I’m actually going to keep this one to three thousand words this time. It doesn’t need to be elaborate; it just needs to establish the characters. This should be doable.
“So, why are you traveling light?” Nat asked as they made a kind of camp. They’d been in luck; they’d found one of the fabled metal pavilions that the Old Americans used to drag behind their equally fabled cars. It even had a giant spider denning in it, which was a piece of luck, since you didn’t have to cook those. They hadn’t seen any more hodag spawn, but a fire seemed like a bad idea right now to the two of them.
Nat swallowed another mouthful of spider sushi (calling it that helped) and went on. “Solo scout or not, you’d need more stuff to tackle the Marcher country, especially this close to the Nogozone or Unholy Toledo. And we’re still going towards Dead Leemah, which we wouldn’t be doing if you had better options. So what happened?”
Oxman shrugged. “I started off with more stuff, too, but I ran into a Toledo slaver party. Five of the bastards, carting along a dozen captures. After I got ‘em loose, one of the slaves told me there’d be another ten slavers coming along to find out what happened. I knew they were gonna be useless otherwise, so I told ‘em to get their asses east while I got the slavers’ attention.”
He leaned back. “Ain’t gonna lie. That was fun, getting them out into the wilderness and picking them off, one by one. Only problem was, the last three killed all their horses and wrecked all their gear when they realized they weren’t gonna be any luckier than the other seven.”
“Bastards,” sniffed Nat. Sincerely. “Ten to one was sporting odds, especially if they had horses and you didn’t. You lose that bet, your ghost’s got no right to complain. Besides, what did the horses ever do to them?”
Forgive me for being *that guy.* And things may CHANGE in a magical apocalypse….
But I feel obligated to inform you the locals of the present day pronounce it “Lye-muh,” like the bean.