“Hullo Pilus,” Marshan said without a hint of surprise when I finally reunited with the man. “You sort out whatever it was you had to do?”
“Yup,” I said with a grin.
It had taken another dozen days or so to reach the convoy, passing a number of other travelers on the way, some of whom I stopped to chat with and get a better picture of what was moving through the kingdom to the capital. This rebellion-crushing business definitely smelled of a fairly serious war effort for a supposedly-conquered territory.
“Sorry I left,” I said after a beat. “There was a pannid attack on a convoy south of you. If it hit you, and I wasn’t there…”
Marshan looked down at me, an unreadable expression on his face, then shook his head and looked back up at the road.
“You know you’re ten, right? The convoy has guards for that.”
“Still. I feel bad.”
“Well, I appreciate that.”
It was nice to be back with the group, and I wandered through to greet everyone before hopping up next to Bilgus to ride with him and Gregory, sleeping in his lap. I leaned back against the seat, letting my head fall back and watched the sky pass as we drove the wagon down the road, resting my legs after so much hard riding.
“Wasn’t sure when we’d see you again after running off like that,” the old tamer grunted.
“Nothing could keep me away from your delightful company, Bilgus.”
“Well, I knew you’d be back for this one, eventually,” he said, hands stroking Gregory’s soft blue fur.
I looked at the pair, not for the first time, seeing how close they had become and how comfortably they were together. Gregory wasn’t much of a fighter, and Bilgus benefitted so much from the company. He had his oxalire, but that was a working beast, a beast of burden. They had a different kind of familiar-tamer relationship.
“What are you doing when we get to the capital?” I asked.
“I’ll be turning back,” he said, not surprising me. “I’m too old to haul goods into the north and to a warzone. I just wanted to earn some coin to bring back to my family running the old farm.”
I nodded. “So we’ll be parting ways soon, it seems.”
Bilgus frowned, looking down at Gregory.
I smiled softly at him. “Would you be willing to keep taking care of him for me?”
Bilgus looked up at me, and I could see it in his eyes.
“Here,” I said, passing him a small piece of meat. “For you and Gregory.”
He nodded seriously, and I watched him channel his tamer will into the meat, infusing it with his MP and giving the treat a soft glow.
“Hey, Gregory,” he whispered. “Got something for you to eat here.”
Gregory lifted his head and yawned, then sat up and raised his little hands towards the snack. I smiled. Same old Gregory.
The flying nodmouse took the meat and started stuffing it into his mouth, and as he did, I released my familiar bond with him.
Gregory dropped off my familiar list, and I saw him added to Bilgus’. I would miss the little guy, but he needed something else out of life than dangerous battles with foes exponentially stronger than him. He would have a much better life with the old tamer he had already grown so close to.
“Take good care of him, yeah?”
Bilgus looked at me, and gave me a warm smile. “Of course.”
* * *
The rest of the trip to the capital was blissfully uneventful, and I split my focus cooking the huge plethora of meats I had in hand for the convoy members, writing in my bestiary and other future tomes, and learning what I could from Marshan, the guards, and the others.
As with Roko, the grasslands turned into farms, huge swathes of land that were being worked so far out from the capital that I still couldn’t even see the city. We traveled through farmlands for a long while before that changed.
“There it is,” Marshan said as the walled city came within sight. “The capital and royal seat of the Horuth Kingdom.”
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
The difference between Horuth and Roko was even larger than the difference between Roko and Mirut. It wasn’t that Horuth was that much larger, as a city, than Roko, but it was an absolute fortress.
The wall towered impossibly high, the work of multiple generations of earth mages and manual labor. Weathered gray stone was largely covered in ivy and some moss. Parapets lined the top of the wall, and there were far more guards than seemed necessary with only farmers hard at work outside.
As magnificent as the wall was, it paled in comparison to what I could just make out in the center of the city, towering further still over the wall.
The royal castle was an incredible construction of intricate stone, absurdly tall for a world without the technology of the industrial age. It was a building that could only be constructed here thanks to magic, all the more impressive when I realized its original construction likely predated point-based magic. Expert earth mages, who had focused their full studies on the single field, would have spent their entire lives to construct a castle like this. It spoke to a long, powerful history.
I was eager to get through the wall and take a closer look, though as with Roko, I faced some difficulties with my familiars. Marshan didn’t have the same pull here as he did in Roko, and a sneaky little calm spell was needed to get the guard off my case and let us in.
