbed in with him. The mule whinnied in protest.
“If you’re riding,” Lynus said as they drove, “do I get that shiny half-crown back?”
“I carried half the way, saved boy from a beating with wrench, then saved the wagon, the mule, and boy from a crash,” Kinik said. “I was expecting maybe other half of crown.”
Lynus frowned and said nothing as they rode through Corvis toward the university. He was frustrated, and grateful, and yet more frustrated that he had something to feel grateful for. And what was the professor going to say?
The two- and three-story wooden buildings gave way to statelier stone structures, then a low ivied wall, beyond which stood the proud old Corvis University campus. Lynus turned right after the gate and went straight to the stables.
Pendrake and Edrea had their horses, Codex and Aeshnyrr, out and dressed alongside Lynus’ gelding, Oathammer. It was nice to be senior enough to merit a personal horse issued by the university, but it would have been nicer still to merit the opportunity to name it something more noble.
Horgash stood with them, leaning against a haystack-sized pile of furs and . . . Morrow above, Lynus thought, that’s not furs.
Horgash had a bison.
Lynus stared at it for a moment. He’d seen bison from a distance, but they weren’t particularly extraordinary, so they never entered his studies, let alone the lab. He had never realized just how large they were.
“Ahem.” Professor Pendrake cleared his throat.
Pendrake, Horgash, and Edrea were staring back at him. Okay, Horgash had a bison. That was not the matter at hand. Lynus had a stowaway.
“I’m sorry, Professor. She insisted.” Lynus gestured at Kinik, who was out of the cart and stretching. “She wouldn’t load the cart, she almost started a fight, and then Mooger got spooked. Anyway, she really wanted to meet you. I tried to say no. I said no a lot, in fact.”
Edrea cocked an eyebrow at Lynus, as if to suggest that he hadn’t merely handled this incorrectly, he’d handled it in the worst possible way. His heart sank.
Pendrake scowled at him, and Lynus’ heart found an
other drop-off. “Did it occur to you that perhaps I should be the one making that decision?”
“Umm . . .” Lynus flushed. Somewhere back there, during the nail-biting and the mule-whipping, that had occurred to him, but he had kept hoping the ogrun would just give up.
“‘Um’ indeed,” said Pendrake as he strode around the cart. “Professor Viktor Pendrake,” he said, offering his hand.
“Kinik Helegroth,” said the ogrun, pumping the professor’s hand. “I am bokur.” She gestured at the assembled group. “You are four, but with maybe only two that carry.” Lynus suddenly felt quite small. “Let me carry, and you are four with eight free weapon hands.”
Lynus jumped down from the cart. “Gods . . . Professor, I think she means to come with us!”
“Obviously.” Pendrake adjusted his spectacles and looked up, way up, to meet the ogrun’s eyes. “Your accent places you from beyond the Wyrmwall, perhaps. You’ve come quite a distance, Kinik Helegroth.”
The ogrun nodded.
“Bokur, you say?”
She nodded more deeply, almost a bow.
“I am a professor. I need students, not vassals. Though I would be deeply honored should you offer, I feel I must warn you in advance that I am not the korune at the end of your bokur’s quest.”
Kinik’s face fell, and her shoulders sagged. She cast a short, sullen glower at Lynus, as if this were somehow his fault. As frustrated as he was, he felt terribly sorry for her. He had warned her, hadn’t he?
And then she straightened up, drawing herself to her full height. “My offer stands. Bokur and student are both for learning. So I will learn as I carry.”
Pendrake furrowed his brow. “You have a war cleaver,” he pointed at the polearm. “Do you know how to use it?”
“I study two things,” she said. “War cleaver is one.”
“And the other?”
Kinik reached into one of the big exterior pockets of her greatcoat and withdrew a battered, dog-eared tome. The embossed title, Monsternomicon, was scuffed but still clearly visible.
Lynus knew that book well. He, Edrea, and numerous others had helped Professor Viktor Pendrake research it. Some of them had died in that effort. Eleven of the woodcuts were from Lynus’ own hand. Only five hundred of these books had been printed on Corvis University’s press three years ago, between the general distress of an undead uprising and an invading army from the east, yet somehow this wandering ogrun had gotten her hands on one of them and walked it all the way back here.
“I study your book.”
Pendrake laughed heartily. “You are a student indeed!” he exclaimed. “It’s decided. You shall accompany us, and since my Iosan assistant has set the precedent,” he looked over to Edrea and winked, “I shall, for the time being, waive the usual requirement that those studying under me be registered, tuition-paying students at Corvis University.”
Pendrake looked to Lynus. “Our expedition’s provisioning must be adjusted to account for another healthy appetite. How quickly can you see to this?”
And then Lynus realized why the provender bundle looked too large. Corcoran had paid the ogrun in provisions.
“I think that’s already been taken care of, Professor.”
Lynus read as he rode, which settled him. Yes, he’d been frustrated earlier, but perhaps that stemmed in part from excitement and anxiety to be headed back into the field. Now they were on the road, and while some peril or another certainly awaited, things felt right.
Oathammer wanted to walk alongside Aeshnyrr, and Aeshnyrr was amenable to that. This placed Edrea to Lynus’ left, just two arm-lengths away. Over the last few years, the two of them had spent countless hours riding just like this, discussing classes, experiments, and of course the creatures they had encountered, were likely to encounter, and would really rather not run into.
