Majutsu-shi no Chikara Ch. 15

...

"What in all creation are you sniffing at?" Damon looked up from his reading, having suffered enough of the ork's long snuffling and snorting at the air.

"No hunter, there." Abhilash pointed east toward the Pilgrim's Road. "Death, rot... no hunter."

"Fuck's sake -- you can smell that?" Ginga stretched and rolled up onto one elbow from where she was laying on her sleeping mat.

Abhilash shrugged.

Damon felt a chill up his spine, wondering -- and damning himself for it -- at what could have snared the ork's interest with such a smell.

"What kind of hunter leaves death and rot, then?" Damon already dreaded her answer, as if he felt he knew before she would say it.

"No hunter." Abhilash muttered the ork word for "stupid", again. "No hunter leave rot. Dead-eaters use -- but this no dead-eaters use."

"Scavengers, you mean?" Ginga rubbed sleep from her eyes, looked over at Damon. "Put out the lantern -- you can read on the crossing."

"Fine." Damon blew the flame out, washing them in the full darkness of the night. The waning gibbous was enough that he thought he might be able to read without the lantern's aid.

"Scavengers not eat -- it rot." Abhilash sniffed again. "Even battlefield, scavengers eat. Different smell."

"That sounds... bad." Ginga admitted. "And I'm doubly glad we're not sticking our noses in it."

"How far away is it?" Damon shivered, pulling his cloak closer to himself and angling the book to catch the light of the moon better. "A few leagues?"

"A day." Abhilash sniffed deeply again. "Maybe."

"I think you're having a laugh." Damon looked up at the ork, knitting his brows in frustrated doubt. "You can smell something ten leagues off that clearly?"

"Step in dung, boots stink." Abhilash snorted, spitting at the hooves of the mules who fretted and brayed irritably at her. "Big dung, boots stink all day -- step in river to clean."

"So it's on somebody that you saw come down the road..." Damon caught his lip in his teeth, turning his attention back to the not-quite-incomprehensible spell he'd been studying. "Fuck, I thought for sure... never mind what I thought."

"We fuck?" Abhilash crouched beside him, blocking the silvery light and stopping him in his studies.

"No, we don't." Damon glowered at her, then gestured around at the clustered wagons and carts. "We're waiting for the ferry, and this isn't a coaching inn."

"So?" The she-ork's irritation was plain, and Damon thought she might try to force the issue.

"We don't, tonight or tomorrow." Damon's voice was low, firm. "After we're clear of town, and well out of sight of the river -- then we can make use of our tent. Until then..."

"Build waiting." Abhilash stood up, spinning on her heel and stomping away into the dark. "I drink."

"Do you even sleep?!" Damon called after her, which Abhilash answered with a rude ork gesture.

"Who cares." Ginga huddled closer to him beneath her blanket. "Wake me after midnight, and I'll keep lookout for the ferry."

"Sure." Damon mumbled, eyes losing focus as he gazed inward with Matta's Lens.

...

"Easy as that?" Ginga could scarce believe her eyes, but the apple-sized globe of light in her hands was proof enough. "I don't suppose you're going to be one of those magical geniuses that masters the craft in a few years, but it would make things easier."

"Wouldn't it?" Damon laughed, still admiring his work as Ginga looked at the bauble in her hands from several different angles.

It vanished, Ginga's prodding finger having breached the boundary of magical containment mid-turn without realizing.

"Oh! I'm sorry, I didn't..." Ginga flinched, instinctively, expecting some sort of backlash.

"No, no -- it's fine." Damon conjured another orb, his voice buzzing briefly as his hands flicked curiously. "It's such a minimal enchantment that even a violent rupture isn't going to do much... here, look..."

He smashed both hands over the new orb -- the light winking into nothingness as his palms clapped together.

"See?" He maneuvered the globe gently from palm to palm, rolling it with delicate movements. "Something more substantial would definitely... uh... I'm not sure -- but it would burn or snap or something."

"War magic." Abhilash grunted from beside them, leaning on the rail of the ferry and running a hand over the stubbly hair on her head.

"Oh, I could maybe use it inside a glass bottle..." Damon looked around, then shrugged. "Maybe. I should really study this more."

"We're going north, right?" Ginga looked between her companions. "It's cold up north... so maybe something to protect us when the weather is really bad, and we're still traveling?"

"And make cock bigger." Abhilash added helpfully.

