Chương 201: Day One Hundred And Ninety-Nine

Dear Diary, There oughta be a law about humpless hump days. Like, things that have humps ought not to not have humps. Like, what even is a camel without a hump? A shitty llama, that's what. Okay, I'm just a little bitchy because after three days or so with things like a bed, and cooked food, and conjugal visits? I'm gonna have to sleep in a pup tent next to a Volunteer tonight. That's not quite true, if I'm being honest. She's a Sergeant. Although I'm not sure if technically she's still a Volunteer?

I gotta ask Saffron that at some point. She'll know. So last night was my last night sleeping in a real bed. When we eventually make our way back to the Academy and all of us are sleeping in the same room on the regular, that's my first thing I'm doing; getting a real bed. The mirror is a nice to have, but the bed is a must. At any rate, Mimic does not dream of electric sheep, because apparently moss is much more interesting.

There might be some lichen here and there too, but its mostly moss and, y'know, that green almost-slime you get in and around moss. Woke this morning to someone knocking on the door to the room. Hopped out of the bed only to realize that Marie must have been keeping the fire fed on previous days, because the room was not toasty warm. Still warmer than our icebox of an Academy cell, but not warm.

I did the shiver dance over to the door, then realized that I couldn't open the door without flashing the whole main room. The choice of room used as a dressing room suddenly made sense. I opened the door just a tiny crack and said, "what's the emergency?"

"No emergency, commander. The expedition is ready to go when you are." I checked the window; the faint light of dawn filtered in through the window. Fuck, I'd missed breakfast.

"Thank you, Larry." I did the insta-clothing thing, glanced at the desk to make sure the uniform I'd dumped on the fluffy chair last night was the one I'd pulled on, because it would suck if I wound up leaving a uniform here, then pushed the door open to find Lancaster standing just out of the swing of the door. He fell in behind me as I walked to the stairs.

"Any problems?"

"No, ma'am." He paused just long enough to let me know he wasn't talking about a problem, then said, "Now that we're out of the woods, might I recommend we start rotating forwards instead of backwards? That puts our most fatigued unit in the back where they have the most broken trail." I nodded.

"Makes sense. How long for the intervals?"

"Half an hour, or when the trail breakers begin to flag? That way once they've all broken trail once, it's time for lunch, and after the second it's time for dinner and camp."

"Sounds good. Are we really going to have to camp out again?" I managed to keep the whine out of my voice, but I still heard a little snort from behind me, just quiet enough I'd have to be a real bitch to comment on it.

"I hope so, ma'am?"

"You got a previously unexplored pup tent fetish?"

"No, ma'am, but if there's room indoors for us it means the people who would normally be sleeping there are dead." I hid my wince, hopefully better than I'd hid my whine.

"Well, let's hope for pup tents, then." Right about then we got to the doors of the house, and I paused and asked, "are we gonna need to camp out at Lancaster House itself?" This time Larry snorted openly.

"Hardly. We may need to open some of the mothballed rooms, but we won't be sleeping outside. Eating inside too, although again, we might need to have some of the troops help with the cooking, depending how many people from outlying farms are sheltered there at the moment." That caught my attention as I reached for the door.

"Just how big is Lancaster House, anyhow?" I looked back at him to catch him smiling that smug Lancaster smile.

"Large enough that I feel confident making those statements." He shrugged off my raised eyebrow. You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"Yeah, but, like, how many rooms?" He shrugged again.

"I really don't know. The last time I got curious I tried to count them, but I lost count." Sometimes the jokes write themselves.

"So, at least eleven then?"

"Please, commander." I smiled a wordless apology, then swung the door open to see the troops mustered and ready to go, just waiting for Lancaster and I. Before I stepped out, he got me by saying, "At least twenty two." I laughed. Honest to god humor from a Lancaster. Who knew? One cannot remain in your company long without developing a sense of humor, Tabitha. Or nervous tics, but he doesn't seem the sort for those, oddly enough.

I rolled my eyes at second-in-command and deity alike, then called out, "ladies and gentlemen, are you all ready for a nice morning stroll?"

