Chương 192: Day One Hundred And Ninety

Dear Diary, I never really thought about the downsides of magical healing before. I got blisters during our third day marching, hit them with Heal Injury when we stopped for the day. I figured that was it. At the end of our fourth day? My feet started to blister again. Apparently you don't get calluses if you magic your blisters away. Who knew?

Also, I'm kinda bummed that I hadn't worked up a decent set of calluses with all the running I did for endurance training, but I'm guessing that marching on a rutted dirt road with constant hills hits different to running in circles on flat, even stone pavers. As we set up camp in near darkness, one of the Sergeants came up to me.

"Ma'am, could you help us with the fire?" I shrugged and asked her, "what's wrong with it?" She smiled, "nothing, really, but we couldn't find enough good firewood, so what we've got to work with is sort of green and a little bit frozen. We're short of dry kindling as well, because of that stream we had to ford today."

"Fire all put together and ready to be lit?" When she nodded, I said, "lead on." The fire was in the normal spot, just not, y'know, on fire. I leaned down, saw where they'd laid everything out, and how the kindling wasn't so much kindling as a lump of sodden stuff. I squatted next to it, spread out the kindling as best I could, and shaped a Fire Bolt, but realized that if I just let it go, I'd wind up blowing it all over the place. I held on to the Mana as the Fire Bolt formed, then let it out real slow.

A steady stream of fire shot out to cover the kindling. First it bubbled and steamed, and then the water was gone and the kindling caught fire. I waved the rest of the fire from the Fire Bolt over the larger branches over the kindling, and by the time the Bolt was spent, the fire had gotten to the point where it would keep itself burning. I stood, turned to the Sergeant, and, keeping my voice low, asked, "don't we have anybody who knows, like, how to build fires in bad conditions?"

She shrugged, "normally in a force this size we'd have at least half a dozen experienced woodsmen, but..." She didn't look away, but I could tell she wanted to.

"Out with it."

"Whoever put our roster together obviously didn't check for things like that." I let out a self-deprecating laugh.

"Yeah, guess Bill and I fucked up, didn't we?"

"I didn't say that, ma'am." I patted her on the shoulder and said, "you're right, I did. I guess there's nothing for it but a quick lesson on how to make a Fire Bolt for the rest of the Cadets with us." She looked a little spooked at that.

"You mean you're the only one who can?"

"Ah, shit. Don't tell anybody. Seriously. That'll be corrected before I go to bed tonight." She nodded, "I understand, ma'am." As I walked up to Angel's units, I thought at Saffron, you up for leaving the menace with Marie and helping me show the others Fire Bolt tonight? I caught the fatigue in her voice, but she replied, certainly. Why is this suddenly an issue? Somebody named me forgot to include anybody who knows how to light a fire in shit conditions on our roster.

She went quiet for a moment, and the next thing I knew she lay a hand on my arm and turned me toward her.

"How exactly did you light a fire with Fire Bolt instead of blowing the wood to ashy splinters?"

"Wanna watch me do the next one?" She rolled her eyes, "lead on, o goofiest of goofs." I called Angel over to her units' firepit and demonstrated for her and Saffron. Angel looked a little doubtful about the whole thing, but nodded when I asked her if she'd seen enough to practice it tonight. Saffron just looked over at me and thought, I see how it's working, but how long did you take to figure that out? I shrugged, just kinda made sense.

She shook her head, pulled me down for a kiss, then said, "let's leapfrog forward through the rest of the units. If nothing else, I guess I'll sleep well tonight." Roughly an hour later, every unit had its firepit lit, and Saffron and I sat on a log near Lancaster's unit, both with more than a little sweat frozen in our hair. Oddly enough, Lancaster was the only one of the Cadets to pick up on the modified Fire Bolt.

He looked at the pair of us and said, "while I do appreciate having a fire tonight, I suppose we've both learned something from this little debacle." I said, "figured out that we forgot woodsmen?" He shrugged, "honestly, I didn't think of it before this evening, and I should have after I realized the Volunteers who knew how to break down the deer we shot were butchers." I laughed, "so this is what duBois would call 'good training', huh?" You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

That got a quickly suppressed snort of laughter out of him, before he nodded to me, said, "Commander," and walked off toward his tent.

"You going back now, Kitten?"

"Not until after I do this," she leaned in and kissed me, her hands freezing against the back of my neck. I wasn't about to complain, what with her sharing plenty of heat via mouth-to-mouth. When she pulled away, she sighed and said, "until tomorrow, Goof." Then she stood and was gone. Same dream, just rooching myself around to get a view of the mossy patches in the rocks without getting too far from the lake to dip into it.

Woke with the Sergeant stirring beside me, ate a breakfast of half frozen Drivers' take out, trying to figure out if I were happier that it still tasted good cold, or irked that it was practically Drivers' flavored water ice. Nothing major during the day, although when we broke for lunch Lancaster came back to talk.

"We might want to rotate our trailbreakers more often, Commander""If you say so. Quarter days?" He nodded.

"Also, have any of yours seen any game today?" I shook my head.

"You asked the others?"

"Yes. No game at all. Which means they've been scared off by something." I heaved a sigh, "well, let's just hope whatever it is winds up scared off by us. In the meanwhile, let the other Cadets know, and tell them to tell their Sergeants." He nodded.

