AN: Tomorrows post may be delayed by up to 24h, I hope no longer. I wrote it, but haven't edited. Sorry, I'm experiencing moderate medical issues, for those of you who've been following a while, my BP once more plummeted dangerously low and breathing is hard.
Any debt incurred will be sorted out as soon as possible.
Enjoy the chapter.
***
Stephan stopped dead at the sight of the Desertcutter River.
It carved the rocky ground like a chisel, broad and violent. Its water roared as it rushed past, churning white where it smashed against the jagged rocks of the bank. The far side rose sharply, an irregular stone wall a dozen yards tall, the raging water splashing and polishing its slick surface.
He couldn’t see the water closer to him, for his side was also well above its level, but he could feel the cold and the damp air with a faintly earthy smell.
“This is Desertcutter’s narrowest stretch,” Muriel said. “Less than a mile across through Donovan Trench. It’s never gentle, but here…” She tilted her head toward the rapids. “Here it gets truly wild.”
Stephan’s were fixed on the chaos, then moved beyond the churning river to gaze at the rocky waste on the other side. Even if it were lush lands, the river’s size and speed meant the kingdom wouldn’t have expanded further south. Not unless there were considerable advantages to doing so.
And instead of a fertile land, all that awaited was a monster-infested wasteland.
“And how do we cross?” he asked, scanning the surroundings. A boat wasn’t an option, and he was trying to figure out whether there was another trick to it. A rope perhaps?
Muriel didn’t hesitate. “We swim.”
Stephan stared at her, but she was dead serious.
“Come on, strip, then you tie up your clothes in a bundle, put them on your head, and swim like that. You can do it.”
He looked back at the river. The current surged so fast, the occasional floating branch whipped past like a thrown spear.
“I don’t know how to swim all that well,” he said after a delay that lasted longer than he had intended. He had tried to come up with a better reply, but words failed him at how stupid the idea was. “Why do we swim at the patch where the river is at its fastest?”
“It’s narrowest here; it makes sense to swim as little as possible.”
Stephan wanted to argue, but perhaps Trackers had some skill that helped with handling the rough water—.
“Why aren’t you stripping?” She folded her arms, frowning at him, but Stephan noticed something.
“You aren’t stripping either.”
Muriel sighed, already pulling off her cloak, and then she grabbed her tunic. Stephan whipped around as cloth behind his back rustled.
“Off with them now.”
Stephan hesitated, then took off his shirt, pants, and underwear before bundling them up. Suddenly, he was very aware of the river’s chill and the wind that stuck tiny droplets of moisture to his skin.
When he turned, he came face to face with Muriel, who stood there with a calm expression, still in her linens.
Stephan yelped. He dropped the clothes and scrambled to cover his nethers with his hands, cheeks heating up, but Muriel neither teased nor commented. Instead, she was focused on the task, her clothes folded into a ball similar to the one at Stephan’s feet.
“Come on, what are you waiting for?”
Teeth clenched, Stephan tried to gather his trappings one-handed while the other stood between his legs, guarding what was left of his dignity. The wind cut deeper now, raising goosebumps across his skin.
He burned with the desire to say just how cold it was, but thankfully knew how stupid it would sound and how it would only make an awkward situation worse.
Instead of blathering or justifying himself, he did as ordered and moved to the edge of the water. He stared at it.
The drop was worse up close. The white foam churned and slammed into the rocks, looking eager to devour him.. He gulped with nervousness, but decided to trust his mentor. He crouched, ready to dive in—
“Stop!” Muriel shouted. “Are you daft? You’re gonna drown if you jump in.”
Stephan blinked at her in confusion, for a moment forgetting about the lack of clothes.
“But you said—”
“And your commanders might say stupid things. That doesn’t mean you have to listen to them. If they tell you to jump off a cliff, does that mean you’re supposed to jump?”
Yes it does? That’s the point of being a soldier? He stared at her without understanding what she was talking about.
“Sometimes they will send you too close to the enemy, or into an obvious a trap, or plain waste your time with a useless task while exposing you to needless risk. You’re supposed to tell them no and say why. A Tracker’s job is to watch and observe. Whether it’s like a scout, a guardian of a dungeon or a forest, our main concern is to pay attention to details. We are not warriors.”
“But I already have a class, and it’s not the Tracker,” Stephan tried to explain as if she were a child.
Muriel was having none of it.
“I don’t know which class is supposed to just jump to their death because someone says so, but it sounds like a bad one.”