Inside the capital’s walls was an even more impressive bustle of people going about their business, which included a lot of organization of incoming convoys for the northern effort. We were directed to staging areas to inventory our supplies and prepare for the trip north, through the mountain pass and to the former Velgein territory.
“Really, it should be the army taking charge of these shipments from here, not hired merchants and convoys,” Marshan whispered while our goods were being inventoried. I slipped some of the salvaged goods from the convoy that had fallen to the pannid pack in, so Marshan would get a little bonus from the sale.
“Why are they sending us, then?”
Marshan shrugged. “It doesn’t bode well. They must be spread much too thin.”
“When do we head out?”
“Not sure. Probably soon.”
“Hmm. I’m going to sneak away for a bit to take a look around.”
Marshan nodded, walking back to the soldiers doing the inventory. “Don’t be too long.”
* * *
Even with the undercurrent of conflict, the capital city was a wonder. I wished I could have spent more time exploring it, talking with craftspeople and shop owners, getting to know the secrets hidden beneath the surface. I slipped through a back alley, and saw a muskoon scamper away from me deeper into the darkness. I grinned at the sight, hoping Atlessoa was doing all right back in Roko.
I made my way towards the castle, wanting to get a closer and more thorough look at it.
Coming out of an alley into a square of some kind, I saw a sight that twisted my stomach into tight knots.
Up on a stage were a half dozen people, in rags and chains. An auctioneer was taking bids from people in the audience.
A slave market.
I looked at the people, taking in their different appearance. They had strong features, wide noses and chins, and the men were quite large and impressive looking, but it was two specific things that stood out.
The southerners had a unique set of hair and eye colors, and so too did these people–northerners, I supposed, or Velgiens–but they had completely different looks. The northerners were stark white, incredibly pale of skin but also practically without pigment in their hair. I would have assumed it was albinism of sorts, but they did have pigment in their skin, it was just very minor. Incredibly low melanin, maybe, all in the skin and none in the hair. The eyes weren’t without pigment, though, as they were all shades of yellow and pale green.
The second and much more shocking thing came when I appraised them. None of them had any MP at all. Not just out of MP, but a total of 0/0 MP.
I had never seen anything like it before. Even the weakest of beasts had 1/1 MP.
Was it an effect done to them, or a racial trait? Biology, or curse?
They were chained and mostly acting contrite but I could see they were furious. It didn’t look like their will was broken, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t had magic done to them. Was there a spell that could completely destroy someone’s magic pool? Not that I knew of, and nothing that I could imagine.
I slinked back into the alley, angry and concerned. As I walked away, something occurred to me. Could taming magic be usurped to use on people? I shuddered at the thought. I assumed that it hadn’t, because there were so few tamers outside of farming and that those people clearly had will and were held by chains, not magic.
I had uncovered a whole new set of questions for a particularly distasteful topic. Getting answers would be incredibly difficult, and I wasn’t sure that I even wanted answers for some questions, like the ability to extend taming to humankind. Like the nuclear bomb, some information, once out in the world, was impossible to put back in the box.
No, I would never explore that angle. I still wanted to push the magic of taming beasts forward to benefit the world–and also for cute pets–but I would never push my experiments beyond that, and I suspected that if I discovered someone had, I would do everything in my power to put a stop to it.
As it was, it took every ounce of my willpower not to turn around and free those slaves.
What could I do, though? The kingdom had the entire northern nation under their thumb. A half dozen slaves likely didn’t even scratch the surface.
Internally raging, I head back to Marshan and the convoy. I would go north with him and see what else I could learn. Sometimes, one had to bide their time.
I wasn’t so interested in exploring the capital anymore.
* * *
“We’re setting out!”
The new convoy was quite different from before. There were a lot more men joining us, many of them soldiers, and a lot of the tamers driving the carts were different people that I didn’t recognize. Bilgus had stayed behind, and I wished him and Gregory well. Hopefully I could visit them in Gurt one day.
Marshan’s expression had changed since we started north of the capital. He seemed a lot more sour, a dull anger. I got the impression he wasn’t a fan of the decisions at play with this entire effort. Marshan liked to make money but he did seem mostly to want to do so by helping people, moving the right goods around, benefiting people’s lives with his work.
War was different. Even though he was still getting paid, this wasn’t going to help people. More likely, it would hurt people. Maybe not people of the Horuth kingdom, but people all the same.
I had no idea how right I was.