Wildcard 15

They'd set up camp on the road. With almost half of their number injured, it was a dolorous setup, and Sparhawk noticed that Berit had taken it on himself to pick up most of the slack, working himself to exhaustion to get the tents up faster and curry the horses. Sparhawk made a mental note to talk to him later; he was obviously feeling misplaced guilt for everyone's injuries after his horse had been wounded, and that was the sort of self destructive tendency that should be nipped in the bud.

Sephrenia doled out smaller doses of the elixir to Ulath, Kurik, and Sparhawk, still managing to go through yet another third of the pale green liquid. Sparhawk was surprised to learn that it tasted mildly pleasant, redolent of mint and aromatic. It was neither sour nor sweet nor bitter, and in some ways reminiscent of a light tea.

"Not bad," Ulath said briefly after his small swallow of the stuff. Sephrenia had splinted his arm, and now Ulath flexed his fingers experimentally, before wincing. "Needs time, I think."

"Keep your arm still," Sephrenia ordered him. "It has been proven to heal, but I can't say if it will straighten that bone before mending it, so don't move it out of alignment."

Kurik's wounded eye was red, but slowly losing that redness after his sip of the elixir, and he was blinking and squinting alternately as he looked around. "A touch blurry," he said, "but it seems to be getting better."

Sparhawk, meanwhile, was keeping his leg as still as possible, noting happily that the soreness and sting of the stab was receding. He resolved not to test the leg for a few minutes more, though, as he had no particular desire to reopen it in the midst of its magical healing.

Kalten shook his head in marvel. "That's really good stuff. Remind me why we didn't bring him with us?"

"Eggs and baskets," Sparhawk said.

"I'm not too thrilled to be one of the eggs in the basket at risk without the egg that reduces that risk along," Kalten commented awkwardly.

"That metaphor got away with you," Tynian told him with a grin.

"It did, yes," Kalten agreed. He poked at the fire inside its ring of stones, largely fueled by deadfall, which wasn't dried and was spitting sparks and smoke viciously. "Whose turn is it to cook?" he asked.

"Yours," Ulath said shortly.

"Mine? Are you sure?" Kalten asked.

Ulath nodded. "I've been keeping track."

Kalten sighed, and walked over to the pack horses to retrieve some rations. "Now that I think about it, that fig is sounding awful good," he commented to Sparhawk in passing.

Sparhawk smiled lightly, but didn't say anything.

Berit cinched tight the last of the tent lines, then stood up straight and stretched, cracking his back. "Feels like it's been weeks since the inn," he commented.

"Only a couple days," Kurik reassured him. "But we'll have a nice meal regardless."

Berit's features pinched slightly, glancing at Kalten, who was in the midst of crudely cutting up cheese and bread with his dagger. He took some of the oils from the cheese cloth, wiping them onto the pan carelessly, then threw several rough cut chunks of bread onto the pan, unevenly sliced cheese over the top, then laid the heavy cast iron lid over the top and half buried it in coals. Berit held his tongue and took a seat near the fire, rubbing the back of his neck tiredly.

"A hot meal, at least," Kurik amended with a faint smile.

"I have no argument with you taking over for me, Kurik," Kalten said blandly. "None at all."

"Perhaps another night," Kurik replied smoothly.

By morning, Sparhawk's thigh was well and truly healed, as were Kurik's eye and Ulath's arm. Ulath made a point to ensure that Berit wasn't doing the bulk of the work breaking down camp despite his attempts.

Sparhawk, meanwhile, took a moment with Sephrenia to look over the scar on the side of Berit's horse. It was there, looking like it was several years healed. He shook his head. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself," he said.

Sephrenia had a frown on her face looking at it. "It's far more potent than I could have hoped, and that concerns me greatly. That sort of power always has a price. It's dangerous to be ignorant of what that cost is."

"Is it so hard to believe that the rules from his world just aren't the same as ours?" Sparhawk asked.

"Yes. If they were so drastically different, then they shouldn't work here at all. I don't like it. I don't understand how it can be done so... casually. Almost effortlessly. Life is never given or restored so easily by the gods; they always extract an equal toll in return."

Sparhawk grunted. "I'm not going to complain that we have him. I certainly wouldn't want an enemy to have access to him, though."

"You seem to have come around on the idea of trusting him," Sephrenia commented.

