A Horn Too Soon
People often get the wrong idea from the name, but a horned rabbit has no horn when it is young. There is only a slight bulge of bone beneath the scalp. You can feel it if you press, yet nothing has broken the skin. Until it is grown, a horned rabbit looks exactly like any ordinary rabbit you might startle on a mountainside.
Leonard kept his face carefully blank and stole a glance above the child's head. He slurped his stew. It was a stew he liked, yet he could hardly taste it. Every nerve in his body had turned toward the horned rabbit.
Look as he might, it was a horn. He could not make sense of it. Why did this one have a horn at all? It was plainly still a juvenile.
And it was tame. Now and then the child set a bit of meat on the hat, and the creature licked it up and sat as meekly as any pet rabbit. When the woman beside them stroked it along with the child, it laid its ears flat in obedience, closed its round eyes as if pleased, or let out a thin pii, the way a thing begs to be spoiled.
A magical beast...
His eyes narrowed of their own accord. This, too, was wrong. A magical beast, gentled by a powerless woman and a child, sitting there so docile.
Peculiar. Truly peculiar.
Most magical beasts live by rank. They grovel before the strong and lord it over the weak. That is why a few are occasionally tamed by people. Catch one young and weak, and drill into it that the trainer is stronger, and now and then a rare beast will submit. Even then, the bond often turns inside out.
Magical-beast trainers are scarce, of course, because a magical beast is hard to catch and harder to break. There is a more important reason. Magical beasts are omnivores. They eat animals and people alike. A few keep to a single prey, but most are not particular, and so far as Leonard knew, horned rabbits were no exception. Contrary to the look of them, they were surprisingly vicious. He had heard of a trainer who took one too lightly and lost a finger, bitten clean through.
With a nature like that, a beast taken among crowds will sometimes harm other people. While the trainer is strong, it can still be managed. A little distance from the rest, and control holds. So trainers avoid villages when they can, and if they must enter, they keep to the outskirts. Let the trainer grow old or sick, though, or let the beast realize it is the stronger of the two, and the order can reverse. Magical beasts follow rank. Once they understand they outmatch the hand that feeds them, they try to overturn it. He had heard of trainers killed by the beasts they raised, or eaten.
A magical beast is nothing like an ordinary animal. Tamed does not mean wholly obedient. Trainers seem few because all those reasons lie on top of one another.
"Little one. That magical beast—may I touch it?"
When Leonard asked, the girl called Dorothy tilted her head. Then she lifted her face, as if putting the question to the creature on her hat. The moment her head tipped back, the horned rabbit flattened itself against the crown.
"Oz, you're gonna be a good rabbit, right?"
The horned rabbit did not so much as twitch. The child nodded all by herself.
"Good. You have to be good. That's how you're Dorothy's horn. Okay?"
She looked at Leonard.
"Only touch a little. Oz is a horn."
He was not sure he followed. Even at his age, children were a difficult breed to handle. Leonard smiled, said that he would, and rose. He stepped out behind the people seated around the campfire and drew near her.
He went down on one knee and set his eyes on the horned rabbit. Gentle. It lay pressed flat to the child's hat and did not move. Still, he could not relax. A rabbit can spring into empty air with no warning, and a horned rabbit is the same—only a far better killer. He had hunted them now and then in his days as a magical-beast hunter, and he knew.
A profitable line of work, that had been.
Leonard grinned, quietly set a hand at his belt so he could draw a small knife at any moment, and reached for the creature's head. His caution came to nothing. The horned rabbit accepted his hand without a stir. Even when he traced the horn and confirmed its shape, it stayed still. The moment his fingers slipped lower, it cried pii. The child tipped her head up and looked at him.
"That's enough. You only touch a horn a little."
"All right. Thank you for letting me."
Leonard drew his hand back at once. The child returned to the meat and now and then offered the horned rabbit a small piece of what she was eating.
He went back to his place and took another bowl of stew. He set his mouth to the rim and slurped the warm broth, and heat followed it down until his whole chest was warm.
People know only a handful of magical beasts. Leonard had seen a fair number in his hunting days, and yet this horned rabbit might be a species he had never encountered at all. A horn breaking through this young, though—so far as he knew, that happened in exactly one case. When the master was Santa's contractor.
But which of them?
If the beast clung to the child, the child was the likeliest master. Still, it might just as well be the mage, or the woman. From the moment he had spoken to the child, he had felt the huge healing mage's eyes on him. The man watched in silence, black eyes steady. There was no sign he meant to reach for a weapon, but the gaze was terribly direct. He only looked, and Leonard's spine went cold. An old hunter's instinct whispered that this one was dangerous.
Strangely, the skin along the path of that gaze began to prickle, as if an unseen tongue of flame touched wherever the mage's sight fell. A strange magical beast, and a mage with black eyes. Unusual looks were uncommon among mages, but not unheard of. The war had dragged on, and mercenaries from other lands had come in numbers. Among them were more than a few who resembled the healing mage.
But a man traveling with a beast like that is no ordinary mage.
The hero said to have appeared in another country came to mind. The same sort of people, he had heard. He could not say whether this mage was a hero, but there might be some connection. Even if he was not, the man was surely Santa's contractor.
