I risked another look. All four of the prisoners were staring down the street. They were being stupidly blatant about it, and the ogre was sure to notice.
As much as it annoyed me, I couldn’t blame them too much. If I was stripped naked, chained up, and forced to crawl until my knees bled, then I’d have grasped onto any chance of salvation. There was an old saying that applied here; you can’t really understand a man until you’ve crawled for miles as a naked ogre slave.
Maybe that was a saying for this world, anyway.
So, they were just a bunch of folks desperate for a hero. Unluckily for them, their hero was a guy who was new to this world, couldn’t cast even the most basic of spells, and only had a poker for a weapon.
There wasn’t going to be any grand rescue. I couldn’t do anything ridiculously contrived like make a diversion and then sneak in or something. I couldn’t chance my luck and somehow kill four ogres just through sheer strength of heroic will.
If I tried to help these guys, I’d end up dead or in chains.
I stared at them now. I sighed, and then I mouthed that I was sorry, as useless as it was.
I checked the ogre wasn’t looking and I darted across the street and toward the end of the village. I was almost gone, when I saw movement to my right.
It was the dog. It must have gotten itself loose, and it was approaching me now. Slowly and limping, but approaching.
“Easy now,” I said. I kept my voice low and non-threatening. “I’m not gonna hurt you. But if you’re coming with me, you better do it now.”
The dog seemed to make up its mind, running over to me and jumping up and licking my hand.
It felt like I’d gone so long without affection that to make friends with this creature…I’m not scared to admit that it made me tear up.
I don’t think it was just the time I spent alone in the cottage and the village. It was before that. Before I even got here, wherever here was. Whether here was a new place or just a new time, I didn’t know, but I got the idea I’d been alone a lot before now.
“Let’s go,” I said.
The dog followed me. Slowly, still in pain, but a step was a step.
Even so, I could tell he was going to be too slow for the quick escape that I had in mind, so I went to pick him up.
He didn’t just let me.
No, he actually tried to jump into my arms, but then winced in pain. I gathered him up, and the poor guy was so skinny that he felt like he weighed nothing.
There was something about close contact with an affectionate little animal that renewed something in me. Made me feel a little less alone, as if I had formed my first connection in this world.
As we headed away from the village, I glanced at the prisoners. All four naked people stared my way, no doubt praying that I’d help them.
Damn it, I couldn’t.
Holding the dog, I walked away from town, grabbed my inventory bag from the copse of trees, and then headed north.
At first I regretted having to leave the village, but I guessed it wasn’t all bad. I’d had a few days of food and rest, letting my body recover. I was alive, the ogres hadn’t spotted me, and I wasn’t alone anymore. That was something.
CHAPTER 8 – Ice and Flames
It felt bad to leave the humans behind with the ogres, but I’m not a complete monster. Although I walked for a quarter of a mile, I didn’t let the village out of my sight. Instead, I found a crest of hills, and I waited there all day and watched the cottages.
I was so far away that I’d be hard to see even if someone were looking in that exact spot for me, which the ogres weren’t. Nor did I worry about the humans giving away my presence; they didn’t know where I had gone, and they’d have to be stupid to tell the ogres about their only possible savior.
While waiting there, I took a bottle of paracetamol from my bag. I crushed a pill, took the barest pinch of it, and I fed it to the dog by scraping it up on a piece of carrot.
As the day grew older and the air became colder, he nestled right beside me. I took out an overcoat I’d pilfered from the wardrobe in the cottage and I placed it over him. It was strange, the effect he had. I already felt less alone. He wasn’t a person, he couldn’t speak to me, but he was there, and I appreciated his company.
He didn’t have a collar, which I supposed meant he’d never been somebody’s pet. Maybe he was born into the world when it had already become the mage and ogre-infested hell it now was.
Or maybe his old owners just didn’t give him a tag. Either way, he needed a name.
One came to me then. A word appearing in my mind.
Roddie.
A strange name.
Had I had a dog called Roddie before? Maybe in my old – my real – life?
“Nice to meet you, Roddie,” I said. “I’m Isaac. I’d say you can call me Zac, but I don’t remember if I prefer my name that way or not.”
Roddie didn’t answer. Not that I expected him to; it was just that, with the way the world was now, I wouldn’t have been surprised. But I was thankful for the lick he gave my hand. I checked he was wrapped up tight in the overcoat, and then I carried on watching the village.
The last dregs of daylight were almost gone by the time eight figures walked out of the east of the village. I saw four hulking ogres, so tall I half expected the ground to shake when they walked. Ahead of them, attached to chains, naked men and women scampered on all fours.
“God damn it, I am the biggest jerk around,” I said. Roddie didn’t reply, which I took to be agreement.
I took the overcoat from Roddie and put it on so that I melded in with the growing darkness. Feeling tired and hungry, I set off and I followed the group away from the village, always keeping the same great distance between us.
The ogres walked for two hours, and I trailed them all the way, sticking at least a quarter of a mile to the side of them so that there was no chance of them spotting me.
