Chapter 22
In what the Dervish would swear was the greatest miracle of the age, nothing terrible happened on the way to the swamp.
They were not set on by bandits or dragons or farmers intent on human sacrifice.
Nothing caught fire. There were probably wolves somewhere, but the Dervish didn’t hear them, or (more importantly) see them.
Even the weather stayed clear, and in fact became pleasantly warm as the elevation continued to drop.
Spring seemed to advance as they watched, as if the travelers carried it with them out of the hills.
This was a very good thing, both for the Dervish’s nerves and because they hadn’t managed to liberate any grain.
Sweetness could live off things that you’d use to build fences with, but their stolen draft horse couldn’t.
They stopped in meadows where he could graze for an hour or two at a time and made camp in the most open areas they could find, which were more likely to have grass.
He had thought about turning the horse loose, in the expectation that the beast would go back to his familiar barn, but Dog Violet would probably have tried to knife anyone who suggested it.
She had taken a liking to the massive beast, talking to him in gnolespeech and draping herself over his broad back in a way that looked less like riding and more like sprawling.
The horse seemed to like her, too, although not as much as he liked Sweetness.
The Dervish couldn’t tell if the mule liked her new worshipper or not.
Possibly she just liked the frequent stops to graze.
The horse still lost weight, even with their slow pace, but the Dervish was fairly sure he’d been underweight to begin with.
His previous owners had likely run low on hay toward the end of the year.
“At least we’re not asking you to pull a plow,” he told the horse, stroking the beast’s cheek.
The horse sighed heavily and lipped at the Dervish’s sleeve.
Those same owners were probably very low on feed right now, given how the barn had burned. The Dervish felt a pang for the animals, but none at all for the people.
He still hadn’t told Edmund that Otto was dead, and Dog Violet had kept his … well, secret was a strong term. He felt no guilt whatsoever for having killed the man. But Edmund probably would have felt guilty, and the Dervish didn’t see any reason to subject him to that.
Angharad would have laughed herself sick.
Sparing someone’s feelings? You, Mister The-World-Is-A-Cruel-Place-And-Everyone-Just-Needs-To-Deal-With-It?
The Dervish would have laughed along with her, mostly at himself.
Edmund seemed so sheltered, so much of the time, and then the Dervish would remember the look in his eyes when he talked about werkblight, or the fact that he’d palmed a knife and passed it over with a kiss, thereby saving both their lives.
That kiss, or rather, the one that came after it, was still weighing on his mind.
It had been good. Much, much better than it had any right to be.
But it hadn’t been repeated, and the Dervish suspected that Edmund didn’t want it to be repeated.
You brought him back his books and he gave you a handshake, for the ancestors’ sake.
Hardly the act of a man in throes of unrequited passion.
Which was good, of course, because Edmund really wasn’t his type.
Yes, granted, he had fantasized about sliding his hands over the scholar’s chest in a way that didn’t involve checking for broken ribs, then finding his way lower, maybe pressing against Edmund’s back and wrapping one hand around his— Okay, yes, definitely there had been fantasizing, but that didn’t really mean anything.
The Dervish was a red-blooded man trapped permanently in his prime so of course he was going to fantasize about something.
The various lovers of his youth were all dead and thinking about that put a real damper on his libido, so his choices were limited.
If Edmund hadn’t been available, it would have been something else.
Trees with holes in them … suggestive rocks …
Fine, there is very little in these godforsaken hills to fantasize about.
That just proves my point. I’m only thinking about him because he’s the only male of my species in the immediate vicinity.
Once we get to an inn or a village of any size, I’ll be spoiled for choice and this will all go back to normal.
The draft horse exhaled meaningfully at him and the Dervish stopped woolgathering. “I think our giant friend here has eaten this spot bare.”
Edmund blew on the page in front of him. He’d been sketching in his little journal again. The Dervish peered over his shoulder and saw a delicate drawing of an equally delicate flower.
“What’s that?”
“Hmm?” Edmund looked down. “Oh, it’s trillium. An interesting little plant.” He pointed.
The Dervish looked at the plant in question. It had three medium-green leaves, splotched with slightly lighter green, and a triangular white flower. As plants went, it was fine, he supposed. He’d seen better. “What’s so interesting about it?”
