Chapter Twenty-Three
Twenty-Three
When Juniper woke the next morning, Mo was burning up with fever in the bedroll beside him, one arm still wrapped tightly around Juniper. When Juniper tried to extract himself, Mo grumbled sleepily and tightened his hold.
It was only after a good deal of maneuvering—how was his grip so strong, even when he was ill?—that Juniper successfully escaped, careful not to wake Mo as he did.
What Juniper wouldn’t give to be closer to a healer, or even one of those people who claimed to be druids, even if all they did was make you a cup of tea and tell you that your palm said you were going to die soon but be very wealthy, or have a lot of health but no money, or whatever it was they were always predicting.
Anything would be better than being stuck out in the wilderness.
And all because he’d done some náiriú poiblí, had ten winters of unaddressed feelings bottled up, and gotten in a brawl.
“Junebug.” Mo’s voice sounded pained. “Where’d you go? Come back.”
“I’m here,” Juniper said, kneeling on the edge of the bedroll beside him. “I’m so sorry, Mo.”
It was on the tip of his lips: What should I do?
I don’t know any more than you do, Mo’s words returned to him. The path is made by walking.
It would have to be, quite literally, since they were now so far from any beaten path.
Juniper lit the fire again, boiled some herb pouches he had remaining in his pack—that would have to do, as far as tea went—and then cradled Mo’s head so that his friend could drink.
He stayed at his friend’s side, pacing the camp, changing the poultice on his injured ankle, pouring tea and broth into Mo’s mouth anytime his friend was awake enough to allow it, and pacing some more.
The river would not carry him back the way he came, but it was clear to him that he needed to follow it back toward the prince and the village.
The prince and his foul little associates were the closest people in the realm, at the moment (unless there really were other dragons out here, whom Juniper was sure would not look favorably on two men who looked like they could be dragon hunters).
So, unfortunately, there seemed nothing for it but yet another trek through the woods. A recurring theme during these recent unpleasant weeks they’d spent questing.
Juniper’s father would have called this an exercise in futility and probably thrown an empty bottle at him to boot.
Well, Juniper’s father could go fuck himself.
With a pine cone.
“Mo, I need to do some sneaking again,” Juniper told his friend the next time he woke. “I’m going to put out the fire so nobody comes across you here, and leave you with the sword.”
“Take the sword,” Mo said, his voice gravelly and low, but, despite the fever, very sure. “You’re going to his camp, aren’t you?”
“If we’re ever going to get Bear back, we need to know what the prince is planning and find the best stop to intercept him,” Juniper said. “And at the very least, I can try to make sure Bear is okay—”
“I want to go,” Mo said. “I want to make sure Bear’s okay.”
I loved you.
Loved.
Mo’s words echoed in his head.
“I can do this,” Juniper said. “You can trust me.”
The rest of the words died on his lips, because as they left his mouth he realized how they sounded.
Mo was still feverish and not quite awake, but the look on his face said enough.
How could he trust Juniper ever again?
“I’d die trying,” Juniper blurted.
“Don’t die trying.” Mo’s voice was terribly grumpy. “Don’t die, Juniper O’Reilly, or I will travel to Tir na nóg itself to find you and kick your ass.”
And then he slumped over on the bedroll and went back to sleep, a little bit of tea dribbling down his chin.
Juniper had never loved anybody so much.
“Glad you think my death will be valiant enough for a trip to Tir na nóg,” Juniper murmured, and then he stole a second knife from Mo’s pants (which were still hanging up. No need to try to shove Mo back into said pants so soon) and put out the fire and went on his way.
It took Juniper until late afternoon to reach the prince’s camp, which had moved back toward Filleadh and had swelled again in size, rejoined by the prince’s other mercenaries.
It was better guarded than before, with no Bear to be seen. No fire, either.
When Juniper arrived at the perimeter, he shrugged his cloak on and realized he should have probably spent the miserable walk there thinking of a plan.
How very like Mo of him to show up with no plan.
