Page 15 of Paladin's Hope

Galen looked amused. To Brindle, he said, “Doctor Piper is he, among humans. Because we can’t smell.”

Brindle looked skeptical. Earstripe explained something, involving many hand gestures and ear positions. Brindle finally nodded and said to Piper, “A gnole will call a bone-doctor what he wishes, but a bone-doctor has a gnole’s respect.”

That seemed to settle that, so far as everyone was concerned. Piper wondered if there was a book available on gnole language for humans and made a note to pursue the matter when he returned to the city.

Assuming we ever return, and aren’t killed by some murderer out in the wilderness who is impaling people or chopping their legs off.

“Is this the same ox you rescued in Morstone?” asked Galen.

“An ox is, yes.” Brindle patted the animal’s flank with pride. “An ox is called Wise-nose.” He scrambled up onto the wagon seat and tapped the animal’s flank with his stick, and they were off.

The ox’s top speed was approximately three miles an hour, which suited Piper fine. He no longer felt as if he was slowing the party down. The two humans walked alongside or sat in the back of the wagon. Earstripe sat up front, next to Brindle, the two of them with their heads close together, chatting.

“Do you think Earstripe is all right?” asked Piper softly. “He and Brindle, I mean? It seems like being a guard-gnole was important.”

“I don’t know. Though I do know Brindle, and once he said, ‘A gnole is family,’ as far as he was concerned, that ended the matter. Earstripe may feel a bit differently about it, though.”

“I wish we could help,” said Piper. “But we know so little about them, and I feel like we could easily make it worse.” He thought back again to Earstripe’s sudden switch in language when he’d asked Piper for help, and how startling it had been. “Or at least leave him having to reassure the dimwitted humans, and I can’t imagine he needs that right now.”

Galen chuckled. “Spoken like a man who’s been there himself.”

“I think every doctor has been at some point. You give someone bad news and then the person with them panics, and the patient winds up having to reassure the person who isn’t even sick. It’s part of the reason I prefer working with the dead.”

“Ah…” Galen nodded. “You worked with live ones first, then?”

“I did. But I’m a great deal better with the dead.” That was as much as Piper wished to say about the matter. His particular trick had given him a great advantage when identifying cause of death. At first he had hated it and tried to avoid using it. Later, he had simply been grateful for that advantage. Anything to stop working with the living. They feel too many things and they want you to feel them, too. And half the time you cannot save them, no matter what you do, but you cannot tell them that.

And they act as if you are a fool or a god, and honestly, sometimes you feel like both.

It had all been too much. Too many feelings. Too many emotions. He had fought for a post where there were only the dead, who felt nothing any longer, and he had won it, and everything had gotten so much easier.

“Even the ones who die by violence?” asked Galen, looking at him with those flawed jade eyes.

“Even then. Sometimes I can help get a little justice. And even if I can’t, they’re not suffering any longer.”

Eight

The wagon was large and mostly empty, despite several crates that Piper guessed were full of food for the ox. Plenty of room to stretch out. The Temple had included a pair of thick bedrolls. Piper had somehow assumed they’d be staying at inns and hadn’t thought to pack any, so when evening came, he was grateful for the foresight. He took the small lamp from his pack and lit it.

“Ah!” said Galen, stepping up onto the back of the wagon. “You brought a lamp?”

Piper nodded, setting it in place atop a crate of provisions. “In my line of work, you always need light, and there’s hardly ever enough.”

“Ingenious design.” Galen moved past him, bent over to clear the ceiling, and inspected it. A short little chimney, a glass hood, and an extremely wide base to keep it from tipping over.

“They use them on ships,” said Piper, “for reading charts below decks.” He unrolled his bedroll on one side of the wagon, leaving plenty of room for Galen on the other. And I suppose that means we’ll be sleeping together. In a sense.

A purely platonic sense.

Yes. Purely platonic, of course.

He sat down cross-legged on his bedroll and wondered if he should start undressing or if there was something else you did when camping out on the road. He settled for pulling his boots off.

“I was surprised you came along on this trip,” said Galen, startling him.

Piper looked up. “Why, because I’m a city boy?”

Looking up was a mistake. The lamplight woke fiery highlights in Galen’s hair and fell kindly across the sharp planes of his face, softening the lines of worry. There was a sharp dip in the center of his upper lip, and Piper had a mad urge to run his finger across it.

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