The Ogre Apprentice (32 page)

“So it was your fault,” Fist said with a glare. The bite on his leg hurt worse than any of his other injuries.

Charz lifted his hands defensively. “Like I said, sorry.”

“Come on, Fist,” Maryanne said, directing him away from the giant. “The wizard’s still looking at the dead rats. Probably doesn’t even know you were fighting.”

Fist limped away from the camp, Maryanne holding one of his arms. Puj was holding onto the other, supporting most of his weight. Despite the pain, he felt pretty happy about how the fight had turned out. Not only had he taught Beard a lesson, Fist had learned something of his own. He couldn’t let himself get complacent. Whether it be his physical training or his magical training, too many people were counting on him.

Squirrel jumped to his shoulder.
You did good
.

Fist turned his head to look at him. “Really, Squirrel? You aren’t mad at me because I didn’t kill him?”

You are too nice
. The squirrel shrugged.
You won
.

“You helped me,” Fist said.
Thank you
.

You are my Fist
, Squirrel replied.

“Hey Locksher,” Maryanne said. “We need your help here.”

“Huh?” The wizard didn’t look up at them as they approached.

Two pairs of moonrat eyes were laid out on the ground in front of him, one of them had been cut in neat slices. Locksher was wearing a pair of glasses with multiple lenses and had a pipe in his mouth that was belching blue smoke. As usual, he wasn’t inhaling the smoke himself, just using it as a medium to reveal magic in his experiments.

He was peering at the moonrat eyes with intense interest. “Where have you been, Maryanne? And what was all that commotion about? I found it hard to think with all that yammering.”

“Fist was in a fight,” the gnome said. “He’s injured.”

Locksher looked up at the ogre and his jaw dropped, nearly losing the pipe. “What in blazes were you doing? Are we under attack?”

“No, master,” Fist said. “I was fighting the ogre that’s been beating Puj.”

“Ah.” Locksher’s eyes flickered to the ogre female on his arm. “You won, I hope?”

“Yes,” said Puj with a wide grin. “He beated him good.”

“Hmm. Well, come on. Lie down so I can take a look at you.”

Wincing, Fist eased himself to the ground and laid back. He tried not to look at the dissected remains of the dead moonrats nearby.

Locksher extinguished his pipe with a thread of water, then set it aside and bent over Fist. He sent probing injuries into the ogre’s body, starting at his head. “Let’s see, broken nose, various contusions and rupture of minor blood vessels. Damaged cartilage in the throat. My, that would be quite uncomfortable. Hmm, bruised ribs . . . bruised right kidney.” He moved down Fist’s leg and straightened in surprise. “A large . . . chunk has been taken out of your leg.”

“Beard bit him,” Maryanne explained.

Locksher grimaced. “Ah, well, uh, you wouldn’t happen to have the missing piece so that I may reattach it, would you?”

“I think he swallowed it,” Fist said, trying not to think about it too much.

“I see.” The wizard shrugged. “Well, I shan’t be able to grow it back completely. You’ll have an interesting scar to say the least.” He put his hands near the wound and Fist felt the tingle of the wizard’s magic as he knit the flesh back together. “It is quite deep. He actually scraped the bone. My, the ogre’s mouth must have been filthy. Infection has already set in.”

Eww
, said Squirrel.

“Can you please stop talking about it, Master?” Fist asked. The description of the damage was making him woozy.

“Fine,” Locksher said, sounding slightly offended. “I merely assumed that you would want to know what I was repairing, that’s all.”

“It’s probably best to know after it’s fixed,” Maryanne suggested.

“As you prefer,” Locksher replied. He finished work on the leg wound and sat back momentarily. “Well, that’s done. I could have perhaps done more with the right elven herbs, but it will have to do. Shall I repair your dislocated toe or would you rather I just said nothing about it?”

Fist blinked. He hadn’t even felt that injury. “Please fix it, Master. I would just rather you talk about something else while you do it.”

“How about the moonrats?” Maryanne said.

