by Logan Jacobs
So I replied, “I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Change back and let’s head back to camp.”
Lizzy squinted at me skeptically, but then she morphed without a word and sprinted off in the direction of the drummer settlement. I chased after her.
Back at the drummer camp, the lone survivor from the Lizzy-hunting party had arrived a few minutes ago. One of my selves stepped outside to keep an eye on the wildly gibbering and gesticulating crowd that gathered around him, while the other remained inside to watch over my companions. The drummer proceeded to spill out his tale of woe to the rest of the drummers in a series of incomprehensible grunts as they listened in horror and chagrin.
As Lizzy and I quietly stole back to the hut, Willobee pressed his lavender hair-tufted ear up against the door and reported to me with satisfaction, “He’s telling them all that the hunting party just got torn to shreds by a giant… murder-beast? Ah, that must be our dear Lizzy. And that we’re for real as gods, and they should have listened to what I said before. They’re worried we’re going to massacre all of them and strategizing how to gather enough acorns to appease us. Yup, sounds like their change of heart is complete.”
In the morning, we ate one last meal of root vegetables and bugs with the drummers. Staying with them and learning about them had definitely been an interesting experience, but I didn’t think any of us were going to miss the culinary aspect. We were nonetheless obliged to fill our waterskins with their dreadful fermented drink, since they didn’t seem to have access to any fresh water nearby and were probably decades away from developing well technology, if their tribe even lasted that long.
However, I thought we had probably given them a much better chance of survival by terrifying them out of their wolf-hunting habit as well as the sheep-killing habit that had turned them into the anonymous enemies of the Sanctimians. The Sanctimians might never know why exactly the sheep raids had stopped. They would probably explain it as an action of Monomachus’ rather than Qaar’endoth’s. That made no difference to me. I just hoped they would conclude that their god wasn’t as strict and as angry as they thought he was, rather than thinking that all of their dreary, uptight ways were what had finally satisfied him. But my companions and I had removed Sanctimia’s most pressing problem. What they chose to do with the rest of their sheep-filled lives was up to them.
After we had forced down as much of their food as we could, for the sake of nourishment, my companions and I collected the patiently waiting Generosity, Virility, Fury, Slayer, and Chivalry. My first priority for the day was going to be finding them some water. I didn’t know whether the fermented drink would necessarily agree with horse stomachs and didn’t want to risk getting them sick. But I knew they must be very thirsty by now.
Then as the rest of us mounted up, Willobee exchanged grunting goodbyes with his newfound worshippers. At his bidding, they opened the gate of their mostly useless fence for us to exit. Then Ilandere scooped up the chainmail-clad gnome and swung him down onto her dappled back, and we were off.
The next thing that stood between us and my revenge upon Thorvinius wasn’t going to be any kind of misguided society of humans or humanoids. It was going to be the mountain that loomed up right in front of us, thousands of feet worth of sheer cliff faces, loose rubble fields, scraggly pine trees clinging on for dear life, and some snow to cap the whole thing off.
As we approached the base of the mountain, the name of which I did not know, I turned to my companions and asked, “Ready for some climbing?”
Chapter Six
“You bet I am, Master,” chortled Willobee, who was still perched comfortably atop Ilandere’s back and did not look as though he had the slightest intention of dismounting to walk on his own two legs.
“You know that I will follow wherever you lead, Qaar’endoth,” Florenia replied. She was being sincere, but her tone also suggested that she felt a little less than enthusiastic about the activity of mountain-climbing.
“Er, I just, uh, hope I don’t slow everyone else down,” Ilandere said nervously. I was a little worried about the delicate princess’ climbing abilities myself and would have preferred to take Willobee onto one of my three horses, or reassimilate one of my bodies and let him have a horse to himself. But besides honey mead, the gnome loved nothing more than riding upon the princess’ back, and she took great joy in his delight, and neither of them would willingly consent to any other riding arrangement. I decided to keep a close eye on the situation and intervene if it looked like the load was going to be more than Ilandere could handle.
“This is more like it,” Elodette said with satisfaction. “No more humoring the stupidity of random humans or worse. Just us matching our wits and our wills against nature as we were designed to do.”
“Well, I was designed to spring up mountains easily,” Lizzy said grumpily, “but only at night. I think we should climb this at night.”
“Oh, no, I’m certain we’d all fall and break our necks,” Ilandere cried.
“We’re not going to climb in the dark,” I sighed. “In fact, the horses will probably do most of the climbing for us. But if it gets too steep and precarious for them to navigate while carrying us, then we’ll dismount and lead them. And if walking gets too difficult for some of you, then I’ll carry you myselves. Now let’s get a move on before we waste all the daylight.”
My determination was genuine, but my confidence was mostly feigned. The temple of Qaar’endoth stood at the foot of a mountain range, none as tall or as steep as this one, but many still of an impressive size, and sometimes the other novices and I had hiked and climbed around in them for training purposes. So I knew this wouldn’t be easy, but I also knew it was something that my bodies could probably handle.
However.