Juniper did, however, know exactly who would have the loosest lips about something as important as the prince’s next steps.
So he pulled his hood low over his face and confidently strolled along the perimeter, gazing into the woods as if he was keeping guard.
“I’m on this beat, man,” a woman interrupted him after a few minutes.
“Ah, of course,” Juniper said. “So sorry.”
She was pale, tall, and red-haired, and she scowled at him, jerking her head toward the opposite side of the camp. “You’re one of Bronson’s fellows?” she asked, her gaze sweeping up and down him with distaste.
“Yes,” Juniper answered with gritted teeth. What sacrifices a man would make for love.
The woman—Juniper would call her Bad Girl #1—stared at him, her scowl deepening. Understandably so, if she associated him with Bill. “Didn’t anyone tell you that your people are supposed to be on wood-chopping duty? After Bill let those outlaws walk right past him into camp yesterday?”
“So sorry,” Juniper said again, hoping his tone reflected the gravity of the situation and not the cheerfulness he felt in his soul. “Off I go, then!”
Outlaws was a very cool and sexy word to describe two rather dirty farmers fumbling about through the forest on a mission to save a little dragon.
Juniper’s chest ached at the thought of Bear. She must be so scared, and so angry. She deserved to be scooped up and fed cheese, not feared and locked away.
He crossed the camp carefully, hood pulled low, toward the cracking sound of wood splintering. On his way, he grabbed a flask of water from the ground.
Bill was at the edge of the camp nearest the river, and he barely looked up when Juniper approached.
“Oh, are you taking over for me?” Bill asked, handing off the hatchet and wiping his brow with the back of his sleeve as he did. “Thank Divona and all the gods. This is such horrible work, and I want to go home.”
Juniper took the hatchet without a word, ducking away from Bill, though he handed off the flask of water first.
Bill took it and slumped over on the pile he’d already created of firewood. “Thanks, my good fellow,” he said. “Ah, that’s better. Though I could do with some tallow. I haven’t had skin care in days.”
So Bill was responsible for driving up the price of tallow back at home, then. Juniper bit back the flash of anger. Divona’s sake, this man was a nightmare.
Juniper turned his back to him. Alas, it seemed as if he would actually have to chop some wood. But Bill was sitting right there and sighing, so that was a positive sign. A whine-fest seemed imminent.
“I don’t even get the point of all this anyway,” Bill volunteered. “And I wish we’d never met that prince. It doesn’t seem right, does it? Locking up a kid, even if she is a dragon?”
Juniper borrowed a Mo-ism and grunted to cover his surprise. Bill, with a take Juniper agreed with? Unheard of in these lands.
“You sound just like my husband.” Bill’s voice was unexpectedly fond, for someone who was such a whiny bastard all the rest of the time.
Phteven must really be something special to put up with a man like Bill.
“We’re moving on soon,” Bill continued to grouse after Juniper said mmm again. “So I don’t understand why he’s having us chop all this wood.”
What a self-centered bore, to carry on talking about his own thoughts when all the other person had done was mmm at him. How was Bill to know what that mmm really meant? Because Juniper meant for his mmm to mean Go fuck yourself, Bill.
Juniper swung the ax again, harder this time, to avoid thinking about any possible implications of that thought. Mo made splitting firewood look easy, and also quite a bit sexy, but Juniper’s shoulders were already burning. And doing this in a cloak?
Nearly impossible.
“Where?” Juniper grunted, trying to make his voice sound as low as possible.
He felt the silence that followed, Bill considering his voice, the question.
“We’re headed back to Pointe Gan Filleadh, you fool,” Bill said finally.
“Are you just slow, or have you not been listening? His royal asshole does not want to lose the dragon to those two country bumpkins or his vicious little sister, so he’s grabbing reinforcements in Filleadh and transporting the dragon on to the capital city before he goes on his grand dragon hunt.
He can do that by himself, as far as I’m concerned.
If there are dragons out there not bothering us, I don’t see why we should go and bother them. ”
Juniper preferred the term outlaw, but he had to admit that bumpkin, when spoken in a tone of such rageful reverence, was not so bad. “Mmm,” he said again.
