The Farmer and the Fighter - Day 14
Cutter and Lita slept at Tiller’s farm on the night of the thirteenth day.
They had helped Norris bury his brother that evening. Tiller dug with his shovel, Cutter applied his Strength Sigil to move a substantial rock as a headstone. Maeve used her crafting sigil to carve the stone with an inscription. She had no specialist sigils for stone cutting, the result being less than ideal but still better than anything the others might have produced.
Cutter bribed Pod to surrender some of his stash of booze and the two humans drank with the morose goblin by the fire into the night.
In the morning Cutter awoke, worse for wear, to the sound of a shovel working.
He rose from his corner of the earthen house with no roof and made his way through the doorway. Lita remained in the corner of the room, sagged in a powered-down robot pose.
The air was different on the island than in the town. Cutter had been spending his nights in a rented room at Spinners. The town of Medley came with town smells and town air. They weren’t all bad. There was the smell of cooking, hot food scents wafting, but there were other less desirable city smells. Regardless of their source or quality, they colored the air of the town. Here it was fresh. The air was cool and garnished with the freshness of morning dew.
He found Tiller wielding his shovel at Bonk’s burial site. He smiled crookedly, “Hey, buddy… what are you doing?”
Tiller spun on him, brandishing the shovel and looking nervous. When he saw it was Cutter he relaxed.
Cutter said, “Weird how you didn’t hear the narration describing me walking up to you?”
Tiller said, “Yeah… kind of. I guess we must get different streams when we’re not together? Like in different scenes?”
Cutter nodded, his stance easy. “I guess. What’s the prick saying now?”
They both stood still and waited, their heads cocked—
Tiller said, “They both stood still and waited, their heads cocked slightly to the side.”
Cutter nodded, his expression bemused. “Same. That’s weird as shit.”
Tiller shrugged, still tense. “I can’t decide if it’s weirder that you can hear it too, or that nobody else can.”
Cutter sidled closer. “So… you didn’t tell me what you’re doing here…”
Tiller’s shoulders sagged. “I got up to look at the damage to the crops. It’s pretty bad. I’m not back to square one but that fight destroyed more than half of them. I can’t stand this kind of negative momentum. Things need to drive forward. I need to keep multiplying if I’m going to get there.”
Cutter said, “Chill, buddy. Remember, time’s sixty times slower back home. You’ll get there. And all this stressing about business made you say, ‘Hey! All my crops are dead! Better dig up an ogre’s corpse!’ ”
Tiller exhaled a burst of weak laughter. “No. I was thinking about money and getting new seed and then it hit me. You took Bonk’s sigil but we never actually looted him!”
Cutter eyed the grisly pit Tiller was excavating. “I know I’m pretty big, but I’m more of an XXL guy, I think. That green bastard was more of an XXXXXXXL.”
Tiller said, “He spent his day going from island to island to island, extorting money out of people. He could have gold on him.”
Cutter responded with an “mmm-hmm.”
Tiller returned to digging and Cutter took a seat on the grass nearby. “Hey, listen, maybe it’s none of my business but you might benefit from chilling the fuck out a little bit. I know you’re eager to get back to your family, which I totally get—I miss mine too. And this is all predicated on suspending my belief that you, like everything else here, are no more than a figment of my imagination. But listen, you’re trying to get to ten million. That’s not going to happen this week. If you stay completely obsessed with that, you’re going to burn out. Head down Pod’s road. I don’t really know you, but we’ve got enough in common that I don’t want to see that happening to you.”
Tiller finished his work as Cutter spoke and stood looking down at the grisly remains of Bonk, stiff and dirt-covered. He stepped into the hole and started rooting through the ogre’s attire. “You can say that. I don’t mind hearing it. You might even be right. But I know I—we have a hell of a task in front of us. Obsession might not be healthy but it gets results. And I have come to the conclusion that this isn’t a dream, so I’ve got real motivation. We don’t all have the luxury of spending our time trying to will Anissa Kate into existence.”
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Tiller glanced up at Cutter, whose gaze had become fixed and staring. Tiller said, “You’re doing it right now, aren’t you?”
Cutter slumped. “It never works.”
Tiller chuckled and returned to his searching. Then “Aha!” holding up a money pouch.
Almost in the same moment Maeve burst from behind the mound of earth. “Oh love! What are you doing? Oh this is terrible.”
Tiller said, “Maeve, I know it’s gross, but there’s money—
Maeve cut him off. “No, love! They’re coming! You’ve got to put this all back, right quick.”
Cutter leaned forward. “Who’s coming?”
Maeve’s face was a picture of distress. “Cronk’s boys! They’re crossing the barrens and coming right this way.”
Cutter said, “Who the hell is Cronk?”
Tiller’s face had become a mirror of Maeve’s alarm. “Oh shit! That’s Bonk’s kin!”
Cutter rose quickly to his feet, sans the panic. He said, “Okay. Let’s keep our shit together. How far away?”
