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fuck i forgot to post chapter 6 here my bad
"You couldn't wait for a chance to be the big spoon, huh," Sorin said sleepily, and craned his neck to look at the Jäger behind him.
He'd half-woken up earlier to crawl into the warm spot when Velimir disentangled himself and sneaked out of the cave -- for reconnaissance, for his morning pee, for breakfast? Who knew, probably all of those. When Velimir came back in Sorin was still only half-awake and did not intend to go any farther on the road to awareness.
"Iz hyu fault, hyu steal mine spot." He shuffled in the dry leaves he'd piled up in the cave and draped his arm around Sorin's waist, rested his cheek on Sorin's. "Mnh, warm."
It did speed up Sorin's heart, made him feel tingly and warm in the pit of his stomach. When he looked down, though, he grimaced a bit. The arm resting on him was the injured one.
The bandages were really gross.
"I think at this point this is doing more harm than good," he said as he touched the cloth around Velimir's wrist cautiously, trying to ignore the solid body cuddling up against his back. "Or at least not doing much good anymore."
Velimir grumbled. "Hy iz tryink to seduce him all sexy-like, und he talks bandages."
"Maybe I wouldn't if you didn't put those bandages on me. Urgh." He ducked his head so that Velimir wouldn't see him smile.
The Jäger nosed his neck, grinned against his skin. Sorin shivered, waiting for a kiss. "Ach, ve ken play de nurse if hyu vants--"
Growl. "Velimir."
"Augh. Not de name!"
"Yes de name." Uh. "The name. And don't you dare infect me with your accent."
"Heheh."
His back was sore and bruised from yesterday; when they'd stopped for the night last evening Velimir had pulled a few splinters out of it, too. He didn't really care right now; the press of Velimir's body against him was firm, but the warmth actually felt good and it wasn't like he was poking him with anything that...
... that was actually high enough to prod at his bruises and...
"Oh dear little hundred gods. You aren't."
"Hm?" Velimir pushed himself up high enough to see his face, gone pink with its customary swiftness. "--Oh."
He snickered. The jerk actually snickered.
"Nah, iz hokay. Diz is not mine... sword."
"Oh."
He leaned in, purred against Sorin's ear. "Hy don't haff a sword."
"One day I am going to kill you very dead," Sorin mused, in a calm voice that didn't do much to hide the howl of frustrated embarrassment building up underneath. "You are the most horrible flirt that ever existed. You're a textbook example of how not to flirt. I don't understand how you think it ever works."
"But iz it working."
Yes. God yes. He wanted to reach back and -- Velimir would let him touch him, would let Sorin wrap his hand around his--
He would kiss him and touch him and have sex with him and then --
And then he would go back out to soldier at people and Sorin would spend a very long time missing it, missing him, and never touching another man again except in furtive stolen moments that the whole rest of his life would make him feel guilty about.
It didn't seem to matter right now, but at some point it would matter again, and then...
"Mnh," he said, noncommittal. His throat had gone all tight. Stupid. Couldn't he just enjoy this? There was someone he liked who liked him as a person and was attracted to him. Soon enough he bet they'd have to risk their lives again, maybe they'd even die and.
And.
He pushed himself up, sat in the leaves. Velimir propped himself up on his elbow to give him a quizzical look. His hat stayed on the ground.
He had a leaf caught in that pale sea-foam hair, orange and crinkly. Sorin smiled a little at it and left it where it was.
"Gimme your arm. I'll take that thing off. Can you flex your fingers now?"
Frowning a little, Velimir let him lift his hand and rest it on his knee. Some of his fingers curled, but the last two didn't even twitch. At least the thumb was working... Sorin busied himself pulling the knots open.
"Vhen Hy can use both hands, can Hy use dem on hyu?"
Velimir was giving him the puppy eyes. Sorin snorted and started unwrapping the gross cloth off him.
Velimir tickled the inside of Sorin's knee with his index and middle fingers. They twitched weird like they weren't entirely controlled. "Hy iz good vith just one hand, but Hy get why hyu vant better den dat--"
"You really don't like it when I look at your wounds, huh."
The Jäger sighed loudly, and fell back in the leaves, grumbling. "Mnrgh."
"Why's that? I'm not going to do anything dumb and hurt you worse, you know. I worked in a forge, I know burns. Oh, urgh. Wow. This is less nasty than it was, I guess..."