So far on this trip Edrea hadn’t said much, but Lynus had been reading. That was the other thing that usually happened during the hours on horseback. Lynus’ satchel was always full of books, notebooks, reference materials, maps, and sketches, and lately that included pages upon pages of material destined for a home between the covers of the second edition of the Monsternomicon.
Horgash and Pendrake rode in front. Horgash’s bison, Greta, seemed even more enormous with the seven-foot-tall trollkin on her back. Pendrake’s mount, Codex, was a large Khardic stallion, but Pendrake’s stature and Codex’s size still weren’t enough to prevent them from appearing almost comically small next to Horgash and Greta.
Kinik walked in back, her long strides easily keeping up with the horses despite the heavy pack she wore. She stood at eye level with all the riders but Horgash.
Lynus considered what Horgash had said about the attack on Bednar. He flipped through page after page of large predators, but the damage Horgash described didn’t sound predatory. A Thornwood mauler might flatten a house and trample those living in it, but it would certainly leave tracks. The same went for dire trolls. Kaelram were larger than either of those but less likely to be preying on villages and even less likely to do so without leaving tracks.
A dragon or a gorgandur could destroy a village almost absentmindedly, but there had been no sightings of dragons anywhere in Cygnar’s skies of late, and gorgandur hadn’t been reported anywhere in western Immoren in decades. Also, it didn’t do to consider chasing either of those, since there was nothing mere men could do but get out of the way of such creatures.
There were species between mere creatures and mere men, though. If this wasn’t predatory . . . He turned to Edrea.
“What if somebody is protecting their territory?”
“Somebody?” she asked. “Not something?”
“It doesn’t need to be a beast, or beasts. This could be the work of gatormen, Tharn, or farrow.”
“Ah.” Edrea nodded and smiled.
“Okay, any of them probably would have carried the sheep off, but it could be jealous swampies, or bogrin . . . maybe even a trollkin war band.” He thought for a moment more. “But Horgash probably knows all the trollkin in the area, the way he wears all those kriel talismans. So my money’s on farrow.”
Edrea nodded again. “Horgash actually suggested that while you were out recruiting.” Lynus winced and glanced at Kinik, trudging along behind them.
Edrea leaned toward him and lowered her voice. “Don’t feel bad. You missed quite the lecture from the professor. He related incident after incident, explaining to Horgash, the stable master, and a captive audience of stable boys and horses why flattened buildings would rule out an attack by farrow.”
Lynus smiled as he imagined the extemporaneous instruction. “Usually a lecture like that concludes with him pointing us all in a new direction. Did he suggest any alternatives?”
Edrea laughed softly. It sounded like music. “Yes. He suggested we let you pore over your notes and mull on the matter. The professor quite respects your recall. He boasted to Horgash that you’d memorized every tome in his library.”
Kinik interrupted, bellowing with glee. “You memorize the books?” She trotted up alongside Lynus and grinned.
“I haven’t memorized them,” Lynus said, upset that she was intruding upon his conversation with Edrea. “I pay attention when I read them.”
“But we suspect that Lynus has, in fact, read all of them, Kinik,” said Edrea.
“How many is all?” asked Kinik.
“Six hundred and fifteen bound volumes, forty-one thesis folios, and four cabinets full of loose-leaf,” Lynus said.
Kinik went wide-eyed. “Where is your time for going outside?”
“I read quickly.” Lynus scowled. Was Kinik chiding him for studying?
“All books about creatures?”
“There are actually very few of those, and none are particularly comprehensive,” Edrea said. “That’s why Pendrake saw the need for the Monsternomicon.”
“Then what are the others?”
“Associated topics,” Lynus said. “Things we mi
ght need to know in order to understand the creatures we find during our many, many expeditions. Alchemy, biology, cartography, druidism—”
“And Lynus has organized them: first by topic, then alphabetically.”
Lynus sighed. That was true.
“It’s okay, Lynus. Everything is much easier to find now.”
He couldn’t tell if she was teasing or thanking him, but he wasn’t comfortable with either, not here, in front of Kinik.
“Of course,” she continued, “if Lynus is in the room, nobody bothers to find the books on their own. They just ask him, and the book magically appears in their hands.”
Teasing. Definitely teasing.
They arrived at The Bodger’s Bed and Barrel just after dusk. This particular inn, one of the first along the Great Northern Tradeway between Corvis and Merywyn, was a common enough stop for Pendrake’s crew on northward trips that it felt like a home away from home to Lynus.
The food was good, the fire warm, the stable well tended, and the beds clean. Lynus sat and stared across the common room at the glowing hearth, his eyes tired from reading.
Fire, he thought, is a great way to destroy a village. Even farrow, those barbaric, boar-headed bipeds, would know to set fire to thatch. In fact, he couldn’t think of any intelligent or mostly intelligent group that wouldn’t resort to fire to raze a village. Maybe his epiphany about a war for territory was completely off track.
Unless . . .
“Friend Lynus.” Kinik’s voice startled Lynus out of his musings. “Sorry for disturbing you. Would you write your name?”
Lynus blinked, his eyes blurring from staring at the fire. “Excuse me?”
“Your name. Would you write your name for me?”
He was baffled. “Whatever for?” And then he noticed her worn copy of the Monsternomicon, almost completely swallowed up in the grasp of her massive left hand.
“You helped Professor Pendrake write this book. You drew pictures.” She clutched the tome to her battered breastplate. “Your name is inside already. But not written in your hand.”
Extraordinary Zoology Page 2