Damon tried to laugh it off, but the intensity of the she-ork's stare gave him a new urgency to be silent and nod dumbly.

"Protection from foul weather and... that." Damon shivered with deep-seated fear, forewarned of such magical vanity causing deformity... among other catastrophic side-effects.

"Deedra said she was burned when her spell broke." Ginga frowned, her mouth twisting in thought. "Matta did something, and she said it burned her -- but it was just a light."

"She was probably trying to hold onto it. Like carrying too much too long... sustaining magic." He shrugged, thumbing his small book open to a page marked by a thin strip of cloth. "There've been a few warnings in here about maintaining focus for such things -- if I don't concentrate on it, the spell is easy to break... the same is probably true of any magic."

"Magic on sword -- focus is in steel?" Abhilash dropped a hand to caress the clumsily swaddled hilt at her side.

Damon nodded thoughtfully and stroked his chin.

"That would make sense. Powerful focus -- some sort of binding power or runes in the item itself -- to keep it from losing the spell." He looked meaningfully at the satchel now on Ginga's hip, where the dragon tooth was hidden.

"And steel not break... strong focus. Strong war magic." Abhilash nodded approvingly, evidently satisfied with her understanding.

"I'm sure there's more to it than that." Ginga scoffed, brushing the mane of one of the mules. "I heard them mention layered spells."

"Layered meanings, layered spells." Damon snapped his fingers. "So there's a lot more in making that one little light work whenever I want without taking the time to conjure it over and over again."

"It didn't take that long..." Ginga mused.

"And lasted just as long." His smile was mischievous, but not unkind. "And we may want something stronger than a hard sneeze, if it comes to traveling at night."

"And something you can darken at a whim, like a hood..." Ginga fretted her lip with her teeth. "I don't like what you're thinking."

"Neither do I, but here we are."

"Aye, we are."

"Hm?" The she-ork was at last confused by what they were saying -- not grasping the truncated parts of the conversation as easily as the slippery concepts of magic.

"Hiding... in case we need to hide." Ginga let out a shaky breath. "I'll feel better with a tenday between us."

"Between you and him?" Abhilash frowned and gave an irritated snort.

"Us and them." Damon nodded his head toward the east, vaguely in the direction of Renks Cairn some days east along the river.

"Feh." The ork spat her contempt over the rail.

They passed their remaining time on the ferry in silence, avoiding the two other groups crammed onto the flat-bottomed vessel in spite of the close quarters. Damon studied the magical tome -- his spell-book, he realized -- as long as he could before Ginga tapped his shoulder, the ferry coming to a lurching stop as it bumped and rocked against the northern docks of the crossing. He ignored the wonderful cooking smells from the last stop along the river before the narrows through the mountains, but his stomach reminded him that he'd not eaten since yesterday.

Ginga chuckled at him, her own stomach having made similar complaints earlier in the crossing.

"Let's get something, ne?" She clucked her tongue and flicked the reins -- the cart trundling swiftly along the ramp and down the docks to the road. "Maybe some fresh rolls or a mince pie?"

...

"It's good." Abhilash admitted, sucking butter from her fingers. "Not sand."

"Gritty, I think that's the word you're looking for." Damon took a heavy pull of the warm milk in the water skin, savoring the richness mixing with the sweet, dense bread. "Coarse-ground maiz is better for stewing. This... oh, this was really good."

"Gritty... is sand." Abhilash puzzled the words aloud a moment.

It was well past midday, and the sun shone through skudding clouds as they rolled north on a trail between farmsteads and their freshly sprouting fields. To the south, the villages along the River had vanished behind slow-rolling hills. Damon remembered when South-wold had looked much the same as some of these outer farms -- sprawling fields, hundreds of paces on a side, full of new sprouts and long days keeping goats and voles from wreaking havoc. How odd that South-wold had looked to be flush as late summer when they left -- despite the early season. He wondered again how his father was doing... missed his mother... missed everyone, except Ginga. Ginga, who had decided to travel with him on this mad journey to find a dragon that was as likely to kill them as anything -- if they could even find it.

Tall, wild hedges climbed up the sides of the road and blocked the view of the fields to either side -- threatening to become a forest -- for at least a league, before the foliage pulled back and swept out over wild grasslands. The dense thickets scattered from walls to clusters, then sparse clumps. The soil was likely very sandy through this area, if the grass was all that grew wild, and the road lost a fair bit of its shape -- fading into thin weeds with muted ruts carving north across the plain. They were sore-arsed and road weary by late afternoon, the sun just beginning its descent onto the highest peaks of the Coast Wall. It wouldn't be much longer before twilight shrouded them, and Damon took to standing up on the bench to look for a flat patch with some sheltering trees north along the road for them to make camp for the night.

