by Cebelius
The trip to the road was a short one. The trees simply stopped at the edge of a low, grassed-over ditch that topped out into an expertly crafted road of quarried stone. It was the only real road that left Florence, and it made its way west along the mountains south until turning into a pass some miles further up.
Laina had only ever traveled this road once, and that had been in the other direction, when her sister had brought her over the mountains to her eventual home in a fishing village too small to have a real name.
As they reached it, Boss turned to her and asked, "Would you be willing to carry Shy for this? I'd like to catch the Kolenkos before dark, and I have no idea how far along they've already gone."
She nodded and shifted her grip on the ax as she crouched, flipping her own backpack aside as she looked to Shy.
The dryad gazed in irritation at Boss as she asked, "Are we really in that much of a rush?"
"The further we get from the city before people find out we've left, the fewer will try and chase us. We need to make good time. While you're good at a lot of things, making tracks is not one of them."
He said it with no malice, but also with little patience. Shy's features fell, but she didn't contest the point. Instead she set her Rod of Arcs against her back and, a moment later, withdrew her hand, holding it there by means Laina didn't care to ask about. The rod was of simple iron or steel, with a solid ball at the top and a flat circular plate a few inches beneath that. It tended to crackle with greenish electricity and did so now as Shy slipped behind Laina and wrapped arms around her neck.
As the minotress stood, she murmured, "I'm sorry about this. I'll find something more appropriate to ride soon, I promise."
"Carrying you is nothing," Laina said, pitching her voice just for Shy out of reflex. "You're not mad about me making fun of you earlier, are you?"
Laina was remembering a few unkind things she'd said of the dryad as they'd first made their way toward Florence. Shy kissed Laina's neck lightly and said, "No. I just hate disappointing him."
Laina snorted as she straightened, loosening the straps on her pack and slinging it around Shy's back as well as her own.
"Comfy?" she asked.
"Mm," Shy said, resting her head against Laina's.
She hesitated, then said, "If it makes you feel any better, I'm slowing him down too. If he moved like he probably wants to, I don't think any of us could keep up. I tried to catch him once, remember? He's fast."
Shy chuckled softly and squeezed Laina's neck as she said, "Thank you, hon. That does make me feel a little better, if only because it's you making the effort."
Laina blinked. It was the first time Shy had used Boss' pet name for her, but she didn't dispute it. As she began to trot, staying in the grass next to the road to save her hooves, she actually found she rather enjoyed it.
Euryale and Boss jogged down the road, with the latter calling over his shoulder, "Tell me if you need me to slow down, hon."
Laina didn't bother to answer. She was concentrating on her breathing, and on her man's mood. Going into that den of spiders would have upset anyone, but even so, he seemed unusually short-tempered.
Over the course of the next hour it quickly became clear that Euryale could cheat when it came to running. She spread her wings and beat them hard as her feet touched the road and literally flew short distances with each stride, easily keeping up with Boss' effortless jog.
Despite the seeming ease with which he moved he set a grueling pace, at least as far as Laina was concerned. She'd traveled like this with him before though. She gritted her teeth and bore with it. Her lungs worked like bellows, and she persevered.
At least the grass is soft and the rocks are easy to see, she thought grimly. I'm actually glad that the Kolenkos mentioned getting a wagon. Otherwise Boss'd probably have us running until we dropped every damn day.
Mercifully, they caught up with the aforementioned wagon after about forty-five minutes of steady jogging, and as Boss greeted and exchanged pleasantries with the tiger kin siblings — a man named Yuri and his sister Mila — Laina sank to her knees, gasping as she loosened the pack and flung it aside so Shy could get off. Her sarashi had loosened somewhat as she ran, and her breasts were sore from all the jostling.
"It's not fair," she gasped. "He's ... Gah. He's not even breathing hard!"
Shy knelt next to her and put one palm on the ground as she laid the other across Laina's shoulder.
