by Joseph Lallo
Worse, there was still the matter of the malthrope.
The little thing, mercifully, had learned to stay out of the way at the very least. As feared, once allowed into Ben’s shack, the blasted thing refused to spend nights anywhere else. During the day, though, the old man had finally coaxed his ward into remaining in, or at least near, the pen they had built. Once or twice daily, the beast would make a stealthy trip to the grain storehouse to supplement his diet with a few rodents, but Jarrad and his men were willing to look the other way on this particular infraction. They didn’t care one way or the other if the beast ever got to eat his fill, but if ignoring him helped to keep the mouse and rat problem under control, a blind eye was worth turning.
This meant that the creature was able to go through his days relatively unharassed, so long as none of the day’s labors brought some of the crueler slaves or slave-keepers near enough to jab at him. It also meant that while Ben was being run ragged, his nightly ward had little to fill his days.
To stave off boredom and loneliness, the creature first spent his time dismantling pieces of the pen, eventually dislodging enough slats to give himself an unobstructed view here and there. When further renovation started to earn him cruel looks and the occasional strike with a strap, he decided to train his keen eyes and ears on whatever group of workers were nearest to the pen, trying to match actions to words, and imitating them both. When the sun began to dip, he would eagerly watch the pathway toward Ben’s shack. The instant the old man began the slow trudge home, his shadow would slip from the pen and take up his rightful place in the old man's footsteps. From there he would watch as Ben worked his way through whatever had been left for him outside his door. Then came a night of well-deserved sleep, the malthrope curled in the center of the floor.
One night, after nodding off a third time while trying to lash together the tines of a wooden rake, Ben decided to leave the task until morning. It was more than enough to pique the interest of his guest. The old man had never left work undone before, and anything new was a source of endless fascination for the creature. He glanced at the sleeping man and stood, leaving his designated patch of floor and venturing nearer to the half-finished rake. Each step was taken tentatively, and with a long, careful look in Ben’s direction, as though the rake may have been the bait in an elaborate trap.
Once he reached the work table, the beast stretched up and peered over the edge, looking first to the ball of twine, then the half-lashed rake, then the sleeping old man. Finally, he gingerly plucked the twine from the table . . .
#
Birdsong rang out, stirring Ben from sleep. On a normal day, there would be a bit more time before the slave-keepers roused the workers for the day's toil, but he'd let his age get the better of him the previous night. There was work to be finished. He stood, took a measured step to the side, and pivoted to take a seat at the work table. A practiced motion brought his hand down where the ball of twine ought to be, instead it struck empty table. It only took a moment for him to realize what had happened. He forced himself to calmly place his palms on the worktable.
“It was bound to happen,” he stated. “I’m frankly astounded you’d managed to behave until now.”
The first words startled his tenant awake. As the creature shook away the grogginess, he listened. The tone of stifled anger in his caretaker's voice was unmistakable, even if the statements were not wholly understood. The creature sifted through the words that he knew, trying to work out what was wrong.
“I was willing to put up with you, so long as you didn’t interfere with my work. But now I’m going to have to throw you out.”
“Out!?” he piped in dismay. “In. Shtay here!”
“If you wanted to stay here, you should have listened when I said no touching,” Ben fumed, jabbing the table with his finger.
“No-touching!”
The words seemed to come with a burst of realization, as the little beast scrambled across the floor, between the old man’s legs and gathered up something it found there.
“No, stop that. Whatever you’re doing, I assure you, you’re making things worse for yourself.”
“Here!” the malthrope said, darting out from beneath the work table and slapping a half-used tangle of twine down where it had been the night before.
“Ah . . . well . . .” Ben remarked, clearly unprepared for anything resembling an appropriate response to his scolding, “Where is the rest? And what else did you touch?”
The malthrope slinked nervously to the rake that had been set aside the night before and nudged it toward Ben’s hand.
“No, blast it, tell me you weren’t playing with—what . . . what is this?”
Ben’s fingers slid across the business end of the rake. Where he expected to find the barely attached bundle of wooden tines he’d left the night before—or worse, a gnawed or piddled upon mess—he found instead something quite different. The point where the tines attached to the handle was a veritable bird’s nest of improperly tightened loops and poorly aligned lashings. It was held together not so much with knots as with twine so twisted and tangled that it wasn’t able to unravel, but it was held together. Yes, it was an atrocious job and would have to be almost entirely redone, but it was clearly the work of something that knew what needed to be done and roughly how it ought to be done. It was a pale imitation of Ben’s own repairs, but an earnest attempt.
It didn’t make sense. Until this moment, Ben would have imagined that the malthrope’s intelligence fell just barely beyond that of a dog. It could parrot a few words, and it could obey a few commands, but it was still a creature. The confounding ability to escape from the pen was one thing, but this was quite another. This was something that a child might have done. A human child.
“You did this by yourself?” Ben asked, pointing first his guest, then at the attempted repair.