He used a corner of his own, mostly-clean sleeve to cautiously wipe away some crusted yuckiness and unveil the healing flesh underneath. It sloughed off easily. There was clear liquid, a lot of it dried already, but no pus at all, which was frankly pretty weird. Big patches of shiny-pink scarred flesh were either moving under his cautious fingers like they would detach and fall off soon, or being colonized by blue-green-gray skin.
"Our bodies iz pro-pray-eet-ary information of de Heterodynes," Velimir said quietly, almost grumpy. No, more serious than that. A bit somber. Had Sorin managed to depress him? Wow, he felt a bit guilty now. "Ve is not to haff people not de Masters fix it."
Oh. If he did it would be treason.
"You know I don't know a thing about biology, right? I'm not going to figure anything out." Or tell anyone. No way. Never. "Or fix anything, even. I'm just making sure it's clean so it can fix itself."
Velimir looked up at him, quiet and serious. "Iz why hyu can look."
Sorin brushed his knuckles against his hair once, picked out the leaf gently, then went back to his arm.
"--What's that bit? That little -- whiteish hair thing?"
"Nerve, Hy think."
Oh. God. "I ... don't think it's supposed to be outside. Do you feel with it yet?"
"Jah. Iz hokay, de skin vill grow over it." A little pause. "Or Hy cut it off so it grow back right."
"Euuugh." Okay, he couldn't clean anything more without tearing off scabs, and those were better off left alone until they fell on their own. "Do you want it bandaged again or...?
Velimir sat up, lifted his arm, checked the way it flexed. "Nah. Sum air vill do it good." He tucked the arm back into its sling. "Hy catch a rabbit earlier, but Hy dun think we can cook it. Hyu okay vith that?"
Sorin grimaced. "Well. I'll have to be. It's not like I can go very far on half a sandwich every two days."
"Hah. Jah, dere is dat."
As Velimir skinned the rabbit, Sorin stretched his abused body as much as he could. Bruises and muscle aches, quite a few scrapes, some he could not for the life of him figure out where he'd got them. His scalp wound was tender but not bleeding, and only really hurt if he prodded it. He didn't want to move anywhere unless it included a hot bath, but...
Ah well, they were going to be traveling high on rocky slopes; difficult terrain, but at least it wasn't as if they would have to deal with those clumsy lava clanks up there. That was something.
--
Sorin was right about the stone clanks they'd encountered being unable to follow them. Unfortunately he'd forgotten they were running from a Spark, and Sparks on a whole tended to take "your creation cannot actually do this" as a challenge.
"Do not move," Velimir breathed at him. Sorin wasn't about to. He'd stopped in the middle of climbing a rock crested with a raspberry bush. His bent knee was starting to buckle from the strain of holding up his whole weight; he finished watching the spider-shaped stone clank climb ponderously up the little path to hide higher on the slope before he slowly allowed himself to get back down to his previous step.
The clank was carrying two lava cannons on its belly. They seemed to rotate some. Up there amongst the bare rocks yet another rock seemed to shift a little in position.
Looked like they'd arrived a little early to their ambush.
"Race through?" Velimir whispered, making a little moue.
He looked disappointed that there wouldn't be a fight. Heh. Sorin's heart had sped up seeing the clanks but it calmed to almost its normal speed watching him. So far their track record was pretty okay.
"They'll chase us anyways."
That, and know where they went, and call ahead to other patrols probably, and...
And down there in the valley there was a road almost lost in the trees, and for a second he thought he saw someone move.
When he looked back at Velimir, the Jäger was grinning with all his teeth.
"Betcha we go much faster vith something vith vheels."
Sorin swallowed an incredulous laugh. "No bet." It was actually tempting, too. "You're going to make me a highwayman at this rate."
Velimir looked regretful. "Highway robbery is verra frowned upon by der Baron."
"But you'd be robbing them for the greater good," Sorin intoned piously.
Velimir sighed at him, and caught his wrist. "Sveetling, is bad place to make me want to kiss hyu vith so much tongue." Then he kissed him anyways.
Five seconds later he was dragging him, low to the ground, down a fairly perilous crack between rocks that a rivulet ran through.
"At least Hy got in sum robbery practice with Master Nero. Should not be that rusty."
Sorin groaned under his breath.
