He drank from his ice-cold ale and decided it didn’t matter how much he spent or drank. It wasn’t like he had class to attend, and his new life in the forest made bank tokens and money unnecessary except for the occasional supply run into the city.
“Well, kiddo?” the man with the burnt face asked. This was his first time speaking since Oscar had arrived. “Which story would you like to hear first?”
The scar tissue over his eye shone wetly in the yellowish light. It scared Oscar but also made him feel like they had something in common.
“Yours,” he told the man. “I want to hear your story first.”
“Ah, of course.” The man fluttered a hand over the scar. The fingers of that hand were only half the normal length and wrapped in scar tissue that made the entire limb resemble a fleshy mitt. “I got this fighting Iolus Magnus at Fort Steel not less than, oh, thirty-five years ago.”
Oscar almost knocked over his beer. “Iolus Magnus?”
“You know him?”
The man didn’t seem all that surprised. Why would he be? Iolus was a legendary villain, even featured in comic books.
Oscar wanted to say yes, that he knew Iolus Magnus and had fought the sorcerer in the Battle of the Ranch back on Taradyn with his demigod friends, Milo and Emma. But today wouldn’t be about him. It would be about these men and their stories of war.
They probably wouldn’t believe him, anyway.
“I read about him,” Oscar said. “He’s the meanest bad guy ever, right?”
The man with the burnt face nodded, obviously pleased. “Name’s Larson Ford, son of Rether Ford. But everyone calls me Larry. Let me tell you about this mean son of a bitch before these clowns next to me start interrupting.”
Oscar grinned. The others looked bitter at having their stories skipped over. Those looks fell away, however, as soon as Larry began to recount what had happened to him. When Darlena began bringing out plates loaded with steaming potatoes and sizzling steaks, the other veterans took small, silent bites as they listened intently.
Larry Ford was a dramatic storyteller. Between sips of ale and huge bites of his steak, he told Oscar the story of how Iolus Magnus had shot a fireball straight at him in the heat of battle, melting the entire left side of his body. It was Larry’s Acolyte wife who had saved him. She had flown straight into the battlefield and had tied Larry’s smoking remains to a leather strap dangling from her waist. Then she flew him out of there, brought him to a safe haven in a nearby forest, and healed as much of him as she could. She not only saved his life but kept his left arm and leg from having to be amputated.
Her name was Dascha.
“Where is Dascha now?” Oscar asked the veteran.
The mood soured a bit. The other ex-soldiers lowered their heads and sipped solemnly from their mugs. Darlena’s face went tight with pity.
Larry was the only one whose expression didn’t change. His ravaged face remained stern as he stared ahead at nothing, lost in memory.
“She died that night,” he said at last. “Before she lifted me out of that hellhole, Iolus’s commander, Kovax Leonaryx, cast some kind of spell over the battlefield that summoned poisonous leeches out of nowhere. Tiny, green things, like rotting maggots with tiny hooks for attaching to a person’s skin. I didn’t see them clinging to Dascha’s neck until the next morning, all fat and bloated from having fed on her.
“You see, I wasn’t the only thing she picked up on that battlefield. A bunch of those wretched green bastards had stuck to her wings. She was so focused on taking care of me she didn’t even notice them. I ended up fine because of her healing powers, but that night as I slept and dreamed of the life and home and children she and I might have together, those leeches fed on her. They poisoned her. She was gone by morning. I slept right through her suffering.”
Oscar realized his mouth was open and immediately shut it. Tears rose to his eyes as he pictured Larry weeping over the body of his dead wife, the woman’s leech-infested wings hanging over the sides of her bed in lifeless sheets. He blinked them away. The other veterans wore distant, hateful expressions, as if they had all become lost in vengeful fantasies directed at the men responsible for their pain.
Oscar stared down at his half-eaten steak. He was no longer hungry, and the thought of finishing his beer summoned a nauseating rumble in his gut. Iolus was still out there. He and his friends could have killed him that night outside Ascher’s ranch, but they hadn’t. Now, without the training he was supposed to receive at the academy, he might never again get the chance to help.
