by Logan Jacobs
Florenia glanced at the bowl of beetles and replied coolly, “Nillibet is the goddess of baking, my dear, and this dish was clearly roasted, so my opinion on the matter would be quite worthless, I’m afraid.”
“Aww, I value your opinion in all matters,” Lizzy said sweetly. She and Florenia actually got along quite well, unlike her and Ilandere. They had a kind of mutual respect and understanding, despite coming from such opposite backgrounds and having such different personalities. So it probably wasn’t a complete lie that Lizzy valued Florenia’s opinion. Even though the only reason she was declaring that fact right now was that she wanted to see the finicky duke’s daughter cornered into eating a beetle.
Florenia turned to my nearest self, and I realized with a sinking feeling in my stomach what was coming next.
“Well, I defer in all matters to the judgment of my lord, Qaar’endoth,” the duke’s daughter announced as she batted her hazel eyes at me innocently.
Fucking hell. I couldn’t even call bullshit on that one because it was basically true. But, I could play the girls’ game too.
I turned to the gnome who glared back at me with his glowing jade eyes. “Well, I would be nothing without the wise counsel of my faithful servant Willobee of Clan Benniwumporgan,” I stated.
“And I,” he announced, “need look no further than the illustrious example of the peerless princess to guide my conduct toward perfection.”
“Who, me?” Ilandere squeaked. She was usually tickled pink by the gnome’s flattery, but it didn’t seem to be having quite its usual effect in this case.
“So, if I eat a fucking beetle, does that mean I’m in charge of you all?” Elodette interrupted.
“No,” about five different voices snapped.
I knew what I had to do after that. There was no choice. My pride and my authority depended upon it. With a groan, I reached out, picked out a beetle from the bowl, popped it in my mouth and swallowed as fast as I possibly could without choking, with the minimum amount of chewing and therefore the minimum amount of taste absorption.
“Er… how was it?” Elodette asked with genuine curiosity. Not enough curiosity to sample one herself though.
The briefness of the contact of the insect with my tongue meant that I actually didn’t really know the answer. It was more the idea of eating a beetle that repulsed me. “Delicious,” I lied. “By the Fairlands! I wish I could gobble them all, but that would be so unspeakably selfish of me that I could never forgive myself.”
None of my companions were convinced by my acting skills.
Throughout the rest of the day, some parties of drummers returned from foraging trips bearing more food supplies consisting of nuts, roots, berries, and more bugs. Others hung around and chipped away at wood to make dishware or at rock to make spearheads. But most of the drummers did not seem to have regular day jobs, and they occupied themselves by watching our every move and grunting at us inquisitively. They especially enjoyed the sound of Lizzy’s voice for some reason as she continued to murmur venomous threats and insults at them. They also kept trying to touch both centaurs until they were in grave danger of getting their brains kicked out by Elodette’s mighty hooves. The centaurs and Willobee particularly mesmerized them, I suppose because of their exotic appearances. I couldn’t tell whether the drummers even recognized that there were three of me, or that this was unusual. Perhaps they simply thought that all the males of my species looked exactly identical, considering that they apparently had not had any direct contact with the Sanctimians.
When we decided that we were going to be staying at least overnight, Ilandere and one of my selves went to go fetch our tethered horses and bring them back into the drummer settlement. We had planned to just go on our own, but the drummers wouldn’t allow that. Half of them stayed with the rest of our party while the other half crashed through the brush after us grunting with distress. I wondered if they thought we were leaving for good and abandoning the rest of our companions, and then I wondered how we were going to manage to disentangle ourselves from our clingy hosts when the time actually came for us to leave for good. Once we retrieved the horses and returned to the settlement, they calmed right back down and seemed happy again. Within the space of just a few hours, we seemed to have gone from being completely unknown to them, to becoming the attraction that their whole existence revolved around. It wasn’t just me who was a god to them. We were all gods to them.