It took them about fifteen minutes to climb down while keeping out of sight, and then they were under the leafy trees, where there were also bushes to block angles of sight. The troop transports that had brought in the clanks were parked a little way off the road -- ponderous things that looked like giant beetles, but wheeled, at least. No matter how Sparks liked their other forms of locomotion, when they had to lose the whimsy and be practical, they went with wheels.
There were two stone spiders standing guard with them. People were still chattering; they weren't expecting them quite yet, or they assumed they'd gone another route and this ambush wouldn't see a thing...
"Hy go distract dem. Hyu schteal one of those."
-- Oh. Urh. "But I don't know how to--"
Velimir closed a hand on his elbow, met his eyes. "Hyu is a schmott boy. Figure it out."
He was gone in the next second, darting between the trees to go around; Sorin lost him. Heart trying to crawl up his throat, he pulled his biggest tongs out of his satchel and sneaked closer. He was aware of every single leaf he rustled, every twig he stepped on. He moved slow, so the pattern wouldn't sound like steps, but his skin was crawling, expecting to be seen every second he advanced.
The farthest transport was locked up, big padlock and mooring chains fit to hold a bull, but the one after that...
"I knew I should have insisted!"
... The one after that wasn't locked because there were still people inside. Sorin swallowed.
"Just one more complete maintenance check, Mistress, just one! But no!"
A dull thud, a faint ow. A woman snorted, voice scratchy. "Yeah, break your toes, go ahead. It's not starting and that's it. Let's go see the commander."
Oh Lord. Any time now. What was he going to do, his mind was blank, he hadn't made a plan -- something jingled. Keys.
They were going to lock the transport when they went.
The woman stepped out of the transport -- grizzled, decked in old leather, eyes hidden behind thick goggles -- and he swung without thought, caught her under the ribs with all the strength of his hammer-wielding days and the weight of a solid metal tool.
Something cracked. She folded over with a very quiet wheeze.
The man behind her yelled something -- alert, alarm, help, all of the above, none of the above. Sorin stepped up on the ramp and swung again -- arms held out to grab his arms, stop his weapon, but he wrenched it free and there was an opening and he took it.
At the last second he went for the jaw instead of the temple.
He stood there, panting, staring down at the man at his feet and the ruined, gushing mess of his face, and the choked bursts of screams and the curling up, and.
He could have killed him.
Skulls were so fragile when you were used to anvils. He'd always known, he'd always -- he hadn't, not really. He.
God.
He grabbed the keys, caught the man by the armpits, and dragged him down the ramp. The woman was trying to get up. He lifted his tongs.
"Stay down."
She gave a very faint nod, eyes on his face. He wasn't even sure what face he was making. He turned and hurried to the cabin.
The rest of the camp was a roaring mess. A tree was on fire, several bushes. The clanks were -- they aimed so much better, so much faster, and if Velimir had needed to protect Sorin they would both have died.
He fiddled with the levers, couldn't figure it out -- he'd never driven anything but a team of oxen the once, and they pretty much drove themselves from knowing the path so well. The controls were always different from machine to machine anyway -- and then Velimir went flying across the road and hit a rock full force, and he just. He just grabbed the closest lever, pressed a button, tilted it ahead. The transport shuddered, went in a half-circle. Okay. That was something. Now if he turned his -- okay, no, he didn't want to go backwards, not backwards oh hell, what if he ran over the --
Forward. Okay. And this one stick -- okay. Now he was even going in a straight line. Straight-ish.
He throttled them both together and the transport roared ahead.
It bounced on some rocks; the wind got in his eyes through the opening in the front. Over there in the woods Velimir was dodging a jet of lava just in time to get whacked in the face by a stone limb. Sorin gritted his teeth and put more speed in.
Two spiders -- a third spider racing down the slope (a fourth spider wrecking on the slope, who cared) -- and one of them was turning to him and raising those cannons --
He braked as hard as he could, on one side only. The world whirled sickeningly.
Something went clang, metal screeching, stone splintering. He fought the control -- no, not that way -- jammed, no, wait, there. No fire yet. No fire yet.
One spider wobbled, fell, several legs crushed. They were armored all over, those, no convenient openings for Velimir to jump onto and hit the driver, but when Sorin had braked so hard, the curled-up, nonfunctioning one had shot out of the open back of the transport like a boulder out of a giant slingshot.
