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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 49: Slade 267
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Cooper 88
Rudolph rushed out of his hut propelled by Dog’s barking. Dog’s hackles were stiff as he walked up to investigate the dead pig-like thing, but when he made sure with snuff and eye that it was dead, he relaxed. Rudolph dragged Dog back, and licked a bit of drool off the corner of his own lip.
“Jumpig is good eating. Would you like Rudolph to prepare it?” This suited Slade well as he was not sure how to cook a jumpig. He watched as Rudolph rushed back inside, and came back with a dull edged stone. The peasant began working on the belly of the beast, until Slade cleared his throat. Slade drew a dagger from his tool belt that had been stored in the hut, and handed it to the man. Rudolph just reached out and grabbed at it, and Slade had to move quickly to grab the blade back before Rudolph slashed open his palm on the blade.
“I do not understand.”
Slade flipped the dagger in his palm, and then shaved a small patch of hair off the back of his forearm. Rudolph’s eyes widened.
“Maybe I ought to use the dagger, and you tell me what to do,” Slade suggested, and Rudolph agreed. Slade yelled at himself in his own mind. He had seen the man use a wooden hoe, not even a stone tipped or antler tipped hoe. He had just seen the man use a blunt rock as a knife of some sort. Rudolph was technologically not even in what was called by some the Stone Age. A Native American’s tomahawk would be a wonder of high technology to him. Handing a steel dagger to him was like handing a machine gun to a longbowman.
Outside, Rudolph ran his finger down the area to cut, and Slade began a slow cut.
“Stop.”
Slade did.
“Be cautious. Do not go too deep with your magic knife. If you cut into the guts of the beast, you will spoil the meat.”
Carefully, Slade ran a cut from anus to the top of the chest. After that, he did it again, and in spots again to finish up. His careful cutting paid off in that no cuts into the interior were present. Then he and Rudolph pulled out blue tinged organs, and brown intestines, and some other parts as well. There was only a little blood as he cut the interior free. Rudolph dragged the rest to the side where Dog began to show a lot of interest in. At Rudolph’s request, he cut off a large chunk, and gave something that was an internal organ to Dog.
“If I let him eat it all, he would get sick. Too rich for him.”
Skinning was next, and it was surprisingly easy once they cut around the front ankles, all they had to do was pull, move the carcass, cut a bit, and pull some more. After that, the two of them working together chopped the creature up into tenderloin, and ribs and hams, and parts.
All of the meats were put into the hut over the fire with the sticks and leaves that Slade and Shella had gotten, as well as some Rudolph had left over. He then took some black rocks from a clay jar, and added them to the fire. Coal. It turned out that sometimes you could find coal in spots here and there in the wastelands. Rudolph went inside to tend the fire, but the smoke drove Slade and Shella out with stinging eyes and hacking coughs. Slade was not sure how Rudolph stood it, sitting in a small hut inside a cloud of smoke that floated up through his ceiling into the noon air. But he merely laughed at them when he saw them wincing at the plumes of smoke coming out the front doorway when he stepped out to cut another piece out for Dog.
The next step out an hour later for bathroom necessities had Shella asking if Dog would eat it all, after all, or what should be done with it.
“Oh, no, great lady. I shall have to drag it away so as to not draw predators.”
“Can you carry it to the new garden instead?”
Once he did so, she cast a modified form of her ground shifting spell causing the guts to sink into the dirt. He clapped.
“Less work and it will make the ground better.” Dog moaned and looked reproachfully at Shella. “Oh, be quiet, you ate a heart and a lung. You’re full, big baby,” Rudolph said to his dog before going back inside laughing, and Dog looked up at Shella with a rueful expression on his doggy face of ‘well it was worth a try’. Shella playfully wagged a finger at him, and he just rolled over, and invited her to scratch his now full belly. Meanwhile, Slade had gone over to the well which had far fewer bugs now that it had running water, and he swung his sword to reduce the number further. It helped with speed and precision to use the sword’s edge as a fly swatter.
That night they feasted upon smoky jumpig. The taste was much like pork, but gamier. The smoke added a good flavor to it despite them having no spices or salt. And the creature to Slade’s eye, while a bit smaller than an ordinary pig in the wild, was according to Rudolph able to hop, and to do a flying jump. Its haunches were bigger, in proportion to a regular pig, Slade noted, as it could jump.
After the hut was thoroughly aired out the two went back in with their host, who was putting up the rest of the meat in clay jars, when they heard a bone-chilling howl outside. Dog suddenly went on full alert, and Rudolph grabbed for his wooden hoe.
“Fear Wolves. Might be as many as eight or ten,” he said, shaking with terror.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
