Chapter 8
Chapter eight
The first thing she was aware of was feeling utterly, absolutely safe.
Then she became aware of a steady drumbeat nearby.
A solid, reliable sound. Her nose and her fingers were cold, but the rest of her was warm enough.
Despite the knowledge that she was safe, she wasn’t all that comfortable.
Her head was resting on something too hard to be a decent pillow.
And there was a weight over her upper arm and shoulder, restricting her movement.
With a small, inarticulate sound of protest, she lifted her head and pulled away from whatever was holding her.
In the dim light of what she thought might be morning, she realised she had been lying next to Girard, both of them on the hard wooden floor of the radio room.
There was a sheet of tarpaulin under them, and what she thought was Girard’s coat over them.
It wasn’t very comfortable, but it also wasn’t the worst place she’d tried to sleep in, either.
As she sat up she realised that the steady drumbeat she had heard was Girard’s heartbeat.
She’d been resting her head on his shoulder.
She was tempted to curl back down again, back to where she’d felt safe, but before she could give in to the impulse, he stirred.
There were shadows under his eyes and he had smudges of soot on his face.
But his gaze was clear when he looked up at her.
Warmth rose in her face. She’d been lying next to him all night, even if she hadn’t been aware of it at the time.
“Are you alright?” he asked her, nothing but concern on his face.
“I think so. Tired. Saints, I’m so tired,” Hallie said, realising how true that was when she tried to get up and her legs wouldn’t work.
“You pulled a lot of magic,” Girard said, sitting up in turn.
“Here.” He got up and set a chair for her, next to the table where they’d laid out the weapons the night before.
At least, Hallie assumed it had been the night before.
“I believe that using magic takes a lot of energy, so you’ll probably feel like you’ve been hit by a train.
” He turned back and offered her his hands.
She leant into his quiet strength as she got herself up off the floor, letting her hands stay in his for a moment longer than necessary, reluctant to let go of his warmth.
“That’s a fair description,” Hallie agreed, managing to get herself across to the chair, and convinced she wouldn’t be able to go further than that.
Now she was sitting, and further away from the floor, she took a look around, noticing that although there were some blood stains on the floor, there was no sign of any creatures in the radio room.
“Did you clean up?” she asked, surprised and touched.
“Just this space,” he said, and grimaced. “We both needed some rest and I didn’t want to wake up to one of those things staring at me like I was its next meal.”
“They were quite hungry looking,” Hallie said, then had to laugh as her own stomach rumbled. “Apparently not the only ones.”
“I’ve got supplies with me,” Girard said. He got his pack down from the high shelf and rummaged through it, handing Hallie what looked like a protein bar. “Start with that, and I’ll get a better meal ready.”
“Thank you,” she said. He was looking after her, she realised, and it made her want to smile even as she was cross with herself for how useless she felt.
She hadn’t realised she’d eaten the protein bar until a bowl was put in front of her, steam rising along with the tantalising scent of some kind of soup. Girard handed her a spoon and took a seat across from her with a bowl of his own.
“This is really good,” she said, after she’d inhaled half the bowl.
“I wish I could take credit, but it’s just basic rations. It is good, but it gets tiring after a few days,” Girard said, humour revealing faint creases at the corners of his eyes.
“Are the creatures all gone?” Hallie asked, finishing the last of her soup and wondering if there was any more. She could feel some energy creeping back into her body, but it was slow, sluggish. Like the rest of her.
“Gone or dead,” Girard answered. “I took a quick look around when it started to get light out. The warrimel had chewed through the gate rope. I managed to get it more or less shut again. There’s nothing else alive inside the walls but us.”
Hallie shivered at the thought. She was glad she wasn’t about to be eaten by one of the creatures - the warrimel - but being surrounded by corpses was only marginally better.
“I’m not going to be much use for a while,” she said, and looked around the room.
She wasn’t used to being looked after, and they were here to work.
There had to be something useful she could do.
When they’d first got here, the day before, the tables had been covered with papers.
“Perhaps I can look through the records to see if there are any clues to what happened and where the people went?”
“Good idea,” Girard said. He got up and lifted the papers and books down, putting them on the table next to Hallie. “I want to take a proper look at the radio, but I’ll get you some more soup first.”
“If we don’t check in soon, will the director send more people?
” Hallie asked. She thought that was what the director had said before they left Daydawn, but there was also the storm to think about and whether the helicopter would be able to get to them.
Even assuming it could, she wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
On the one hand, she’d have welcomed more people the night before, to help fight back the swarm.
On the other hand, she was used to working alone, to relying on her own resources.
She was getting used to working with Girard, and welcomed his company, but wasn’t sure how she’d fit in with a larger team.
“I tried the radio phone again earlier,” Girard told her.
“Still no signal. Not hugely surprising. We’re on low ground here, and that storm front is between us and Daydawn.
If we haven’t checked in by nightfall, the director will start to worry.
But it’s going to depend on the storm as to how soon he can get more people here. ”
“So we’re on our own for a while,” Hallie said.
“Problem?” Girard asked.
Hallie gave a half-laugh. “Bit late to complain now, isn’t it? No, it’s fine. I just wondered. We could have used Frollo and some of his friends last night.”
“That’s true. If Peredur had thought we’d be up against a swarm of warrimel, or find a dead body, he’d have sent the tactical unit with us for sure. Sit for a minute while I get you that soup,” Girard said.
“Sounds great,” Hallie said, pulling the nearest pile of papers towards her.
As the morning wore on, Girard fed Hallie not one but two more bowls of soup.
She chose not to feel self-conscious or guilty about the resources she was taking up as she saw him take a second bowl, too.
It had been a hard fight the night before.
Her body was slowly recovering, and she was aware of the zauber snoozing in her pocket.
Its energy was drained, but it was still there, and she let it rest.
The papers and books were an odd mix. She’d been right about the schooling.
There were several pages covered in badly formed letters, clearly a child’s effort to learn to write, as well as more vivid drawings.
Hallie couldn’t help but feel shocked at the waste of resources.
Paper and handwriting materials were scarce in low city, since the commercial port had been moved, taking almost all of low city’s industry with it.
She and her class mates had learned to read and write with erasable slates, only graduating to paper and pens when they had some basic competence.
And now the children growing up in low city didn’t have any paper or printed text books, only the slates to practice writing.
But here, in this almost primitive settlement, the residents had been happy to give sheets and sheets of paper to children to play and practice with.
As well as the evidence of school work, there were ledgers which seemed to be cataloguing the inventory of goods ranging from the bags of flour and woodworking tools she’d seen to blankets and towels and numerous other goods that were all ordinary and domestic.
There were a few paper books, the covers and pages creased and worn from repeated reading, that turned out to be manuals or instructions covering skills from carpentry to growing crops.
The contents made her brows lift. It seemed that at least some of the people who had been living here had not brought the skills with them, but had needed to learn on site.
Which might explain why the open area where she and Girard had arrived had looked so rough.
If the settlers here didn’t have farming skills, they were learning as they went, and probably finding it a lot harder than they had anticipated.
It was Hallie’s experience that everything was harder in practice, at least to start with, whether that was tracking down a skip in low city or changing the tyre on one of her aunt’s vans.
She kept searching through the papers and books and eventually uncovered something that looked like a ledger at first glance, but on a closer look the entries were more like a journal.
The writing was in a neat, meticulous hand, as easy to read as printed text.
It recorded the date, the time of entry, and made commentary on the weather and progress of building with various comments about people who Hallie assumed were the residents.