The muscles of her neck twitched and spasmed, jolting Cara out of a nearly comatose sleep.
The cramped former chariot-wagon, stuffed with people and supplies, had not let her stretch out. She’d somehow fallen off of the quasi-bed she’d constructed and slid into a tiny patch of floor in the corner closest to the “sealed” back door-wall.
That seal wasn’t as watertight as it had been the day before, and that had been a touch-and-go exercise as it was. Now that she was awake and aware, she realized her bum and feet were cold and wet.
Her shin throbbed, the slash from the day before a hot spot in her freezing flesh.
Grimacing, she sat upright from her slouched sleeping position. The movement didn’t rock the water vessel as she’d expected it to.
Frowning, Cara twisted around—wincing as blood flowed into the formerly crunched places—and peeped over the side.
The boat had ground itself on what she guessed was a sandbar in the middle of the river.
It wasn’t so much a river anymore as a broad, watery puddle. Cara couldn’t see a shore at all anymore, only the barely moving water and patches of soggy ground.
Trees formed more of the miniature islands like the one where they’d found the kaprid nest. Cara could see places between the islets where the river bottom rose and came within a few inches of the water’s surface. Thick mist curled around the trees, shrouding the new morning in a damp veil.
Unseen animals called to one another under the shelter of the ground-cloud, unaware of the humans in their midst. Cara listened, but she couldn’t identify any of their haunting cries. She shivered.
Cara looked back into the boat and found Dayton tucked into the boat’s opposite corner, on the other side of the mound of bags. He slept, curled on his side like a child.
The baby kaprid had nosed itself under Dayton’s arm during the night, warmed by his body heat, its muzzle still firmly gagged. The tiny taloned limbs twitched in some dream.
It would be very easy to pull the infant monster out of Dayton’s loose hold and kill it before he woke up, letting its body fall into the waters of the swamp where it would never put another person at risk.
Cara could even suggest to him that it had crawled away in the night on its own; there was no need for him to suspect that she’d done the thing in herself, despite her distaste.
Except Dayton would suspect, and for the very good reason that she told Dayton the night before in a state of complete exhaustion and exasperation that she was done talking about the monster, she hoped he slept well, and she’d kill the thing in the morning.
Cara cringed as she remembered the uproar her threat had caused. She’d ignored most of it by curling up on the bags and stuffing a handkerchief into her ears as Dayton continued to harangue her.
The dratted beastling had her marque so deep in its grasp that he might very well cut their quest short and abandon her in the middle of the swamp if anything happened.
The swamp was the last place that anyone should abandon their partner, even momentarily. As much as her pride hurt to admit it, yesterday’s encounter with the wyvern taught her that she would need help to get them out of their current predicament and back to civilization.
So Cara was stuck with the baby monster, at least for now. She’d work on loosening the creature’s grip on Dayton. Once they got back on solid footing—literally—she’d slay the menace.
For now, all she could do was stick her tongue out at the creature. The gesture wasn’t particularly mature, but it made her feel better.
But she and Dayton both needed to feel warmer, and sooner rather than later.
Cara shoved a foot at the pile of bags, which nudged Dayton on the other side.
“Huh? Wha’?” Dayton rubbed the back of his hand over his face, grinding the sleepers out of the corner of his eyes.
Dayton’s blond hair was greasy and matted, sticking up at odd angles. His Acolyte’s robe was ripped and stained, and his underclothes weren’t much better from what she could see through the tears.
Cara could only imagine how much worse she looked in sweaty linen stained green in places from monster ichor. Her lady’s jerkin felt practically glued to her torso, and her trousers…
Cara steeled herself and looked down. A dark stain bloomed near her foot like a deep rust pit. It glistened with wetness, but everything was damp. She couldn’t tell if the area was still bleeding, or if it had gotten wet from the river trip.
They definitely needed to find a dry place to recover—and sooner than later.
