Chapter 19

  In the morning, after a quick breakfast, courtesy of Dava’s tab at the Cantering Colt, Dalex and his companions went down to the Batulan-bar docks along the river. They met Dava and his party on a pier next to a modestly sized river boat named the Welcome Waters.

  “The captain says he can get us to the den in about eight hours,” Dava said. “We’ll camp a mile downriver tonight and attack the den tomorrow morning.”

  The ship had sails, but they weren’t currently unfurled, and when Dalex was onboard, he learned they wouldn’t be for most of the trip. Traveling up river against the current and the general direction of the wind meant most of the journey would be accomplished through good old core strength and precise teamwork.

  Thankfully, the Welcome Waters didn’t use slave labor to fill out its rowing positions. Both elves and beastkin worked under the main deck for what Dava called a fair wage, and passengers were expected to lend a hand. The hunters had earned inexpensive passage to their destination under the agreement that they would row their share.

  “Naturally, Ser Dalex, that means you’ll do your part as well,” Dava said, giving him a pointed look that challenged Dalex to disagree.

  “No such thing as a free lunch,” Dalex said. “Though I’ve never rowed before. I might need some instruction on the proper form.” He looked over his shoulder at Seventh and Hitasa. “How do you two feel about helping out?”

  “I do not perform physical labor,” Seventh said.

  “She’s out, then.” Dalex turned to Hitasa. “What do you think?”

  “I can help,” she said.

  Dalex wasn’t sure if that surprised him or if it was in line with expectations. Hitasa was still mostly a mystery. He looked back at Dava. “You got two of us. Seventh is… Uh… Well, she’ll pull her weight in other ways, I promise you.”

  Dava gave the [android] a distasteful look but said, “I suppose the captain will not mind two out of three.”

  Dalex, Hitasa, and the hunters went down into the ship’s hull and Dalex got a crash course in rowing. The oarsmen were laid out in seven lines from the front of the ship to the back with three rowers to a side. All of them were shocked to see a human lower himself to join them in their toil.

  As Owen Little, he hadn’t spent much time on boats. Before he got sick, he had learned to swim, but he hadn’t been in water deeper than a bath for nearly fifteen years. The depths of the river running under the hull unnerved him a little.

  Luckily, the shaft for the oar was fixed in place, but he had to lend his strength and rhythm in a row with Hitasa and three beastkin and one elf employed by the captain. The other rows had a similar composition. In order not to snap the wood of the shaft, Dalex dialed back the strength output of his {adamantine} armor. For the moment, he was only as strong as the rower next to him, which was a lot stronger than he had ever been on Earth.

  The deckhands cast off and the crew below deck went to work propelling the ship out of the dock and upriver. A crewmate with a small drum was beating a rowing rhythm from the back of the boat. Even with alien-resurrected super muscles, it was hard work. Next to Dalex, Hitasa didn’t seem to struggle as much. A few beads of sweat trickled down her face, but she didn’t grunt like Dalex and most of the beastkin rowing with them. All of the elves seemed superhumanly strong. It made him wonder how long elves at the bottom of society had been the status quo.

  Physical strength didn’t make a race better at dominating its peers by default. Dalex had seen plenty of things in his time on Gaia Eta that would make powerful muscles useless. The dragons being at the top of this realm also meant the pecking order couldn’t be determined by strength alone. But it did seem like elves had an inherent advantage over their taskmasters, especially if they could cast the same magic as everyone else.

  Dalex took his mind off the grueling labor by asking Hitasa. “If writing and speech is so carefully regulated, how do the hunters have access to weapons and spells capable of slaying mutts? And there are as many elves in the Lodge as there are beastkin. I wouldn’t think the dragons would want to let so many elves use magic.”

  It took him a while to get the question out. When Hitasa answered, her voice didn’t sound at all strained by the rowing effort.

  “The Hunters’ Lodge gets special privileges. Its members can publicize weapons and magic, elves included, but only with human and dragon approval. And no elf joins the Lodge without human vetting. The slightest rebellious tendency disqualifies an elf from joining. But we are a strong people, skilled in the use of magic and slaying monsters, so we are still given the chance.”

  Between breaths, Dalex asked, “What draws elves to hunting?”

  “Stable, honorable work with a connection to our heritage.” It sounded like a good thing given the alternatives, but her voice carried a bitter edge. “That is what drew my uncle to it. Hunting takes an elf out of the city and returns them to the forest. And our oldest heroes were slayers of monsters.”

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  “You sound like you don’t approve,” Dalex said, the words coming a little easier. He was getting into a rhythm.”

  She snorted but lowered her voice. She obviously didn’t want the other hunters rowing with them to hear. “It is still slave labor.”

  They rowed for four hours. Every thirty minutes, each rower received a ten minute break, staggered so there were always enough people rowing to keep the ship in motion. After four hours, a strong tailwind kicked up and the crew on the top deck unfurled the sails, giving the oarsmen a much needed break.

  Dalex went up top and found Dava. The beastkin was drenched in sweat just like the rest of the crew, except for the elves. In addition to the exertion, this part of Gaia Eta was apparently very humid, draining the crew’s strength even more. It was a good thing they didn’t plan on attacking the mutt den until the next morning.

