CHAPTER 25 #5
“What is your name?” Digi asked.
“You may call me Maggie.”
“Give Maggie anything she asks for. Let it be known that she is our ally and should be treated as such.”
I rose. “The wisdom of the orsi knows no bounds.”
One of the guards stepped forward and bowed to me. “This way, honored guest.”
I limped after him, outside, with Lute holding my elbow just in case. The doors closed behind us.
The guard took us to a smaller door on the left side.
We passed through it, cleared a hallway, and exited into a smaller courtyard.
An older man sat under a tree, drinking green wine from a wooden cup.
His coarse dark hair, salted with gray, was pulled back from his face in a half-ponytail, falling to his shoulders.
Short for an Okulan, with a broad build and powerful arms, he seemed grizzled like an old bear.
Scars marked his face, one across the left cheek, and the other on the right temple, where something must’ve tried to bite off his ear.
He looked like he could lift a small car all by his lonesome.
Two large dogs lay by his feet, panting. They looked like an oversized, prehistoric version of a German Shepherd with long legs and thick lupine fur. Two pairs of golden eyes stared at me. The fabled Harzi hounds.
“The orsi wishes to gift a mordok to this ally of the clan,” the guard told him.
I understood spoken Harzi. I wasn’t even surprised anymore.
The man sipped his wine. “The orsi should have told me in advance.”
“She didn’t know, nura,” I said. Nura was an all-purpose honorific used to address older Harzi men. Beastmasters enjoyed a lot of prestige among the Harzi. Being polite usually helped.
The two men spun to me.
The guard cleared his throat.
The beastmaster sighed and continued in Harzi.
“And now they speak our language. What is the world coming to? You come at a bad time, foreigner. I have only one mordok available, and she is a terrible creature. She screams. She bites other mordoks. She bites the dogs. She bites the hand that feeds her.”
“But can she track?” I asked.
“What do you have of your prey?”
“A bloody chunk of hair and a blood-smeared shirt.”
“Does your prey use magic?”
“He does.”
The gamekeeper shrugged. “Good enough. She will track him. Do you know how to handle a mordok?”
“I do, but I would beg you to honor me with a lesson.”
“This one has some sense at least,” he muttered. “Follow me.”
He rose and went to a door on the left. The dogs stood up and trailed him, trotting at his heels.
I was next, then Lute, walking side by side with the guard.
We passed through the door into a large courtyard.
Deep spacious stalls lined the walls on both sides, segregated by bars, wire mesh, or wooden partitions.
Creatures moved within, hidden in the shadows.
Some were eating, others slept on the straw.
A dozen animal smells floated in the air, mixing with a trace of manure.
A howl echoed through the stables, a ululating call that was like nothing I’ve ever heard before. I almost cringed on pure instinct.
The Harzi guard made a face.
“Nothing to worry about,” the beastmaster said. “Just a cub missing her mother.”
“What happened to the mother?”
“Who knows? The hunters who sold her to us did not say. A goruk might have gotten her. Or a peibasa flock. Perhaps one of her own kin wanted her territory. It matters not. Now the cub is here, and she is fed and safe.”
I had no idea what was making that disturbing noise, but I knew what a goruk was.
That beast was about twelve feet long and weighed close to twenty-five hundred pounds, with a body that resembled a giant sloth and overly long limbs armed with steak-knife-sized claws.
The goruks were excellent climbers. They scaled near-vertical surfaces.
Unlike a sloth, they were fast and carnivorous, and their mouths would give anyone nightmares.
The peibasas weren’t much cuter either. They were about eight feet long and looked like velociraptors sheathed in owl feathers.
They stood on four legs equipped with talons, had long necks and vicious teeth, and they flew around on oversized wings.
The peibasas hunted in packs. Whatever the mother of the cub was, she had to have been large, because they usually went for sizable prey.
“Do you think the hunters might have killed the mother?” I asked.
“It would take many great hunters. The men who sold her to us were few and not that great.”
We passed by a cage. The man inside it grinned at me. I took another step.
Wait, what?
I stopped and leaned back to look.
The man from the Garden. What the actual fuck?
He sat on the floor of the cage, one knee bent, foot planted on the floor, his arm resting on his knee.
No cloak this time, just a jerkin, pants, and boots, all in charcoal gray.
He was lean and long legged. His light brown hair looked a bit disheveled, and a short brown beard traced his jaw.
He’d been clean-shaven in the Garden, and I was pretty sure a man couldn’t go from smooth jaw to a beard that full in two weeks. And it did not match his eyebrows.
He was smiling at me like a happy wolf panting in the forest.
I pointed at him.
“That one is not merchandise,” the beastmaster said.
“He is an intruder,” the guard told me. “We found him in the courtyard in the middle of the night.”
Aha. “But he didn’t steal anything.”
“He didn’t. We found him before he could try,” the guard confirmed.
Crap. I’d worked too hard on making friends with Clan Harzi. I would need them later. I had to fix this right now.
I turned to the beastmaster. “This man is dangerous.”
“Him?” The beastmaster eyed the man in the cage.
“He is more than he seems. You caught him because he wanted to be caught. I don’t know what his purpose is, but it’s not good. He’s a lord. Killing or detaining him will bring trouble to the clan.”
The beastmaster sighed.
“Why should we believe you?” the guard asked.
“No one allies with a clan just for a mordok,” the beastmaster said. “She will want more from us. If we are harmed, she cannot benefit.”
“You are wise, nura.” I bowed my head.
The beastmaster sighed again. Harzi culture dictated that thieves were to be made example of. More, he had broken into their clanhouse, which insulted them and damaged their reputation. They couldn’t just let him go. They couldn’t keep him either.
“You said he wasn’t merchandise, but may I buy him?”
The beastmaster raised his thick eyebrows. This was the best solution to the problem. The clan would profit from his presence, which would wipe away the black eye on their honor.
“The price will have to be fair,” the beastmaster warned. We both knew it was another favor to the clan, but proprieties had to be observed.
“Of course, nura.”
We pondered the man in the cage.
“I have never sold a human before,” the beastmaster said.
“I have never bought one before.”
“What would be a fair price . . .”
“How long have you kept him?”
“Since last night.”
“He looks to be about the size of the oruke bull in that stall over there. Should we say the cost of the bull and enough money to pay for a dinner and green wine for the guards who captured him and for his keeper?”
The beastmaster tilted his head side to side, thinking. “Seems fair. That will come to thirty dens.”
I switched to Rellasian. “Lute, please hand the man thirty dens.”
Lute extracted his purse and counted off the money. Best thirty dens we would ever spend.
“Prepare him,” the beastmaster told the guard. The younger man bowed his head and jogged off.
“Come with me, small foreigner,” the beastmaster said. “The mordoks are kept just beyond here, in the gardens. Let me introduce you to your new best friend.”