A/N: Sorry this is extremely late. I meant Arthur and Gwen's mission to be one section of chapter 2, and instead I kept writing and writing… So there's this, and the next two chapters already done and more or less ready to upload. No cliffies that way, or at least none that take weeks and weeks to resolve for you all…
Also, new pov for this chapter. And introducing some new canon characters, too…
Also, fyi. The italicized terms used for my pseudo-Middle-Eastern kingdom aren't actually terms in any language, but kind of an amalgamation of several, and my own inspiration. None of this material is meant to be denigrating to anyone in any way, but to remain true to a soldier's perspective nonetheless…
Chapter 2: Where the Scouts Went
"The sandbox, he said," Merlin managed.
Nimueh shifted, still leaning into him, soft down his chest and belly as the brick of the alley side of the Sunrise tavern was scratchy and rigid down his spine and the backs of his hips.
"Be more specific," she suggested in a throaty purr.
"He…" Merlin could hardly think for the bright orange sunbursts in the corners of his vision and at every pulse point. Push her away. This is how she gets through your blocks, gets to the truth… "He laughed. He said, the sandbox. That was it… he said he'd… tell me more when he got back."
If he got back. That had been a subtle and unintentional thought fluttering down from Arthur's white-castle battlements like a lost feather or dying leaf.
"Do you know what that means, the sandbox?" Nimueh whispered against the heartbeat in his throat.
He shook his head, the rough brick catching and pulling hair.
"Any idiot on that base could have told you. Either of those idiots you're drinking with, tonight." Her thumbs found the vulnerable hollows to the inside of his hipbones, up his t-shirt, down his belt, and pushed; he winced, tensing but holding still. "The sandbox is what they call the entire Middle Eastern region."
She pushed away from him in aggravation, stiletto heels clattering on the broken pavement of the alley. Distant streetlights reflected in broken puddles.
"When did he leave?"
"I don't know what day," Merlin said, trying to catch his breath and realign body and mind. He knew she teased him to take him apart, but one of those parts kind of wished she'd keep going, one of these times. Finish, so maybe he could be finished with her and not react so… flustered. Magnetized, hypnotized, attracted… unsatisfied. "I saw him last… Monday."
"This Monday?" she snapped "Five days ago?"
"A week and five days." He gulped and worked some spit around to swallow; it tasted sour from the beer he was yet unused to.
"Did he have anyone but Scout Thompson with him?" She swiveled to pace in a short one-two-three-turn pattern, then threw him a sardonic glance. "Relax, we have no interest in her. Dull little thing."
That wasn't what Merlin saw when he looked at her, but he disagreed with Nimueh's assessment of Arthur, too.
"I bet Oldham knows," she added. "You should ask him. But question him so that he doesn't get suspicious, and take the rest. They said you were good at this."
"They said I was a good psychic," Merlin snapped back. "No one ever said I was a good spy, because I've never done this before."
She made a noise of neutral agreement and halted facing the street. "What of Muirden?"
"Reassigned elsewhere," he said, off-balanced by the unrelated question. "He leaves in two weeks, I think."
"And good Sir Geoffrey?"
He wondered if they knew about the museum pieces – if something like that could possibly matter to Essetir. There was no contest for ownership; they'd clearly been found within Camelot's territory.
"They've been recording me trying to repeat what bits of the Early tongue I can hear from the artifacts, but they don't give me translations."
Another noncommittal noise made by the union of lips and tongue and mouth and damn him if he didn't want her to keep doing it. He gritted his teeth against the impulse and wondered if he shouldn't let Leon set him up with that clerk from Dependent Affairs, just for the distraction of comparison and contrast and maybe a little satisfaction working against her seduction.
"And Gaius?" she said, turning just her head. Her braids swung and brushed each other; her eyes and teeth gleamed.
"I haven't seen him since before I last saw Arthur," Merlin said honestly.
"Is he still on post, or has he left Fort Fuller?"
He tried to think, whether he'd heard anyone say, whether there was indication of the old man in his office or using a debriefing room or in a meeting elsewhere – and then stopped.
"I don't know," he said, sticking to bald honestly instead of helping her with conjecture.
Her lips tilted in a smirk. "Go back to Oldham. Find out about this mission. And don't take so long to come back to me next time."
She was moving before she finished, hips swaying toward the street end of the alley and the orange glow of corner lights under the invisibility of midnight-black sky.
"I'm still watched," he called after her. "For my own safety."
She didn't give any sign that she'd heard him.