"We're short on time, options, and resources, while also being long on problems and enemies. He seemed more lost than dangerous, and he appears to be a solid option for saving Ehlana. Plus, his elixir that he made in a hurry turned out to be at least as good as he said it would be. That has to count for something."

"Perhaps," Sephrenia conceded grudgingly. "But I still have misgivings."

"Have your misgivings, then, little mother. I'm not closing my eyes to the possibility of him posing a threat to Elenia at some point, and if that point comes about, I'll deal with it. But right now, the most reliable and responsible man I know is keeping an eye on him, so I'm going to trust Vanion to know what he's doing, and barring incident that shows Anthony to be an enemy, I'm just going to treat the man with some respect and make use of his talents. He made this concoction of his in minutes; I'm curious to see what he can do if he has the time to really work at it."

"And that's part of what concerns me the most, dear one."

Sparhawk's dreams had been beset by the memory of his Queen encased in diamond in her throne room, a prisoner to the measures which kept her alive. He could practically feel the sand in her personal hourglass pouring down his back with each passing hour, spurring him to do something, anything, to make them move faster. So spurred, he pushed them to make better time today; the lack of injuries to slow them and a full night of rest had galvanized him to do his best to make better time.

As they were nearing their third hour of travel, Kurik finally stepped in. "Sparhawk, we can't keep pushing the horses like this. We need to conserve them. One night of rest isn't nearly enough after what we've already put them through."

"We need to stay ahead of the Seeker," he called out shortly, although he grudgingly called out a reduction in pace to a trot.

"We'll manage that a lot better if the horses aren't on their last legs two hours from now," Kurik replied. "We need to pace ourselves better than this."

"How far until we reach Lake Randera?" Berit asked, seemingly more to change the subject than anything else.

Kurik looked up at the stars, gauging them thoughtfully, checking north. He held up a thumb to measure it against the moon, barely higher than the horizon, and did some mental math that was beyond Sparhawk's ability. "I'm guessing, perhaps eight hundred miles yet? We're a hundred miles north of Chyrellos, if I'm right, and we've yet to reach Lake Lamork."

Sparhawk said nothing- but it did not need to be said.

Sephrenia shook her head. "It cannot be helped, Sparhawk. It can only be done as quickly as possible."

It took another two days before they reached the Arnek river. Kurik was disatisfied by the revelation, given that it meant he'd been slightly off in his navigation. "I'd hoped to bypass the river by running us between its start and Lake Lamork," he said ruefully. "We're a bit further south than expected. It's not a terrible ford for us, but I'd rather have not risked the horses slipping on river stones."

The morning had been a miserable thing with dense cloud cover and a thin but steady drizzle wetting everything, and Sparhawk felt chilled to the bone in the cool spring air.

The horses were milling about, taking forage from the scattered grass they could find, but there wasn't much for them here. Berit was assisting Kurik in filling feed bags, and Talen and Flute were chasing each other in the ankle deep shallows of the river, the latter's enthusiasm infectious even to the street hardened boy. Kurik spared a few seconds, watching the two with an unreadable expression on his face as he worked.

"You did fine, Kurik," Sephrenia reassured him, "and this just means it's easier for us to water the horses."

"I'm more concerned about the Seeker," Sparhawk said, eye on the horizon behind them, to the west. "We were expecting it to try again yesterday."

"Nothing happened yesterday, though. I told you we should have stopped at that inn," Kalten interjected mournfully.

"Probably for the best," Tynian soothed. "You never sleep alone in a Pelosian inn. All sorts of unpleasant critters have first dibs there."

"Fleas?" Kalten asked.

"And bedbugs and lice the size of mice."

"We're not so desperate as all that," Kalten agreed with a grimace. "Although I could use a break from dry bread and cheese."

"That still begs the question," Sparhawk mused, frowning. "What is it up to?"

"We should simply be taking advantage of its absence," Sephrenia said with a frown.

"One of those things Platime hammered into my head," Talen announced, shifting a little to keep his balance as he approached the gentle slope of the river bank. "When someone suddenly stops chasing you for no reason, it's a real good idea to keep an eye out in front of you, not just behind you."

"Platime sounds like he has a good head on his shoulders," observed Ulath.

"He should; if he didn't, he'd have lost it a long time ago."