When the other novices and I went up into the mountains, we had never had horses with us. Horses and centaurs, no matter how athletic, were heavier and bulkier than humans, and when the going got vertical, if we had to use both our hands and feet to pull ourselves up, then they were going to have a real problem. I guessed we were constantly going to have to find detours to accommodate them.
Also, falling into crevasses or getting buried beneath avalanche slides hadn’t been that big of a deal in my novice days, because every member of the order of Qaar’endoth had had the ability to double, although I was the first that I knew of who had ever been able to triple myself, so we could all afford to lose a spare body to a mountaineering death and then simply regenerate it later. My companions on this climb didn’t have that luxury. So I was just going to have to stay vigilant and protect them with all three of my bodies until we crossed this range.
We rode along the range for a mile or two until I found a spot where I thought I could see a clear line we could follow to the top. Of course, at this distance, there might be pitfalls I wasn’t aware of, but we could recalculate later. From the valley floor, this looked like the least steep climbing option, one that would be doable for the four-legged as well as for the two-legged.
Our journey started out at a plodding pace. We were moving uphill, and I didn’t want to push the horses too hard considering the heroic task I was asking of them. But fortunately, the trail was broad for now. Not that there was any kind of formal trail that had been marked out or cleared for us. There was just ground that looked solid and unobstructed enough for us to pass that way. There were probably very few groups that had ever crossed this range.
A Thorvinian army had probably been among the most recent, based on the reports we had gleaned so far off the bloody paths that The Devourer was carving across the kingdom. I could of course have searched for the pass where the Thorvinians had crossed, since an army would leave obvious tracks, but I didn’t want to risk encountering any Thorvinian detachments that might be following behind the main force. My companions were going to struggle enough with the mountain itself, so they needed to focus on the climb without a bunch of crazed mutant warriors trying to murder them at the same time.
Fortune was on our side in one regard. We were only half an hour into the ascent when we came across an icy mountain stream from which the horses drank gratefully. We all rinsed the remnants of the drummer grog out of our waterskins and filled them up with cold, clear water instead.
At that point, I said, “Willobee, I’d like you to ride on Fury with me for this next stretch. To give Ilandere a rest. That chainmail and shield of yours are pretty heavy.”
The gnome accepted this proposal with a simple, “As you wish, Master,” without any of the resistance that I would normally have expected. I guessed that meant he too had noticed the poor little centaur’s huffing and puffing and the fine sheen of sweat that appeared on her dappled pelt.
Ilandere didn’t say anything, because I knew she hadn’t wanted to complain about Willobee’s weight and make him feel unwelcome to ride on her, but she cast me a grateful look.
“I will carry the gnome’s shield,” Elodette offered. She was larger and stronger than even the four destriers, so that made sense, although she also wore saddlebags. So far, there was no sheen of sweat on her black pelt.
“Thanks, that would be helpful,” I said. “What about you, Florenia?”
The duke’s daughter looked surprised. “… I could carry the gnome’s chainmail, if you wish, Qaar’endoth?”
“No, no,” I said. “I meant, how are you doing? Are you all right?”
“Of course, my lord,” she replied. “I am merely riding, not walking. So Chivalry is the only one you need to worry about.” She patted her dappled courser affectionately.
“Chivalry is lucky that you weigh almost nothing,” I said. “My horses have to do a lot more work. I think I’ll give Generosity a break for now.”
When I transferred Willobee’s shield over to Elodette to carry, I also offloaded all the weapons that one of my selves was currently wearing and reassimilated that self so that only two of me remained. One to lead the party, and one to guard the rear.
After we had waited long enough to allow the sweat to cool from the horses’ and the centaurs’ pelts, we mounted back up and continued on our way. The air was crisp and biting. We couldn’t see very far ahead of us, since there were enough pine trees at this elevation to obscure our views, but I figured that was probably for the better, since the mountain was so tall that we had had to crane our necks back to see to the top of it. The best way to tackle something like that was to take it one step at a time.
“How does a mountain even get this tall?” Ilandere wondered aloud at one point.
“Guess the gods just pile more and more rocks on top and don’t know when to stop,” Lizzy replied with a shrug.
“Well, actually, it has to do with the shifting of the tectonic plates that form the earth’s crust,” Florenia began to explain.
“The spirit of the rock gets a certain kind of yearning in it,” Willobee informed us solemnly, “that causes it to burst upward, transforming from its dormant state into something towering and magnificent.”
Florenia suppressed a giggle. “You mean, like… never mind.” She and Lizzy exchanged smirks.
As the ground got steeper after that, I started to get more worried about all of my equine companions’ footing, and I instructed everyone to spread out more so that if one slipped, he or she wouldn’t bring everyone else tumbling down the mountain too.
Conversation faded because the centaurs needed their breath for the climb, and the rest of us were focusing on guiding our horses and positioning ourselves optimally in the saddles to aid their balance and efficiency of movement.
At the toughest stretch of the hill, Virility shied beneath me and attempted to race back down, which startled all the other horses following behind us as well and gave them even more second thoughts than they were already having. I pulled him up short, dismounted, and dragged him the rest of the way up by the reins until we got to a crest where there was a brief flat stretch before the next hill.