He raced to where the Jäger sprawled on the ground, almost under the second clank, raced the third clank crashing down the slope like an avalanche. Velimir wasn't moving, wasn't --
He rammed the second clank's legs. Things flew, things crumpled, he was thrown into the controls so hard his breath wouldn't come out and the stone spider was slowly toppling onto his roof, no, fuck it. He throttled the control again, snaked right and then left, and the transport coughed, rattled, shot free.
Velimir. He braked, almost ran him over (oh Baal's Hell was it almost,) reached for the door --
A fist hit the side of the transport. Thump. He craned his head, saw the Jäger crawl up the ramp, crash on the floor like a felled tree.
He hit the gas.
He almost ran over the troop's commander or something. At this point he did not actually mind. If anyone fired lava at them, it missed.
The road was empty. He could swerve and wobble as much as he wanted. He focused on getting them the hell away from there.
--
Took him a long, long time to stop shaking, to think about stopping the transport for a while. Whenever there was a stretch of straight road he would crane his neck and check on Velimir. He didn't like that he was still dragging the unloading ramp, that the back was wide open. (What if he hit a pothole and Velimir rolled out?)
He couldn't even see him breathing.
A half-hour in, Velimir rolled onto his side. Ten minutes later Sorin's next check found him curled up with his back to one of the sides of the transport, a hand gripping the brim of his hat, keeping it lowered firmly across his face.
He breathed maybe a little easier after that.
The front of the transport was dented so hard in places Sorin was surprised it still handled as well as it did. Possibly all the controls and motors were underneath. One of the creases came almost to his knee, and he kept bumping into it when he shifted in his seat. He was lucky there had been no windshield, even despite having to squint against the wind, having his eyes watering so much, because a face full of glass wouldn't have been any better.
The sun was rising toward noon. It was a nice day. Crisp air coming down the mountains, but the sky was very blue.
"Hy gotta haff mine pee break," Velimir told him woozily through the grate. Sorin almost swerved them off a little cliff.
Alive. Aware. Moving. He didn't close his eyes and breathe, because they were in the middle of a fairly sinuous part of the road that hugged the side of this particular mountain. He just kept his eyes on the road and breathed instead.
"Surprised you didn't try to pee out of the back."
"Did," the Jäger replied plaintively. "Ken't hold on to the side und aim mine prick both, und Hy almost fell right out not holding on."
Red fire. Would Sorin have noticed if he'd fallen out? Probably not for another twenty minutes, and in the meantime he might well have rolled over the cliff. Blast it.
"I'm stopping as soon as restarting won't send us toppling overboard," he said.
"Hm?"
"This thing has a bit of a kick on starting," he started to explain, but Velimir just winced at him, confused, eyes squinty, so he gave up. "How bad is your head?"
"Hy'm not letting you look."
Accent mostly dropped, even. So... Pretty bad. He was aware, he was talking, he was even mostly logical, and if his nerves could grow back Sorin was almost sure his brain could fix itself with time, but obviously that wouldn't be happening straight away.
"Another five minutes," he said, voice gentling. Velimir nodded wordlessly and sank to the floor, fingers wound through the grate.
He found a good stopping point another five or six turns in, a deep recess into the cliff with slopes encasing them on both sides, cutting off most of the view. There were no trees, mostly thorn bushes, and enough space to restart the transport without shooting overboard, if it deigned to restart. Sorin parked and climbed out.
It involved kicking the door out of its frame, because it was well and truly stuck, but like hell he was letting it stop him at that point.
He went around the truck, finding Velimir already wobbling his way down the ramp. The Jäger seemed relatively steady on flat ground; Sorin watched him, but didn't follow. If he could do his business without his hand being held, that'd be good for both of their prides. Still keeping track of him, Sorin went to check out the bushes for edible berries.
He found a little stream -- not a surprise, from the greenery springing around it -- and crouched and drank his fill from his cupped hands. The water was snowmelt-cold, almost painful on his fingers but perfect down his throat.
Velimir joined him at a wobble and almost took a header into the water. Sorin grabbed his arm to stop him, until he realized it was deliberate. The Jäger splashed his own face vigorously and rubbed it, before even drinking. Half of his face was pretty much purplish-brown. Sorin wondered how bad it had been a hour ago.
