Quara cried quietly for a few minutes while they walked on. The only sound that met their ears was the crunch of leaves and sticks under the girls' feet. Ausfela's movements were surprisingly silent for a creature of her size. Soon though, the task of concentrating on keeping up with the dragon and not tripping over the roots and fallen branches that littered the forest floor helped distract her mind from the immediate danger that her family, and especially her brothers were facing only a short distance away.
As the sun climbed higher into the sky the day grew warmer. "It's nearly summer." Ausfela was the first one to speak after nearly an hour of silence. Neither girl responded. They were both breathless from the grueling pace that the dragon had set for their small group. When they had begun walking they had stayed for a while on relatively level ground as they made their way between two of the smaller mountains, following what looked to have once been a river bed that had long since run dry, but after an hour another mountain began to rise up in front of them and finally it was time to climb. The mountain itself, like most of the mountains that Quara could see, was not enormous like the volcano, or even as large as the largest granite peak in the Castle Spires. The smaller mountains they were now faced with climbing were nearly all below the tree line and were the sort of hills that likely wouldn't even have names.
Ausfela slowed slightly, because she could tell as she listened to the girls' breathing that they wouldn't be able to keep up the pace for much longer, and it was important that they keep moving steadily towards their goal, for they had weeks of traveling before them, even without taking frequent breaks. As they began to move more slowly up the side of the mountain Lina felt that she had finally found a pace that she could maintain, if not all day, at least for a good long while. Quara was on the dragon's opposite side and while her breathing no longer sounded labored, her face was noticeably pale as she made her way up the steep slope.
The heat of the day grew with each hour that passed. Charcha was a large enough country that many climates existed within its borders, but the far southern reaches of the nation experienced long frozen winters and scorching arid summers. During those summer months not a drop of rain fell from the sky. As they made their way further north towards the tropics, the air would grow thicker and rain would fall year round, but until they climbed over the highest of the mountain ranges the sky would likely remain almost entirely without clouds unless a rare summer thunderstorm blew in from the west.
They were nearly to the top of the ridge when they came to a small, open flat space, hardly larger than Ausfela's body. The dragon turned, looking back in the direction that they had come from. Turning and following her gaze, Quara gasped. They were up above the base of the Castle Spires now and the view, which showed both the enormous granite rock formation and the volcano, was stunning. For a moment she forgot her aching feet and the trembling exhaustion in her legs, and she put out her hand and leaned against the dragon as she let her eyes wander back and forth, between the volcano on her right and the Spires off to her left. For a moment her eyes searched along the bottom of the Spires for the army that she knew must be there somewhere, but they were hidden amid the hills and trees and she could make out no sign of them, even from their vantage point.
Lina sank to the ground, stretching her legs out in front of her body as she finally tore her eyes from the scene below and looked up at Ausfela, who slowly sank into a sitting position, = her head was still scanning from side to side as she gazed up at the sky. "Dragon patrols in these parts are rare. The enemy has dragons, as I mentioned earlier, but not so many that he can cover the entire skies with his patrols and so they're mostly used for scouting in areas where the Emperor has a specific target in mind. Of course they're nearly always sent to any battles that might occur. There is a real possibility that for some reason this area has become one of his targets, whether that's because someone has told him of the prophecy or because he's found some evidence of the stronghold within the Dome itself. Still, I think we should be safe if we pause here for lunch. This open area is not so large that we shouldn't see anyone long before they're able to spot us and move back into the cover of the forest. If you look into the bottom of the second saddle bag on my left hand side you should see several packages of dried meat that should sustain you until I can hunt tonight and bring home something a bit fresher."
"How old is," Quara began to ask the question, but a look from Ausfela stopped her short.
"Sometimes it's best not to know everything about the things that one must eat, especially when the meal is necessary to muster the strength to continue onward." Ausfela did not pause in her long sweeping glances at the sky as she spoke.
"Do you need anything Aus?" Lina had retrieved the meat and both of the girl's water skins as she spoke.
"I won't eat until later when we've stopped for the night. I can last for longer stretches and right now, in the light of day, the most important thing is keeping watch. We can't afford the delay that a hunt would bring, or the attention that might be pointed in our direction if I took to the sky to search for my prey." Nodding, both girls put their backs against the dragon's large side and managed to chew and swallow the tough meat while clinging to the dragon's words that they would need their strength to continue. The water helped.
When Ausfela uttered the words "we need to keep moving" Quara didn't manage to suppress the groan that welled up at the idea of rising up on her tired feet and continuing the journey north. Still, she focused on the images of her mother and father and brothers that she called forth in her mind, and she forced her feet to shuffle forward, left, right, left, right, until the stiffness that had begun to settle in while they'd eaten lunch disappeared altogether as they headed down the other side of the ridge.