"Yes, ma'am!" their voices filled the air, and I noticed that each of them had a brand new shield, not to mention their packs and all that good shit. I turned to ask Lancaster about it, only to find him holding out a pack with a shield hanging from the back and a spear threaded through the straps. I pulled the spear out, shouldered my pack, and said, "take the lead?"

"As you command." He strode off toward the first unit, and I pointed westward, or what I hoped was westward, with my spear.

"Move out!" Nothing really happened through the morning. We walked down a snowed in road between snow covered fields, the wind chill dropping the temperature low enough I wound up glad the wind was blowing from behind us, where the packs could block most of it. I still kinda wished I could jump back and pick up my furry coat, but I wound up in the unenviable position of telling myself that if I didn't bring enough for everybody, I couldn't wear mine.

Fortunately about midway through the day we came to a narrow strip of woods, which wasn't big enough to hide anything bigger than some rabbits, but when we marched off the road just past the tree line, it provided a pretty good windbreak for us while we sat, ate lunch, and rested up a little bit. While most of the troops huddled together in their squads, trying to keep themselves warm by proximity, I leaned against a tree on the edge of the woods and looked at my new shield while keeping watch over our back trail.

It would be just my luck if the Dragon had a spouse or mother or kid who decided to chase us down to avenge the building that flew like a lizard. Jotnar lack of fucks to give about cold for the win. The first thing I noticed was that unlike our old wood shields, this one wasn't really square. The bulk of it was shaped like a single big scale, that classic 'rounded across the top, bottom coming to a broad point' thing. That made sense, since it probably was just one of the bigger scales.

The size of the fucking Dragon hit me again, and I hid a little bout of shakes by clutching at the shield and holding it between me and the wind to look at it. Two smaller scale shapes, one on each side of the main one, but oriented with their points upward, brought the overall shape of the shield to something approaching the rectangle our troops trained with. The reason I couldn't be absolutely certain about the shape being a scale?

The entire thing, outside and in, had a hard leather cover over it, the only gap being where the soft... well, softer leather of the straps threaded through the outer leather casing. I'd never seen deliberately hardened leather before. It looked like leather, smelled like leather, but felt more like, I dunno, greasy wood? Something like that anyhow. You'd expect the whole thing to be way heavier than the old wooden shields, but despite being at least three layers of whatever they were, it felt lighter.

I wasn't about to go trying to break it; if I couldn't, I'd look like an idiot, and if I could, I'd not only feel like an asshole, I'd look like an even bigger idiot. After putting my arm through the straps and practicing moving it around a little, as well as taking one swipe with it, I hooked it back over my pack. While I did I felt something odd inside the pack. I pulled it open to find a helmet and shin guards made out of the same kind of stiff woodish leather as the shield cover.

I tied the shin guards on over my pants, regretting it a little as that squished melted ice down my leg into my boots. I didn't think I could slip them on under my pants without pulling my pants off, and I really didn't want to flash my bits to the troops. I still left the shin guards on, since if I needed them, I sure as shit wouldn't have time to put them on properly. The helmet took a bit of work to get on over my hair, which had kinda sorta frozen into a helmet itself.

Once I got it on, I figured it would fit pretty well normally; it covered the top and back of my head, with holes in the sides around my ears, and a curved strip down each side of my face that pushed into my cheeks just a little. I figured that kinda like any other leather, it would gradually adjust to fit me better as I broke it in, so I left it on. Right about then I got the bright idea to use Loki's insta-dress trick to put my shin guards on under my pants. I'm glad my troops have such high morale.

Because they've pretty much got to have balls of fuckin' titanium to laugh at the woman who walked away from being eaten by a dragon when she hopped around squealing about ice cold leather freezing itself to my goddamned shins. The afternoon passed with no more issues than the morning, and as the sun dropped below the horizon, I realized why Lancaster hadn't pulled us over to camp when I saw the lights of a farmstead ahead of us.

Real fuckin' tempting, even if every bunk they had was full, to pack us into the buildings like cordwood, because it was fuckin' cold as balls out here in the sticks at night.