Page 61 of Winds of Destiny

I wake up the next morning to Turo shaking my shoulder roughly. Gone is the man who rested so sweetly against me last night. The person I see when I open my eyes is as grim-faced as ever, and it doesn’t take long for me to see why.

The sky is thick with dark, low-hanging clouds. With no wind to move them along, normally, you can see a storm coming for days before it finally reaches you. This time it appeared overnight, which is almost unheard of.

“It’s going to rain,” he says.

“Fuck,” I mutter as I get to my feet. Rain will turn the ground into a soggy mess that will slow our run to a crawl in no time. “We have to move.”

“The rams are ready.” Sure enough, when I get up, I see that he’s not only packed all our equipment except the blanket I was wrapped in, but he’s even saddled the beasts.

Part of me wants to inspect his wound and make sure he didn’t open it up, but there’s no time. I’m going to have to trust that Turo is all right and set my sights on getting as far as we can today.

“Let’s go.”

We ride over half the day in a light mist, walking when we have to rest the animals but otherwise keeping a blistering pace until…

Splat.

The first drop hits my saddle horn, then rolls down the side of it to disappear into my ram’s thick coat. I hear other drops hitting the grass, a shushing sound that would be soothing under other circumstances. Right now, it just makes me feel desperate. Turo, too, if the way he urges his ram forward is any indication.

We push on for another five minutes, then ten, then fifteen. Finally, though, with grass springing upright all around us as the parched stalks soak up the fresh water, we have to rest the rams—their hooves are caked in muck. Turo stares fiercely at the drizzle, drops soaking into his hair and dripping from the tip of his nose and chin, and he doesn’t move. He turns his head right, then left. Then—

“Fuck!” He hits his leg with his fist, hard. “They’re going to outpace us now, if they haven’t already.”

There’s nothing I can say to make this moment easier. I haven’t lost hope, though. “We need to keep going.” We have the pearls, we have the rams, we have the favor of our gods. That’s reason enough to keep the faith.

“Where?” Turo shouts, turning angry eyes on me. “Whereare we going to go? We can’t even make out the direction of the sun in this mess. What if we end up riding in circles? What if we lose our way entirely?”

“We won’t,” I say, but he’s in no mood for placation.

“You don’t know that!”

“We can’t stayhere!” I shout back, finally losing my temper. I’m tired, I’m sore, and I’m just as fucking furious and afraid as he is, but it’s not likebothof us can afford to lose our minds right now. “We know the course they were on, and that’s the best we’re going to do right now, so we stick to it.”

Turo stares at me, but I can tell he’s not really seeing me. Whatever he sees, it’s enough to make his head drop after a few seconds, all the fight leaving him just as quickly as it built up. It’s like watching a sheet of ice break away from the side of the mountain, all noise and fury at first—and then, seconds later, nothing remains of it at all.

I reach out and take the reins, and he lets me. He’s slumped so far over I’m half afraid he’ll fall off. “You better not,” I mutter as I start us moving again.

I go until the air becomes hazy with darkness, then finally stop to make camp. One nice thing about the grass getting springier is that it’s going to make a pleasant cushion while we sleep for once. I don’t think I’ll be mentioning that benefit to Turo, though.

I put up the single tent I salvaged from the wreck of the wagon for us, then drape each ram in a heavy oilcloth. They seem utterly unperturbed by the rain, munching away on grass with the steadiness of their less-impressive kin. Finally, I drag our food into the tent, then Turo. He’s no help at all as I wrangle him out of his wet, freezing clothes and wrap him in a blanket; he doesn’t even seem to notice I’m there. It’s like the fugue state he went into when this entire fucking mess started, and I’m not going to let him go back to that point.

I pull a small knife from a little sheath on my belt, one of the practical, single-edged blades that I carry for things other than fighting, and use it to cut several handfuls of tamped-down grass. I wind them in a tight circle, as I learned to from Turo himself on this trip, then set the coil down by the entrance to the tent.

I close my eyes, then focus on the metal in my hand for a moment, and flame erupts along the edge of the blade. I stab it into the grass and wait for the damp stalks to catch. They finally do, and, thanks to the tightness of the coil and the thickness of their fibers, they burn slowly, filling the tent with steady warmth.Better.

I take some of our rations out of my pack and hand the first serving over to Turo. He eats mechanically, like he barely tastes the smoked fish and travel bread. I make sure he finishes what I give him before eating myself.

The light goes dim, and I know it’s time to sleep, but I look around the tent instead, suddenly frantic for something else to do. I’m not ready to sleep, I’m not ready to dream. I’m not ready to stop moving and working and holding it together.

A cold hand reaches out to grip my forearm. I glance up, and there’s just enough sunlight left for me to see Turo looking at me with a concerned expression on his face. “Are you all right?” he asks.

The fuckinggallof this bastard. I open my mouth to shout at him, to snap, to have my moment of pitching a fit, and instead what comes out is, “No, I’m really not.”I’m cold and I’m wet and it’s a lot easier to have faith when I feel like I’m doing something for us instead of being useless.

I don’t think I’ve said the last part out loud, but he seems to hear it anyway. He pulls at me, trying to draw me close to him. I finally let him.

This might be the first time we’ve reached for each other willingly and for the same reason. Turo has always been such a mystery to me, either hiding what he feels or making such a show of it that it’s hard to detect any nuance. At this moment, though, in my heart, I know that for once we’re exactly the same. We’re fighting for hope, we’re fighting for the man we love, we’re fighting to stay strong, and the only person either of us has to rely on is the other.

I’m suddenly, fiercely glad that Turo is here with me. I can’t imagine trying to do this without him. If the way he squeezes me back is any indicator, he’s happy to be here with me as well. It’s good. Peaceful. Warm and affectionate, almost…

---