Before the World Broke — A Vegetaone Story
Reddbull climbed slowly.
Vegeta had expected a Tauren carrying a shield to climb slowly. He had not expected the pace to be deliberate.
At each turning, Reddbull waited until both of them could see the next stretch before moving into it. He tested loose stones with the haft of his axe. Where the path widened, he stayed near the inner wall.
“You have done this before.”
“Fallen?”
“Climbed.”
“Both. One teaches the other.”
Vegeta put his boot where Reddbull had put his hoof.
Below them, the stolen wagon lay beneath a shelf of rock. One wheel was gone. Smoke rose from the quarry furnace beyond it, where three ogres worked a long bellows.
Four smaller figures sat beneath a timber shelter.
The missing driver and laborers.
A fifth figure approached them carrying a bucket.
An ogre.
He set the water down and took a blow from the nearest guard for doing it.
Reddbull stopped moving.
Vegeta put a hand against his shoulder.
“Wait.”
The Tauren breathed through his nose.
Then lowered himself beside the outcrop.
They watched until they understood the yard.
The ogre with the bucket came toward the side trail at midday.
He carried a sack of furnace ash. The guards had stopped watching him because ash was beneath their interest.
Reddbull stepped into view before Vegeta could decide how to announce them.
The ogre nearly dropped the sack.
“We're not taking you,” Reddbull said.
The ogre stared at the shield.
Then at Vegeta's swords.
“You might change your mind.”
“We want the wagon people.”
The ogre's expression changed.
He looked back toward the yard.
“Marn,” he said after a moment. “I cook. They make me carry ash too.”
Gorvek had taken his two nieces when Marn refused to join a raiding party. They were held farther uphill, where the big ogre kept his food stores and the channel gate.
“The little people leave tonight,” Marn said. “He'll trade them to the next band. Tools too. Better payment than carts.”
Vegeta looked toward the smoking furnace.
Three days for guards had become too long.
“Can you get them into the ash passage?”
Marn shook his head.
“Door barred outside. I can bring them water. That's all.”
Reddbull crouched until their eyes were level.
“Where does the passage come out?”
Marn pointed beneath their feet.
They returned far enough to meet Rella, who had followed with rope and a mule despite Sarn's opinion of her judgment.
“I can be sensible from a distance,” she told them.
Vegeta drew the furnace on the ground. The ash passage ran behind it, low and narrow, with a sloping outlet where the workers dumped waste.
It was too small for Reddbull.
Vegeta looked at the Tauren's shoulders.
Reddbull looked at Vegeta's.
“Yours come off.”
Vegeta sighed.
Rella held out her hands for the shoulderplates.
“Try not to lose the parts of you I can't put back.”
The ash was warm.
That was the first unpleasant discovery.
The second was that the passage bent sharply enough to make a greatsword useless. Vegeta left both blades with Reddbull and went in carrying a knife, a short hammer, and an increasingly poor opinion of furnaces.
At the barred door, he heard the driver explaining how to keep someone awake after a blow to the head.
Good. They were helping one another.
Vegeta tapped twice.
The voices stopped.
“Sarn sent us.”
A silence.
Then the driver answered.
“How many?”
“Enough to leave. Not enough to stay.”
He worked the hammer beneath the swollen bar.
It moved a finger's width.
Above him, an ogre shouted.
The bellows began pumping faster.
Heat pressed through the passage wall.
Vegeta's old glove split as he hauled the bar upward. Hot iron touched his palm.
He held long enough to wedge the hammer beneath it.
Then shook his hand once, silently.
“When this opens, keep low.”
Reddbull hit the bellows yard with his shield.
He did not roar a challenge. He drove the first guard back into the long lever and stopped the pumping.
The second guard swung a club.
Reddbull caught it against the shield rim. His old wound pulled painfully at his side.
He stepped with it rather than trying to stand still under the blow.
His axe cut the leather bellows strap.
Air spilled uselessly into the yard.
Behind the furnace, Vegeta lifted the bar clear.
Four people came through.
The last crawled with one arm tucked against her chest.
He went behind her, pushing her boots when the passage rose too steeply for her to manage alone.
At the outlet, Rella caught her under the good shoulder.
“This way.”
Reddbull backed toward them with two ogres following.
Vegeta took his swords from the rock where they waited.
He drew one.
The first ogre saw it and slowed.
“Prisoners first,” Vegeta told Rella.
She led them uphill.
Marn remained in the yard, already carrying another sack of ash. To follow them would tell Gorvek who had helped.
Vegeta hated leaving him.
Reddbull saw the look.
“His nieces. We come back with help.”
They withdrew together.
Sarn dressed Vegeta's burned palm himself.
“How long did you hold it?”
“Long enough.”
“A stupid answer to a useful question.”
He unwrapped the old glove and looked at the torn fingers.
The rescued driver stood beside the workbench. Her name was Hessa. She had confirmed the men loading the wagon intended to sell their prisoners, and that Gorvek was gathering the settlement's stolen channel fittings.
Now she watched the armorer open the small cabinet behind his forge.
Inside lay a pair of heavy gauntlets.
Vegeta recognized the shaping along the knuckles.
Destroyer work.
“A customer left the balance unpaid,” Sarn said. “I've had them longer than I care to.”
“I can't pay that much.”
“You brought my driver back. She can tell me what happened to my load. That saves more than a pair of gloves.”
He set them down.
“Payment for the rescue. I'll adjust the lining when your hand can bear it.”
Vegeta looked at Hessa.
She nodded.
“Take them. Next time I'd prefer you arrive with fingers.”
Reddbull sat outside while a healer checked his side.
Vegeta sat beside him with the new gauntlets resting across his knees.
“You stopped the bellows,” he said.
“It was cooking you.”
“You could have gone after the guards.”
“They weren't cooking you.”
The Tauren rubbed a hand over the shield's dented edge.
“I keep thinking I should have brought Marn.”
“He asked us to get the girls.”
“I know.”
Vegeta looked toward the mountains.
There was a harder job waiting now.
“The guards arrive the day after tomorrow,” he said. “We give them a better map.”
Reddbull nodded.
Vegeta left the gauntlets across his knees until the forge lamp had burned low.
End of Chapter Three