They had made it over two more ridges before evening arrived and the sun sank down behind the horizon, dying the sky a radiant coral that bled into a glowing amber, before fading away into a pale grey. Directly overhead the grey gave way to an ever darkening shade of plum. For a moment both girls nearly forgot their troubles as they stared at their first sunset, glancing back at the view again and again as they made their way down the last mountain of the day in the fading light.
"Quara look!" Lina clutched her sister's arm. Staring in the other direction Quara realized that while they had been focused on the sunset, the moons had risen, side by side, one appearing nearly as large as the palm of her hand, and the other about half the size of the first. The larger of the two moons, Zimral, was a pearly white, while the smaller moon, Zolin, was a pale red.
"Zimral and Zolin, ever racing each other through our skies," Ausfela paused for a moment and cast her eyes towards the ever darkening sky. "It's easy to forget, in the rush to get to Za'Reek, that there are so many things that you girls have never seen. I have spent many years underground, with only brief moments of reprieve, but it is difficult for me to imagine what it must be like to have spent your entire life in the Caverns, having never once seen the light of day. How bright and strange everything must seem." The dragon fell silent after casting a glance over her shoulder at Lina, who had been walking for a while with her hand resting on the dragon's side. "There's a stream at the base of this hill. It's small, but it'll have fresh water and the game in the area should be abundant. It's far enough from the Caverns that the wild life will be less wary of humans."
The space between the mountain that they had just slipped and slid their way down and the next mountain that Ausfela was going to force them to climb the next morning was rather wide. The stream that ran through the little valley had not always been so small, although that day when Quara and Lina laid eyes on it for the first time, years of drought had shrunk it considerably. Ausfela could remember years when it had flooded, filling the entirety of the valley with its angry boiling waters, but as Quara pulled off her boots and plunged her feet into the water, she could hardly feel a current running through the shallow pool that she had stepped into.
The water was a welcome relief after a day spent walking. Lina plunged into the shallow waters, still wearing her clothing. Dipping her head under the icy water was invigorating, although she was breathless for a moment after being immersed in the glacier fed stream. Droplets of water streamed down her face as her sister stared at her.
"I needed a bath and my clothes would need to be washed before too long," she said with a smile. "Besides it's still hot out. It will dry before we go to sleep. You really should do the same." Quara was unconvinced until she heard Ausfela's voice assure her that if their clothes were still damp when it began to grow cooler she could use her dragon's fire to help them dry.
"Is that safe?" Quara asked, a new concern sprouting up amid her other worries. "I mean the smoke. Is it safe for us to have a fire when someone might see the smoke?" She paused, about to plunge into the water and waited for an answer.
"Dragon fire doesn't have much smoke when we're breathing it. It's only when we light something ablaze and it begins to burn that the smoke appears." The dragon was a fair distance away and she let out a few seconds of bright orange flame to demonstrate that no plume of smoke rose up into the sky. "In a couple of hours it will be entirely dark. And then I'll leave you two here, where you ought to be safe, and I'll catch us dinner. Tomorrow we'll try to push on, closer to nightfall, but I know that we won't find a more perfect campsite on the road ahead, and you girls both look to be pretty close to being done for the day. Just don't expect anything this short tomorrow. We'll be up earlier and on the road longer.
Lina had laid back on the rock covered shore line, her clothes already beginning to dry on the sun heated rocks, but now she pushed herself up into a standing position and walked a little ways up the stream. "Are there any fish here?" she asked after a few moments, peering into the shallows.
"I'd be surprised if you found anything, but it's a possibility I suppose," Ausfela replied. "This stream used to be deeper, and fish would swim up it, from the main river that runs near the mouth of the Caverns, but it's so shallow in places that there's hardly an inch of water now. And it's been that way for at least two years. So I'd be surprised if anything was left up this far. Don't worry though. I won't have any problem bringing back dinner. And I'll even cook it for you." The dragon gave a toothy grin.
Now Lina remembered the thirst that had begun to creep up on both of the humans in the party towards the end of the day and she retrieved her water skin from the saddle bag still strapped to Ausfela's back. She was about to return to the stream when she thought of something.
"Ausfela, would you like me to unbuckle the buckles so that you can take the harness off? I wouldn't want to wear my pack across my back all day and I can't imagine that you're planning on sleeping in your harness." The youngest member of the group reached up to begin undoing each buckle but the dragon stopped her with a shake of her enormous head.
"No, it's best if we leave it on. It's not such a bother and if we need to flee to the skies from some danger on foot, it's better if we can go without losing a single second." Lina nodded in understanding and let her hands drop, before retrieving her water skin where she'd placed it on a large rock.
"I'm going to try to figure out how to make some sort of bed." Quara was standing by the side of the stream ringing her clothing out while still wearing them after washing away the day's dust and grime in the river.
"We'll only be here for a night." Lina turned back from her short walk up the river.
