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unknownjpegs · 1 year ago

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little value

“Halt!”

Stepper doesn’t listen to the command, since it’s not from him, so the lumbering beast continues on stepping. Happy watches lazily, arms tucked into his sleeves, folded over his chest. His tortoise takes another lazy step and the Kings Guards on the road start to seem panicky, waving their hands, shouting the command another time.

“Stepper,” Happy calls, whistling. The Great Tortoise pauses then, one massive leg half lifted. He sets it down and swings his massive head toward him, blinking big doe eyes. “S’nough now, yeah? We’ll rest a bit.” He gets another few blinks before the tortoise opens its mouth in a giant yawn and then the beasts stomach hits the ground hard enough to make the two guards stumble a bit.

“You have papers for this beast? For your wares?” One of the guards snaps, coming forward. He’s taller than the other, lanky with floppy brown hair that pokes out underneath his little royal helm. Guard Two stands at a more respectable distance, has shrewd and beady red eyes. Neither of them pay Stepper any mind now that he’s flat to the ground.

“Are you askin’ if I’m a legitimate merchant, or a man with a giant tortoise carrying goods, roaming around for fun?” Happy takes one arm from his sleeve and uses his little finger to scratch inside his ear. Stepper gives another big mouthed yawn for effect, resting its head on the ground lazily.

“Being short with me, merchant?” The first guard snarls, hand on his hilt.

“Least m’bein’ recognized as a merchant,” Happy mutters, waving a hand in mute compliance to have his wares looked at. But neither guard actually move to do so. Instead they come closer, angling looks at each other. Suspicious and furtive, and both rest their hands on their hilts then. Happy looks between them, bored and tired.

“Looking for this man,” the short guard says, yanking out a piece of parchment. He holds it up for Happy to lazily inspect, head lolled to the side and angled down, because he’s much taller.

It’s Tino, of course. An artists rendering, with charcoal perhaps. It has his smooth cheeks, dark hair, the handsome cut of his jaw. Only whoever had done the drawing had also given him a terrible sneer. A cruel curl to his lip that wrinkled his nose. His eyes were glinting with malice, brows drawn in. He looked cartoonish and villainous and nothing like the laughing, good natured man Happy knew. If someone knew Tino, perhaps they’d recognize this as him. But a stranger, who merely glanced between this paper and the smiling, baby faced man they were looking for, might possibly think there was just an unfortunate resemblance.

“Never seen ‘im,” Happy replies.

The guards stare at him, their eyes narrowed. Beads of sweat roll down their faces, because they’re in light armor. He stares back, nonplussed and unimpressed.

“Suppose you’ll be paying the Kings tax ‘fore we let you by,” the shorter guard says then. He sniffs hard and spits snot onto the ground at Happy’s feet. The wind rustles through the trees a bit. He feels rain incoming and truthfully, he’d hoped to be at Tino’s by now. Because the trail is just shortly to their left, leads right into a clearing where the runaway’s built his little home for him and his stolen babe. And if it weren’t for that trail being so close, so happenstance nearby, Happy might have been content to just let them rob him.

Instead, he gives a shake of his head and sighs.

“Already paid my taxes this year.”

The guards unsheathe their swords with a clanging metallic sound. One points the tip to him while the other starts toward his tortoise. Stepper blinks up at the man as he levels the sword with his long leathery neck.

“Not above killing a man’s beast to set him straight,” the tall, sweaty guard says in a snide and malicious voice.

“Know what he is?” Happy asks in reply, gesturing toward his companion. The tortoise blinks at him this time. His great bulk shifts slightly, excited for the attention. Happy can remember the exact day when he got Stepper. Bought from a traveling merchant just like himself. Small enough to fit into his palm.

“A fucking turtle, what else he be?” The short guard prods his sword closer, point neck level with Happy now. He stares down the long glossy metal. It looks mostly unused. Happy understands. Pricks like the Royal Guards that wander the Kings Road, to keep peace, don’t usually have care to swing a sword. They can bully what they want out of people—and Happy is usually too lazy to argue, cuts his own coin purse and tosses it to them most of the time, without a backward look.

But the trail is so close.

“Stepper is a Great Tortoise. Not to be confused with the little tortoise. The ones you might be used to, yeah? The difference between Stepper and the small ones is not that he’s much bigger.” Happy sighs out, as if this is all some great inconvenience and not that he has a sword tip up to him and his animal companion. He lifts up a hand to wave at the tortoise, who raises his giant head in reply. The tall guard startles and takes a stumbling step back. “It’s that he can kill you.”

Steppers head shoots out fast, a blurring quickness. His great maw opens and then snaps shut around the tall guards head. There’s a distinctly wet crunching sound and then the body falls back to the ground with a loud thumping sound. His head does not follow.

Guard Two makes a brave attempt with his sword, screaming as it arcs through the air to catch Stepper on the neck. The thin metal snaps in two as it strikes the tortoise’s skin, the point of it flying and sticking into the soft dirt behind Happy, who’d stepped to the side as he saw it coming. The half broken sword makes a distinct twanging sound and then the guard is knocked to the ground by Stepper’s giant head.

“No! No!” The guard thrashes, screaming, scrambles—not enough. The Great Tortoise puts a great foot to the mans chest, and in one smooth and effortless motion, steps down. There’s the crunching sound of body breaking as well as the creak and groan of metal giving underneath the giant tortoise’s foot. Happy winces a bit as the blood soaks into the dirt road, dark and thick.

