I cycled through the stances then. Well, the arm motions, anyway. I thought I had done a pretty good job, but Rosi grinned at certain movements, and she gently moved my arms slightly to correct me.
“Agen,” she said.
That was my cue to cycle through them again, which I did. She gave me fewer grins this time, though she still had to correct me.
“Agen.”
I cycled through them three, four, five times, and by the end, Rosi crossed her arms and stared at me. “Ged, Isaac. Ver ged.”
Helping me with my form had killed an hour, but there was plenty of night left. Plenty of time to sit in the cold and watch the darkness. I started to feel sleepy. Great! Now, at the exact moment I wasn’t allowed to fall asleep, my body decided it was the perfect time to make me feel exhausted.
I needed to keep my mind occupied, so I pointed at a grouping of trees across from us. “Tree,” I said.
Rosi caught on quickly. “Ah. Fern.”
“Fern. Okay.” Now I pointed at the sky. “Sky.”
“Skee.”
“Okay, that’s pretty similar. Let’s see…”
This took up the rest of our sentry shift, which passed without any enemy attacks, but lots and lots of vocabulary lessons. When she had taught me more than a hundred words and we had gone through the list again and again, I felt like my head was ready to burst. There was no way all of this would sink in!
Finally, we heard footsteps behind us, and two more mages had come to start their guard shift. It would probably be the last one until morning.
As Rosi walked on ahead on me, I put my hand on her shoulder. “Thankie,” I said.
She smiled, then punched me on the shoulder, and then walked off into the cavern.
The next morning, Pendras gave us all a sip of the acorn-flavored replenishing potion, and we breakfasted on some dried beef strips. Once we’d eaten there was nothing to do but leave. That was one of the perks of this place, I guessed. No shaving, no manicures, no hair grooming. Just eat your jerky and get on with the day. It was kinda freeing.
Pendras walked at the head of our group, alongside the mage he’d spent his sentry duty with. This guy was older than Pendras but he never showed it. He was always the first to wake, the first to lead the clan, the one setting the pace with his quick strides.
I wondered if he’d come here the same way I had, or if he’d been born here. It seemed like some people were born into this world. Poor bastards.
I’d half hoped Rosi would walk with me, but she was in the middle of the group, walking with a mage who looked to be her age. I remembered him as one who’d made a particularly funny impression of someone in their strange funeral ritual, but I don’t know who the impression was of. I knew next to nothing about these guys, after all.
So, I walked at the rear end of our procession, and I told myself I wasn’t just an outsider who nobody wanted to walk with; I was willingly volunteering to be our rear guard. Me and Roddie and my poker. Yep, that was it.
We hiked through the frozen wasteland for all of that day, camping out at night under a small copse of trees where the leaves formed a canopy overhead and shielded us a little from the icy breeze. Pendras didn’t want to risk a fire, so we all huddled together.
We spent the next day traveling too, and I found that my calves were starting to ache less as I got used to walking for so long. Rosi spent a little time with me, pointing at various things and teaching me even more words.
Finally, as the sun began to set, the mood of the clan changed. People seemed less tired, and they smiled more, and I soon saw why.
There was a collection of tents and huts in the distance, and I saw fires burning and people walking to and fro.
Rosi nudged me. “Home,” she said.
Well, at least that word was the same in both our languages.
CHAPTER 15 – The Ogres’ Bond
Josag the ogre led his son Kody far away from camp. A journey of three suns and two moons, traveling across ground touched by winter’s kiss. They both held their chains in their right hands, and bound to those chains were their scamps.
Josag’s scamp was as old as he; four score years and five. Aged in the flesh, weary in bone. Knees calloused from years of crawling. No more pain for him, though; he was used to it, this scamp.
Kody held his own chain lightly, and when his scamp got too close to him he almost dropped the chain, as if he were scared of it. But just like his father’s scamp, the young ogre’s was his age, too. A youngling, a human with just seven years to his name. Pale of skin, with wide, soft eyes. No sorrow in them, for the scamp was born into this life, and he didn’t have a happier one to compare it too.
“Pull your chain tighter, young one. Show him you are his master.”
His son eyed his own human warily. Josag tried to read his son’s expression. Was it guilt? Sadness over the intelligent being kept in chains? That was worrying. Those were weak emotions, and his weakness would have to be crushed before he reached ten years; at ten years old, the tribe would forgive no wilting of the soul. Josag had seen his own brother cast out for such a reason.
He still remembered that day. He and his brother were twins, and they faced their Manning day together. The elder ogre had looked into their eyes, and used his gem to read their souls.
In Josag’s he’d read what he wanted to see; strength. Loyalty to his clan. Knowledge that he would spend his life fighting for it.
In his brother’s soul he read weakness. A wilting, like a flower rained upon for weeks without rest.
With that, the elder had made his pronouncement.
“Gyant, brother of Josag, son of Raindar and Furil, you will leave us this day. Your destiny lies not in our tribe, but in the wastes.”
