Chapter Five
He walked across a sandy plain, dragging his wife behind him by her hair. She didn’t complain, but she wouldn’t speak to him either, since they had been arguing. As he walked along, he kept finding fruit and coins and all sorts of things that he wanted to pick up, but he had his hands full of her hair, so he couldn’t. The sun was hot and bright overhead, and … and Androkles slid back into waking reality. He was truly tired—it felt like clawing his way out of Raphos Corpse-eater’s iron grasp. He stretched and yawned loudly.
Looking around, Androkles saw that the kits were both awake and waiting for him expectantly, so he decided it was time to feed the kits again. This was turning out to be a lot of work; no wonder everyone bought slaves for it. Seeing something like this, Athanasios would have laughed at Androkles, if he was alive. Probably started calling him nursemaid and asking if he could see Androkles’s teats.
“How do you boys feel?” Androkles asked.
“Fine,” said the white one.
“My stomach feels weird,” said the black one.
“Does it hurt?”
“No … I don’t think so.”
Androkles scowled. “How does your mouth feel?” he asked.
“Fine …” he said, but wasn’t very convincing.
Androkles knelt down. “Open up, let me see,” he said, putting his thumb on the boy’s chin.
The kit obediently opened his jaw as far as he could; his mouth looked fine. Those teeth of his were sharper than a man’s, though. Much sharper. No wonder his leg had bled for so long. He should probably still beat the white one for that, once the kit recovered.
The white one leaned over to look as well, unsure what he was looking at. Androkles explained, “Sometimes when people go a long time without food, their mouth turns red and their teeth start falling out. He’s fine, though.”
“But his mouth is red,” he replied.
“It’s normal red, not bloody red. He’s fine,” said Androkles.
“Can you look at mine?” asked the white one, sounding nervous and opening his mouth as wide as he could.
“Looks fine to me,” said Androkles, slightly amused. “Let me know if your guts start to hurt. A little is okay, since your stomach probably forgot what to do with food and it has to remember. But if it’s a lot, let me know. Got it?” They both nodded.
Androkles stood to fetch another mug of honeyed young wine and added, “And let me know if you need to go to the bushes. Even just to make water.” They both nodded again. It might be a day or more before that happened, he figured, but one never knew.
When he fed them, the white one wanted to try holding the mug on his own, and Androkles let him, wondering if he could. However, after holding it to his mouth for a few seconds, his arms started to shake, and Androkles had to grab the mug to keep him from spilling it. The white one would recover sooner, but after last night, and then this morning with the hatchet, Androkles was surprised he was even sitting up.
“It’s best to just relax, boy. All the energy you spend moving around doesn’t go to building up your body again. So just take it easy,” he said, trying to sound stern.
The kit nodded and lay down hard with a thud and an “Ow!” The black one grinned. Androkles smirked.
“Stay put, and try not to hurt yourselves laying there. I’m going to go check out the cart,” he said, rising to his feet. The boys glanced to make sure the cart was in eyesight, then nodded their consent.
The bandits had stolen a standard merchant’s pull-cart, which could be fit for an ox or pulled by one or more men, and its original owner had tended it well. Underneath the oiled tarpaulin, neatly organized goods lay in orderly stacks, except where Theodoric had witlessly rummaged around.
Starting at the back and moving his way forward as he searched, under the bench he found four long reams of linen; two dyed bold yellow and woven soft, and two dyed bright red and woven warm. The yellow would make nice robes for the three of them, and the red would make good cloaks. Behind the cloth were pillows, which he wished he had known about earlier.
Neatly stacked pots filled much of the rest of the cart. Aside from a skillfully decorated water-clock, most of the pots were plain, unmarked, and still sealed with cloth and wax, leaving their contents a mystery. A fat open sack lay to the side, and Androkles grinned greedily when he saw that it contained a huge quantity of biscuits. He immediately grabbed two and shoved one as far into his mouth as he could get it, leaving half poking out like he had no manners, and set the other one aside. Running all night and fighting all morning could make a man hungry, it turned out. He hadn’t felt like drinking the kits’ wine, and he’d been too busy to eat anything else.
Androkles shook the smaller jars to find grain in one, nuts in another, and so on, until he found what he was looking for: fermented wine. He broke the seal and drained a quarter of the pot in one draught. It was a muddy red grape wine just starting to go sour, but it was wet, and it was wine. He loudly sighed his contentment, wiping his beard clean of the drops.
He looked back over at the kits, who had both wriggled themselves around and lay on their arms to watch him. They probably got bored just staring in to the blue sky. Or maybe they were just watching him eat, he thought with a faint smirk. He called out, “You boys want to know what’s in here?”
“Yes, can we?” they answered.
The back of the cart had a bench to sit on, so he decided to set them on it. He walked back over and told them, “Grab my neck,” then lifted them up and carried them to the cart, their arms on his shoulders and their tails swishing back and forth in front of him.
He deposited them carefully onto the bench, then grabbed all the pillows and had them lay on their sides, propped up so they could see without rolling off the cart.
