A New Road, A New Companion

They were barely a mile outside the city when the boyish watcher announced his presence.

Ol-Lozen had heard him first, the slapping gait of one to whom running was a pastime and not an activity to excel in, fitting for a youth. His sandals were leather and baked by long hours in a field. He wore a brown leather jerkin over a stained homespun tunic, and baggy trousers barely reaching past knobby knees. The travel sack over his shoulder jangled with possessions. At his waist hung a heavy hatchet whose handle was worn smooth as its owner’s face.

All in all, an untested peasant boy, waving a hand to show he no longer made attempts at concealment.

Mouse leaned out over the wagon’s bed to get a better look. With it, she no longer needed to ride on the donkey’s back, and could relax in the carriage under its white canvas bonnet, reading her tomes, strapped crates for backrests.

“Grandma, that boy is shouting for us to stop.”

“So I’ve heard.” Daigay reached down to pet Jackbee, encouraging the steed to trot faster. Though the wagon had come with a bench to direct beasts of burden from, she chose to remain in the saddle.

“Should we stop for him?”

“He’ll catch up eventually.”

“Daigay is right,” said Ol-Lozen, “stopping will only cost us time, and there remain many kilometers to our destination.” He trailed in the wagon’s wake.

“Even should he shout ‘please?’”

“Boys love to chase pretty girls. Let him have his exercise, he’ll thank us for the effort.”

“He just tripped, so I doubt that.”

“Ah, so that was the clatter. More’s the pity, but pain and failure will motivate him ten times over success.”

Empathy swirled in Mouse’s eyes, and Ol-Lozen knew what would come. He was already half-turned when “Demon, bring that boy to me” reached his pointed ears.

He lay facedown in the dirt. True to her word, the boy’s sandal had caught over a divot in the road and was sent sprawling. Out of embarrassment, or possibly a bemoaning of poor fortune, he had not arisen by the time Ol-Lozen loomed over his heap of naivety. The Orkan wordlessly picked the youth up, draping the limp body over his shoulder like a sodden bath towel. Ol-Lozen’s expert estimation of age was anywhere between Mouse and Daigay; closer to the former, a handful of summers older. He had lithe muscles, and two heads of height over the girl. Careful not to cut himself on the boy’s hatchet, he took it for his own belt, one loop over from the bloodsword, wrapped now in fabric. The necklace he wore bumped against Ol-Lozen’s shoulder with each step: hands holding stones cast in bronze, burnished from repeated rubbings. The Orkan’s eyes narrowed, but their reason eluded him.

Mouse was dabbing at his mashed lips with a ball of cotton when the boy’s eyes sprung open. First in his vision was her, the second an instantly recognized eight-legged, eight-eyed form crouched on her shoulder. He had been laid in the wagon and out of sun’s reach, a burlap sack of oats for a pillow. A new environment. Combined with new stimuli, that he screamed should have come as no shock. He screamed again upon notice of his inability to move; Daigay, out of concern for physical panic, had bound his limbs together. Those born without ears were entirely spared from harm. Picking painfully at his, Ol-Lozen thought it wise to wait out of sight until the boy calmed, passing the time by attempting to piece together the conversation from Mouse’s words.

“Calm down and we’ll release your bonds. Struggling will only hurt you!”
The boy’s eyes were a speck of pupil in a sea of white. “Miss, you have a spider on your shoulder!” He struggled to free an arm to smack it away.

“His name is Lazylegs.”

“Creepy! What came over you to name it?!”

“He’s my friend. If you try to kill him, I’ll bind your eyelids together and leave you blind. I’m a magus, and so is my grandma.”

“Grandma…” He breathed the word. “Oh! The old woman who bought my Da’s wagon. She’s your family?”

Mouse nodded. “And we have a demon.”

“Demon?” The boy turned around. Seeing the mammoth black silhouette of Ol-Lozen cupping his half of the bonnet, he blanched whiter than the canvas. “The green one. I should have guessed he hadn’t just been rolling in grass, but no demon I’ve heard of looks similar.”

“He’s not Incursion,” Daigay piped in. “That one is mine, in every means imaginable. So, unless you wish him leave you by the roadside, bound and helpless, at the mercy of whomever or whatever fate throws your way, explain why spied and why you have chased us, and do so before my patience runs dry.”

“Then, ma’am, I will gladly. Could I ask you to untie me?”

“No.”

The boy swallowed, throat suddenly dry. “My folks named me Joshua, and I’ve been Joshua all my life. Paguno was my Da’. Is my Da’.”

