Chapter 18: A Waxing Flame

Chapter 18: A Waxing Flame

You've come to me as an advisor and seek my guidance? Your plight is helpless. Lay down your arms, and retreat. Pray that mercy protects you, for against him, providence will not.

The hot Tiris sun bore down on their wagon as Huck, Logan, and Ryan sat on the bench behind the large Rohm. Dust kicked up under the wide wagon wheels, the compact, gritty dirt barely compressing at all, leaving only faint lines in the earth to mark their passing.

Ryan counted arrows into piles on the empty bench next to him, dividing the burning blue blood arrows, dubbed “triple B’s,” and the paralytic arrows into equal portions to include Synec in the distribution. The tail of his coon-skin cap bobbed and bounced as the wagon moved down the uneven road.

Noticing Logan’s attention on him, Ryan glanced up at the older man; the one from a place called “Long Beach” on “Earth.” Under the curved brim of a brown Nostets qortle-herder hat, solemn, earnest eyes returned his gaze. They both smiled, and Logan picked up an arrow, balancing its middle on his finger.

He twirled it between his fingers. His dexterity stat made things like this, tasks requiring coordination and fine motor control, far easier now than they’d even been before. Despite Logan's apparent confidence, Huck glanced over from where he sat a few inches to Logan’s left.

“Wanting to burn down the whole wagon, lad? Unless you’ve got another hiding away in that mysterious ‘inventory’ of yours, then I’d prefer you didn’t.”

The rohm snorted in what could only be interpreted as approval.

Logan snatched the center of the arrow, stopping its spinning motion, and handed it back to Ryan, who sat on his right.

“You make a good point.”

Logan rubbed his neck, then cracked it, turning his head to either side with his palm. He had a nervous energy that he couldn’t dispel. He summoned his short sword to his hand, then dismissed it and summoned a dagger. He dismissed that too, then summoned a throwing knife from his inventory, extra stock for the strap of them he kept fastened to his chest. He twirled the knife around his finger, the straight blade had a small metal circle set onto its end that reminded him of a Kunai.

Logan glanced at the sun overhead, hanging in the sky directly above them.

“How long’s it been? Three, four hours?”

“Something like that, why? Bored already lad?”

“Something like that. I’m just amped up to fight this thing. We’ve been preparing for so long, you know?”

“Amped up?” Huck and Mikey said at the same time, their overlapping voices, one in his mind the other in his ears, creating a disorienting dissonance.

“Uh, excited,” he said.

“You want to test those fancy new weapons, don’t you? I can’t blame you,” Huck said, half turning and gesturing with his head towards the heavy, tall Warhammer resting on the canvas wall next to his bow behind the bench where they sat.

“I want to see the rest of the world,” Logan said, looking distantly at the road ahead of them, gently curving to the southwest, and the forest that stretched out on either side.

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“I want to explore it with you both,” he said, shouldering Ryan.

Ryan tied the four piles of arrows with a bit of string, creating neat bundles, then rolled them each in a sheet of leather and handed them to Logan, who added them to his inventory.

The Suko mountains loomed high in the distance, and Logan watched Ryan staring at them, a look of determination on the boy’s face. He saw his little brother in Ryan’s unruly brown hair, sticking out from under his coonskin cap; in his open, innocent expressions, in his quick smile and easy laughter. A cold weight descended on Logan like a seeping flood as his mind turned to thoughts of his brother. He pushed them away before they overwhelmed him. This time he’d do better.

He pinched Ryan’s cheek, who’d been looking absently into the distance.

“Ow! What was that for?”

Logan laughed, summoning a small buckler shield, and leaning sideways against Huck to avoid his playful retaliatory punches.

Huck smiled, glancing at the pair then back up to the road. They’d rounded the gentle curve and were now on the straight path that led to Woolam.

“Ho,” Huck said, gently easing back the reins tied to the Rohm’s straight horns.

Logan turned from Ryan’s assault to look at the road and whatever had caused them to slow.

A cart, its back covered by a canvas tarp, lay titled to one side in the center of the thoroughfare, one large wheel shattered and broken. A mid-sized beast, a bit smaller than a horse with short hair, a bull-like face, a long tail, and no ears was standing in front of the cart, fastened to it. Logan recognized it as a qortle from descriptions Huck had given to him.

A man, Logan thought he was in his mid-twenties or early thirties, with a scraggly beard and simple worker’s clothing rose from his hunch at the broken wheel and looked at them, raising an arm. He couldn’t make out much more of the man’s appearance from the distance.

Ryan leaned forwards, curious, and Huck glanced around at the forest around them, some thirty yards removed from the road’s edge.

“Do we help him? We could give him a ride or something,” Logan said evenly.

Huck drew the wagon to a stop. They were still a hundred or so yards from the man and his cart.

Logan looked at Huck, confused, but confident in the older man’s judgement. Huck didn’t take his eyes off the man and his cart, his gaze hard and critical.

“I don’t like it. He’s facing us, coming towards Tarik. Small cart, and no spare wheel. No town’s ‘tween here and Woolam, but we don’t keep qortle but for the fields ‘n milkin’. It ain’t right.”

