SIDE Chapter 60 - A Ruff Journey

Things were looking up looking up for the beastman boy and his little sister. The slave collars around their necks were removed by a strange human boy even though it was said that they were impossible to be removed. Without the collars around their necks they could finally make their way back home and tell their parents what had happened to them.

A quick look around the abandoned village for supplies allowed the two of them to find some carrying sacks for the vegetables they were going to bring with them, an old rusted axe, a barrel they could use to hold drinking water, and a damaged cart that had two good wheels. The cart couldn't hold smaller things due to it having holes but it was perfect for carrying the barrel. It didn't take long to get everything ready to go; the boy remembered to fill up the barrel only after it was loaded on to the cart and vegetables were easy to load once the barrel blocked the largest hole.

It was too late to leave by the time the cart was ready so the boy decided to stay one more night at the abandoned village since the buildings would protect them from the wind. He woke up feeling well-rested. "Lily, wake up. We've got to start moving." The beastman boy was gently shaking his sister until she opened her eyes.

"Rex? It's too early. Mr Sun isn't even fully awake yet." Lily was still young and had learned the names of many things from the storybooks read to her by their parents. Mr Sun was the name used for the sun in a storybook explaining how plants grew and it seemed like it was Lily's favorite story.

Rex continued to shake her until she got annoyed and nipped his hand. "Ah! Lily! You can't just bite me like that. Do you want me to tell Mom that you've been biting me again?" Lily's ears drooped down when she heard Rex's question; clearly a sign of her being afraid of him telling their mother.

Lily reluctantly got ready to go. It was cold so she stuck to Rex's side as he pulled the cart. The clothes they were wearing were basically scraps and didn't really keep in their body's warmth so without each other's warmth they would find the temperature to be too cold to continue forward. "Rex, I'm cold."

There was nothing Rex could do about their clothes since the only cloth he could find in the village was rotted and covered in mold. "Get on my back. You'll feel warmer." Lily climbed up on to his back and held on tightly so Rex had to warn her about her arms choking him.

Rex inherited his father's strength so he could easily carry Lily while pulling along the cart stacked with food and water but unfortunately he also inherited his father's intelligence. He struggled with written words and he had to rely on his younger sister to do the reading for him. "Lily, there's a sign and I don't know which way to go. Can you tell me what the sign pointing left says?"

Lily looked up at the sign and tried reading it. "Foo-ert Toogoo?" She struggled a bit while reading but that was mostly due to her young age. In a few more months of lessons she would likely master the written language.

Foo-ert Toogoo? It took a while for Rex to figure it out. "Ah! Fort Togo! Didn't mom say something about our Uncle running a shop there?" His mom's brother decided to become a merchant and was currently running a business selling supplies made from the animals hunted by their tribe. Rex could remember that because his mother said that she was going to turn a pelt from one of the animals he hunted into a jacket and that the uncle knew somebody good at making them. Unfortunately, Rex was wearing that jacket when he and Lily were captured so it was unlikely that he would ever see it again.

Thinking about the jacket made Rex wish for a warm coat to give to his sister. He could feel that she was still shivering on his back. "Don't worry, Lily. I'll get us to a village and then we can get you a nice new coat. That weird boy with the scary hobgoblin girl left us enough to buy you something really warm and fluffy."

Lily nodded while still on his back and spoke while chattering. "O o okay, R Rex." After struggling to say two words she buried her head into the fur on Rex's neck, trying to get more warmth.

After an entire day and night of walking, Rex finally spotted a group of buildings. Lily was asleep so she was being held in one of Rex's arms against his chest while the other arm pulled the cart behind him. They still had a good amount of food and water left for their journey so the only thing they needed to get were the warm clothes and maybe a place to sleep for a day.

Rex hadn't gotten any sleep since he left the abandoned village. He was too worried that if he fell asleep he'd wake up to his sister's dead body from her freezing to death. He had to keep stopping in order to rub her limbs to keep her warm in the dead of night when the temperature kept dropping and the winds picked up.

Arriving at the village, Rex was greeted by rude people staring at him and his sister, saying mean things about the two of them to each other, unaware that they could be heard. "What are a couple of furballs doing traveling alone?" "We've already got a few of them staying here that won't leave. Don't tell me these two are here to stay with them." "They look broke so I doubt that they're going to buy anything. Keep a close eye on your goods."

There was a beastman woman with floppy ears towards the outskirts of the village that waved at him so he brought his sister and the cart over to where she was. "Excuse me, do you have any clothes I can buy? My sister has been freezing in this cold weather."

The lady nodded but warned Rex. "I don't mind giving you some clothes but you need to take your sister and get out of here as soon as possible. The people in this place aren't friendly to us beastmen, especially if you're new around here." She didn't seem happy with how she was treated by the people of the village.

Rex accepted her offer for the clothes but was curious about her situation. "Why do you stay here if they're not nice to you? Why not move to a different place?"

The woman gave a small chuckle at Rex's question. "It's the same whichever village I go to and I can't afford to live in a city. I could go live with a beastman tribe but I've never hunted before and I would need to leave my husband and children behind since humans and halfs aren't accepted there. They're not all terrible people in the village but the ones that do hate us are really vocal about it. Now, wake your sister and get some warm soup in your bellies before moving on."

Lily was going to complain about being woken up but then she smelled the soup. A smile was on her face as she drank it down, warming her insides. "Lily, this nice lady decided to give us some warm clothes. Say thanks to her."

"Thank you, bunny lady." Lily gave a small little bow before putting on the clothes. They were a bit old and haven't been used in a while so they had a weird smell but they were better than the clothes they've been wearing.