He wondered if Essetir would organize some form of attempt on his life, if it was expected, to allay suspicions in Camelot. Like the sniper on the snowy mountaintops. How successful might they be allowed?
Then he realized that because the tavern's back door didn't have a handle on the outside, he was essentially locked out until he went around to the front. Or until Leon or Percival came looking for him. Maybe he should take up smoking to give himself an excuse for being found in the back alley.
….*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..
The sandbox, Pendragon had said. It was what they all called it, but it was Gwen's first time to Aravia, and even if she was dressed in the mottled-camouflage uniform of a ground-pounder, this wasn't her first deployment, nor was she an ordinary foot soldier like the others disembarking with heavy-stuffed rucksacks over their shoulders.
Her eyes found the stripe of pale skin between Pendragon's soft-cap and the collar of his regular-uniform jacket as he descended in front of her, hair caught up like hers was under the tiny Velcro patch placed there so anyone behind them could address them by name.
Except his said Jones and hers said Smith. Leon's joke, she believed; she was starting to get that his jokes were subtle.
Pendragon turned to glance over his shoulder, marking her position as they stepped down to solid ground. His eyes crinkled with the grin nearly hidden by the beard he'd let grow since they learned their destination, as he said it again. The sandbox.
"The box of sand," was what he said, because he spoke in Aravian, and his accept was so good she had to translate in her head rather than just hearing recognizable Aravian words with a Camelot accent.
"The box of sand," she repeated sardonically. They'd have to get used to the differing sounds of the local language, though without drawing the attention of the other soldiers.
He swung away to lead her across the wide sandy area that separated shipping-transportation from the rest of Camp George, that served as the jumping-off point for military operations in the region. With every step she felt the dry heat leach moisture from her skin and lips, even as her uniform t-shirt grew damp under her armpits. It was a whole different world, here.
She was glad she was not alone in it.
All around the arriving soldiers chattered nervously to each other, energy high, before beginning to split off to report to their various section chiefs for orientation, however brief and informal, and receiving new assignments.
"Chokers," she heard with amusement, more than once. Artichoke green, those who might choke at a critical point because they were new troops, untested and unproven.
Because the soldiers who'd been here for a while, who were counting down to a departure date instead of up along the days they'd served, were obvious and condescending. Uniforms faded from sun and sand and harsh soaps and contrived laundry facilities – she could see from here how lines had been strung between two parked tanks, as half-dressed soldiers hung t-shirts and boxers and socks over them, dipped out from five-gallon buckets. Skin brown as the sand, eyes squinted comfortably against the glare, teeth unusually white in their grins. Jackets discarded or carried tossed over a shoulder or tied at the waist; a few with the alternate-uniform coverall of mechanic or medic left unzipped to the waist, arms in or out of the sleeves left to dangle.
She wasn't one of them, either.
Pendragon paused at a faded map with tattered edges that had been pinned up on a community board along the main walkway through camp. Not because he hadn't memorized the camp's layout already, but for the same reason she crowded his elbow to look for herself. Every day the lines shifted, what was safely-defended territory, what was considered neutral, what was actively hostile.
You are here, a red arrow said, curving to a point nestled down in the uneven topographical lines and hard-to-pronounce village names.
"And this is home," someone paused to remark sarcastically, jutting a dirty forefinger into the air an arms' length to the side of the board. "Way over here. Far, far from home."
"I'll be sure to cry myself to sleep tonight," Pendragon tossed back, gaining an appreciative chuckle from the joker and his pals. "Refugee camp still inside the wire?"
"Yeah, they're on the northeast end," the soldier answered, more readily than if they'd stopped someone to ask. "They get moved around a lot. Safety reasons. Patrol's got eyes on. What do you want with them?"
Curiosity occurred to them all at once, and they looked at both her and Pendragon with more interest.
She gave them a smile and said in Aravian, "I translate the words, from one to another language."
"She's a translator," Pendragon explained.
The soldiers nodded and moved on their way, jostling past the one who'd spoken first. He lingered to say to his fellows, "I'll catch up with you lads, yeah?"
Murmurs of disinterested agreement.
Then he grinned at Pendragon. "Smith," he said, pointing his dirty sardonic forefinger again. "And Jones."
Gwen felt Pendragon's attention sharpen. "Are you-"
The soldier's jacket, where his name would have been tagged on the left breast with Velcro, was slung low around his hips, and as he was facing them, the name on the back of his soft-cap did no good. But he had no trouble establishing himself as their contact.