As I watched the drummers in return and tried to analyze how their little society functioned within itself, I realized that they did have somewhat of a social hierarchy. They seemed to defer most to the largest and strongest males, and those were also the ones most likely to be wearing wolf pelts rather than some other kind of fur or coverings of woven fibers. The women’s status didn’t seem to be correlated with size in the same way. I guessed that it might be correlated with physical attractiveness instead, but I had no idea what their metrics were for that.
We hadn’t seen any children when my party first arrived, but eventually it turned out that all the drummers under the approximate age of puberty were kept shut up in one of the buildings. A few nursemaids ostensibly watched over them, but didn’t seem too fussed about it when one child pushed, poked, or punched another, or pissed itself. Their main job really seemed to be keeping the children inside the hut, rather than keeping the children clean, safe, or entertained. But, there were about twenty of the brats all vigorously alive, and about twice that number of fully grown or even elderly drummers, so it seemed that they must be getting enough essential care to survive growing up in basically the equivalent of a pig pen.
At one point, Willobee remarked to me, “You don’t think some god called Monomachus really created them, do you? Some god with a sick sense of humor?”
“No, I think it was one that’s just an amateur at the art of creation,” I said. “Whether his or her name is Monomachus, I couldn’t tell you. But I do think the Sanctimians are the ones making themselves miserable for no reason. I doubt it was a god that handed them their rulebook. If it was, well then he’s even more of a fucking sadist than Thorvinius.”
The drummers’ sheep-killing habit was the root of all their problems with the villagers, and their wolf-killing habit was the root of all their problems with Lizzy, yet they didn’t actually seem to eat much meat of either kind. But, after the evening meal, I did notice that some of them seemed to be preparing slabs of meat. They were soaking it in some kind of liquid, which interested me because it was a more elaborate cooking process than I had seen them perform before. They tended to just put things on sticks and hold them over a fire until they stopped bleeding.
I caught Lizzy’s eye and nodded my head toward the drummers involved in the marination process. She glanced over. Then she sniffed the air. Then her whole body froze, and her green eyes flashed.
“Poison,” she hissed.
“For us?” gasped Ilandere, who had overheard her.
The drummers hadn’t given any sign of wanting us dead. On the contrary, they seemed both too afraid of us and too worshipful of us to try anything malicious toward us. And if they did have bad intentions, I was sure they would have been revealed by now. Our first meal served by them would have been poisoned, not our fourth. They simply weren’t cunning enough to bide their time and plot our downfall.
If my theory about the actual purpose of the poison was correct, that would explain how these slow, stupid creatures had the capability to kill animals as fast and smart as wolves. And it would explain why they didn’t seem to eat any wolf meat even though they wore so many wolf pelts. I’d also seen some of their apparent leaders with wolf claws or teeth strung on necklaces. If poison was their method, it made those trophies shameless and dishonorable.
While some drummers were performing a variation of their traditional skipping circle dance for the umpteenth time around me and my companions, I saw four of them head out of the gate toting the poisoned meat.
As soon as they got distracted
fetching us more drinks and some women started braiding Ilandere’s tail while she stood there patiently and let them, Lizzy and one of my selves snuck off to follow. We didn’t use the main gate because that was directly in the sightline of the main group of drummers. Instead we chose a spot concealed from their view by one of their crude buildings. I gave Lizzy a boost to get over the fence, and then I took a slight running start, kicked a few steps vertically up one of the fence posts, and grabbed onto the top of the post with both hands. From there I pulled myself up and dropped down to the other side where the she-wolf was waiting.
It still wouldn’t be dark enough for another couple of hours for Lizzy to morph, so we were restricted to her human speed while she used her sense of smell to lead us on the tracks of the poisoners. So we didn’t catch up to them until half an hour later when Lizzy held up her hand in a gesture for me to stop. In a clearing just past a few more meters of trees, the four drummers were depositing their lethal offerings on the ground.
“They’re right,” Lizzy whispered to me. She pointed. “There’s a wolf den over there, I can smell it. They must know that. They’ve been here before.”
