Andrea: Thanks. I haven't seen Dragonheart...but I do appreciate the compliment!
Suze: It's been fun writing this so far. Update comin' right up.
Early evening found them briefly halted again. Carl sat on his still-bundled bedroll, Van Helsing's chin on his knee. Both were bent over an unfolded map laid out on the grass before them, squinting at it in the low light.
Carl pointed to a spot not too far from the Maros. 'I think we're here," he said, trying to sound more certain than he felt.
'Really? Because I thought we were a bit more south than that.'
'Are you sure?'
'Well...no.'
Ever since the afternoon, the sky had been so heavily-overcast that Carl had had to pull out the compass to make sure they were still headed more or less in the right direction. It sat now on top of the map, but it wasn't doing much more than telling them that they weren't accidentally headed towards the Black Sea instead.
'I think,' Carl said with an attempt at cheerfulness, 'we're reasonably in more or less the right area.'
'At least we probably haven't wandered into Romania, you mean?'
'Yes. Look, the river, see? Then if you look down here, you get to - what's this? A lake?'
'Whoops.'
'I would appreciate it if you refrained from slobbering on our map.'
'One little drop is not "slobbering".'
Carl dabbed it away with his cuff, then wiped it thoroughly on Van Helsing's shoulder. It was like rubbing his sleeve against a wall of muscle covered in black fur. 'Moisture of any sort does not belong on a map printed on non-waterproofed paper, understand? Aren't you supposed to have, I don't know, some sort of natural canine instinct for getting places?'
'For finding old denning sites, maybe. Locating sea-ports? Not so much.'
Carl let out a sigh. 'There's no way around it, you know. We can follow the river for as long as we like, but we need to get over those mountains. And it's more or less plenty of mountains until we get to the port at Budva.'
'I know. I was there on the way in, remember?'
That was the white elephant neither of them had particularly wanted to discuss for the past two days. There was no getting over those mountains on foot, at least not whilst carrying their supplies. But one could only ignore the issue for so long, especially since - Carl ruefully stretched his lower back - he was beginning to suspect the figurative pachyderm had decided to nestle itself into his own pack.
The easiest thing to do would be to get a horse, but Carl didn't think it possible to actually ride one alongside a wolf, at least not without an assortment of sprains, contusions, and outright concussions. He could claim to have been heroically (and repeatedly) injured in the line of duty, but it probably wasn't worth it.
'I could chase the horse all the way to Montenegro,' Van Helsing offered. 'It'd save a lot of time.'
Carl stared at him. 'How did you know I was thinking of...? You're not telepathic now, are you?'
'Would I tell you if I were?'
'Er...'
Van Helsing flicked one wedge-shaped ear in frustration, and Carl rubbed absently at it. 'You need a horse,' Van Helsing told him. 'You know it, and I know it. We'll find a village tomorrow, and you can get one.'
'We'll have to travel separately. You'll have to stay out of the way.'
'I know. Don't worry, I'll be fine.'
'I was worried about me.'
'Bloody monk.'
'Friar.' Carl bent over the map again. 'There's a village coming up, I think. A little box - is that what a little box is? yes - right there. So small, evidently, that it doesn't even have a name, or perhaps the map-maker ran out of ink. We could reach it in the morning.'
'Carl?'
'Yes?'
Van Helsing had one eye cocked at the sky. 'You know how you didn't want the map to get wet?'
'Yes...?'
'Too late.'
A blinding streak of lightning flashed across the sky, followed almost immediately by a deafening clap of thunder and, just to complete the set, a bone-chilling torrent of rain.
'Oh, dammit!'