“Ooh! I heard,” Rufus offered, turning his head to grin at the dwarf without breaking stride. His enormous eyes were level with Lenny’s head.
“That’s ’Cause yer one of ’em,” Lenny said, pointing at the rogue horse. “You just keep yer nose on the road and keep sniffin’!” He shifted his gaze back to Edge. “Anyways, I see yer point. That rug-licker could be takin’ her anyplace. But this Alsarobeth is the only clue we got. Jhonate’s a first-rate Academy veteran. She knows her stuff. If’n she’s tryin’ hard to hide her tracks, we ain’t gonna find nothin’!”
I found something! sent Deathclaw from the trail ahead.
“Deathclaw found something!” both Edge and Fist said at the same time and Rufus bounded ahead towards the raptoid’s position.
“Dag-gum bondeds,” Lenny grumbled. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a pair of spectacles, then spurred his horse after them.
The undergrowth was thick in parts of these woods, though this wasn’t much of a problem for Rufus. Albert, on the other hand, balked at traveling through such treacherous foliage in the dark. Lenny was forced to pull out a special device to place over Albert’s eyes. They were basically a version of the same spectacles the dwarf was wearing, but made for horses.
The raptoid had stopped at the edge of a small clearing and Edge arrived at his side within minutes. They could hear Lenny cursing in the forest behind them, but didn’t bother to wait.
Edge slid down from the rogue horse’s back. “What is it?”
“I found the tracks of two people on horseback that had left the road to cut through the woods,” Deathclaw replied. “They stopped here for a short time.” He walked a short distance into the trees and gestured. “Jhonate urinated behind that bush.”
“You recognized her scent from that?” Fist asked, wrinkling his nose.
Deathclaw hissed. “When I know someone well, yes, I can smell their scent even in their urine. Besides, she left a few faint boot marks in the soil. Her scent was with them.”
He pointed to the far side of the clearing. “The male that is with her urinated way over there.”
Edge knew exactly how the situation would have gone. Jhonate would have forced the man to do his business as far away from her as possible. She was very modest when it came to things like this.
“Did you learn anything about the man?” Edge asked.
“From his stance and bootprints I can guess that he is just under six feet tall,” Deathclaw said. “His weight is somewhat close to my own. Also, he doesn’t drink enough water.”
Fist patted Rufus’ head. “Go see if you can sniff anything out.”
The rogue horse moved across the clearing just as Lenny arrived. His hair was mussed and his glasses askew. His face was twisted in a scowl. The dwarf had been battered in the face by branches all along the way.
“Alright, dag-blast it! What’d you find?” Lenny asked.
“Stinks!” Rufus declared.
“We found their tracks,” Edge said. “They are on horseback and stopped here briefly. Rufus smells the stink of the Black Lake on the man.”
“I thought the smell of that place was long behind me,” Lenny said, his lip curled. “I can still remember it. The water was thick as puddin’ and filled with maggots and its shores was piled high with the leg-draggin’ corpses of movin’ dead things.”
“I have seen Fist’s memories of it,” Deathclaw said, his expression mirroring the dwarf’s.
“Don’t worry, it is long behind you,” Edge assured Lenny. “Rufus is the only one that can smell the traces of the stench on that dagger.”
They set out again, Deathclaw leading the way with his senses focused on the trail. Sometime just before dawn they reached the outer edge of the forest. Jhonate and her thieving companion had avoided travelling through Sampo. Edge could just make out the city far to the northeast.
They followed the trail westward into vast rolling plains. It seemed as though Jhonate was still heading in the right direction for a journey to Alsarobeth. The distance would be shorter if she had traveled directly northwest, but the route she was taking was best in order to avoid villages along the way.
They traveled throughout the morning and Edge felt weariness overtake him. He had traveled for two straight days with only a couple hours of sleep. Fist noticed his discomfort and pulled energy from Rufus’ stores, then fed it through to Edge’s body through the bond.