Logan had rarely seen him so serious. He turned his own eyes back to the man, who’d lowered his arm and looked took on a posture that looked… annoyed? Aggressive?

“So what do we do?”

Ryan, reading the atmosphere, grabbed hold of his bow from behind him and set it on his lap, slinging his quiver over his shoulder.

“Try to pass beside him, I s’pose. Or turn around, head back and take one of the side roads. It’d be a pain, but maybe worth it,” he said, his eyes still fixed on man before them.

He’d moved to the back of his cart and was doing something with the tarp.

Logan stood, stepped over Ryan, and looked behind them. A line of men, ten or so, though he didn’t take the time to count, stood fifty yards behind them brandishing swords, axes, and bows. Logan grimaced and returned to stand beside Huck.

“We’ve got company. About ten behind us, armed. They don’t look too friendly.”

Logan remembered the distinct sensation he’d had of being watched as he shopped around Tarik in days prior and chided himself for not being more vigilant.

I didn’t think they’d follow us out of the city….

Huck grunted and rose to his feet.

“My bow,” he said, and Ryan handed it to him.

“What are you going to do?” Logan asked, concern rising as he watched Huck draw an arrow to his cheek.

“Show ‘em that we’re not some helpless merchants. Let ‘em know that if they want trouble, it’s trouble they’ll get.”

The man in the distance glanced up from behind the cart, shock evident in his posture. Logan watched his mouth moving as he said something, and the tarp exploded off of the wagon bed.

A cloaked man leapt from the cart’s back and strode hurriedly towards the front, a sword drawn at his side.

Huck loosed his arrow, and as soon as the man stopped moving in front of the cart, it landed perfectly between his feet, sticking into the dirt, and oscillating in place. The man pulled his hood down, revealing a head of oily brown hair. With his improved vision, Logan could just barely make out the twisted scar that ran parallel across his forehead and turned down his cheek, just beyond his right eye, ending in his thick brown beard. He ripped the arrow free from the dirt, sneering, and cast it aside.

“It’s the group from the Inn,” Logan said, summoning his own bow from his inventory.

He doubted he’d be able to hit anything from this distance, but perhaps he could scare off the ones behind them. As he said it, he felt Ryan tense beside him.

“Figured as much. Bretta said they were trouble; I just didn’t think they’d go this far. They’re probably the ones who were trailin’ you, too.”

Logan nodded, though Huck didn’t see it as he smoothly knocked another arrow.

No town guard out here, he thought.

He looked at Ryan, kneeling behind the bench, bow ready. His face had gone stone hard, a wall of dead emotion. He knew that look; it’s one he’d grown used to on himself and seeing it on Ryan’s youthful features saddened him.

I’ll do better.

“Do you think we can do this without… anyone getting too badly hurt?”

The leader had begun walking towards them, sword low and menacing at his side; the first man followed a few paces behind, also wielding a sword.

“That’s up to them,” he said, firing another arrow that landed just beside the leader.

“But it doesn’t look like they’re here for a picnic.”

Logan knew that Huck was missing intentionally, giving them ample warning and opportunity to back off. He looked behind the wagon again. The men behind them weren’t moving yet, thankfully.

The leader stopped, close enough now that they could clearly make out his features. It was definitely the same man. Ryan clenched his jaw and gripped his bow with whitened knuckles; his anger was palpable.

“Arrogant and wealthy! Shopping for some nobleman, decided to secret himself away in the southlands aye?” the leader shouted, his voice gruff but high, almost whiny.

“Your lord’s goods will be coming with us, so why don’t you get off my wagon before this gets ugly.”

Huck raised his bow, seemingly prepared to actually shoot the man this time.

“If I give the signal then my men will be on you before you can fire another arrow, man.”

Huck turned his head slightly towards Logan and gave him an eye.

“Don’t shoot, I’ll handle this.”

Logan jumped from the wagon, landing on the dirt, hands empty and raised.

Huck, though wary, figured that losing the wagon wouldn’t be all that bad in reality; everything they had purchased was stored in Logan’s inventory after all. He lowered his bow and moved to Ryan’s side, putting a hand on his shoulder as he watched Logan walk slowly towards the thug boss.

The man stood, placid and motionless, smiling an ugly sneer as Logan approached. When there were only twenty yards between them, he sheathed his sword in a belt scabbard and lifted his arms in front of him.

“Fucking idiots, as if we’d let you live.”

Logan froze mid step, hands slowly lowering to a ready stance.

This is bad.

He glanced over his shoulder at Huck, who cocked his head questioningly. The man had spoken only loud enough for Logan to hear. He started to shout, but he was too late. He faced the man in front of him as he spoke, arms raised parallel to the ground, hands pointed towards Logan’s chest, in a loud, pompous voice.

“Furos, Father of The Inferno, god of fire and flame, heed my call: Fireball!”

If it weren’t for his utter shock at the blatant use of magic and the gout of orange and white flames pouring from the man’s outstretched hands and hurtling through the air at Logan’s chest, he would’ve laughed at the ostentatious, cheesy invocation. As it stood, however, he summoned a tall kite shield and leapt to the side with all the strength and speed he could muster, kicking up dirt as he pounced out of the flame’s path.

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