Tarius nodded and looked at his sister's back. This time all the animosity had left his face as if realizing that she was a living link to his family. "Ufalla, I . . . "
"What?" Ufalla shot back, not deigning to turn and look at him.
"I wish you'd quit being such a little bitch," he said hotly.
"Yeah well I wish you hadn't bedded the witch, so we're about one stanza from an incantation that I'm sure will make your member fall off so go on your turn!" Ufalla screamed back.
Jabone just sighed and wished they'd blow the horn for dinner.
Oddly enough when they had first arrived at to the garrison none of them would have had trouble with an all day ride in a saddle. They did it all the time at home, even Jestia. In fact maybe Jestia was more accustomed to it than they were because she was always getting bored and just taking off across the Kartik.
But after weeks with very little riding the all day ride had taken its toll. It took all the rest of their strength just to make camp.
At one point Jabone stood at Derek's shoulder as he barked out orders and Jabone said, "You set camp exactly as we do."
Derek turned to look at him and smiled. "Of course we do. Your mother . . . No you call Tarius something different?"
"Madra."
"Your madra," he stumbled over the unfamiliar word and then went on, "she taught us how to set camp this way when she was our war lord. We've done it this way ever since. Horses on the perimeter, regular soldiers on the outside ring, command and support in the middle."
Jabone nodded and went to help set camp.
They weren't on watch that night so after a meal of beans and bread they all crawled into their tent which was barely big enough for them all. With all the feuding parties trying their damndest not to touch each other it was a good thing that Jabone and Kasiria were willing to lay basically on top of one another.
For the good of the unit of course.
She was lying with her back to him and he was holding her. He whispered, "I didn't get to talk to you at all today. How are you?"
"Fine. Damned wagons, we're split on either side of them and I saw no way to have us do it without you being on one side and me on the other because . . . Well look at them. It was the only way I could keep them separated," she whispered.
"I know. I was hoping they'd at least be pretending to get along but at dinner none of them would even look at each other much less speak."
"At least they've stopped screaming at and punching one another," Kasiria said.
"Actually," Jabone said, a sad tone entering his voice, "that's what I'm used to. If they were doing that I'd have some hope that they'd eventually make up."
* * *
Some time in the night a frigid rain started to fall. There tent leaked a little but considering it was pouring outside Kasiria just considered herself lucky not to be out in it and to have Jabone close for warmth. When the herald called them the next morning. She opened her eyes to see Ufalla, Tarius, and Jestia all huddled together for warmth. She was thinking that this was a good sign when Ufalla—who was in the middle—woke up first and sent the other two flying in either direction.
Kasiria had never had to do this before. Tearing down camp in the torrential rain was horrible. Her cloak stopped shedding water half way through the process, and then she was just soaked. Her clothes, her armor, everything. She assumed the others were as miserable as she was.
They were all fully armored now. In fact if her unit hadn't stood out before they would now. Kasiria wore standard Jethrikian military issue armor. Knee cops, elbow cops connected to leather vambraces, and a split chain mail shirt that went to her knees over her blue and white gambeson and blue breeches, and she wore a short blue cloak that went to her knees. However her unit wore black leather kidney belts, metal-banded black leather upper leggings that held their knee cops in place, black leather vambraces banded in metal with metal elbow cups, and black leather gorget with black breaches and sleeveless gambesons of the brightest Kartik colors you could imagine with three-limb palderons tied to them. Their cloaks were long, going to just below the tops of their boots, and jet-black just like their armor. Unlike her hood that barely covered her head theirs were so large they had to be careful or they obscured their vision. Their helmets weren't the barrel types the Jethrikian army wore but just a pointed metal half helm with leather sides. Of course no one put on their helmets unless they were in dangerous territory or facing battle. It was just too hard on our neck riding with them on and they kept you from seeing all around you. The Kartiks' helms weren't as bad as hers regarding field of vision, and while much less protective there was something to be said for actually being able to see. She wanted to look into getting herself a Kartik-style helm.
In fact why stop there? I'll just get all Kartik armor and then we'll all look alike, and I'll look good, too.
