Majutsu Shi No Chikara Ch 20

Majutsu-shi no Chikara loosely translates to "Sorcerer's Power"

CHAPTER TWENTY: Winter Flowers

...

It hadn't been much of the wyrmling running that he witnessed, the young wyrms that would grow to become dragons had been half-butchered when he, Abhilash, and Ginga had crested the last ridge before entering the sweeping desolation of the northern wastes. The largest specimen, stretched larger as it was flayed and harvested, could have rivaled Kuruk in height from snout to haunch with a tail easily that length again. Its wings tattered rags of leathery skin that could have stretched wider than the whole length of the wyrmling, but the mess of slashed membrane and crumpled bones were too scattered to make any clear determination.

The sun was dropping to the rim of the world -- far west where the northern waste descended at last to the Sea of White Knives. The northernmost coast was inaccessible to merchant ships, for the many spires of bonelike stone jutting up from the foaming, steaming waves. The wastes, too, made three broad shoals of dark stone blades that refused, however briefly, to succumb into the fine sand that the sluggish breakers demanded for scattering along the shoreline.

Damon kept his eyes narrowed as he looked at Dragon Eater. Abhilash had taught him this meant he acknowledged the ork to be a great threat. Narrowing his eyes only a little, or relaxing his gaze would convey that he felt comfortable -- able to conquer anything he saw. When seeking favors, this would be an insult. Better to keep his eyes narrowed, studying his foe for weakness he couldn't find. Not that he had much hope of finding an exploitable weakness in the savage, scarred ork with the over-sized saber. Even without the War Gods tribe amassed around them, Damon wasn't sure the help of

Pyaas

would bring victory.

The ork chieftain called Dragon Eater stared one-eyed death at him, wordless and fuming, even after the jotun slave had been sent to instruct Dragon Eater's warriors to grant meiyo to Damon's trio. It was a curious matter, and Damon found himself desperate for the plain manner to which he and Ginga had grown accustomed traveling for so long with Abhilash. It might be that he was overthinking matters, but something felt decidedly wrong with everything Dragon Eater was doing.

Even what Damon believed must be the natural rhythm of a successful hunt -- would it be considered a battle? -- such as this, appeared broken around the chieftain's stony behavior. Skin little brighter, a rosier hue of gray slate like the blasted ground on which he sat, Dragon Eater was bare-chested and thin. Myriad scars -- slashes, burns, punctures from wyrmling bites -- covered hands, arms, chest and back before disappearing into his hide and fur leggings. The prominent burn that blinded the ork's right eye was a slab of burn scar that still looked angry and pushed the line of the ork's braided dark-brown hair to an odd angle, mangling the point of that ear in the process. The ork's hands were overlarge, and Damon found himself wondering if the massive saber were purpose-built for Dragon Eater -- or if the chieftain had salvaged it in combat with some now-dead jotun. Possibly his kept slave's father, brother, or mate.

I AM

.

"What?" Damon asked, but it became clear at a glance to his right where Abhilash sat eating raw wyrmling liver that his own voice was the first thing to break the silence since his arrival before the northern chief.

He shook his head, tapping the heel of his palm roughly above his temple as though knocking rocks loose from his ears. It had sounded like a voice. Yet his ears bore not the ringing that should have followed, loud as it was.

"Chieftain..." Damon bobbed his head, eyes angling down briefly before locking with the one obvious, threatening eye staring at him. He kept his eyes narrow.

He felt the sound again -- now clearly in his own mind buzzing like an angry hornet -- louder and more distracting.

WAITING

.

"Why are you here?" The ork's voice was low, soft. Dragon Eater spoke with deliberate effort, as though his mouth only barely remembered the way of it and he wasn't himself certain the words meant what he intended. Smoke-stained, yellowing teeth and tusks bit through the ends of words.

I AM WAITING

. Damon shuddered, trying to shake the voice in his head loose without breaking eye contact with the ork chief. Pressure built painfully behind his eyes as his vision swam violently.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been staggered by whatever mental intrusion this was -- unless it was something else. The ork narrowed his singular gaze at Damon, a clawed hand closing tightly about the hilt of the jotun-sized saber that Dragon Eater kept close by.

Damon realized the ork had asked him a question, but he couldn't remember what it was. His vision was blurring, dimming as the pressure increased in his skull.

"I am..." Damon felt the words scrape across his lips, pulled out of him by some will other than his own. "...waiting."

He could taste blood on his tongue, his teeth clacking together sharply as the ork grabbed the clasp of his cloak suddenly and pulled him down to stare him in the eyes.