A swirl of vines sprouted near the dryad's fingers, and as Laina watched a pair of fruit appeared, swelled, and ripened before her eyes.
When Shy's magic stopped, Laina was staring at a pair of perfectly ripe watermelons each easily twice the size of her head.
As her mouth began watering, she glanced up at Shy and said, "Have I told you I love you? 'Cause I do."
Shy smirked and leaned in, kissing her lightly as she murmured, "It's always nice to hear. Thanks for the ride."
She sauntered over as Boss was shaking Marcus' hand. The big minotaur spared Laina a glance and a nod.
Marcus, Mila, and Yuri were adventurers, monster hunters, that Boss had met and befriended in Florence. Laina had come to trust the three of them herself over the course of the last few weeks. They had amazing chemistry on the battlefield, and working with them had made what would have been an absolutely terrifying ordeal bearable ... more than that, survivable. All three were experts in their various disciplines.
Giving the three of them no more thought for the moment though, Laina picked up one of the massive melons and punched her thumb through the rind, then tore it open and ate the chunk in her hand, rind and all.
"Oooooh Mmomph. Perfect. Juuuust perfect," she moaned in between bites.
"Watermelons?" Euryale asked, hands folded behind her back as she bent at the hip, standing on the edge of the road as she looked down at Laina.
"Mmph!" Laina said, not bothering with anything more. She tore a chunk off and tossed it.
Euryale's eyes widened and she skipped back, then forward again, juggling the messy piece a bit before settling it in her brazen claws and taking a dainty bite of the bright red flesh.
She rolled her tongue around in her mouth and seemed to consider the flavor, then shrugged as she spit out a few seeds and said, "I prefer meat, but the water makes it good. That was an invigorating run, wasn't it?"
Laina gave her 'the look' as she chewed, still breathing heavily through her nose. Euryale smiled and shrugged, stepping off the road and down into the ditch with her. She cut the unopened fruit from the vine and hoisted it over her shoulder as she asked, "Do you mind if I take this one to Master?"
Without waiting for an answer, she turned and with a wing-assisted leap, jumped back up to the road.
"Showoff," Laina muttered.
The minotress re-slung her backpack and groaned her way to her feet. She held her massive ax in one hand with the remainder of the watermelon palmed in the other, and ate it in huge bites as she walked to the wagon.
The Kolenko siblings had been very thorough in their preparations. The wagon was of the covered sort, with a white tarp stretched taut around metal ribbing anchored to the sides of the wagon that arched high overhead. Both the front and the back could be cinched shut, but the back was open at the moment and a glance showed bags of grain, barrels of water, and several crates, along with space for two or three people to sleep out of the weather. The wheels were high and steel-shod, and there were even high-quality steel shocks mounted to cushion the ride.
"I've never seen a wagon quite like this," she murmured as she bent to get a closer look at the broad, oval-shaped shocks.
"Thank Euryale for it," came a soft voice with a slight but exotic accent. "She provided the coin to purchase it from her hoard, along with the horses."
Mila Kolenko was a tiger woman with the feline face typical of her breed and green eyes. Her figure was concealed under a cream-colored robe with red edging, but the hood was down and she smirked at Laina, her ears alert a
nd forward. The minotress recognized the expression as one meant to convey friendliness without showing a predator's teeth.
Laina knew and liked Mila — of the two siblings she was the far more sensible and socially aware.
"I will," Laina said, not as bothered as she would have been a week ago to hear about someone else spending money for the Boss' sake. She'd made a mint while in Florence and was now in a position to live well wherever she went, but she'd had little opportunity to spoil her man with the proceeds from the gift he'd given her. "I guess you guys got out of the city with no problems?"
"None at all," Mila said, still smiling. "Would you like to ride in the back with Euryale for now? It will be no trouble. Yuri and I have horses, and Marcus is an excellent driver. We brought extra horses, but Boss says he prefers to walk, so we will hitch it to the back for now. Shy will be riding. Apparently, Euryale makes all the livestock nervous, even with the mask. The two of you will fit comfortably."
