Power Trio

His limbs burn by the time they reach the pens. He does his best to get the gear to the ground without jostling it everywhere and thanks God for the snow to pillow the descent. He doesn’t like to be reminded of his weaknesses, especially his physical ones.

Legendary are here. Thekla’s cooing and scratching a cub behind the ears. Kell watches the pack orcs with interest.

“Okay, Nicky-o.” Dee places her own cargo down with zero visible strain. “Step one to this game is you meeting the rhinos and getting used to each other. That’s Doink over there.” She points at one of the biggest, shaggiest beasts in the pen. “Say hi.”

“Hi, Doink.” He shakes the heat out of his bicep. Doink surveys him with huge, placid eyes.

“We’re gonna tack him and load these on him. I’ll show you how to get the harness on and adjust it, so watch what I do, okay? And then you’ll give it a shot.” Dee passes Doink, scritches his humpy neck, and retrieves a complicated conglomeration of straps and buckles from a pegboard stuck up by the trailer.

Doink expels a deep raspberry of groaning air as Dee approaches, shifts his bulk from one tree-trunk leg to the other. Dee tuts and plants a mollifying hand on his horn. “Now don’t you go bitchin’ on me, man. You know how much grass your ass is eating? This guy. Fuss pot.” She rolls her eyes at her trainee. “You watching, Nick?”

He blinks at the massive horn in Dee’s fist. That thing could carve him open like a turkey. “I’m watching.”

“Okey-doke. We start at the horn.”

Dee anchors the harness to the rhino, strapping and tightening, talking her way through the lengthy process. By the time she’s done, Doink is loaded for bear. Dee gives him a proud smack on the haunch. “Okay. And we do a little test.” She plants a foot in a stirrup and hauls herself up. “And if we don’t spill our asses out and if Doink don’t act like it’s too tight, we’re good. Now I shall undress the gentleman and it’s your turn.”

“How will Doink act if it’s too tight?” he asks, as Dee scoots under the rhino and uncinches the buckle by his belly.

“You’ll know.” Dee pops up and winks as she pats the snow off her butt. “All right, Nicky.” She tosses the rigging to him. “Your rhino awaits.”

Kell nudges Thekla and picks her up into the crook of her arm. The Kamiyons watch expectantly.

“No pressure, bro,” Kell says.

He takes a careful breath and shuffles toward Doink. The rhino scans him up and down and huffles when he sees the harness. Another step and the rhino hunkers, glaring.

“Shit,” he murmurs.

“C’mon, Doinker,” Dee chides. “Be friendly. Gotta make him feel like he can trust you, Nick.”

“How do I do that?”

“Just move like you’re trustworthy, man. You ever in doubt with a rhino, treat it like a person. They’re not dumb.”

He eyes the horn. “He could kill the hell out of me.”

“I could kill the hell out of you too, Nicky. You aren’t afraid to get close to me, are you?”

He glances back at Dee. She winks at him. “Here’s an idea,” she says. “You get this rhino tacked up without fucking up or peeing your pants, and I’ll give you a reward.”

“What reward?”

She shrugs. “Whatcha want?”

He straightens his spine and takes another step toward Doink. He reaches with intent, like his packmistress did, and pats the rhino’s shaggy hump. So far, no impalement. “I don’t know,” he says.

“How ‘bout you contemplate while you’re saddling up the Doinkster.”

Half orc, whole man. Come on. He rolls his shoulders back. He finds the riveted loop and lowers it across the rhino’s horn.

Strap by strap and buckle by buckle. Nothing to it. Step-by-step. Like setting up a stage. A hairy, two-ton stage with a sword on its face. He slides a loop along Doink’s undercarriage, hears someone up above make an exhalation of air, and changes his grip, finds the longer adjustable section he should be using.

He pops up on the rhino's opposite side. He has this. He sees how everything connects. See? It’s not so tough. At some point, while rhino stomach blocked his view, the elf showed up. She’s standing just outside the pen, half-concealed behind his grinning packmistress, watching intently. He clacks the last buckle in, looks at Dee.

She nods. “Now the test. Mount up.”

Big breath. He plants his foot in the stirrup and straddles the rhino.

Doink lets out a rumbling groan and rears up, scraping one foot across the ground. He squawks and clutches a hemp handhold.

“Oh, god,” he hears Anise mutter.

