Дэйв Дункан - Magic Casement

Red and puffing, he studied Rap impassively for a moment, then asked, “Blisters? Rubbings?”

Rap mumbled something incoherent and shook his head.

Little Chicken nodded in grudging satisfaction. “You run good, town boy.”

Rap grinned, but only to himself. He nodded.

“Go much faster, then?”

Rap nodded with less certainty, and the goblin chuckled as he closed his hood, but when he broke from the walk into a jog again, he kept the same pace as before.

Any resident of Krasnegar needed good legs. Rap had hoped that his week on horseback might have left him in better shape than Little Chicken was. As the hours crept by, he discarded that idea. The night became a blur of snow and trees, of shadows and moonbeams, of pounding heart, of smoky breath out and icy breath in, of chest burned by the frigid air, of Fleabag loping along, always at a distance, of Little Chicken ever just ahead, usually jogging, rarely taking a walk break. At times they must run with hands held high to divert branches, at times they were slowed to a snail pace by cluttered deadfall, but mostly they just ran. There was no conversation and Rap would not have been capable of it anyway. He was soon unable to think or feel anything except a steady, grinding, suicidal resolve that the town boy was going to keep up with the goblin.

Just before moonset they came to Porcupine Totem, and when the dogs began to bark, Little Chicken stripped off the masks. He pushed Rap ahead as they approached the doors. By that time Rap was too weary to wonder why, but he was accepted as Flat Nose of the Raven Totem without question. Most of the clan were absent, visiting Raven Totem for the entertainment, but there were a couple of young men left in charge, and many old folk, and some children too young to travel.

The village layout was very similar to the Ravens', perhaps a little larger. Rap staggered into a lodge that seemed quite identical and met insufferable heat and glare. His knees almost buckled on the spot. Yet the household had been asleep and was only just reviving the fire for the visitors, so perhaps the hall was really quite cool. Little Chicken’s fingers expertly unfastened Rap’s buckskins for him, and he stepped out of them with relief, sank down on the hearthstones, and greedily drank of whatever it was they gave him. His mind was as full of smoke as the ceiling. All he wanted was sleep, sleep, sleep…

Then Little Chicken, stripped to a loincloth as he was, pushed him down flat on the big fireplace and produced a bucket of the inevitable grease, contributed by the hosts. He inspected Rap’s feet carefully, then set to work at giving his legs a vigorous massage, skillfully unknotting the tendons and easing the aches. It was heaven.

“Soft, town boy,” he growled contemptuously.

Rap agreed, thinking that he could not have run another two steps. When the massage was over, he offered to do the same for Little Chicken, although he knew he would be very unskilled.

Little Chicken’s eyes flashed in anger. “For trash?”

Probably he did not need a massage. He looked as fresh as when he had started out, hours before. After snatching up a dish of food that was waiting by the side of the fire, he stalked to the door. Rap’s farsight showed him heading for the boys' building.

It was then that Rap realized why he had been pushed forward for the introductions, and why the skin around his eyes hurt—which he had not noticed before. It was only after he had gulped a quick meal and thanked his hosts and rolled up in a greasy, stinking fur to sleep that he wondered what Inos was going to say about that.

He had hardly closed his eyes, he thought, when Little Chicken was shaking his shoulder and starting another massage to loosen muscles knotted up in sleep. Then he sternly ordered Rap to go out to the pits right away. Two of the women rushed to prepare food for the guests even as Rap was being dressed again by his handler. Little Chicken obviously took his duties seriously, whether they be to die entertainingly or to serve a master. He would allow Rap to do nothing that he could do for him, not even lace a boot; he would accept no help for himself. In his own eyes he was trash, neither boy nor man, merely a possession that should try to be useful and must pamper this fragile nongoblin.

He led the way southward without another word. Had it not been for the first glimmers of dawn light, Rap would not have believed that his stay at Porcupine Totem had lasted more than a few minutes.

The following days passed in the same way, Each morning Little Chicken obtained directions. By moonlight he brought his owner safely to another village. Conversation was impossible in the masks, and when the journeys ended Rap was too exhausted to try. In any case, his companion refused to stay in the adults' building once he had given Rap his massage and seen him settled.

Rap talked a little with his hosts, but he had nothing to tell them, and their news was meaningless to him. His questions about Darad brought only angry silence—just by asking, he was breaking the rules for guests. He was never refused hospitality or courtesy, but the welcome was grudging, partly because he was not goblin-born, mostly because of Little Chicken. To own trash was a crime. Rap had offended by not giving his defeated opponent the death he deserved and wanted.

Gradually Rap’s fitness improved, aided each evening by the most enormous meals he had ever eaten, much of them fresh meat that was a great luxury to him. Gradually Little Chicken raised the pace, but only slightly, for the villages were set an easy day’s run apart, and greater speed would have brought no advantage. The daylight was becoming noticeably longer as the sun began its slow return to the northlands and the travelers worked their way south.

About the sixth morning, just as it was time to fasten the masks and leave the lodge, Little Chicken paused and regarded Rap with a glint in his eye.

“Salmon Totem,” he said, “then Eagles, then Elk. Three days?”

“Right.”

“Or sleep in snow, then Elk. Two days?”

Any perceptible hint of a challenge from Little Chicken was unbearable. “Let’s do that, then.”

The goblin’s angular eyes widened. “And run faster?”

“Fast as you like!”

“Town boy!” Little Chicken laughed, and contemptuously pushed a handful of grease in Rap’s face.

A few hours later, grimly aware of the tearing pain of the faster pace, Rap thought to wonder why his companion had not brought food if there was to be no lodge at the end of the day’s trek.

The answer, obviously, was that a goblin could live off the land. They stopped when Little Chicken judged the light too poor for running—he did not know that Rap could see in the dark. He lighted a fire and then made two others. Three small fires were better than one big one, he said, and then he screamed in fury when Rap tried to help by gathering firewood. Needing a bucket to melt snow, the goblin used his backpack, dropping hot rocks in it. While the resulting water was necessary and welcome to Rap, it was the strangest-tasting brew he had ever swallowed.

“I find food!” Little Chicken announced. He pointed scornfully at Fleabag, whom he had completely ignored until that moment. “You keep that here?”

Rap agreed, and did so. He was glad of the company, sitting in the darkly haunted forest, watching the shadows of the densely enclosing conifers dance around his triangle of firelit snow, and trying not to wonder what he would do if Little Chicken failed to return. Fleabag just pawed out a hollow and went to sleep.

But Little Chicken did return, in an astonishingly short time. He came bearing two white rabbits, which he had caught beyond farsight range, so that Rap did not know how he had done it. He could hardly have been quicker had he run to a market for them.