"Commander." Then he walked off. Nothing out of the ordinary happened for the rest of the day. Just marching through snow, or trampled slush by the time the ass end of our column got to it. Saffron and Isnomi showed up for dinner. I'd planted my butt on a section of log that was destined for the fire some time during the night. Saffron took one look at me and sat on my lap, leaning against me.

"Rough day at work?" Isnomi jumped up to sit on Saffron's lap, kneeling on her thighs and putting one arm around each of us. Well, as far as she could reach anyhow. Saffron ran a hand through the menace's curls a few times before saying, "we had our first quarantine breaker death today." I put one arm around her, then hugged Isnomi to us with my other.

"Yeah. I remember when that happened in the Yards." After just sitting there a while, I asked, "did somebody kill him?" She shook her head.

"We posted sentries after what happened to Pennypacker. She died of exposure." I looked around at the snow-covered alpine forest we'd camped in. Around the smells of our fires and the ever present scent of unwashed human, the scent of incoming snow lurked.

"It snowed there today, didn't it?" She nodded.

"The storm is moving south. You'll probably see it tomorrow." Isnomi wriggled out from between us to go scampering off to say hi to all the Volunteers, so I pulled Saffron close, letting her hide her face against my jacket.

"I get it. I do. Just let me know what you need. This, or coming home for the night, or, I dunno, just talking about the weather." She laughed just a little at that, the sound thick with unshed tears.

"I'm sure I killed some people at the Battle of Newark, but," she paused, and for once I wasn't a moron and just let her sit and think while I held her.

"I never saw the bodies, not really. That was in a battle, too, and I think I'm the one that told you that killing someone in a battle isn't murder, didn't I?" I buried my face in her hair and replied, "yeah, pretty sure you did. Forgot your own advice?" She shook her head, which tickled my nose, but I managed not to sneeze in her hair.

"Not so much forgot as didn't realize how difficult it might be to implement." She heaved a huge sigh, then pulled back so she could look me in the eye.

"I'm not sure I'm cut out for this Imperator job." I held her face, stared into her eyes, and asked, "because you're upset about someone dying because of something you ordered?" When she nodded, I said, "I think that's a sign that you're absolutely the right person for it." Then I leaned down and kissed her. She wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me closer, the kiss hungry. When she pulled away, she asked, "if I wrangle Isnomi a sleepover with Grandma, can you spend the night tomorrow?"

I grinned down at her, then sighed.

"It'll have to start late and finish early." When she pouted just a little I said, "I'm the one in command here right now, love. If I'm not here when they go to sleep or when they wake up, they're gonna feel some kinda way about it."

"So you're their mother now, too?" I laughed at that.

"I guess, kinda sorta. Although I'm gonna be way less upset if they catch an earful of us going at it. Hell, even an eyeful." She snorted out another laugh, "you haven't stayed up listening to your troops after lights out, have you?"

"Really?"

"Oh, not all of them, and officially they're supposed to be asleep, but if anybody asks or comments, they'll claim they were 'wrestling to get themselves tired enough to sleep." I shook my head at the threadbare excuse, but then I really wasn't one to talk. If I wasn't sharing a tent, I sure as hell would take advantage of Saffron's visits, assuming the menace wasn't along. I'll hold you to that, you realize? And to other things too, I'm sure.

"Feel a little better?" I asked. She nodded.

"Yeah, I just needed," she paused, searching herself for the right word.

"Perspective, maybe?" I wasn't sure what I was about to say, because the howl of a wolf echoed through the trees. That didn't bother me, what with a whole army around us, but when countless others echoed it from every direction, I jumped to my feet, Saffron barely keeping on her own feet in her stiletto boots. We looked one another right in the eyes and at the same time said, "Isnomi!" I bolted along the middle of our oblong campsite, head on a swivel looking for the menace.

About halfway along the camp, I caught sight of a wolf striding into our circle of firelight. The fucker had to be at least five feet tall at the shoulder, and while none of the shadows moving behind it were quite that big, there were a fuckton of them. Attention focused on the wolf approaching, I almost ran straight into a Sergeant who'd been running toward me.

"Ma'am! I tried to stop her, ma'am, but she bit me and I dropped her!" That's when I saw a tiny figure walking across the snow toward the big wolf.

"Oh, shit." I tried to step to her, but halfway through the motion I got thrown back to land on my ass. I saw Saffron hit the ground a few paces in front of me, right next to the Sergeant who'd been talking to me. I jumped to her, scooped her up and tagged her with a Heal Injury while scanning the spot I'd seen Isnomi. She'd moved to stand inches from the big fucker, its jaws looming over her head.

I heard it growl from where I stood, and stepped behind her, since there was literally no space to jump between her and the wolf. When I got there, my feet plunged through the crust Isnomi and the wolf were both standing on, leaving me waist deep in freezing white shit. Before I could do anything else, Isnomi crouched down, the shadows around her twisted, and the snow vibrated. I felt it before I heard it, a growl that shook the snow off the trees, dumping it on the wolves and me and Saffron.

Somehow all of it missed the menace, who still crouched, staring right up at the big wolf, who hadn't moved or broken eye contact with her when she hunkered down. The big wolf blinked. Then it sat, then lay down on the snow in front of her. It rolled halfway over and started whining, an absolutely ridiculous sound coming from a wolf that size. Behind it, I saw the other wolf shapes doing the same thing.

The little menace, one hand reaching out to pat the goddamned monster wolf on the cheek, turned around to us and said, "Ah got dis, Mama."