That seemed to pacify Bill—fool that he was—because he took another swig of water and switched to complaining about what a long walk it was going to be to the capital city, now that the prince had commandeered his horse.
And that was enough information for Juniper—the prince needed more men, somehow, because he was afraid of his sister’s or Juniper and Mo’s interference, or both.
Or maybe (and this, Juniper thought, was far more likely) the prince couldn’t find a sufficiently easy path through the thickening forest and was scared of what might happen if he came upon a community of dragons.
So, coward that he was, he was taking Bear and running to the capital city.
“Has anyone ever told you how bad you are at chopping wood?” Bill commented. “And why are you doing it in a cloak, anyway? That’s how you lose a toe.”
“Billy!” Phteven called from a nearby tent, a blessed relief, since Juniper was using all his concentration not to tell Bill he should worry about his own damn toes. “I’m coming out to take over for you in a minute, okay?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Bill called back. “Some lad’s already here. What did you say your name was, again?”
Now mmm would no longer work as an answer here, so what the hell was Juniper supposed to do? If he had thought about this, which he hadn’t, he might have thought to make up a name (perhaps “Fern”) or just say he had to go and shuffle off across camp quickly.
But Juniper had free will and a flair for the dramatic, so he pushed back his hood, grinned at Bill’s shocked face, and said:
“It’s Mr. Bumpkin to you, thank you very much.”
“I— What? You?” Bill dropped the flask, water spilling across the orange and red leaves at his feet.
“Me,” Juniper answered. “Slap ya later, Bill.”
Bill surged to his feet, knife in hand, and lunged for Juniper.
Juniper dodged back, but Bill closed a surprisingly strong hand around Juniper’s bicep, placed the tip of his knife on Juniper’s throat, and said:
“Shut your mouth.”
Juniper opened his mouth, because obeying such a command from Bill? Even at knifepoint? Unthinkable.
Phteven rounded the corner, eyes widening when he saw Juniper. “Don’t say anything,” he said softly, waving at Bill. “Bill, put the knife away. Juniper? Can we talk?”
Juniper’s mind couldn’t quite keep up. Talk? To Bill?
When Juniper couldn’t summon an answer, Phteven moved closer, his dark eyes trained on Juniper. “Stay quiet,” he said again. “The prince is sending men for Morn, and they may already have him.”
“What?” Juniper gasped.
“Put your hood back up,” Phteven hissed at him. “Now.”
Juniper did, hunching his shoulders and glancing around to make sure nobody else had noticed. “What do you want?” he asked. “What are you saying? Are you…are you trying to help me?”
“I’m saying the prince sent men upriver last night,” Phteven told him. “I’m sure you don’t want to hear this from us. But we—we’re in over our heads on this quest, and neither of us like what the prince is doing, and—”
Bill elbowed Phteven in the ribs. “We shouldn’t be telling him this,” he cut his husband off. “We can’t trust him. He sold out his boyfriend!”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Juniper mumbled, but his heart was thundering in his chest. “They’re going after Mo? Right now? I didn’t think there would be a trail they could follow out there.”
“He sent some trained mercenaries,” Phteven told him, exchanging an unreadable look with Bill. He glanced around, and then hooked his hand under Juniper’s arm. “You know, the ones who aren’t just lads from Tús with the ability to brawl and walk for many leagues? Let’s walk,” he said.
The three of them skirted toward the edge of camp, where the river thundered by.
“They’re more dangerous,” Bill told him as they reached the river. “You know, the assholes from the capital city who are trained from the time they’re twelve winters or so? None of the rest of us even have a chance on these quests.”
There was an unexpected note of bitterness in his tone.
“Why in Divona’s name are you helping me?” It took everything Juniper had not to add an insult to his question. But this was Mo’s life at stake, Juniper’s one single incentive to behave. So, reluctantly, Juniper did the last thing he’d ever expected:
He followed Bill Bronson into the forest.