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

[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.