...

"He's had another one of his fits." Abhilash cradled Damon's head in her lap, refusing to look up at the ork called Dragon Eater lest she feel compelled to challenge him. "He is magic sick."

"Better to kill him, then." Dragon Eater grunted, his voice a raspy tumbling well-matched to the blasted valley surrounding them. "But you have meiyo, so you may keep him."

"That is good." Abhilash nodded. "He seeks a dragon said to lair in the High Ice. The southerners call it Eclipse."

"The dragon's eye is the only dragon I know, around here." Dragon Eater sniffed, thrusting with his jaw to the northeast. "A cave, three peaks that way, half-sun walk up the valley. Three... no, eight days walking as a human walks."

"The chief of the War Gods is generous." Abhilash glanced up, eyes narrow, before averting her gaze. "This one knows a story the Dragon Eater may find amusing."

"Southern humor?" Dragon Eater snorted, curious and dismissive at the same time. "I'll hear it at the story fire. Eat. Drink. It has been too long since the blood of Sidero walked freely on the High Ice."

"Three winters is not so long a time." Abhilash smirked, blushing with pleasure at such a compliment.

"To you, perhaps." Dragon Eater sniffed. "I am sick with waiting for the jotun to challenge me, and Sidero was the only fool strong enough to best me in combat."

"Do you know how he died?" Abhilash glanced up again, wondering if the Betrayer's lies would be dispelled so easily.

"Feeding a dragon, I heard." The chieftain thumped his chest and laughed. "

I

only hunt the

little

ones!

He

was said to have found a great grandmother of a wyrm, her shadow could cover the whole of a single peak."

The ork chief waved grandly at a nearby mountain, a smiling laugh twisting his scarred face.

"When you showed up on the edge of my hunt, I thought you were here to challenge me." He scowled thoughtfully. "I'm tired as yak shit, and the thought angered me that I might lose."

"It is a wise chieftain who understands the dancing of a candle flame." Abhilash nodded, echoing something Sidero had said.

"Yes, but we are few. Too few." Dragon Eater squatted nearby, setting small bits of rock into arranged cairns to mimic the surrounding mountains. "Here to here, we range in the summer to hunt the jotun and ice trolls -- the dying races, we call them. They cling to the wick, like southerners in their little wooden villages, and snuff themselves as the world changes around them. We, too, are a dying kind."

"Just so." Abhilash watched the scene take shape at the chieftain's deft movements.

"Here... and here." He pointed, a place far to the east. "Your homeland, now empty. No jotun. No trolls. Plenty for human

city-makers

... lumber and stone, and water. Sheltered in the elbows of the High Ice, nearer to the Fire Tongue -- the burning mountain a full moon beyond the horizon, at the head of the wastes."

"I remember." Her interest piqued, seeing just how near -- or far -- the old territory of her sire sat from where she was now. "Perhaps the dragon did feast on him."

"Gone, anyway. Dead or not -- his horde is gone." Dragon Eater sniffed, spitting off to the side. "I bought half a dozen seed slaves shortly after, from the Ekimu People."

"Any Sidero?"

"No -- listen... they only sold to me because they wanted southern steel for their totem's blood rituals." Dragon Eater shook his head. "I do not keep with such rituals, but the slaves were good stock. The steel was probably used to feed their foul god your blood-kin. If you want to find Sidero's kin, look south of the Ice. In the shadows of the lowlands, maybe, among Viper and Bear. On the Ice, they would be too few, or they are one with White Death. They would be hunted by the Ekimu, because Sidero's death was their doing. I do not know it, but the signs are ill."

"Many would blame Kamakshi herself." Abhilash sneered, bitter relief at prying loose an old scab for all the itching it caused.

"I do not say they are wrong." Dragon Eater nodded. "She fought well. Near as strong as Sidero himself, with her magic. I do not know why his death made her flee, unless the Ekimu sent her poison dreams."

He frowned at that, looking somewhat sad as he reflected on the recent past.

"Still, the worshippers of the skull idol keep our wits and blades sharp." Dragon Eater clapped her shoulder and grinned with southern familiarity.

"Just so." Abhilash grinned with half her mouth in answer.

Damon stirred in her lap, his eyes wincing and fluttering open by turns -- searching in the deepening shadows of the rapid dusk of late autumn.

"Abhi...?" Damon's eyes skirted left and right, making out little more. "I... I thought..."

