James Galloway - The Tower of Sorcery

"I know that," Tarrin retorted. " Where on the High Road? Near what city?"

"How can you not know that?"

"Are you going to answer me or not?"

"I may not," he said.

"Human, if I was a bandit, I would have attacked you when you went into the bushes," Tarrin said in disgust. "I just want to know where I am so I can get to where I'm going."

The fact that Tarrin called him "human" was not lost on the man. "Are you a Faerie?" he asked curiously. "Is that why I can't see you?"

"Don't worry about what I am, just answer the question," Tarrin grated.

"This place is about a day's ride to the west of Ultern," he answered. "Jerinhold is about a day's ride east of here."

Tarrin considered that. "I came too far east," he growled aloud. "Thank you, human. That helps me a great deal."

In an intentional rustle of leaves, Tarrin left the man standing there.

Tarrin was quickly faced with another problem, one he hadn't considered. The forest came right down to the road in that stretch that he'd found, but that was not normal. Farmlands cut into the forest on both sides of the road not even a quarter of a mile from where he'd encountered the guard, and they stretched out too far for him to keep the road in sight and still stay in the woods. Tarrin couldn't follow the road quickly if he had to detour every quarter of a mile to go around a farm, and time was a definite factor. It left him with a hard decision to make, but in the end, it wasn't much of a decision.

Tarrin holed up in a tree top for the rest of the day. When sunset drained all the light from the sky, leaving only the faint, multihued light of the Skybands as illumination, Tarrin dropped down from the trees and stepped out onto the road. There was no helping it, but at least on the road he could travel with great speed. Tarrin set out in that ground-eating lope, and spent the night travelling down the road. He passed the caravan he'd encountered that day around midnight, and left them far behind.

What he didn't expect was reaching the city of Jerinhold before dawn. It was a walled city, surrounded on all sides by farmland, and not a few small villages. Tarrin wasn't about to set foot inside the city, so he ran along a road that went along the base of the wall, watching the faint light on the eastern horizon warily. He also didn't want to be caught out in the open at daybreak. He wasn't sure why he was so concerned with not being seen, but some part of him didn't want the humans to see him, or for them not to see him like that. In a way, he was afraid of how they would react to seeing a half-human creature, and the thought of being violently rejected was more than he was willing to risk.

It was almost dawn by the time he'd managed to circumnavigate the walls of Jerinhold, and the High Road stretched out before him with almost no cover available. He decided to find cover for the day, but he'd get as far as he could before he had to take shelter. He ran at a very brisk pace right up until the dawning of the sun, then he veered off the road and crossed several farms, and got himself into a small strip of woods that lay between two large farms, serving as a boundary between them. He hid his clothes in a small bole of a tree, changed form, and crawled into the bole with his clothes. As the first rays of the sun washed over the floor of the woods, Tarrin fell asleep.

Tarrin was almost starving when he woke up, some time before sunset. He dressed with a hollow hole forming in his stomach, and the thought of food was the only motivating factor. Aside from a few field mice, there really wasn't much in the small strip of woods, and besides, field mouse wasn't the tastiest of meals. There were farms around, several of them, and he was absolutely positive that he could find something to eat among the buildings of one of them. Tarrin didn't really like the idea of stealing from honest folk, but there was almost nothing else to eat, and he was afraid to show himself. He was filthy and bedraggled, and a farmer or innkeeper would probably go for his pitchfork before greeting the Were-cat in a civilized manner. Aside from that, Tarrin had no money with which to buy a meal, even if he had the courage to walk into an inn.

Tarrin considered this as he slinked out of the woods furtively, keeping himself relatively well hidden among the rows of knee-high wheat growing out in the fields. The closest farm was the most logical target, and it was a very large one. Obviously losing a chicken or two wouldn't really hurt this farming family. They were evidently very prosperous. He crept among the wheat as human smells touched his nose, and he crept up on the scents with the stealth of a ghost. He lay in the field and watched as four men worked with iron rods and wooden dowels to uproot a huge treestump. The tree which had owned the stump lay on the ground beside the stump, and the stump itself had not been cut. Rather, the ancient tree which had once rested upon it had simply came down from old age. There was an older man with a brown beard and a grizzled visage that was obviously in charge, coordinating the heaving attempts of the three young men with him to rock the stump out of the ground. By their scents, Tarrin could determine that they were all related. A father and his three sons. And they all had smells of other humans all over them. Wives and children, most likely. This was a family farmstead, where whole generations lived and worked in harmony to manage the large holding and make it productive.

Tarrin just couldn't steal from them. He'd been a farmer himself, and he knew how it felt to lose livestock and crops to raiding animals. But, watching them heave and groan and sweat trying to uproot the stump, he realized that he didn't have to steal from them.

Steeling himself, Tarrin stood up. It took them a few moments to notice him, and when they did, the father gave out a startled shout and brandished his iron rod like a staff as his sons hastily yanked out their own tools to defend themselves against the intruder.

"Please, don't do that," Tarrin said from his heart, raising his paws in supplication. Tarrin's simple plea must have struck a chord with the brown-bearded patriarch, for he lowered his iron rod a bit and regarded Tarrin curiously.

"What manner of creature are ye?" he asked. "And what do ye want?"

"I'll help you uproot the stump in return for food," Tarrin offered, ignoring the questions he didn't feel like answering.

"Really now?" the patriarch asked. "And what makes ye think that we'd be wanting yer help? Or that we can trust ye?"

Tarrin hadn't considered that. Back in Aldreth, trust was a simple matter, and it was abundant through the village and outlying farms. Nobody locked their doors in Aldreth. He knew things were a bit different in the rest of the world, but watching the farmers made him look on them as he would have looked on farmers back home. And it was obvious that they were nothing like his friends back home. Tarrin caught a glimpse of his hand-paws, and an even greater reality crashed in on him. They'd trust him even less because of what he was. "I, I'm sorry I bothered you," he said quietly, turning around and starting to walk away.

"Hold," the man called. Tarrin stopped and turned around. "Yer more dirt than skin, and that shirt's hangin' off ye like there's nothin' under it. Ye offered work in exchange for food, and I have the feelin' ye could have easily stole what ye wanted. If ye could get this close to us, then getting that close to the chicken coop woulda' been just as easy. Come, stranger. Help us pull this cursed stump, and ye can eat with my family this night."

The look of grateful appreciation on Tarrin's face made the fatherly man blush a little bit. The three young men gave their father a wild look, but said nothing. "Come on then, stranger," the man said, putting his iron rod back under one huge root. "Well, come on, boys, I'd like to get this done today," he prompted.