Over the Hills & Far Away, tag: zaman (escovi plains)

[Galia Baryk]

Instinctively, Galia shot him a look that said Not me, though she knew she didn't mean it. They were safe for the moment, but there were other, bolder, things lurking in the brush that didn't respond to threat as well as they did to the scent of blood. She rolled over once more onto her belly, and thought for a moment to just stay there, faceplanting in the dirt. Except she couldn't, and didn't, easing herself first onto her elbows, and pushing from there until she was sitting upright. It was hardly a graceful sight.

"Well. So much for interrogating captives," she said mildly, assuming that he meant he'd given the other bandit the same treatment as Ed. Surely command would understand the circumstances they were facing, and possibly follow up on the matter with a larger force at the next opportunity. All things considering, they'd done well for themselves by recovering the stolen property and living to tell the tale.

Crawling on her hands and knees, the soldier gathered up her sword and dagger, sheathing both at her hips. She also reached for the longsword her opponent had been using. His knife could stay right where it was, though. The cheap blade made for a good enough walking stick, if nothing else. Resting her weight on its pommel, she extended her other hand to Zaman.

"Don't get too comfortable. Unless you see an undertaker or a sorcerer here, I doubt those bodies will move on their own. The least we can do is secure our campsite for the rest of the night. And see if we can salvage any of that food." Probably not. The air was rank with smoke from charred meat. Maybe that rabbit would come back...

[Zaman Jaraei]

He didn’t want to get up.

Staring at her hand, he scrunched his nose and glowered. He didn’t want to. He couldn’t. He was incapacitated. His will was broken. He was in mourning. Something. Anything.

Whatever worked.

Eventually though, he did take the hand. He used it to hoist himself to his feet. His legs wobbled underneath him, but he was okay. Unlike her, his major problem was fatigue. His muscles were sore and angry. They burnt and protested with even the slightest movement. His head hurt, and he was sure there was a lump forming at the base of his skull where the Bandit had struck him.

And then there was his cheek.

Zaman wasn’t vain, but he liked his face. He wanted to keep it scar-free. In that moment, it seemed like too much to ask.

“Yeah, no,” he grumbled at her suggestion to save the food. “I’m not eating that.” Whatever it was, it was burnt now, and Zaman wasn’t about to spend the night picking apart the charred skin looking for edible bits of meat. They would just have to subsist on rations—and book it back to Maristheum as soon as possible.

His first stop was the Giant. Staring down at the dead man, he felt his shoulders sag. That was a big body to move. He'd stood a full head taller than Zaman and probably weighed twice as much. Moving a goddamn mountain would be easier.

He turned to her. “Hey, what do we do about the ones we can’t move?”

[Galia Baryk]

"Suit yourself," she murmured, making her own way over toward the meat on the spit. It had been beyond recognition to begin with. Now it was simply a massive brick of coal, miraculously clinging to the stick it was skewered on. Galia lifted the sword and poked at it curiously. So...maybe he was right about one thing, disappointing as that happened to be. She was starving.

She was also feeling oddly disconnected from the rest of her body, which ached, but the soreness was offset by the high she felt from the struggle for her life. And it wasn't as if women weren't designed to handle pain. She had yet to try it, but squeezing out babies sounded a lot worse than what she'd been through. Getting hit in the face a couple of times and suffering head trauma was nothing.

Galia was still staring blankly at the fire when she heard Zaman's question. She looked up at him and shrugged, absolutely deadpan, "Cut 'em up until we can?"

There was a long pause to follow. Then, finally: "Kidding."

Maybe.

The scout hobbled over to him, staking the sword in the ground as she went, forcing her to stop to pull it out of the soil every couple of steps. She stopped beside him, looking over the Giant for herself, then glanced around at the camp. There was a scattering of smaller stones, enough to pile up on the corpse.

"Cover the body is the best thing we can do for now, I guess," she suggested. "Build up the fire, and one of us keeps an eye out for predators. Or...I don't know, but I wasn't serious about chopping him up. Don't have the energy for it." Another beat. She glanced over at Zaman. "Kidding. That's gross."

[Zaman Jaraei]

He was nudging the body with the toe of his boot. The skin shifted slightly, but the rest of the corpse didn’t move. Not an inch. For some reason, he’d been hoping the body would turn into a balloon; like an inflated waterskin he could just kick away and be rid of.

At her suggestion to cut the bodies up, he felt a shrug roll through his shoulders. “Okay.” He drew his sword. Why not? Couldn’t hurt.

