Karik was surprised just how much thought Romi had given the entire subject—in his own way, the captain was as skilled as Karik’s Pa in planning a journey, and if the men were his beasts, he knew just as much about getting the best out of them. He shuddered to think what their situation would have been if Romi had died in the landslide—if any one of them had.
By noon, the weather had cleared, and they were all in good spirits. More berries, nuts and fungi had been collected and Taz, exploring rotten wood as the fire was set going, found some fat grubs which were quickly roasted and eaten with relish. “No oroj crickets in Andon, it’s very sad,” Kepi said, smacking his lips. “I like a good roast cricket.”
“No, but they have some large insects and beetles—the grubs are the prize,” Karik said. “Now’s a good time for them—they’ll be nice and big, ready to turn into the adults.”
“Just the information we need,” Romi said, clapping Karik on the shoulder. “Right, we’ve done about seven miles this morning. We’ll walk another three hours or until we spot a perfect campsite. Everyone’s feet holding up?” He wasn’t content just to be told—feet had to be physically removed from boots and checked before he was satisfied. Kei would have been proud of him, Karik thought with a smile. At least after all these months, their boots were well broken in. He hoped they would last out the journey.
They made camp mid-afternoon, and once a shelter had been made, they were set foraging again. Once again, they had good fortune, and more of the grubs were found, as well as more nuts. Snares were set, taps for sugar sap set up, and Karik used the weti skin to form the basis of a woven hat for Romi. When he was done, he handed it to the captain. “How do I look?” Romi said, putting the basket-like object on his head.
Taz grinned. “Like a street performer.”
“Thanks very much, soldier,” Romi said, pulling a face. “But it’s better than the feel of rain on my head or trying to keep the skin in place—thanks, Karik. Good job. Can you make one for Kepi?”
“Of course—we just need another skin.”
“All in good time.”
The cloaks and blankets were spread to dry over the shelter’s ribs, under the branches which would keep the worst of any rain off. There was no argument with Romi’s insistence on an early night—it had been easier than expected, but Karik was still damn tired. As he got settled, he couldn’t help be afraid of what the night would bring—would his mind ambush him again?
He jumped a little as Romi’s arm came around him. “Do you mind? I’d feel easier if....”
“No,” Karik whispered back. “Thank you.”
“Part of the service,” Romi said quietly. “Like the hat.”
Karik rather thought saving his life was a bigger favour than keeping a braid dry, but he wouldn’t quibble. He remembered another man, another time when he was afraid in the night, and how that brave heart had anchored him to life and kept him safe. Arman had chosen well, he thought sleepily. Must remember to thank him....
~~~~~~~~
After the first week, Romi felt they were in good shape—making fair speed, no one was becoming exhausted, and foraging was going well. But by the second week, he was becoming concerned at the loss of condition, and by the third, he called a halt for three days. He’d discussed it privately with Karik the night before. “Kepi’s losing too much weight,” he’d said, confessing his worries to their medic.
“We all are—you too,” Karik had said, not sparing his feelings. “We need more meat, and we need to make bread, which means seeds—things that take time to collect, but that will give us the real energy. But can we afford to stop?”
“We can’t afford not to.” And so he’d announced they would be halting for as many days as it took to take down at least one large game animal, and for them to collect starchy food, tree sap and honey. It was none too soon, he realised when they’d stopped, seeing how Kepi’s mood immediately improved, and how the stress in Taz’s face eased. Obviously thinking they were managing fine had been nothing more than a delusion.
Strangely, Karik was coping best of them all, perhaps because he had the most experience of working on his own, so he was less affected by the loneliness. Romi was starting to use the man to bolster his own spirits, to distract him from the ache of tired muscles, and to maintain interest in the unceasing journey. It was like Karik could always find something new in the terrain, something to talk and theorise about. Romi felt like he was receiving an education all over again.