“Well,” Happy folds his arms back into his sleeves and looks to his companion. Stepper yawns once more, blood dripping from his pointed beak like mouth. “Suppose we’re in it now, Steps. No going back once you start killin’ the royalty.” Stepper slowly sinks back to the ground, belly flat, rumbling the Earth once more. Happy sighs, knowing he isn’t going to get any help moving the bodies to the forest.

—

The baby coos at Happy, his little fists waving in the air from the chair Tino’s fashioned for him. Something to keep him locked in, while he’s being fed. In the castle, Benji would have been spoiled rotten—held by a maid while another spoon fed him delicately. Now, he sits there with a plate of mixed foods that he smacks at happily, puts into his mouth messily as he smiles toothlessly up at Happy.

A bowl of soup and rice is handed to him then, by the young father. Happy takes it and immediately puts it to the side and then levels a look at Tino.

“Came here to talk to you,” he says in a mild voice. Not that the food didn’t smell amazing. The entire home did; alive with the cooking. The spices and the fire, and the closed in little space. The baby making excited sounds as Tino steps closer to wipe at the corners of his mouth.

“Not just to visit? Diondre, you know you can sit down. Enjoy a meal.”

“I know a witch,” he says instead, leaning against the table by the window. His eyes cut out to look at Stepper, who looks morose to not be involved. “With a babe just his age. Maybe a year younger or older, can’t really remember. She’s not exactly a nice witch, if you understand me.” He feels a chill sort of run up and down his spine, hairs lifting along his arms, like she can hear him. Wouldn’t doubt it if she could. He’d say it to her face, though, so the chill disappears as quickly as it had come on.

Tino stills, his shoulders tightening. Happy’s head tilts to the side, assessing as the younger man moves around the baby. Benji seems to sense the tension, his giant brown eyes going wide and watery. He looks fit to suddenly scream until Tino brushes a soothing hand over his curly hair. The baby has an absolute mop of it, black waves that stick up until Tino is brushing them down.

“Guards were on the road again.”

“Guards are always on the Kingsroad. It’s the Kingsroad.”

“And this,” Happy says, with a gesturing hand toward the placated baby. His little fist is wrapped tightly around one of Tino’s fingers, teething at the tip of it happily. He blinks at Happy, his eye lashes already thick and long. He looks nothing like his father. Not yet anyway. “Is the King’s son.”

The two men make eye contact then. Tino’s capable of a vastly darker look than one might assume him capable of. Nothing like the snide villains sneer on the parchment Happy had been shown. It’s not cruel, but it’s a cobra’s strike of warning. Benji makes happy, bubbling sounds. Happy sighs, takes the bowl from where he’d put it, assumes the soup is finally cooled down enough to eat. He won’t make this argument a third time; Tino will keep the baby, and Happy will keep selling along the Kingsroad to ensure that baby isn’t found.

Stepper breaks the tension by shoving his giant head through the window. Benji shrieks, but not in terror. He waves his hands in the air as the tortoise’s head comes closer. He yells in his babies babble and Stepper’s giant mouth opens, yawning large and wide.

The maw snaps shut on a bundle of herbs just above the mantle. Stepper chews contently, big eyes blinking as Benji continues his cherubic giggling.

Tino swings toward Happy with a delighted smile.

“You’ll be paying for the herbs then?”

Happy’s head rolls back on his neck, sighing out as he fishes for his coin purse.

—

Outside, Happy walks alongside the tortoise. The baby sleeps contently in the basket that Stepper carries inside his mouth. Tino watches from the door of the house, puffing away at the pipe. The smoke carries up into the air, disappears among the pink and purple clouds as the day slowly ends.

“I knew your father,” Happy says to the sleeping baby. Benji is swaddled tightly. He’d been fussing and crying, arguing against his sleep when Happy had scooped him up and placed him into the basket. It’ll help. Babies like the rocking motion, he’d explained as Stepper had taken up the handle without question. They lumber along now. Benji sleeps soundly, little face perfect.

“Well,” Happy continues, hands in his sleeves again. “Your real father, not that one. Know him too, for a bit now.” The edge of the forest greets them, so they make a turn to continue back toward the house. Tino has not moved, watches dutifully. “Not a big fan of the King, Benji.”

Stepper stops suddenly and sinks down onto his stomach lazily. Happy leans over to inspect the baby once more. Nothing but his face pokes out from the layers of blankets that keep him safe and warm. Happy crouches to look closer. He tries to find a shred of The King inside this face, but comes up empty. Not that he looks much like Tino either. Happy suspects, he’ll grow into a face that is uniquely his own.

“They’re going to come for you one day,” he murmurs. Stepper yawns out, puts his head beside the basket. Blinks his eyes closed. Happy sighs, looks up to the slowly darkening sky. Then he fishes within his red robe, pulls out the long necklace he’d stolen before he left. “This was your mothers. She was—well. The light in the halls of the castle, I’d say.” It’s not something a queen would wear, it’s simple, and of little value. It’s gold chain is old and the ornate gem at the end might not even be real.

Happy tucks it into the basket anyway.

#writing #hj #2023 #fantasy #dml #tl

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