by Joseph Lallo
The instructions thus handed out, Ben handed down a sling and paced slowly back to Jarrad's side. His apprentice watched him go with a curious look, then peeked over the edge of a basket and sniffed at the contents.
“It clearly doesn't understand a word you say,” Jarrad muttered, “Look at it. And besides, that row has already been worked, I checked it myself. There isn't anything but under-ripe berries left.”
“Well, then anything the beast might find would certainly have been lost otherwise.”
The two men watched as the beast took one final look at the ripe berries before darting into the bushes. Jarrad wore a stern look on his face as he watched the bushes rustle.
“If that thing harms so much as a single rakka bush, I claim the bounty today and you are on half-rations for the next year,” the plantation owner rumbled.
Ben responded with a nod. To his surprise, he found that he was almost anxious for the little monster. Realistically, with that thing gone his life would be immeasurably easier. No more having to keep the creature occupied, no more wrangling him or warning him away from the slaves more vigorously hateful toward him. Half-rations were a small price to pay . . .
And yet he found himself hopeful that his ward would come through this, and a shade guilty that if the beast did not, the little thing's death would be the result of a hastily composed plan to avoid further punishment on his own behalf. He listened as bushes rustled up and down the row, and finally as his apprentice emerged and padded toward the baskets. A telltale tap and bounce of falling fruit as the creature walked made it clear even to Ben that the foraging had not been in vain.
“Have it bring them here,” Jarrod ordered.
“Bring them here,” Ben repeated.
At the sound of the blind man's request, the malthrope approached, putting as much distance as possible between himself and Jarrad as he did so.
“Here,” the creature said, managing to shuffle the berries about enough to free a hand. He pulled down Ben's free hand and filled it with berries.
What had been two heaping paws full was just enough to fill the human's hand. Jarrad inspected. The deep pink color of the fruit declared them to be perfectly ripe.
“The beast found a dozen or so berries. Hardly worth the trouble of having it loose during—” Jarrad began.
“Here!” the creature interrupted.
Jarrad glanced down to see the malthrope looking up to Ben, hands outstretched with the sling that had previously been slung out of sight behind his back. The rough cloth of the sling was bulging with berries, each one just as ripe as those in the blind man's hand. The plantation owner reached out to take the bag, but the little creature pulled it away and retreated a bit, eying the other human suspiciously before attempting to present his hard work to Ben again.
“Fine. I want that thing with you in the fields. Each time the others finish harvesting a row, have it do a pass as well. It clearly hasn't got the sense to stay clear of the thorns, so it can reach the berries the others can't. At the end of a week, if there has been no damage to the crop, and it continues to turn up berries, then you are back on full rations. But keep it on a short leash, Ben. I won't tolerate any problems.”
“Understood, master.”
Ben listened as the heavy, plodding steps of his master retreated into the distance. When enough distance was between them, the blind man's protégé took a few more steps forward and hung the well-filled sling over the end of Ben's walking stick. The old man sighed and shook his head.
“I do not know if I've done you a tremendous favor or a grave disservice, but one thing is now clear, my little red shadow. From this day forward, we are in this together whether we like it or not.”
“Together,” the creature nodded.
Ben paced to the baskets and managed to dump the berries into the appropriate one, the beast skittering behind and collecting the stray berries that spilled to the ground along the way. He dusted off his hands, stood up straight, and declared. “I suppose we may as well have ourselves a meal.”
#
The creature did his job admirably, for the required week and each one after. Through the whole of the growing season he solidified his reputation as the old man's shadow, perpetually a few steps behind his keeper. Now that the malthrope had an official job to do, the slaves were forced to endure his presence, an affront that had a mixed effect on them. The elves had already been behaving with carefully cultivated disdain for their fellow workers, so heaping a bit more on this latest one was hardly any trouble. Gurruk, typically in one state of inebriation or another, never seemed more than vaguely aware of the beast. The rest, though, either avoided the malthrope, or gave him a very good reason to avoid them.
Of all of the slaves and servants, by far the most thoroughly hateful was Menri. When stones were thrown at the little thing, his were the largest and the sharpest. When others muttered vile words at the beast, Menri spat on him. The elder slave would tug rakka branches as the creature rustled between them, raking the thing with thorns. More than once Menri had “accidentally” struck the malthrope with a shovel while widening an irrigation ditch. The creature never lingered near Menri if he could help it, and other times always made certain to keep Ben as a buffer between them.
Ben himself faced a bit of a struggle as well. Though Jarrad was no longer after him to corral the beast, the stubborn plantation owner was very slow to warm to the idea of keeping a triple-stripe slave. The blind man was constantly forced to find new ways to contribute. Fortunately, his long life of service had afforded him an impressively diverse set of skills. On any given day, he could be found coaching slaves in the rakka fields on the best way to find and select berries, or perhaps in a slave’s quarters treating this injury or that ailment, or else in his shop-cum-abode repairing or improving any equipment that required his attention. Regardless of the task, his shadow was always there, watching and mimicking.
