in the nick of thyme

[inkindled]

WHO: Ilias, Matthias, John
WHAT: In the Nick of Thyme
WHEN: Drakonis
WHERE: a lonely road west of Cumberland, on the way to a refugee camp
NOTES: none for now

The caravan makes what must be their last camp, with a day and a half left to the journey. That's as much as they can estimate with maps and the speed they've kept so far.

As before, once the wagons are circled, a perimeter is established, and watch is posted. Cookfires are kept low, noise is kept lower still. Details of guards take turns sleeping in the wagons with the supplies. And any one of their number who might range outside of the circled wagons--to collect firewood, to fetch water, to take a piss--does so with an escort.

It's familiar to Matthias. A series of precautions, played out bigger, more elaborately than what he grew up with. But he knows the pattern when he watches, from a distance, pressed low to the ground and dressed to blend in with the scenery. Their trio didn't make it to the crossroads in time. They've had to sodding scramble all this way, only now to find that the guards are too through, and too well-armed, for just the three of them.

So they have their own camp--small, at a distance, within a thick copse of trees at the base of a shallow hill, and still within eyeshot of the wagons so they can keep their own watch. Matthias has been pressed against the crown of the hill on his belly for hours, watching. They can't risk a fire the way the caravan can. They'll be seen in a second, no matter how careful. Cold rations and water from the stream, and the damp chill of winter-turning-to-spring down in their toes.

"We have to do something," Matthias says over his shoulder, back to Speaker Fabria and Silver, back in their pathetic little camp. It's just begun pissing down rain, and the drape of Matthias' hood is heavy against his head. He tries to ignore it. "We can't keep just following along like bloody dogs."

Comments

[libratus]

Ilias, in the last five minutes, has taken another mental lap through an array of increasingly unlikely alternative solutions -- creating a distraction, drawing enough of them into the trees to leave the carts poorly guarded, as if that wouldn't still be too many for the three of them to handle on either end -- anything to avoid so much as edging a soggy boot near,

"Destroy them?" It's not loud; voices carry even in this dogged downpour, but his voice is a touch sharp. "And deliver to the camps-- what, tree bark and water?"

[inkindled]

Matthias looks back at the carts and the camp, squinting through the raindrops as he weighs both this suggestion and Speaker Fabria's apparent disapproval of said suggestion.

"You can boil bark in water," he says, evenly, "makes a decent enough soup."

And wouldn't he know it. He scoots back on his belly and twists so he can slide the rest of the way down the short hill on his arse, to join their conversation. It is a purely practical move, but it likely comes out looking more childish than Matthias'd like, if he could see himself outside of himself. He rather ruins this by elaborating on his point: "I reckon we might have to wreck them. I don't want to. Only we can't let the Vints get any glory out of this. If we hadn't been late, we might have done aught, but," and he shrugs, short and spare. "I dunno. What other choice have we got? There's too many of 'em guarding it by any count."

[hornswoggle]

John manages not to sigh audibly in relief, but it's a near thing.

"Matthias is right. We've arrived too late, and it limits our options."

If there had been more of them, or if they were better equipped to do a great dea of murder in a short period of time—

But they aren't. John can't devise a scenario in which they were.

"You know as well as I that we cannot allow Tevinter to benefit here. If we allow them any leverage at all it'll be something that will dog us for months, perhaps even past our ability to counter."

[libratus]

Frustration pulls at the corners of his mouth, tightening a frown with every too-sensible word. They aren't wrong; if public opinion begins to soften toward Tevinter, Nevarra may never rise up to reclaim its capital. Perendale may prove to be only the first territory quietly ceded, Aurelia's treason only the beginning of a pattern. (All of their work with the Van Markhams could be for naught.)

"Only it isn't we at all, is it?" Taking action. Deciding what not to allow. Ilias turns, distinctly not looking at John anymore. "It's you, Matthias."

"I can help cover you, keep the guards' attention elsewhere perhaps. But I cannot start a fire from this distance. Primal magic, force, these are not my strengths." And Mr. Silver, he assumes, is not a mage today.

"The weight of the decision, the responsibility for it, that may rest on all of us, but it will be you who has to set it into motion. And you who has to live with it, knowing the supplies you destroy may cost lives, too."

[inkindled]

Matthias looks back, steady and unflinching.

"Yeah," he says, "I know. 'Cause I've fought in loads of battles, mate, so I've done this before."