She was practically glowering with rage. That was a new side of Lizzy that I hadn’t seen before. She had a temper, sure, but you pretty much had to wrong her personally, or maybe me, in order to rouse it. But Lizzy didn’t even know these wolves that were being victimized by the drummers, and yet she somehow seemed to feel protective of them. Dishonorable tactics in general didn’t particularly get her hackles up. I knew she’d seen and utilized plenty of questionable tactics back in her bandit days. And innocent creatures dying didn’t necessarily faze her much either. She kind of seemed to consider that the way of the world. But, she had always seemed fiercely proud of the wolf heritage that was part of what made her so different from everyone else. So maybe this emotional reaction on her part was some sort of kinship instinct.
“You take the left two, I take the right two?” Lizzy suggested. It was a little cocky of her to think that an even split made sense when she wasn’t in her wolf form, but I guess that was probably partly the rage talking. I was definitely making a mental note to myself never to harm a wolf unless it was necessary to defend someone.
“None of those four are wearing wolf pelts,” I pointed out.
“So what?” Lizzy demanded.
“So, they’re not high status in their tribe,” I replied. “They’re not the ones calling the shots. They’re probably not the ones who decided to poison the wolves, they were probably just sent out here.”
“So what?” Lizzy repeated as her green eyes narrowed.
“So, eliminating these four won’t affect whether the tribe continues poisoning wolves,” I said. “The rest of the drummers may have noticed that you and I are missing from the camp, and if we came back and these four minions didn’t, then they might put two and two together, and they might turn against us all. Or they might not. But either way, I don’t think they’d come to the conclusion that they should stop poisoning wolves. We’ll have to come up with another plan.”
“If we wipe all of them out, then there won’t be any left to do no poisoning,” Lizzy said.
“I just don’t want to be the kind of god who’s too… smite-happy, you know?” I sighed. “If we can’t educate them, then we’ll do it your way. But can we at least try first?”
“Try what?” Lizzy asked. “To educate them?”
“Yes,” I said.
She cackled with laughter. We both ducked behind a tree as the nearby drummers stared around in terror and confusion. Eventually they must have decided that it was an exotic bird or something and finished emptying their bucket of poisoned meat.
“I know you’re not dumb,” Lizzy said, “so I guess you must just be a what-d’ya-call-it. An octomist?”
“An… optimist?” I guessed.
“Yeah, that, the one that means you’re not dumb, but you’re just laying a dumb wager cause you wish things was a certain way they ain’t,” Lizzy explained.
“I’m not really an optimist in the usual sense,” I said. “See, an optimist just hopes the universe will work out a certain favorable way, like you said. I, on the other hand, am a god. So I can find ways of bending the universe to my will, and that’s how I know things are going to turn out all right.”
Whether or not I was truly the incarnation of the god Qaar’endoth, I still didn’t know for sure. But I knew an oracle, deceased now, who had suggested as much in a prophecy, and the part of her prophecy about me being able to create new selves was already coming true. So that definitely increased my confidence in the rest of it.
By then, the four poisoners had left. Lizzy and I crouched down to hide in the bushes as they passed us. Then after they left, we went out to the clearing and gathered up all the slabs of meat of which there were about ten scattered throughout.
“Not sure how to dispose of these,” I muttered. “If we bring them back, I guess Willobee can dissolve them with his bile.”
“Yeah,” Lizzy agreed. “Or we could hang out here for a couple hours, just you and me? Then once it gets dark enough, I can morph and eat ‘em myself.”
“What the hell do you mean, eat them?” I exclaimed. “You’re immune to toxins too? Not just germs and diseases?”
“I don’t know what a toxin is,” Lizzy replied, “but nothing I ever ate has so much as given me a tummy ache. And I’ve ate a lot of the same things that killed members of my old crews. Like that river I told you about what made ‘em shit themselves to death, and some mushrooms I ate once with a fellow called Hank that made us see things. I ate twice as many as him, and he was twice my size but he conked out drooling after we’d done running away from the angry ghosts and the giant ducks and whatnot, never woke up again.”
