by Jim Butcher
The terrain was a brutal mixture of shallow water over clinging mud, deeper water that could rise above Amara's chest, and the occasional sullen, damp, insect-infested rise of more solid earth. Twice more, they were rushed by garim, though thankfully none were as large as those lurking around the exterior of the swamp-but they ceased their rush forward when confronted with immediate resistance and simply scattered when Bernard and Amara willed their furies into visible manifestation. The lizards, it seemed, had learned the futility of assaulting wild furies and were quick to avoid those the trio had brought with them.
They were making reasonably good time-so long as one considered that any significant progress was reasonable, in the relentlessly wearying terrain. They had avoided any further mishaps, and they had found a number of edible fruits and berries growing within the swamp. They tasted foul, but would sustain life, for a time at least.
The worst thing about the past several days was how the swamp had absolutely permeated her lower body. She and Bernard were both covered in the thick, rich muck of the swamp floor, nearly to the hips, and constantly walking through water had ruined her boots and left her feet perpetually damp and chilled. They had to stop several times a day just to dry their feet out and prevent them from developing sores. There had been no further encounters with the enemy.
All the same, Amara was worried.
About Bernard.
They stayed in the shelter he'd had Brutus dig for them for less than a day, all told. The instant he woke, he wobbled to his feet and insisted that they had to leave at once. Only the fact that it was already the dead of night, and that the First Lord was still unconscious kept him from staggering into the swamps. But the instant there was light enough to see, he began preparing for the remainder of the journey.
To Amara's surprise, the first thing he did was to skin the dead garim. The soft, supple hide of their throats and bellies had already been ripped open by scavengers and gnawed by insects, and they would be useless for making capes. But the heavy, nodule-studded skin of the large lizards' backs and flanks remained sound. Bernard cut the large sections of tough leather away from the corpses, and laid them flat on the ground. At a murmur from him, Brutus rose and dragged the hides down into the earth. A moment later, they reappeared, the skin side of the leather scoured clean of any remaining flesh.
Bernard went to a willow tree beside the swamp, and drew off a dozen larger branches. Under his hands, they simply came away from the trees, like grapes picked from a vine. Using his wood fury and his broad, capable hands, he bound them together into a long frame within a few moments, complete with wooden handles at either end. He then stretched the hides over the frame and secured and sealed them with thick, resinous sap from another tree.
Twenty minutes after he began, Bernard bore what looked something like a runnerless sled over to the First Lord, and loaded Gaius into it. Then, with repeated nervous glances over his shoulder, he got his bearings and led Amara into the swamps, carrying the frame over one shoulder when the ground was mostly solid, and letting Gaius float in his boat-stretcher whenever they had to wade.
Gaius was asleep or unconscious much of the time. Though Bernard tried to be careful, the First Lord's stretcher could not avoid every jolt and bump, and whenever it happened, his face turned pale and twisted into a pained rictus.
It wasn't until their second day in the swamps that Amara saw that Bernard's course had begun to waver. At first, it wasn't by much, but as the days went by, Amara saw that his sighting of trees ahead and behind had become increasingly sloppy.
"Stop," Amara said, finally. "Bernard, let's stop for a moment. I need to rest."
Bernard, who had been walking over a low hillock with the First Lord's litter over one shoulder, settled the old man down gently and sank to the ground without a protest, his head bowed.
Amara frowned. He hadn't checked the ground beneath him before he sat, something he had repeatedly emphasized as important during their first day in the swamp. Such places, he warned her, harbored a great many venomous serpents and insects with poisonous bites, and it could be worth as much as a man's life to sit down upon or near one of them. Amara checked the ground around Bernard before she settled down, drew out her water bottle, and drank. She offered it to her husband. He drank as well.
"I need to talk to you," she said quietly.
He nodded without answering.
"I've been watching and… and I think your course is wavering."
Bernard frowned and looked up at her. Then he muttered under his breath, and asked, "Are you sure?"
