Chapter 22 - Hitch a Ride

Something was coming.

Roads meant people. People were a touch better than beasts. People weren’t necessarily safe though.

The last people I’d met tried to kill me, and the ones before that locked me up and made me do things. Plus, I seemed to have a nice assortment of different races of people cold on the ground beneath me, some I’d killed, all of them I’d looted. Whoever was coming might just take offense to that.

I picked the nearest tree trunk and skittered behind the thing, reaching down to smear a handful of mud on my face and helmet. Then I got low until I was half submerged in the stagnant puddle between the swamp tree’s roots with my head in a position where I could just barely see around the trunk. It was as good a hiding spot as I was going to get with such short notice.

What came into view was a group of armored men riding atop white haired beasts. The riders wore chain armor from head to toe, plumed helmets, and a black and green livery on cloth strips that hung down from their shoulders. Each of them carried a crossbow with thick limbs the edges of which seemed to glint in the non-existent sunlight.

Their beasts were ungulates of some kind, easily as tall as I was at the shoulder, whose disproportionately tiny hooves made clicking sounds on the stone path. They had thick, powerful shoulders and hind quarters, short necks, and wide heads. I only caught flashes of their big black eyes through the curtain of long, wiry hair that covered the entire animal.

A sturdy looking black carriage, pulled by two of the beasts, rolled in the middle of their formation. The wheels squeaked as the wagon navigated the semi-uneven surface of the road. Curiously, there was no driver’s seat as one might find on an old Earth wagon. Instead, the animals seemed to know where they were going or were being directed some other way.

They were getting closer.

Slowly, carefully, I slipped sideways and got lower in the water that pooled next to my tree, losing sight of the caravan and listening for any sign they noticed me.

Stealth is now level 3.

“Hold!” a man’s rough voice shouted from their group. All activity stopped. “Point, check it.”

“There it is. Right there!” A precise, aristocratically accented male voice came from somewhere in their ranks, and if I had to guess based on the hollow timbre, it was coming from the carriage.

“My Lord?” The rough sounding man asked.

“It’s here,” the posh voice declared, sounding very sure of himself. “Go collect a sample, so we can be on our way.”

“I’m sorry, my Lord. There’s dead on the road, and we need to sweep the area to make sure we’re safe.”

“It’s not on the road. Check to the side. It’s here somewhere.”

There was a pause. I imagined the lot of them peering around attempting to find the thing their master wanted. “Pardon, lord, but I don’t have your sight. What is it I’m meant to see?”

“Over there! Are you blind?” Carriage guy shouted from his wooden box.

I winced, slowly peeking around the trunk of my tree again.

One of the riders, an older man with craggy scars marring his cheeks and a bushy gray mustache, was there at the door to the carriage, leaning down to speak to someone in the car, the tall green plum on his helmet brushing up against the black painted trimming. He was looking my way.

Stealth is now level 4.

“No, my lord. I am not blind. You say there is something over there?” He asked as he tilted his head and narrowed his eyes to scan the area.

Two of the riders trotted forward, shifting their grips on their crossbows to sweep the scene with their muzzles.

“Fresh blood here, sir, most of it goblin! ” One of them reported over his shoulder.

“Most of it?”

“Aye. Road hasn’t muted the scent yet, sir. Something else too. New to me.”

“Yes! It’s right there! I am telling you.” Scolded the man in the carriage. “Let’s get it and be done before it has a chance to get away. I’m already past due, but we have a duty to fulfill. If we have another Mendau plague on our hands, there will be riots in the city.”

I was deathly still now. The rider nearest me was so close, I could smell the stink of his mount’s damp fur over the stench of the swamp. My eyes ran over the group. Six men in all, not including the one in the wagon. The one that had been talking to the noble was coming closer while there were three encircling the carriage.

If I could panic their mounts, maybe I could make a break into the woods. It might be possible if I could squeeze off a shot, but, then again, I didn’t run faster than a crossbow bolt. How fast would the animals be once they recovered? What if I could make for the deep water and use my air tank to evade them?

“Ah!” The man closest to me gave a shout of surprise as he seemed to finally take notice of me, his eyes widening under the visor of his helmet. He’d startled me as well. Without thinking, I jumped to my feet. The man’s mount shared our mutual feelings of surprise, bounding backward, surprisingly nimble, fully over the next rider and landing on the trunk of a leaning swamp tree ten feet away. The beast and the rider were perched near vertically on the side of the trunk, but neither gave any indication that this was abnormal. Instead, the rider’s crossbow was already lined up for a shot, but he didn’t fire yet.