Both the weighing of the act, its cost and its moral heft--though you didn't always get that luxury. Sometimes you were only told to do, and you had to. Us or them. Wolves at the door, no time to wring your hands, act and have your think later, if indeed you must--and then the doing of the act, too. That's nearly always been his. Fingers on a hand. Orders from someone else, someone barely your senior, some other kid from a Circle what fell, and then later you see her with half her face gone, bleeding out into the mud. You can't let yourself think.

"Silver's right. This is the Vints we're talking about, when all's said and done. The people what would get those supplies--I'm sorry for them." Practically been them. It doesn't do anyone any good to say it, especially not when his meager upbringing likely stands out from leagues away to someone raised like Fabria must have. "I am. I know that's mine to carry. But we're fighting a war, Speaker. Not familiar with it, maybe, but I reckon you ought to learn, this is how it goes. 'Cause if the shoe were on the other foot, you bet your arse the Vints would kill our lot and gloat about it. We've got to take what chances we have, even when they're slim, and shit."

It's not quite conviction flagging, when he breaks off and looks down at his hands. That's all still in him, burning away.

"Need your help, though. Both of you. You're right about that--distractions, and all. It's never anything you do alone."

[hornswoggle]

Mr. Silver would prefer not to be a mage on any day, but—

"Well said," is his simple, brisk acknowledgement of Matthias' answer. Is this why Flint had chosen him as an assistant? Has Matthias said as much in Flint's hearing? That's something to consider on the way home, but in the moment it's simply useful. He cracks his knuckles, one after the other after the other. Considers the bones and precious stones in the pouch at his hip, considers what pain he'll trade away for the night's work.

(Considers what he'll say to this boy, when it's all over.)

"I can shatter the wheels," John says, blunt. Not mentioning what he can do to the Tevinter guards. "You'll need to do the rest, Matthias. Any ideas to draw their eye while we work, Speaker?"

[libratus]

He ought to learn. Is learning presently, with a quick flinch between the brows, and wishing Matthias weren't the one so well prepared to teach him. The thought makes his lungs feel too thick, sandbag heavy. How badly must they have all failed, that the youngest of them know war so well. (How lucky they are that he does.)

But he'd wanted the boy to have a choice, and he's made it. Ilias dips his chin as if accepting an order himself. Even John's offer earns no more than a sharp glance (surprise, even relief) as he steps from them in semicircle, unclipping the lyrium from his belt. The first blow will need to be decisive.

"I will kill the big one there," a nod toward the far side of the camp, barely in their line of sight. "And he will fight the others. If his position isn't enough to mislead them, I can hold them off until you're clear."

"When you are ready."

It will start with a scream and a crunch, when he is.

[inkindled]

Matthias sucks in a quiet breath and lets it out, then pushes himself to his feet with his staff as leverage.

"Right," he says, briskly, "let's. Only how close d'you need to be to break apart the wheels?" With a hammer of some sort, is what he's assuming. It will be a good plan. Even if they put out the fire Matthias is going to visit on the carts, there will be no pushing them on, not with the wheels all broken. "That'll make a good distraction but have we got to work out some sort of cover?"

And then, unspoken, how is Silver going to get over there and back fast enough? Matthias has grace enough not to look down at his leg and all. Been around enough to know better than that. The point remains.

[hornswoggle]

As it turns out, dredging this particular secret up in a moment of calm is more difficult than reaching for his magic out of necessity when everyone around him is either being shot at with arrows or being trampled by horses.

"Oh, just the top of that hill. Maybe a few steps closer, give or take."

It's reckless, what he's doing. Divulging this information brings no relief with it, nothing but the terrible, crushing sensation of being left vulnerable without any safeguard. John feels cold sweat pricking the nape of his neck as panic tries to work itself out from beneath his determined calm. He looks to Ilias, then back to Matthias.

"Don't hold back. This is all for nothing if what they have in those carts isn't reduced completely to ash."

Nothing need be broken. John laboriously walks past Matthias to the top of the incline, and has just enough time to draw out a slender, white-bleached bone, carved with runes, to hook between his fingers when an agonized shriek and subsequent shouts of alarm herald the success of Ilias' opening salvo. John's contribution is less dramatic, but effective: he brings his hands together with a resounding crack and hears it echoed in the camp as wood splinters and carts crash to the earth.