“I’m sorry,” he said and sniffled.
Larry gave him a kindly smile. “It’s okay, cub. That was decades ago. I know she’s in a better place now. Someday I’ll meet her there, and it’ll be like old times. You can bet on that.”
He raised his mug. The men around him raised theirs as well. Oscar followed suit.
“To the next realm,” Larry said.
“To the next,” everyone echoed, including Darlene, who finished pouring a shot of liquor and solemnly gulped it down.
They drank their mugs dry and set them down in a series of heavy bangs like pistols being fired—like the shot that had killed Oscar’s mother. He held back more tears and cleared his throat, telling himself to move on from his pain as these men had done. Someday, he would join his mom in another life, too. He had to believe that was true. Otherwise, what was the point of anything?
Swaying a little on his stool, Oscar considered paying the bill and telling the men he would be back tomorrow if they felt like sharing more, when the front door suddenly banged open. A burst of afternoon light pierced the timeless haze inside the tavern.
The silhouette of a stocky, bushy-tailed man stood in the doorframe. His shoulders rose and fell with each hurried breath.
“Hey, it’s good ol’ Jason!” the man with the severed tail said. “Come have a drink. Oscar’s buying if you got a good story to tell.”
Jason slammed the door shut and entered the bar, raking in each breath as if he had sprinted clear across the city to get there…except he didn’t look winded from running. The sweat on his pale face dripped past wide eyes and a mouth wrenched open by fear. Clumps of dirt were stuck to his messy blond hair and his short, matching beard. His hands, along with his rugged outfit and the utility belt strapped around his waist, were caked with dirt and something much worse.
Dried blood.
“They’re dead,” Jason said. “All of them. It was a massacre.”
Alarmed, the veterans rose all at once—a single, trained unit—and approached the frightened man.
“Brother,” Larry said, “where have you been? What happened?”
“Larry, thank the gods you’re here. We were in the mountains looking for—for gold. Oh gods, how could we have been so stupid?”
“Which mountains? What part? Come on, man, what did you do?”
“We went into the Caves of Krilkan Haut.”
Larry shook his head, his good eye set in a fierce squint. “Didn’t our father teach you better than that, you idiot?”
“But those were just stories,” Jason said, spreading his arms in a gesture of helplessness. “Things people tell their kids to scare them. How was I supposed to know they were real?”
Now Larry looked confused. “What are you talking about? It wasn’t bandits that did this to you?”
“Oh, gods, I wish it was just bandits. But—but it was something else, something I still can’t…”
“Just say it, Jay,” Larry told him, grabbing his brother by the arms. “What was it you saw?”
Jason spoke in a panicked rush. “A big, hairless creature in a loincloth was standing at the end of the tunnel, holding a torch. He had one eye, and it—it blinked at me, and then he was gone, and then Bil and Sara got caught in these metal clamps. I tried to drag them out but they were too heavy, and—and I heard the thing coming, and all I could do was run away. I left them there. I left Bil and Sara in the dark with that—thing.”
“You did what?” Larry said with a push that sent Jason staggering.
“What was I supposed to do? I had to get help. I went to the warden station on Pallos Street, but they didn’t believe me. They laughed at me, so I came here. I didn’t know where else to go. Larry, you have to believe me. That thing was gigantic!”
Oscar hung back by the bar, stunned by what he had just heard. The hairless, one-eyed giant Jason had described was most likely an Orglot, a mythical monster that Owen and Gunner had often talked about during their secret gatherings in Ascher’s attic. But even they had acknowledged that the creature was either extinct or not real to begin with.
Larry was furious. “Even if that were true, what in the name of the gone gods do you expect me to do about it?”
“It’s Bil and Sara,” Jason pleaded. “They’re our friends. We have to help them.”
“And you’re sure they’re still alive? All that blood on your shirt says otherwise.”