"You had another fit." The she-ork explained, her blunted claws trailing aimlessly across his temples and through his hair. "I had to catch you so you didn't split your head on a rock."

"How long?" He groaned, struggled to move, and resigned himself to laying still a few longer moments.

"Not long." Ginga angled into view, her belly shadowing them both from where she stood. "They've got plenty of fire, beer, meat, and furs for sleeping."

"I could've sworn..." Damon shook his head slowly, trying to slough-out the remaining fog in his thoughts. "Maybe it was a waking dream."

"Maybe." Ginga fretted her lower lip with her teeth. "What was it?"

"Later." He frowned briefly, his stomach grumbling loudly. "I feel like I could eat half a yak."

"Funny you should mention." Ginga smirked, jerking a thumb over her shoulder.

...

Charred wyrmling proved a tangy, stringy meat, with an oily bitterness clinging long after one resigned to swallowing whatever chunk taken. It was

beyond

generous to say it paired well with the stringent, sour mead of the prior summer. Still, Ginga and Damon willfully gnawed, chewed, and gulped-down their portions, each truculent morsel thudding into their bellies as though their efforts had been wholly unmoving to the reptilian carcass.

When Ginga was offered another shank of flesh, she grimaced and pushed the offering away.

"Do

none

of ye ken how to eat meat?" Ginga demanded of Dragon Eater's warriors, careful to not directly look at their chieftain lest she give him personal offense. "Where's a flank of unburnt wyrm?"

So urgent was her outrage, she'd spoken in her native southern tongue and most of what she said was lost in the guffaws erupting from Abhilash at the confused stares the northern warriors gave the dark-skinned southern female. Damon harrumphed weakly, shrugging and nodding to himself in agreement with Ginga's assessment, but otherwise just as reluctant to offend as the tough morsel he was currently working between his teeth was to descend into his stomach. The she-ork leaned closer, but her voice was far above a whisper and spared no doubt.

"This will be good." Abhilash looked up to a nearby War God; a male human with a scarred, beardless face. "Get her a raw cut of wyrmling."

...

"Here." Ginga set the smoking skillet between Dragon Eater's feet, a skewered sliver of glistening wyrmling wiggling from the point of her knife. "Eat."

She looked him full in the eye, her stormy, gray-blue eyes momentarily wide and defiant before she narrowed them. The chieftain sneered with amusement, leaning forward to snatch the quivering offering from Ginga's knife using only his lips. His eyes closed as he sat back and chewed, his face settled into a stone mask of attention.

"Cook lean meats with extra fat. Butter, or maybe a fatted yak." Damon continued idly, rubbing his hands together as if trying to restore feeling to his fingers despite the sweltering heat of the nearby fire and his own winter clothing.

"Good." Dragon Eater said at last, opening his eye and looking at Ginga, head tilted so the human was his obvious sole focus. "Show me again."

...

"How are you feeling?" Ginga, sweating and breathless, squatted clumsily before sitting down on her bedroll. "Damn this belly."

"Now, now." Damon leaned close, caressing her cheek and scooping her hand up to his lips to rain kisses on it. "Only a little while longer, lady farmer."

"Sorcerer's lady, to you." Ginga glowered playfully, pulling him easily closer and kissing his mouth firmly. "How's your head?"

"It's..." Damon blanched, looking away from her and trying to ignore the flitting, needle-teeth barbs rippling along the ground even now. "It's fine, now."

"Damon." Ginga cupped his cheek, pulling so he looked at her. "Is it getting worse?"

"M-...M-mu.." He stammered twice, took a deep breath and tried again. "Ya."

"How do I help?" She whispered, resting her forehead to his and feeling the relative chill of his skin against hers. "What do I do?"

"I don't know." He only barely shook his head, never breaking contact, and gave a weighty sigh. "I just need to convince the dragon to help us... or find another way through this."

"We made it this far." Ginga smiled sadly. "What's a tower full of wizards going to be, compared to this?"

They laughed, mocking themselves and their fate. It was one of the few things that dammed-up the tears and the dreadful powerlessness that kept dragging against every step forward in their travels. For all they'd done, they had yet to set eyes on the dragon they sought. South-wold, for all they knew, could be nothing more than a smoking ruin. If there was an "or worse" that could be contrived by the wizards of Renks Cairn, they were sure it could happen and so they never gave it any other voice. The northern cold nipped through their cloaks, barely kept at bay by the mead and the fires of the War Gods.

"Nothing, if we can teach a Dragon Eater how to cook a fucking dragon." Damon answered wryly, twisting to nuzzle Ginga's neck and hug her tightly. "It'll be easy as fucking."