Laina nodded as she listened, then said, "For now I'll walk alongside. I thought I'd be finished, but that watermelon was really good, and I feel like staying on my feet for a while."
Mila smiled and laid her hand lightly over Laina's on the ax as she said, "Whatever you prefer. Boss seems to be eager to move, so let us go."
The minotress' smile faded a bit, and she nodded. Mila walked away and a few minutes later she and her brother were mounted and the wagon lurched into motion with Euryale in the back.
Laina stepped back off the road, silently cursing herself for the thousandth time for not getting shod while she was still in Florence. She just didn't like wearing shoes, but she knew she'd regret putting it off before this was all over.
As it was, the grass was soft and her hooves felt fine, so she put it from her mind. She was gratified when, a few moments after they got underway, Boss hopped off the road to walk in the ditch with her.
"Feeling all right?" he asked.
"Yeah, fine. Really glad we caught up to them though. Too much longer and I'd have had to ask you to slow the hell down. My tits are killing me."
She caught the slight blush that crept over his neck and cheeks and smirked as she said, "You can make it up to me tonight."
That only deepened his blush, and he glanced up at her in mild consternation as she started to laugh.
"You fought a behemoth and faced down a dragon, but just the thought of milking your woman — which you do all the time — still turns you red. You are such a wuss."
"What can I say. I love it sure, but there's a part of me that just can't get over how absolutely inappropriate the whole affair is," he said, rubbing at the back of his neck. Laina noticed as he did so that a spider had to scurry out of the way of his hand.
"You've still got spiders on you," she warned.
"Yeah, I checked, but I'm still all out of give-a-fucks. They aren't hurting anything, and, well ... after what happened to Ephe I figure if they want to tag along I'm not going to stop them."
He glanced up at her as he said, "Not going to feed them though. So eventually they'll probably leave when they get hungry."
"Mm."
They walked on in companionable silence, and Laina breathed deeply, able for once to simply enjoy being where she was. There were high clouds, a decent breeze, and the temperature was perfect. It was a beautiful early summer day, and she was walking next to her man.
Terry Mack meant more to her than she could readily put into words. He'd granted her fondest wish, and as she'd stayed by his side she'd seen him overcome odds and obstacles that would have crushed ordinary men, all to save not just his friends and family, but everyone else too. He wasn't just a man. He was a good man.
Now he was committed to a journey of more than a thousand miles for the sake of helping a friend, and keeping a promise.
And I still barely know anything about him.
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and saw that his previous moodiness seemed to have dissipated. As he walked, it was clear he was enjoying the same things she was. His face was tilted to enjoy the breeze, and he had an easy smile on his face.
May as well give it a shot.
"Boss?"
"Yeah?"
"Could you ... tell me something about where you're from?" she asked. "Nothing personal! I just, I don't know much about where you're from aside from the fact that your people all look like you."
His smile faded, and his eyes grew distant. Laina quickly added, "You don't have to if you don't want to. I'm just making small talk, yeah?"
"Yeah. I just don't ... know what I'd talk about. Most ways it was, well, kind of a shitty place," he said after a moment's pause. "School was nothing special, my parents were special in all the wrong ways, and my friends were ... forgettable. If I talked about any of that, I'm pretty sure I'd just depress you, and I know I'd depress me."
"Oh."
They walked on as Laina silently berated herself for spoiling the mood. Several minutes later though, he started to talk.
"I guess the thing I miss more than anything else about where I'm from is the music. Everywhere you went, people had music playing. Some of it sucked, but it was always there. Eat at a restaurant? Music. Buying groceries? Music. Work out at the gym? Music. Hell, I had music just walking down the street. I listened to it every night as I went to sleep. I trained to it, danced to it, it was just always there."
He fell silent again, and after a moment she asked, "Anything you could share?"
Boss laughed, but it was a rueful sort of sound.
