Interlude
Hunters
“But we’re just back from the east road,” the fat sergeant blustered.
“Nonetheless,” the old mage seemed indifferent. “I’ve the orders direct from the Lord Chamberlain. He wants a patrol on that road by break of day, and you’re the only ones in the town to do it.”
“His lordship requested us specifically, then?” arrogant pride changed the sergeant’s voice from whine to boast in a single beat.
The mage, none too happy with his assignment in this pesthole to begin with, and weary from the necessity of augmenting the communications spell fresh from a mildly inebriated slumber, scrubbed a shaking hand over his face.
He could feel the ancient magic of the faerie wood to the north lapping at the edges of his consciousness like a softly buzzing and very annoying fly — an ever-present reminder that the capital and the true lands of men were far, far away and, that he was trapped in this backwater hell for the foreseeable future. Trapped with the likes of.... The sergeant was an utter dolt.
“No, sergeant,” as he spoke he cast woeful eyes at the young corporal who would be running the garrison but for an accident of birth and a corrupt general staff. “He cares not a whit who goes. I meant simply that you and your men are the only soldiers currently in garrison.”
Chapter Three
Cumbersome
The soldier was breathing heavily as he crested yet another ridge, dense with old growth. He eased himself over the crest crouched low, legs trembling, and nearly fell. There was nothing for it, he admitted to himself. He’d have to rest. Again. But he kept moving, surveying his surroundings trough watering eyes, struggling to hold the tearing gasps of his breathing below a roar.
Just over mid way down to the next narrow gap between upthrust slopes, he found the corpse of a long dead spruce that had fallen against its neighbors and gotten caught. Over the years, there had formed between it and its nearest support something of a shallow cave of brush and leaves. There was evidence that animals had used the enclosure more than once in the past, though none recently.
It was far too obvious an area of concealment to use for long, always assuming he thought he was being looked for. For his current purpose, however, it would do. He lay against the bole of the tree and tried to regulate his breathing, striving to ignore, at the same time, the quivering of his legs and arms, the dull thud of the cracked rib that thumped away from the other side of the pain blocks that were already in need of augmenting.
Despite the relatively easy pace he’d been setting himself, he was about done in. There’d been the battle on the other side, of course, before he’d ever set foot upon... wherever the hell he was. And the one before that. No telling if the rib had been damaged as a result of one of those fights or from the... trip, he decided to call it for lack of a better word. Yes, trip. A battle and another before that, with only the dash in the Corvette between them — not a transport that allowed for rest even if they hadn’t been in maximum overburn. It didn’t really matter for his purposes. The important thing was that his injuries were more serious than what his dampened nerves were being allowed to tell him, and he was too well trained to push blindly forward until exhaustion brought him down just because the pain blocks were working. Collapsed senseless beside the trail he would do no one any good. Bridle though he did at the delay, he forced himself to try and relax while he let his heart slow, his muscles cool and his breathing regulate. He didn’t have to like it, he only had to do it.
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Meanwhile, he was through carrying the heavy combat knife naked in his hand. In this dense timber the weight threw his balance off, not to mention the fact that his left hand might be somewhat helpful in moving along what still didn’t really amount to much of an actual path.
Edging to the opening of his little cave, he held the remains of the scabbard up to what little light there was beneath the forest canopy, examining it critically. The ragged edges of its outer face, bore the same crystallization as the armor and holsters had, but the damage hadn’t penetrated all the way through.
Puzzled, he took up the knife and ran his fingers over the grip, which had been at least as exposed to whatever the hell had happened to him as the scabbard. The coated aluminum bore no trace of disruption or decay. How was that possible? He brought the knife close to his left eye, peering intently at the structure under magnification. Worn, of course– he’d been carrying it for several years and it had seen more than its share of use even before that. There was the gouge where a warrior’s mandible had nearly taken his hand off, its edges blurred with time. The nick where a tunneler had tried to pluck the blade from it’s abdomen as it died. But no fresh damage, and the blade was as strong as the day it had been forged.
He set the knife aside and returned his attention to the scabbard. It didn’t matter if none of this made sense. It was what it was, and he had to deal with it, understanding or no. Maybe later there’d be time to decrypt the impossible. For now, the knife was too unwieldy to constantly have to carry in his hand.
Some little scraping told him that the back of the ruined scabbard was still strong enough to support the weapon, though considerably weakened from it’s original state. Nearly half of the sides looked like they’d hold as well. So what he needed was something to cover the face. Simple, right?
Looking carefully around, his eyes lit on the stump from which the spruce still leaned. Jagged, as though the wind had blown the tree over. Edging that way, he examined the thick slivers of wood still protruding from the break. There, that one looked like it might work.
One good swing and the heavy splinter flew free, though the soldier winced at both the noise and the stinging pain in his side. Gathering up his prize, he eased back into his corner.
He held the wide sliver against the polymer and eyed it critically before trimming a bit away at the edge. Another examination and a bit more trimming. It took over an hour before he was satisfied, or at least as satisfied as he was likely to get trying to precision carve components with a tool designed to chop through or pierce heavy chitin, and he wasn’t all that happy with the results even then. But it should keep the combat knife from wandering off or slicing through his leg, and that was the whole point, wasn’t it? It would have to do for now.
He fastened the new piece to the damaged portion by wrapping it tightly with the rags of his undershirt. Only then did he slide the knife home, rattling the scabbard back and forth a bit to check the fit. Again, not perfect, but it would have to do. The quick release wasn’t something he was going to be able to cobble together without tools, and it took some thought to come up with a way to keep the knife in the makeshift scabbard in a fashion that would allow for him to get it out in time to matter should the occasion arise. But that too, he worked out eventually.
The last scraps of the Lyrran shirt, he wove into a makeshift belt to hang the whole mess from. He took some time repeatedly untying and drawing the blade, lest, in the heat of the moment, his hand would automatically reach for where the weapon had spent the last several years rather than its current home.
Looking around as he prepared to resume his journey, somewhat rested and with both arms now free, the soldier was surprised to realize that night had crept up on silent feet and overwhelmed his position.
The pounding in his head, then, wasn’t due so much to his current injuries as it was to his having unconsciously switched the mechanical eye over to light gathering and left it there for far too long. Stupid pain blocks again. Closing both eyes tightly, he consciously switched to standard mode, counting to thirty to allow both eyes to calibrate. When he opened them, it was to absolute darkness. If he insisted on moving now, he’d have to go to IR, and the headache that would cause so soon after the overuse of LG would probably overwhelm even freshened pain blocks.
Discretion over valor, then. Thumbing the retaining loop of the knife’s tie down, he settled himself as comfortably as possible against the bole of the tree, clasped his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes. He was asleep within moments.