"Feeling better?"
"Some. Hrngh. Ooh, berries."
They sat on a rock and ate berries. When the pouch Sorin had made of the bottom of his shirt was empty they got up and checked the bushes for more. Sorin found a nest -- some small bird, the eggs were tiny -- and let Velimir have three of them. He slurped up the contents of the fourth. Not a lot of protein, but it was still something. Knock on wood that he didn't get sick from eating it raw.
He went back to the transport to check it for anything useful. He found maintenance kits, mostly, nothing edible, and no bottle he wanted to empty of its oil and put drinking water into. Why couldn't the spider drivers come with their snacks and conveniently leave them behind? Unfair.
And that stupid ramp. Hrrmgh. Thankfully it wasn't hard, closing it; just a matter of turning a winch and locking the chain. It grated a little, but the roof wasn't twisted enough out of true to prevent it.
Oh, right. "You want to ride with me in front, or sleep in the back?" he called out to Velimir.
"Hy think Hy sleep enough." Velimir yawned, jaw opening a bit too wide to seem natural. "Can Hy drive?"
Sorin snorted. "Haha, no. Come on, then, I don't want to stop that long yet. Who knows when they'll catch up."
Velimir dragged his hooves to the cabin and climbed in, claws planted in the wooden seat to haul his weight up. Sorin followed, closed the door; the door didn't stay closed. He decided that too bad, he had no rope to tie it with so it may as well flap away.
It took him a few minutes to remember how to start the vehicle.
The transport jerked ahead and in a half-circle. Sorin brought it back under control and started driving down the winding road again.
It only took him five minutes to notice Velimir's tense shoulders and the way he cringed subtly before each hairpin turn.
"So uh, do hyu think Hy could try de driving thing maybe."
"Do you know how to drive this?"
"Doesn't look hard--"
"Hah! Denied."
Velimir sank into his seat, pulling the hat low on his face. "Sveetie -- hhhg cliff!"
Sorin rolled his eyes. Drama queen. Sorin didn't second-guess every step he took when he ran in the woods with Sorin on his back, no matter how close to tree trunks and wild beasts they got, did he? And Velimir got them a lot closer to tree trunks and wild beasts. Inches away, sometimes. Granted, the transport was pretty huge, but still. "I've got it under control."
"Ken hyu haff it under control slower?"
Sorin breathed through his nose. "It doesn't go slower. Or if it does I haven't figured it out." Velimir was making him stressed out about driving again. "It's fine, I've got it under control. I just need to concentrate, you know, anticipate the --"
"Ken Hy be sick."
"I've got it under control, if you stop distracting me."
Velimir didn't say another word until they were back on somewhat flatter terrain, some thirty minutes later. When Sorin risked a glance off the road to check on him, he found him asleep, wedged in the corner. He kept driving.
He'd half-woken up earlier to crawl into the warm spot when Velimir disentangled himself and sneaked out of the cave -- for reconnaissance, for his morning pee, for breakfast? Who knew, probably all of those. When Velimir came back in Sorin was still only half-awake and did not intend to go any farther on the road to awareness.
"Iz hyu fault, hyu steal mine spot." He shuffled in the dry leaves he'd piled up in the cave and draped his arm around Sorin's waist, rested his cheek on Sorin's. "Mnh, warm."
It did speed up Sorin's heart, made him feel tingly and warm in the pit of his stomach. When he looked down, though, he grimaced a bit. The arm resting on him was the injured one.
The bandages were really gross.
"I think at this point this is doing more harm than good," he said as he touched the cloth around Velimir's wrist cautiously, trying to ignore the solid body cuddling up against his back. "Or at least not doing much good anymore."
Velimir grumbled. "Hy iz tryink to seduce him all sexy-like, und he talks bandages."
"Maybe I wouldn't if you didn't put those bandages on me. Urgh." He ducked his head so that Velimir wouldn't see him smile.
The Jäger nosed his neck, grinned against his skin. Sorin shivered, waiting for a kiss. "Ach, ve ken play de nurse if hyu vants--"
Growl. "Velimir."
"Augh. Not de name!"
"Yes de name." Uh. "The name. And don't you dare infect me with your accent."
"Heheh."
His back was sore and bruised from yesterday; when they'd stopped for the night last evening Velimir had pulled a few splinters out of it, too. He didn't really care right now; the press of Velimir's body against him was firm, but the warmth actually felt good and it wasn't like he was poking him with anything that...