"Favor for the old man," he said easily. His body language said lazy-relaxed and his grin said stupid-cheerful, but his eyes were sharp and missed nothing as he evaluated them – re-evaluated them – in a moment. "I'm ranked high enough to help you without raising eyebrows, and low enough to be expendable if this all goes to hell."
"It won't," Pendragon said, with the confidence that Gwen – and others of Psych Ops – used to despise and envy in equal measure. Now that she knew him better, she understood that it was only simple truth as he believed it, not arrogance and not pretense.
"From your mouth to God's ear, mate," the soldier returned. "Eat first or change first? I assume you'll spend the night with the skulls, and leave the wire in the morning? I wasn't told accommodations on this end."
Soldiers' quarters and facilities were going to be lavish compared to what the refugees – called skulls by the military because their term for themselves sounded similar, and because so many of them had little hope of survival - had, and they were very literally camping. Ditch latrines and communal showers and an inch of foam pad to sleep on. Or a canvas cot over a collapsible metal frame.
"Change first," Pendragon said. "We'll eat with the skulls like we just got here."
The soldier's sharp dark eyes went distant as he thought. "Yeah," he said, moving to lead them toward the northeast. "They'll be busy with their dinner, no one will notice you didn't actually cross the wire from the outside."
Gwen followed, shoulders aching under even the padded straps of her camo rucksack. The patrol could be expected to notice – but there were three of them to deal with that and she was fully capable of figuring something on the fly by herself. So was Pendragon.
"Supply tent," the soldier said succinctly, yanking a guy-rope to loosen it enough to unwrap from the anchor-peg and lift a corner-triangle, glancing around.
Pendragon shrugged his rucksack off, giving it a toss and a kick before putting one boot through the opening and crouching to duck through. Gwen dropped hers but chose to crawl through the gap, pushing her ruck ahead of her.
Inside, it felt like an oven. Stacked crates, khaki-colored light, and her makeup would have been running if she'd worn any.
"I apologize in advance for my body odor, however long this mission takes," Pendragon said cheerfully, doffing his cap and ripping open the Velcro flap of his jacket that hid the zipper up the front.
"Never mind," she said.
There was ground-canvas at least, if a bit dusty. Gwen chose to scoot herself and her ruck further behind the stack of crates and begin on her boot-laces.
Hurry, because it would be awkward if he had to wait for her. And because in the very small space, perhaps they weren't looking at each other around the corners of the crates, but every sound was captured by the tent material. Jacket zipper – trousers zipper – whisk of soft undercloth over skin…
She was all thumbs. Socks inside out, stuffed down the boots. Voluminous dress that dragged at her heels and threatened to swallow her hands, sewn without buttons or fastenings of any sort save for a faded ribbon laced through the bottom of the neckline, meant to be hidden by the waja, a long length of cloth that covered her collarbones and hair and half her face, save for a gap to allow her to see where she was going.
Generous, that.
In any case, she ducked into the garment – not new or freshly laundered, because Leon was detail-oriented like that - and removed her underwear beneath it, thinking absurdly of second-year gym class.
"You ready?" Pendragon said.
Hurry faster. Bra and underwear wrapped in the t-shirt, wrapped in the trousers and then in the jacket. Dump the rest of the contents from the ruck, then boots in the bottom and the wrapped clothing on top.
"Yeah," she said, sliding her feet into the soft slippers Aravian women wore even as she wrapped the waja around her head.
But he didn't appear around the crates, packed and dressed and ready to go, so she stepped into the space, still tugging the waja because there was a trick to keeping it in place without having to constantly push and pat it with her fingers, and a native would know that.
He was seated, long-tunic under a dirt-colored jacket hitched up by his hips to show baggy trousers, sareq wrapped and tucked around his head to shade his face and protect his neck, but he was still tying the leather thong around the loose hide boot, tightening it comfortably to his calf. A trick to that as well, she expected.
"I swear," he said, glancing up at her. "I'm not taking these things back off til we return."
"It could be weeks," she reminded him, amused.
"I know," he said, grinning like a mischievous little boy. "Think how we'll reek…"
She made a face. Already she wanted lotion. Sunscreen and deodorant and body spray – hell, why stop there? She wanted air conditioning…
"Have you got pins or rubber bands in your hair?" he added.
"Oh, yeah," she said, reaching back to find the hair-band and pull it out – slowly, as the twist of hair loosened in stages under the waja.