“Is there anything you can’t eat?” I asked her.
“Well, I dunno… I wouldn’t swallow a blade or nothing, or fire, that’s for stupid people,” Lizzy said. “And my chewing abilities and my stomach capacity are a lot more limited when I’m like this.” She gestured at her voluptuous human figure.
“Oh, fuck,” I said.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Back at the camp… they’re wondering where we are,” I explained. “At least, I assume that’s what’s getting them all agitated.”
“That’s what your other eyes see?” she asked. “A bunch of drummers getting their panties in a twist? Well, who gives a fuck what they think?”
“I think… they seem to want our friends to make us come back, or something,” I sighed. “I don’t know. It’s a lot of grunting, and it doesn’t sound very happy. There’s some rock waving involved too now. We better get back on the double.”
We ran back as fast as Lizzy could while we were still carrying all the slabs of poisoned meat. If she had been a wolf, she would have easily outpaced me, but as a human, she huffed and puffed behind me. Once we reached the perimeter of the settlement at an unobserved point, we paused.
Lizzy asked me, “Er, should we dump these here lamb shanks, Vander? So they won’t know we took ‘em?”
I considered for a moment and then I said, “No. We’ll bring them in. And this time, don’t talk nice. Say the same things you always say to them… but say them like you mean them.”
“Sure thing,” Lizzy agreed.
As soon as we showed ourselves at the gate of their fence, the drummers started cheering and whooping. Neither of us said a word in response. We just clutched the steaks and glowered. They let us in, ushered us back over to the others, and started doing their usual circle dance around us to celebrate having recovered us.
“Thank goodness you’re back,” Ilandere whispered. Florenia smiled at my most recently arrived self. My selves that were nearest to them laid a reassuring hand on Ilandere’s back and squeezed Florenia’s hand in mine, but my most recently arrived self did not acknowledge any of my friends. Neither did Lizzy.
Instead, we held up the poisoned steaks, poi
nted at them, and started shouting.
“What the fuck is this?” I yelled.
“If it weren’t for Vander every single one of you fuckers would be dead already,” Lizzy screamed.
The drummers gibbered in fear and either fled into their huts, flattened themselves, or huddled on the ground much like they had done when they first laid eyes on me and my companions.
Instead of relenting I demanded, “What the hell is this liquid? Huh? What the hell is this?”
“Poison is cheating, you fucking pathetic cowards,” Lizzy snarled. “You could never fight a wolf and win. Never. I’d love to see a wolf get its teeth in you, even if it can’t be me, since Vander won’t let me.”
“But I ever catch you pulling this shit again, and I will let her,” I shouted.
My self that was closest to Ilandere rubbed and patted at her backs, both her human one and her horse one. The princess was trembling even though my anger obviously wasn’t directed at her, and it was mostly staged. Lizzy’s, of course, was not staged, so the fury of her rant overshadowed mine.
The drummers started whimpering.
“You learned your lesson?” I asked them. “You ever planning to do this again?” I pointed at the poisoned steak.
They didn’t even seem to have gestures for yes or no, or at least ones that my companions and I could understand, so there was no head-shaking involved. But I was willing to bet from the look on their faces that there would have been, if they had been familiar with that gesture.
I threw all the steaks that I was carrying down in the dirt and stomped on them as I yelled, “Never again! Never! Bad! No!”
Lizzy on the other hand fell completely silent, raised both of her human hands with their wolfish claws, and stalked around the circle of surrounding drummers to express the unmistakable threat to them. A lot of the time I wasn’t sure if they understood anything that we were trying to communicate with them, as eager as they might be to please us, but this time they definitely got the point. The display of claws was not even necessary by that point, anyway. The drummers were cowering and shaking. They seemed convinced that we were about to slaughter them all. I shot Lizzy a warning look to remind her that we weren’t in fact going to do that.