Chloe took it upon herself to stay awake along with Malo as he kept watch on his two rangers. He didn’t think they’d try to slip away now that he’s called them out on it.
Like last night he found himself stargazing… listening… making music to share with Chloe. He kept it quiet and melodic, layering dozens of celestial notes, one atop the other. When an object disappeared behind a mountain top, he’d find a replacement counter note. This entertained him most of the night, a few hours before dawn he let it die out. The silence was quickly filled by early morning songbirds and the distant chirps of ravtors finishing their hunt.
Ranger Sandy is now up, “So that was you the other night. We wouldn’t have come across you if it weren’t for that music. We expected to find a troop of musicians we could kidnap and force to perform for us.”
Happy it’s not Ranger Melia, “Your people have a strange sense of humor.”
Sandy makes a face at the comment, she doesn’t understand why he’s bringing up her people’s sense of humor. “You now have two bargaining chips to coerce Commander to do your bidding.”
Malo almost misses what she said as Sandy steps through a beam of morning sunlight. Her previously grey skin is now a pleasant tan. The play of morning sunshine makes her newly tanned complexion glow like gold. Briefly her eyes flash white from sunlight reflected from the back of her brown eyes. He thought she was attractive before, now he finds himself enthralled by her beauty.
Malo scrambles for something to say, “Coerce? I’m offering a ridiculously lopsided bargain. I expect your commander to be uncomfortable accepting it, a formal trade agreement with a kingdom for a few months of instructions by one of your trainers is as lopsided as it gets.”
“You don’t understand our people as well as you think you do.
“We don’t have instructors; we have sergeants, we already know what to do, we just need structure, discipline, and motivation. We will have to create a curriculum and invent a teaching method for you. We also do not concern ourselves with what is fair or not fair. We’ll burn a village to avenge one death. As for lopsided trades, we call that asymmetrical warfare, we’re comfortable with lopsided exchanges so long as we hold the advantage.
Malo wasn’t really listening; he was hoping to see her eyes flash again. Some animals have a reflective tissue called tapetum lucidum in their eyes to assist seeing in low light situation, he didn’t know War Born had this adaptation. Ranger Sandy fascinates him more every hour.
“You look good this way, but why are you darkening your skin?”
Cheeks flushing from the unexpected but welcome compliment, she answers, “We will spend most of today at the base of this mountain with northern exposure. We’ll be exposed to more sunlight than usual and it will be much warmer. You should start darkening your tone as well.
“I’m heading back to the lakeside to bathe. You look overdue for one, you should bath too.”
Malo watches her turn and head towards the lake; she seems to be walking slower than normal. She and Melia are usually rushing everywhere with an economy of motion. This morning Sandy’s swaying gait keeps pulling Malo’s eyes towards her slender waistline.
Two thoughts push through his ambulatory over analyzing mind, Ranger Kelly is on her way to bathe and she said he needs one too. A naked Ranger Sandy is something he didn’t know he needed to see until that moment.
He has no change of clothes or even a towel, shrugging his shoulders he hurries after the retreating ranger.
Sandy hasn’t had an amorous thought in her head for nearly a decade. This young man shows up and he’s easily half a yard taller than her. She revisits the memory from the other morning of him taking that rope in his hand and snapping it like it was an errant string. For a moment she imagines that hand on her neck and shudders.
Feeling silly at having invited this young man to bathe like a settler who can no longer fight, she decides she is enjoying herself and will continue the courtship.
Malo reaches the lakeside and notes the guts and bones from last night’s dinner are gone. Small ravtor tracks, pepper the damp dirt beach. The tracks he’s most interested in were made by the now barefoot ranger. Those tracks lead west, disappointedly he surmises she went that way for privacy.
Wishing to respect that privacy Malo strips and wades into the ice-cold mountain water to wash himself as best he can.
Wading out until the water is waist high took him twenty plus paces, turning back to the shore his breath catches as he clearly sees Ranger Sandy wading into the water a scant two dozen yards away. Her body is breathtaking.
Turning his back to her he lowers himself into the water out of embarrassment. Grateful for the near freezing water he tries not to think about the tan-toned-feminine form burned into his young imaginative mind.
He needs a distraction so he absently feels along the lake bottom for rocks that could prove interesting. Malo is unaware of the gentle splashing water growing nearer, until a wave of water douses the back of his head.
Spinning around he’s confronted by a partially submerged Ranger Sandy.
She doesn’t wait for a response before splashing him with another wave of water. This one directly into his face.
“Hey! What was that for?”
“For spying on me of course.”
“I wasn’t spying, that’s why I turned around.”
“You really don’t know much about my people, do you?”
“I guess I don’t. I’m sure one of you sergeants can teach me what I’m missing while I learn woodcraft.”
Ranger Sandy clearly didn’t like that answer, as she frowns at him.
Malo tries again, “umm, unless there’s somebody better that is…”
She raises an eyebrow.