"Do you want to sleep on these stones tonight?" Quara was already scanning the area around them, looking for a suitable space to set up camp. The ground all around was uneven and rocky. Comfortable sleeping spaces looked scarce.
"Of course not. But now I'm regretting not grabbing at least a few of those quilts off the beds." Lina bent over and picked up a rock and then sent it skipping across the shallows.
"We're traveling quickly, which meant packing lightly. Those quilts would never have fit in one of my saddle bags." Ausfela was stretching herself out on the rocks as she waited for the sun to set. "Just be thankful that we aren't making this trip in winter. Otherwise these mountains would be covered in at least a length of snow. Which would have made today's walk feel as though it were at least twice as long."
Quara paced back and forth for a moment and then walked a short ways into the forest and found a rather flat space under a large oak tree. Ausfela glanced up at her. The tree wasn't at all like the oaks that one saw in Za'Reek. It was a large oak, but the dragon thought that it was also rather sad looking, because like all the oaks in this part of the woods, the densely packed trees had forced the broad leafed trees to send their branches practically straight towards the sky to reach for the sun. At the oak's base there was a slightly concave space just large enough for the small group of travelers to squeeze into.
Quara went about removing every stone that wasn't firmly planted in the ground, until the base of the sleeping area that she was creating was rather smooth. She walked around collecting pine needles and piling them atop each other until the entire space was covered in a thick layer of pine needles that she hoped would entirely cover any remaining rocks. At least there was some use for the pine needles that covered nearly every length of the forest floor, which Quara had spent the day slipping and sliding across, losing her footing as she moved across the slick ground far too frequently. By the time the bed was completed the lingering heat of the day had entirely dried her clothing. Sinking down she unbraided her hair and shook it out and then carefully plaited the long golden locks again, before trying the plait in a knot at the base of her neck.
Lina brought the older girl her water skin, filled with icy water from the stream, and then both girls sank back into the pine needles, thankful after a long day of moving to be off their feet, and knowing that the morning and the continuation of the long trek ahead of them, would arrive all too soon. The pine needles were a surprisingly comfortable bed. Sure a person laying in them got poked now and then by a stray point, but Lina found that when she lay perfectly still she could not feel a single rock from the forest floor below the pine needle pad that her sister had created.
As they stared up at the darkening sky, night came on quickly. Quara jerked awake a half dozen times before finally falling into a fitful sleep, exhausted, but unable to entirely rest while thoughts of the massive army waiting outside the Cavern's doorstep remained. When her sister finally lay still Lina rose silently and slipped over to the stream's edge where Ausfela was warming herself on the rocks of the river bank.
"Is it safe for you to hunt with that army so nearby?" Lina sank down and leaned back against the dragon's side and Ausfela craned her neck to look at the small human who had resumed staring up at the almost black sky.
"Of course it is. What can those puny little men do to harm a dragon of my size? Besides, I won't venture that far west. I'll hunt here, a ways out, since it's likely the game in this immediate area has been frightened off by our less than stealthy arrival. There is a small danger of being seen by scouts, but the far greater danger would be to you girls here, if an army scout came upon you. Still I can hear for miles, and all I hear at this moment are squirrels and birds, a half dozen hares, a fox, a family of skunks, and a few deer, so I think that in the amount of time that it will take me to find dinner you ought to be quite all right."
"What about other dragons?" Lina bit her lip as the thought occurred to her. "Aren't you worried that the Emperor is sending dragons for this battle? And that a dragon might see you?"
"It is a small concern, but again, unlikely. I would likely have heard dragons, and sensed them, if they were already at the battle field, because they would not be making any efforts to conceal their existence. And while we dragons have good eyesight in the dark, we can't see nearly as far as we can during the day. I can see a good fifty hundred lengths in any direction when there's little light, but I can't see miles and miles away like I do during the day."
"But with both moons nearly full you can hardly call it dark." Lina whispered the last words, sounding worried.
"I didn't know that I had two little worriers with me." Lina could hear the dragon chuckling in her thoughts as she said the words.
"Considering the possible dangers it isn't as if we don't have ample reasons for our concern." Lina stood and brushed herself off. "I won't be falling asleep while you're gone though." She walked back towards the spot where her sister was dreaming. "It might only be a small danger, but it's not one I'd like to risk with both of us fast asleep and defenseless.
The dragon watched the girl walk away and didn't add that when faced with an army scout they would likely be largely defenseless anyways if she weren't there, regardless of whether they were awake or asleep, but she decided not to give voice to the thought. Besides, these two small humans might not be as entirely defenseless as she'd first imagined when she met them. The resilience of humans had always surprised her. They looked so fragile and defenseless with their skin so soft and free of armor, but she had learned over her relatively short lifetime that they had a way of surprising other species, especially when it meant their own survival, or the survival of those that they loved.
She watched Lina settle down against a tree near where her sister was sleeping and then launched herself into the sky. Dinner was waiting. She just had to go catch it.