* * *
It didn't stop raining all day. Drenched and tired they went about the task of setting camp in the rain. There was no getting a fire lit and they all had to eat a dinner of hard tack which was in Kasiria's opinion the equivalent of chewing on horse grain and bark.
They were all just standing around under tarps chewing their cud and talking, Captain Derek looked exhausted. They all did. Like a bunch of drowned rats.
"The trail will be gone," Jabone said conversationally.
"Yes, I'm afraid so," Derek said.
"What?" Kasiria asked.
"The rain will have washed out the Amalite's tracks," Jabone said, spitting on the ground.
Damn. She hadn't even thought of that.
No I haven't thought of the mission all day. All I've
thought about is how cold and miserable I am. How this isn't what I signed on for, this isn't glorious battle, this is just mud everywhere and trying to find somewhere that isn't a standing puddle to pitch your tent on. I tell the story of Kasiria who pitched her tent in the mud. Now it was at that time that it was raining more than anyone had ever seen it rain before . . . Except that's not true, it's normal spring rains, I just never had to be in it before.
"When it is cold you will be cold," Ufalla said to Jabone.
He smiled at her and said, "And when it is wet you will be wet." He looked at Kasiria and Derek in turn. "That is part of what my madra told us when we wanted to go to do battle."
"And it just went down hill from there," Jestia said. "Your friends will die and your horses will trample their bodies and you'll breathe flies up your nose, on and on and on."
"My madra didn't want us to come," Jabone explained with a huge smile.
After they had eaten they all left that shelter such as it was and headed for their tent. Once inside they all took off their cloaks and lay them close to the door in a pile and that was when she noticed that Jabone and all the others were hardly wet at all.
She reached out and ran her fingers through his dry hair, which was the only dry thing she'd felt in over a day.
"Is it some spell you cast?" she asked Jestia.
"You told her I was a witch?" Jestia said accusingly, and slapped Jabone on the shoulder hard.
"No, I wouldn't," Jabone said, rubbing at his shoulder as he shoved Jestia. "She saw you going to practice."
Jestia looked at her as if sizing her up and deciding she wasn't smart enough to have caught her without help which Kasiria took as an insult.
"I'm the Katabull, all right?" she said in a whisper so low it almost couldn't be heard over the slapping of the rain against the tent. It was pretty obvious that Ufalla knew already because she had no reaction and Jestia and Tarius just sort of looked at each other and bobbed their heads as if to say that explained everything. Kasiria found herself strangely disappointed that they didn't react with any sort of shock what so ever.
The sun was almost set and soon the whole camp would be in darkness so black no one would be able to see a thing except of course for she and Jabone.
"It's not a spell." Jabone picked up his cloak and handed it to Kasiria. It was almost dry and it felt slick to the touch. "It rains all the time at home and then of course we also make most of our money at sea so we boil the cloth for our cloaks and coat our boots and leather armor in the oil of the silas vine. It makes the cloth and leather waterproof. I'm sorry I didn't know you were getting wet, you may use my cloak tomorrow."
Jestia laughed then and threw up her hands. "Thank the gods if I don't have to hide it from her anymore I can make life a little more bearable." Then looking at Kasiria Jestia said, "Dry cloth." Kasiria was happily standing in dry clothes, not about to bitch that her head was still wet.
"Light within dark without," Jestia said, and then a light was bobbing around the tent.
* * *
Not one but two Katabulls in the tent with her and she had cast not one but two fairly complex spells so she thought maybe, just maybe. "Invisible shield" there was a crackling of energy and then nothing. "Dammit." She flopped down on her bedroll took off her boots and started shedding down to minimal armor. She took her spell book from her pack as the others sat down and got comfortable and she tried to concentrate. She looked up over the top of the book to see if Ufalla and Tarius were even close to making up, which they obviously weren't as they choose spots as far away from each other as they could.
I didn't want her to get mad at him, I just wanted her to get mad at me so that maybe she'd stop loving me. But now she won't even talk to me and she hates her stupid brother. It doesn't matter. Eventually they'll get over it, but she's still going to shun me. I just wanted her to quit loving me, not quit liking me, not quit being my friend. If I could just learn this spell.
