We walked for days, unable to use the main routes or trust that the nearby villages were on our side we took much longer to cover ground. We weren't even completely sure where we were, our guides being only the sky and the way the land moved. It would be enough, it had to be enough.

Three nights in I laid in a field beside my companion, looking up at the clear night sky. It amazed me how pristine it was, the wide band of blues and yellows stretching from side to side. As I did I had a though, and sat up a bit.

“You thought of something,” Ian commented, chuckling to himself.

“Yes, the stars, do they stay the same over time?” I asked.

“Hmm? No, they migrate as the birds, coming round and round by the year. Didn't you know that?”

“No, never really paid much attention to them. Do they always come in the same place?” I inquired further.

“Of course.”

“So could we use them to find our way?” I said excitedly.

“Justin, I've already been doing that. Normally you don't need them, but going far like warriors sometimes to you need to know a bit.” Now he actually laughed. “Sorry, but you were beaten to that discovery long ago.”

“Could you show me?”

Ian looked almost taken aback. “You know, some days I forget how young you are. Come here then friend, and I'll teach you what you should've known long ago.”

I made a face, hoping he couldn't read the embarrassment. Really I should have paid more attention to this, but I just hadn't over the years. Sure, I knew a few things, but nothing about navigation, it just hadn't occurred to me. It was also great to find something others had thought of first in this world that was so far behind my own.

Should I have been surprised though? If I remembered correctly stargazing was one of the first things any human society had done. The night sky was just there too much, too visibly, and clearly painted with something too beautiful for anyone to really ignore for too long. Perhaps in smaller villages it was mostly ignored, but in large cities where people had to travel for weeks or months potentially in untamed wilds? No, it was clear why it was known.

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In the end though the information I got was pretty general, the way the galactic disc pointed during this or that time of the year, a few of the more visible constellations for this time of year and what they could mean based on when it was. Ian's knowledge was general, not that of an expert. Maybe there were people who were more expert, maybe not, I didn't know.

If I could math out a basic system for timekeeping and angles we could probably get a rough estimate of things. On the other hand I didn't need that right now, nor would we in the foreseeable future. One day perhaps we'd need something like the systems used to make the age of sail possible, but for the moment they'd just be one more thing for the list, and that list was already long enough.

Over the next few days he and I talked about our techniques for hunting and navigation as we talked. They were mostly similar, even if there was more than one way to skin a cat there were only so many different methods. There were a few outliers on plants though. Some of the ones around here I'd never seen, having come from further inland, whereas Ian was going through much the same. He came from a coastal area, and as such some of the vegetation further inland than he was used to going was novel.

“I can't believe you've never seen these,” I said as I picked a few berries.

“Eh, we had meat and weren't really looking for something to snack on,” he explained. “The few times I went out we mostly stuck to what we already knew, and most of the soldiers are from Atal too.”

In honesty that particular bush, with it's deep purple fruit, had been a rare find. I'd seen no others like it on this trip. Maybe a bird had been migrating, or perhaps it had washed down in a flood or something. There weren't even any others nearby. I knew because I looked, but not another one was in the area.

A couple more days and we had a visitor in the afternoon sun. I heard it before I saw it, the distinctive cawing a dead giveaway. Following our ears we soon found the source, through thickets and a few briars.

On a rock, in the middle of a small pond sat the one we'd sought. He poofed up, looking this way and that over some small fish he had captured, ostensibly from the same body of water. Other birds were nearby, circling over what was clearly a meal as the owner squawked defiance at them.

It was a seabird, a simple, solitary seabird eating a fish. It was something you could see any day near the docks of Atal, or along the coast. These creatures were little better than rats with wings, going everywhere, making a mess everywhere. I never thought I'd be so happy to see one of the little avians.

“What a wonderful omen,” Ian said. “I ate one of those once. Ever tell you that?”

“No, but I'm not surprised. Did it taste good?”

“Stringy, but not bad.”

I sighed. “Maybe we'll have one another time.”

We'd been on berries and whatever we could eat on the go, and meat was not it. We'd want to cook meat, and both the raw stuff and the cooking smell would alert people and animals for miles around of us. The smell of roasting meat was clear even to our lesser senses at a distance, and animals could smell blood for an obscene radius.

Instead we hurried our pace and went far deeper into the evening than we'd dared before. The running through the night had been for naught, stopped only when it became clear that we'd either have to use light, or risk injuring ourselves. Neither of those options appealed to either of us so we put them to the side, resting since we had to, and determined to wake up as early as possible.

The sun rose over crashing waves the next morning. Ian and I had both woken up in the pre-dawn light, and agreed without words to continue. We'd made it just in time to see the first beams streak above the horizon. It was a magnificent sight, if only because it told us we were almost home.