Amara bit her lower lip, met her husband's eyes, and nodded.
His expression became faintly confused, and he shook his head. "How much?"
"It's hard for me to judge. We might be five or ten miles south of our original line of march."
He closed his eyes for a moment, then nodded. "I see."
She took his hand between hers. "Love. Tell me what's wrong."
Bernard swallowed. He shook his head once. Flies and midges buzzed noisily about them. A rare breath of wind stirred the water at the base of the little hillock and set a dozen frogs to croaking.
Amara leaned closer, and kept her voice gentle. "Tell me, love."
"It's m'eyes," he half whispered. "They're not… they're not focusing the way they should. Sometimes I have trouble trying to find the right marker to hold our course. But I thought I was getting it most of the time."
Amara felt her heart beat faster with nervous fear. "You did take a blow to the head, love. It can do things to a person's vision until they've had time to recover."
"Yes," Bernard said. He looked up, squinting out at the swamps, then winced and pushed the heel of his hand hard against his head.
"Pain?" Amara asked.
He nodded. "Wasn't much at first, but… it's the light. Everything is too bright. It hurts to move my eyes around."
Amara leaned over and placed her wrist lightly over his forehead. "I've heard of some diseases that can do that, but you don't have a fever."
"I feel fine," he growled, leaning a little away from her hand. "Except for my bloody head."
"That is generally considered to be something important," Amara said. "Even for men."
Bernard smiled faintly at the joke but didn't lift his head. "If I'm not able to do this…" He shook his head. "If I can't trust my eyes, there's no help for it. You'll have to take the lead until this has passed."
Amara frowned. "Are you sure?" she asked gently. "You told me that navigating through a swamp was no task for a novice."
"I'm sure that we haven't got much choice," he replied. "You did well enough before."
Amara grimaced. "I'm not sure it will be as easy, here."
"No," Bernard said. "It won't. So it's a good thing you've had some practice."
In the stretcher, the First Lord stirred and lifted his head. He peered blearily around them. "Still in the swamps?"
"Yes, sire," Amara said.
"Bloody crows. I thought I remembered someone saying we were finally out of them. Have you seen the mountains yet?"
"No, sire," Bernard rumbled. "But with the trees and the mist, we can't see more than a quarter mile or so, at best."
"Oh," Gaius murmured, subsiding again. "Well. Have we another blanket? I'm frozen."
Amara's head came up suddenly, and Bernard's did the same. She traded a long look with her husband. Then she went to the First Lord, who lay apparently sleeping once more. She laid her hand on his forehead and felt the fever at once.
"He's running a fever," she said quietly.
Bernard growled. "Check his feet, first. If anything got into his blood, he might have to heal it and take our chances on alerting Kalarus."
Amara used more water to clean her hands, and checked the First Lord's dressing. His sore foot still looked tender, the flesh red and raw, but there was no swelling or inflammation. His broken leg, bound hard to its splint, was swollen still, but the deep and heavy bruising all ar
ound it had faded to faint blotches of yellow and green. She cleaned them both with salted water, which elicited no response from the sleeping First Lord. Then she covered them again and turned to her husband. "I don't think it's come in through the wounds. Perhaps it's just a springtime fever."
"Maybe," Bernard said. He rubbed at his head again. "We need to push harder," he said quietly. "Get as close as we can to Kalare, as fast as we can possibly manage it."
"If he keeps getting sicker, he might not be able to craft himself out of it," Amara said quietly.
"All the more reason for haste," Bernard replied.
Amara frowned, but could hardly argue with him. Their choices were unenviable. Allow Gaius to continue being weakened to ensure the surprise attack he said they needed, or have him begin furycrafting immediately, when they were farthest from any support, and where even the First Lord himself might eventually be overwhelmed by enemy numbers. "How much farther?" Amara asked.