Then she told him she was kidding.

Zaman blinked. “Oh.” The sword was sheathed quickly. “Right. I knew that.”

She hobbled over to him. He could tell she was tired, and all that hobbling from place to place was probably beginning to annoy her. She looked like the type to hate being incapacitated too. The type to pretend she wasn’t hurt. Grit her teeth, grab a sword, and soldier on as if she was in fine form. No rest for her. Just work. Just a lot of effort.

Another joke passed. That was two in the span of a minute. She must have either really warmed up to him, or she was actually delirious with exhaustion. Probably both.

Zaman pulled on a smile. “We could...leave,” he said dubiously, looking down at her leg. They could grab what they needed and strike out elsewhere. Not far, of course, but away from these corpses. There wasn’t much to carry, but Zaman wasn’t sure she was up to the task. Watching her hobble through camp was painful enough.

But then, she was a stubborn little thing. Who knew what she was capable of.

[Galia Baryk]

Galia blinked.

"Yeah. I guess," she said with absolute indifference. Her eyes darted toward the goods that had been brought here by six men. They numbered in two. Just a pair of slightly brain damaged soldiers. That pile of junk seemed enormous, bigger than the last time she'd examined it, and not easily divided between them.

She frowned, brow knit together in thought, "But. There are more dead bodies out there too." Three, to be precise, and none of them even remotely close together. "So...we'd have to go a while, before we could stop and find a safe place to build a camp." That sounded awful, trudging along in the dark. Except she didn't want to complain about it. Wouldn't that make her some kind of wuss? She had to soldier on.

Galia looked around again, her eyes landing on the very pretty, very bright flames. "There's a fire here already. It's warm," she murmured softly, not even realizing that it was aloud rather than kept in her head. Wait. Wasn't she going to soldier on?

"But I guess...we could leave, too." Another shrug. "Know what? I don't even care. You're in charge now, sir. Give me an order." Rank be damned. Her head hurt way too much to keep making executive decisions.

[Zaman Jaraei]

Oh, Gods no.

Orders? And him?

He looked at her for a long time, indecision tearing through him. “I’m not good at this,” he told her plainly, glancing variously at the fire, the grass, and the corpses around them. Not a single option made sense. If they stayed here, they would risk wolves and bears (not to mention the stink of rotting corpses). If they left, they would have to carry things and walk.

And he’d been carrying things and walking all day.

He sighed and nudged the body with his toe. Nope, still not a balloon. Dammit. “Fine,” he muttered. “You go sleep by the fire. I’ll bury what I can and take first watch.”

[Galia Baryk]

She had been prepared to tell him to suck it up, make a choice.

To her immense surprise, she didn't actually have to. That brought a smile to her face. It was safe to say that she was warming up to him. Also that she was slightly delirious, but that had no bearing on the respect he'd gained from being decisive. Nevermind that it required prompting on her part; at least he'd done it, even if he didn't like it.

Strangely, being told what to do was kind of a turn on.

But that thought was neither here, nor there. And the amount of dead men around them was definitely a massive turn off.

As tempting as it was to curl up in a ball, Galia hesitated for a moment, as it only seemed fair. "I can help you. At least with the other one," she waved toward the slighter bandit across camp, who had a gaping hole in the middle of his forehead. "Got enough left in me to do that much first. How long of a shift do you want to take?"

[Zaman Jaraei]

“It’ll be morning soon,” he replied. “So...until then, I guess.”

His eyes moved to the horizon, to the spot where he expected the sun to rise. The nights were getting shorter and it wouldn’t be long now. Maybe four hours or so. He could stay awake until then. He could watch the fire, think thoughts, and watch for predators.

It would be fun.

He breathed out a sigh. “Go rest,” he told her; it wasn’t an order, but a request. “I got this.”

[Galia Baryk]

Galia waited a moment before lifting her shoulders in a shrug, "Alright." She didn't sound wholly convinced, but she was too drained to really argue, "If you insist."

She meandered back to the other side of the camp, picking up her half-filled water skin. First, she drank from it, then poured a little on to her hands and splashed it against her face. The water went from clear to pink as it dripped to the ground. But it felt good and cool, especially on the areas that were bound to swell come the morning.

Finding the one spot that looked and smelled clean enough to bed down on, she laid on her side with an arm supporting her head, curling slightly until she was comfortable. Her other hand was firmly gripping the hilt of her dagger. Just in case.

"Good night," she called, then closed her eyes. It took no time at all to fall into a deep sleep.