Edge immediately felt more alert, his tiredness evaporating. This was one huge benefit to being bonded with a rogue horse, however it wasn’t wise to fend off true sleep for long. The body might be rejuvenated by borrowed energy, but the mind needed sleep as well. Edge knew it well. He had gone a full week without sleep during one mission and by the end of it, he had been plagued by hallucinations. He needed his mind to be sharp at the journey’s end.
“Thank you, Fist,” Edge said.
The ogre looked over to the dwarf. “How are you doing, Lenny? Tired?”
The dwarf snorted and blinked. “What? Huh?”
“I asked if you were tired after riding all night,” Fist said.
Lenny yawned. “Don’t worry ’bout me. I know how to sleep in the saddle a bit at a time. Albert knows to follow y’all.”
“What about Albert?” Edge asked.
“The saddle gives him some extra juice. We do plan on stoppin’ fer real sleep eventually, right?” Lenny asked.
“Uh, yeah,” Edge replied.
“He’ll be fine,” the dwarf said, patting the horse’s neck. Albert snorted.
The trail wasn’t too difficult for Deathclaw to follow through the plains. There hadn’t been any rain for about a week, but the cool air and thick grasses had kept the ground damp enough for good hoofprints. Jhonate and the thief seemed to be making a beeline for the shores of the Wide River.
It was mid-afternoon when they found evidence of the first attack their quarry had fended off. From what Deathclaw was able to puzzle out, five men had hidden behind a hillock waiting for the two travelers. The particulars of the initial confrontation were unclear. Perhaps the men had jumped out with bows and swords and demanded money.
At any rate, Jhonate and the thief had dismounted and then the would-be bandits had learned that they had underestimated their prey. Three men lay dead in the grass with the various wounds consistent with Jhonate’s shifting staff style. One dead man had been disemboweled with a sword. The fifth man had run away.
Deathclaw examined the bodies, but could find nothing particularly special about them. These weren’t veterans of battle or mercenaries. Perhaps they were just locals who thought they could make some money on the side, or roaming thugs new to the business.
“The man travelling with Jhonate carries a peculiar sword,” Deathclaw said upon examining the disemboweled man.
Edge came over to the body and crouched next to the raptoid. “I see traces of earth and water magic in the wound.”
Deathclaw pulled back some of the flesh and Edge saw damage radiating beyond the slices made by the blade. The wound was a mess. He wished that he had external healing magic so that he could examine it with more detail. “Fist? Can you give this a look?”
The ogre came over to them and held his hands out over the body. He sent energies into the corpse and winced. “It is as if the structures of the tissues around the wound have burst from within. I can’t necessarily tell the mechanism in which the magic of the sword did this, but a wound like this would be extremely difficult to heal.”
Edge grunted. “When we meet this man, remind me not to get stabbed by this blade.”
“I will trust you to remember,” Deathclaw said.
They travelled on, keeping to Jhonate’s trail until dusk and Edge finally made the call for them to rest. He planned for everyone to sleep for six hours and get right back up again. Deathclaw felt that they had made up a few hours’ ground on their quarry and he didn’t want to lose any of that time.
They found a hollowed-out hillside that
would protect their campsite from being seen across the plains and dismounted. While they laid out their bedrolls, Edge told them his plan. Fist and Deathclaw thought it was reasonable, but Lenny disagreed.
“Give us seven hours,” Lenny suggested.
“Why?” Edge asked.
“You want six hours sleep, which ain’t much with how much you been runnin’ ’round the past few days-,” Lenny began.
“And with the energy given by Rufus that should be plenty,” Edge said. “Don’t worry about us.”
“I wasn’t finished, gall-durn it,” the dwarf grumped. “Six hours is fine fer sleep as far as I care. But that don’t give me time to fix a proper supper.”
“Oh,” said Edge, understanding. Lenny had always been particular about his trail food. It made him a good cooky. “We can make do with trail rations for now.”
The dwarf folded his thick arms. “Is that so? Well tell me somethin’. When’s the last proper meal you et?”
Edge thought back. He looked to Deathclaw.
The raptoid shrugged. “I hunt along the way. A bird or rodent here and there. As for you . . .”
Edge snapped his fingers. “I ate at Lillian’s aunt’s house. It was . . . I can’t quite remember what it was, but it was a full meal.”
