Of Bone and Thunder (12 page)

“His skin . . .”

“Yeah, disgusting, isn't it?” Rickets said, clearly enjoying Jawn's first encounter with a native. “Look like they never wash, which is probably not far from the truth.”

Jawn shuddered. The slyt's skin was mottled. Instead of a single pigment it was a streaky mess of several shades of brown and green. It was as if someone had painted the slyt.

“Is it a disease?”

“If it is, they all have it. It does vary though. I've seen some that have coloring like tree bark and others that look like their entire body was tattooed with leaves.”

“Well, he's still a person,” Jawn said.

Gray wisps of hair sprouted from the slyt's wrinkled ears, while his completely bald head both reflected and absorbed the lantern light. The dark spots of his skin made it appear as if the slyt's head had missing pieces. The slyt's eyes were the typical rheumy orbs one saw in the elderly. They didn't twinkle with mirth or flash with menace . . . more like water and stare aimlessly.

Jawn moved closer to the slyt, doing his best to demonstrate a bond of kinship with the slyt and put Rickets in his place. An odor crept into Jawn's nose and he gagged, halting after a couple of steps. Person though he may have been, the slyt stank. His simple garb of dun-colored short pants and watery-green, sun-bleached vest of thin cotton gave off a pungent mix of aromas that made Jawn's own eyes water.

“It's wrong to use him as a beast of burden,” Jawn said, retracing his steps and hoping it looked like he was simply pacing. He did his best to breathe through his mouth. “There must be other transport to take us to this tavern you know.”

Undercutting Jawn's advocacy, the slyt spit out a red-tinged stream of juice from some kind of nut he was chewing and gave Jawn a quizzical look. Then he broke wind. He was barely five feet tall, and the smell vastly exceeded his presence.

“Civilization at its zenith,” Rickets said, coughing as he climbed into the cart. He settled himself on the tattered canvas-covered board serving as the seat and slouched down against a similarly upholstered backrest. “Unless you want to wait for a team of brorras,” Rickets added, “I'd suggest you climb on.”

Jawn knew further protest was pointless. He wasn't about to walk a road in a foreign land soon to be shrouded in darkness. This was a war zone, and he was damn tired.

“What's a brorra?” Jawn asked, tossing his two bags to Rickets one at a time.

Rickets caught the bags and stowed them, then looked to the sky. “Apparently the army doesn't bother teaching officers a damn thing about the land they're invading,” Rickets said. He suddenly stood up in the cart and
looked around. “How the fuck do they expect us to win a war they don't understand!?”

Jawn stepped back from the cart. This was a new side of Rickets. “I didn't mean to upset you. This is all so new.”

Rickets blinked and seemed to realize where he was. He turned to Jawn. His eyes were large and rigidly focused.

“You're right. This is your first day here and I, well, I can sometimes be a bit dramatic,” Rickets said. “It was a long flight. Took more out of me than I thought.” He sat back down, a smile appearing on his face.

Jawn nodded. “It was a long flight. Still, this is no way to treat the elderly or a slyt,” Jawn said, climbing up.

Rickets leaned forward. “Hey!” Rickets shouted, waving at the slyt.
“Viyor dass ghont, hax
n jhi zer phey fwa li?”

The slyt spit on the ground, flicked his left ear with his finger, and pointed at Rickets. It clearly wasn't a sign of affection. The slyt then turned his back to them, bent down, picked up the two long poles jutting out from the cart, and began walking. The slap of his sandaled feet on the dirt was eerily similar to that of a horse's.

“What did you ask him?”

Rickets leaned back and handed one of Jawn's bags to him. “Would he prefer to ride while
you
pulled the cart. Apparently, he's content to keep the arrangement as is.”

The temptation to wipe the satisfied smile off of Rickets's face with a well-placed punch stayed with Jawn for quite a while.

