“Let us talk about this again when I get better at explaining myself,” he declared to Fog. She took in his words, her head tilted.
“...You’re serious about this.”
“Indeed.”
“Well, I’ve already smelled the kind of person you are. But what are you going to do about everyone else? I don’t think many of us are gonna take you up on your offer if you just go around volunteering to help.”
“I thought as much as well. What do you think of this?” And Gaius laid out his plan to her.
“Hmm... That’s some act. I mean, it does make some sense, but...”
“Isn’t constructing more homes your top priority? As long as there’s a human—an enemy—here, the village will never be able to relax.”
“I guess,” Fog mumbled, her arms crossed.
“So once everyone has calmed down, then I will escape. But not until then.”
“I’m okay with this, but are you sure?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your wagon’s full of stuff that’s really carefully wrapped up—most of it’s weapons, right? I don’t know a lot about life outside the forest, but you’re some kind of warrior, aren’t you?”
“I was something like that, once.”
“And you still don’t care?”
“About what?”
“Come on, I mean...pride, shame, things like that. Won’t those be a problem?”
“Why would they?”
Fog stared at him, ever-so-slight disappointment on her face.
“...Okay, I got it. Let’s go with your plan.” And so, the two began their preparations.
＊
A band of kobolds had gathered to gather some more trees—but at the moment, they were all standing dumbstruck.
“Uh, so. As part of his sentence, I’m putting the human I caught to work.” Fog stood in front of the group, and made her declaration with a sigh. Beside her stood the giant man in question, a collar around his neck. Fog held onto a rope leading to the collar.
“Starting today, I think I’ll make him do all our heavy lifting, sunup to sundown. Go on, say hello to everyone!” she said, her voice flat like a poor actress reading from a script, then tugged hard on the rope. She smacked him across the backside with a stick she held in her other hand.
“Yowie! That hurts! Have mercy, ma’am!”
“No backtalk! Hurry up!” She gave him another smack. The kobolds froze at the sharp crack! that rang out—it sounded like Fog was swinging the stick with a fair bit of force.
“Ow ow ow...” Gaius rubbed his rear, then turned back toward the kobolds and put his fist against his chest, his elbow straight out. It was the royal salute of Igris, although normally he would be holding a sword.
“My name is Gaius Beldarus! I pledge to you my eternal devotion, so I beg of you, spare me from execution!”
For a while, the kobolds could only simply stare, utterly dumbstruck.
＊
“Fog! We’ve stripped all the bark off this one, bring us another!” shouted one of the young kobold men, as he and the others lifted a bare tree trunk now devoid of bark and branches to their shoulders.
“Right! You heard them, get over there,” Fog said from her perch atop Gaius’s shoulder. She tapped her stick against his head to urge him on.
“Ma’am, yes ma’am!” he replied, his voice full of cheer as he hoisted the tree onto his other shoulder. With his strength, carrying a tree small enough to make a kobold house was no trouble at all.
The kobolds were still unused to a human’s presence, and still occasionally raised their voices in both fear and amazement, but by now they no longer trembled at the sight of him.
The sight of Fog steering him around the village, having seemingly tamed the beast, was also gradually causing them to lower their guard. Less because she’d made a human submit to her, but more because the pair of them looked so ridiculous.
Fog immediately wanted off his shoulder as soon as she realized this, but when she thought about how Gaius was deliberately putting himself in the role of prisoner, she felt like there was no choice but to persevere.
When she asked Gaius how he was holding up, she got a high-spirited reply. “I feel like a new recruit again. It’s so refreshing.” What a carefree man.
They’d made several, no, dozens of trips between the woods and the village, carrying items here and helping out there. Gaius was hauling the trees at such a pace the tree-clearing team eventually were unable to keep up.
After all, even though they were a group of men, each of them was still only around half the size of a human. Their tools, like the stone axes most of them wielded, were also somewhat primitive.
“Do you have any axes or anything like that, Gaius?”