The malthrope looked to the rake, then back to Ben and nodded.
“Did you do this? Did you learn to do this by watching me?” the blind man repeated.
The creature nodded more vigorously.
“Where are you?” Ben said irritably, reaching toward where he imagined the creature to be.
The beast first darted away, then crept back and raised his arm to place his wrist in the old man's hand, as he did when the time came to be led to the pen for the day. Ben lifted the little thing into the air and plopped him down beside the chair, letting go of his wrist and placing his own hand on the thing's head.
“Did you,” he said, pointing at the beast with his free hand, “do this?” His final word was accompanied by a jab at the rake.
Another nod, this time taking the old man’s hand along for the ride. He groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Listen. I am blind. Unless you can nod that head of yours hard enough to rattle your brains, it isn’t going to do me any good. So pay attention. No,” he said with an exaggerated shake of his head.
“No,” the beast said, imitating the motion.
“Yes,” Ben said, now with a nod.
“Yesh.”
“Now, once more. Did you do this?”
“Yesh,” came the mush-mouthed reply.
“Good enough for now,” Ben said, absentmindedly patting the creature’s head. “Now, let me get this fixed before the sun finishes rising. Watch closely. You might learn something.”
#
As the sun began to slip from the sky at the end of another long day, Ben made his way to the equipment shed, as he had weekly since he’d been made the official tinkerer for the slaves. A routine quickly formed between himself and whatever servant of Jarrad was currently playing the role of assistant to the supply chief. Supply chief was a position staffed by one of the paid slave-keepers, but if a slave had done a particularly good job or been on particularly good behavior, then as a respite from field labor, the easier task of transporting materials was granted as a reward. Today Gurruk had that honor.
“Blind Ben!” he declared brightly,
tipping a wheelbarrow onto its wheels. “The usual, I imagine?”
“Mostly,” the old man replied. “But first something off the list. I need a cot.”
“Something happen to yours?” he asked with a wink. There was a looseness to his speech and a slight waver to his posture that suggested he’d been taken advantage of the lighter duty by indulging in the fruits of his leisure time labors. The fact that he’d winked at a blind man was a fairly strong indicator that he wasn’t quite sober.
Each single-stripe slave was permitted a small patch of land behind their quarters to do with what they wished. Most wisely used the land to grow additional food. Gurruk used a bit of it as a garden as well, mostly to grow herbs and other ingredients to be dumped into the primary resident of his piece of land: his still. The thing was a triumph of ingenuity and misappropriation, assembled out of spare parts, scraps, and items traded for or outright stolen. It was truly astonishing how quickly he had put it together. Into its boiler would go any overripe or otherwise inedible rakka that came out of the fields, along with stems, botched seed batches, and anything else that the masters intended to throw away. What it produced was an evil-smelling concoction that the elves called pomace brandy. Everyone else called it rotgut. By rights, the stuff should have been weak as water based on the ingredients, but one should never underestimate the ingenuity of a thirsty dwarf. Somehow, he managed to produce a spirit strong enough to bring the hardiest of drinkers to the brink of blindness. Gurruk drank it straight.
“I need it for the malthrope,” Ben stated.
Gurruk flinched at the statement. In general conversation, “malthrope” was less the name of a creature and more a slanderous insult to hurl at an enemy. Most slaves hadn’t become comfortable with one of the beasts being near enough to warrant a mention, so the word had yet to lose its edge.
“You mean that shadow of yours? Err . . . supply chief?” the dwarf asked, turning to the scrawny clerk in charge of the equipment and materials, “Do monsters get beds now?”
“The mally sleeps on the ground. No cot,” came the reply.
“Yes, that’s the problem. He sleeps on the ground. He’s always underfoot. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stepped on the confounded thing. At least with a cot, I’ll know where the blasted thing is when he's asleep.”
“The monster does not get a cot,” repeated the clerk. “Ask again and I'll have yours taken away.”
“As you wish. To do the day's repairs, I'll need three lengths of pole, six medium planks, a hank of twine, two spools of thread, a needle, and a half-bolt of canvas,” Ben listed.
“A bit more than last time,” the clerk remarked, waving Gurruk into the shed to fetch the appropriate supplies.
“The men have been working hard, wearing through things.”
“Mmm,” replied the clerk without truly listening. He marked off the contents of the barrow as it was loaded to ensure nothing extra was taken, then waved Gurruk on his way.
The dwarf easily raised the barrow and set off toward Ben's shack, the old man in tow. With nearly the length of the plantation to walk, and more than enough rotgut in his belly to make him feel particularly social, he decided conversation was in order.
“So. That little monster has been spending the night in your shack,” he said.
“He has.”
“How can you stand it?”
“Haven't much choice in the matter. He gets into and out of whatever he pleases. At least with him spending the nights on my floor, I haven't gotten an earful from the master lately.”
“But the stories . . . you know what those things can do. It might steal your soul . . . or curse you . . . or something like that.”
