Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
So they eased out of their den and headed for the path, Theos swearing as they went and he saw all the tracks through the woods. “Idiots,” he said. “They have no one on the trail at all? If they did, they’d have seen our tracks, and seen where they ended.”
“Maybe they thought we were Elkati. The Elkati military isn’t set up for this sort of mission. Our communication isn’t too efficient, and we don’t have . . . routines. I don’t know the word. We don’t have processes to follow, ways to expect people to behave. It’s probably pretty chaotic out there.”
“Good,” Theos grunted, and then they saved their breath for traveling rather than wasting it on conversation.
They moved fast, and again Finnvid lost his battle to stay alert and on guard, drifting into a meditative state, focusing only on putting one foot in front of the other.
He knew that Theos would be paying attention to the larger world, so Finnvid paid attention to Theos’s feet, tromping through the snow ahead of him.
They took short breaks to drink the melted snow from the containers they kept strapped against their chests and to eat quick bites of jerky and even of straight butter. As darkness fell, they stepped just off the trail and burrowed into a snowbank together.
The night was long, and Theos said it was too dangerous to travel in the dark; too much chance of falling off a cliff or running into a camp full of Elkati.
Finnvid felt ashamed for his gratitude to the night, but he knew that if he’d asked his legs to carry him any farther, they would have refused.
So he loosened his outer clothes and snuggled in against Theos, and they slept, alone again in their tiny world.
***
The Elkati were camped right where Theos had expected them to be.
He’d noticed the spot on the journey toward Elkat and had seen how there was absolutely no way to pass without going through the narrow gap between two cliffs.
But it had all been academic then, just one more bit of information to stash in case it was useful someday.
Now it was a serious problem. “We could get off the trail, den up, and hope for a storm,” he told Finnvid.
“In the middle of a blizzard we could walk right through; no one would be able to see us well enough to know we don’t belong.
If we were farther up in the mountains, that would make sense; the weather up there is bad as often as it’s good.
But we’re pretty low, here. We could wait a long time and not get much of a storm. ”
“What’s our other choice?” Finnvid asked.
“We don’t really have another choice,” Theos admitted.
He’d been thinking about it for a while, worrying about it, but he’d hoped the Elkati incompetence would continue and they wouldn’t have seen the importance of the pass, wouldn’t have established a camp there.
Now that he’d seen not only the Elkati but the number of Elkati, his optimism was gone.
“We need to get through,” Finnvid said. “There are too many of them to fight?”
“There’s about a hundred men.”
“That’s too many.” Finnvid grinned quickly. “Right? Even for a Sacrati?”
“It’s too many.”
“There’s no way around it. We can’t fight through it. I like your blizzard idea, but the weather won’t cooperate.” Finnvid stared through the trees in the direction of the camp. “This is a problem.”
“It is.”
“We can’t just wait it out? Maybe they’ll go home.”
“The men downhill from us have probably found our den, and they’re likely working their way back toward us.
They’ll be sweeping the forest more thoroughly now, and they’ll know what they’re looking for.
If they’re doing a good job, it’ll slow them down, but you and I haven’t been pushing as hard as we could if I were healthy. They’ll catch up to us soon.”
Finnvid stepped a little closer and drew a shaky breath. “We’ve come a long way, you and me.”
Theos heard the sadness in his voice. The resignation. “It’s not too late for you to go back. Or go forward. Stumble into camp with your wrists tied, say you managed to get away from me . . .”
“Stumble into camp,” Finnvid said. He frowned. “I probably could. Not as me, just as an Elkati soldier. Everyone will be wearing whatever winter gear they could find; there’s no uniforms to worry about. With scarves and beards, it’s hard to recognize anyone at a distance. Or even up close.”
“That’s why they’ll have passwords, and a process for identifying . . .” Theos looked more closely at Finnvid. “No passwords? No system for keeping track of who’s in camp and who’s out?”
“I don’t think so,” Finnvid said. His voice was cautious, but his excitement was clearly growing.
“I’ve never heard of such a thing. Never seen it done.
When we traveled this summer, we did nothing of the sort, and as I said, we don’t usually leave the valley in the winter, so we’d have no special procedures in place. ”
“It would be risky,” Theos said thoughtfully.