Maeve most certainly did not keep her shit together. Her voice was high and straining to the breaking point. “Minutes! They’re almost here!”
Cutter said, “Okay! Shovel man, you best get to shoveling. Come on, Maeve, we’re going to have to play the classic stall-the-parents routine.”
Maeve looked between them frantically, mouth hanging, speechless.
Tiller said, “Just go, go. I’ll take care of this. Shit, I need Bean. Bean! Where are you? BEAN!”
Cutter moved with Maeve to the far side of the island, leaving Tiller to his task.
They reached the edge of the island and faced the stretching whiteness. Only a few hundred yards away lumbered three ogres.
They ranged in size, from a little smaller than Bonk (which was still fairly huge) to quite a bit larger. One of them carried a heavy club in an overhand grip. The really big one had a massive sledgehammer over one shoulder.
Cutter hissed through his teeth. “Shit… two of them are stone-banded. You don’t see that many stone bands—how come there’s so many ogres like that?”
Maeve couldn’t remove her gaze from the approaching trio. “Cronk’s well-to-do. He’s got plenty of gold. He invests in sigils and sends his boys to tutoring and on quests and such so they can level up a bit.”
Cutter said, “Okay. Okay. We’ve got to play it cool. Get our story straight. Norris said that they ambushed Bonk out near the Gandersons’ place, wherever that is, and that Bonk came right here when he got the other guy, the dead goblin, to reveal the employer. Gotta ask him how you ambush someone in that open space. But the main thing is they can’t know what went down. So let’s just play it nice and cool. Okay? Maeve… you’re not playing it cool.”
The little blue woman was visibly shaking. “I’m sorry, love, I’m sorry. It’s just so… they’re going to…”
“Hmm… you know what, maybe you should go get Lita and lay low a while… I’ll handle this.”
“Oh no, love. I couldn’t do that. I can’t leave you to three of them on your own.”
“Relax. They’re respectable folk, aren’t they? Bonk was the only one with a racket, right? Right?”
She nodded, still trembling.
Cutter said, “At worst they’re just out looking for him. He was such a dirtbag I’ll bet he goes missing all the time. Now go on, if they see you like this it’ll be a dead giveaway.”
Sniffling slightly, Maeve nodded and bowed her head, shuffling back into the interior of the island.
Cutter puffed up his chest and saluted the approaching creatures. “Morning, boys! What can I do for you?”
The two stone-ranked ogres, the ones with the weapons, flanked the clay-ranked ogre, the smallest of them. It was this middle ogre who spoke as they reached Cutter. “Who’re you?”
“I’m Cutter, and who might you fine fellows be?” he gave them his best all-star quarterback smile.
The ogre said, “Where’s the little shits what live here?”
“They’re busy just at the moment. Early morning and all that. Work to do.”
The ogre looked around, his beady eyes lingering on the uprooted and crushed crops. “What happened here then?”
Cutter took a step closer, not posturing but showing no fear and exuding confidence. “You never told me your name, friend.”
The ogre eyed him up, taking in his weapon belt and stone band. He said, “I’m Gronk. This here is Clonk and the big lad is Donk. What’re you then? Security?”
Cutter shrugged, visibly working to contain his amusement at their naming scheme. “Yeah, that makes as much sense as anything else. I’m security.”
“How they affording you?”
Cutter swept his arms expansively. “A new operation, as you can see. A farming enterprise.”
Gronk’s eyes dwelled on the ruins of the farm. “What happened here then?”
Cutter stepped closer. Gronk stiffened as Cutter casually came very close and whispered conspiratorially, “Bit of a domestic, actually, if you want to know. You know what Pod’s like, mean old drunk. Him and the missus got into it last night. There was screaming and throwing and… as you can see, rampant crop destruction. Anyway, fellas, you never said to what we owe the pleasure of your company.”
Gronk’s beady eyes remained narrowed. “Cousin’s missing. Name of Bonk. The little folk would know him. Has he been about?”
Cutter made a show of not recognizing the name. “No. Never heard of him. Certainly wasn’t here in the last… when did you last see him?”
Gronk said, “Yesterday morning. He went off on business, but we had a party planned at Spinners—Donk’s birthday. Not like Bonk to miss something like that, not with Da paying up for the booze and girls. Not like him at all, so we decided something must have happened to him.”
Cutter said, “Oh, well, I was here all day yesterday and I can tell you, we did not see this fine cousin of yours. What could have inspired you to come directly to us?”
Gronk said, “This was the direction he went in. We’re making calls.”
Cutter shrugged. “Sorry, fellas. Can’t help you. Maybe try, what are they called, the Gandersons?”
Gronk said, “The Gandersons? Aye. That’s our next stop.”
Gronk started to turn and his brothers made to follow. Then he stopped.
“What’s that there then?” he said, looking at Cutter’s band.
There, inserted the night before while deep in his cups, was the berserker sigil.
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