"Says the wizard of sex." Ginga tapped his shoulder playfully, the feeling more like a punch as Ginga was still wearing the jotun-hide belt.

"How's your head?" Abhilash stepped over them, staring down over her swollen belly. "Can you rut?"

"Abhi..." Ginga looked up, pleading. "You didn't... here?"

The she-ork's defiant glare softened, her mouth tightening into a line and she sucked in a sharp breath.

"The War Gods could do worse in trade." Abhilash sniffed, the minute implication of contrition smothered quickly beneath her ork pride. "I was promised an army."

"It's alright, Ginga." Damon soothed, patting her hand and kissing her cheek. "What was promised shall be given. This time. Alright, Abhi? This time, I'll obey."

Abhilash held a hand out to him, helping him to his feet and steadying him as he swayed in a sudden gust of icy wind.

"Farmer!" Dragon Eater called from two cooking fires away. "Farmer, here! Your mate has strong knowing."

Damon smiled, waving an abrupt reply and letting Abhilash guide him along the uneven, loose rocks between firelight. He couldn't help feeling a sense of dread welling in his gut. The knot of longing in his chest helped to distract him from the strange figures darting at the edge of his vision.

"Yes..." he mused softly, pausing to glance back at Ginga and then over to Abhi. "Yes, they do."

...

"Not possible... for one who is not a shaman." Dragon Eater pouted, tilting his head. "Your mate says you can, and you are a shaman -- magic-sick or no. If Sidero's blood would seek you out, then the War Gods will learn from them."

Damon grimaced, trying to ignore the hungry looks he was getting from dozens of faces all around.

"I will not let you seed all the females of the War Gods. Too many whelps sharing blood..." The chieftain sucked as his teeth in sage disapproval. "...no good. Ten. One for each talon."

The ork wiggled his fingers meaningfully, then nodded at him.

"Which ten?" Damon schooled his features as best he could, dreading what was likely to be a frigid studding on thin leather over sharp stone shards.

The chieftain laughed, seeing Damon's eyes passing along the many warriors gathered near in the firelight.

"Seed slaves, south-man!" The chief burbled with laughter that shook Damon's vision slightly blurry. "I

need

my warriors."

At his side, Damon felt Abhilash tense and draw a sharp breath. She already knew what he was about to say, and not even she knew exactly how this northern tribe would react to it.

"They must be willing." Damon stated flatly, eyes still lowered.

"If I tell them, it is so." Dragon Eater lifted his chin, crossing his arms over his chest.

"They have to want it." Damon looked up, locking eyes-to-eye with Dragon Eater, and relaxed his gaze to stare

through

the ork. "I will not lay with any female that does not desire

me

."

The chieftain's good eye narrowed to a single line, catching a glint of firelight in the deepest recesses of that angry shadow as if to fire it through the human's heart. The ork's ears itched, and he dug a finger into each of them, snarling and muttering under his breath before straightening up and looking at the human as if nothing odd had happened.

"Your mate will find the females you will seed." Dragon Eater snorted, looking for all the world as if he hadn't just suffered an indignity unlike any before from this southern shaman. "Until then, your mate offered to share her knowing of Sidero's doings since last I crossed paths with that one."

...

"I found him like this." Abhilash shouldered her way into the cramped stone shelter, the twitching, smoldering, naked human sorcerer cradled in her arms. "Had to pull him off the fire he scattered."

"You weren't watching him?" Ginga's shock and accusation tripped over each other, trampled headlong by the charging beast of her own fear. "Gods!"

His right leg was badly burnt -- flesh blackened and charred in places -- with swollen, weeping blisters and cuts all over his arms and legs. His hair smoked the most, much of it charred to shriveled stubble. Ginga stifled a sob as she chewed back the nausea from the stink of burnt hair and skin. He was fussing in sleep, unaware of his injuries.

"Kusuri sap?" Ginga choked the words out, not daring to look away from Damon where Abhilash lay him on the sleeping furs in the stone-roofed hovel.

"They are making their own, but it won't help his leg." Abhilash sniffed, touching her nose reflexively and scowling. "I felt nothing."

"You felt...?" Ginga's focus on Damon clouded her understanding, and she took several long moments to shake the idea through her hands before locking eyes with the ork. "Your curse?"

"I don't know." The she-ork grunted, worry widening her eyes as she watched Damon twitch and jerk against some unknowable nightmare vision. "His magic... I've never felt his pain from his magic."