He and Taz set themselves the task of taking down big game—there were occasionally herds of doigs now, and many long-necked tevinu in the grasslands, though they were swift and wary prey, and up to now, Romi had not even bothered to hunt them. But now the need was urgent, so armed with spears and Kepi’s bows, they set out. On their very first day, they succeeded in taking down a good-sized buck tevinu. Romi didn’t wait to butcher it properly, carving out tender belly flesh to throw on the fire for fast cooking. They ate it half raw, blood streaming down their chins. Romi swore he could see sunken cheeks begin to fill out as he watched them eat. How he could not have seen his people were starving?
With stomachs full of tevinu meat washed down with sweet tea, the task of skinning, butchering and smoking the animal was easy. The hide would not be big enough on its own to make a coat, but now he was determined to take at least one more large animal before they started moving. It took them another two days to get another tevinu, and it was not an easy kill—Taz was injured by one of the antlers before they managed to take it down, but fortunately it wasn’t a serious hurt and Karik dealt with it easily. It just meant that taking another couple of days to allow the meat to smoke and more foraging to occur, allowed Taz to recover as well.
Karik had collected a good deal of grass and plant seed and had been milling it into flour. The ecstasy on Kepi’s face when Karik proudly presented them with honey cakes for breakfast was heartbreaking. Such simple things could make the difference between life and death on this journey, and Romi felt his own eyes moisten a little as he thought about eating honey cakes with his Ma, and how much he wanted to see her again before he died.
The flour wouldn’t keep well, so they gorged while they could on camp bread, honey and the meat. Nuts were becoming more abundant as autumn approached—the time of harvest back home, Romi realised. The bounty would not be available forever and they had to collect what they could even if carrying it made walking more difficult for a while.
The five-day break did them a world of good. The hollows under eyes and in their cheeks filled out. Aching legs began to feel normal again, and repairing clothes, boots and making small tools, would all help them travel more easily. They took time to wash in the small stream near their campsite as well, and get their clothes properly clean. Karik finally perfected his hat making, and now both Kepi and Romi had comfortable, light, waterproof hats which would make rainy weather much more tolerable. Just getting several good nights’ sleep without too much exertion during the day had improved Kepi’s low mood considerably.
Romi explained his revised plans the last night around the campfire. “I suggest now we walk for a week, stop for two days, and so on. We need to take large game, despite the trouble. We still have time in hand—we’re nearly half way there, and we still have well over a month and a half before there’s any risk of snow. I think we’ll make better speed if we’re better fed—thoughts?”
“Only that perhaps we should only walk until noon, rather than try and put another two or three hours in,” Karik said quietly. “Two hours’ extra foraging will garner us more things like seeds and honey, even if we’re not hunting. Gives us more time for snares to work.”
“Agreed—good, Karik. Kepi? Taz?”
“Agreed,” they both said.
“Good. I’m sorry, men. I should have stopped before now.”
“Come on, Romi, it’s not like you’ve got a knife in our backs,” Taz protested. “We all should have realised we needed to stop. I just want t
o get home, is all.”
“Though why I should bother, I don’t know. It’s not like I have a home any more,” Kepi said bitterly, then got to his feet and pulled a brand from the fire. “Excuse me.” He walked off into the darkness, the lit stick his only light.
Taz gave Romi a worried look. “He tries, but he can’t get Sera out of his mind.”
“I’ll go speak to him,” Romi said. He couldn’t have people wandering around in the dark, especially not depressed ones.
Kepi hadn’t gone far—he was leaning against a tree, staring up into the night sky. “I miss her,” he said in a low voice. “If she’d just given me a chance. I’d have left the army for her—if she’d just waited...waited for me....” He began to weep quietly, tears trickling down his stricken face. “No one cares for me now.”
Romi set his fire sprite over their heads, took the brand from Kepi’s hand and extinguished it, then took his friend into a firm embrace. “I know it’s hard,” he said. “She wasn’t right for you, if she wouldn’t wait for you—you were a soldier when you married, she’s the daughter of a soldier. She knew what she was getting into.”