"You're not wearing any underwear, are you?" he continued, knotting the narrow leather strip fastening his boot at his shin He turned over to his knees to stuff his uniform into his ruck, emptied of the rest of its contents beside it on the ground-canvas; she caught a glimpse of dark blue that definitely wasn't military-issue, and knew his answer even before she shot back-
"Are you wearing any underwear under that?"
He froze, then twisted and straightened to look at her. She shook her head; he really did have the tendency to say the most unfortunate things, sometimes.
"Oh my gosh," she enunciated deliberately, to keep it teasing instead of awkward.
He got to his feet with a rueful expression. Maybe he blushed, but the tent blocked enough light that she couldn't tell for sure. "I don't do that with anyone else," he admitted with faint chagrin. "I don't know why things come out of my mouth sounding like that. You'll have me up on harassment charges one of these days."
"Not a chance," she told him good-humoredly, perfectly satisfied to have him react to her differently than anyone else.
"All right – if you say so," he said, bending to retrieve his things – the military ruck with his discarded uniform, and a bag that looked like goatskin and probably was, presumably packed with the sort of edible any Aravian would carry on a journey. She turned to claim her own, and followed the soles of his soft-hide boots back out of the tent.
It wasn't any cooler out here. The air was hot and the wind was hot and their soldier's t-shirt was damp at the armpits as he yanked the guy-rope tight and rewound it around the anchor-peg.
Pendragon didn't immediately stand up, though he shuffled his ruck to one side. Instead he scooped a double handful of dusty sand to wash his hands thoroughly, then scooped up what had trickled down to rub over his face also.
The soldier gripped Pendragon's ruck by the carrying strap at the top and watched, amused. "You gonna get down and roll around in it, too?"
Pendragon shook his head to get rid of loose particles, and blinked up at her, dirty-tan like he'd been traveling all day in the wind-tossed heat and sand. "Probably should…"
"Sleeping on the ground tonight will be good enough," Gwen offered. "Everyone else distracted by dinner, remember, and then we'll lose the light to see by, anyway."
He contemplated the ground for a moment before nodding and getting his feet under him.
The soldier shrugged Pendragon's ruck over his shoulder, and picked hers up, glancing about to be sure they were still private. "I'll keep an eye out for you," he said, "coming back into the refugee camp. The old man said give you a month before panicking and calling him?"
"Don't worry about that," Pendragon said, adjusting the cord of the goatskin bag over his shoulder. "If they catch us, I'm sure you'll know – they'll record and publicize our execution. And if they don't, and we don't show up – well, just figure it took us longer than we expected."
"To do what?" the soldier asked – then answered himself, good-naturedly, "If you told me, you'd have to kill me, huh?"
"Somehow I think I might come to regret that, too," Pendragon answered.
"Yep," the soldier agreed, angling his elbow to nudge Pendragon. "Good luck, then."
"Be seeing you," he said.
"Thank you," Gwen added. As he turned to haul their rucksacks somewhere to wait for them – briefly she regretted the inside-out socks – she ducked her hooded head into the string of her own goatskin supply bag, letting its weight settle between her shoulder-blades and hooking her fingers into the string to keep it from choking her.
"Let's go claim a tent," Pendragon suggested, moving where he could see the refugees' camp and the patrol. "See what Leon packed us for lunch."
She repeated his words in Aravian to remind both of them who they were supposed to be, then added, "What is your suggestion to avoid the dustmen-" the soldiers of Camelot didn't have the market cornered on derogatory slang, after all – "and join the sjuyl, my brother?"
He didn't give her so much as a glance of surprise, melding into his new identity and language seamlessly. "Those children who kick the ball will soon distract the dustmen from his duty. Then do you follow me, my sister."
She smiled into the concealing fold of the waja. And maybe the coarse, unfamiliar fare would unsettle her stomach and maybe she would be sore from lying on the ground and walking leagues every day in these soft slippers, in the sun and heat, and maybe she would be constantly tense from maintaining cover. And maybe he would fill their tiny tent with the rattle of his snoring, but truly – she'd rather be here with him than back home by herself.
…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..
Lawrence Leclair crept along the upstairs corridor of the O'Rourke family mansion, boots soundless on the ornate Oriental runner. He held his pearl-handled Weston steady, at the ready; the stiff black-and-white photos of the family's long-dead ancestors were creepy at best.
He froze, finger caressing the time-smoothed trigger like a woman's smile. Was that the lament of the wind outside, rising with the storm? or the moan of a lonely captive, the tempestuous daughter of the estate, who'd learned too much of her father's nefarious political plans before Leclair could warn her to circumspection?
