“What in the shitting gods was that thing?!” Rose hadn’t felt as if she’d stalked since the chair, but she sure as hell stalked down. The wheels stalked, her arms stalked, her shoulder stalked and orange face mask backed up as if she were stalking, so she felt it entirely counted.
His voice was panicked and high pitched. “I have no idea! How the hell would I know?!”
Rose focused her vision and let it flare out. She illuminated the area and bright cones of light exploded from her eyes. To Rose they seemed even brighter than usual. “If you do not tell me everything right now, I will blow a hole in your head the size of a muskmelon!” Orange face mask shielded his eyes and stumbled back, clearly more terrified of her than he had been of the beast. Fuck. Shit. She had to get a hold of herself. She let the light fade and took a breath. In a more reasonable tone of voice she said, “Look. I’m pretty sure the half man that just killed your friends is who we’re after. Please. Tell us what you know and we’ll leave you alone. You can have your weapons and some of my stuff for your trouble.” Decima started to speak and Rose simply said, “They’ve lost enough. I’m not taking their free will, as well.” That seemed to mollify her. Seemed to mollify orange face mask and top-knot, too. Top-knot nodded and orange face-mask sat down and spoke.
“Okay, look, you need to understand that usually we work during the day. It’s easier and safer. We only came here at night because we were desperate and you had a fire. Anyway, we see this guy coming up toward us through the roughs early this morning. He’s not on a trail, mind, he’s trudging through the roughs. And usually that means lost. And lost usually means we score, right?”
Rose thought she should wait, but she couldn’t. “Did he have a prisoner? Human? Female?”
The shame that passed across his face told her a lot more than yes. He nodded his head while looking down. He got it.
“Look, we would have cut her loose if we’d been able, but you got to understand, it didn’t go according to plan. See, after a while he gets close and it’s pretty obvious that he’s spotted us. That’s actually pretty normal, you know? Lots of folks think that you want to sneak up on folks to rob them, but you don’t. Usually you let them see you coming so nobody gets surprised. Surprise means – ” he looked around and clearly didn’t need to say anymore. “Anyway, by the time he gets close enough to talk to it’s clear that he’s a fucking mess. He’s got a mask sort of hanging from the left shoulder of his outfit,” he gestured to where his own mask was hanging around his neck, “but he didn’t put it on. And it was … I never saw anything like it before. I’ve heard of half men, but I never saw one before and it was just the absolute worst. It’s like it was fresh and old at the same time. It was dry like a day old cut of beef, but still red like it just happened. Not wet, but … what’s it called? Tacky? It was gross.”
He swallowed it down and said, “I think he left it down on purpose to scare us. And, you know, it worked! We were thrown, but we outnumbered this guy five to one and he clearly had a prisoner to worry about, so we figured he’d toss us a little coin or food or something just to not have to worry about us, right? Plenty of people do. Most people offer up what they can spare just so they don’t have to risk a fight.” He was starting to look nervous remembering it.
“So I head up to talk. Grace hangs back by a stump of tree for cover, but visible, you know. There’s a rock off to one side that Gregano and Yusuf are behind. Still pretty visible, since he already caught sight of us. Jaakko was with me.” He glanced, involuntarily, to the remains of the dwarf. “The two of us usually had this sort of thing covered. He’s – he was – more serious than me, you know? Gravitas. So I give him the song and dance. Good morning, friend. Nice day. You seem lost, all that. He’s not buying. He’s not even talking. Just giving me an even stare with his one good eye and his one huge,” here he looked like he might sick up just remembering it, “ bloated eye, which unsettles the shit out of me, I don’t mind saying. And she, of course, isn’t saying anything. Looking down, you know. It was pretty clear that she wasn’t going to be part of the conversation.” He made a little ‘ahem’ when Rose glared at him and continued. “Anyway, Jaakko does his part for when I don’t impress. We don‘t want to make trouble, etcetera.”
“And that’s when things go pretty off script. He doesn’t answer at first, he just reaches into a pocket and then he says, ‘Well, I’ll tell you what folks. Unlike you, I DO want trouble.’ And then he casts out his arm and tosses something to the ground and each one of them explodes into one of those ….. one of those things. Whatever that thing was that just jumped us. And then while these things are hissing around us all crouched and ready to spring and it was just like that one! You couldn’t even look at them the right way. And he says ‘However, I am in something of a hurry. So if you promise to make a blood offering to the Sundered Countenance, you can keep your lives for now.’ And, well, I don’t have to tell you that the numbers were no longer in our favor and it didn’t take much thinking to agree to his terms, so to speak.”
“But we didn’t make the offering,” said top-knot whose name was apparently Yusuf.
“Well, of course not!” Orange-face mask broke in. “Who the hell would do that once he’s gone?! What were we going to open our own veins?”
Yusuf said, “Seems like that might have been wiser,” but his heart wasn’t in it.
Emrys saved him. “If it’s any consolation, it was probably the blood spilled here that summoned the thing. He probably left it behind to respond to blood with violence.” That seemed to be something the two men hadn’t considered. Rose also hadn’t considered it, but it tracked. Walk away from some bandits and then send a pet to kill them to cover up the evidence. If they hadn’t been so close on his heels ….
Orange face mask said, “Oh.” It hit him harder the longer he thought about it. Rose didn’t let him dwell.
“Which way did he go? Any idea what his destination might have been?”
Yusuf nodded. “Jaakko’s people used to have a village across the roughs. If you keep going north three days, you’ll hit a road that will take you southeast to that place in another five, but cutting across the roughs is a shortcut. The roughs will get you there in two days or so if you’ve got the endurance for it.”
Rose wasn’t sure she DID have that kind of endurance. Being on the path had been difficult enough at this point. “So you think that guy is going to camp down with some dwarves?”
“Nah, they used to have a village,” said orange face mask. “The half men killed any they didn’t drive off. I can’t say how many of them are there now, but he always said it was not more than 20 dwarves in the village. The place didn’t even have a proper name, I think.”
“Second Mother’s Village.”
Orange face mask looked at Yusuf. “Is that a proper name? I just figured it was where his second mother lived or something?”
Yusef shrugged. “I believe he only had one mother. The dwarvish words would be Avar Kurditot.”
Orange face mask said, “Huh. Well, that’s the place I guess. But if there’s anyone there it’s other half-men and their friends. So – well, it feels a little weird to tell you to be careful after all this, but be careful all the same.”
The two men didn’t have any other information about the beasts that they’d seen, but it sounded like the half-man would have at least two more. Rose didn’t love the sound of that. Especially since she was almost certain that it was using some sort of talent against them, but she hadn’t been able to perceive it. In the end, it was too late to worry about it. The sun was already starting to peek up on the horizon, so Rose and Emrys and Decima packed up camp. They left the two men with their weapons (Decima had been upset about losing the bow and the arrows), and Rose left them with some road food and a few coins. “Try to find something safer, huh?” was the last thing she said, but she didn’t have much faith they would.
Leave a Reply