“I miss her,” Kepi whispered into his shoulder. “I still love her so much.”
“I know, I know,” he said gently. “But it’s not true to say no one cares about you. You’re Taz’s best friend, and a good one of mine—what about Karik? Do you think he doesn’t care?”
“He’s your friend.”
“He’s a friend to us all, as you are. Come on, man—look at what you have, not what you’ve lost.” Kepi sniffed and straightened up. Romi looked him in the eye. “You know what I think you and Taz should do? Transfer to Temshek. You could work with Weapon Master Sarte, and we can always use surveyors out our way. If not Temshek, somewhere else. The problem is that where you are now, everything reminds you of her.”
“Temshek?” Kepi said, swallowing a sob. “Would you mind?”
“Not a bit—even if I wasn’t there, it’s still a good barracks. Very friendly, and it’s a lovely place to live. Our colonel’s a very good man too. Get out of Oshek, it’s a dead end.”
Kepi nodded, and wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“Don’t be an idiot, Kepi. Another day it might be me crying over Daiso. Let us help you.”
Kepi sniffed. “All right. Thanks, Romi. I just can’t help thinking about it, you know—walking—it seems to keep coming back.”
“I know what you mean. Now here’s a plan—you’ve been walking with Taz. How about you swap him for Karik for a bit, give you something new to talk about?”
“Won’t you mind?”
“I’ll struggle on, soldier,” Romi said dryly, which made Kepi smile. “You might learn more about fungi than you ever had a desire to, but I think you and he will get on all right. It’s worth a try.”
“Then I will. Thanks.” He sniffed again. “Better get back.”
“Yes. Let’s get a good night’s sleep, and take it easy tomorrow.”
They walked back to the campsite, Romi’s hand on Kepi’s shoulder. Taz stood. “You all right?”
“I will be,” Kepi said bravely. “Come on, let’s water the trees.”
Karik watched them walk off in silence, then stood and gave Romi a quizzical look. “He’ll be fine,” Romi said, keeping his voice low. “But I need a favour—will you walk with him instead of me for a few days? He needs something to snap him out of old patterns of thinking—he keeps grinding over the divorce, and he needs a distraction. Will you be that for him?”
“Me? He has no interest in my work.”
Romi put his hand on Karik’s shoulder. “Then make him interested. Please?”
“I’ll try.”
“Thank you. He thinks no one gives a damn about him. We have to prove him wrong.”
“I can do that,” Karik said, his expression determined. “He’s a good man, Romi.”
“Yes, he is, and so are you.” He gave Karik’s shoulder a squeeze. “I really can’t do this without help.”
“Fortunately, you don’t have to,” Karik said with a sudden smile. “We’re a team, remember?”
“Yes, we really are. Thanks, Karik.”
That night, his arm around Karik as they had got into the habit of, Romi couldn’t help his own little fit of depression. He really felt for Kepi’s situation—to think he had found his soul mate, to plan a life together, a family together, and to have it all taken away. And worse, to see another man walk away with the prize. His arm tightened involuntarily in his anger. Daiso had been his prize, and Romi had let him slip away for want of a little attention. He had no one to blame but himself. It hadn’t been his job, like it had been for Kepi—it had been him, only him. He indulged his self-pity for a little bit, and pretended, as he sometimes did rather guiltily, that he was holding Dai. Then he firmly made himself stop. He couldn’t afford to give in to his own demons, and he couldn’t let Kepi be lost to his. He had to keep them together until they were all safe. Nothing else was acceptable.
Staying Power: 29
Karik was apprehensive about carrying out Romi’s request, though refusing had never occurred to him. He wasn’t really used to being the support for someone in Kepi’s situation, though, as he thought about it, that was perhaps a good thing. Kepi assumed—correctly—that Karik really would have no idea about his pain, and so never mentioned his marriage. Instead, they talked as they put the miles behind them, about Kepi’s parents—his father was a carpenter, his mother a glassmaker—and how Kepi had dithered for a year or more about which trade he wanted to follow. “Then the army gave me a way of doing what I wanted to do,” he said.