As dusk gave way to dark and the dirt road stretched on without any sign of ending, a sense of unease gripped Jawn. He'd expected to see other carts, and definitely Kingdom soldiers manning checkpoints, but other than the emaciated corpse of a dog a half a mile back, they had had the road to themselves. The countryside offered little in the way of distraction. Jungle lined their route, sporadically thinning out to reveal small fields that appeared to be planted with bushes in brown ponds. The crowny had dozed off, and it was the quietest he'd been since Jawn met him.

“. . . three cups of oil will make it nice and wet,” Rickets murmured, opening his eyes and looking around.

“What?” Jawn asked, too surprised to stay quiet and hope the man would fall back to sleep.

“What, what?” Rickets asked, rubbing his eyes and yawning.

“You were talking about . . . ,” Jawn started to say, then decided he really didn't want to know. “I mean, I was asking you if it's always this hot here,” Jawn said, prying himself from the backrest and pulling his sodden tunic away from his body. He felt as if he were smothered in congealing grease.

“Hot? This is nothing,” Rickets said, sitting up a little straighter. “Wait until the summer gets here. Keep your eyes open too long, and the heat will boil the jelly in them.”

“Sounds divine,” Jawn said. He despised the heat. His decision to volunteer was not weathering its first day in Luitox well.

“You get used to it,” Rickets said, settling back down on the bench. “It worms its way into you, the heat. Eventually, you just don't notice it. I mean, it's still hot as hell, but you build up a tolerance.”

Talking about the warmth here only made it worse. “Where is everyone?” Jawn asked, swinging his arm around to take in the empty roads and fields. “They all go to bed early around here? I haven't seen a soul.”

“It's night, and we're not at the city outskirts yet. The farmers stay inside come nightfall. Groups of slyts, either from the Forest Collective or sympathetic to their cause, have been infiltrating the area. Quite brazen, really, but then I did tell you this.”

Jawn became more alert. “I thought you were just talking. Is the Forest Collective really this far east? If you had told me that before we left, I never would have agreed to this.”

“I surmised that very thing,” Rickets said, “hence my not telling you. But not to worry—our driver is no more eager to die than we are, and with you being a thaum, I figure we're as safe as girls in a High Druid monastery.”

Jawn sighed and regretted yet again engaging Rickets in conversation. They rode on in silence. Before long, the rutted dirt road—doing its best to jostle Jawn's insides into mulch—abruptly transitioned to a smooth ride. Jawn looked down and made out wide, flat fieldstones laid with some care. While still a far cry from the precision cobble work of the Kingdom's major
cities, it was skilled labor and a welcome relief. Their porter, which Jawn had finally decided to call him after rejecting Rickets's more colorful suggestions, seemed to appreciate the change in the road as well, as his pace suddenly accelerated.

“We'll be there in no time now,” Rickets said, his voice perking up. “A candle eighth at the most.”

Jawn nodded. A hot, wet odor of raw sewage struck him and they couldn't get there fast enough. Small, scurrying black shapes darted across the road as their cart approached. In the dark, it was too difficult to make them out, but Jawn knew they were rats.

“The outskirts of Gremthyn,” Rickets said, flourishing his hands in mock pomp and circumstance. “You can smell the civility from here.”

Their small cart negotiated a few twists and turns as it descended a low ridge. With each yard, the heat and the smell grew.

A small orange glow winked into existence several yards ahead to the right of the road. Jawn sat up straight; images of flaming arrows were still vivid in his mind. He reached down for the small hunting knife tucked into his left boot.

“Easy there, tiger, it's just a cooking fire,” Rickets said.

Jawn noticed that Rickets was nevertheless sitting up as well. Their porter, however, seemed oblivious and kept going at a pace Jawn realized he himself would have had difficulty matching. And the slyt was pulling two full-grown men plus a cart.

As the cart pulled even with the glow, Jawn made out several slyts in similar dress as their own porter. Two tall slyts and three short ones. A family. A hut with bamboo walls and a palm-thatched roof stood a few feet behind them.