... that was actually high enough to prod at his bruises and...
"Oh dear little hundred gods. You aren't."
"Hm?" Velimir pushed himself up high enough to see his face, gone pink with its customary swiftness. "--Oh."
He snickered. The jerk actually snickered.
"Nah, iz hokay. Diz is not mine... sword."
"Oh."
He leaned in, purred against Sorin's ear. "Hy don't haff a sword."
"One day I am going to kill you very dead," Sorin mused, in a calm voice that didn't do much to hide the howl of frustrated embarrassment building up underneath. "You are the most horrible flirt that ever existed. You're a textbook example of how not to flirt. I don't understand how you think it ever works."
"But iz it working."
Yes. God yes. He wanted to reach back and -- Velimir would let him touch him, would let Sorin wrap his hand around his--
He would kiss him and touch him and have sex with him and then --
And then he would go back out to soldier at people and Sorin would spend a very long time missing it, missing him, and never touching another man again except in furtive stolen moments that the whole rest of his life would make him feel guilty about.
It didn't seem to matter right now, but at some point it would matter again, and then...
"Mnh," he said, noncommittal. His throat had gone all tight. Stupid. Couldn't he just enjoy this? There was someone he liked who liked him as a person and was attracted to him. Soon enough he bet they'd have to risk their lives again, maybe they'd even die and.
And.
He pushed himself up, sat in the leaves. Velimir propped himself up on his elbow to give him a quizzical look. His hat stayed on the ground.
He had a leaf caught in that pale sea-foam hair, orange and crinkly. Sorin smiled a little at it and left it where it was.
"Gimme your arm. I'll take that thing off. Can you flex your fingers now?"
Frowning a little, Velimir let him lift his hand and rest it on his knee. Some of his fingers curled, but the last two didn't even twitch. At least the thumb was working... Sorin busied himself pulling the knots open.
"Vhen Hy can use both hands, can Hy use dem on hyu?"
Velimir was giving him the puppy eyes. Sorin snorted and started unwrapping the gross cloth off him.
Velimir tickled the inside of Sorin's knee with his index and middle fingers. They twitched weird like they weren't entirely controlled. "Hy iz good vith just one hand, but Hy get why hyu vant better den dat--"
"You really don't like it when I look at your wounds, huh."
The Jäger sighed loudly, and fell back in the leaves, grumbling. "Mnrgh."
"Why's that? I'm not going to do anything dumb and hurt you worse, you know. I worked in a forge, I know burns. Oh, urgh. Wow. This is less nasty than it was, I guess..."
He used a corner of his own, mostly-clean sleeve to cautiously wipe away some crusted yuckiness and unveil the healing flesh underneath. It sloughed off easily. There was clear liquid, a lot of it dried already, but no pus at all, which was frankly pretty weird. Big patches of shiny-pink scarred flesh were either moving under his cautious fingers like they would detach and fall off soon, or being colonized by blue-green-gray skin.
"Our bodies iz pro-pray-eet-ary information of de Heterodynes," Velimir said quietly, almost grumpy. No, more serious than that. A bit somber. Had Sorin managed to depress him? Wow, he felt a bit guilty now. "Ve is not to haff people not de Masters fix it."
Oh. If he did it would be treason.
"You know I don't know a thing about biology, right? I'm not going to figure anything out." Or tell anyone. No way. Never. "Or fix anything, even. I'm just making sure it's clean so it can fix itself."
Velimir looked up at him, quiet and serious. "Iz why hyu can look."
Sorin brushed his knuckles against his hair once, picked out the leaf gently, then went back to his arm.
"--What's that bit? That little -- whiteish hair thing?"
"Nerve, Hy think."
Oh. God. "I ... don't think it's supposed to be outside. Do you feel with it yet?"
"Jah. Iz hokay, de skin vill grow over it." A little pause. "Or Hy cut it off so it grow back right."
"Euuugh." Okay, he couldn't clean anything more without tearing off scabs, and those were better off left alone until they fell on their own. "Do you want it bandaged again or...?
Velimir sat up, lifted his arm, checked the way it flexed. "Nah. Sum air vill do it good." He tucked the arm back into its sling. "Hy catch a rabbit earlier, but Hy dun think we can cook it. Hyu okay vith that?"