“Ah, good idea,” Locksher said. “Aside from Alfred, you are the most well put together gnome warrior I have ever met.”

“Uh, thanks?” From the gnome’s tone, it was easy to tell that she wasn’t sure if that had been a compliment or not.

Locksher went back to work, repairing Fist’s toe and then moving up to focus on his kidney. Fist sucked air in through his teeth as the wizard told them what he had discovered. “My investigation is still in its early stages, but I have some fantastic findings so far. These moonrats are not being controlled by the enemy we are investigating.”

“Really?” Fist said, his voice strained. “How do you know?”

“The eyes of the dead moonrats are . . . well, dead,” Locksher replied. “When Mellinda controlled them the eyes remained a conduit to her power even after the death of their host. The eyes of the unfortunate creatures you brought me last night are mere empty receptacles. They have no spirit magic connection to anything.”

“Then why are they in these mountains?” Maryanne asked.

“That, my dear, was a fine head scratcher,” the wizard said, moving on from the kidneys and focusing on Fist’s ribs. “The answer was the live moonrat you brought me. Loud little thing. I was forced to remove its vocal chords,” he said, making a quick gesture towards the one beast that was still breathing. He had placed a sack over its head to shield its sensitive eyes from the sun.

“What I discovered was that, though it was not projecting any spirit magic, it was sensitive to it. Those eyes of theirs are complex magical instruments and, it’s just a theory mind you, but I believe that they have somehow sensed the ‘evil’ we are chasing after and are gravitating towards it. The changes we have heard in their moans are in reaction to the signals they are receiving.”

“Then the evil in the mountains is not Mellind-ack!” Fist’s question ended in a gurgle because Locksher had left his ribs and started working on the damage to his throat.

“It’s hard to tell,” the wizard replied. “All I can tell you with any certainty is that if she is the one behind this, she no longer has control of her former children.” He shrugged. “I still have some tests to run.”

A short time later, the wizard finished with Fist’s throat and moved on to his face. “In fact, I could use your help with those tests, Fist. Especially if you want me to finish them up today so that we can continue on our journey.”

Actually Fist had hoped to spend the afternoon taking a nap. He’d had little sleep the last several nights and past experience told him that the physical toll of the fight and the healing Locksher was doing were going to wipe him out. But at that moment Locksher was fixing his broken nose and Fist was too busy trying not to sneeze to raise any protests.

“There. That should take care of it,” Locksher said.

“Wow, that was fast,” Marianne said, nodding in appreciation. “Some of the quickest healing I’ve seen.”

Locksher waved away the praise with an absent gesture. “I’m no specialist. But in my position it’s best to have a thorough understanding of anatomy. After that, healing is merely proper application of elemental magic theory.”

“You is all better already, Big Fist?” Puj asked.

Fist sat up, feeling barely a twinge of discomfort in his body. “Yes. Well, mostly,” he said, wincing at the puckered pit of a scar in the side of his left shin.

“It’s not attractive, I know,” Locksher said. “But I told you this would happen. In the future if any part of your body is removed, hold onto it. Scarring is much easier to avoid if the original material is available. Now, stand up and tell me how you feel.”

Fist did as he said. Everything was fine. His leg was stable. “I feel pretty good. Thank you, Master Locksher.” He yawned exaggeratedly. “I’m tired though.”

“Good!” Locksher said. He picked his pipe back up and lit it with a flare of fire magic. He raised an eyebrow. “Now be a good apprentice and bring that moonrat corpse over here.” He pointed. “The one labeled with the number three.”

Fist spent the rest of the afternoon working with the wizard. This mainly involved moving the moonrat corpses around and observing while Locksher performed various experiments. The wizard used him as a sounding board, asking him questions he already knew the answers to. It was as if hearing his theories out loud helped him determine their validity somehow.