  “You work hard for a human,” Dava said, leaning against the protective rails of the deck.

  Dalex pulled off his shirt, exposing this aching muscles and stomach to the cool breeze and warm sun. He thrust the shirt over the side and wrung a gush of moisture out of it. When it was a little less sodden, he set it to dry on top of the rail and leaned next to Dava.

  “I’m always up for a new experience,” he said. “And I like to earn my keep, of course.”

  “You haven’t quite paid off that room and meal yet,” Dava reminded him.

  “I’m good for it. And I’ll work extra hard if you tell me a bit more about these mutts.”

  Dava’s expression became serious. “I’m more than happy to do that gratis. Every extra person that knows what a mutt is, how they behave, and how serious a threat they are brings the Lodge one step closer to wiping them out.”

  Considering Dalex was already pretty much on the side of wiping out the mutts, Dava couldn’t possibly know how much of a windfall Dalex’s arrival had brought him.

  “Tell me more.”

  “You know mutts first appeared fifteen years ago, but I don’t think you understand just what that meant. If you’ve been getting all of your information from that elf, Hitasa, then it makes sense you wouldn’t know. She probably told you the arrival of the mutts forced the humans and beastkin to abandon two frontier cities.

  Dava paused to make sure no one was close enough to hear and then lowered his voice. “What she probably didn’t know was that the cities were not abandoned. No one evacuated them. Somewhere around a hundred thousand people were killed in the span of three days, in the cities themselves and across the entire frontier.”

  Dalex’s eyes widened. “How could that be a secret?”

  “You don’t know your own race,” Dava said with a smirk. “The humans and dragons have total control over what news passes between cities. Once they knew what had happened, they kept the true scope of the disaster silent. Few of the citizens on the frontier had family or friends outside the cities. Human policy is to keep blood concentrated in one place, not spread out. They told the rest of Gaia Eta that the mutts had arrived, the cities had been evacuated, and that all the refugees were going somewhere else.”

  Dalex nodded. “And no one could contradict them.”

  “Not a soul. The few survivors that managed to run far enough and fast enough to escape the mutts were threatened into secrecy. An even smaller fraction of that group formed the first hunters’ lodge. The humans let it happen. While the mutts didn’t immediately spread out to destroy more cities, they didn’t stay put either. The humans knew someone needed to deal with them.”

  “If this is such a secret, why are you telling me this?” Dalex asked.

  “Because you’re a human,” Dava said. “And because, unless you are all howl and no fangs, you are powerful. If you’re interested in mutts, I want you to know exactly how dangerous they are. They’re spreading, Ser Dalex. Not as fast or as violently as the day of their arrival, but they get closer to Batulan-bar every year. We in the Hunters’ Lodge are too few to stop them, and no one else is doing anything. The dragons and humans do not care if beastkin die, and though they pretend otherwise, they take pleasure when elves die. No one is going to help us.”

  Dava could not know how valuable this information was to Dalex. He hadn’t been sure what to make of the mutts and the enemy {far realmers} that had deposited them on this world. He knew they were after the same resources, that they refused to communicate, and that they could be arbitrarily violent, but these could all be symptoms of a confused race of beings focused on self-preservation.

  That they didn’t mind indiscriminately massacring so many sentient beings brought their full malice into context. Even if there was a misunderstanding at play—and Dalex didn’t think there was—the enemy {far realmers} and their mutts couldn’t be allowed to stay on Gaia Eta, and probably not in the realm either.

  And the dragons and humans of this realm didn’t seem much better.

  Dalex clapped beastkin on the back and said, “I have heard you, Dava. And I look forward to seeing these things up close.”

  Over the next four hours of strong tailwinds, Dava explained more about what they were likely to find when they got closer to the target den, and then, when Dalex felt satisfied he knew what he was getting into, they pulled the hunting party together to prepare. Dalex learned more about what his new companions were capable of and he shared a few extra details about what he might be able to do to help. He still kept the full scope of his capabilities a secret.

  Hitasa didn’t speak a word about her own capabilities. Again, Dalex experienced a moment of doubt that he should have left her behind, but he knew he could protect her as long as she stayed close. And, even if they were somehow separated, the little shadow he had given her the day before would keep her safe.

  Eight hours after they departed Batulan-bar, the Welcome Waters drew in its sails and drifted toward the southern bank of the river to drop anchor. Dalex and the others boarded a pair of dinghies with their equipment and made for the northern shore. They moved off the river beach and set up camp for the night in sight of the river. By Dava’s estimation, the den was a mile upriver and perhaps a hundred yards from the northern bank.

  The group held a meeting to discuss their plan for the morning, then assigned guard duty and prepared for bed. Before Dalex went to sleep, Dava took him aside for one last question.

  “You told me you were looking for something connected to the mutts,” he said. “You haven’t told me what that is. Should I know more?”

  “It’s a metal,” Dalex explained. “A very important one. I expect the mutts are very interested in it. If we find some in their den tomorrow, I’ll tell you more.”

  https://www.patreon.com/wjeffersonsmith