“Neither the first nor the second question I asked,” Daigay interjected. While the boy was silent, she snapped her fingers. His bonds fell away. “But you have manners.”

Joshua rubbed at his freed wrists. “Much obliged, ma’am. I was only curious why you came. Not a lot of visitors come through, fewer looking for wagons, even fewer who could talk Da’ out of his. Are you a magus, as well?” He paused, frowning. “Did you put a spell on him?”

Daigay rolled her eyes to the high heavens. “A proper word at the proper occasion with proper planning has turned more minds than the greatest of spells. I did not charm your father, not with magic.”

“But you could charm someone?”

“Better – she could turn you into a bird.” Mouse grinned, relishing in the boy’s nervous twitch.

“Forced transformations are unproductive, rest assured, just as this conversation has become unproductive, now, again – why are you here?”

Joshua straightened his back before he spoke, and cleared his throat of any impediment to his meaning. “Because I heard what you and Da’ spoke of, how you intend to visit the lostlands. To fight the demons. I wish to join your quest.” Tall and proud, shifting slightly as the wagon rumbled on over the uneven road, he waited for Daigay to respond. Back turned, he had no way to know what expression the magus wore. As the moments dragged his eyes began darting around, learning where the hard-angled boxes were, the yielding sacks, in case she decided to bind him again so he’d know where to fall.

hee-haw hee-haw hee-haw hee-haw

The donkey punctuated the silence with brays. His master shuddered, then a harsh, spitting laugh erupted from her mouth.

“Our quest?” she cackled. “Oh – Oh, that’s rich –” She threw her head back in mirth and laughed some more. Joshua’s face brightened red.

“Is this not what you do? Not repenting for your sins against the kingdoms?” His accusation cut Daigay’s laughing cold. “Da’ told us the reason for the demon’s war against us was because of our magi. Because of their arrogance, and the great mountain of sins they’ve let fester under the bed. Now, I don’t mean disrespect, but I mean when I say I want to fight. The least you could offer is an answer, not a mocking.”

“Magi have been accused of everything from calamity to misplaced tools. A king develops a cough because he looked at a magus wrong, his pet lion dies to pay off the debt of clearing a storm. Always the magi, as if every worldly wrong were resulted from the ripples of our actions. One can only tolerate hearing the same tune so many consecutive times.” She scratched her donkey behind his ears. “Bring Ol-Lozen back,” she said to Mouse. “He’s been left in the dark long enough. And you,” she returned to Joshua, “best clear from your head any notions of quests. What you’ve become accomplice to is an undertaking of grim importance.”

“I fear I don’t understand.”

“Then I shall speak plain: we do this for betterment, to make us wiser. We do not ‘quest’ like adventurers of old; there will be no reward for laying his enemies’ heads at a king’s feet. If you wish for material gain, you’ve chosen the wrong allies.”

The Orkan sidled up beside Daigay. “I’ve been summoned back again.”

“Aye, just in time to watch a young boy swallow reality. This is our new companion. Brace yourself for rounds of thrilling conversation.”

Ol-Lozen saw a boy swaying in the wagon who looked as if he’d choked down a toad. “Does he speak?”

“Not to you,” she said with a glance sideways.

“I see the joke now.”

“After I’d instructed where to look,” she chided, smirking when he huffed. “Best toughen up that thick skin of yours, given I now contend with two children; my barbs must be frequent if I’m to keep madness at bay.”

Ol-Lozen threw a look back to the two riding in the wagon. Mouse had slunk back into her book, the spider on her shoulder awaiting any morsels seeking to disturb her study, while the boy, Joshua, dug through his sack, looking fervidly for something. Clacking of the boy’s axe against the bloodsword reminded him he’d lifted it. “What age is he?”

Daigay yelled his question at the haggard youth. “Seventeen summers.”

“Among my people he would be on the cusp of manhood.”

“He is a man here as well, but all are children to me. Even you.” She knocked his elbow with her own.

The jape slipped past, but he hadn’t reached to grab it. Unease churned in his stomach, distracting him with the swirl of sound that sounded awfully similar to the bump of a small piece of metal. His had been an earnest face, much like the farmer’s whose necklace he wore. His parents had welcomed their son shining and new into the world, taught him manners, clothed the boy and fed him when their own bowls were empty. Love was given freely, and the warmth of their fire. Instilled in him dreams of better days; better nights, abundant with fireflies, warm for enjoyment with a net in hand and an open field devoid of prowling terrors that would steal him from their arms.