“If it really is Orglots, they won’t kill them right away. You’ve heard the stories. They’ll make Bil and Sara fight each other to the death so they can place bets.”
“Stupid, gold-loving brutes,” one of the veterans grumbled.
“Then they’ll eat them,” Jason continued. “It’s how they do things.”
“In the storybooks, maybe,” Larry said. “Are we forgetting that no one has even seen an Orglot in over two thousand years?”
“Seen one and lived to tell about it,” Jason said. “Until now.”
“I don’t buy it,” Larry said. “And you had no business bringing Bil and Sara up to that place, you greedy idiot. What’s wrong with you?”
“Please,” Jason said, joining his hands together in a begging gesture. “Help me. You can keep the gold—”
“There ain’t no gold,” shouted the man with the missing arm. “If I had a thesselbit every time you said you knew where to find gold—”
“Dagon, shut up,” Larry said with an angry wave. “Let my brother speak.”
“That’s what you think,” Jason threw back at Dagon. “But what do you call this?”
He dug into his pocket and pulled out a shiny gold coin. It was oblong and flat, with no markings on either side. Crude methods had been used to shape it. The veterans’ eyes widened at the sight of it.
“We found at least a hundred of them,” Jason said. “Unmarked. Probably a million more where these came from. They were spilling out of a sack in one of the tunnels.”
“Blasted idiot,” Larry said. “It was a trap.”
“I know it was. But see, here’s the thing. When Bil and Sara got caught, I dropped the sack. The coins fell into a shallow crack too small for an Orglot hand. But if one of you wanted to reach in…” He let them finish the idea for themselves. “All I ask is that you help me save our friends.”
The veterans traded looks of interest. The one with the metal leg was practically hopping up and down in delight.
“We’ll be rich,” he said.
“Shut up, Muldoon,” Dagon said. “With your bum leg, you’d only slow us down.”
“Is that right, Dagon? I’d like to see you climb after me—oh wait, you need two arms to climb—”
“Quiet,” Larry ordered the men, who immediately clamped their mouths shut. “Everyone listen up. I’m going with my brother up to those caves and see if I can’t help Bil and Sara, at least confirm that they’re alive or dead. Any other man who wants to come can keep whatever gold he finds. But if any of you lets greed put the rest of us in danger, I’ll make you wish you were battling an Orglot instead of me.
“I’m going with you,” Muldoon said with a decisive stomp of his metal leg.
“Me too,” said Dagon.
One by one, the others agreed. Jason was the first to the exit. Larry followed, waving the others along. Oscar was the last one through the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Larry asked him on the sidewalk, blinking his good eye in disbelief.
“With you,” Oscar said. “Your friends need help.”
“Don’t lie to me, cub. If you think this is your chance to see an Orglot so you can brag to your friends later—”
“Look, I need this, okay?” Oscar said with a suddenness that surprised even him.
“Why? To get into school? You were rejected, right? And you think risking your life is gonna make them welcome you with open arms? Don’t be a dummy.”
Oscar had no idea what to say. “How—how did you know…”
“I may have one eye, cub, but I ain’t blind. I knew you weren’t a farmer as soon as I heard that accent. Beats me where you’re from, but the only kids with accents around here either study at the academy or traveled here in hopes of working their way in somehow.”
Larry gripped Oscar’s shoulder and turned him forcefully around, to face the tall buildings downtown. The other veterans had already begun to run in the opposite direction, led by Jason.
“Go home, kid.”
Oscar spun to face him. “I’m fast. I won’t slow you down.”
“Look, kid, I’m telling you this because I like you. If you’re not at the end of that street in ten seconds, I’m gonna toss you there.”
Oscar crossed his arms. “I’d like to see you try, old man.”
Larry frowned. Oscar steeled himself in case the man’s threat had been real. The grizzled war veteran surprised him by laughing out loud instead.