On this day, the last of the growing season, Ben and his protégé were toiling away at what was easily the most miserable task on the plantation—seed roasting. Inside a shack just slightly larger than the one Ben called home, there was a large metal drum. Beneath it, a fire was built using any scraps and trimmings that came off of the field. Heaping baskets of rakka seed would be dumped into the drum, which had to be kept rotating at a constant, steady speed. All the while, the tumbling seeds were monitored by color, scent, and taste. When the seeds were just right, they would be dumped and quickly cooled. On the coolest of days, the air within the shack was stifling, and the powerful odor of the roasting seeds mixed with the smoke of the scrap-fueled fire to make the air nearly unbreathable.
Most days it was a trio of the veteran slaves manning the roaster, but on the final harvest day—a day when both the rakka and lentil fields needed to be stripped clean—every able body was needed on the fields. That left Ben to supply the muscle to rotate the drum and issue orders. All other tasks were performed by the malthrope. Thanks to the well-trained nose of the blind man and the sensitive nose of his apprentice, there was no need for looking or tasting, and thus little use for a third man. Even with only two slaves on the job, much of the time was spent waiting, with the occasional request for another bundle of dried scraps to be thrown on the fire.
“Smells close,” wheezed Ben, cranking industriously at the drum. Once or twice, he had experimented with allowing the creature to man the crank, but that idea had been abandoned fairly quickly. The little beast invariably cranked a bit too enthusiastically, as though turning the crank faster would roast the seeds faster.
“More,” remarked his shadow, sampling the air for the smoky, spicy scent. “More . . . more . . . no more!”
Ben halted the drum and stepped down on a foot lever, which, through a series of interlinks, managed to hoist the far end of the drum toward the roof of the shack, dumping the seeds into a carefully placed basket. When every last seed had tumbled into the basket, the malthrope shoved and heaved at it until he’d managed to m
aneuver it out the door, where it could be dumped into a wooden tray and spread thin to cool.
“Quickly, load the next batch,” Ben managed to order between coughs.
“No next batch,” the malthrope said.
“We’ve actually gotten ahead of the shuckers?” Ben asked, referring to the slaves performing the only marginally less laborious task of removing the single seed from the center of each rakka berry, dropping it into a vat to soak, and collecting the seeds from three days prior to be toasted. “Thank heaven for small favors.”
“Thank heaven,” came the parroted reply, accompanied by a nod.
To keep the drum from overheating while it awaited its next load, Ben wedged his chair over the foot lever. He then stiffly made his way to the outside, where a second chair had been set up for these rare opportunities to get some fresh air into his lungs. The chair hadn’t even finished creaking when he heard the creature plop down beside him. From the sound of it, the beast was tinkering with something.
“What have you got?” he asked.
“Wait. Not done,” his shadow replied.
Ben grinned at the response. The weeks since their arrival had seen a veritable transformation in the little creature. For one thing, he had grown like a weed. He was nearly a head taller than when he had been found, and his hair had grown into a wild and unruly mop that dangled in front of his eyes. He had also become a veritable chatterbox, at least when the two of them were alone. Once he had learned that gestures and nods didn’t get a response, he had quickly learned which words would do the job instead, and his vocabulary had soared, even though his grammar needed work. It was difficult to believe that something so young could have developed so much over the course of a single growing season—but, then, no one truly knew enough about malthropes to venture a guess at how young the creature really was.
One thing was certain, however: if this beast was typical, then malthropes seemed to develop much faster than their human counterparts. It stood to reason. They tended to live such short and harried lives, the species wouldn't exist if it couldn't learn the ins and outs of survival quickly.
“Fetch some water,” Ben said.
“Uh-huh,” his ward replied, jumping up and trotting off.
A moment later, the apprentice returned with a wooden pail and a dipper. Ben let a mouthful of cool water scour away the layer of soot and grime that seemed to have coated his tongue, then spat it on the ground and took a long, badly needed drink. By the time he’d had enough water to convince himself he wouldn’t shrivel up and turn to dust, the tinkering sounds had stopped.
“Here. Done,” the malthrope said.
A hand tool, a trowel, was placed in Ben’s hand. With the sheer quantity of secondary tasks that the old man had been forced to take on, he'd begun handing down the simpler tasks to the malthrope to do alone. The results were typically lackluster, but they left Ben with far less work to do to bring them to a proper state of repair. He turned the latest test of his apprentice’s skill over in his hands and felt the joints, testing the strength and feeling the edge.
“It could be better. The grip is a bit rough, and the edge could use sharpening,” Ben critiqued, handing it back.
“But . . . but good enough, right?” his shadow defended.
“If it can be better, then it isn’t good enough.”
“But it . . . I have to give it to Menri.”
“What difference does that make?”
“I don’t like Menri.”
“What difference does that make?” Ben repeated, a stern edge to his voice this time.
“I don’t want him to have a good tool. Not anything good.”
“Well, that’s too bad. The purpose of the task, your purpose, was to fix the tool. When you have a purpose, you don’t always have the luxury of choosing who it benefits.”