"I think I see a small house ahead." He frowned. It'd been early afternoon when they'd passed the last farms and at least two leagues since the last field.

"Feh." Abhilash snorted, then swatted at something by her ear.

"Midges?" Ginga, likewise flinched and seemed to duck away from something.

"I don't think so." Damon's vision clouded briefly, small black dots swarming around him and buzzing around his face. "Dammit!"

He sat down hard, swatting his hands in front of him and slapping at the prickling sensation of bugs on his neck.

He didn't feel the stinging bites, though... perhaps it was only a passing cloud of gnats or some other insect he didn't know from this area. The tickling buzzing in his ears persisted a few moments more -- but then it was gone.

"Oh, I see it." Ginga nudged him, pointing out toward the house. It was much larger than he'd originally thought, and built in a style favored by those closer to the city. Damon thought it must have taken quite a bit of lumber and time to build such a house this far from any other settlements.

It was a sprawling estate house, with open gables on either end of the main body of the house; an intersecting entryway -- two dozen paces long by Damon's eye, and only half so long as the main structure to which it joined -- pulled their eyes to the front of the estate, facing east by south-east to catch sunrise through most of the year. A tower-like dormer on the rear of the house cast a steeple shadow over the well-cut path from the house to the road. His mind's eye tried to understand the interior, with vast open space throughout or a tangle of rooms and corridors between the shuttered windows -- all undoubtedly full of glasswork -- with stonework between the twin chimneys to trap heat in the winter.

"We shouldn't stop here." Damon put a hand over Ginga's on the reins. "That has to be a noble's estate. Anyone here will be trouble."

"It's probably a hunting lodge." Ginga stood up from the bench and craned her neck. "I don't see any standard, sign of horses... no dogs."

"Who keeps a house this far out with no dogs?" Damon wondered, only to be answered by the distant barking of a hound.

"Well, at least one, then." Ginga shrugged, sitting down and drawing the cart to a stop where the trail forked to enter the estate or continue north.

A figure strode uncertainly from the far corner of the house, rounding the building and pointedly adjusting a crossbow cradled to his shoulder. White hair and beard marked him a man passed middling years, perhaps fifty or sixty winters. The hound trotted out behind him, a great hunting beast that could easily have put its forepaws on the man's shoulders if it stood upright on its hind legs. The dog walked stiffly forward, still barking noisily until the caretaker (or perhaps the petty lord of the manor?) whistled sharply. Quieted by the command, the large hound turned its shaggy head to its master before looking back at the nearby intruders. Damon could almost hear it whine in complaint.

"A fine welcome." Ginga flicked the reins to guide the mules to the right, away from the home and back onto the spare northern road. "Right, we'll be off."

Their attention on the house and its lone defender, Ginga didn't notice the boggy ground hidden in the thick grass until the mules began splashing and stomping -- their hooves sticking and stuttering the wagon to a halt.

"Damn." She swore. "And I don't suppose either of you know the terrain better than him?"

"No... I'll go ask." Damon stood up, raising his hand in greeting before hopping clumsily into the muddy grass.

Another swarm of bugs -- loudly buzzing and clouding his vision as he staggered and swatted. He could almost taste them in his mouth and feel some sticking in his nostrils. Hacking and spitting, he did his best to stand upright and walk slowly toward the house with his hands raised empty above his head. He heard a low growl behind him as Abhilash wordlessly threatened his folly.

"Warn me, then, and I'll drop before he shoots." He whispered back, hoping his voice wouldn't carry near the house over the song of crickets in the waning afternoon.

"Stupid." She used the human word, this time, and Damon flinched a little at it.

Not far wrong. He took a deep breath and another two paces closer to the house. "Hullo!"

He waved his hands slowly overhead as he walked, uncertain whether the steward-guardian had clear enough eyesight to make him out plainly. The crossbow lowered... no, it followed him as his approach took him out of line of the wagon. Damon gulped dryly, his hands getting cold above his head and his stomach churning sourly. He could make out the man had pale skin heavily sunned red like cured leather -- reminding him of some of the sailors he'd seen in Tsuro.