Then he went back to taking inventory, pausing every so often to explain what he had found. They recognized the cabbage and onions, but not the garlic or raisins, and they knew all the beans and grains except the chickpeas. By the time he’d finished sorting through the food, he’d found everything from vinegar and honey to olive oil and lard. Most incredibly of all, a pot of genuine, ground black pepper had been hidden away carefully beneath the sacks of barley. It was easily the most valuable thing in the cart. And once he had a complete inventory, he realized that he and the boys would be able to eat for weeks, not counting the money he’d get from selling the rest.
Aside from the cloth, Androkles found a number of other useful goods, such as needles, thread, twine, and in wooden boxes, more tools than he would ever need. Bronze knives for cloth and meat, awls, hammers, heads for axes and picks, and a pouch with a scissors tied to it, containing needles and rolls of thread. Almost all of that could be sold without a hint of regret.
Satisfied that he had seen everything the dead bandits had to offer, he leaned against the side of the cart and looked at the skinny, frail little kits he’d picked up. They were still a bit pale, but their eyes were lively. The black one was breathing much easier than he had been in the early morning. He had to admire their incredible luck, assuming they lived. They might not. But a cart like this was an incredible boon, more than he would have expected even if he had the gods’ favor, which he didn’t. But he had to accept that the kits themselves might, in which case he’d have to be very careful about how he treated them.
Actually, no, that didn’t make sense. If the kits had the gods’ favor, they wouldn’t have been starving and alone, freezing in the middle of the night. Any gods who might be involved had probably hoped that the bandits would kill him and the kits both.
The only thing missing from the cart, he realized, was the silver. It was either still hidden in a sack or pot that he’d somehow missed, or it had been lost before the bandits killed the merchant and stole the cart. Gods grant it was the former.
Before he had time to resume his search, a glint of sunlight from a low angle found his eye and he realized that he had lost track of time. The sun was only two fists’ width above the western horizon, which meant nightfall was but two hours away at the latest.
He put his hands on his hips and asked, “Boys, how do you feel? Are your guts hurting at all?”
The black said, “I don’t feel bad, but can we have some more? It’s been a while, I think.” His voice sounded a bit more energetic, but it was still raspy and weak.
“I guess it has, hasn’t it? I suppose I’d better feed you and check the bandages.” He put the kits back by the fire, this time with some of the pillows, and fed them more honeyed young wine. Once the kits were fed, he ate some olives, biscuits, and a couple figs from the cart, and followed it up with half a pot of real wine, enough to warm him despite the chill in the air.
He sat around for a while after that, watching the sun descend through the leaves and color the sky as it started to sink beneath the hills and wondering where Della was at that moment. His thoughts about her were tied to a muddy ball of unpleasant emotions in his stomach that never really disappeared. Was it because he missed her? She had never really grown fond of him like she was supposed to, no matter what he did for her. After a few years, he’d stopped even trying to win her heart, deciding it would be fine if she just gave him a child. His friends’ wives had all been fiercely proud of their men, and Androkles had always been jealous of their kindness and warmth. Indeed, the only kindness he ever really got had been from his friends and brothers-in-arms, and they had the bad habit of dying.
As night approached, the crisp air turned cold, and he decided it was time for bed. He got the fire ready to last the night, stacking the wood wide and flat so it would burn slowly and stay hot for longer. He took down the travel blankets that Pansy had hung and laid them out to sleep in. He considered sleeping between the kits to stay warmer, but decided against it when he wondered if he might roll over and crush them. He doubted the black one in particular had enough strength to pinch him awake before being suffocated.
Instead, he put his blanket right next to theirs, close enough for the white one to smack him awake if something happened. The evening was quiet, and the kits soon fell asleep. Yet, despite his own exhaustion, he found himself unable to fall asleep. Instead, he lay there with his thoughts, listening to the kits’ steady breathing and idly wishing that some friendly giant would come take care of him. And every so often, the wolves howled, somewhere off in the hills. Never close enough to worry him, not with the fire, but it was disconcerting. Gazing up at the sky, it seemed like the faint haze had grown thicker, muddying the stars’ brightness and clarity, and something about that bothered him as well. The night sky was worshipped in the Glories by the wise and pious, but this didn’t feel like the same sky.
Androkles finally decided that he was being silly, and the reason the sky seemed odd was because it was odd; he was far from home. He should have been used to this by now. With that thought, he was finally able to sleep.
His sleep that night was troubled. He drifted in and out, dreaming of restless and angry things wandering through the woods. From time to time the wolves howling in the distance awakened him, but never for long. Just long enough to see the fire still burning.
Near morning, in the haze of half-awareness, it seemed that he could see the Hewer, the immense god deep under the earth. But he was far away, not close like the last time. Androkles walked along a dirt road in unfamiliar country, but the road was uneven, like contours of a woman’s body. Every time he took a step, she rolled, annoyed. Then she reached down to swat him, and he could feel the weight of her hand on his chest …
And then he groaned and woke up. Morning had come. It was too early, no matter what time it was. The white one was leaning over and shaking him awake, hand on Androkles’s chest. “Tell Thuellos Sun-Lord to send the dawn back a few hours. I’m still tired,” Androkles growled.
In a voice halfway between a whisper and a squeal of terror, the boy said, “There’s a wolf!”