“Three days ago,” said Deathclaw.
“I’ve had jerky and . . . dried berries while we rode,” he replied.
Edge felt the heavy weight of Fist’s hand on his shoulder. “I agree with Lenny. We should take time to eat.”
Before Edge could give in, Lenny was already unpacking his pots and seasonings. “Get a fire started. I’ll have a pot of stew ready in a half hour.” He looked to Deathclaw. “Any rabbits or birds nearby you could wrangle?”
“Perhaps,” the raptoid said. He drew a throwing knife from his bandoleer and slunk into the grass.
“Me too!” Rufus said excitedly, and he bounded off on a hunt of his own.
Edge sighed and busied himself breaking off branches of a dead tree for use in the fire. As he did so, he felt a light presence appear on his shoulder. He snapped a branch over his knee and smiled. “Squirrel.”
He felt a shifting in his connection with Fist as Squirrel’s thoughts entered his side of the bond. Squirrel’s mind was much more complex than it had been when Edge first bonded with Fist. As he had aged physically, Squirrel had somehow developed a sophistication of his own. He had learned to manipulate the bond in ways Edge found difficult to duplicate.
Tell me, Edge, said Squirrel while he expertly shelled a nut. He was wearing a knitted orange vest that Mistress Sarine had made for him. He had a wardrobe of the things in his pouch. Do you think you will ever bond again?
Edge was surprised by his sudden curiosity. “Why do you ask?”
I was watching your magic with spirit sight, said Squirrel, watching the white tendrils that constantly extended from Edge’s body. They waved through the air, reaching for any living thing that came within range. No creature seemed too insignificant. Be it bird or insect, the tendrils touched them before moving on. In the years we have known each other it has never stopped searching.
“True,” Edge said. The last time he had bonded had been with Deathclaw and that had been nearly 18 years ago. He had become so used to the way his bonding magic acted that he rarely noticed. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know what it’s searching for. The only thing I know is that there has to be a mutual need.”
What constituted a mutual need was rather broadly defined. Usually, the bonding wizard and his bonded had weaknesses that could be made strong by the talents of the other. Edge’s bond with Fist had given him strength. His bond with Deathclaw had enhanced his senses and given him control. But sometimes the benefit was more nebulous than that. One of Edge’s former mentors, Master Coal, had bonded with a goblin because he was too innocent and trusting and needed to learn the darker side of human nature.
There are many stupid creatures out there that need to be smarter, Squirrel observed. What do you think you need?
“I . . . I’m not sure,” he said and bent to pick up the branches. Certainly, he wasn’t perfect. He had much to learn and physically, his skills weren’t quite where he wanted them to be yet, but he was happy with the benefits his bonds had given him. There was no hole in his life that another bond could fill. His problems weren’t of a physical sort. “What has you so curious?”
It’s about Fist. Squirrel glanced over to the center of the camp where Fist had used earth magic to open up a fire pit and pulled rocks out of the ground to pile around the edge. I think his bonding magic is growing.
Edge raised an eyebrow and turned to look at the ogre. Fist’s bonding magic had always been faint. This was why his first bond had been to a small creature like Squirrel. One benefit Fist had gained from his bond to Edge was an increase in his magic ability to go along with an increase of intelligence. Even then, the increase in his bonding magic had been slight. He had barely enough magic to bond with Rufus and rogue horses were designed to be like magnets for bonding wizards.
Lately, if I watch closely, I see a rope of the bond leave him and touch something else, Squirrel said. When you return to the fire, you’ll see.
Edge did as Squirrel suggested and returned to lay the branches next to the pit. He looked at Fist so intently that the ogre could feel it through the bond.
“What?” said Fist, turning to stare back at him. “What are the two of you looking at?”
Then Lenny walked past Fist to build the cookfire and Edge saw it. It was just a flicker, but a lethargic tendril of magic reached out from the ogre to touch the dwarf. It didn’t gain purchase, but Fist’s magic was definitely searching for something.