"How wide is the bog on the road north?" He called, just hearing the low rumble of the hound growling at him. "Stranger to stranger, we'll be off if we know how to keep from getting stuck."

"Stranger to stranger..." the man lowered the crossbow, making a pronged fist with his left hand and holding it to his mouth. "You don't know me, do you, boy?"

"Should I, Ser?" Damon tried to shrug, but kept his hands up. "I'm on pilgrimage north... I don't know this ground, and we don't want to lose the wagon or waste your time getting stuck."

"Nothing but wilds and woodland, north." The man lowered the crossbow entirely, but Damon noticed that his feet didn't move and they were still more than two score paces -- near shouting to each other. "What are you called, lad?"

"Damon." He saw no point in lying. "We've just come east from Tsuro and north."

There he left his answer, not wanting to mention South-wold -- though he wondered if such a weatherbeaten and worldly-looking man might recognize his style of clothing or the way he braided his hair.

"You don't sound like folk from the capital." Whether a steward or land-owner, he carried himself like a soldier, and Damon found his gruff demeanor chafed his fear of being marked as a wild mage.

"We are not." Damon motioned, risking a glance over his shoulder to the wagon where Ginga and Abhilash were tensely waiting. He felt lost in a sea of grass, though he was standing on a well-worn gravel track midway between arbalest and wagon. The dog whined.

"Our companion is from the north." He risked the admission. "My pilgrimage is for... for her sake."

"The sake of an ork?" The laughter was obvious long before he heard it. "You're daft or a saint."

"Daft, then." Damon tried to smile, hoping again that the guard could see him well enough despite his years. "I'd rather be home, bouncing my wee ones on my knee."

"I ken it, meself." The old man spat and nodded. "C'mon up to the house, the lot of you. You can stable your beasts just there."

Sighing as discreetly as he could, Damon lowered his arms and nodded heavily. He looked to the small shed-like barn hidden just behind the main house, then he turned and waved one arm in a slow arc toward Ginga. She waved back and slowly inched the wagon out of the muck.

"Ser is kind."

"Leave the ork outside." Damon heard an angry edge in the man's voice. "We've had our fill of raiders, be-devilled or no."

...

"Something wrong." Abhilash sniffed, eyes narrowing at the house as the wagon rolled slowly by on their way to the barn.

"What?" Ginga whispered, keeping her chin near her chest and eyes shielded as she could manage to steer in the light stabbing over the crest of the Coast Wall.

"Mph." The she-ork shrugged. "Wrong."

"Is it the dog?" Ginga offered. "Maybe they've got soldiers staying with them?"

"What dog?"

"The hound." Ginga put a palm on her forehead as the sunlight disappeared behind the mountains. "The wolf-looking beast -- I know you ken what a hound is... the dog. Dog, hound, hound, dog?"

"No, not dog."

"The dog isn't a dog, or the dog isn't wrong?" Ginga felt herself growing more frustrated. "No, you know what? I didnae care about the dog. What exactly do you think is wrong?"

"House."

"What about it?"

"Smell empty. Wrong." Abhilash shrugged.

"Dangerous?" Ginga couldn't help but feel a little dismissive -- such a big house would feel very empty with only one person to care for it. If what Damon said about Sidero communal sleeping habits were absolute, anything less than cramped quarters could seem vacant or abandoned to the ork.

"No." Abhilash snorted, using the well-trodden ork word for 'stupid'.

"We'll be careful... I'll have Damon bring you..."

"His rut-stick?" Abhilash locked eyes with her, lips curling in a hungry smile.

"Supper... our host may be keeping you out of his house, but he won't deny you a meal." Ginga sighed, shaking her head. "You'll get Damon's attentions after I do -- not before."

"Waiting." Abhilash narrowed her eyes at the human, then smiled. "Want my tongue in you?"

Ginga blushed.

"Damn your nose." She hissed, turning to march angrily toward the front of the house. "See to the animals, trollop."

...

"Sorry fer the midges -- they don't seem to bite, this close to the forest, but they're still a damned nuisance." Their host, a man named Stearn, stoked the low coals in the cooking hearth of the kitchen. "We don't entertain guests much, and I've little to offer by way of proper hospitality."

"Ser's welcome is warmer than he thinks." Damon tried to laugh-off having stared-down a crossbow just before sunset. "You must receive plenty of unwelcome visitors, this far from the better-traveled roads."