Two sumptuously-decorated floors below him, a door clicked open and footsteps sounded on the vaulting staircase, profound and purposeful. Leclair felt for the nearest doorknob, grimly yearning for cover, aiming the trusty Weston as the footsteps ascended, thumping steady menace over crimson thick-pile and dark curving mahogany…
"Merlin!"
He lifted his head, keeping his thumb between pages, the spine of the paperback dog-eared over his hand.
"Hey, Merlin! Comm-block contact for you!"
"Roger!" he hollered back, so his voice would bounce out his open door and down the white-painted cinder-block hall.
"No, it's Williams!" drifted back, along with cackles of laughter from the speaker's friends at his obvious wit.
Merlin sighed, smiling to himself as he unfolded from his slouch atop his bed, leaving the comforter rumpled and padding down the barracks hallway in his socks. Industrial carpet and whoever was on housekeeping duty – not his rotation this week - did try to keep it clean. Past the great corkboard crazy-quilted with notices of all kinds in all colors – looking for a cylinder head for last year's turf-bike model, looking for a kitten for a niece, looking for a no-strings-attached go-all-the-way date. Come see my sister's secondary-school play, my mother's candle shop, the dance routine of the new stripper at Hairy Carrie's…
The comm-block hung on the wall at the end of the hall, where you could turn right for the stairs or left for more rooms. Most doors were left open unless there was specific need for privacy, and soldiers were social, he'd discovered with surprise, so it was always noisy.
He tucked the Charles Gates novel under his arm and put his finger in his left ear, then lifted the comm-block to his right.
"This is Merlin?" he said.
"Merlin – it's Leon. How've you been? good week?"
"Can't complain," he returned. A bit of the same old, same old, denying but never quite ignoring the desire for freedom and choice.
"Feel like getting out? I know Pendragon and Thompson aren't here, but Percival and I are going to-"
Merlin missed the specifics as a trio of soldiers still in uniform bumped past him from the door. No, I said the hell with you sir, I ain't gonna-
"I thought you were going to start taking Gwen's friend out," Merlin said, down the darkness of the line to the invisible Psych Ops officer who'd befriended him for Arthur's sake. "Jennifer?"
"Yeah…"
He didn't even have to try to hear the blush in the older man's voice, and smiled in spite of himself.
"You and Percival – a double date?" he guessed. "And maybe someone said they knew someone who'd be willing to blind-date, for me?"
"Dammit, Merlin," Leon said mildly.
More faintly, he heard Percival's voice. What did he say?
And Leon's muffled response – He's psychic, Percival, what did you expect?
"It's fine," he said. "Thanks for asking, truly. But I think I'll stay in, make it an early night. Finish this book before Arthur gets back."
"If you're sure?"
He hesitated. If they weren't going to the Sunrise, maybe he didn't have to worry about Nimueh, about questions and confusion and saying more than he meant to, and not knowing what they did with what he said. Betraying his friends. And disappointment and dissatisfaction in his half-hearted efforts affecting the status quo in Essetir. Maybe the blind-date girl would be nice, and he could make another friend… And maybe Nimueh would find him at a new place, anyway.
"I'm sure," he said, his throat feeling thick.
"All right… We'll be seeing you. Take care, Merlin."
"I will," he said. And he meant it, true as truth.
…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..
"They call them mountains," Arthur said to Gwen, pausing at the side of the road as if to catch his breath, letting the other sjuyl trudge past them, ignoring them.
She stopped just behind his elbow – an Aravian convention he still had to remind himself he was supposed to be comfortable with, two weeks later.
And they were as hot and smelly and dirty and tired and sun-browned as any of the rest of the people scattered haphazardly along the length of the track. Janada, a halfway-civilized city some leagues still to the north of their position, had a hospital, some international nondenominational place tolerated by all factions as long as they remained politically neutral. That was the logical destination of this track, though many of the sjuyl had traveled from place to place on rumors with even less substance. On hope, alone.
Desert didn't even begin to describe this part of Aravia. Most of it flat and rocky, dusty scrub and tough, tenacious trees growing in the washes, and deceptive distances. And then suddenly, like broken bricks in an actual sandbox, there would be sheer cliffs jutting hundreds of feet high. Just now they were about halfway down a switchback trail coming over a spine-ridge of such mountains, looking across leagues of dusty mirages shimmering with bloody sunrises or sunsets at another collection of such mountains.