“No more than sitting here, waiting for the soldiers from downhill to catch up to us.”
“You could still go back,” Theos tried.
Finnvid snorted and clapped a mitt-covered hand to the side of Theos’s face. “You need to hear me when I say this, Theos.” He locked his gaze on Theos and slowly, clearly, said, “I’m not going back. I can’t live like that. I won’t.”
“Maybe you could—”
“No. I can’t. I won’t.”
“Just because they want you to marry a woman.”
Finnvid sighed. Then he shook his head. “No. Not because of that. Truly, it’s because they mispronounce my name. They say it ‘Finnvid,’ but really it should be pronounced ‘Feenveed,’ and I just can’t stand the idea of living the rest of my life with such ignorant people.”
“That must be very aggravating for you.”
“It is.”
Theos took both of Finnvid’s mitted hands in his own and said, “I’d rather you were safe. But, if you’re sure . . .”
“I am.”
“Then I think we should go at dusk.” And they stood together, there under the pine trees, and worked out the rest of their plan.
A few hours later, as the sun dropped behind the mountain peaks, they ran up the hill toward the Elkati camp. They were both genuinely out of breath, but they exaggerated the stagger in their steps and the slump in their bodies.
There were sentries on duty—the Elkati had managed that much—huddled behind a tree, trying to escape the wind, and only one stepped forward to intercept the new arrivals.
Theos briefly reconsidered the plan; he could probably kill these three without much noise or fuss, and then there would be no one to sound an alarm.
No. There would be time enough for killing if the plan went wrong; no need to rush into it.
So he doubled over as if fighting for breath while Finnvid spoke in Elkati.
He would be saying that they had an urgent message for the camp commander.
When the sentry would demand to know what it was, Finnvid would gasp out that an army of Torians had snuck around, coming down the mountain route, and were on their way to the valley.
Theos could see the sentry’s jerk of panic in response to the Elkati words and wondered if they should have chosen something more mundane, and snuck in on a wave of apathy rather than panic, but it was too late to change, and this approach seemed to be working.
The man was no longer thinking clearly, and that was good news.
Finnvid barked a few orders at the sentries and then strode into camp, Theos stumbling along behind him, doing his best to look harmless and disoriented.
Finnvid seemed to know where he was going, approaching a large tent—a tent, in the middle of the mountains in the wintertime—and then jerking to a halt as if his attention had been called elsewhere.
Hopefully this charade would work if the sentries were still watching them.
Finnvid turned and strode just as purposefully off on a tangent, and then, once they were out of view of the sentries, he stopped and waited for Theos to catch up.
“Good?” he whispered, and Theos nodded. He didn’t see any reason for them to wait around.
So they continued, heading for the far side of the camp, and it was then that Theos saw a familiar face, and then another.
The Elkati soldiers who’d traveled with them from Windthorn, the soldiers who’d been Torian captives for months .
. . some of them were in the camp, and they were staring at Theos and Finnvid. They’d recognized them.
Theos found his sword. There were too many Elkati, far too many, but he’d go down fighting.
Then he saw one of the former captives raise his hand. A quick, subtle gesture, but unmistakeable. He was telling Theos to stop. Stop moving? No. Stop his attack, before it had even started. The men didn’t move. They didn’t sound an alarm. And then, as if of one mind, they turned away.
Theos hurried after Finnvid, and they reached the path out of the camp.
There were sentries there as well, just as cold and miserable looking as the others, and again only one of them stepped forward.
More Elkati words from Finnvid, this time drawled in the bored voice of a soldier sent on a task he considered beneath his dignity, and then they were past.
Still not out of bow’s reach, though; Theos could almost feel the arrowheads burying themselves in his shoulders, yet nothing flew at them, and no alarm was raised.
Theos wanted to speak, wanted to yell a celebration, but he didn’t dare. So he just kept walking after Finnvid, trudging through the barely packed snow.
When he couldn’t stand it any longer, Theos jogged a few steps and caught up to Finnvid. “It worked,” he said.
“So far,” Finnvid said. “But there are tracks here . . . Elkati have been traveling this path. Keep your guard up and your voice down. Stop speaking your brutish Torian.”