Chapter 30: Chapter 29: Survivors

The mouse dug for a good while before anything happened. And when something did, they nearly missed it. Jack was peering down into the ragged tear in the prairie, straining his eyes in the dimming light of his flashlight beam when a trickle of mud nearly at Meynardo’s feet fell away and down.

“Hold it!” he warned.

Meynardo stopped his digging, looking up over his shoulder. Jack pointed to the shifting mud. A hand showed at the edge of the trickle, poking up from below and pulling another small plug free.

Either Meynardo hadn’t got the angle just right, or those digging upward hadn’t, and he’d nearly passed by them overhead. He shifted quickly and began to assist whoever was working from below. In a matter of minutes, a filthy creature with a pot belly and burly arms pulled itself up out of the freshly opened hole.

Jack eyed it skeptically. It was still a mouse, generally speaking, but its form was considerably more anthropoid. More like a cartoon mouse from one of those afternoon kids’ shows. The ones from back in the day, when the animators really worked at it. Reaching down, this new specimen helped another of them up. Younger, apparently, although it was difficult to judge. Female, this time. Bosomy and wearing a dress and bonnet, both sodden and grimy. In her arms, she clutched a tiny, button-eyed creature that looked one hundred percent a baby mouse of the everyday variety.

And so they came, straggling up out of the ground. Forty-six of them, ranging from garden variety mice, to a few who, save for their stature, ears, and short snouts, looked nearly human. All were looking apprehensively up at him as they gathered in the rain.

Meynardo was speaking to them in hushed tones, with the occasional gesture or glance over his shoulder in Jack’s direction. After a few minutes, they began to disburse, egged along by an older looking, nearly humanoid mouse in mud spattered maroon robes and matching, wide brimmed conical hat.

Jack watched them for a moment as they scattered slowly, some climbing up what he could now see were trails carved into the sides of the sandstone upthrust, presumably to the shattered ruins of what had been their homes. Others moved to the corpses of the invaders.

He wondered at first what the latter were up to until he saw the first of them start working at the remains of one with a tiny knife. He had to turn away then. They were retrieving their dead. Shaking his head, he turned for the horses, moving slowly and with a pronounced limp.

He shucked out of his rapidly deteriorating armor. He hung the brigandine from the chestnut’s saddle, observing the rents in the blue leather and the plates beneath. He wondered as he ran a finger along one of the rents; had he really only purchased it a couple of days ago?

The mail wasn’t in much better shape, nor the vambraces. That swordsman had been no joke. He shrugged out of the bloody arming doublet next, and the linen tunic beneath.

He shivered wildly as the rain doused his naked skin, but it would help to cleanse the wounds he seemed to be accumulating like freckles in the sun. He’d gotten the greaves off and was sitting on his hind end in the wet grass gingerly skinning a torn pant leg up over one bloody shin, trying to decide whether he should just peel the trousers off as well, when his companion found him again.

Taking his hat in his hands and bowing deeply, Meynardo addressed him seriously. “Friend Adventurer,” he began, voice catching.

“Jack,” Jack provided. “Jackson Grenell.”

The mouse nodded. “Jackson Grenell,” he went on. “I —we— owe you more than you can know. Everything....” he paused, struggling for words.

“But we’re not done yet, are we?” Jack sighed into the silence, pausing at his task and staring dismally at the blood washing down his leg.

Meynardo heaved a great sigh of his own and shook his head. “We... we cannot remain here,” he managed finally. “Even had we the desire to rebuild in a place of such memories. The scent of death will carry, even in this weather. Other predators... larger, more fearsome, will follow it back, even do we rebuild the wards.”

So now he was expected to adopt a tribe of mice? Was he hearing correctly? “And what would you have me do?” he wondered aloud as he stood to dig through the saddlebags for something with which to treat this newest batch of wounds.

“We must find a safe place,” the mouse didn’t hesitate. “Perhaps a protector of some sort. We are tiny, but we are fierce! There are many tasks we could perform for the right master in exchange for a safe place to live.”