“Thus far, the creature hasn't done anything worthy of campfire tales.”
“Not yet, maybe. I'd keep an eye on it, if I were you.”
“If you were me, I can assure you that you would not.”
“Eh? Oh, yeah,” Gurruk nodded, glancing at the blindfold. “What's it like being blind?”
“Close your eyes. It is a bit like that, only more so. What is it like being a dwarf?”
“Eh. It's life.”
“You seem to have taken to slavery a bit more easily than the others.”
“Yeah, well. A free dwarf spends his time working in a mine until he's exhausted, then his nights drinking until he passes out. Only difference between that and being a slave is a bit more fresh air and a bit less strong drink.” He pulled a leather flask from his belt, something he'd had Ben make for him, and took a long swig from it. “Now there's little difference at all. What about you? Why are you such a model slave? What’s your history?”
“I don’t have a history. I just appeared one day, old and blind, with a job to do,” he said, flatly.
“Mmm. I hear you. Best not to think about things in the past. Or, better yet, do what you can to blot them out.” Gurruk took another swig.
The slaves reached Ben's quarters and unloaded the barrow, at which point Gurruk drained the rest of his flask and stumbled vaguely in the direction of his still to refill it. The dwarf hadn't made it more than a dozen unsteady paces away when the light crunch of paws signaled the arrival of the little creature.
“Right,” Ben said, opening the door. “In you go.”
His guest hardly needed to be told, scampering inside before the door had finished swinging open.
“I've got a lot of work tonight,” the blind man continued, taking a seat at his work table. “But this first bit I want you to watch closely.”
“Watch,” his ward stated with a nod.
“Yes. Because I am going to show you how to build a cot . . .”
Chapter 8
The days that followed brought many things. Already deep into the growing season, the lentils and rakka alike were growing in leaps and bounds. For the berries, this meant twice daily stripping away the ripe berries for processing and the overripe ones to make room for the next batch. The cruel thorns and long hours combined to produce the need to constantly mend equipment and workers alike. During the cool nights, the malthrope earned many a lesson watching Ben do his work until even the beast's sharp eyes couldn't make out his motions in the darkness.
Before long, the little thing began to take on some of the simpler steps himself. He was an eager learner, quick to pick up the broad strokes but slow to master the intricacies. Nonetheless, he clearly enjoyed the chance to be with someone, and to be engaged in some way. In fact, each day he grew a bit bolder, venturing out of his pen earlier and sticking close to Ben even when other slaves were around. It did not go unnoticed.
“Blind man!” growled a voice from the edge of the rakka field as the slaves were leaving for their midday meal.
“Yes, Master Jarrad.”
“Your shadow is back,” said the owner, eying the malthrope as the creature peered nervously from behind a clump of rakka bushes.
“He is, master.”
“For a time I thought you'd managed to keep that thing in check. I was almost ready to restore your rations. I do not enjoy repeating myself.”
“Nor should you, master.”
“Then would you care to explain why you do not even appear to be interested in catching it?”
Ben paused. The honest answer was that he had become accustomed to the thing constantly at his side. That was an unacceptable reply for any number of reasons. Fortunately, a reply that was marginally less likely to lead to harsh punishment presented itself. “Because I am beginning to think that keeping the beast locked up is nearly as great a waste as it would have been to slaughter him as you'd intended when you first received him.”
“You're questioning your master's judgment?” Jarrad fumed.
“I am suggesting that you did not know, nor did any of us, that the beast could be useful. Right now he is nothing to you but a mouser and a tail awaiting harvest. Until that day comes, surely any work you can wring out of him only adds to the return on your wise investment.”
“
And what good can the beast be in a rakka field besides upsetting the other workers?”
“Let us see,” Ben said.
He took a few measured steps toward the field, his mind working feverishly to produce something resembling a useful job for the beast . . . of course. He was a beast! He was used to foraging and the like. That was all that harvesting was, after all. Tapping about with his walking stick, Ben found a few of the baskets holding the morning's harvest. They were sturdy reed baskets, stained with the berry juice of half a dozen seasons. Around the rims hung a dozen or so burlap slings, worn by the workers to carry the harvested berries before being added to the bushel basket. He leaned down and sampled the contents. A bit of squeezing identified one basket of ripe fruit, and another filled with discarded overripe berries.
“Right, come here, you little devil,” he said, snapping his fingers.
Locking his eyes on Jarrad, the malthrope slipped from his hiding place a few steps at a time, skittering a bit on all fours before stopping to sit up and assure himself that the master wasn't going to pull out a strap to swing or a stone to throw. When he reached Ben, he stood and finally shifted his gaze to the nearest thing he had to a caretaker.
“Here. This is ripe. This is what we want. This goes in here, with the rest,” Ben demonstrated, amid many exaggerated gestures. “These are overripe. You put them here, with these. The rest are not ripe. You leave them be. Don't break any branches. Don't pull any leaves. Go, find some ripe ones.”