“Oh. We’ve found it, my lord!” The mustached man shouted. “Small problem though!”

“What is it, Garret?” The man in the carriage asked, leaning his head out of the curtains that covered the window. He looked younger than I’d guessed, maybe in his forties. Long black hair spilled down over his shoulders, and he was just starting to show traces of silver at his temples. His gaunt face and thin lips were pinched like he was perpetually sucking on lemons, and his skin was white as bleached bone.

“I see it,” he said once he spotted me. “Shoot it and bring the body with us. No time to tie it up.”

Mustache, or Garret, I guessed, shrugged his broad shoulders and grimaced slightly. “Alright, lord. Think I can get it in one. We’ll be on our way soon. Get the netting, Dimus.” Then he brought his crossbow up to his shoulder, the gleaming tip of a quarrel aimed right at my eye.

“Woah. Woah. Woah! Do not do that!” I shouted, shrinking away from Garret’s line of fire and trying to duck behind my tree. Garret tracked my movements like a pro though. So did the other two riders that could see me. I felt around in my spatial storage for my pistol and got ready to summon it as I turned my head back and forth rapidly to try and keep all the crossbows in my line of sight at once.

No one shot me.

Garret’s eyebrows lifted slightly, and his head tilted to the side, bringing his eye away from the crossbow’s sight.

“It speaks, sir,” he called over his shoulder.

“Ah, damnit. Of course it does. This is going to put us more behind schedule. Blasted Returned Accords,” the carriage man moaned. I heard a hard slap on the wood of the carriage door and muffled cursing to follow before he got his composure back again. “We still need that sample, Garret.”

Garret never took his eyes off me, but his expression took on a curious sort of look. “Sir, if it can talk, perhaps it can give an account of what it’s seen?” He speculated.

“No. No. It’s no use,” Carriage guy sighed as if the entire world conspired to tax his dwindling patience. “Witness accounts are notoriously unreliable, especially with the mentally impaired. The amount of detail I need can only be extracted from a sample, and, additionally, I have the weight of the Queen’s decree pressing down on me.”

The big rider’s eyebrows scrunched together as he thought, and he allowed the crossbow quarrel to slide down from my eye to my chest. “Perhaps it can give us a sample voluntarily, sir?”

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“No, you bu-” It sounded like the noble was going to rip into Garret, but apparently something occurred to him mid-sentence. “Ah. Well, yes, perhaps you’re right, Garret. Ask it if we could take a small part of its flesh. Assure it we need no more than a few pounds. Oh, and be polite.”

“Yes, sir,” Garret assented before he cleared his throat and addressed me. He spoke loudly and slowly, enunciating every syllable of his words.

“I apologize for our initial misunderstanding, Mister…Ah. Do you have a name?”

I put my hands down slowly, making sure I didn’t seem overly threatening. The pistol could be in my hand in a flash, but how many could I take out before I was shot through the heart? “Uh. Ryan,” I replied. “Thank you for not shooting me, by the way.”

“Mister Ryan, yes. Of course. Sorry to interrupt your meal with this. Can never be too careful on the road in these parts. Some of the less aware… ah… folk like you… still cling to their old allegiances, you see, and we’ve had a lot of goblin activity in the past few weeks but you’d know all about that I guess,” Garret chuckled half-heartedly, shifting uncomfortably in his saddle. He’d put down his crossbow to rest on his saddle now, but it wasn’t lost on me that the other two riders with a line of sight still aimed at my head.

“I… what?” I asked. Folk like me? Humans? That was impossible.

“Oh gods, he’s a fresh one.” Garret muttered to himself as he ran a palm over his face. He paused to gather his thoughts for a second, nodding to himself and looking to the side as if he were trying to formulate the proper words. When he was ready, he continued. “Let me be the first to tell you, then, Mister Ryan, that the war is over, and you are free. Completely. Unequivocally. Congratulations.”

“Uh. Thank you,” I replied. I needed to roll with whatever this was and give myself an opportunity to escape “Glad to hear it, I guess? One can never be too free.”

“And I must say, you speak remarkably well for one of your kind, Mister,” Garret observed with a grin, not at all patronizing.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “My mother said the same thing.”