Jack paused as he was withdrawing the aid kit, thinking of Rosaluna. Wondering what the old woman would do to him if he brought her a basketful of talking rodents.

“I’m kind of in the middle of something,” he ventured without real hope.

“We will aid you,” Meynardo assured him.

Right. “You have any idea what I’m up against?” he wondered dubiously as he flopped back down to address the damage the dire hares had done.

“The bandit camp, obviously,” Meynardo’s voice was firm. “I was headed there when I found you. How many other reasons could there have been for you to be out there under arms?”

“You were heading for the bandit camp?” Jack couldn’t believe his ears. “To do what?”

Meynardo raised an eyebrow, an act almost invisible in the darkness and wet. “I was going for help,” he said matter-of-factly.

Jack stopped, his leg half wrapped, and stared. “You who the what now?”

Meynardo smiled a grim smile. “Oh, granted,” he assured the man. “I was not about to request their aid straight out as I did yours. More like I was going to attack them and lead them back here. Introduce them to the dire hares and allow nature to take its course as it were.”

Jack shook his head disbelievingly as he finished dressing the wounds on his leg. He started in on his hand, then. One of the hares had gotten a good bite of the back of it, but hadn’t taken any chunks out.

“What makes you think you could’ve gotten them to chase you?” he wondered.

“My arrows,” Meynardo stated grimly. “And my bow.”

Jack remembered the hare convulsing after being hit. “Poison?” he wondered.

“Indeed,” Meynardo nodded. “Derived from the venom of specially bred spiders, cultivated molds, and various plants. Oh, nothing that would kill a fully grown human, I’m afraid. But rest assured, it would be extremely painful, and not something to ignore.”

Jack nodded, running his hands along his arms and his other leg, looking for more holes. “So, you just keep pricking them until they’ve had enough and decide you’re trouble worthy of a chase?”

“Indeed,” Meynardo repeated. “Although, I much prefer the outcome we arrived at.

"Uhm, your cheek is bleeding as well.”

“Thanks,” Jack grinned. “You’re kind of a hard-ass, aren’t you?”

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The mouse measured himself. “I am Meynardo Chee-Ch-Cheep,” he proclaimed somewhat forlornly. “Called Long Racer. I am a rank eight ranger. And, for my size, a renowned hard-ass.

“Now, will you aid us?”

Jack sighed softly to himself. He’d answered that question already, hadn’t he? When he’d diverted to rescue the mouse’s village. It was pretty obvious they weren’t rescued yet, so what options did he have? “You do understand that I can’t promise I’ll even be alive by morning, don’t you?”

“I have faith in you,” Meynardo gave him a quick bow.

“How long will it take them to get ready?” Jack asked resignedly.

Meynardo turned to look up into the darkness of the ruined village. His people were moving about slowly, uncertainly. Many of them were still trying to come to grips with this latest tragedy which had befallen them. He doubted there would be much portable salvage, but there were personal belongings some would want to at least try to save. Some mementos of the lost.

“Not so long,” he told the man. “There is not much left. But the dead must be put to rest. Such as we are able at least in this weather.”

Having put himself together insofar as he might, Jack stowed the dwindling remains of the first aid supplies. He didn’t bother yet to re-don his sodden clothing or armor. He couldn’t sense anything out in the grass, and the soaked linen wouldn’t warm him. He did throw his tattered cloak over his shoulders, though. Wool was itchy, but it did retain warmth even when wet.

“Anything I can do to help?” he asked.

Meynardo hesitated. “My... friend,” he started. “My... brother in arms. We two were among those drawing the hares away to give the rest a chance to reach the refuge.” He paused for a long breath. “He fell,” his voice broke. “There,” and he pointed northward. “It was then that I realized I alone would not be able to... when I decided I would need aid not to be found among my people.”