And that was the last time Josag had seen his twin brother. Maybe he was still alive out there, somewhere. Josag had heard of tribes formed miles away, where outcasts pooled their fates. Where they lived without scamps in chains and tried to survive.
He wanted to believe the stories were true, but he doubted it. There were bands of roving scamps out there in the wilderness, and they knew what ogres did with their chains, and they punished outcast ogres with swords and fire. Unrelenting. Sprays of blood, roars of fury.
He wouldn’t let the same happen to his son, and that was why he had brought him here today.
They settled in a vast plain of frozen ground. They sat. Josag pulled on his chain, and his own scamp scurried over to him and settled beside him. He flinched when his bare bottom touched the ground.
Kody sat down, and his own scamp scurried on all fours, this way and that, staring off into the distance. Kody’s scamp hadn’t formed the callouses that would protect him yet. His human skin was raw and bloody, especially on his palms and knees.
“Pull him tighter. Show him you are his master.”
“I’ll hurt him.”
“A little pain now will make him stronger as he grows. Pull the chain.”
“Father, I-”
Josag was about to grab Kody’s chain and pull the boy’s scamp to teach him a lesson, but he stopped himself. That was forbidden; you never touched an ogre’s chains.
“Do you know why I brought you here?” he said.
“Mother said you had something to tell me.”
“Not to tell you; to teach you. But it is through the telling that I teach.”
“I will listen, father.”
Josag smiled. “You are a good boy, but your heart is too soft. You uncle was like you.”
Kody smiled then. That smile darkened Josag’s heart, because their seemed to be some pride in it. Kody always asked about his long-absent uncle, the one he’d never seen.
This was his mother’s doing. She should never have spoken his name. But Kody had been a sickly child who was prone to fits of illness, especially at night. And his mother had told him stories to help him sleep.
Stories of the world and of the people with in it. Stories of the Voice in the Sky. And when
she ran out of those stories, she told him others, until finally she had told Kody about his uncle; the ogre who was banished.
“I have brought you here so that you will understand,” said Josag. “You need to learn why we each have our scamps. Why you are given one at birth, and as you grow, so does he. Why you must always protect him as he protects you, and why this protection might seem cruel to one as young as you.”
Kody placed his chain on the ground.
“No, Kody. You must never lay your chain down when you are outside camp, unless to protect yourself or fight.”
Kody picked the chain up now, holding it lightly as though it hurt him to touch it. His scamp sat crossed legged, his gaze on the ground, picking at a knot of frozen weeds. It seemed strange to Josag, how similar young ogres and young scamps were. Different in size, sure. Different in their bodies. Humans were all too weak. But similar in their eyes. Specifically, the way young eyes looked at the world.
“Who was the first ogre to come to this world?” asked Josag.
Kody looked up at the sky, as if it would give him answers. Perhaps he expected the Voice to feed them to him.
“Come on, boy. You know this.”
“Colan was the first,” said Kody.
“Good. Colan found himself here, one day. Alone. Cast from his own world and into another. And what did he do, this first ogre to visit this world?”
“He searched the wastes for sixty days and nights, looking for his home.”
“And when he didn’t find it?”
“He crawled into a cave, and sat there and waited to die.”
“Good,” said Josag. His son might have been soft-hearted, but learning was his talent. “That is why, on the sixtieth day of each year, we all retreat to that same cave and stay a night in remembrance.”
“That is soon, father.”
“It is. Perhaps twenty moons. But as Colan lay there, wasting away, his depression eating his soul, what happened?”
“He heard a voice.”
“Footsteps, and then a voice. That’s right. Who did he see?”
“Karcsi.”
“The second ogre. The one who was to be his lifemate,” said Josag, nodding. “Together, they started a family. They formed the beginnings of all that we are. Our tribe, now two hundred in number and growing ever still. But back then, after many years together in this new world, they were just twelve. The twelve originals, who wandered this world, never settling, always looking for their purpose and their home.”
Kody nodded. “I remember, father. Why do we come here to talk about this?”
“Because you know the story, but you do not understand.”
“I do, father. I just don’t understand why…”
Kody paused then, as if he’d sucked the words back into his mind.
“Speak, boy. This is why I brought you away from the tribe. Here, we will speak as if our words vanish once they leave our lips. Nothing we say today will follow us back to the others. You do not need to fear punishment.”
“I just don’t understand. The humans…they weren’t created to live like this. If they were, then why are there other humans out there who don’t live in chains? We have our scamps, and we keep them in chains and you say that is the order of things, but we see others. Tribes like ours. With mothers and fathers and sons and daughters.”
“What is your point?”
“We have never seen them keep ogres in chains. The humans don’t keep ogre scamps.”
“You think they could keep an ogre in chains? There’s no metal that could hold us when we grow.”
“Still, Father…”
“Think back to Colan and Karcsi and their brood. They made a home, did they not? Several, in fact. They tried to settle in places where the land gave gifts, as long as they tended it. Places to live until the Voice would one day reveal the grand purpose.”
“Yes, Father.”
“What happened each time, Kody? What became of each home they made?”
“The humans came. They attacked. They scorched the land, they hunted the younglings.”