“Yes, ma’am! They aren’t for cutting trees, but I do have several!”
At Gaius’s cheery response, Fog looked at him in amazement, and asked, “Really? Ones we can use?”
“They are somewhat heavy.”
“Somewhat, huh...? Heeey, Rain Grass!”
Rain Grass looked up from the tree he was stripping the bark from and called back, “What?”
“I was thinking of letting this guy have an axe and making him cut down some trees. What do you think?”
“Don’t be stupid! Who’d give a weapon to a prisoner?” Rain Grass said, waving a hand in front of his face as if to wave away the idiocy of her suggestion. Nearby kobolds also voiced their disapproval: “Yeah!” “No way!”
“I agree, ma’am!” said Gaius, which earned him a smack on the head. Instead, Fog ordered him to go and carry the bark that had been stripped away back to the village. They could put it to use by making fiber from it, or using it in foundations. Trimmings, too, could be used as kindling. The trunk wasn’t the only important part of the tree.
“Shall we load it into the cart and have Claudette take us back?”
“Now there’s a good idea, Gaius,” Fog said, wonder in her voice.
“Over my dead body! That’s where his weapons are!” Again, another kobold shot down their suggestion.
“Why not just take them out of the wagon, then?”
“They’re way too heavy for us to move!”
“Then make Gaius do it.”
“What are you saying, Fog...?” Their back-and-forth continued a while longer.
“Lizard! A lizard’s comiiiiiing!” a voice cried out from the trees.
The kobolds’ ears instantly pricked up at the sound, and after looking around frantically their eyes all focused in the same direction. Several kobolds came running from that direction, their faces aghast.
“Get out of here! There’s a lizard!”
“A lizard’s coming!”
“Run! Hurry! Hurry!”
The kobolds all broke out in a run, shouting at each other to flee, their tools still in hand.
Gaius, on the other hand, did not budge. He asked Fog, “By ‘lizard,’ do they mean a ‘tree-eating lizard?’”
“Is that what you humans call them? Yeah, sounds like that’s the one.”
As far as magical beasts went, tree-eating lizards lived relatively near the outskirts of the Greatwood. The oversized reptiles could grow to nearly 12 feet long from head to tail, and just as the name implied, they fed on trees, particularly those native to the Greatwood. Vegetarian reptiles were a rarity.
Not only did they feed on live trees, they were able to sustain their massive sizes on this diet alone, defying human understanding of biology. Perhaps they played a role in maintaining the forest’s ecosystem.
Unlike bugbears, tree-eating lizards did not prey on humans or other beasts. However, they were violently territorial by nature; they would attack if anything so much as approached their territory. Fog had once seen one use its powerful teeth and jaws to kill a bugbear, which should have had the upper hand in a fight.
And once or twice, they had attacked the kobolds that ventured into the woods. For the villagers here, tree-eating lizards were one of the more familiar and predictable threats.
However, they didn’t attack to hunt for food, so as long as one was able to make it out of their territory, they would be safe. However...
“Fog, over there,” Gaius said and pointed, back to his normal self. She looked in that direction.
“...He’s not gonna make it!”
One young kobold was still up in the swaying branches of a tree, hanging on for dear life. The tree-eating lizard had stopped at the base of the tree. It slammed into the tree again and again, trying to shake him down. Another minute more and the trunk would surely break from this punishment.
That kobold had most likely realized that he could not outrun the beast, and instead had tried—and failed—to avoid its charge by hiding in a nearby tree.
“Gaius, hurry, go get a weapon!”
“There’s no time. I’m going just like this.”
Fog, still on his shoulder, yelled in surprise as he headed for the beast.
Sensing another presence, the tree-eating lizard’s eyes looked all around. It could not twist its relatively narrow neck far enough, so it had to turn its entire body around to face him. As soon as Gaius could see the reptile’s emotionless face, he sprinted at it without so much as a wind-up.