“Then I don’t want one.”
“Don’t want one what?”
“A pur . . . a thing like that.”
“A purpose.”
“Uh-huh.”
Ben smirked. He'd long had a feeling that the creature actually knew a great deal more words than he used. The broken and awkward manner of speech seemed motivated by his desire to avoid certain sounds. Now was as good a time as any to test the theory.
“Say purpose.”
“Purposhe,” the beast slurred.
“Still haven’t learned to speak correctly, I see.”
“It’sh hard! My mouth ishn’t like yoursh. The shound shpillsh out the shide when I shay shome shoundsh,” it sputtered.
“One would imagine that it is difficult to say anything at all in a human tongue, considering you don’t have a human tongue.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well then, if it is so difficult to speak at all, then you may as well put in the last bit of effort and speak properly.”
“Uh-huh,” it pouted.
“Now what don’t you want?”
“A purpos-s-s-se,” it managed, emphasizing the S partially as an act of rebellion and partially to be sure it sounded correct.
“That’s your second mistake. There is nothing, nothing, more important than having a purpose. A purpose is the whole reason you exist. Some people have grand purposes, others have simple ones, but they are all important, and to be given a purpose, to know what your purpose is, is a gift. It doesn’t matter what your purpose is, once you have one, you must perform it to the best of your ability.”
“But why?”
“Why? Because a sharp trowel cuts the earth more easily, and a smooth grip is easier on the hand. A proper tool makes work easier. It lets you do more work. That means more rakka, which means more money, which means better treatment. It means more lentils, which means more food for everyone. But, more important than that, easier work means a better life. And I think you'll agree that life is hard enough for everyone, and anything that can make it better is worth doing. Most of all, having a purpose is what gives life meaning. Without it, there would be no reason for you to wake up every morning. Nothing to work toward. Life would be empty. Understand?
“No.”
“Well, one day you will. Until then,” he said, handing down the trowel, “do it because I said so.”
“Okay . . .” moped the little beast, taking the tool back.
“But later. It sounds like the next load of seed is ready . . .”
Chapter 9
That first year had been a good one. Jarrad’s gamble with the new land and larger rakka production had paid off, and his plantation flourished as a result. True to his word, he did much to reward his workers. Wooden tools were largely replaced with metal, and gloves and boots thick enough to withstand the vicious rakka thorns were provided to all. Even Ben felt the benefits, as the new tools required him to take on metal working, requiring an anvil and furnace. That meant a new room added to his shack, which, in turn, gave the creature a place to sleep without getting in the way any longer.
Of course, while a blind man can do a great many things by hand and by ear, one cannot hope to shape hot metal without sight. Perhaps predictably, in the early days, it was Gurruk who worked the steel. When he first took on the task, the flaring flame and pounding hammer terrified the little malthrope, sending him scurrying into the workshop for protection from Ben.
“Calm yourself,” the blind man said irritably. He was at work sharpening the teeth of a saw. It was a slow and tedious process, and having a trembling beast clutching at one's legs wasn't terribly helpful.
“Why is he doing that? Why doesn't he stop?” the creature whispered urgently.
“He's doing that because that is how metal is shaped.”
“But . . . metal is hard. How can you shape something that's so hard?”
“You shape it in the same way that you shape anything else. With something harder. You can't make something harder, or sharper, or better, without testing it against something stronger. It's the same way with anything else.”
“Anything?”
&nbs
p; “Anything. Iron sharpens iron. That goes for men as well as metal.”
“Men? How?”
“Ask the people heading into the Cave of the Beast.”
“What?”
Ben sighed and set the task aside for a moment, scolding himself for mentioning the place. It was a fine story, and as such the little beast surely wouldn't let him finish his job without hearing it from beginning to end.
“In the north, in the Nameless Empire . . .” Ben began.
Gurruk stopped hammering and spat on the ground at the mention of the land to the north. The malthrope ducked a little lower behind Ben's chair.
“Why did he do that?” he asked.
“Because we are at war with the Nameless Empire.”
“Why?”
“One story at a time, you little devil. Now, in the land to the north, as far east as you can go, there are mountains. At the foot of these mountains there is a very thick forest. At the very deepest part of the forest, where the trees and the mountains meet, there is a cave. They call it the Cave of the Beast. It is called that because there is a creature that lives inside. None have seen the beast and returned to tell the tale, but sometimes if you listen closely you can hear it roar with a force that makes the very mountain tremble. Those warriors who fancy themselves the best in the world make their way to this cave, with hopes of besting the beast.”
“You said no one has come back.”
“That's right.”
“So they all die?”
“One must assume.”
“Why would they do it?”
“Well, it is said that the man who defeats the beast will be hailed the world over as the greatest warrior who ever lived. There have been rewards offered, but most of those who test themselves against the beast do it for the glory. They say that killing the beast is proof of greatness, that no one but the strongest and most skilled of warriors could strike down the monster.”
“Do you think that?”