After the two of them were suited up, it was time to continue their journey. Rex was still tired but he didn't want to bring trouble to the woman that gave him clothes. "Come on, Lily, hop in the cart. Now that we've got a blanket you can stay warm in there." Lily curled up into a ball with the blanket wrapped around her, taking advantage of the small gap between the water barrel and the front wall of the cart to protect herself from the wind.

Rex moved forward for a few miles until he realized a problem. Behind him was a small group of people going in the same direction. It seemed like they were trying to hide their footsteps which wasn't a good sign. If he didn't have great hearing then he wouldn't have been able to realize that they were there until they got too close.

There was a sharp turn up ahead so Rex decided to turn into the forest after it in order to gain a little bit of time to set a trap. He left the cart below a tree and woke up Lily, holding a hand to her mouth so she couldn't make a lot of noise. "Lily, listen to me. There's a group of people following us and I suspect that they're up to no good. Keep quiet so that they don't hear us."

Lily nodded so he removed his hand from her mouth. The blanket would make a good foundation for the trap so he tied one part of it to the tree's branches and the other part to the cart so that it looked like a tent. The rusted axe didn't look like it could withstand a prolonged fight so he'd need to be smart and use it at the beginning when the enemies hadn't noticed them.

"Lily, we're going up the tree. Do you remember how to climb one?" He was great at climbing since it allowed him to hunt better but Lily was more of an indoors kid so he worried that she wouldn't be able to climb the tree. It looked bigger than the one he took her climbing up in the past. Lily nodded and started to climb before Rex could tell her to.

Rex climbed up after Lily, one hand holding the axe. It didn't take long for their tail to catch up and realize something was wrong. "Where did those furballs go? There's no way they could have reached the next corner in that short amount of time." The speaker was a somewhat young man. Now that Rex could hear their voices clearly he decided to count the number of different voices.

A second voice spoke up. "Look, over there. There are tracks leading into the forest. They might be close by, keep quiet." This voice sounded a little younger but still had more of a masculine tone.

"I don't think we should be doing this. We don't even know if they're the slaves that guy was looking for. They're not wearing collars. Weren't they supposed to be wearing collars?" This was the third voice. It had slightly whiny tone and seemed to be more feminine but it was hard to tell if they were a girl or a really young boy.

Those were the only three voices. Rex now knew why they were targeting them. If they turned around now he would let them live but if they persisted then he couldn't allow even one of them to escape or else they might tell the slavers where he's headed. He couldn't let the slavers catch them again.

"Look. A camp. There's the cart they had with them." The three were trying to be quiet as they approached Rex's trap. The oldest person there looked to be sixteen with the youngest around ten. Two of them were visibly carrying weapons. The tallest one had a short sword and the middle one had a cooking knife with a pointed tip. The littlest one looked defenseless but Rex decided to assume that they were armed just to be safe.

The boy with the kitchen knife approached the cart slowly and peeked in to the fake tent. "They're not here. What should we do?"

"We'll wait for them to return. They'll need to get their stuff eventually." The boys weren't acting like people so Rex decided not to treat them like people--instead, he decided to treat them like they were monsters that needed to be hunted. Rex took advantage of this opportunity and dropped down, breaking the axe against the oldest boy's shoulder, causing him to drop his sword. The axe head remained buried in the boy's shoulder as he screamed in pain.

Rex used the rest of his axe--the sharp broken handle--to pierce the oldest boy's throat, silencing him forever. The sword was on the ground so Rex quickly picked it up and launched himself towards the boy with the knife, stopping just outside of the boy's weapon range and changing direction to target his legs.

The boy had his knife ready to defend his upper-body but he was unprepared for Rex's sudden change in direction and his ankle was slashed open, causing him to lose his balance. The boy was crying from both the sudden pain and the loss of his companion. He only wanted to get some money to help his family and didn't expect that anything bad would happen.

Rex ignored the injured boy with the knife and ran towards the youngest one, causing him to panic and start running. The boy wasn't quick enough to escape and Rex wrapped his foot around the boy's leg, causing him to trip. After a quick search for any weapons, Rex dragged the youngest boy back to where the injured boy was.

"Throw your weapon away or he dies too." Rex had the sword pointed to the back of the little boy's neck.

"Why are you doing this? We weren't going to harm you." The boy with the knife was still crying and at this rate he would bleed to death before giving up his weapon.

"Toss your weapon away and the two of you get to live. It was only that boy that wanted to harm me, right?" Rex knew that attacking the boy while he still had the knife was a terrible idea. A wounded animal with no escape would fight to the death but if you give them only one way out then they'll rush to fall into your trap.

The boy hesitated but in the end tossed the knife further into the forest. "You, boy. Go patch up his ankle." Rex let the youngest boy get up to check out the middle boy's injury before walking to the two of them.

The two of them felt relieved and didn't expect Rex to go back on his words. When he struck again they weren't able to defend themselves and the two of them ended up dying before they realized it. The sword was covered in blood so he wiped it on their clothes and called for Lily to come down from the tree. The sword might come in handy if someone else thought to harm the two of them and there were no obvious markings on it that would allow anybody to trace it back to the boys he killed so it was stored in the back of the cart. Lily wrapped herself back up and climbed into the cart, keeping away from the sword.

The cart was pulled away from the bloody scene and the two continued on their way to Fort Togo after Rex covered their tracks. Rex felt bad for killing the youngest boy but if he was left alive then he would just tell people what happened. It was better to be safe than sorry.

Rex just wished that he could find a good place to rest before reaching Fort Togo.