1 1. The Smell of Books, Bandits, and Clydesdales

    The desert sands radiated unbearable heat as the mid-afternoon sun scorched overhead. Sagebrush and cacti dotted the plains beyond a beaten path that a rickety, splintered wagon pulled by two patchy Clydesdales rode. It clunked up and down as the shotty wheels bumped over rocks, knocking the wagon rider and the passenger inside every which way. The wagon rider had a gnarled, grisly face, covered in splotches of developing cancers. He was nearly unapproachable, but his small size and wrinkled age were reassuring to anyone that looked at him. He leaned back towards the wagon's pale brown light.

    In the midst of the stained glow of the wagon cover, there was a silhouette of a medium-sized man poised primly upward. He had been quiet for nearly twenty days, keeping the same pompous position on top of a large storage trunk, doing nothing but flipping through pages of an old, dusty book. The wagon rider's throat had been itching for a conversation for hours.

    "The road 'round these parts get pretty rough," he said, wiping sweat from under his hat. "No one usually comes out here but me and m'other riders, it's faster this way. The bandits are too bad to take the regular way anyhow."

    The passenger responded after a moment. "Yes, the sinister bandits."

He went quiet again. The wagon rider waited for him to speak again, but he'd already reburied himself deeper into his book, practically sniffing the pages. He shuffled back into his seat, gripping the reigns tighter through moistened palms.

"It's hot, ain't it?" the wagon rider said.

"The wagon's quite temperate." He returned to silence with another thwip of a page.

The wagon rider looked back to the horses with a sigh, but as he turned back, he chuckled.

"Y'know, I always thought it was funny that I took a job where I stare at a horse's ass all day. Heh. It's fellers like you that usually--"

The passenger in the back closed his book, narrowly missing his nose. The wagon rider turned with the noise of slapping pages. A ray of light glinted in the passenger's glasses, overrun by his large amounts of wavy, auburn hair. He was a well-kept younger man no older than thirty that had expensive but modest clothes: a tanned vest, a blue wool coat he sat on, suspenders, and slacks. He glared at the wagon rider.

"I know you must be bored Francis, but please don't interrupt my study. I have a lot of ground to cover before we get to California and I need all the concentration I can get."

"Y'got another thirty days 'fore we're even close to California! It can wait a damn minute, can't it?"

The passenger was smelling pages once more. Francis looked back to the road, his face in a frown.

"Asshole."

So there they sat, in near-perfect silence. Every now and then, you'd hear the whip of a tail or the flick of a page, and of course, the Clydesdales constantly clopping their hooves, but a word wasn't spoken for an hour and a half. During that time, the sun didn't get dimmer and neither did the passenger. He stayed vigilant, following the words he read with astute precision as the wagon bucked and jerked him around its interior.

You'd think that it killed Francis to stay quiet for that long, but every time he tried to talk to the man behind him, he'd get more bitter at the idea.

He was always "studying," or doing whatever he did back there. It irritated him that he could only stare at a horse's ass and nothing else, but he tried to look on the bright side. "At least it's not a bad lookin' horse ass," he thought. Another half-hour passed. The passenger had just finished a page and grabbed to turn it, but the wagon jolted to a stop. Still in motion, his hand forcefully tore the page directly from its spine. He looked at the damage in horror, sputtering what he thought were words.

"W-Wha-- What…"

His fist clenched around the paper. He huffed to Francis' end of the cart.

"What is the meaning of--" then he saw them. Two men in the middle of the road, standing side by side. They were musty with dirt with matching red handkerchiefs around their necks. The one on the left was missing all but one tooth and deathly skinny. On the contrary, the taller one on the right seemed well-fed, a little too well-fed even. Though they were contrasted in size, they both had an equally dopey expression on their faces. Francis had his hand on his hip near a gun holster.

"I almost killed you, dumbasses! Didn't your mama teach you not to jump in front of carts like that? The hell do ya think you are?"

"I'm Barnaby and that's Cate," the one on the right said. His Southern accent that made him unintelligible. "Most people call 'im Toothless."

The passenger looked at them in disgust. He could smell them from nearly ten feet away, and it wasn't pleasant either. His nostrils felt violated.

"Well get outta the road! We got places to be!" Francis said.

"So do we," Barnaby said. "We were jumped by bandits a few miles ahead. They stole our horses and took our money. Made out to a nearby town, I think. We were hopin' of hitchin' a ride with you folk."

Francis and the passenger looked at each other. His eyes were scornful knowing what Francis was about to say.

"Hop in, we'll drop you off along the way."

Barnaby and Cate approached the back of the wagon and along with their bodies came their horrid stench. The passenger's eyes dripped tears as he tried to cover his nose, but he didn't make his repulsion too obvious. That would've been rude.

"Hya!"

The Clydesdales were off, but thanks to the weight of their new "passengers," they were slower than before. More methodical. Barnaby and Cate stared at the well-dressed stranger in front of them expecting an introduction, but he didn't give them a second glance. Hell, he didn't give them a first glance. He just read.

Read so frantically, you swore his eyes could burst out of his head at any second. Barnaby and Cate watched in awe, their mouths open and stench drawn. The passenger in front of them finally looked up.

"I hope you were taught that staring is impolite," he said. The red-handkerchiefed pair remained unwavering.

"Sorry, didn't mean t'be impolite," Barnaby said. "Me n' Toothless've never seen a magician before."

The passenger smirked. "How can you tell I'm a magician?"

"Yer book. Seen sum'n like it when I was back East. Place's full of magic, right?"

He looked at the back of the book he had in his hands. On top of the leather, its symbols were cryptic and sharp, not in any sort of English. He raised his eyebrows. "Yes… It is magical, if you want to phrase it like that. I didn't know anyone out here could read runes."

"Can't read 'em, I just seen it before."

"Ah." The passenger dove back into his book, brushing his hair behind his glasses. Barnaby's eyes fell to the trunk that the passenger sat on. Between his legs there was a bronze embroidering with a name.

"Charles Buchanan," Barnaby read. The passenger's head perked up.

"Yes?" Charles said.

"You got a mighty fine lookin' chest un'erneath ya. I'm sure it's fulla nice things." Toothless nodded beside him staring at the glistening trunk.

"I believe what's in here is none of your concern." Charles said.

"It might be real soon." Barnaby said. Toothless' jaw was agape, drooling all over his lap.

Barnaby and Cate shifted in their seats with their thumbs in their belts, doing their best to hide pieces of leather attached to them. Holsters. Charles didn't make eye contact.

"I'm certain that you're unaware of this since this is the first time you've crossed a magician," Charles said, "but there are a few things you need to know about us. First, and most importantly…" He put fingers in an odd formation in front of him with his palms out. A blue glow of energy surged through his body, starting at his feet and quickly progressing to his head. Flames flew from his fingertips and his eyes finally met with the bandits. They recoiled in fear.

"... We're much tougher than we look."