Chapter Six

I don"t like confiding

And I make stupid mistakes

Been misled and misguided

And I"m easily led astray

You can dance with disaster

Never missing a step

Spinning faster and faster

Long after I've already slipped.

Great Big Sea: Stumbling In

Isak hadn"t signed up for this. He'd signed up for glory and honour, not for freezing in a forest. They were chasing a man that should by rights have been easy to find but who had turned a simple search and retrieve mission into a six-week witchhunt. Six fucking weeks. Forty-two days. Isak had never met Seifer Almasy during the wars, but he was really starting to hate his guts.

The first casualty had occurred on day two of the mission; when one of the scouts had failed to return. Cadets Waszowski and McNeill had vanished in the second week. They'd never found the bodies.

He'd found White's body in week four -or rather,what was left of it after the monsters had found it first. He'd heard they'd almost captured the bastard then, though Isak had seen nothing. Two more cadets disappeared the very next day. Monsters started attacking every night. And a bad wound was as good as dead, out here with little magic and no chance of fast transport back to the base camps.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. Isak had known some of the soldiers. They'd shared meals, talked about girls and drank beer and played cards round fires on camping trips. Now they were dead.

At the start of the mission Isak had thought he'd make Instructor in a week. He'd heroically manage to corner the fallen knight singlehanded on a picturesque cliff. Headmaster Martine would have pinned the medal on his chest personally.

But none of the stories he'd read had mentioned the cold that seemed to worm its way into your bones. None of them had mentioned the lashing rain that had turned to snow as the Galbadians travelled further north. They slept in damp clothes every night and ate half cooked food. Monsters leapt from every tree, attracted by their footfalls and the blood of wounded men.

Isak was starting to suspect that he was cannon fodder. A few of the corps had started to talk half-heartedly about deserting, but there was nowhere to go even if they'd had the guts to try it.

That night they sat around a blazing campfire. Isak cleaned his weapon again. He thought drearily that the only good thing that had come out of this mission was that he was now able to strip and reassemble a Sig Sauer 9mm in forty-eight seconds, which he reckoned must be worth some kind of medal at least.

Not so far away, voices floated up between lines of fir trees…

"No, what I'd really, really like, is a vodka. A large one."

Quistis sighed. "In cold environments alcohol it decreases your core body temperature and dehydrates you further. It also reduces liver efficiency. Drinking in excess can cause impaired motor functions. That'snot a good idea right now."

"Hyne, can"t you remove the stick from your ass for one minute, Trepe? Don't tell me you're teetotal now. I hate fucking non-drinkers."

"So don't fu.."

Seifer halted her with a gesture. "Don't say it."

"I don't like alcohol." Quistis flipped her hair away from her face, pushing back the hood of her parka and retying it into a loose sloppy knot.

"Everyone drinks some time. It's like …never missing a lecture."

"I never did that either."

"Look," Seifer said. "Some people like something between them and the world. And by some people I mean me." They rounded a corner and the valley spread out in front of them, picture perfect except for the biting wind as they came out of the shelter of the mountain. It was beautiful, and best of all there were no Galbadians. Anywhere.

Quistis analysed the landscape by his side. For a moment she looked almost happy. Seifer sympathised. The prospect of a view containing no imminent death was always a good one.

"Why didn't you use a GF back there?"

She frowned. "I didn't junction one for the mission."

Seifer sighed. "I don't blame you. I don't mind magic-I mean, try everything you"ve got. But maybe I"ve got enough things messing with my head at the moment as it is."

"Reeally?"

"Hex 'em till they glow, then stab em' in the dark." Seifer grinned savagely.

"You're just obsessed with fighting, aren't you?" Qustis said scornfully." Is it evil? Kill it. Not sure? Kill it anyway! What happens when you"re up against something too big to fight?"

"Then it's politics. Not my problem."

She rolled her eyes at him. "I wish life was that simple. I'm tired of wondering whether or not the commands I"m getting are the right thing to do. At least our Garden has some morals. Unlike Galbadia."

"We're mercenaries," Seifer said. "Sure,the whole thing is to protect against the sorceresses but when you get right down to it we're not paid to have morals."

"You're not paid to do anything."

He sighed. "So, I'm not. But I wanted to be. Maybe it's the only thing I"m good at. You don"t have to think. Everything's sorted out for you, everyone knows where their place is. That was what was so great about the sorceress thing. For once in my life I believed I was actually doing some good. Okay, I was brainwashed, and okay, it wasn't the right thing to do anyway, but I knew."

"Did you do it voluntarily?" Quistis asked. She watched him with an unreadable expression.

"I don't know any more," Seifer confessed." I don't even trust my own head. It was like being drunk. Something told me to go with her. And then, well, I've always been good at acting on impulses. Imagine waking up and then finding that you've just been fighting on the wrong side." He paused and tried to explain. "It's not an excuse. Or it won't be. I still did…what I did, they can"t prove I was being screwed with and anyway, even if I was everyone'll say it was my fault for being too damn weak to resist."

"It"ll be a fair trial." Quistis said. She didn't look at him. He wondered why.

"Yeah. Like that's going to work. Do you think I'm just going to say "hey, I'm not an evil person" and they'll believe me?"

"No," Qustis said. "But you could always plead insanity."

"That's a great idea-shit!"

Quistis spun around as Seifer dragged her into the cover of a fir tree. Pine needles scratched his face and sap oozed down his jacket. She pressed against his coat. He inhaled the smell of woodsmoke, sweat, and the coppery undertone of what had to be monster blood.

"Don"t. Fucking. Move," he hissed.

She narrowed her eyes, unimpressed. "Don't make me zap you."