The problem was that they were choosing their path, and so could avoid obstacles. To keep them in sight while maintaining my distance, I had to cross a stream, climb a mound of hills, and skirt around an impossibly-dense thicket of bushes that seemed to spring from nowhere and delighted in stabbing my ass with their thorns.
Soon, I was exhausted beyond belief, and my arms ached from carrying Roddie.
And I had a sore ass.
“If only I could find a lamp with a dumbass genie in it,” I said, talking out loud so I would stay awake. “I’d wish all the tiredness away.”
I took a few steps.
“Wait, no. What am I saying? What a dumbass wish. I’d wish all of this never happened.”
Finally, the ogres stopped. They had reached a camp where three great fires were burning, and the glow gave me a faint glimpse of other ogres sitting around it.
There were ogres even bigger than the four I’d trailed, as well as little ones barely bigger than a toddler. This was a whole camp of them. Some of them were talking in their harsh language, some were cooking meat on spits, and others were even singing.
Not only that, though. If that were the extent of things, this could have been a nice place. A little quaint, actually, if you ignored the fact that it was ogre-infested.
But a sight on the edge of camp drew my attention, and I felt a little sick. There, removed from the rest of the camp, were two trailers with cages on the back, the kind a circus might use to transport animals.
Inside each one was dozens of naked men and women.
The guilt of abandoning just four people back in the village had already weighed in me like some horrible growth, spewing poison into my belly. But leaving two dozen people to their fate? I couldn’t do it.
Then again, what happened to the guy who rushed into a camp full of ogres? He got stomped. Or crushed. Or snapped. Or any nasty thing ending ed that you could possibly think of.
I was thinking emotionally now, and that wouldn’t help. I needed to take in as much of the camp as I could and decide based on facts.
&nbs
p; So let’s see. There were fires piled with wood, and they use them to cook meat and to dry their clothes.
I couldn’t see any tents, sleeping bags, or covers. They must sleep on the ground.
Weapons? Not many. At least, they weren't walking around with them anyway. I guessed that if anything spooked the ogres, they’d have a weapon supply they could run to and equip themselves.
Maybe if someone sneaked in and took their weapons…
Nah. Stupid. Even some of the smaller ogres looked like they’d flatten someone’s face with a single punch. Hell, the toddler ogres would have outmatched me. Ogres with fists like rocks didn’t need weapons.
What about their weaknesses? They were big and lumbering. Speed matched with some kind of offensive force might give them a hard time. Shame I only had a poker I had looted from a fireplace, and so far I had only mastered the swing and hope technique.
“Time for a retreat,” I told Roddie, who was snuggled against my thigh and leeching the heat from me. “We’ll try and find the Lonehill clan. Maybe if they see I didn’t just go off and get myself killed, and if I can explain about the ogres, they’ll help.”
I was going to start walking toward the direction where the Lonehill clan had left me days ago, but it was getting dark now. Not just dark, but the sky was spitting chunks of ice, and they were lodging in my hair and melting and then trickling down my spine. My arms and legs felt like solid lumps, and when I took a step I hardly even felt the contact with the ground.
I couldn’t walk through this for long. I needed to get back to the cottage, get some sleep, and set out when the sun rose.
An arctic blast of wind joined the hailstones now. I held Roddie against my chest and I buttoned my overcoat and put my hood over my head. Even then I felt the wind snake in through my collar and my sleeves, sneaking through any gap no matter how small.
My temperature plummeted. I felt Roddie shivering against my chest. The hail turned to rain, and it took only minutes to drench me.
A man would die if he was stuck outdoors in this for too long.
After a couple of hours’ walk, I reached the sweet old village of Kirkwall again. The sight was a glorious one. Weird how much I’d come to love that little place; I guessed it was because, you know, it had saved me from dying and everything. It’s easy to reminisce about a place that saved your life, even if you only found it a few days earlier.
Now, there was something different about Kirkwall. The ogres were gone, sure, but they’d left their mark.
Under the glow of the moon, I saw that the ogres had drawn chalk symbols onto the houses, much like the ones that had already been there, except cruder, and with a rougher hand.
They had drawn letters on each house, along with numbers. A-7. T-9, and so on.
Since I seemed to have experience in using codes like this in my old life, it only took a minute to have a decent guess at what they meant. I felt my brain working now, like cogs were turning and old memories and knowledge were resurfacing.
The letters the ogres used were ownership markers. Maybe an initial of their names, or something. The numbers next to the letters might symbolize how many people – or ogres – could inhabit each house.
What this screamed to me was that the ogres I had seen earlier were some kind of scout party, maybe exploring to find new territory.
They’d marked the village as a potential settlement for some or all of their clan, and that meant they would be back.
My stomach lurched at what this meant. I couldn’t stay here. I didn’t know when they would return, but I’d have to be an idiot to let myself sleep in a place where I knew a bunch of slaver ogres were going to return to.
But I was so wet. So cold. I could already feel my sinuses stinging from the chill.
Without a shelter from the rain and a place to dry my clothes, I’d do serious damage to myself tonight. Maybe flu, maybe worse. Pneumonia, maybe even exposure.
But if I let myself fall asleep in a bed, I might wake up to find an ogre pounding me.
With his fists, I mean.