“Time to wake,” Cara said as cheerfully as she could. She turned and stood in the boat, using the wall as a brace to help her stand upright without falling. Her shin flared and sweat broke out on the back of her neck.
Dayton stood behind her and began to rummage around in the bags. “Time for breakfast, y’mean. Have you eaten yet? Any tea, by chance?”
Cara refrained from suggesting he drink the swamp water if he wanted rotten leaf juice that badly.
Instead, she counted to four before replying, “No, afraid not. We’re in the deep swamp now, and it’ll be a trek from here. I don’t think the chariot-wagon can take us much farther, anyway.” She eyed the slowly seeping side of the boat. “The seal’s given out, too, or almost has. It’s time to jump ship.”
“But where?”
Cara turned to find Dayton scanning the surrounding area, trying to see through the mist. The animals had stopped calling, she noted with some private relief. She supposed she should’ve been worried about the sudden silence, but the comparative quiet gave her room to think without her hair rising on her arms every three seconds.
She focused her attention on Dayton, who continued to think out loud.
“It’s all water, as far as I can see. There’re the little tree hills, but nothing solid, y’know? And unless you’re planning to swim, I think we’re stuck in the boat.”
“Not really. Look below the water over there.” Cara pointed at the nearest clump of bushes, clinging to a boulder covered with moss and algae. “There’re sandbars crisscrossing everywhere, so it’s shallow enough to walk.”
Cara shrugged. “Better to be moving and cold than still and freezing, I say.”
“But how do we carry the bags? The food? The box?” Dayton’s voice rose higher with each question.
“We leave it behind,” Cara said simply. “The priority’s getting out of here, and we can’t do that loaded down with a bunch of luggage. It was fine to take when we had a horse or a river to carry it for us, but it’s too heavy for us to carry alone.”
“But we already took out everything that wasn’t important in the forest!” Dayton all but wailed.
He grabbed for the nearest piece of luggage—one of the food sacks that held the traveler’s bread—and clutched it to his chest as if to protect it from Cara’s careless scavenging.
The baby kaprid, who had crawled from the crook of Dayton’s body to his shoulder, squawked through its fabric muzzle as the bag squished its tail. Dayton immediately loosened his hold on the bag, and the kaprid settled back into the warmth of Dayton’s neck.
“What’s more important: Having seven spare robes or getting to Cadens?”
Dayton took longer to answer than Cara would’ve liked. “Cadens, but I need something reasonable to change into when we get there or the chaplain won’t—”
“No one will give a gnat’s ass what you’re wearing after you tell them about the trip you’ve had.”
Cara, too, grabbed the nearest bit of luggage. She undid the buckles and tugged the drawstrings loose to peer inside. The smell of spoiled food ghosted out, and she nearly gagged. The wrappers Master Jeffrey had used to protect the perishables hadn’t held up in the damp.
With a sigh, Cara tossed the bag to her feet and reached for the next. “Are you going to help me pick out what we take, or are you going to belly ache all morning? I want to get someplace dry enough for a fire before we die from damp, if it’s all the same to you.”
Dayton sighed. “It’s not like I have much of a choice, is it?”
“No.”
“Well, I can keep you from throwing out the important things, anyway, like—Cara, don’t toss that!”
“What? This? It’s moldy.”
“But its cuffs are mink! That’s real mink, not just rabbit or whatever else you backwater hobos think passes for fur! You can’t just toss it overboard!”
“Really? Because it looks like I just did.”
Dayton scrambled to Cara’s side of the boat, just in time to watch the indoor coat float away in the gentle current.
“Why did you have to do that? It was mink.”
“So I’ve heard.” Cara stuffed her amusement down and grabbed the next bag—also full of clothing, from the feel of it. “I’m not carrying all of these clothes, not when we need to take food and water and that damn chest with us. I don’t suppose you can open it?” she asked Dayton as he continued to reach in vain for the coat with the mink fur cuffs.