Chapter Fourteen
Sir Edge – Messages Received
Deathclaw soon returned to the campsite with his kill. He walked into the camp with the small creature hanging from the barb on the end of his tail. It was a black and white speckled wild pig, bristling with hair and weighing perhaps twenty pounds.
Lenny was just getting the water in his pot boiling when the raptoid whipped his tail forward and slung it at the dwarf. Lenny swore, but managed to catch it without knocking the pot over.
“Dag-blast it, you garl-friggin’ viper spawn!” The dwarf’s scowl turned into an impressed nod as he looked over the carcass in his hands. “Good catch, though. Better than the trash monsters Fist usually brings in.”
Fist rolled his eyes. “You are never satisfied.”
The ogre had been known to hunt bears, snakes, or even giant insects. His philosophy was that as long as it couldn’t talk back, it was good meat. Lenny’s discerning tongue disagreed.
Lenny shook the pig at him. “I’m friggin satisfied with this!” He took out his belt knife and expertly skinned and gutted it, setting the heart and liver aside. Then he cut it into chunks and added it to the pot. Whistling a tune to himself he dug into the dried spices and vegetables he had brought and began building a soup.
A few moments later, Rufus returned, emerging from the darkness with a wide grin on his huge head and his own kills tucked under one arm. “I’m back!” he declared and held out his trophies.
Hanging from his enormous hand were the remains of two large groundhogs. He had smashed them so flat with his fists that they were barely recognizable. Their bones were crushed and their entrails bulged from their ruptured hides. He brought them to Lenny. “Ooh-ooh. Cook!”
The dwarf grimaced and waved him away, “No! Ain’t no way I’m gonna try and separate the meat from that mess. We’re fine with the pig meat”
“But . . . I hunt,” Rufus complained, waving the dripping rodent carcasses at him.
“I said hell no!” Lenny barked. “Take them disgustin’ things away from my pot!”
“This isn’t the first time this has happened,” Fist said with a sigh. “He gets too excited about the catch.” He looked at Rufus and placed his hands on his hips. “We’ve talked about this before, Rufus. You need to
practice self-restraint while hunting. No one wants to eat something that had been crushed beyond recognition.”
“B-but . . .” The rogue horse hung his huge ape-like head in rejection.
“Think of the positive side,” encouraged Edge. “Now you can eat them both yourself.”
Rufus lifted the kills in front of his face and wrinkled his nose. “They . . . raw.”
“Since when does that matter to him?” Edge asked. Rogue horses were omnivores. Gwyrtha loved eating raw game even more than she liked grass or grain.
Lately, Rufus has become picky, sent Squirrel, who was still standing on Edge’s shoulder.
“I think it’s all the treats that the students keep feeding him,” said Fist. “I keep asking them not to do it, but all he has to do is shrink to the size of a puppy and they can’t deny him anything.”
“I not want raw!” Rufus pouted.
Hissing, Deathclaw approached Rufus. “I will eat one if you eat the other.”
Rufus’ smile returned, and he handed one of the crushed animals to the raptoid. Then he looked back at the remaining carcass and his smile faded. He stuck out his tongue. “Ick!”
“Do not waste it. That is the law of the hunt,” Deathclaw warned him. He lifted the flattened groundhog and scraped some dirt off of it, then took a bite out of the side of it.”
“Don’t do that in front of me!” Lenny said. “Take yer nasty arse into the grass and eat it where I don’t gotta see.”
Arching one scaly eye ridge, Deathclaw took another bite and let gore dangle from his jaw as he chewed. Then, since it was what he wanted to do anyway, he slunk into the grass to finish his meal.
Rufus looked once more at the glistening hairy disk in his hand and edged closer to Lenny. “Please?”
“Dag-blast it, Monkeyface!” barked Lenny, as he stirred his bubbling pot. “If’n you have to cook the durn thing, you’cn put it on the coals. Just do it on the other side of the fire so’s it don’t stink up our food.”
“Not monkey face,” Rufus mumbled, but he lumbered over to the fire and laid the flattened groundhog directly on the coals at the fire’s edge. It instantly started to smoke and hiss in the heat. He inhaled the fumes and smiled.
Sir Edge Page 15