Trying again, “someone closer… maybe I could ask you to teach me?”
Her face said he answered correctly but her words, “My people don’t waste time with questions.”
Sandy pauses to judge his reaction. He does nothing but look at her with droopy inu eyes.
Her challenge ignored, frustrated she turns and swims back to shore, delivering a final splash with a powerful kick.
Malo watches as she swims back to the shoreline and can’t help but stare at her bottom as it bobs near the water line with each scissor kick.
It takes a quarter hour for Malo to gently warm his clothes until dry. He dresses quickly, not wanting the Rangers to slip away. He needn’t worry, the game of losing him appears to be over when a surely Ranger Melia called to him that it was time to leave.
As told by Ranger Sandy, they descended most of the morning, moving at a light jog they traversed steep winding paths that wound down and around cliff and tangled brush.
The terrain leveled out about the time the sun was at its peak. Ranger Sandy calls for a halt to change clothes. Both rangers strip off their long sleeve shirts and only wear their sleeveless white undershirts. They each take a moment to hydrate. Malo waters Chloe before deciding to remove his shirt as well.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Pulling off his worn grey shirt, he decides to also remove the undershirt he’s been wearing all week. Stuffing his clothes into his pack he’s interrupted by snickering.
“What did you do,” Asks an incredulous Melia?
“I want to say I took off my shirt, but you can see that. Can you be more specific?”
“Your forearms are pink, your face is lightly tanned, but your shoulders and chest are pale! How is it you’re multicolored?”
“In case you missed it, I’m not like you, I’m a runt. It’s rare for us to live this long, but I did. The two things you should know about me are that I’m not fully grown and I wasn’t born with any knowledge. I know nothing until I see, hear, or read about it.”
Unimpressed Melia asks, “What does that have to do with your gross skin discoloration?”
“I thought that went without saying; I also can’t change my skin color on demand, it changes based on sun exposure. If you think my chest looks pale you should see my butt.”
“You look disgusting.”
Malo has experienced this level of contempt most of his life from half the people he’s met as a side effect of his true spirit or so the leading theories suggest. The fix was an affect mask, finding it in place is disappointing because that implies Ranger Melia genuinely doesn’t like him.
In retrospect, the people in Bearupper were an uncomfortable mix of too nice and unfairly dismissive. The bandits were the sort that couldn’t trust him even if they did like him. Maybe something has changed and he needs to rebalance the mask. He’ll make tweaks as he meets new people until it levels out again.
Done with the introspection, “That’s a shame because I think you two are beautiful.”
Ranger Melia looks at him with contempt.
Ranger Sandy stares hard at the uneven tan lines and decides they are exotic.
Malo tries to salvage his image in the eyes of Sandy, “Don’t worry, these pale areas won’t last if I stay in the sun. My skin is going to turn bright red, peel, and come back darker a few times in the next couple of hours. By tonight I’ll be as dark as the two of you.”
Ranger Sandy incredulously says, “You’re going to molt like a snake?”
Laughing at the image, “Sure, I’m going to molt like a snake.
Chloe starts getting antsy and is jumping up and down with energy.
Ranger Sandy decides it’s time to move, “Let’s go. We’ve talked enough, we have canyons to check.”
The four take off at a jog towards the first of many canyons, making it impossible to travel in a straight line. They follow some and climb down and out of others.
Malo wonders what they are looking for until they come across a desiccated corpse.
A brief examination of the corpse finds a packet with paperwork verifying the identity of the man as John Wong a known prospector working these canyons. The body has a few personal effects which they collect. They follow the canyon in the direction that water would flow and start finding the man’s prospecting gear and eventually the remains of an inu. They retrieve the gear and cache it under a pile of rocks that will be easy to find.
Ranger Sandy explains, “We’ll notify the man’s business partner’s and let them know of his demise. They can determine if the gear or a burial are worthy of a trip.”
“Were you expecting to find this man or is this a lucky find?”
“He’s been missing for two months but that isn’t unusual out here. We expected to come across him, we did not know in what condition. From the looks of things, he was caught in a flash flood.”
Ranger Sandy looks over Malo, “I see what you mean by peeling, it’s not quite like molting but the skin underneath does look darker.
“You still have darker arms but the variation is milder, you remind me of the animals found in the northern plains. They have patterns in their coats to help them blend with their environment.”
“Bang-up, you see me as a predator big cat?”
“I was thinking of the plains-deer that they prey upon but sure you can pretend to be a big cat.”
Malo doesn’t know the end game of her comments, is she joking? Not knowing, he sticks to what he knows, she’s War Born, be bold, “You may think of me as a plains-deer… but I’m not afraid of big-cats.”
Sandy challenges, “Are you afraid of me?”
Alarms are going off in his head, how he answers will move him closer or further to Ranger Sandy. He’d like to be closer, even if he doesn’t know what that would entail.