Leonard, who had sat with the campfire between them, finished eating and stood. A merchant caravan carries several liaisons of the Adventurer's Guild. When a great column is formed and many of the guild's adventurers join it, the guild sends those liaisons along, so that calls for more escorts, and other business, can be passed as quickly as possible. This healing mage, too, had been summoned through one of them.
Leonard stopped at his own wagon and wrote a short letter. He slipped it into an envelope, melted wax along the flap, and pressed his company's seal into it. Then he called a guild liaison.
"Deliver this to the master of the Bern Adventurer's Guild."
"Understood."
After the man had gone, Leonard looked once more at the healing mage and the magical beast. The meal seemed nearly done. The child said something, and the mage and his wife laughed.
No one knows yet. It won't stay that way long.
Magical beasts are rare, but there are plenty of people, like Leonard, who know how they live. The oddity of that trio would spread soon enough. His meddling ended here. Step in too far unasked, and the guild grows wary. Better to keep a decent distance. A laugh escaped him before he knew it. A tie with Santa's contractor—an unexpected harvest.
Conscious of a stomach gone a little heavy from the meal, he walked a while among the wagons. Was anyone acting strangely? Had some new face suddenly boarded another merchant's wagon? He checked such things with his eyes and said nothing. Far off, the guild liaison was riding away.
What he had sent the guild master of Bern came to a single line.
That much, the man would understand. The magical beast called a Rudolph, made by none but Santa's contractor. What such a thing truly looked like—he found he was very much looking forward to finding out.
The first day passed as quietly and easily as any journey. Red Sword had settled it that two of them would stand night watch together. Juhwan's party had joined as the healing mage, so they stood no watch. They were only asked to mind their condition, so mana would be ready whenever it was needed.
He hardly needed such care. Healing magic came easily—by the feel of it, far more easily than fire magic. Perhaps his gift leaned that way.
It doesn't suit my face in the slightest.
Lizzie, wound tight with nerves at the start, seemed to ease once night drew near. She must have been worrying what sort of work paid so much coin. At dusk the column halted. Campfires bloomed here and there around the wagons, each a careful distance from the next. They were not only for the cold. Wolves had to be watched for, so the fires were lit in as many places as they could manage. He had heard that in the black before dawn a person sometimes vanished, dragged off by wolves. A hard world to stay alive in.
One thing struck him as odd. There was a fire mage among them, and still everyone struck their flames with flint and steel.
"Doesn't the fire mage help light the campfires? It's simple work. It can't be that difficult."
When Juhwan asked Jessie of Red Sword, she answered low.
"Every adventurer works for pay. Mages especially. Mana is the same as stamina. Use it, and you wait until you're yourself again. People say the body is your fortune. That's as true for a mage as for an adventurer."
A thread of wind passed, and Jessie hunched into herself.
"You can take it that no mage spends mana for nothing. Not even on a trifle."
Jessie flicked a glance at the fire mage. Something in that look snagged on him—hatred and fear stirred together.
Supper was the same food as midday, with herring added. He could not say why, but herring seemed common even with no sea nearby. In the adventurer village, too, it had not cost more than other fare. What he had seen there was salt-cured. What they were given here was dried—split, gutted, and hung until it stiffened.
Wait. Isn't this just gwamegi?
The oily sheen was unmistakable: gwamegi, the half-dried fish he knew from home. It did not seem popular. Most people left the herring alone. Lizzie and Dorothy never so much as looked at it. They ate only the meat and the stew. Perhaps the smell, or the fishy taste.
Juhwan watched someone else eat a piece, then beat his own soft with a stick and put it in his mouth. Well. Seasoning would have improved it, but it was not bad. He liked the chew. He offered some to Lizzie. She shook her head. Dorothy pinched her nose shut with one hand and refused as well.
Strange. It's good.
He ate a few more. Too rich to take in quantity, but with the stew it was exactly right. If only there had been a burning cup of soju, it would have been heaven and nothing short of it. He felt the lack.
When the meal was done, the adventurers made their own beds. They did not sleep heaped together. Juhwan scraped up wood from nearby and lit a campfire beside the wagon. Then Marie of Red Sword came closer, hesitating.
"Um... would it be all right if our party slept around here?"
The other two stood a little off, unloading a cart. Bedding, by the look of it.
"It's fine. Do as you like."
At that, Marie's relief showed plain on her face, and she smiled. He glanced around. Several men had their eyes on the women of Red Sword.
Ah. Of course. The night raid.
He smiled bitterly. If he had not been here, would Red Sword have spent the whole night half-awake, watching every man around them? What the party had could only generously be called a tent. They set wooden poles and drew thick cloth over them. It was low, and the space inside small. All three could not have lain down at their ease. Curl small enough, and perhaps three might just fit.
Juhwan sat a while before the fire. Karin did not go into the tent either. She sat across from him. Somewhere a wolf howled. Silence held for a long time. Then she spoke, abrupt.
"Thank you."
It was probably for letting them sleep beside his fire. He was not sure the thing deserved thanks. He thought so, and still he answered with a quiet smile.
"Don't mention it."
Karin sat a moment longer, then went into her tent.