Daigay’s question had been little above a whisper in his ears, Mouse’s shout a rustle, as he yanked the squirming Joshua from their wagon and stood him on the road, shoving the travel sack into thin arms, the axe on top. Words or no words, a drawn Orkan face and sharp finger pointing back the way he came wrote a clear message.

“Go home, boy.”

“No… no, I will not!” The boy shouted back, arms tensing as if he intended to throw his possessions to the ground in anger before remembering the entirety of all he’d owned was contained in that sack – valuable things too: pots, cooking knives, firestones and sharpening stones, spyglass – depositing it to the road instead, eye’s connected to Ol-Lozen’s own by steel cord. Having leapt from her saddle, Daigay swept in astride the two, dust kicked up by her run. One pernicious look from her withered a phrase most revealing on Mouse’s lips, whose head had popped out the wagon intending to call Ol-Lozen off.

Joshua raised his fists in a fighting stance. He bounced in place on his heels waiting for the not-man to strike, imagination rotating through the scenarios of how their fight would play out. The green chin was within grazing distance if he jumped. If it came to it, one good punch from Ol-Lozen would stun the boy and lay him out flat. He would then grab that thin ankle, spin him around like a slingshot until Joshua’s nauseous face blurred a green ring, and send the boy flying back to his doorstep. “It’ll take more than some green oaf babbling to scare me back to the roads. Handle me again and you’ll see I can be just as monstrous as you,” he said.

Daigay placed a hand on his shoulder to calm him. “Now, Joshua, even the blind could see that as nonsense. But you,” she groused, batting Ol-Lozen with the back of her other, “will not demand I play peacemaker again. We shall settle this here. You require your focus, and the boy his body in one piece.” Turning back with a sweet smile, Daigay switched the Orkan words for Joshua’s. “Speak, and I will translate for you both.”

“Tell him I’ve come to help. Tell him I want to fight the Incursion, too.”

Ol-Lozen snorted. “This child? This stick of a boy? They’d skin him alive, whittle his bones into skewers for cooking the little meat he’s got.” Cruel as the words were, he couldn’t deny the satisfaction he felt when the boy’s face paled. “Is that what you want, boy, to die so worthlessly?”

“Better than sitting around waiting for the end,” he said. “Like so many others where I am.”

“Wouldn’t you rather want to die with your family, than out there where we’re going?”

“I’d rather give them a chance to live!” The boy’s voice raised louder, color flushing back into his cheeks. “All they do is sit around and talk of what will be done when the Incursion comes, instead of setting foot out there. If they won’t protect themselves, then I damn well will!”

“Then I take it nobody asked you for sacrifice, you made the choice yourself! Did your parents piss you off, boy? Is this you getting even?”

“Did you ask her?” He pointed to Mouse.

Ol-Lozen leaned in close so Joshua could see his runes. “I am bound to serve, boy. By Daigay’s hand will she and the magus be safe.” He emphasized the breathiest words. Humid, unwashed gusts battered the boy’s senses. “But you’re throwing your life away.”

“It’s my life, that means I get to decide. I want to use it for the good of my family”

Daigay finished translating with a shake of her head. “Have you gotten your fill?” she said to Ol-Lozen. “Clearly the boy will not be dissuaded.” With a tender shove she sent Joshua away. Over one shoulder he threw Ol-Lozen a glare of contempt, tears of sweat beading where his sodden hair rag met skin.

“He has no magic. No sense. All he carries is an axe that will shatter at the first use.”

“And he’s another mouth to feed,” she agreed. “Would you kindly break his legs?”

He was taken aback at her words. “What barbarous question is that?”

“I’d not doubt it possible with your hands alone, but if necessary we’ve a hammer within reach,” she added, pointing to the wagon. “Given time we might procure a suitably heavy stone from around here. Any one of hundreds would do the trick.”

“I will not hurt him needlessly.”

“Then you’d best grow accustomed to our new companion. Haranguing will only incite him to stay.” She looked at the wagon where a fine conversation had been struck up, Joshua throwing his arms up in imitation of Ol-Lozen, Mouse laughing along. One hand worried at her glove which hid their Orkan’s true master. “You worry for the boy.”

“He is no concern of mine.”

“What part of that sounded like a question?” He could feel the smug look she wore even through the back of her head, needling him with its point. Mounting Jackbee once more, her firm hand to his backside to resume their journey, and a long stretch of road passed by like dreams.