16. N #3
Her experience with Haldeen’s control rod and her collar suggested that these rods served a similar purpose, and kept the creature under control.
These rods would be tailored to what would hurt a creature made of … what? … stone?
Still, somehow, it helped me. She looked at the loose rod.
It definitely wobbled a bit as Rock moved.
Time to square the ledger. She looked around for something she could use as a ladder, and saw the cot.
Pick it up, lean it against the thing’s size, and perhaps get enough height to scramble up on top.
She went and got the cot, and set it up against Rock’s side, then went to climb.
Rock shifted away a bit, and the cot slid. She tried again, and Rock moved away.
“Hold still, you big baby. I’m trying to help.”
The third time she positioned the cot next to its side, it held still.
She found she could easily slip her toes between the tight cords that supported the thin pallet she slept on.
She scaled the side of the cot far enough to be able to just reach the control rod just behind the one that appeared loose.
She remained a bit hazy on its … anatomy …
didn’t seem like quite the right word. Perhaps “geography”?
This rod was further away from the part that appeared to eat.
Rock appeared larger than most boats she had seen, so astern?
She grabbed the rod and used it to anchor herself so that she could get a purchase against its side and lever herself up. It took a bit of scrambling, and rather more swearing, but soon it was done. She had summited the Rock. Now at the top she walked along its back to the rod that leaked fluid.
Close up, this looked more and more like some kind of infection where the control rod had been driven in.
Rock shifted a bit as she approached for a closer look.
The rod definitely wobbled. The sensation under her feet felt a bit like how she imagined an earthquake would feel, the sudden lurch beneath her leaving her twisting and shifting to hold her balance.
“Time to square up, my good sir,” she said, while positioning herself to draw out the rod.
“A favor for a favor.” She positioned her feet on either side of the loose control rod at about shoulder width apart, where she could use her back.
“Best done quickly,” she said, trying to mimic the tone the chirugeons used when setting her fighting-slaves’ broken bones. “Best done quickly.”
She put both hands on the rod and heaved.
Things happened rather quickly then. The rod came out easily, rather more easily than she expected.
She realized she put way too much back into it.
She saw a spurt of some kind of greenish ichor follow the rod as it emerged from Rock’s back, as she stumbled back and overbalanced.
She heard something that sounded like a chuff from somewhere below, and Rock heaved itself sideways, taking her feet even further out from under her.
She started to slide down Rock’s side, felt the slide turn to a fall, and her stomach lurched with terror as the stone floor loomed up in her vision.
This is going to hu— She had just enough time to turn her head so she didn’t hit face-first.
Then felt a blinding pain as her head struck the stone floor, and the world went dark.
Triana woke, in her cot, covered by her blanket.
Again. Her last memory was of falling, and striking her head on the floor.
She remembered that clearly enough, and she knew she hadn’t navigated back to her cot under her own power, much less put the cot back in the first place.
She sat up. She felt a dull throb in her head, from where she struck, but that was all.
She looked at the straw-filled canvas sack she used for a mattress.
It was streaked with fresh blood. Hers, and more than she wanted to see, but not nearly enough for a head wound.
She raised her fingers gingerly to her scalp.
She had no doubt her hair should have been matted with blood.
There was a little, and well scabbed into her hair.
She rubbed through the small amount of matted blood, felt no wound.
She looked at the blood on the mattress.
Definitely a wound. She felt her scalp, feeling for some other injury. None.
She stood up, and while her body was sore from the fall, she didn’t see or feel any of the injuries that a headlong fall from thrice her height should have brought. And apparently Rock had even put the cot back. She looked at that for a long moment. How? It had no hands that she could see.
She stepped down the two short steps and crossed over to where Rock rested, taking up about a third of the cage.
“So,” she said conversationally, “if you can put the cot back, then you can get your own food? ….”
She trailed off, realizing then what does it need me for?
She moved quickly to a thread that didn’t suggest her disposability.
“Thank you for that. You can heal. I split my skull, the blood on the mattress tells me that, but I’ve no wound, so you fixed that.”
She paused, thinking a moment. “You … must have healed me when I was sick … somehow. I realize you might have done that for your reasons, and not mine, as you need me to eat.”