Jack gave him a minute, but he didn’t go on. He thought he might understand. Meynardo had shown no fear against the hares, but there were some things that required a different sort of bravery. Some things that you didn’t want to be real, so you didn’t want them confirmed. Couldn’t see them confirmed.

“Let’s go, then,” he said softly. "He’ll want to rest."

“Yes,” Meynardo said, eyes downcast. “Thank you. That is the least of the debts I owe him.”

“This was just the two of you?” Jack asked a few minutes later.

“Yes,” Meynardo nodded. “In this direction. And more him than me, honestly.”

They’d passed more than half a dozen dead hares already, and they were barely fifty yards from the former village. Meynardo drew up at an eighth body, dimly seen in the falling rain.

“Here,” he announced. “Here is where he fell. My friend. My brother. Osmando Ch-Ch-Cheep, called half-tail. Son of—”

“I’m still alive, idiot!” came a muffled, barely understood voice from beneath the carcass. “Get this thing off of me!”

Meynardo froze for a moment, a look of shocked astonishment washing across his face. Jack, meanwhile, reached hurriedly down and pulled the hare clear by its ears, revealing a crumpled figure mashed into the mud beneath, one arm bent at an odd angle.

This one was more anthropoid than Meynardo, and wore pants, a blood-spattered off white linen shirt, and a black felt vest. A droop hat lay beside it, mashed flat, a bedraggled pinfeather protruding from the tiny silver band.

Meynardo reached hurriedly down and helped his injured friend to his feet, struggling to brush the mud from him as Osmando angrily slapped his hands away with his one good one. “Leave off, you,” he grated. “I’m fine. Find me my bow if you want to be useful. It’s somewhere over there,” and he pointed over his shoulder.

Jack winced in pain as assurance and command infiltrated his brain. Osmando’s speech was at once unintelligible and understood. Like a badly out of synch translation — an echo overlaying and overriding what was being said.

Shaking his head clear, Jack examined the hare, finding the cause of death. A needle thin shaft, broken at its midpoint and fletched with what looked to be frilled grass protruded from its throat. As though Osmando had rammed it in by hand rather than firing it from his bow. Well, that would explain his arm.

Osmando was eyeing Jack skeptically while this was going on, tilting his head this way and that. He clearly wasn’t understanding what it was he was seeing. Just as clearly, he wasn’t liking it.

“Here!” Meynardo called out from a short distance away, holding aloft a bow very similar to and slightly larger than his own. “Found it!”

“Is it—?” Osmando started.

“It’s fine!” Meynardo called back, already returning. “Didn’t even break the string.”

Osmando took the bow from his smaller friend’s hands and turned to Jack. “You...” he ordered, looking up and hesitating. “...whatever you are. Unhand my kill, if you please?”

Frowning at both the tone and discordant delivery, Jack tossed the dead hare to the ground. What came next surprised him more than a little. Osmando approached the corpse, clutching his bow at its grip, and extending one limb out toward the beast.

Jack saw the jewel, then. a shard of aquamarine the size of a grain of wheat. Osmando mumbled something in a low voice and the jewel began to glow faintly. A familiar aura sheathed the hare. It began to fade only a moment later, along with the carcass, coalescing at last into a fountain of glittering sparkles of light floating gently skyward.

It was Jack’s turn to stare open-mouthed at the small scattering of gifts that had taken its place.

Osmando, his task finished, gifts gathered, turned back and noticed, one eyebrow going up.

“How did you do that?” Jack wondered. “I thought you needed to be a priest or wizard to free souls like that without a bounty token.”

Osmando reared back before turning to Meynardo. Meynardo shrugged. Both looked back to the man. “And why would you think such a thing?” Osmando asked bluntly. “Every child who takes the path of adventure is taught the freeing spell before reaching rank two. Only minor healing is taught before.”

“It’s true, then?” Meynardo asked. “You are ungifted? I thought surely— How, then, do you wield such powerful weapons? Wear such powerful armor? The way you fight.... you spoke of classes.”