Usually, Fist found Locksher’s method of teaching interesting, but his mind kept wandering and by the time evening came around, he was mainly concentrating on trying to stay awake. It didn’t help that Squirrel was in his pouch, snoozing away. The squirrel’s hazy dream thoughts made Fist’s eyes seem even heavier. As far as he was concerned, night couldn’t come quickly enough. Soon as the sun was down, he stumbled over to his bedroll. Puj was waiting for him.

The ogress was holding a large steaming bowl. She held it out to him. “You fighted good today. I maked you food. Just for Big Fist. Winners stew.”

“You did?” he reached out and accepted it from her, doing his best to make his smile seem enthusiastic.

Puj had been the main cook for the journey before the Mage School had supplemented their supplies with magically prepared human food. Now that those rations were mostly gone, the ogress had been taking up her old role again. The results had been mixed.

He looked into the bowl. The liquid inside was a dull red and he saw chunks of meat and roots and something that looked like piece of sponge. To his relief, it smelled quite good. Fist had become so used to the spices and flavors of the more intelligent races’ cooking that going back to ogre food had been difficult.

She nodded at him, urging him and Fist began eating it in the traditional manner. Ogres rarely used utensils, so the eating of stews consisted of picking out the bigger chunks with their fingers, often cursing if the liquid were too hot, then sipping some of the liquid out of the bowl until it was easier to get at the smaller pieces. It was a time honored method and effective enough with the usually tough ingredients ogres tended to eat.

Fist was pleasantly surprised. The meat was tender and only slightly fatty. The roots had been cooked to a soft consistency and the spongy things he saw ended up being pieces of cheese bread left over from the Mage School rations. It was a little light on salt, but the events of the day had left him ravenous. He downed the bowl quickly.

“That was very good, Puj!” he said.

“Good!” she said, clapping her hands together. “Maryanne shooted a big bird for me to use and helped me find the yummy roots.”

“Well. You did a very good job. Thank you,” he said. Fist yawned. “Now I’m going to go to sleep.”

Puj scooted her furs closer to his bedroll. “Is you making that magic light again tonight?”

He opened his mouth to say no, but then he thought about it. He was so tired. Surely Darlan wouldn’t be mad at him for draining his magic just this once. A full night’s sleep without dreams sounded so luxurious. Besides, he was in a tribe surrounded by ogre warriors and had Squirrel to watch over him. Surely there was no danger now that the situation with Beard was taken care of.

“I will be making that light, yes,” he said.

“Oh! I will watch,” she said with a smile.

“Alright, but you know how this makes me very sleepy,” Fist said, climbing into his bedroll. “Stay by me. Beard should leave you alone from now on, but just in case.”

She nodded, scooting closer. “Stay by you. Yes.”

“And don’t go out of the camp, even to pee, unless Maryanne is with you,” he added.

“Only pee with skinny women. Yes,” she said eagerly.

“Okay,” he said, giving her an uncertain look as he laid back onto his pillow. Why was she so enthusiastic about this? But the pillow was so nice and the allure of sleep so heavy in his mind, he shrugged off any questions. “Now keep quiet for a minute while I talk to Justan.”

“Yes,” she said, still watching him and grinning. Puj knew who Justan was. She didn’t quite understand how Fist talked to him when he was so far away, but she was used to the idea.

Fist closed his eyes and almost drifted to sleep right there. It took a great effort to reach through the bond. Justan wasn’t in a position to speak right then, so Fist just told him that he would tell him what happened the next night. He returned to his body and his muscles groaned in protest as he forced himself to sit up again.

“You will make the light now?” Puj asked. The ogress was sitting cross legged on top of her furs with her elbows on her knees and her chin resting on her hands.

“Yes,” Fist said, wondering why she was so eager.

He turned to face her and raised his hands in front of him enacting the complex air spell. The ball of light swirled into existence, glowing so brightly at first that it hurt his eyes. Then he poured more magic into it, forcing the ball to shrink and the light to dim. Finally it was the size of a plum and let off just a soft glow. Fist was so tired that he expected the light to wink out almost immediately, but he had used very little of his power that day. It took a while to fizzle.