He hopes this is the right answer, “You scare me a little, but it’s a good kind of scared.”
Sandy stalks towards Malo, “If we were to fight, what technique would you employ?”
“My size advantage would give me an advantage in all of them. I would let you make the first move and adjust my defense accordingly.”
“I didn’t ask you how you’d defend against me, I asked how you’d attack me?”
“I don’t know. I guess it would depend on why we were fighting.”
Sandy coyly responds, “I can think of only one reason the two of us should fight. I hope you figure it out soon.”
Ranger Melia interrupts, “If you two are about finished we have more canyons to search.”
Sandy has one more question, “Did you say you’re not done growing?”
“I don’t know, probably.”
Sandy raises her arms over her head and stretches her back while taking a deep breath and slowly exhaling. All the while staring at Malo.
It feels awkward as he forces himself to look her in the eyes the entire time. His brain wants him to look lower, he doesn’t give in and holds her gaze until she speaks.
“You heard Melia, we have a lot of ground to cover.”
The group finished out the day jogging along and through canyons. Looking for anything that needs to be set right.
A pack of ravtors was trapped in a narrow canyon due to a landslide. Malo expected the rangers to leave the dangerous predators to perish. Instead, the two rangers downed a tree, stripped it bare of branches and dropped one end into the ravine. It delayed them by two hours but even Malo felt happy seeing the pack of child-sized bipedal featherless predators scramble up the log to safety.
The part that surprised him the most was watching the first few adults clear the lip and take up protective positions as the young ravtors followed them. Last to climb out were the old and feeble members of the pack. The adult ravtors stood watching the three humans and their inu until the last of the pack was free. Then without warning the entire pack turned at once and retreated along the lip of the canyon and disappeared into the first patch of trees they encountered.
“I thought they were going to attack us when they were all out of there.”
Melia speaks up, “Ravtor this far from civilization don’t always recognize people as prey. We cull any animals that do. There can only be one top predator in a region, and that is us.”
Malo doesn’t ask but wonders if she means all humans or War Born.
The rangers continued along their route until the sun was about to set. Ranger Sandy invited Malo to join their camp for the night, he gratefully accepted. Subsequently he also received his first lessons in outdoor craftsmanship; essential gear.
The two rangers only carried a soft cotton blanket for sleeping. In case of rain, they had a waterproof poncho that could double as a shelter or a moisture barrier on the ground. Their meager packs were loaded with various tools they used in their jobs such as a folding shovel that also served as a hatchet and hammer, a versatile machete with a saw blade on the spine. Three different size knives, a fire striker, and a collection of fishhooks and lastly a single metal pot. The rest of the pack space was taken up by rope and string.
While they finished their day once again near water It’s too late to pull fish from the river.
Malo sends Chloe out to forage; she brings back a pair of cavi in under an hour. The rangers set some snares to see what they can catch for a morning meal.
Trusting the rangers Malo decides to sleep that night. The rangers do the same and don’t bother with a watch. Chloe slept with one ear up.
Morning comes with no surprises; everybody is present and accounted for. The rangers check their snares and find an entrapped red fox. This breed isn’t as numerous as it once was so they release it. A quick poll has them all in agreement that a four-hour jog to Bearlower is more important to start than fishing for breakfast.
The trio set out with Chloe bouncing ahead shortly after first light. No more than thirty minutes into the final leg of their route Chloe begins to act agitated and growls at Malo.
“What is it, Chloe?”
The inu bounces from side to side like she wants to play but she’s growling.
The two rangers stop along with Malo to see what is going on.
Malo doesn’t remember this behavior. Master Terius taught him all the commands and signals that a trained inu would recognize or use and this isn’t one of them.
“Chloe, you have to use a signal that I understand. I don’t know what you are telling me.”
Chloe gives a pained whine then shakes her head. She turns north and points her nose with her left rear leg straight. That’s the signal that says I found what you want and it’s over there.
“Thank you, girl. We should go see what she wants us to see.”
The trio walk in the direction Chloe indicated, the trees are thicker here and they can’t see far ahead. They soon come across a space where a felled tree has left behind a stump. On the stump is a medium sized leaper.
The leaper has been eviscerated and gutted. Intestines are wrapped around the base of the stump. The removed organs have been crushed. Some look chewed and spat out.
Malo has never seen such a needlessly grotesque display, “Uhhg, what is this?”
Ranger Sandy doesn’t hesitate to answer, “This is an abomination. Somebody has tortured this animal to death.”
Malo has to ask, “Is this something you’ve seen before?”
Sandy and Melia both say, “No, never.”
“My profiling training from study tells me this is the kind of thing done by a sociopath, possibly a serial killer, either one that hasn’t killed a person yet or one that can’t find a victim and is blowing off steam.”
There’s only the bare minimum of conversation during the final three hours of the journey to Bearlower. The morning’s discovery has put everyone in a dark mood.