Bernard made a brushing motion at the earth in front of them, and immediately the ground almost seemed to boil, dark loam rising to cover the grass and weeds in smooth, rich brown. Another gesture, and a large, semicircular area of the dirt shifted its contours, becoming an irregular, bumpy surface, not too unlike the skin of a garim. "This is the swamp," he said quietly. He took a small stone from the ground and placed it almost a third of the way across. "Here's us."
He gestured with his hand again, and the earth at the far side of the symbolic swamp shifted, rising up into smooth cones in a broad, elegant sweep like that of a strung bow. "Here are the Kalare Mountains. They half encircle the area around Kalare. Once we cross the swamps, we'll have to make our way to the base of the mountains. Then we'll have to press through them until we find one close enough to see the city. Then we'll have to climb it."
Amara blew out a breath. She hadn't fully realized the implications of the distances and terrains involved. She had never fully appreciated the full meaning of her ability to fly, completely ignoring such obstacles. When one had to walk over, and around, and through them, travel became a completely different sort of challenge. "How long will it take us?"
"Under ideal circumstances, maybe two weeks to the edge of the swamps and another day of fast travel to the pass through the mountains. Like this…" Bernard shook his head. "Three. Maybe even more."
Amara's heart sank. Three weeks or more of this? She wriggled her toes in her boots, or at least tried to. They were so damp and chilled, she wasn't sure that they'd moved at all. "Oh," she said quietly.
"You can't think of it like that," Bernard said.
"Like what?"
He gestured at the swamp. "As three more weeks of this."
"Then how should I think of it?" Amara asked wearily.
"One thing at a time," Bernard said. "For instance. Right now, what we need to do is stand up." Her husband suited action to his words, wearily pushing himself to his feet. He offered her his hand.
Amara took it, and rose.
"Good," Bernard said. He pointed out to her the last two trees he'd used. "Now, find your mark."
Amara did, lining up the two trees, and sighting forward to her next way-point, correcting their course slightly back to the north. "All right."
Bernard grunted and picked up the stretcher again. "Now we go to your next mark." He glanced up at the sky, and though the sun was hidden by clouds and mist, he winced and shielded his eyes with one hand. "We just keep doing that. Walking to the next tree."
Amara took a deep breath, studying her husband, fearing for him. Blows to the head could take days or weeks to kill a man. What if he'd been more badly wounded than he claimed? What if he was already bleeding inside his skull, and it was only a matter of time before the pressure killed him?
Gaius could heal such an injury.
She bit her lip. She was a Cursor of the First Lord. He had given her a task, and it was her duty to see it through. Even if it cost her life.
Even if it cost Bernard's life.
The thought made Amara's knees feel suddenly weak with dread and simultaneously brought up a burst of anger that burned in her chest. Had she not already done enough? Had she not already given more than enough? She had fought the Crown's enemies tooth and bloody nail. She had overcome creatures of nightmare and men of cruel and destructive means as a Cursor, and her body bore more than one scar received in the line of duty. Had she not done enough for the First Lord that he would ask her to sacrifice the man she loved, too?
It would be easy to stop. She had only to tell Gaius that his fever demanded him to take action to save his own life. Or, if that was not enough, it would be laughably simple to ensure that an infection spread to his wound. All she had to do was be careless for a moment, with a single cleaning, a single slip of the bandages. Gaius could heal himself, heal Bernard, and they could all leave this hideous place.
She thought, for a moment, of a lifetime without Bernard. Without ever again knowing his touch, hearing his voice. Without ever again sleeping beside him, waking in the circle of his arms, knowing beyond any doubt that she was desired, treasured. Loved.
Her husband touched her chin with gentle fingers, and she looked up at him. His eyes, though shadowed with pain, were almost invasively aware. She had no doubt at all that he had guessed the direction of her thoughts.
"What do I do?" she whispered.
He was silent for a moment, before he rumbled, "What your heart tells you is right. As always."
She bowed her head, feeling the burn of impotent, shamed tears in her eyes. She refused, absolutely refused, to let them fall.
