The Crux of the Matter

“Pull!”

I pulled. My rope slid a dozen twists out of the pit, then stopped. I shifted my grip.

“Pull!”

I pulled. This time my rope slid out a little further.

“Pull!”

I pulled, lost my hold, and felt my callus-armored palms grow hot before I could catch the rope again, but I didn’t let go. I couldn’t. I allowed myself a grunt, no more, even as I forced my fingers to tighten around the rope.

“Pull!”

I pulled, twice in succession to make up for the lost length, and we were almost there.

“Pull!”

I pulled. My rope fell slack, and I and everyone else dropped our ropes, rushing forward to examine the tangled mass of mud and fur and leaves and blood and dust and skin we had pulled out of the pit trap. It was a lion, with a bare, muscular human torso where its head should be —

“Farul. What the seffin is a wemic doing this far from the veldt?” Oornoe’e demanded. Her pretty elven face showed nothing but concern, her agile hands swiftly disassembling the knots that held the net together. In a moment it loosened, letting the wemic tumble ungracefully to the ground.

“I don’t know. Maybe he can tell us, if we can get him to a safe place before trolls catch us out here in the open.” Warban finished pulling himself out of the pit. He’d climbed down into it so he could put the wemic on the net, being the only one of us strong enough to lift his weight alone, and able to climb back out of the pit. He looked worried, as far as it is possible for a hobgoblin to look worried. “How badly is he hurt?” he asked Oornoe’e.

“Well, he’s unconscious, no surprise; anybody would elu’ye be, after falling the height of three men and onto a slab of chamge granite; his front left leg is broken in four places, and he’s got various other scratches that might get infected if I don’t take care of them right now,” she enumerated, peering up at Warban with a faintly exasperated look.

“Hm. Well, go ahead and do what you can. Dauroh, let’s figure out how to carry him.” While Oornoe’e, Luth, and Amaranz cleaned up the wemic, Warban pulled off his gloves and set about helping me fashion a sturdy hammock from one of the tents. At least, he tried; when I finished laying out the tentcloth, he was still trying to tie a bowline loop in his rope. He got it that time — though it must have been his second or third try — and then he started to pull it on. I grabbed at it.

“Warban, you are too tired to carry yourself, much less him. Let Amaranz and me do it,” I counseled.

He blinked and tugged at the rope; I tugged back (and winced; without their dermal armor, my fingers now felt stiff and rope-burned). He relented. Mark of the quintessential leader, that: he was always pushing limits, but knew when to back off. This earned him a great deal of respect with me, and a great deal of faith. After so many years together we knew each other very well. And at the moment I thought I detected a twinge of guilt at catching a wemic in a trap that was supposed to catch something no larger than a deer. I was feeling a good deal of remorse myself, but all we could do now was try to make it up to the fates …

Amaranz, who was unreasonably tall even for a half-orc — he towered almost two full heads over Warban — took the loop and tried to pull it on, but found it too small for his thick hard biceps. I adjusted it and again he tried it on: too loose. Shaking my head and rubbing my hands briskly to limber up stiff fingers, I untied the loop and collected the rope, measuring it out at each end of the tentcloth. Having Amaranz stand still long enough for me to measure out the rope across his muscled chest, back and shoulders was a task to try the patience of the gods, but after some grunting and adjusting Amaranz was wearing a smock.

“Feels tight,” he said.

“You’re wearing the longer rope,” I pointed out. “I can’t loosen it any more or it’ll fall apart.”

He shrugged. “Din say was bad tight.” The shorter rope, tied in a similar way across my chest and shoulders, trailed an arm’s length or so at each end. Making sure the knots were secure, I wriggled out of my harness and donned it backwards, wearing the hammock rather like a cloak. We moved together to kneel next to the unconscious wemic. Warban directed Oornoe’e to help him lift up the wemic high enough to let Amaranz and me slip the hammock underneath.

“One. Two. Lift.” They grunted with the effort. ”Be careful with the leg.”

Oornoe’e just grunted. Then: “He doesn’t — foli’ir fit!”

“Dauroh, stand up.”

“No don’t! I can’t lift so malab high.”

“Wait wait wait! Turn him around.”

“Ugh! Why?”

“So the leg won’t bleed more!”

“Nivadi malab!” Oornoe’e set the wemic’s hind legs down, gently, but leaving Warban holding him up by the armpits. “You two turn the seffin around!” she commanded, making circles in the air with her finger at Amaranz and me. I obliged, moving to stand by the wemic’s head, which Warban had also set down.

Oornoe’e, it seemed, meant to roll the wemic onto the hammock. This in turn meant we had to stretch out the tentcloth beside him to its full length, forcing me to lie nearly on my back and Amaranz nearly on his belly. Warban and Oornoe’e gently rolled the wemic onto his right shoulder, needing to be especially careful with the broken leg, while Amaranz and I shuffled sideways so they could roll him onto his back. At last the wemic lay securely within the hammock. Amaranz and I stood up. Well, Amaranz stood up, anyway. First Warban had to help me to my feet, and then I nearly fell back down from the weight; but after bracing myself properly I found I could keep my balance easily. The wemic lay face up, his broken leg set with a strip of cloth and three arrows minus the tips, his rough maned head resting warm between my shoulder blades. Oornoe’e fussed with him for a minute, during which my shoulders started to ache. Snug by itself, my harness was biting under the wemic’s weight.