She winced at the clumsiness of it all, but was the best she could do to remind it that it needed her. “But, I’m still grateful.”
She did want to remind it she had done it a service as well.
“Well, let’s have a look at you.” She tried to assess how intelligent it might be.
So far, it had shown no capacity (or inclination) to communicate directly, so she worked to assess it based upon what it had done.
Even a human slave could form a plan to get fed, and execute simple steps when directed.
They had a rudimentary intelligence …. Rock’s actions so far put it on that level.
Much like humans, intelligent enough to do basic problem solving to get something they wanted.
Still, she had a debt she needed to clear.
A good turn for a good turn. She walked a quarter way around its bulk, then backed up far enough to see where she had removed the rod.
The ichor still streaked its side, but instead of the stinking matter that flowed before, she saw some kind of milky fluid welling up.
She couldn’t really see clearly, but it seemed to be crystallizing around the wound site.
She looked around for the control rod she had pulled out.
It had dropped some distance from where she had fallen, and had rolled up against the bars.
She went over to it and picked it up. It looked to be nearly five feet in length, long enough to touch her chin.
The shaft had the weight and heft of bronze.
One end had a square point with a short barb, while the other end had a blunt, round head.
The top of it looked smashed down and split, a bit like a mushroom cap.
It took her a moment to realize that had been the end that the hammer had struck repeatedly, driving the rod deeper into Rock’s back.
She knew bronze to be a soft metal, as such things went, but this had been done with enough force to deform the end struck by the sledge. It looked … brutal.
She looked over at Rock, who waited patiently near the hopper. She heard what she thought might be mouthparts moving, stone on stone.
“Hungry?” she asked. “Well, if anyone deserves dinner, it would be you.”
She looked around, trying to think of a place to hide a five foot long bronze metal rod wider than her thumb.
The cell presented a few choices. The obvious choice would be the cot, and the first place where a search for anything would start.
She looked around. Something less obvious.
Her eyes settled on the hopper full of straw and manure She walked towards the manure bin, thinking to slide the rod into the dried dung.
She seriously doubted a guard would look there.
Rock shifted a bit, trying to edge away from the rod.
She looked at it, then the rod, and understood.
“I’m sorry,” she said and placed it on her cot to deal with later.
Rock clacked its mouthparts as she got her shovel and started spreading the dried mess out in front of it.
The work kept her hands busy, making the slow circle of feeding it, scraping the ash, and filling the bucket.
Her mind, freed by her hands’ monotony, whirled with thoughts and implications of what had taken place.
The fall had confirmed that Rock could heal her if it … “it” doesn’t seem right, definitely some kind of animal. Time to throw a dart, and hope I hit a gender. It was named Rock, and Rock feels more like a male name, so “I’ll simply assume” … Rock is male.
He had picked her up, dusted her off, set her insensate in her cot, and cured her hurts …
not once, but twice. She had already gleaned an intelligence from its actions, but now she started to revise upward how smart it might be.
She slowed a bit as she thought through the implications of that.
A horse could not have done that. A dog …
might have. A human slave, given the chance for a kind of revenge against the masters, might have let her die.
So it might be as intelligent as a human slave, but it seemed to be much less inclined to hold a grudge.
Or it can tell the difference between a fellow captive and a master. So what had the others done to get squashed?
Well the answer to that was under her bed where she had put it on arrival and not touched since. The rod to make it move. She hadn’t used it once. So … it hadn’t squashed her, and didn’t have a motive to get back at her for hurting it.
And then I pulled that festering rod out, and it recognized that I was acting very differently from its previous keepers. Just have to hope that the message it received was the same one I tried to send.
Or so she reasoned, anyway.
She stopped and leaned on the shovel as it …
he … methodically ground through the trail of matted straw and dung.
The actions in caring for her suggested comprehension, motivation …
intelligence. Perhaps not a lot, by her standards, but enough to see a bloody, cracked skull or a fever fit to roast meat that needed to be tended if it was to have breakfast.
Intelligence. From a house-sized piece of stone that looked like a cross between a cottage and the world’s largest oyster-shell.
Her stomach rumbled and she went to fill it with water again.