“Your… mother?” A look of horror passed over Garret’s face, his mustache’s tips drooping down like a hairy caterpillar had died on his face. “You had a… mother? How does that work?”

I frowned, feeling lost. “I- Maybe just use your imagination, buddy. I don’t know what to tell you.”

One of the riders swallowed, looking a little green. He spurred his mount to take him behind the carriage, out of sight. Labored breathing carried over the heavy air from where he’d gone.

This was getting weird. Dangerous and weird. What the hell did I say?

Garret looked rattled, but he soldiered on. “Ah. So, anyway. If you’ve been traveling along this road, I’m sure you observed the diseased vegetation at the foot of the mountain. My master is a once in a generation scholar, you see, and he would like to study the phenomenon.”

“Understandable,” I replied with a reluctant nod.

“Quite so, well. You see- It’s- You have a similar magical… scent… all over you. It would help my master greatly if you could… ah.” He coughed uncomfortably. “If you could give us a piece of your body. Nothing you’d miss!” he added with a raised hand to forestall any protestations. “Just a couple strips of flesh and-”

“Two pounds minimum!” Came the lord’s shout from the carriage.

“I was working up to that, m’lord.” Garret whisper-shouted back at his master.

Flabbergasted, I just stood there blinking, opening and closing my mouth, multiple replies just waiting on the tip of my tongue. I went with: “Why would I give you… that?”

“Please. You would be assisting the Queen and advancing science. Also, we might be convinced to leave the goblin corpses to you if you help us out. They appear to be the freshest. Again, we’re not asking for anything you’d miss, sir.”

I took a step back. “Oh, I think I would miss it.” Also, what did he expect for me to do with goblin corpses?

The lord was shouting again. “No! No! Stop it. You’re ruining it, Garret. Just… Damnit. Bring him here,” he bellowed.

Garret shrugged and flashed a grin at me like he hadn’t just been asking for a literal piece of me. He didn’t seem put out in the slightest at his lord’s displeasure or that he’d supposedly failed. The guardsman lazily brought his crossbow up to aim in my general direction again, waving me to come out from behind the tree.

I walked toward him slowly, careful not to trip or give any indication that I wanted to do violence. As we approached the carriage, myself in front and Garret at my back with his mount sniffing at my bloody and muddy armor, the noble opened the carriage door and leaned out to look me over. The perpetual frown that looked like it never truly left his face, deepened as he took me in.

“Garret. When we get to the city, go get your eyes checked. All of you. This is no Returned,” he admonished them all, shaking his head and rubbing one of his temples.

“He’s alive, my lord? Then why does he look like that? Where are your clothes, Mister? Your hair?” Garret gasped, before leaning down in his saddle to look closely at me. His tone softened. “Are you alright, young man?”

I didn’t know what a Returned was, but if they were going to shoot me for it, I wasn’t going to try and keep the label. They also didn’t know what I really was, so that was a relief. “I- It’s a long story,” I replied to all of Garret’s questions at once.

The nobleman sighed, blowing air through chapped lips. “One we can’t stand around for. I’m past due to arrive at the university.” He pointed to me. “You. You have the diseased mana profile all over you, inside of you as well. How did this come to be? Quickly, in less than ten words if you can. Our world may depend upon it.”

“Uh-”

The man’s frown deepened into full scowl territory. “Do not waste your words. Think carefully,” he snapped.

For some reason, I felt like I was back in school being scolded for daydreaming in class. “I escaped the mountain. Killed a mockvine. Am I really missing my hair?” I turned back to look at Garret.

The big man nodded, wincing a little on my behalf. “Most of it, sir.”

“My eyebrows too?” I asked as I reached up to feel my face. Yep, they were gone.

“You are also quite filthy, Mister Ryan,” Garret added helpfully. “Point! Is it this one’s blood you smell over there?” He called to the two riders still posted next to the bodies.

“Yes, sir. I think so. His and the goblins are all I can smell,” the point man reported. “The others ‘been dead for a while. This looks like two fights separated in time, sir. No weapons or spoils I can see. Might want to check what he did with ‘em.”

“My man over there says he smells your blood, Mister. Mind telling us what happened?”

Lord interrupted, waving Garret off and leaning forward to get a closer look at me. “Yes. Yes. He smells terrible. Now what’s this about a mockvine? A wild one?”

