Wychling

Chapter 46

The sun was setting behind the mountains to their right. They would be in the dark soon, which was good for their odds of being spotted, but bad for keeping warm in these mountains. He had thought the City was cold. Out here, it was like his first winter North, after being exiled from the balmy Islands he had always known as home.

Tal was looking particularly tired, after a full day of prowling, dodging and play-fighting with her enormous friend. Somehow, he had become rather nonchalant about a two-ton predator, mock-hunting a small girl not fifty feet away from him all day.

He had been watching closely and despite the tiredness, Tal had got better. She was spotting him quicker and at greater range. A couple of times she had seen him before he pounced. When she did this he came and rubbed his head on her chest, purring gently.

Corby had improved too. A day without savage violence had been good for him. He still twitched a little around Suma, when he got close, but he was starting to talk more, and he'd lost some of the whiteness around his eyes.

He had spent most of the day staring into space as they trudged uphill, but Shimon left him to his own devices for now. He needed to come back to himself. All things considered he had reacted to everything that had happened to him about as well as could be expected.

The kid had always been tough, and brave to boot. He just needed time to process what had happened. It wasn't the first time he had been in a nasty fight after all. There was an old dock worker that used to cause trouble, on the regular, in their patch of the City. Enormous man, burly. Equal parts fat and muscle, who just loved to get uproariously drunk, and fight an entire taproom by himself.

Shimon knew he couldn't take him down without two other people, or an axe. His baton was good, hard oak, but some folk just had thick skulls. He had been on patrol with Corby and seen the monster of a man causing trouble. Shimon had stopped to blow his whistle for back up, but Corby had just dived straight in. Cracked both the big guy's kneecaps and dodged his bear-hug before knocking him clean out with a beautiful spinning strike to the temple.

The boy had put down the beginnings of a large bar brawl within ten seconds. No collateral damage done. The stones on him. Shimon smiled, shaking his head to himself. Whatever happened with the kid, it was on Shimon to look after him now. It was at least half the reason he had decided to trust Ulrich back in the cell.

"Hold up!" Ulrich's raised voice wasn't quite a shout.

They hadn't seen anyone since they left Darkport, but that didn't mean they had become careless. Shimon closed the distance between them with the same measured stride he had used all day.

"The trail ahead gets steep and difficult. I think its best that we camp early tonight and get a big dinner in, ready for tomorrow. We should make the road by the afternoon. If we are going to...bump into people, it'll be then."

"Whether they're our friends from the city or not, Suma is likely to scare them into doing something stupid, and there's not much cover up there for him to sneak through." He explained.

"Do you think we can have a fire up here without being spotted for miles around?" Shimon asked. Tal looked as eager as she had all day and even Corby brightened up at the question.

"Aye, there's a nice shallow dip in the ground up ahead. That should stop us from being too obvious." Ulrich said, extending his hand in that direction.

"Yes!" exclaimed Tal.

The others smiled as she ran to the place where Ulrich had pointed, Suma loping along beside her. They made camp halfway down the depression, so that they wouldn't wake in a puddle if it rained. Tal volunteered to go and fetch some firewood for the night.