Jack was getting used to the echoing harmonics of the older mouse’s voice now, and it no longer hurt his head. Much.

Scrubbing at his face with one hand, trying hard to cover embarrassment he shouldn’t be feeling, he wondered how he could be expected to know? It wasn’t as though either of the grand total of two mages he’d encountered since learning of his status had told him or anything, was it?

“I’m... not from around here,” he told them after a moment. “Where I come from, things work... differently.”

“Ah,” Meynardo smiled, coming to his rescue. “Of course.”

Osmando gave his friend the side eye, but remained, for the moment, silent.

“So, you are gifted?” Meynardo went on. “What rank are you then? What class, if I may ask?”

Jack wasn’t sure he wanted to tell them. The older one would be even less likely to believe him. On the other hand, why should he care what a mouse thought of him?

But no. Glancing back at the trail of hares the pair had left in their wake, he realized he did care. He respected warriors. He respected bravery. And, truthfully, he wondered how he, himself, would fare pitted against a couple of dozen or so creatures twenty times his size and capable of swallowing him whole.

“Overall, I’m rank nine,” he admitted finally. “Primarily, I’m a sentinel.”

Four glowing eyes grew large as saucers in the darkness. Then Osmando snorted disbelievingly. “Of course you are,” he sneered. “Because you’re not from around here. Where you’re from is a thousand years ago, and they don’t learn to release Jehsha’s gifts until rank ten there, eh? Ridiculous!”

“Osmando!” Meynardo scolded his friend.

“No,” Jack held up a hand. “He’s right to scoff, Meynardo,” he said. “Or he would be if I’d come up the normal way.”

He copped a squat so as not to loom so far above them. “Osmando,” he began. “I know Meynardo’s class and rank. What about yours? If you don’t mind?”

Osmando seemed to be having as much difficulty understanding him as he’d been having understanding Osmando. The mouse thought about it for a moment before answering. “I am a March Warden,” he told the man. "And my rank is seventeen.”

Jack nodded, trying the math in his head, but lacking the background. “How long did it take you to reach nine?” he asked.

The mouse’s eyes narrowed. “Two years,” he said evenly. “Nearly three.”

“And would it surprise you to know,” Jack smiled, “that three days ago, I didn’t know what a sentinel was? Or a rank?”

“That’s absurd!” Osmando spat. “How, then, did you—?”

“Jehsha’s Window,” Jack told him. “Jehsha’s Window granted me both my rank and my classes.”

Neither mouse had an answer for that.

“You know about the mirrors, then?”

“We do,” Meynardo answered in a subdued voice. “The master had a special one built for us in his castle in the early days. We have not seen one since the castle fell, however.”

That wasn’t hard to imagine. “So you guys really are adventurers, then?” he smiled.

“Monsters,” Osmando growled. “We are classified as monsters.”

Jack reared back at that, taken off guard. And by the time he’d gathered himself, the mice had moved away.

He caught up as Osmando was performing the ritual on the next of his victims. “Could you teach me that?” he asked hopefully.

“No,” the mouse replied without turning.

“It is a thing for mages,” Meynardo explained.

“Why would that—?”

“Because we cannot see clearly enough to know if you’re doing it correctly,” Osmando interrupted, still not turning from the glistening cloud of disbursing light. “If you were to do it incorrectly, there would be no way for us to know how you’d gone wrong, nor how to correct you, and any magic misapplied is dangerous.”

Jack looked down at the younger mouse, who nodded agreement. He sighed heavily. “So I’m out of luck until I get back, then, I guess,” he lamented.

“Or perhaps Old Luciandro could teach you,” Meynardo shrugged.

“Luciandro?” Jack wondered.

“Our mage,” Osmando turned to him finally. “Same as taught us.”

The older mouse in the robes, Jack decided. Strange it hadn’t occurred to him before. The little guy might as well have been wearing a sign, dressed as he was.