"No. I remember the lyrics and I have a pretty good memory, but I'm not much of a singer. I'm not bad but ... I just don't have the voice to sing most of the music I like, and I'd hate to give you the wrong impression. It sounds bad when I say it out loud, but it's true: I spent my whole life brawling, and I just don't have many other skills."
Something he'd said made her blink, and she looked down at him curiously. After a moment, his sense of being observed kicked in and he glanced up and asked, "What?"
"You said you danced. I'd have never guessed," she said.
He smiled broadly and shrugged as he put his eyes back on where he was going.
"I was flat broke pretty much from birth, hon. If you got no money and you can't dance, the girls just won't be on you," he said. "I spent all that time learning how to move in a fight, it was only a few extra steps to learn how to move on the dance floor."
"Getting a girl was that easy, huh?" she said, smiling a bit wistfully. "Wish it'd been that easy for me. Before you I was pretty much convinced I'd never get laid, or if I did I'd be settling."
"If it had been easy for you, we'd have never met."
She laughed at that and said, "Somehow I doubt you'd mind, Boss. Some other girl'd be here walking."
"Nope," he said simply. "I'd be dead."
Laina opened her mouth to protest, then caught him shaking his head out of the corner of her eye. She thought better of what she might say, and the two resumed their companionable silence.
They passed several other groups of people over the course of the afternoon, and Boss put up the voluminous hood of his traveling cloak and walked with Laina between himself and the road. He even slowed down and sped up slightly to keep her body between him and the majority of the eyes they passed. Since virtually all of the travelers were headed toward Florence and presumably knew nothing of the recent troubles there, no one stopped them or did more than offer perfunctory waves of greeting as they passed.
The troop made another ten miles by Laina's estimate before Marcus — without a word to anyone — turned the wagon off the road and started the horses north into the grasslands. A quarter-mile later on, they camped in the lee of a hill with a relatively steep slope that was half-again as tall as the wagon and would effectively hide them, and their fire, from the road.
Boss was quickly corralled by Mila, who took both him and Shy away from the camp. Marcus dismounted the wagon and — rolling his shoulders idly — stopped in front
of Laina and said simply, "Come with me."
4
Filling in the Gaps
"All right, Boss," Mila said as she, Shy, and Terry moved out of sight of the camp. "I take it that you have the Rod of the Heart with you?"
Terry nodded, eyes narrowing at the question. He said, "Yes? And just for the record, call me Terry. Laina calls me Boss and ... I don't know, it's just getting a bit weird hearing it from you and your brother."
Mila shrugged and gestured at him impatiently as she said, "Fine. Terry? Take out your rod."
Shy giggled at that, and Terry's lips twisted around a smile as he shifted the black backpack off and set it down. Several spiders scurried away from the pack as he reached in for the gloves. Pulling both out, he was reminded by the gore on them to ask, "Would you do that thing you do to clean the blood off me, Mila? I'd really appreciate it. I meant to ask earlier."
"Mm. You do smell a bit like rotting meat. One moment."
Mila spoke words that sounded familiar to Terry, but refused to give up their secrets. He'd spent much of the past week researching magic, but though the language of magic written in Volai Hart's books seemed to be an actual language, he had no pronunciation key for it. Prada had helped him, but what Mila was saying sounded nothing like what Prada was teaching him.
All of the dirt, filth, and grime clinging to his clothing and skin fell away, landing in a rough circle around him in the grass. He stepped out of it, smiling at Mila as he said, "Thanks. Really appreciate it."
"You are welcome. Now, stop stalling. The Rod."
Picking up his pack and moving it a few feet away, he put on the gloves and willed the Rod to his hand. It came easily, and he pulled it from the backpack.
It was about six and a half feet tall and the haft was a dark mahogany wood wound with a single thick coil of gold. The butt was also capped in platinum, and a sizable ruby — shaped vaguely like a real heart — was fixed to the head and held there by traceries of gold that strongly resembled arteries and veins.