She looked up at him again, and said, "We'll walk to the next tree."
Chapter 33
Tavi looked up at the evening sky and grimaced at the cheerily shining stars. He would have preferred pitch darkness for the raid. Such conditions made it virtually impossible for any kind of organized activity, but considering that Kitai could see in the dark, his own small group would have been at far less of a disadvantage than the forces of the civic legion, the Grey Guard, and any other troops who might be in position in the capital.
Granted, the deceptive shadows and sourceless glow of starlight could be worse than pure darkness when it came to aiming at a target, but Tavi would vastly have preferred a night so stygian as to prevent him from becoming a target in the first place.
"Staring out the window isn't going to make the time pass any more quickly," Ehren observed.
Tavi turned from the window of his room at the boardinghouse and gave Ehren a very direct look.
I'm just saying," Ehren said, spreading his hands.
Tavi sighed and paced over to his bed. It was after midnight, and the rest of the house had been asleep for hours. Araris was stretched out on one bed, fully dressed, snoozing. Ehren, in his chair by the door, was patiently sewing a new hem on one of the evening's disguises, his needle moving smoothly and steadily.
Tavi sat down on his bed, drew his sword from its scabbard, and got out his whetstone. He spat on it, and began stroking the sword's edge with focused, deliberate movements.
After a little while, Araris turned his head, opened one eye, and said to Tavi, "Give over, man. If it isn't sharp by now, it's never going to be."
"All this criticism had better not be setting a pattern for the evening," Tavi growled.
Araris turned to Ehren, and said, "Don't take any offense, Sir Ehren. He's always been the sort to start running his mouth when he gets worried about something. It usually got him into one kind of trouble or another."
"I know what you mean," Ehren responded. "There was this one time in class during our final examination…"
Tavi let out a disgusted sigh and rose. "I'm going to see if the ladies need anything." He strode to the door, ignoring Ehren's grin, and went to the room down the hall. He knocked quietly, and said, "It's me."
Isana opened the door, smiling. "Come in, dear."
Tavi returned her smile and hoped it didn't look as tense as he felt. "Thank yo
u."
Inside the room, Kitai sat cross-legged on the floor, dressed in dark, closely fit clothing. She was carefully coiling a slender rope. She looked up at Tavi and smiled. "Chala. Is it time to leave already?"
"Not yet," Tavi admitted.
"Then why are you here?" she asked.
Tavi scowled. "Ehren and Fade didn't like the way I was running my mouth."
Kitai put down her rope, stared at him for a second. Then she turned to Isana. There was another moment of silence, and both of them burst out into…
Into giggles.
Kitai and Isana-his mother-were giggling.
He blinked at them for a moment. Then scowled more deeply, and demanded, "What?"
Their giggles became a regular gale of bubbling laughter, and Isana actually had to sit down on the bed.
Tavi felt his scowl deepen. "Tonight is hardly a laughing matter."
They laughed themselves breathless, and as Tavi grew more frustrated, a single glance at him was enough to send them into fresh bursts of merriment. It wasn't until Isana sat with her hands pressed against her stomach and tears in her eyes that it finally began to die down.
"I'm glad someone's enjoying themselves tonight," Tavi said. "Is everything ready?"
"I believe so," Isana said, her voice still quavering slightly.
"All the pieces of your plan are ready to go, Aleran," Kitai said, nodding. "Not that there is much point in all this preparation."
"Oh?" Tavi asked. "Why not?"
"Because it will not work out the way you expect," she said calmly.
Tavi frowned at her. "You've seen the plans, the guards' positions, the defenses. If you thought it wasn't going to work, why didn't you say anything yesterday?"
"The plan is good," Kitai said. "You did not miss anything."
"Then why would you think it's going to go wrong?"
"Because it always does." Kitai smiled at him. "It is the nature of life. Something unexpected happens. Something goes wrong, and the plan must change."
"If that happens," Tavi said, emphasizing the first word very slightly, "then we'll adapt."