"Is that Qauyl?" Gwen murmured, and he resisted the urge to look at her.
Aravian men didn't coddle their women, constantly checking if they were all right, if there was something they wanted or needed or liked to have done for them, as if they weren't perfectly capable of obtaining or demanding anything they chose without prompting.
But Gwen wasn't Aravian, and he couldn't help thinking this mission was harder than she had anticipated. You're not my pack-mule, he'd argued, trying to carry both goatskin bags.
I'm not your wife either, she'd returned defiantly. You carry yours and don't worry about me. I'll keep up.
And oh, how her eyes snapped when that was all he could see of her face, hidden and mysterious and he had to call it to mind rather than just letting his eyes take it in when he looked at her, lazy and careless and ungrateful. The curve of her cheek, the angle of her nose, the expression of her mouth… He even missed the shape of her ears, bared when she tied her hair in that knot on the back of her head. And what was the point of leaving her hair down and unbound if she had to cover it with the waja anyway?
"I think so," he responded. "Around to the north. But that…"
He didn't lift his hand to point; of course she'd seen it too, and had been studying the formation since they'd paused beside the track. Nor did he say the word, the name of the place they'd been seeking on this mission, for two weeks now.
She made a noise of corroboration and agreement. Maybe carrying some relief to finally have found their goal.
A wall had been built between two of the jagged peaks, stacked block-and-mortar of the same stone, an impression that shifted into mirage and then invisibility with the angle of the viewpoint. Irregular dark shapes of windows, enough to be noticeable and definitive, but not to military transports daring the roads and focused on ambushes, nor yet to illicit night-flyer routes.
The fortress of Urhavi. Printed on no maps, half-legendary and temporary headquarters of the roving clan of the Isyad who'd wrought such terror and pain and destruction between here and home, planning and directing the atrocities they claimed were an inevitable response to the policies of Camelot and her allies, each demand more untenable than the last.
Mostly dismantled, the organization. This possibly the last – and most dangerous – hold-out.
"How can it be possible for us to-" she started, and didn't finish.
Arthur had no answers to offer, and simply moved to continue down the path. They could reach the village of Qauyl before dark, if they were lucky. And maybe the water source would be sufficient for washing, in addition to drinking and cooking… Half their month was gone, infiltrating and seeking and finding this place. And now, to get inside – he hoped it didn't take another two weeks. But if it did…
He hoped no one panicked at home, either.
Beside him, Gwen lifted the water bottle that hung over one shoulder from a cord looped around its mouth, moved the waja enough to swallow twice before covering her face again.
He regretted that, and the need to let her fall behind him as they traveled. At least he'd meet any threat first.
The village was built right up into the mountain, like the fortress several hours around to the southeast. Cave-homes hollowed into the rock, supplemented by centuries-old brick, connected by goat-paths that were steep and abrupt - now looking up at half-a-dozen stories of cliffside habitation, now looking down at three or four neighbors' roofs – and rope-bridges anchored more or less thoroughly. Replaced as needed, he supposed, and if they trusted their children crossing those things… How far up should they climb? Because they'd just have to come back down again to leave…
The residents eyed them warily, sending women and children inside to peek through windows and door-curtains.
"Peace to you," Arthur said to anyone who'd meet his eye. "Please, we have need of… We carry our food with us, we only have need of water, and perhaps… shelter for the night? For many nights, if perhaps we might be welcomed here?"
One man jutted an abrupt and inhospitable finger further up the path Arthur's aching feet stood upon, and in following the indicated direction, he saw Gwen in her baggy dress and waja turn from consultation with one of the women. Catching his eye, eye, she inclined her head in the same direction, and he sighed.
Well, that was why she was part of his cover, right?
Always in these villages there would be empty homes. There were few families left untouched by death, by the urge to leave seeking a better life elsewhere, sacrilege in a culture that valued family and stability of habitation and occupation above most else.
At the moment, nearly a fortnight into this mission – and he didn't do long cover; he was in and out, usually, fast-fast-fast – he could relate. Home was far away and two weeks behind him. And even then, it was a barracks room. Drinking buddies and physical training and waiting for another mission, to pit strength and speed and intelligence against the world…
But it was probably different when one was dispossessed and displaced without choice, and through no fault of their own, having no place to go and no one to depend on and expecting to met with violence rather than welcome…
Hells, he was tired tonight.
Gwen gave him a glance that managed to be questioning though all he could see was her eyes – tired eyes. It would be good to enjoy a minute of quiet with her. And rest.
They were going to need it.