“Damn it, Roddie,” I said, my teeth chattering. “It’s that classic problem. You move into a new house, and then a bunch of ogres come and ruin the neighborhood.”
This was all about managing risk. If I got trapped by a bunch of ogres, I couldn’t fight them.
But if I braved the cold, I at least had a chance. I could maybe find shelter. Start a fire. Easier to do that than to battle of bunch of giants.
“Sorry, Roddie. We’ve got to keep moving a little while longer.”
I didn’t want to lose my way, since I needed to try and find the Lonehill clan at some point. I left the village the way I had once entered it days ago. I knew that under the dirt and weeds there was a road, and following it would lead me back to where the clan had once camped. From there, I at least knew the direction they’d set out.
So I looked at the sky and checked the position of the moon, and I used that as a guide to make sure I stayed true to the road I couldn’t see. I knew that the moon would move as the night wore on, but I’d account for that.
I walked for an hour with Roddie under my overcoat and against my chest, but soon I was so cold and tired that I couldn’t carry him. With regret, I had to get him to walk by himself, and the poor guy shivered his way alongside me dutifully.
It wasn’t long until the God of Karma decided it was his time to shine. Adding to our misery, I started to hear noises. Howling sounds that seemed like they were coming from the distance one minute, and nearby the next.
Wolves. It had to be.
“Let’s pick up the pace, buddy.”
We walked even faster now, and after another hour, we were both ready to drop. Every step was like trying to summon a god, it took that much effort.
And still the rain came down, and the wind wouldn’t stop.
And still the wind carried the howls to our ears. I felt a chill tip-tap over my spine, and Roddie barked at the darkness. Every time he did it set me more on edge, even though I couldn’t see anything.
We couldn’t just keep walking, because the wolves weren’t leaving us. They hadn’t approached yet, and I wondered if they were clever enough to know to stay patient and let Roddie and I wear ourselves out.
Rather than stumble aimlessly, I looked around me. Finally, I spotted something in the distance. A house, maybe?
I felt a warmth spread through my stomach, but I didn’t want to get too excited yet. Nothing can haunt a man more the ghost of hope.
I get a little closer and I dropped to my knee and I watched.
No lights. No movement.
Wait – no walls.
Damn it!
This wasn’t a house; it was just a single wall. The more my eyes adjusted, the surer I was. This was just a ruin.
Roddie and I headed over to it and I saw that I was right. It was a cobblestone wall, ten feet high. It had belonged to a house once, but that could have been years ago.
There was nothing else around for miles. I had been prepared to walk until I found shelter, but the wolves made that impossible. Not only that, but seeing the house and then having hope taken away was like a punch in the gut and a kick in the balls, both at once so that I was too winded to carry on walking.
It might not have been a house, might not have a roof, but the wall was blocking the wind, at least.
Three loud, drawn-out howls screamed out from somewhere nearby. If I could speak wolf, maybe I would know what it meant. But if I did, maybe I would wish I had never found out.
I was too tired to keep walking, and it wouldn’t help anyway. There was no losing them.
So, should I fight?
No, all I had was a poker. I might as well put salt and pepper on my chest and invite them to the banquet. I needed something else.
The best thing I could do was use the firelighters to start a fire, and then get dry next to it and see things out until daybreak. The fire would keep the wolves at bay, and if I could keep it b
urning long enough, they might give up. They would need to seek shelter at some point.
Then again…really? Starting fires in a place only six or seven miles away from ogres who take humans as slaves? Kinda like dripping blood in the ocean and then sticking your hand in it and praying you don’t see a fin.
What choice did I have?
I couldn’t go on. My body was on the edge. I’d pushed it way, way beyond what it was built for, and I just couldn’t walk anymore.
Caution was sensible. It was practical, given what I’d seen. But caution was useless if I died of exposure.
I’d have to risk a fire, get warm and dry, then snuff it out. No other choice.
Huddled against the wall, I took my stuff out of my bag. Firelighters. Kindling. Newspaper. Logs. A lighter.
I heard more howls. Closer now. Roddie growled at the darkness. My chest tightened.
Come on. Focus.
It only took a few minutes to arrange the kindling. It’s weird how quick you can work when you’re shivering so hard it feels like your heart is going to tremble right up your throat and out of your mouth.
I placed the firelighters in the middle of a pile of kindling. The firelighters were little white blocks made from kerosene, and people used them outdoors when they were camping. That’s what they were made for, at least. Nowadays, they were just an easy way to start a fire in your log burner or your barbeque.
I held the lighter against the white blocks and clicked.
Nothing happened. Not even a spark.
And then I heard steps behind me. The wolves weren’t howling anymore; we had reached the end game.
I flicked it again. I heard something crunch, and a piece of metal pinged off and disappeared somewhere beyond me, in the tangle of weeds.
The lighter was broken.
I lifted my fist and shook it at the sky. “Damn you, universe!” That seemed like something people said when this kinda crap happened all at once.
I had no shelter. No means of starting a fire. No clue where to go, either, and the wolves were circling around me.
I couldn’t keep walking. It was a choice of starting the fire or becoming wolf food.
Everything Is Worth Killing- Isaac's Tale Page 6