The next several days remained much the same as they traveled through southeastern Pelosia, taking turns traveling ahead to finding vantage points to check their path, and checking behind to get warning if anyone or anything came up behind. The sky remained dreary as they worked their way northeast, raining just often enough to ensure that nothing ever actually dried out. Periodically, they saw peasants - serfs, actually - laboring in the fields, seemingly unbothered by the rain as they wielded their crude tools against the muddy earth. Birds were nesting in the hedges and what trees dotted the countryside, and when they passed farms, they were as likely to see deer grazing among the cattle as not.

They did their best to avoid people, despite there being no sign of church soldiers, Zemochs, or the Seeker for closing in on a week, now. They only spoke with residents when purchasing supplies. As they approached the border to Lamorkand, though, there was little avoiding contact with rumor, and rumor had it that turmoil in Lamorkand was reaching a boil.

The region was never particularly stable at the best of times; despite there being a nominal King, he ruled largely at the suffering of his Barons, who typically retreated behind the walls of massive castles rather than close ranks when trouble stirred. This wouldn't be a problem, save for one other tendency Lamorks had: feuds. Lamorkand could easily be said to exist in a state of perpetual, simmering civil war. Blood feuds going back a century or more were commonplace, and there were even odds that the original offense sparking many of them had long been forgotten.

Three leagues from the border, a week and a half after the Seeker's attack, Sparhawk finished the last bite of his stewed venison, a young buck that had wandered alone from its herd, perhaps two years old. A single arrow from Berit's bow brought it down quickly and cleanly, though the Pandion novice insisted it was more luck than skill. The game kill had lifted everyone's mood; Kurik, of course, had salt and scraper for the hide (although he admitted he'd expected to be using it on boar) and what couldn't be used tonight was being prepared for travel, either over the fire to smoke it overnight or cut into thin strips and layered with more salt to preserve it that way.

Sparhawk tongued fiercely at a bit of meat caught between two teeth, smiling in satisfaction as it dislodged. "So, Kalten. You spent what, seven years in Lamorkand, right? What are we walking into?"

"Nine," Kalten corrected him soberly, his usual goofishness completely absent. "They're a strange people. A Lamork will sacrifice anything for the sake of revenge, and the women are worse than the men about it. A good Lamork girl will spend her whole life, and her family's wealth, for the chance to sink a knife into the belly of someone who declined her invitation to a dance at some winter party. The whole time I lived among them, I never heard anyone laugh or saw a single person smile. It's the bleakest place on earth; even more than Pelosia, I'm fairly certain the sun is forbidden to shine on Lamorkand."

"Charming people," muttered Ulath.

"The universal warfare we've been hearing about from the Pelosians. Is this common, then?" Sparhawk asked.

"Pelosians aren't the best judges of Lamork peculiarities," Kalten replied. "If it wasn't for the influence of the Church and the presence of the Church Knights, they'd have likely engaged in a war of mutual eradication by now. Pelosians and Lamorks despise each other with a passion that's almost holy in its mindless fervor."

Sephrenia sniffed disgustedly. "Elenes," she muttered.

"We have our faults, little mother," Sparhawk conceded. He turned his attention back to Kalten. "We're going to run into trouble as soon as we cross the border, aren't we?"

"Perhaps not," Tynian commented, drawing everyone's attention. "Sparhawk, we've been wearing our formal armor ever since the Seeker attacked. It's been unpleasant, but it could work in our favor if we just keep doing it. Not even the wildest eyed Lamork baron is willingly going to cross the Church, and any order of the Church Knights could grind Lamorkand to mud if they felt like it."

"There's still only five of us," Kalten pointed out, "what if they call our bluff?"

"What reason would they have to do so?" Tynian asked in return. "The neutrality of Church Knights in their disputes is just shy of the sun rising in the east in its dependability. Formal armor makes it clear we're here on official business and might well allow us to proceed with that business unbothered. We're trying to get to Lake Randera, after all, not involve ourselves with the local hotheads."

"He may be on to something," Ulath said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Perhaps all we need to do is simply continue on as we have been."

"If that's the case, we're going to want to make our armor extra clean and shiny," Sparhawk announced. "We can't show up looking like we've been splashing through every mudpit in southern Pelosia, even if we have been."

The sighs of discontent at this declaration mirrored Sparhawk's own feelings on the matter. It was with heavy hearts that the five of them spent a couple extra hours cleaning, polishing, and oiling their formal armor in preparation for the next morning.