The Ghost's Crusade

Chapter VII: Akkali (cont)

"Well shit," said Drystan, crossing his arms against his chest in a manner disturbingly similar to Tiernan, "guess we really should have gone back for the horses, Akkali."

Eyes narrowed, the Enkiri peered down at the fire pit from where she stood in the shadow of a gnarled and burned-out tree trunk. She could see scraps of unburned leather and metal sticking up haphazardly through the still-smoldering heap. There had been more than sticks and logs put to the flame. She grabbed the nearest unfletched arrow and proceeded to sift through the ashes by stabbing through them in a circular fashion.

Behind her Tiernan seemed to have decided that now was as good a time as any to berate Drystan for whatever past slight he had perpetrated. "So this is what you've been doing these past seven, eight years?"

Drystan gave a halfhearted shrug. "No. I went back south for a while."

"Find what you were looking for, or did you just piss away eighteen years of your life because you were stupidly drunk?"

"Listen, Tier," he said with a sigh, "I'm sorry. I'm not like you; I was never fit to be an Inquisitor."

"That is a piss-poor excuse for walking out on everyone you bled with the night before we were all supposed to take our vows," muttered Tiernan with an irritated scowl.

Akkali rolled her eyes at the poorly concealed disconsolation dripping from Tiernan's words and stabbed the arrow shaft deeper into the fire pit. It had been dug unusually deep, perhaps two feet straight into the ground. The arrow easily disappeared into the ash and swallowed up half her forearm before it connected with packed earth.

No one would dig a pit this deep unless they planned to burn and bury everything.

She crab-stepped her way around the fire and continued to methodically prod the ashes in the pit, ignoring the strange look she was occasionally getting from the Inquisitor. It was difficult to tell whether he was amused or simply in shock that he was still in the company of an Enkiri. He didn't seem to be a man capable of much in the way of mirth, not like the irrepressible grinning fool Drystan, at least as far as she could tell by his demeanor.

"You're not going to accept my apology are you."

"Of course I'm not, you idiot!" retorted Tiernan, turning to face the other man in order to properly argue with him.

The arrow shaft connected with something solid. She stabbed at it a few more times to determine how big it actually was, then plunged her hand into the ash and plucked it from the embers. It was a leather-bound book, half-charred but still legible near the bindings. With a chill she realized that she had seen its like hundreds of times before, bound in well-worn black leather with intricate gold stitching to keep the pages in place. Dusting it off, she scuttled back to a nearby round rock and sat down to witness what she hoped would be a very good fight. She needed something to take her mind off what she had just discovered and watching an Inferi and an Inquisitor attempt to beat the sense out of one another would be amusing.

Tiernan had one finger up and was stabbing it at Drystan to emphasize his sentences. The man was on a furious tirade on par with those of wives whose husbands ran off to drink and gamble at all hours of the night. "You walked out on me, on the whole church. You walked out on Marshal Inquisitor Æbenforth for Junan's sake! How could you do that? You, of all people?"

Shoving Tiernan's hand aside, Drystan began shaking his own finger at him just so he could seem as angry as the other. "Don't you stand there and tell me that if you were in my place you'd have stayed!"

"I would have!" shouted Tiernan. "You don't just abandon your brothers, Drystan!"

"You speak as though the church is at war and I left you all on the battlefield."