*****
She woke up in pain.
Again.
That was, perhaps, a bad sign for her future, Elanthielle supposed as she turned over and grimaced slightly. There was a crackling sound, the smell of embers on the air, and the warmth of a fire touching her face as she opened her eyes. It had gotten dark since she had blacked out. The night sky was clear, and the stars twinkled far too merrily above.
“Awake at last, then?”
She turned her head to where Kaern was sitting, cross-legged, by the fire and nodded painfully.
“That was a bad one,” he told her frankly, holding up a shirt she recognized as her own.
The material was unblemished to her eyes, but Kaern was clucking like an old mother hen as he poked his finger at something only he could see.
“That dagger even managed to put a little bit of a hole in here,” he said, holding it out between her and the fire. “Here...look.”
She looked, but shook her head. “What hole?”
He rolled his eyes, half smirking, and held it closer. “Watch for it, lass...it’s tiny.”
She stared, watching the point he gestured to, then at once saw a twinkle of light against the background of the shirt. Her eyes widened in surprise. That was it? That was all?
Kaern chuckled. “Small little thing, isn’t it? It’s large enough for this shirt, though, let me tell you. This is machine-bonded carbon weave. Soft as silk, true enough, but the very next thing to indestructible. Too bad the same can’t be said for you... The knife, shirt and all, put a fair size hole in you, after all.”
Elan looked down, lifting the furs that Kaern carried with them, and saw the ugly red puncture in her breast. It was ragged and glared angrily up at her, the throbbing of pain beating with her heart. She swallowed, noting that her side and belly were covered in dried blood, running all the way down her thigh. She looked up, eyes wide, as Kaern shook his head and tossed her a cloth soaked in water.
“Here,” he said, “you’d better wipe down. We’ll be to fresh water soon, so there’s no need to worry about saving it anymore. Water falls from the sky here.”
He smiled sardonically as he said that and Elan felt a surge of irate indignation. She knew what rain was! True, it didn’t happen often where she grew up, but it wasn’t that rare. A slice of pain from her breast silenced the words before they came, though, and she meekly began to wipe down the blood.
The stain the crusty red material left on the cloth caused her to glance back at the shirt in surprise as she noted again that it was unblemished by either physical damage or the stain of her life’s blood.
“Noticed that, did you?” Kaern smirked again in that irritating way of his. “It’s called a micro-fiber weave, lass. Nothing sticks to this material. Makes it especially tough and long-lasting.” He threw her the shirt then. “Wear it, keep it, enjoy it. It’s many times better than most folk own nowadays. Places in the cities would trade you years of rations for it, even precious materials if you happened to like that sort of thing.”
Years of rations.
She stared at the material as if seeing it for the first time. Food for years, all bundled into her hands. It didn’t seem possible; it was like a dream.
A dream.
No, it was a nightmare.
She shuddered, wondering if the shirt were worth enough to someone out there to get her mother and father back. Elan closed her eyes, shaking slightly as she bundled the shirt up in her grip and held it closely.
Probably not.
Across the site, on the other side of the fire, Kaern watched as tears cut a path of skin against the dirt on the young girl’s face and guessed at what she was thinking. Loss wasn’t easy, he knew that too well. He’d lost many times in his very long life, and it never felt any easier, first or last. Only time would attenuate that pain, he knew, and even then deep losses had a way of sneaking past the armor of time and knifing you where you were least able to stand it.
He tossed another stick on the fire and sighed as he watched her finish cleaning the blood from her skin. He’d gather up the bandits’ gear from their bodies in the morning, he decided, what little they had worth taking. They were only a half day’s travel from the outskirts of the city now, and they could arrive at their destination by midday, even with the extra weight.
“Get some rest, lass,” he said aloud then, nodding across the fire. “We’ll get where we’re going tomorrow.”
Elan nodded, not knowing what to say to that, and just finished what she was doing before she slid the shirt back on and lay down.
Where they were going.
Where were they going?
She didn’t know, but suddenly the future seemed a dark and dangerous thing. She hadn’t had time to think about it since that night when everything...changed...but now she couldn’t help but face it.
What was she going to do now?
There were no answers in the night, however, and Elan shivered as a chill wind blew over her and huddled in closer to the furs Kaern had given her.
*****
Morning came quickly, and by the time Kaern cleared the camp, Elan still hadn’t woken. He checked her then and found that she was drenched in sweat and was burning up.
“Damn,” he cursed softly, under his breath.
He’d intended to take the bandits’ weapons and kit—it wouldn’t have been too far to haul it— but that was out of the question now. He chucked the extra weight, tossing it by the side of the path, and used a couple of the larger tree limbs from the line of the forest as the basis for a stretcher. It took the better part of an hour to finish properly, but when he was done, he slung her into it and piled on as much of the gear as he figured he could handle.
Kaern wasn’t a man who wasted much if he could help it.
He broke camp and started toward the settlement he’d been aiming them for before mid-morning broke, dragging the girl behind him.
Chapter 8
Simone Carnsworth shoved her way through the hard-packed earth, pushing the heavy blade ahead of her as she tried to turn the heavy dirt over. Breaking new land was about the hardest job they had and normally it wouldn’t have been her doing it, but it had to be done and she was the only one available.
The heavy chunk of metal she was pushing had been hammered out from a large sword, heat-welded together with spare chunks of armor and whatever other metal had been available. The plow was clumsy, heavy, and barely worked. Even so, it was better than anything else on hand, and it did the job.
Mostly.
She was about halfway through her eighth line across the small field when a crack sounded behind her, startling her as she twisted in the plow’s harness and looked around. She got caught in the leather straps, nearly falling over as her foot hooked on them.
“Ow!” she yelped, catching herself on the handle of the plow and keeping from a nasty enough spill. Working the land was growing harder with every passing season, it seemed. The rains were either too sparse and dried the land to the qualities of stone, or too common and left her bogged in the mud.
It wasn’t work for a lazy soul, of that there was no doubt.
Simone straightened up the plow, setting the furrow straight again as she prepared to continue with her day’s work, but a motion in the distance caught her eye. She stopped her work and carefully undid the straps, letting the plow fall heavily to the ground.
She was a big girl, near six feet and heavier than most men, so when Simone pulled the heavy blade from where it was strapped to her thigh, she was confident that anyone who saw her wasn’t likely to take her lightly. She stepped around the plow, eyes on the figures as they approached, and waited with the naked blade hanging loosely in her right hand. She wasn’t really expecting trouble—the small homestead was behind the outermost walls of the city and well enough protected—but she wasn’t expecting anyone, so there were chances she had no intent of taking.