“Fine,” he said. “You say you’re fast? Prove it. If you can make it to Ambler Park five blocks thattaway before my fool of a brother gets there, I’ll let you tag along.”
Larry had to shout the last few words, as Oscar was already past the first block before the man had finished.
CHAPTER 32
A ndres was no Feral like his son, but his ears had always been sharp.
He had been there almost the entire time, crouched beneath an open window in the alleyway alongside Tailspin Tavern. He had listened to the conversation between Oscar and the ex-soldiers seated at the bar. Andres’s first thought upon watching his son enter the gloomy place was that Oscar was about to embark on the path of a drunk and spend his days slumped over an endless series of bottles. Andres had witnessed that kind of life up close; his own father had drunk himself into an early grave, a heart attack taking him while he’d been waiting in line at the only store in town that sold his favorite German beer.
Andres was only slightly relieved to find that his son had entered not to drink but to hear stories of war. Hopefully, the boy wouldn’t skip one evil—alcohol—only to run straight into some battle that had nothing to do with him and would get him killed.
But that was exactly what Oscar did. While drunk, no less.
Using the levathon Emmanuel had given him, Andres had spent the past day and a half gliding above the forests in search of his son, calling his name until his voice was hoarse, stopping only to rest from midnight to sunrise. The only other time he stopped was to eat a quick meal at a city food stand and feed the levathon—whom he called Alma, which means “soul” in Spanish—at a stable. It was a stroke of good fortune that led him to the outskirts of the city, where he caught his son sprinting across a field.
He had been spying on him ever since.
Andres almost confronted his son outside the tavern on his way out. But he waited instead, hoping the man with the scarred face would be able to convince Oscar to stay behind. Then, before he could understand what had happened, Andres lost sight of his son. The boy had broken into a sprint in the direction of the other Ferals. He was fast.
“Let’s follow him, Alma,” Andres told the levathon.
He whipped the reins to send her into flight. Oscar was quick, but he was no match for a levathon flying overhead. They landed farther up the street and stood waiting for Oscar, who appeared within moments and wasn’t even out of breath.
His boy could move like the wind.
“Papa?” Oscar said, blinking at him in surprise. “How did you fin
d me?”
They spoke in Spanish, thank the gods. Andres’s limited English turned to nonsense when he was flustered.
“I’ve been looking for you since yesterday. I saw you enter this side of the city, and I listened while you were in the tavern.”
Oscar’s eyes narrowed, the orange one a flame, the other like coal.
“You were spying on me?”
“Would you expect anything less?”
Oscar sulked as he tried walking past him. “Why not? After you abandoned me at the castle yesterday—”
Andres grabbed his son’s shirt and yanked him close. Oscar flashed him a look of surprise and anger.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Andres said. “I won’t stand by while you throw your life away over some stupid school.”
“Let go of me.”
“No.”
Oscar wrestled himself out of his father’s grip. He wasn’t as strong as he was fast, but he could move like an eel. Andres held his arms out to block his path.
“You’ll die if you follow those men.”
Oscar frowned at him in disbelief. “You were at the window the entire time? Why didn’t you just come inside?”
Andres considered this. Should he have barged in and sat with his son for a drink? Should he have listened to Oscar’s story and tried to understand what he was feeling? If he had, all of this might not be happening. Andres pictured his wife shaking her head at him in disappointment.
“I can’t let you go, Oscar. Come back to the hotel with me.”
“I’m never going back.”
“Let me finish. We’ll pack our things, and we’ll go somewhere else. I’ve been thinking of buying a Wingcab license. Emmanuel already said he would invest whatever money I needed to get it running. It’ll be like when I drove that taxi back home. You loved that taxi, remember?”
The look Oscar gave him then, like he was embarrassed to be standing so close to such a pathetic failure of a man, almost melted the strength in Andres’s knees. He felt he could barely stand beneath the weight of that stare.
Savant & Feral (Digital Boxed Set): Books 1 and 2 of the Epic Luminether Fantasy Series Page 68