Chapter 24 #2
He found the scholar, the gnole, and the mule all in a large loose box at the end.
Edmund was putting packs onto Sweetness’s back, then taking them off again and making adjustments.
In the absence of real saddlebags, he had been doing a great deal of packing and repacking to make sure that none of their makeshift equipment rubbed any raw spots on the mule’s hide.
The Dervish was by now fairly certain that this particular mule’s hide was six inches thick and made of a combination of stone and evil, but Father’s Brother would have approved of Edmund’s care.
“Were you just planning on leaving without me, then?” the Dervish asked, trying to keep the edge out of his voice and aware that he wasn’t succeeding.
“What? No!” Edmund looked up, clearly shocked that he’d even suggested it. “You were asleep and I didn’t want to … I was going to ask if you wanted…” He stopped and took a deep breath. “I didn’t know if you still wanted to travel together.”
The Dervish, who was starting to feel like a right bastard at this point, said airily, “And leave our gentle lady gnole to defend you against villains on the road? She’d never forgive me.”
Dog Violet snorted. She had taken advantage of the available soap and water to do some truly heroic laundry. She now wore substantially fewer rags but the ones she did have were extremely clean, if wrinkled. “A gnole will show her teeth, all villains run away.”
“Probably, but in case of any stragglers, I might as well come along.” He hefted his pack.
“Oh,” Edmund said. “I—err—thought you might want to stay another night.”
“Ancestors, no. The sauna’s lovely but every day we go south is a day closer to this scholar of yours and, who knows, getting this curse off me. Just let me eat some breakfast and we’ll be off.”
“Yes. Yes, of course. As long as you need.” Edmund was staring at Sweetness’s neck as if the secrets of the universe were embedded in the coarse gray hair.
This is going to be a very awkward morning, the Dervish thought. He did not think he could face it on an empty stomach. He turned away and left Edmund to the job of rebalancing Sweetness’s packs.
When he had eaten a bowl of porridge sweetened with honey and acquired bread and cheese for the road, he came back out to find his traveling companions waiting outside the stable.
Dog Violet was sprawled across the draft horse’s back, and Sweetness clearly felt that if she was going to be awake anyway, she might as well get moving.
It was the closest to fellow feeling that the Dervish had ever had for the mule.
They set off without a word and made it perhaps five minutes down the road before the Dervish couldn’t stand it anymore. He glanced over at Dog Violet. “You know, we’re getting into farm country. You might be able to sell that ravenous beast somewhere.”
The gnole’s ears went back. “A gnole will not. And a horse has a name.”
The Dervish ran a hand through his hair. Apparently he was going to offend all his companions this morning. Just as well Large Francis isn’t here, or I’d probably accidentally cause an international incident. “Oh, well, if you’ve named him that’s another matter. What’s he called?”
Dog Violet turned to Edmund and said something in gnolespeech that sounded like a huffed descending growl. Edmund thought for a minute. “Bigfeet? No. Greathoof? I think that’s closer.”
“Hrr-urruh?” The Dervish put his fingers to his face to indicate lifted whiskers.
Dog Violet stared at him for a long moment, then went off into peals of laughter. Edmund put his hand over his mouth.
“I take it that wasn’t right?”
“Was good for a human,” Dog Violet said. “Hrr-urrruoh.”
The Dervish tried a few more times before finally giving up in defeat. His throat simply didn’t make sounds like that.
“Okay, what am I actually saying?”
“Big ankle,” Edmund said. “Which is a disease. I think it’s like dropsy for us. You got the whiskers right, though.”
“How did you ever learn to speak Gnole?”
“Very patient teachers. And my accent is vile.”
“Eh, book-man is not so bad. And book-man can hear, even if book-man can’t smell.”
“Can you at least teach me to say hello?” the Dervish asked.
“A gnole can try.”
Greathoof continued down the road, immense hooves ringing on the packed earth, while on his back, the language lesson continued.
By the time they stopped for lunch, the Dervish had decided that simply pretending nothing was wrong was not going to fix things. He waited until Dog Violet had gone off to answer the call of nature, and said, “I think I was extremely hard on you last night.”
“What? No!” Edmund looked appalled, either by the statement or by the fact that they were having to talk about it at all. “No, you—I mean, you absolutely have the right—no one would ever think otherwise—”
“Right,” said the Dervish. “But I should have said something. You didn’t know, and I should have warned you.
It’s just good manners before you screw someone.
You tell them what you like and what you don’t.
‘Don’t talk about the scars’ is no different than ‘I don’t suck cock.
’” He cleared his throat. “In my defense, you’re the first person I’ve come on to since getting shoved in the sword, so I’m obviously rusty. ”
“I still should have known better,” Edmund said. “I didn’t think.”
“Edmund,” the Dervish said wearily, “I know you. Even if you had thought, you wouldn’t have dreamed someone did that to me deliberately.”
The scholar hung his head. “But now you’re trying to make me feel better,” he mumbled, “and you’re the one it happened to, and you shouldn’t have to worry about how I feel about it…”
“No,” said the Dervish, “which is why I hope you’ll accept the damn apology or whatever this is, so that we can stop talking about our feelings and go back to being normal people at each other. Or as normal as this group gets, anyway.”
“Humans being normal?” Dog Violet asked, emerging from a hedgerow. “Are humans well?”
“We’re fine,” Edmund said. He smiled at the Dervish then, a little shaky around the edges, but still a smile. “We’ll manage.”