“Noë, what are you doing?” I inquired.

“His arms keep falling out. There.” Twisting my head around, I saw how Oornoe’e had tucked his elbows in at his sides, hands resting one atop another on his belly. “All right … let’s go.” After a false start or two, Amaranz and I got the hang of moving in tandem, and we set off to find cover.

Near sunset, much earlier than I expected, Luth returned from scouting and led us off in a new direction at right angles to the gully. Because Amaranz was so tall, he could trail me and still see where I was going; but now that we were heading steeply uphill, we found it necessary to climb more or less side-by-side, a truly tricky proposition thanks to the general terrain. It was really slow going. Fortunately Luth had found us a broad crescent ledge, carpeted with grass and furnished with a rill of springwater, a few hundred-paces further up, just in front of an unoccupied cave. Warban gave him the usual look. I chuckled to myself. I suppose Luth never is going to live down the time he found us what was supposed to be an empty overhang for the night, but turned out to house a very large family of rats. For weeks afterward Warban lamented not having a dwarf to scout out caves and having to let the gnome do it, but Luth certainly never made that mistake again. After he swore up and down that this cave was empty Warban made a show of reluctantly believing him, giving his approval, so I lurched eagerly on and looked forward to some rest.

Alas, it was not to be. Warban put me on kitchen duty, which meant I had to go hunt and then cook some food. This I did, and then I drew first watch. I sighed. At least when I was done I could sleep through the night.

While I hunted up and summarily cooked a couple of rabbits on Luth’s fire, Oornoe’e took charge of the wemic. Her gentle hands and extraordinary healing skills did amazing things with the wemic’s leg, which had indeed been broken. When she was finished with him she ate ravenously, announced that the wemic could walk again, and then went to sleep. The camp grew quiet, and as the darkness deepened outside the cave, Warban, Luth, and Amaranz dropped off to sleep, leaving me awake with the wemic.

Being on watch in this cave was little more than a formality: the cave dead-ended forty paces in, had no branching tunnels, and I could easily watch the entrance. Warban knew it. I knew it. Luth knew it, having drawn a ward on the floor at the mouth of the cave. So I had no compunction about digging in my backpack for a few sheets of parchment, a stick of graphite, and a knife, so I could spend a while writing. I chose a long dry branch, lit the end on the fire, and braced it against the wall near the sleeping wemic with a quickly fashioned spit stand tied with my bandanna.

I scribbled notes for some time, glancing up once in a while to look out on the faintly moonlit ledge outside our cave. The moon-shadows crawled slowly eastward; they had marked perhaps nine or ten inches’ worth when I noticed that the fire was considerably lower and my own little torch was guttering fast enough to make my eyes hurt. I fixed it, then sat back and relaxed for a moment. My hand was starting to cramp.

There was a nonzero chance I might simply nod off where I sat if I closed my eyes, but I did it anyway. I’m supposed to have better control of myself than that, I thought. Nonetheless, a parade of vague, disconnected images began to dribble down my closed eyelids, signaling I was in need of some real rest. Grudgingly, I summoned up the willpower necessary to open my eyes, in preparation to rise and go wake Luth.

The first thing I saw was a pair of glowing yellow-green eyes, peering into mine.

I was virtually certain that he could smell the adrenalin flooding my system, but all I did was nod a greeting and say in Raficcan, “Hello.”

The speed with which he got to his feet amazed me. I’d never have thought that anything with that body shape could move that fast — especially with a broken leg. Oh, but perhaps he didn’t know he’d ever had a broken leg. Oornoe’e had healed it so well he had never been conscious enough to feel his injuries.

“Where am I, human? Who are you?” the wemic rumbled.

“You are in the Hoarmoss Ridge,” I answered, “and my name is Dauroh. I … want to apologize for any indignity we’ve caused you. We dug a pit trap to catch a deer or boar, and instead we, uh, caught you.” I forced myself to meet his eyes.

He padded closer. I cringed a little. “I was alone?” he growled. I thought I detected an edge to his bass voice, which made me very afraid to nod, but I did.

His face contorted in a mask of rage. His fist struck the rock wall just above my head — I didn’t even have time to duck — with a dull thud, a sound that was all but lost in his deafening roar, and suddenly he seemed to collapse into himself.

I jumped to my feet simultaneously with my other four very rudely-wakened companions. We stared in surprise at the wemic, who was rocking side-to-side, face buried in his hands.

I gingerly touched a muscular shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

“Then my people are dead. I am the only one left,” the wemic sobbed, and I swear to the gods that I never had and never will hear a sadder thing. “The only one.”

“Listen,” I said. The wemic shook. “Listen.” I grabbed both shoulders. “You are among friends here. We could help you if you can tell us how.”

The wemic looked at me — looked down at me, of course — but in his sorrow he seemed so small. “What could you do?”

“That is what you must tell us,” said Warban.