He muffled her mouth with the palm of his hand. He could feel her heart beating rapidly through her clothing. "There"s someone out there. Maybe more than one. Keep still."

"Mmm.!"

"I"m going to let you go. Don"t you even fucking think about trying that thing. "

Quistis coughed, but quietly. "You don't think maybe you"re just paranoid? I can't hear anything."

"Sure. I've had half of the Galbadian army chasing me for six sodding weeks. Of course I'm paranoid. Shh."

"There"s no one there, Seifer," she hissed. "For Hyne's sake, just calm down."

"Shut up!" He scanned the undergrowth. The trees merged in a crazy lattice pattern. There was too much cover. Hyne, he wouldn't notice anything unless it was standing three meters away. Unless something moved, he wasn't going to see a thing.

"Which direction?" she asked.

"Over there. Over that ridge." He jerked his head. The ridge was uremarkable; just a low rise in the ground with a few scrubby bushes on the top. Grass blew gently in the wind. There wasn't much cover, for anything."Hear that?"

"Not if you keep talking…" She fell quiet as her ears picked up a sound that Seifer's hearing, more attuned to forest noise after weeks of solitude, had caught first.

Metal on metal. A human noise.

..clink..

..clink..

There was a faint sound of raised voices. Raised foreign voices. Raised Galbadian voices.

Damn it, Seifer thought .This was so not good. What the hell were they doing here?

"Hyne's-sake!" Quistis hissed quietly. Still. The wind blew the fur hood of her parka round her face.

"You can say that again."

They waited until all the sounds were gone, and then by common consensus, they waited some more.

The evening was fast closing in. The birdsong picked up around them

"They weren't supposed to be here," Seifer said eventually. "They're miles off. They should hand in their scout badges."

The wind blew straight through Isak's coat. It was a lazy wind that couldn"t be bothered to go round but instead cut straight through you. It whipped snow off the thin covering on the ground and made it hard to see.

He heard a noise behind him and whipped his gun up, aiming it at a startled jay that chattered abuse down on him. He sighed and lowered the gunt again. He scanned the ground for footprints.

Nothing here.

What a waste of damn time.

Saying "Okay, we think we"ve got a handle on him, you guys swing round and cut him off while we'll keep on tracking just in case" sounded like a good idea on paper, but out here in the back of beyond it was wildly different. Tracks were easy to follow, as long as the bastard didn't keep to the rocks or cut through any rivers, or they didn't get a fresh fall of snow- but setting a course through these woods was ridiculous. So far they'd had two incidences of injury through friendly fire -nothing too bad, one missing ear and a clipped shoulder and apprehended onesquirrel and two vaguely puzzled deer. At least the deer were edible.

It didn't take much of a brain to decide that he had the hard job. They'd chase Almasy across hundreds of miles of uncharted territory and the knight would be captured at last by the unit waiting at the foothills that hadn't done anything but sit on their asses for seven days, so far. Lucky sods.

He wouldn't have felt so bad about it if it wasn't for the fact that he'd volunteered in a rush of mad public spirit. And now , with nothing to do in the cold dark winter nights except play Triple Triad, he owed Lupe seven thousand gil, and most of his clothes, a bet which she'd said she had every intention of collecting once it was warm again and there were enough people to point and laugh.

Life sucked.

He turned back to camp.

It was getting dark and what little heat there was vanished with the fading sun. Seifer was the first to move. He stretched and leapt silently to the nearest line of exposed rock, trying and failing not to leave footprints. He raised an eyebrow at Quistis and brought one hand straight across in a chopping motion. Quistis nodded and they made their way excruciatingly carefully up the back of the exposed ridge of rock.

When they reached the top she held a hand straight up and they both dropped to their stomachs, crawling the rest of the way.

The air smelled of sharp clean snow, soil, dead leaf litter and smoke. Down below in the shallow valley was the dark outline of a Gal'badian soldier, high up on the other side of the ridge.

Seifer mimed a gun and Quistis shook her head. She pointed at a faint line of smoke a mile or two over to the west. He nodded and pointed back the way they'd come; raised his eyebrows.

Quistis mouthed yes and they crawled back down the sat in the scant cover, trying to think about what to do next.

Quistis got the compass and map out and check their direction. The Galbadians were camped treacherously close to the pickup , she thought.

Seifer squinted at the map and scowled. "I'd swear that's a smaller group. They must have split. What do you bet that there's another lot coming right up on our tail? We should pray for a really heavy fall of snow."

"How long do you think it'll take to go round?

He gave a considered glance at the forest. "A good while. They usually have three rings of outlying scouts. I'd say most of the night, if we want to make sure they don't hear us. Add a few more hours onto that, because unless you can see in the dark we're going to have to take the long way round just to make sure. And that's assuming we don't bump into anything nasty. Which we will. It's not a good idea to travel at night."

"Do they change guards?"

"Fuck, I don't know." He thought. "You know, I don't think they do. I got one of them when he was asleep."

"Remind me to tell you about combat honour sometimes," Quistis said.

"Maybe when I'm not outnumbered fifty to one."

She decided not to waste her breath. According to her watch, they had twelve hours before the transport was due. They'd barely make the location by Seifer's estimateNot enough time to cut round. And with no com, she couldn't even risk sending out a message. "There can't be another landing point for miles in these forests. Why do you think it took them so long to catch up?"

"I just thought it was my superior survival skills."

"Mmm." Quistis made a noncommittal noise. They were still taking quietly, in whispers. Seifer"s breath hummed close to her ear in little white frosty clouds and despite herself she shivered.

"What"s that supposed to mean?"

"It means", Quistis said," we have a plan."