“I killed an… uh… ancient mockvine in a cave a good distance that way.”

“Don’t play with me, young man,” he hissed, a dangerous tone in his voice. “Tell me the truth. An old one? How big?”

I nodded, trying to look more confident than I felt. “Took up the whole cave. It tried to eat me, but I sort of disagreed with it.”

He leaned forward, putting a hand on the carriage’s open door. “If the type of mana on your body were any different, I would call you a liar and have Garrett club you, but…”

“Why?” I asked.

“Why what?”

“Why club me?”

“I still may have to, sir, if he murdered these folks,” Garret added helpfully.

“No, Garret, I don’t think that will be necessary. Our new friend here is most likely responsible for the goblins but not the others. The mana signature on him is too fresh to have been here for the previous killings. If it makes you feel better, you may check with your point man,” the gaunt nobleman said before turning to me. “The residue of the mockvine rolls off of you along with something else. I took it for miasma at first as we tracked you but now…” His eyes lost focus for a moment, seeming to look at something very far away. “Garret, this young man is coming with us.”

Garret cleared his throat and swallowed. “No need to… sample his flesh then, master?” He inquired uncomfortably.

“No. It would be helpful, but it also would be illegal,” the nobleman said with a wave of his hand. “Can’t have a scandal on my first day.” A significant look passed between the two. I caught it, but I couldn’t discern the meaning. I didn’t like it.

“And if I don’t want to come with you?” I asked, feeling very much like my desires weren’t being considered at all. I didn’t want to trade one cage for another. The mention of the law gave me a little hope, though. Maybe false imprisonment was illegal here.

“No choice, young man. I need to verify your story and make sure we don’t have a tree killing disease on our hands. It wouldn’t be the first time. Whether you’re lying or not, you’ve been in the thick of it, whatever it is. Once I have my answers, you will be free to go do whatever it is you do. You can ride with me and give me a full account of your story. After all, we do appear to be going the same way, and you have no shoes.”

I hesitated, looking to Garret and the riders. None of them had put down their crossbows fully, but they didn’t seem worried for their master even if he wanted to ride with a stranger. Better to agree to it now than to be tied up and forced to ride that way.

I sighed. They were going my way, I guessed, and they didn’t want to kill me immediately. I also had my spatial storage to bring to bear if I needed to make an escape. “Alright, I-”

“Wait-” The nobleman put out a hand to stop me then snapped his fingers. There was a stinging, electric sensation that ran over my body from head to toe like the entire outer layer of my skin had just been violently scrubbed with wire brushes, but I got the full experience in less than a second. I gasped, nearly doubling over. It wasn’t necessarily painful, but it was so sudden and intimate. The feeling was everywhere I had skin from my scalp to my toes to my armpits and groin.

When the sensation abated, I looked up to see a swirling vortex about the size of a billiards ball coalescing above the nobleman’s hand. Then it solidified, and the man plucked it out of the air before stashing it in a glossy pouch he’d pulled out of his pocket.

I looked down at myself, wondering what he’d had done to me, but it didn’t take long to see. My jaw dropped in shock. For the first time since I woke up on Ralqir…

“There. You are clean. The mana is still on your being, but the stinking muck you’d bathed yourself in is now stowed away for examination later,” Lord said, pausing to look me over, then peering intently into my eyes for a long, awkward moment to finish.

“Now let’s be off. Retract your aura and get in,” he commanded.

I blinked, feeling my nonexistent eyebrows knit together. “Retract my what now?”

“I acknowledge you are a practitioner. I can see that now that we’ve cleared the flotsam. But I won’t ride the rest of the way to Eclipse with your aura spewing out of you like blood from a severed artery. Hurry now. Daylight will not linger.”

“I don’t understand,” I insisted. What was he talking about? He called me a practitioner, so maybe this was about magic or mana?

Lord sighed again, slumping back into his cushioned chair further inside the carriage. He looked tired, like his entire life was a series of disappointments and setbacks, and I was just the latest.

“Nevermind. Your vacant expression tells me I will not get what I want, not in time at least. Damned Wildlings. Unbelievable.” He raised an accusing finger and pointed it to the sky. “Whoever your master was did you a great disservice, you know that. Did he simply teach you the dominion ritual and wander off to live with a herd of deer or something? No. Nevermind. It doesn’t matter. I suppose I’ll have to endure. Get in.”