“What? The chest? No. The cleric has the key, not me. I was just supposed to take it along.” Dayton blew out a sigh, forcing the kaprid to resettle on his neck.
Cara suppressed a shudder, seeing its claws so close to Dayton’s throat.
“You would’ve thought they’d send along an escort or a bodyguard or something with that box,” he added, annoyed. “It’s almost gotten me killed!”
“A bodyguard on an acolyte would’ve been suspicious.” Cara fished out a bit of dried fruit that had survived the boat trip—cranberries, if her nose could be trusted—and stuffed them into a mostly dry bag she was using to store the salvageable supplies. “They probably gave it to you to avoid suspicion. After all, who would think an Acolyte would have something worth stealing?
“Though I’m surprised you weren’t waylaid for your clothes alone,” she added, wrinkling her nose. “Gods all bless, Dayton, how much junk did you bring on this trip? I mean, really? You brought this?”
She held up a piece of crushed red velvet, coated in intricate gold embroideries. “I don’t even know how you’d move in something like this. …Wait a moment, are these trousers? Your pants are stitched like this?”
Dayton sniffed. “I might be an Acolyte, but I’m also a Helfand. We have standards to uphold.”
“Well, I think your standards can hold themselves up, with as much metal as you’ve got stitched onto these things. They can’t come with us, anyway.” Cara balled up the fabric and prepared to hurl it into the swamp.
“Wait! Don’t throw them out!” Dayton practically hung off of Cara’s arm to keep her from tossing the trousers. “Can’t we, I don’t know, make a stash or something? I could come back for them later, after we’ve gotten more supplies!”
Cara started to tell Dayton that that was a nice daydream, but not going to happen—the swamp creatures would surely pick the pretty clothes to bits to line their nests, if a human scavenger didn’t stumble across them first—but she decided against it. There was no harm in letting the clothes simply stay with the boat, even if she did get a naughty thrill every time she discarded an expensive piece of frippery.
So it was under this surface truce that they divvied up the remainder of the luggage between them, leaning heavily toward edibles that could make it through the swamp.
Despite forcing Dayton to part with his useless belongings, Cara couldn’t quite bring herself to leave the broken hilt of her sword behind. It wasn’t much use for anything—her eating knife had a longer blade than the hilt held anymore—but it wasn’t like it’d be on the way in the scabbard hanging from her belt.
In the end, they cobbled together a pack for Cara to carry on her back, made up of several of the leather bags and leather straps with buckles that Dayton carefully cut away from the spare bags they had to abandon.
Cara made sure the pack could be easily slipped from her shoulders, in case she needed to fight. She kept her sling on her belt with its pouch of ammunition, and double checked the knife in her belt buckle. She might’ve lost her throwing knives to the wyverns, drat them, but she wouldn’t be going into the swamp completely helpless.
Dayton’s burdens consisted of the day-old kaprid—which he insisted on calling Cami instead of “that thing” or “the whelpling,” which were Cara’s suggestions—and the oaken chest that he point-blank refused to abandon.
The chest looked none the worse for wear, despite its less than dry journey this far. It gleamed, golden in the few sunbeams that managed to slip between the tree branches overhead. The mist had finally burned off, but the increased visibility only made Cara increasingly edgy instead of relieved.
They were exposed now; they needed to move on.
Dayton grunted and heaved at the chest, pulling on the leather straps and buckles that secured it to his back and chest in a harness-like contraption. It was not going to come on and off without help, which was why Cara insisted he be the one to carry it—so she could retain her mobility and be as combat ready as possible.
Privately, Cara thought that it only served him right: If he refused to abandon what she considered to be a useless burden, then let him pay the consequences.
She had added a few extra foodstuffs, though, to her own packs, to make up for Dayton’s lack of supplies.
They each took a swig of the weak ale from a wooden canteen—one of four that Cara had managed to find undamaged and still whole—and set off.