“Blow things up?” Karik asked.
“Exactly,” Kepi said, grinning.
Having so little in common with the man made Karik search for things they could talk about. He found a surprising amount, actually—cart building, useful woods for different purposes, the best composition of casings for explosives, and treatments for burns. Kepi was a sound person. Not quite as broad in his interests as Romi, nor as quick to catch onto things, but not a stupid man by any means. He would make any woman a kind and devoted husband.
Romi’s revised plan went better with them, though it was still hard work. Karik had been correct—by stopping earlier, they did find more food and became less tired, and their improved condition meant they probably covered the same number of miles per day. On the night of the ancestors, they had enough food to make a little feast for their quiet celebration, and though they were tired and thoughts of home made them sad, their spirit was good and their determination undiminished, thanks in no small part to Romi’s endless encouragement and concern. They would not have got this far without that.
The smoked tevinu lasted a week, and then Romi called a halt again. Karik and Kepi began to collect seed and nuts around the camp, and Taz and Romi—their best hunters—went out looking for game. They were gone all day, so long that Karik began to worry, but finally, near to dusk, they returned, muddy and exhausted, though with a very fine buck tevinu around Romi’s shoulders. Kepi and Taz relieved him of it so they could take it away and butcher it, and then the captain slumped onto a log. “What happened?” Karik asked, offering him some sweet tea—they’d found a huge beehive, and would feast on honeycomb that night.
“Damn thing ran into a swamp with my arrow in its side. We had to chase it through the pissing reeds and mud.” He rubbed his calf distractedly and winced.
“Are you hurt?”
“No...something bit me. Bug or something. It’s nothing.”
“Let me look,” Karik ordered, and insisted on Romi rolling up his trouser leg, much to Romi’s tired irritation—Karik had never seen him look so exhausted before.
He was glad he’d insisted. “Gods—look at that.”
“What? Yuck, get off, you bastard.”
He made to brush the insect off his leg, but Karik stopped him. “Wait, damn it! You don’t want to leave half of it
behind.” He found his dissecting tweezers, heated them up in the fire and then used them to grip the bug’s head to ease it off Romi’s leg and whisk it to the ground, where he quickly squashed it. Then he looked carefully at the bite site—damn, there was still something in there. “I need to clean this—I need to use the knife.”
Romi looked nauseated. “Just do it,” he snapped, then turned his head away.
Karik heated his knife and then delicately probed the wound to remove the insect mouthparts. Romi hissed in pain but made no other sound. “Sorry,” Karik murmured, washing the leg with boiled water. “I need to put a herb binding on it.”
Romi endured his ministrations impatiently, then stalked off to wash off his hands and clothes in the stream. Karik hadn’t seen him so bad tempered in weeks—and couldn’t help but worry.
He continued to worry as Romi seemed unusually tired all that evening, and crawled into the shelter to sleep without a word to anyone. Karik was a little relieved when Romi’s arm came around him as usual, but he still reviewed all he knew about marsh bugs, and wondering how much more toxic the Andonese ones were. Some species in Darshian were very mildly poisonous, causing painful local swelling around the bite. The real risk was from leaving the mouthparts in, which led to infection. Though Karik had dealt with that in the approved manner, he knew of no marsh bug so large in Darshian, nor what effect their bites had. The insects of Andon were little studied, and those of the north completely unknown, a lack which Karik now very much regretted.
He woke, instantly aware that something was wrong. He lay still for a moment, trying to work out if it was something he had dreamed again, or if it was an external threat—then he realised what it was. Romi was shivering, and when Karik touched his hand, found it was ice cold. He rolled over. “Romi, wake up.”
Staying Power (Darshian Tales #3) Page 40