“And so began decades of migrations. Of wars between our two people. Children born on both sides, raised to adulthood, then sent to fight. Life begat just to satisfy death. A war between ogres and humans so bloody that neither side could survive if it continued.”
“But we don’t fight any more.”
“We do not. This is what you need to understand, Kody. Come on, boy. You know the story. Why did the fighting end?”
“The human chiefs met with ours.”
Josag nodded. “Yes. This was long after Colan and Karcsi had died. Generations after the dozen originals had lived and gone. After years of slaughter, on both sides. Finally, we each began to see sense, us and the humans, and so we met, did we not?”
“Under the glow of a blood red moon, whence the wolves and dogs once more did croon…”
Josag smiled. “That old rhyme. My mother used to sing it to me, too. But yes, part of that is true. I do not think the moon was blood red that night, but they did meet one night when the stars twinkled above.
The chief of the humans and our own chief who is long-dead, Ywan, descendant of Colan. They met under a pact of peace, with no blades. They sparred, certainly, but with only words. For eight straight suns they talked, and this was no small feat; to undo years and years of war in just a drop of time. What was decided between those two great chiefs, Kody?”
Kody sucked in his cheeks. “That humans and ogres would fight no more.”
Josag nodded. “Yes. That we would no longer pursue mutual destruction. And how did we seal this pact?”
“I know what you’re trying to say, father.”
“Then speak the words.”
“To the humans, we gave the still-beating hearts of twelve ogre elders, that they serve as a symbol of cooperation.”
“And…”
“And to us, they gave twelve newborn humans. That we may raise them and breed them, and each of us would have a scamp of our own. That the chains we hold keep them close, and while an ogre keeps his scamp in chains, no human may harm him.”
Josag nodded. “And so it was agreed, and sealed by dark magic cast from the blood of a thousand crows and blessed with the essence of night. That is why we keep our scamps, boy. Not to be cruel, but to keep peace. For the scamps that live with us are symbols, and their life in chains keeps the rest of the humans alive. No more war. No blood shed between man and ogre.”
“I understand, father. But that was years ago. If we’re at peace now…”
“You say you understand, but I fear you hear the words and miss their meaning. Symbols are powerful, Kody. If we gave up our symbols, meaning would be lost. Things would change. Both our people’s would slip back to our old ways.”
Kody said nothing now; he just nodded.
“You still do not believe, do you?”
“It’s hard. Sometimes my scamp looks at me and I can see he is sad, and it makes my eyes wet.”
“Tell me, boy. If this was as bad a thing as you believe, why would the humans allow it? Why have they never found us and attacked and tried to claim back their own?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“Because, my boy, the human elders take their own sons into places like this, and they tell them the same story.”
Kody was silent then.
Josig remembered the night his father had brought him here and told him the same story. There was a portal opening in the west that night, if he remembered correctly, but it was too far away to bother investigating. Some other people would get there first.
He remembered disbelieving the story his father told, and the more he thought about it, the surer he was that things couldn’t have happened the way it was always said.
No, in his mind, he believed that this whole symbolic peace thing was justification for doing something wrong. It was a tale spun to make sure the young didn’t grow up questioning things.
Josig believ
ed that years ago, some ogres had snatched human babes the same way they sometimes saw humans take wolf pups.
They had planned to try and farm the land in the way they had seen humans and circle children do. The problem was that ogres are not built for physical labor. Josig was strong, yes. He could punch a hole through a tree. It was true! He’d done it to impress a girl, when he was younger!
But Josig knew from experience that his great size made him tire easily, and that he and everyone else needed lots and lots of sleep. However, working the land demanded early rises and long hours of labor.
So, they took humans to raise them as labor animals, only to find that humans were cleverer than imagined, and so they created this false mythology to ease their guilt.
Or, perhaps it was all true, and Josig was wrong for doubting the stories. Maybe every tale told by every father to every son or daughter was completely true.
Who knew?
All Josig knew was that although their efforts to work the land failed, scamps were invaluable to camp in many ways, and more than worth the meagre food they were spared. And so, he would tell Kody the same story.
He pushed on. “Think of something else, Kody.”
“What else?”
“Scamps under our bondage live much longer than others. More of our scamps’ hair turns grey than anywhere else in the wilds. And not only that. Yes, we must feed them, but the benefits to us have become anything but symbolic.”
“Because they work for us?”
“I suppose. They easily make back their share of food in manual labor. But that wasn’t what I was thinking about. They are different to us. Smaller, Flexible. They can reach places that we cannot.
Why, remember the tunnel we found weeks ago. Dug by the hands of man, but too small for us ogres to navigate. So, we sent in our scamps, and we found one of their hidden caches. Enough human food to last us for three months. And then there are the tools the humans can use. Ones that would take too many resources for our big hands. Also, they are smaller than us. Do you think our ogre scouts could creep up on travelers the same as a scamp?”
“I understand what you are trying to do. I know that they are worth more than what we feed them, and I know we protect them well.”
Everything Is Worth Killing- Isaac's Tale Page 11