She tried to just concentrate on the book on some of the incantations she had written. Revisit them see if any of them even looked close to being right. But even as she did her eyes lifted from the book to look at Ufalla who was huddled over with Kasiria and Jabone talking about something.
We've always bickered but it was never real. She never said anything to purposely hurt me, not like she did the other day. They all get letters and I don't and instead of saying things to make me feel better she purposefully twisted the knife. No one in the world but Ufalla ever loved me and now she hates me, and it doesn't matter if it works.
Tarius tried to move over to talk with Kasiria, and Ufalla kicked him. He started to kick her back and then just moved back to where he had been. Shortly Jabone joined him.
Poor Tarius, he doesn't even really understand why she's so mad at him, and I didn't even think about what it might do to their relationship. The spell, I have to work on the spell, just in case this doesn't work.
"Jestia," Jabone said, causing her head to snap up from the book. "Jestia, you didn't repeat the dream so it can't come true, right?"
She wasn't going to tell him that she'd spent two nights dream free, she just explained. "Sometimes dreams, especially a witche's dreams, foretell the future. If a witch speaks a dream aloud it will come true. But even if she doesn't it's still destined to happen. The only thing she can do is try to change the outcome of the dream. A witch's dream is a warning. I need invisible shield," she said, and this time when she looked into her book it had her full attention because she needed to be ready if the dream came back.
* * *
Jestia was fully invested in her studies Tarius had already gone to sleep, and Kasiria and Jabone were too busy he-ing and she-ing to notice what she was doing, so she just watched Jestia.
There is so much in her that no one sees that I do . . . the worthless whore!
She looked at where her brother slept and stared daggers at his back, thinking,
If you were drowning and all I had to do was reach down and pull you out then you better hope that someone grabs you before I hit you in the head with a stick, drive you under and hold you there.
She knew it wasn't how the curse went but she felt like it needed to be improved on just for her brother's sake.
She finally quit looking at Jestia, lay down and stared at the ceiling of the tent. Then of course a leak started over her head and dripped right in her eye. She started and wiped it away, and then the leak was just gone. When she turned to look at her, Jestia just smiled at her. Ufalla looked quickly away.
I'd rather get wet, better to have it pour in my face, I'd rather it drown me out right than have your help. You wretched hateful woman.
She suddenly realized something and she looked back at Jestia. Again she was now busy with her book.
She has done it, all this trying to learn that spell and she's learned to cast without speaking at all. She is magnificent.
She rolled on her side so that she could look at Jestia again and went to sleep just watching her.
* * *
The next day the rains had stopped and they continued their journey making much better time than they had the day before in spite of the mud their horses slung with every footfall. Until close to midday they came to a place where the road had been mostly washed away. There was barely ground left to get the wagons through between the washout and the treeline and even after they had removed two trees it was a tight squeeze. Several of them had dismounted to lead their horses through the area because the creek was still eating at the embankment. The horses were spooked and the ground wasn't stable. Jabone was leading his horse through the mud just behind Tarius and soon found that with every step he took his feet seemed to gain a pound as the sticky red mud clung to them. Tarius seemed to be having even more trouble than Jabone was, and behind him Ufalla was saying something about Jabone telling her parents that she loved them and had been eaten by killer mud. The creek beside them was way out of its banks and lapping against what was left of the road embankment. He was just thinking how unstable the ground really was when Tarius's horse spooked as the ground gave under his feet. The horse managed to escape the collapsing earth but Tarius wasn't so lucky. The ground gave way under him and then he was falling. Lex spooked in all the commotion and it was all Jabone could do to hold him still and keep him from collapsing the ground at Jabone's own feet. Tarius was a good, strong swimmer, they all were, they were Kartiks after all. Jabone trusted Tarius to be able to get out of the water himself. But Jabone underestimated the power of flood water. When he realized Tarius was in trouble he let go of Lex and started for the water but before he could get there he saw someone's cloak go flying and then a gambeson, and then a flash of color ran past him and then he heard Jestia screaming, "Ufalla no!"