It was unthinkable to stop and talk at any length in the midst of a stirge infestation, much less to set up camp nearby. Yet with night settled about the forested hills and out on the steppe, blundering far through the darkness was hardly an option.
The ex-legionnaire retrieved a pair of saddlebags from nearby and slung them across his shoulders, then led the way westerly while creeping widely around the infested orchard. Tilda followed close behind his dark silhouette leading both horses from the ground, while Block rode the pony. She made an unvoiced vow to herself that the next time she was in an otherwise healthy orchard left to spoil, with overripe fruit hanging neglected and no sound of birds, she would not just take a moment to wonder why it was so, but just get gone out of there right away.
The trudge through the trees was tricky in the dark, and every misstep and stumble sent a throbbing ache around Tilda’s midsection. But soon it was over. The two-horse column descended one last hillock and emerged again onto the grassy steppe, blonde stalks looking silvery in the waning moonlight. The renegade marched west with a long stride for perhaps a quarter mile, and just as Tilda was deciding to remount her horse, he stopped and about-faced. Though there was not enough light to make out his expression, his posture was now relaxed. He put both hands on his hips, which did keep one close to the sword at his side.
“When stirges come down from the mountains, they hunt in a narrow corridor back to their main nest. They won’t find us out here.”
“Where is Lepokahan?” Block growled in a manner that made the word sound less like an assumed name and more like the oath that it was.
“I told you,” the renegade said. “Gone. Him and a few others cut out two days before the fight with Duke Gratchik. Deserted from the desertion, if you will. But I know where they are going, and I am going after them myself. You, gentle Islanders, are welcome to tag along.”
The dwarf leaned forward in his saddle to add something colorful, but the renegade held up a hand.
“Your further satisfaction will have to wait until morning, Guv. I am plain done-in, and the two of you cannot be much better off. Particularly not your girl, there.”
Tilda turned to look toward the Captain, but stopped halfway and closed her eyes as a stitch flared in her neck. The renegade took the set of saddlebags off his shoulders and started tramping a narrow flat spot in the long grass. Block spoke at Tilda.
“You will stand the first shift, as ward.”
The renegade sighed, stacking his bags as a pillow and unfastening his sword belt.
“The stirges won’t come out here. I promise.”
“She will not be warding against those.”
The man snorted, unwrapped the blanket from around his chest and shook it out.
“I am not going to run off, nor do anything else untoward,” he said, dropping out of moonlit sight as he sprawled on the ground. “If it weren’t for you two galloping about those stirges would have sucked me dry in my sleep. I suppose there’s worse ways to go, but I’ll take life just the same.”
After a last rustle in the grass the renegade settled into silence with a grunt of finality. Block remained glaring at the spot for a time before allowing Tilda to help him off his pony, with a wince he did not see. The Captain settled his own bedroll a short distance away from the renegade and left Tilda to see to the horses.
After doing so Tilda walked her turn at guard more than stood it, bone-tired but knowing that her bruised muscles were going to tighten as soon as she stopped moving. The dwarf’s internal hour glass woke him in the small hours before dawn, and he relieved Tilda to crawl into her own bedroll and drop instantly into a sleep not untroubled by dreams. Dreams of mosquitoes big as oxen.
She awoke with dust motes hovering about the grass stalks in front of her nose, started to stretch, and caught her breath. Tilda had a moment of sheer terror, thinking she was paralyzed, but realized that it was not a matter of being unable to move. It was just that her body really did not want to do so.
Tilda’s knees were nearly touching her chest for in her sleep she had constricted, actually shriveled like fruit gone bad. Her shoulders throbbed, one knee felt wrenched, and worse than either was a band of purple pain that beat across her torso and belly in time with her heart.
Matilda Lanai had loved adventure stories as a girl, the old ones from tribal times that clan elders had once told around campfires and that Islanders still shared in taverns and family rooms. She did not recall any of the bold heroes of those tales waking up to a morning quite like this. She uncoiled slowly and with several shuddering spasms, and crawled out of her bedroll. She got to all fours, took as deep a breath as she could manage, and stood with a motion that from a distance might have looked smooth. Unless one could see the trembling hands and mouth locked in a grimace.
“Did you break a rib?”
The renegade’s voice came from behind Tilda and she spun, which almost made her swoon. She planted her feet to face the man standing a few paces away in the waist-high grass, powerful arms folded before his off- white Legion tunic smeared with reddish rust stains at shoulders and flanks where a steel breastplate would ride and fasten. He was eating what looked for all the world in the narrow sunlight of dawn to be an orange, a thing Tilda had not seen in months.
“I broke nothing,” Tilda said, then snapped her eyes around. The two horses were still asleep where they stood hobbled nearby.
“Where is Captain Block?”
“Block, is it? I can see that. Suits him.”
Tilda knew where Block’s name came from, but she let it pass. “Where is he?”
The man popped a wedge of orange into his mouth and shrugged as he sucked juice from his fingers.
“He’s around.”
“Where?” Tilda demanded. Her hands were loose at her sides. Her buksu and several daggers lay beside her bedroll, though she still had one of the latter in either boot. The renegade rolled his disappointing brown eyes.
“Fine, so much for being polite. He’s having a squat in the grass over yonder. Do you need to wipe for him, or can he manage that himself?”
Tilda could not help but have her eyes follow the bright fruit as the legionnaire tugged loose another section with his teeth, which she saw were nicely white. Not nearly enough of that on this continent.
“Where did you get that?” she asked, and the man nodded toward where he had slept.
“Saddlebags, off the charger. Nibbles for nobles. All sorts of little dainties in there.” He sucked two sticky fingers, and gave a slight scowl. “I take it you two found the horse?”
“Yes.”
“How was he?”
“Well enough.”
The renegade nodded his short-haired head. “That horse saved my life, you know. Got me out of the fight.”
Tilda narrowed her eyes. “I take it the battle did not go well?”
He gave a smirk. “It went wonderfully, for the Duke. Those of us on the idiot baron’s side of the field took all of a thumping.”
Grass parted in the direction the renegade had indicated, and the top of the Captain’s raised hood approached like a black shark fin in the grass. Tilda frowned, thinking of her own filthy, bloody Guild cloak which she had dropped in the grass a good distance away from both the horses and her own bedding.
The dwarf arrived and stood on tip-toes to look at Tilda and the legionnaire over the burry tops of the grass. Finishing his orange, the man tossed the rind toward the horses and moved toward his equipment.
“The gang’s all here,” he said. “Let’s get on the move.”
“We will speak first,” the Captain barked in a tone Tilda could not have denied, but the man was already draping the blanket around his shoulders to cover his Legion tunic.
“I’ll tell my story walking, Cap‘n.” The man slung the plush leather saddlebags across his back. “Do you want to catch your man, or no?”
Tilda waited until Block gave her a curt nod, then tried not to think about her aching body as she rushed around readying for a return to the trail.