“They’re very hard to grow,” Edmund said, putting his journal away and standing. “I mean, you can dig one up and replant it and it grows, but it was very hard to get the seeds to germinate. Scholars didn’t even know how the plant reproduced itself in the wild. But then someone found the answer!”
He smiled so brilliantly that the Dervish found himself smiling back. “And?” he said, not because he actually cared about how to grow a specific flower, but simply because he wanted Edmund to keep smiling.
“Yes! It was ants.”
This was not quite what the Dervish expected. “Ants?”
“The trillium seeds have a fleshy bit that ants love, so they carry the seeds off to their tunnels and eat the part they like, then put the rest of the seed in their trash heap. But the fleshy bit is only there so the ants pick it up, and the seed itself starts to grow, in what’s essentially a warm little compost heap an inch or two underground. Isn’t that brilliant?”
“Yes,” said the Dervish, who was getting a bit hung up on the phrase fleshy bit.
“I always wondered what it would be like for the ant, to come back and find the trillium growing in the trash heap. Like finding an enormous tree coming out of your chamber pot.”
The Dervish glanced involuntarily at the trees lining the road, as if they might be conspiring to sneak into chamber pots the world over.
“The scholar who finally discovered the connection proposed that it be called myrmecochory. Dispersal by ants.”
“… Huh.”
“In-my-homeland-there-is-a-water-plant-that-acts-similiarly-but-it-is-dispersed-by-an-aquatic-insect.”
“Really? Can you describe it?”
The Dervish went to help Dog Violet with the horses.
“Scholars, eh?”
“A gnole is glad someone thinks these things, because a gnole isn’t going to.”
“You and me both.” Myrmecochory. Just rolled off his tongue, because somebody somewhere watched flowers and ants for ancestors know how long.
I wonder if somebody else had to make sure they ate properly.
“Honey, the ants will still be there tomorrow, your dinner is getting cold.” The Dervish tried to feel amused and slightly superior, a sensation that normally came easily to him, except …
Dammit, it was kind of interesting. He’d watched ants as a child, usually while the sheep were getting down to the serious business of grazing.
The way they marched busily back and forth, and the way a lost ant would run around in alarm until it found its way back to some invisible path and rejoined its brethren.
How they could take something—a bit of bread dropped by a very bored young shepherd, for example—and industriously reduce it to crumbs, to be carried off below.
And apparently somewhere a flower had also been watching the ants, and thought, I bet they can help me.
Which was a lot more brains than he’d normally give a flower credit for.
Probably a god was involved somewhere to do the actual thinking.
Maybe the god of ants and the god of flowers got together and worked out an exchange.
I’ll feed your people if you plant mine …
He’d always known the world was cruel. It was just odd to discover that sometimes it was also fascinating.
Myrmecochory. Huh.
It took them three more days to reach the swamp.
The main road eventually turned south, but a narrow, rutted track continued east. The landscape changed, growing rocky again, but in a different fashion, the hills sharper and littered with large stones scattered about, as if immense columns had been dropped from a great height.
The vegetation also changed, the gray-green of pines giving way to more intense green hues, and shrubs growing up thickly between the trunks.
The Dervish made a passing remark about not recognizing any of the trees here, and Edmund took it upon himself to identify them as they passed.
This should have annoyed the Dervish, but he found he actually rather enjoyed it.
Edmund clearly cared so much about whether some random tree was a box elder or a bigroot maple, and his delight when the Dervish correctly identified one was so unfeigned that the Dervish couldn’t help but respond.
He couldn’t remember the last time someone had actually been delighted by him. Charmed, thrilled, engrossed, aroused … very definitely aroused … but delight was a new experience.
It was a good thing that he had no taste for innocence, or this would be a definite temptation.
Fortunately the Dervish preferred experienced men that were, if not jaded, at least well versed in the arts of flirtation and seduction.
That was definitely not Edmund, unless the man was trying to seduce him by listing plant species.
Which, now that I think of it, is not actually that far-fetched.
“Wait, what did you call that one? Salmonberry? Like the fish?”
“That’s right.”