“Belly strap!” Dee gesticulates as Doink tries to shake him off. “Buckle in front of you behind the shoulder! Loosen that!”

He desperately flips the buckle. The whole harness sags as the connections falter. He shifts his weight, cinches the line again, clutches the shaggy neck in front of him until Doink settles. Then, with exaggerated care, he puts his feet back into the stirrups. Doink sighs grumpily.

“Fuck yeah, Nicky!” Dee whoops and claps her hands. “I mean, if we’da had him tied to anything, he might have spilled our expensive, fragile shit everywhere, but that is a harnessed-up rhino. All right, bud. Hop off. Let’s load him up.”

He lowers himself to the ground. “Did that count as a fuckup?”

“You fixed it.” She shakes her head. “If you fuck up while you’re learning, and you fix it but I’m still pissed, you have my permission to cuss me out. Truth be told, I didn’t think you’d be able to do that shit at all. Now I have to give you a reward. Unless you peed your pants?”

“My pants are un-peed.”

“Darn. Oh, well.” Dee lifts a case. “Grab that other one. We load him up symmetrically.”

“That’s not my equipment you’re testing him with, is it?” Anise asks.

“Nope.” Dee unlatches her case. Inside it’s full of gravel.

“Man, what the fuck,” he says, and then claps his trap shut when he remembers he’s saying that to his new bosses.

But Dee just laughs. “You better get used to lifting heavy shit for no good reason, Nicky,” she says. “This point on, I’m putting you on the pack diet and the pack fitness plan.” She ties the case off on Doink’s flank and holds it up until he does the same. “We let go on three, two, one.”

Doink grumbles as the weight lands on him. Dee crosses round to his side of the rhino and slaps his back. “Give it a couple weeks and you’re gonna hate my guts. Couple months and you’ll be strong enough to do something about it.”

“If it means I’ll be as jacked as you, I’ll take it on the chin,” he says. Dee smiles. He continues, emboldened. “I know the reward, by the way. I know what I want.”

Dee’s smile grows. “Oh, yeah?”

“I want a guitar,” he says. “I swear to the pack I won’t try any shit with it. But I don’t own a thing anymore since I crossed. I’m a guitarist. And the one thing I miss is a guitar.”

Anise taps her foot nervously. “Dee,” she says.

Dee holds up a wait finger to him. “Yeah, boss?”

Anise hesitates, sighs. “Never mind. It’s your pack.”

“Thank you, boss.” Dee sounds like she really means it.

“Legendary has a spare acoustic.” Evan raises his hand. “It’s a beater and I don’t know if we can peel all the stickers off, but Nicholas can have it. If that’s okay with you, Thekla.”

“As long as he promises to take good care of it,” Thekla says. “It’s a bit of a piece of shit, but we got it from a dragon.”

“And the dragon got it from a Chinese drop shipper,” Kell says. “C’mon into the casa, Nick. It’s in there somewhere.”

Dee lets Legendary take him into their trailer. It’s a cramped beige place, with dry artificial heat, but it’s bigger than the yurts. Evan scoots a boxy mini-fridge out of the way of a storage boot and rummages around inside it.

“So, Nick,” Kell says, while her husband seeks. “We had a proposition for you, but now I hear you’re part of the Voraag pack. Not sure if that changes anything.” Evan’s rump is in the air as he investigates a crawlspace. Kell gives it a tap. “We want you to audition. We need a touring guitarist.”

“We don’t need a touring guitarist,” Thekla says. “We’ve got samples and arrangements. Sorry, Nick. These fuckers had to talk me into it, so I’m the bad cop.”

“I reminded Mrs. Kamiyon that last time we held a blind audition, we got a husband out of it.” Kell winks at her wife. “Not that we’re looking for another. Just a lead guitarist. Our last one, uh. We’re not sure where he is. Somewhere on a mountaintop learning how to cast Fly.”

He just about swallows his heart. Easy, hombre. You already pledged one allegiance.

“I’ll talk to Dee,” he says. “If she says yes, then my answer is absolutely.”

And if she doesn’t, he thinks, there’s surely a way out of Pack Voraag.

There’s always a way out.

He climbs back out of the trailer. Dee’s still in the pen by the gate. She’s unloaded the gravel from Doink. “Go ahead and stow that guitar, Nick. We’re not done yet.”

“What are we doing now?”

Dee grins. “Now we’re gonna saddle up and take you for your first ride.”