Chapter 18

                                    

                                          

The next few days were an exercise in frayed nerves. The ogre's cage remained covered in a sheet of rough leather, but the creature groaned like a horse being hit by a club. Even two horses struggled to pull its heavy prison. 
Their slow progress meant they were overtaken often. Farmers, traders, even the occasional ducal messenger clopped by, spreading Grand-Duke Flavus's influence over this distant province.
"Surely they can hear it," Joakim complained, after a pair of youths drove a flock of geese past them, every other moment punctuated with a grunt or sigh from the ogre. "It's loud enough to wake the dead!"
"Keep your voice down," Erstas replied from the seat of the ogre's wagon. Cren had taken charge of their original wagon, guiding the horses with an easy hand. "They can't see him because they don't think to look. You can hear him because you know he's there. Trust me, the spell will hold unless one of us is foolish enough to mention it."
"I hope you're covering Hoi-Yan too," Cren said. "We still don't know who was seeking her."
Erstas grinned. "Indeed. To other eyes she appears as a young boy with a scar and a lazy eye. You would be proud of how ugly I've made her."
Joakim frowned, glancing at Hoi-Yan. He could see no difference in her appearance, but she, and the ogre's cart, gathered no looks from those they passed.
Ahead of them, beyond heathery sheep fields and twisted apple orchards, rose a plateau famous even in the Isles.
According to the men of Door, the Cursed Plateau was the site of Manus the Ogre-Slayer's final clash with the ogres. There, the last of Hab's followers had fought, before fleeing to the north beyond the Klebbermach, the massive cliff that Kraos, Spirit of Earth, had raised against them. They said the battle had been so bloody, the earth itself had soured, making the region unliveable, banishing both men and fey.
Men and fey will soon return to it, thought Joakim, as the ogre groaned again, just as they passed a hay wagon with its wheel off at the side of the road. The wagoneer fiddling underneath it didn't look up. 
Joakim doubted the truth of Manus's tale–long years making long lies in his opinion–but a part of him felt keen to see the plateau. As a boy he'd acted out the battles of brave Manus with his siblings on warm days when the sun shone and food sat in their bellies. Harken had loved those games. The memory was not as sharp as it had been, but still enough to make Joakim shy away from it.
Squatting like a fat toad sheltering in the shade of the cliffs, the town of Lothra did not doubt Manus's myths. As they rumbled towards its stone walls, they passed a huge stone pillar. Carved with off-putting gore, it showed scenes of battles, charges, a race of monsters pitted against an army of men. Joakim could read the words 'Victa Humanus' upon it. 
Entering such a place with one of humanity's greatest enemies would be foolish at midnight, yet when they reached the town just before noon, Erstas insisted that they go through.
"It guards the only wagon path up the cliffs," he answered when Joakim voiced his objections. Guards. That was the word. Soon they spotted big, burly men in uniform, peering grimly at all interlopers.
To Joakim's relief, no one stopped them at the high wooden gates. They clattered along the paved streets and wide gutters of Lothra, a small town that dreamt of being greater. Stone shops and houses stood proudly alongside wooden ones – the former older and well made, the latter newer but less sturdy. 
The streets were far from empty, but people moved out of their way without incident, ignoring the ogre's wagon completely. They stopped at an inn with an ugly horned skull on a spike outside it. A sign saying 'The Ogre's Head' hung above the door. Still, Erstas insisted they linger. "The lands to the north are wild, and we're running low on supplies. Go with Cren and fetch what we need. I'll give you a list." With the list came a pouch of coins and suggestion for Joakim to buy himself some new clothes. "You've got blood on those ones." He vanished into the inn.