Ilandere behind me spoke soothingly to Virility all the while even though she was clearly out of breath from the climb. “Don’t worry, Virility, you handsome white stallion,” she murmured. “Vander won’t let anything happen to you. He knows the way. Well, I mean, he’s never been up here before either, but he’s good at reading mountains, and he always takes great care of his friends. I promise. You’re almost there, I can see the top of the hill.”
Between the two of us, Virility’s panic faded away and he reluctantly decided to cooperate, although he still certainly didn’t like it. When we got to the top, he snorted indignantly as if to show me what he thought of my mountain-climbing plan.
I had to repeat a similar process several times over the course of the day with Virility and some of the other horses as well. Each time we stopped for water or to rest the horses, I would switch to riding another mount. I had Lizzy start switching around too so that each of the four destriers got breaks from carrying a rider. As I had told Florenia, I didn’t worry about Chivalry as much since she weighed less than Lizzy and far less than my selves, especially since unlike us, the duke’s daughter was not carrying a pack. Besides, the little dappled courser, funnily enough, seemed to be more at ease in the mountains than the powerful destriers, which had been bred to charge fearlessly into battle, but not necessarily to navigate precarious terrain.
As for the centaurs, Ilandere wasn’t nearly as athletic as the other equines and I could tell that it was a struggle for her to keep up, but it wasn’t until we came to a boulder field where the rocks seemed horribly unstable and prone to sliding that they both really had a problem.
I was in the lead atop Generosity at the time, so the brown horse was the one to take the first few tentative steps across the boulder field. He was steady-footed and of a relatively stable temperament, so he managed just fine for the first few yards. Then he took a step onto a seemingly solid chunk of granite, and it slid out from under his hoof so that his leg very nearly got crushed beneath another rock. He neighed in panic and reared up out of the way just in time. After his front hooves landed again, I leapt off and calmed him before he could start an avalanche, while I motioned for the others behind me to stop where they were.
Then I sent out my third self again and used that body to test a route across the boulder field. I jumped on and kicked at rocks to make sure that they would stay put and memorized which ones I had stepped on. Then I double-checked by using the same route to return to my self that was waiting with Generosity. Finally, both selves very carefully coaxed and guided the brown destrier along the same route. He was skittish, but at this point he was starting to trust my judgment. Once I had brought him over to solid ground, which took an extremely tense ten minutes or so, one of me stayed there with him, while the other returned to guide the next horse along the same route. In this manner, we managed to navigate the boulder field without any mishaps.
As the day wore on, we encountered a few more boulder fields. There were a few that I determined were too treacherous altogether and made me decide to seek out another route for my friends. When this happened, two of my selves would wait with them, while the other darted ahead and sometimes took shortcuts they couldn’t that involved vertical climbing. Once I found a suitable path, I would simply reassimilate, and my remaining two selves would lead the way.
At another time, there was a large boulder blocking the way of an otherwise ideal path that required the maximum exertion of all three of my selves plus Elodette to move. Once we finally managed to push it downhill, it snapped two tree trunks as it tumbled out of sight.
A few hours later, one of my selves was off scouting an alternative route while the rest of us waited.
“Oh, look!” Ilandere cooed as she pointed to a clump of boulders about thirty feet away and started to clip clop toward it.
“Look at what?” I asked warily as one of me got up to walk over with her, dagger in hand. I didn’t see whatever she was pointing at.
“I think it’s a kitty,” the centaur princess said happ
ily. “Remember those little orange kittens in Ferndale--”
Then she screamed as an enormous mountain lion burst out in front of us.
“Watch out!” I yelled as I got in front of her. I would have simply pushed a human woman out of the way, but it wasn’t that easy to budge even a small centaur, so I had to just hope the princess wouldn’t be too petrified to move on her own.
The mountain lion stared me down through bright gray-green, slanted eyes and was built of about two hundred pounds of coiled, predatory muscle under a covering of tawny fur. I could tell it had been a magnificent creature that reminded me in some ways of Lizzy. But the left side of its face and parts of its flank had been eaten away to reveal patches of raw red muscle, and it was foaming at the muzzle. I didn’t know what was wrong with it exactly, but this was not a healthy cat.
The mountain lion and I lunged at the same moment and crashed together in the middle. I had been aiming to stab it in the neck with my dagger, but a lucky swipe of its claws tore open my wrist and severed nerves in it which turned that hand useless and made the dagger fall from my grasp. I couldn’t reassimilate the damaged self that was tangled up with the mountain lion because then it would probably attack Ilandere, who was standing right there, while I was replacing myself. I couldn’t call back the self that was off scouting either, because that self had taken Polliver, and if I reassimilated, the irreplaceable mystical sword would just vanish.
My other self at the scene stayed back at a safe distance with the horrified Lizzy, Florenia, and Willobee, because if the mountain lion somehow got past me, then I needed to be there to protect them. Also, I needed to be there to hold Lizzy back from jumping into the fight with me.
So that left me suddenly locked in unarmed single combat with a deranged mountain lion.
If it hadn’t been for all my practice wrestling sessions with Lizzy in her wolf form, I don’t think I would have lasted a minute.