“It is a bad one,” Stephan said without thinking, feeling betrayed, his anger building up. “But you’re not someone. You’re my teacher, and if I can’t trust you, who do I trust? I have to assume you know better than me. Otherwise, why would I listen to what you’re teaching?”
Muriel tried to counter, but failed to find the words.
“It’s a tradition!” she finally said. “Your mentor teaches you not to follow orders blindly. You think you’re the first one standing naked a step away from the edge?”
Stephan’s hands once more shot down, this time covering himself with the bundle of clothes.
“Get dressed,” Muriel said and turned around, pulling her tunic back on. “The point is to use your head. You looked at the rushing water and knew you would drown. It was death. And yet you believed I had a plan. Don’t assume others know better than you do. A Tracker’s job is to know best, to see and trust their eyes.”
As he got dressed, Stephan realized she was more or less repeating the speech her teacher gave her.
She obviously didn’t challenge their logic the way I just did. Does that mean she failed the test?
On one hand, it wasn’t a bad lesson; Stephan certainly trusted people too much. He had given control of an entire city to a group of strangers.
But it turned out all right. Didn’t it?
Now that he asked himself that question, Stephan wasn’t certain. Cliffort was functioning normally at first glance, Silas had nothing to report, and the old Priest should have reported problems. And yet the warlock was dancing in the shadows, not a shadow of him ever seen.
He was tightening his pant’s drawstrings, still unsure about his prior life, when he turned towards Muriel.
“And where are we supposed to go?”
Muriel still seemed offended Stephan spoke back, but answered his question with arms folded and minimal pouting. “The rapids are a hundred and twenty miles long. The western end is closer, some thirty-five miles away, and that’s where we’re going.”
She turned west and started walking. “You’re still searching for tracks. Since the terrain is easier to read here, you have to look out for animal prints too, not just human ones.”
At first, Stephan thought Muriel was punishing him for speaking up, but soon he found that the constantly moist ground really was easier to read than the mostly dry, leaf-covered soil of the Iron Forest.
“This one is an hour old, right?” Stephan pointed at what he believed were depressions left behind by a wild boar’s cloven hooves.
“Six to ten,” Muriel corrected. “If I had to confidently report to someone important, I’d say eight. But you never know the exact time; you can only guess ranges, and you get better at it with practice. Now, as you can tell from what I just said, prints in wet ground hold up better than in dry, loose soil.”
She pointed at the neat edge of the print. “On the forest floor, this line would be more flaky. Forest has the advantage of the disturbed leaves staying disturbed, but this trampled grass right here. See these dark lines? That’s where it folded. It must have been stepped on and is now standing straight. That tells you a bit about how much time has passed, but not everything.”
She stood and walked along the trail, pointing at the ground. “Then there’s the distance between the prints to consider. See how it’s smaller here? The boar slowed down. There’s nothing disturbed around, that means that rather than stopping to eat, it heard or smelled something…”
Muriel explained how the print would decay in wind and rain. And even just by being there, baked by the sun, it would have crumbled as the earth dried and cracked.
They followed in the boar’s footsteps for a while, noting the broken petals and undisturbed cobwebs, then the beast turned into the forest, while Stephan and Muriel kept following Desertcutter.
He was learning a lot. Damaged flowers didn’t recover quite as neatly, and even if the plant straightened itself, the petals remained ruined or fell off entirely. Then there were things like cobwebs, anthills, and molehills to pay attention to. Ants repaired their homes in half a day, spiders in an hour…
The headache and the burning in his eyes once more settled on Stephan, growing with each new observation. He healed himself again and again, but he was under the impression that he could last longer and longer between healings as time passed.
By sunset, he was still wrong more often than not, but he felt more confident. With animal tracks mixed in with what he was learning, he could form a more complete picture of what was happening.
He was particularly proud when Muriel explained to him how a deer stomped the ground to chase away a small predator, and he found the fox’s tracks in the bushes with next to no help from his teacher.
“You’re not bad,” Muriel said, as if reading his thoughts. “You have a lot to learn, but your perception is decent, and your mind is sharp enough to connect the clues you find. Just give it time, and you’ll start seeing.”
Stephan thought he heard a note of grudging respect from the woman. As if she acknowledged him while at the same time lamenting the missed chance to torture him and make fun of his failings.
“I guess it’s no fun having a talented student?” he joked with a smug face.
She nodded. “But I guess it’s fair. Gods have shorted you enough.”
Stephan bristled, the words escaping him as his tongue moved faster than his mind. “Look, it was really cold there.”
“Whatever you say, Sweet Cheeks,” Muriel chuckled. “Whatever you say.”