“Yes, Majesty.” Maruk crumpled to the other side of the cart, the unforgiving boards bracing his back the only things holding him upright. Face a pale olive, all of the sun-drenched bronze faded from his skin, he patted the furs at the front of the cart with a weak smile. “Please sit, Lady, and have a care.”
“I’m sorry,” Aida whispered as she crawled to the loose ring of furs and tugged one up around her shoulders. Huddling inside of it for a warmth that would not come as her blood ran cold with Er’it’s promised vengeance.
“All is well, Lady.” Some of the color returning to his cheeks, Maruk gave her a small smile and patted her hand with a clammy palm. Grimacing and wiping his hands over the loose legs of his pants before arranging his lanky limbs in a more comfortable position.
They sat in silence as Maruk’s tent was taken down, his beautiful hangings wrapped in sturdy cloth and stored away in another cart alongside more poles and heavy drifts of canvas. The only other one Aida could see, it appeared to carry all of their supplies. The one she and Maruk were banished to containing nothing but what she’d seen at first glance.
More boy than man, one of the warriors clad in a simple pale tunic and blue pants climbed onto the seat of the cart. Back stiff as he ignored his riders, he flicked the whip he held in one hand over the head of the shaggy beast tied to the cart. Aida gasped as they lurched forward, clinging to the wooden planks of the frame as the boy urged the beast again. The whip cracking over the rounded horns until the woolen creature snorted and kept its massive hooves moving. Pulling the cart along behind it up a trail Er’it and others picked out for it.
The path was rocky and overgrown, the wheels struggling to find purchase on loose soil and jagged outcroppings hidden in the underbrush. More than once the boy resorted to flicking his whip at the beast while the handful of others remaining with them pushed at the back of the cart to get it free of some ditch that broken limbs and parched grass secreted. The sun was high by the time they found the real path. It mattered little to Aida as she stared at the dwindling horizon of deep azure settling over the mountains, the intense sunlight filtering through the ragged needles of the trees that began soaring above their heads. Already the landscape was changing, becoming so different from that which she was used to. Trees no longer bent and twisted, they were green if sparse in their covering and thin. The earth was darker, seeming richer as the grass turned from bright saffron to warm chartreuse. Their roots running deep into the ground, tearing free with a crackling sound as hooves and wheels churned them into muddy sludge.
“What is a Phylix,” Aida asked in a whisper, keeping her eyes turned up to the shimmering cerulean of the sky she could still see through the overhanging branches with their sparse covering of bristly needles.
“Kal, he’s a Phylix.” Maruk dug through the crate at his side, fishing out a wooden cup and a water skin. Moving with the rocking of the cart, he poured out the water without spilling much, handing the cup to Aida.
“Not a.. a horse?”
“No, nothing like them, though he resembles them. Drink, Lady.”
“And are those still the Solosa mountains?”
“Drink, Lady.”
Aida huffed out her breath, but did as Maruk asked, taking a healthy draught from the cup and showing him the contents to prod him into answering.
“I do not believe they are. Every place has their own name for things. What you call the Solosas, the Hatwar tribe of Aleota call their side of them the Utanet.”
“How odd.” Aida hummed, taking a slice of apple from Maruk when he held it out to her. “What of the thing pulling us? What is it called?”
“A type of cow, Lady. Raised on the Em’cha Steppes where it grows so cold, they need such fur to keep them alive.”
“Not a cow,” the boy guiding the cart said with a snort, shaking his head full of dark curls. “And you can find them as low as the Darusk Valley.”
“Forgive me for not being knowledgeable on beasts of burden in the mountains,” Maruk said with a dry laugh, sending his gaze towards the sky before turning his smile to Aida.
“No reason to give bad information,” the boy muttered, flicking the whip in a gentle arc over the beast’s head when its steps slowed.
“What are they then?” Aida turned towards the front of the cart, looping her arms over the edge to peer at the creature. Wide as the cart it pulled, its coarse hair hung in matted strands down to its hooves, dragging through the dirt. Blunt horns remained tight down the side of its head before curving out and up.
“Bull ox, though they’re called magallas in the Valley. They are a bit different there, like Lir here. Thinner coats, not as big, but twice as mean and hard working.”
“He’s yours?”
“Lir is a female,” the boy said with a smirk, flicking the whip in a lazy arc off to the side to push Lir back onto the sturdy path they followed. “And she’s as much mine as one of these monsters can be.”
“She… she’s not truly a monster is she?” Aida eased back, eyeing the shaggy bull ox with trepidation.
“Just ornery when she isn’t having her way. You just come out from under a rock?” The boy turned in his seat, trusting Lir to keep them to the path for the moment as he raised a single brow at
