A Long Walk Home

She stepped over the threshold, her boots sinking softly into the shaggy rug at the entrance like paws in shallow mud. As she thought of this, she couldn't help but wiggle her toes, and then almost laughed. She cupped a hand over her mouth and gathered herself, however, as she remembered why she was there. Nodding to herself, she crept forward until her feet rested inches from the bed.

The lump stirred but did not wake, and Esme smiled as his snoring recommenced. She slowly and deliberately placed her hands on the bed beside it, and leaned in until her breath tickled its ear.

This time her voice was sharp and quick, and the tickle at the lump's ear made it reach up to swat at whatever could have been disturbing its rest. Esme ducked out of the way, and the lump smacked its cheek with a grunt. It slowly drifted into conciousness, the stinging on its cheek scaring off the happy dreams that were nearby.

Esme stood up straight, and pulled a long, thin wire from a small pouch on her belt. The lump--which was actually not a lump at all, but a very round man laying on his stomach--turned his head to look out his window for the light of morning. His eyes did not make it that far. They froze on the cold, pretty face that stared down at him. He began to scream, but Esme had quick hands. The garotte fit 'round his neck snugly, and she held it there for a long time. After a few minutes, the man was a lump again, and had stopped its jiggling.

When morning came, Esme had already left the trader's home, and made it back to the camp she and her companion had set just beyond the outskirts of Shagrim. She arrived to find her companion, a half-ogre named Gordel, pulling down their tents and dousing their fire. As she approached, he looked up and nodded his bald head at her, then continued his work.

"We leave, now." He said in in a deep, grunting voice. Though it sounded plainly like a statement, Esme knew her gargantuan friend well enough to recognize a question when he asked. He didn't speak very well in any language, but Esme also knew that this did not reflect his intelligence in any way. Gordel's mind was as sharp as his voice was dull.

"Yes," She answered, taking a knee by the smoking embers of their camp fire, "We've dealt with the last of them."

Gordel grunted in response as he carefully folded the canvas in his hands and stuffed it in his large backpack. He then proceeded to take down the other tent with the same gentle care, of which few ogre-kin care to muster.

"I want to reach Aikish by sunrise tomorrow, if we can," She thought aloud, "We'll both need some time to rest before Oryn arrives."

He nodded silently again, slowly standing up with a second folded canvas in his hands. He made his way over the the backpack once more, and stuffed it inside. Despite the care he took to hide it, Esme could still see her friend's limp.

"How's your leg doing?" She asked, trying to sound conversational. Gordel paused before speaking, looking up at her with an annoyed frown.

"Leg fine." He said, and gave Esme a look that would have ended the conversation were he staring down anyone else. She shook her head, after a moment.

"We'll be in Aikish soon, anyway. You'll have to rest there, whether you like it or not."

She held her hands up for him to see, then shrugged. Arguing wouldn't get them anywhere, and Gordel was tougher than he looked, she knew. That was certainly saying a lot, considering his girth, but even so, it still concerned her.

Esme looked down at the bruises and scrapes on his calf as he knelt in front of the pack, his back to her. Their last stop was in Phatep, where the second to last of their targets had ended up. He was, to their surprise, well guarded, and Gordel took a hard hit to his left leg in the exchange. It didn't take long for the guard to regret his decision. Once the half-ogre was on his feet again, that poor guard could see what was going to happen next in his furious eyes. He dropped his mace and tried to make for the door, but a half-ogre's arms are long, even if both of their legs are broken. The guard had only managed one, and so, one can only imagine how much his odds worsened.

Loslie was the last, and Esme had to leave her companion behind to take care of him. Luckily, their final target wasn't the smartest fellow, and turned out to be amusingly easy to deal with. She, however, decided to save that story for the long walk ahead. In this heat, they were going to need a good many stories to keep them occupied.

Gordel grunted one last time as he hauled the giant backpack over his shoulders, and made himself comfortable. Esme mused that he looked like a two-legged elephant, with no trunk or tusks, just grey skin, carrying one of those big seats on his back, with bags of gold and jewels hanging down its sides. He stared at her with a puzzled expression on his face. That was when she caught herself giggling softly, and cupped her hand over her mouth. Her ogre-kin friend looked profoundly confused, but she wasn't about to share her thoughts with him.

As a rule, Esme had vowed that if any man or creature to swallow her in any less than three bites, it was not worth upsetting for gold or glory. So, she just patted him on the back, took one last glance at their camp, and then started to walk. By the time their camp disappeared from sight, Gordel had forgotten all about it, and so had she.

They travelled through the morning hours, until the heat of the day became to great for walking. Already, both Esme and Gordel were red with sunburn, and eager to find shelter for the blistering afternoon that lurked threateningly on the horizon. They took refuge under a small outcropping of rock until the sun sank into the sand that evening, where it would remain until the dark night needed to be chased away. This gave Esme's ogre-kin companion plenty of time to rest his leg for the remainder of the journey, and Esme herself time to think and converse with him.

She had been handling Oryn's landside affairs for many years now. Since she had just entered her twenties, in fact. That was quite some time ago, now, but it certainly didn't seem that way. Esme had to admit to herself, though, that she wasn't as young as she used to be. At least she could look and play the part well, were it still not true.

She found Gordel near Windy Bluff not long after she began her work for the Captain, and soon learned that the half-ogre had been exiled. When he came to Windy Bluff, he was just an incredibly large and slightly ugly man in search of adventure, on the outside. Inside, he had an intelligence that rivaled even the smartest of ogre-kind. Due to this, Gordel didn't take kindly to those who assumed he was a dull as he sounded. There was an incident in a pub, involving a rather heavy wooden table and a rude man killed by it. Needless to say, the township didn't take well to killers, and Gordel counted himself lucky to have only been cast out from the town.

His size and strength had come in handy on countless occasions since their meeting, but it was the companionship she valued the most in their business relationship. He watched her back, she watched his, and neither needed to say that things would always be that way. They were friends, in reality, but both had always been to professional to admit as much.

Esme stared out at the heat waves as they baked the air above the sand, outside of their mostly comfortable shade. She could see a small scorpion scuttling towards their cool sanctuary, its tail raised warily and its little claws poised to strike. The heat didn't seem to slow it down, but surely it could at least feel the discomfort. Esme lifted the toe of her boot as it scuttled out from the sun, and she watched it intently.

While Gordel snored beside her, and the scorpion cautiously halted nearby, she mused that it was more than just vaguely similar to them. A scorpion was a hunter, travelling aimlessly in search of its next meal, always poised to strike, always cautious as can be. The little insect scuttled towards her, coming to a stop near her boot. She smiled, slowly bringing the toe of her boot to lurk above the unknowingly doomed creature.

Even hunters make mistakes, She thought, [i]Someday, every hunter will be hunted.[i]

With that thought, as though the scorpion heard her speak aloud and understood what she meant, it reared up its tail and scuttled backwards, quickly making its way out from under the outcropping. She watched long, until it disappeared in the wavering camouflage of the desert heat waves.

The sun was setting slowly outside of their little hovel, painting the golden sand an intense, angry red-orange. The sky was pink, completely devoid of clouds. There was only the shape of a buzzard circling in the distance, crowing the eulogy of a dying creature she would never see nor hear.

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