On Death's Honor

Chapter 12: Ignorant Soldier

"Oh, shut up, will you?" Her sister snapped - and again, there was a smile she was trying to fight. "That's not why we're up here."

Erlan raised her eyebrows. "But we were going to meet him."

"Yes, we were," Hida looked around, squinting her eyes through the brush and rock that surrounded them. "But it looks like he's not coming."

"Oh." Erlan frowned, sensing her sister's disappointment, then reached out to take her hand. "To be fair, dear sister, I'm not sure anyone's worth hiking up these wretched mountains when the wind is seeking to tear everyone's skin from their bones."

"Oh, sush," Hida punched her in the arm, and Erlan laughed.

"Do you know where he would have come from? Maybe he's lost, or he's stuck somewhere."

This seemed to nag at the older girl, and Erlan mentally kicked herself for suggesting such a thing.

"You're right," Hida agreed, staring down an old, worn path further down the slope. "Perhaps we should go look."

"Now?" Erlan exclaimed, her heart dropping. "Hida, perhaps we should go back. Have Jemny or Dax get the dogs and look for him-" But her sister was already making her way down the rocky slope, heading away from their growing town. "I'm not coming!" Erlan called after her, hoping to make her sister see a bit of reason. For good measure, Erlan even acted like she was going to walk back home.

When her sister made no objection, however, Erlan stopped. Groaning, Erlan turned back around, wincing at the sharp, chilly pain curling around her toes.

"The gods smite you if I break my neck over these rocks," she grumbled. "Hida - Hida, wait up! Hida!"

Her older sister had already disappeared around the bend.

"You are such a whale's ass, Hida," Erlan whispered, glaring down at the rocky surface beneath her feet. As if on cue, her foot slipped against loose rock and dirt, and she all but slid the rest of the way down to the path with a strangled yell. Stumbling to her feet, the girl angrily brushed off her coat, hating the sharp pains shooting up her feet.

"'Come with me to Shire's Clearing', you said," Erlan huffed. "'Get out of town for a couple hours', you said. Well you didn't say anything about standing stiff still in the wind for hours for a stupid boy!"

Erlan shook out her legs, shivering, and wiped her mittened hand across her nose to clear the snot running past her lips. It wasn't by any means the coldest weather Erlan was ever exposed to, but she was already coming down with some sort of illness as it was. Hida had been making more of an effort to spend time with her ever since Erlan started speaking more with Frenza, the runkist woman, but up until now, she hadn't wanted to go out and explore like they used to.

Erlan was thirteen years old, but she still ached for the times Hida would take her out to the woods to play. Despite good sense warning her against going out to the mountains with mucus clouding her lungs, Erlan hadn't wanted to pass the opportunity to do something like that again with her older sister.

Even if Hida was nearing twenty-two and was surely too old for games like those, anymore.

"What did you expect?" Erlan scolded herself, following the direction she'd seen her sister go in. "She's supposed to be married by now. You're just the burdensome baby sister." She glared up at the rocky walls. Not if you freeze to death out here.

"Wouldn't you be considered an old hag by now, though?" She thought out loud, hoping her sister was close enough to hear. She recalled Ansle Jorbson saying something about women who weren't married by sixteen.