AOA Book III

Chapter 3 - The Humble Vessel

            Iona's stomach twisted as Dunlin dismounted his horse a few paces away. He was early... The crude man came with almost mechanical precision with supplies every fifteen days at noon—a fact that Iona had used to keep track of how long she had been away from her family. He did not have his wagon this time though. The burly man was riding a stallion whose gear looked to have been poorly fastened, and as he leaped down, there was none of the hunger in his eyes that usually blared through when he looked at her.

"T-tie the horse," he muttered, thrusting the reigns into Iona's hands and stepping past her. His gaze had not even dipped down to her chest. There were no haughty comments made, no suggestive winks. This should have been a relief, but it was not. Dunlin's brutish, tattooed face was filled with a fear that felt... ominous.

"Yes, sir," she said. Bewildered, she watched him walk toward Gorlick's shack for a few heartbeats before tugging on the black horse's straps. The beast snorted and pulled away from her while at the same moment she heard a shriek from behind.

Iona whirled around to see Dunlin stepping back, his sword half drawn from its hilt as Boar stepped out from the shack's entryway, bearing his thick, white teeth at the man. "Dammit! Gorlick, get this wretched dog off me!"

"He ain't on you," Gorlick growled from behind the door, and then his massive, bulbous head poked through the window and added: "yet!" There was a rumbling from inside, and then the half-ogre stepped out from the small house and glared down with his asymmetrical eyes at the trembling Dunlin. "What are you doin' here?" he asked, the irritation plain in his inhuman voice. "And what do you think yer gonna do with that there little sword?" Gorlick towered over the trembling man, standing at least one and a half times as tall and perhaps four times his weight in hulking muscle.

Dunlin's breathing quickened, and he shoved his weapon back into its sheath and raised his hands. "W-we have to t-talk," he rasped. "There's been trouble in the capital."

Gorlick's bulbous eyes narrowed. "What trouble?"

Dunlin cast a pale-faced look back at Iona, sweat dripping off his skin. "Maybe we should talk inside."

Iona saw Gorlick's eyes shift to her and she quickly returned her attention to the horse, leading it to the make-shift post her master had made out of dried branches and twine.

Gorlick watched her for a brief moment, then let out a grunt that vaguely resembled a laugh and said to Dunlin: "You worried about the little girl? See her as a threat, do you?" Iona's half-human master seemed to despise Dunlin for some reason. She had heard him go on many times about what a 'weasel' and 'coward' the man was.

Dunlin swallowed hard before murmuring: "Our leader didn't want her to overhear... certain things."

"Bah!" Gorlick grunted with a dismissive wave of his monstrous right hand, "If he's worried 'bout what she knows, he can wipe her mind like he always does."

"M-maybe not," Dunlin rasped. "He's been... incapacitated."

Gorlick glared down at the man for a tense moment, then he gestured with his head back toward the shack and said: "Come tell me what happened." Dunlin obediently, if very nervously stepped toward the house, and Boar let out a rumbling growl, bearing his thick fangs. "Down!" Gorlick snapped, and the enormous dog instantly flinched to the floor, all the snarling vanishing in an instant. Gorlick glanced up at Iona and said: "Go gather blueberries." He turned his gaze to Boar and added: "Go with her."