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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 58: Slade 270
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Cooper 91
A bit of a week after they arrived, there was rain. This revealed the problem with a loose branch top to the hut. But the suggestion of closing it off had as Rudolph pointed out a problem in that he needed a place for the smoke to go. Two weeks later, both men smiled, separately, gleefully and proudly as Shella clapped for them.
The roof was enclosed in a rough stone arch with supporting branches, and a chimney (which Slade privately admitted would never win an award for beauty or straightness) with a fireplace had been built. Rudolph had learned two new words as well from English, as the local tongue had no words for ‘chimney’ or ‘fireplace’.
A month after the first hunt, a still fearful Rudolph walked with them across the wasteland to the canyon hunting grounds. Some of the garden patches were yielding food, but with three to eat, or four including Dog, they needed more food–this despite the greater yields from watering, fewer bugs, better fertilized earth, and earthworms.
The white, dusty stones of the wasteland eventually yielded to a line of green running right and left across their vision. Entering the short trees, Rudolph pointed out a tree with a singular large mango-like fruit. In the white stones, dark greens, and brown branches it was the first bright red thing he had seen in this world other than blood.
“It’s called a Shivering Tree. I don’t know why, as it doesn’t move much in the wind.” He shrugged. “It's illegal for peasants to take their fruit. The nobles would whip us to death if we took one.”
Slade paused, and studied it. As he did, he felt something off.
“Forseti, I could use a bit of wisdom here,” he said.
His eyes drifted, and he saw a whining Dog off thirty feet away, and a clearly uncomfortable Rudolph. Even Shella looked uneasy. He turned to the fruit. Something about this tree was affecting the others, but not him. Almost before he could think it, his sword had snapped out and cut the fruit loose. He caught it with his off-hand.
Sniffing it, he did not sense anything but sweetness and a mild tang. Rudolph moaned in fear, but he saw everyone after that seemed to relax a bit, except for Rudolph who was muttering to himself that he had hoped to end his days in peace, and not whipped to death. He showed the fruit to Shella, and she shrugged.
“Well, let’s find out.” He took a small bite, and it was sweet, and tangy, somewhere between a lemon and a peach. Rubbing his tongue against the small chunk of violet inner fruit inside the thick reddish outer skin inside his mouth, he waited for a sense of numbness, or a burning sensation, or for his lungs to suddenly seize up. None of this happened, and so shrugging, he swallowed the bit.
Still fine, he put the rest in his pocket. He would wait and see what happened. Turning to Rudolph, he spoke softly but firmly.
“If I am found out, I shall simply point out that I am a noble, and have a right to it, and you had no right to stop me. Nor did you encourage me to eat it in any way.”
Rudolph looked uncertain, and perhaps the Rudolph from a month ago might have panicked, but this new Rudolph was a little braver.
“Yes, Lord Slade.”
Everyone walked further into the small woods and downhill. They passed a redfur, which boldly, even impudently, stared their way and then went back to tipping over the small rocks between the abundant grasses in the canyon in its search for beetles. Slade felt as if he could see the waves of stink rising from it, and when Rudolph led them wide around the smelly little furball, he went willingly.
Shella mentioned that it was nice to be in the woods with lots of grass over the white stones, even if the woods were but twenty feet tall at the highest. Rudolph pointed out Joshua trees, and goodburners, and a woodhoe tree, and a small Shivering Tree with no fruit, and others as they walked downhill. In the distance, they could hear the trickling of a creek at the base of the shallow canyon, but then Dog suddenly went on alert.
Slade looked and saw a jumpig shoving its tusked nose into a rotten and fallen trunk. Motioning the others to stay, he rushed forward as silently as he could while drawing his sword once again. The jumpig still heard him, and turned his way. It was going to get away, Slade realized. But then its expression changed from fright to anger.
It gathered its legs underneath it, and Slade watched as waves of faint ripples in the air gathered around its haunches. Even as he ran at full tilt now, it leapt, and soared through the air at him with shocking speed. It had made a fifty foot leap like an arrow right at him, and he snapped his sword up to cut at it even as he dove to the side. The jumpig hit the blade, and tore it clean out of Slade’s hands. Crashing to the ground even as Slade turned his fall into a tumble, the jumpig rose once, with the sword still in its side, and then fell over, twitched, and did not move again.
Dog ran up and examined it, and told his master with one soft bark that all was well. His hand hurting, Slade joined the others at the jumpig where he retrieved his blade from the ravaged flank of the creature. Now he knew why the pig-like beast with the extra large haunches was called a jumpig, or jumping pig. But the question was, what had he seen as he saw the jumpig gathering itself?
“Rudolph, the first of these did not do that?”
“Were you close on it?”
Slade thought back to his first hunt, ever, about a month ago, and then nodded in recognition. It had taken the beast time to gather whatever it needed to make the jump. It was not a simple on-off thing. He nodded.
“Good man,” Shella spoke to Rudolph and asked pleasantly as she tried to avoid giving offense. “These creatures seem dangerous, but you know how to skin them. How is that?”
“Simple, great lady. I have a few spots near the canyon where I can drag up a rock on a bigger rock above the trail alongside the creek. I tip the rock off and smash a jumpig beneath it. Then I run and climb a tree and wait until it either runs off or it's dead.”
“Very clever, Rudolph,” Shella complimented him, and he swelled up with pride. Slade could see that such a technique would work well enough, but it required a lot of waiting time for the target to get into position. One might wait several hours for a jumpig to wander by, and then miss it. But with Rudolph still being under ninety pounds (he had gained a few pounds over the last month) it really was the only way he had to hunt the beasts.
“Shella, I saw something about it as it gathered itself. Some--I do not know.”
Shella thought, and then abruptly reached into his pocket for the fruit of the Shivering Tree. She took a large bite out of it, and swallowed, and suddenly laughed, and took another quick bite, so that Slade put his hand on her wrist before she could go for a third.
“You dare!” she shouted, and spoke several words causing a sudden wind to blow Slade head over tail crashing through several flimsy trees.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