The slyts looked up as their cart went by. Jawn tensed, not sure what to expect, but the slyts simply stared at them before returning to whatever domestic chores they were doing. Jawn spotted a sixth slyt, a babe, latched to its mother's breast.

They passed by more cooking fires, and huts that began to look more substantial. The first cross street heralded two houses of gray brick construction, with waist-high stone fences surrounding them.

Over a dozen slyts stood near a small fire at the next intersection.
They were dressed similarly to their porter and, oddly, did not appear to be talking but were staring raptly at the fire. It was as if they were in a trance. Each held some kind of farm implement—a shovel or a hoe, a couple with axes. The slyts slowly turned their gaze to the cart as they passed by.

“What's that all about?” Jawn asked.

Rickets waved for him to be quiet.

Jawn looked up the road. The dots of orange flame lining their way took on an ominous tinge. As their porter drew them past each one, Jawn saw that they weren't cooking fires but gathering places for young males. In each case, the slyts stared deep into the fire, their faces eerily lit.

Rickets leaned forward in the cart and spoke to their porter. “
Vust kì
parg fera xa?
”

The slyt didn't turn or answer but broke out into a trot.

“Where's the nearest military outpost?” Jawn asked.

“A quarter mile to the right back there at the last intersection,” Rickets said, never taking his eyes off the way ahead.

Jawn turned in the cart to look and then quickly spun back around. His heartbeat increased and the sweat drenching his body took on an icy feel. He drew in a long breath and let it out slowly before speaking. “There are slyts behind us. A lot of them.”

Rickets nodded. “They look angry?”

This time, Jawn slowly eased his head around until he could see out of the corner of his eye. With each intersection they passed, more slyts joined the crowd following them. Jawn estimated well over two hundred. Despite their youth, their calm demeanor was unsettling. Jawn slowly turned back until he was facing forward. “Some of them are carrying pitchforks and torches.”

Rickets started to smile but then stopped when he caught Jawn's expression.

“Keep an eye out for ogres then,” Rickets said.

His voice was surprisingly blasé, which was entirely the wrong reaction. This was a time to be concerned. Very concerned.

“What's going on?” Jawn asked.

Rickets looked over his shoulder before replying. “So how much time do you need to, you know, do what you do?”

“Are they going to attack us?!” Jawn's mind raced. He wasn't ready for this. Nothing since the moment he'd landed on Swassi Island was going the way he'd expected.

“You know how many times I've seen the natives gather like this, at night, since I've been over here? And all military-aged slyts to boot? Once, counting now.”

“Get our mule to tell them we're on their side!” Jawn blurted.

Rickets's eyes widened and then he smiled. “I think you mean the person acting as our porter.”

Even in the heat, Jawn felt his face flush. “I didn't mean . . . what I meant to say was—”

Rickets held up his hands to forestall Jawn's apology. “Let he who is without sin cut down the first tree.”

“I'm not a specist,” Jawn said, indignation giving power to his voice. “I believe that all species, no matter—”

“Uh, hold that thought,” Rickets said, pointing up ahead. Jawn looked and the heat in his cheeks evaporated.

Slyts poured onto the street from every intersection. There had to be thousands of them. There was no longer any room for the cart to move forward, and their porter slowed and finally stopped. Slyts moved in front of, behind, and beside them. None of them spoke a word. Jawn realized that was the most unnerving thing—he expected angry shouts and gestures, but though they walked with purpose and carried weapons of convenience, the slyts looked . . . serene.

Jawn balled his fists to stop from screaming. Over a decade of training and study at the RAT had been in preparation for this, but instead of finding his center and solidifying his position in the environment, he felt untethered and adrift. His emotional response overwhelmed the courses in meditation, body control techniques, and agonizing memorization drills, which were critical to creating the necessary harmonics with the environment and the aether beyond. Everything he knew—had known—blurred like a shaken kaleidoscope. It was as if he'd never attended a single lecture.