Sorin grimaced. "Well. I'll have to be. It's not like I can go very far on half a sandwich every two days."
"Hah. Jah, dere is dat."
As Velimir skinned the rabbit, Sorin stretched his abused body as much as he could. Bruises and muscle aches, quite a few scrapes, some he could not for the life of him figure out where he'd got them. His scalp wound was tender but not bleeding, and only really hurt if he prodded it. He didn't want to move anywhere unless it included a hot bath, but...
Ah well, they were going to be traveling high on rocky slopes; difficult terrain, but at least it wasn't as if they would have to deal with those clumsy lava clanks up there. That was something.
--
Sorin was right about the stone clanks they'd encountered being unable to follow them. Unfortunately he'd forgotten they were running from a Spark, and Sparks on a whole tended to take "your creation cannot actually do this" as a challenge.
"Do not move," Velimir breathed at him. Sorin wasn't about to. He'd stopped in the middle of climbing a rock crested with a raspberry bush. His bent knee was starting to buckle from the strain of holding up his whole weight; he finished watching the spider-shaped stone clank climb ponderously up the little path to hide higher on the slope before he slowly allowed himself to get back down to his previous step.
The clank was carrying two lava cannons on its belly. They seemed to rotate some. Up there amongst the bare rocks yet another rock seemed to shift a little in position.
Looked like they'd arrived a little early to their ambush.
"Race through?" Velimir whispered, making a little moue.
He looked disappointed that there wouldn't be a fight. Heh. Sorin's heart had sped up seeing the clanks but it calmed to almost its normal speed watching him. So far their track record was pretty okay.
"They'll chase us anyways."
That, and know where they went, and call ahead to other patrols probably, and...
And down there in the valley there was a road almost lost in the trees, and for a second he thought he saw someone move.
When he looked back at Velimir, the Jäger was grinning with all his teeth.
"Betcha we go much faster vith something vith vheels."
Sorin swallowed an incredulous laugh. "No bet." It was actually tempting, too. "You're going to make me a highwayman at this rate."
Velimir looked regretful. "Highway robbery is verra frowned upon by der Baron."
"But you'd be robbing them for the greater good," Sorin intoned piously.
Velimir sighed at him, and caught his wrist. "Sveetling, is bad place to make me want to kiss hyu vith so much tongue." Then he kissed him anyways.
Five seconds later he was dragging him, low to the ground, down a fairly perilous crack between rocks that a rivulet ran through.
"At least Hy got in sum robbery practice with Master Nero. Should not be that rusty."
Sorin groaned under his breath.
It took them about fifteen minutes to climb down while keeping out of sight, and then they were under the leafy trees, where there were also bushes to block angles of sight. The troop transports that had brought in the clanks were parked a little way off the road -- ponderous things that looked like giant beetles, but wheeled, at least. No matter how Sparks liked their other forms of locomotion, when they had to lose the whimsy and be practical, they went with wheels.
There were two stone spiders standing guard with them. People were still chattering; they weren't expecting them quite yet, or they assumed they'd gone another route and this ambush wouldn't see a thing...
"Hy go distract dem. Hyu schteal one of those."
-- Oh. Urh. "But I don't know how to--"
Velimir closed a hand on his elbow, met his eyes. "Hyu is a schmott boy. Figure it out."
He was gone in the next second, darting between the trees to go around; Sorin lost him. Heart trying to crawl up his throat, he pulled his biggest tongs out of his satchel and sneaked closer. He was aware of every single leaf he rustled, every twig he stepped on. He moved slow, so the pattern wouldn't sound like steps, but his skin was crawling, expecting to be seen every second he advanced.
The farthest transport was locked up, big padlock and mooring chains fit to hold a bull, but the one after that...
"I knew I should have insisted!"
... The one after that wasn't locked because there were still people inside. Sorin swallowed.
"Just one more complete maintenance check, Mistress, just one! But no!"
A dull thud, a faint ow. A woman snorted, voice scratchy. "Yeah, break your toes, go ahead. It's not starting and that's it. Let's go see the commander."
Oh Lord. Any time now. What was he going to do, his mind was blank, he hadn't made a plan -- something jingled. Keys.
They were going to lock the transport when they went.
The woman stepped out of the transport -- grizzled, decked in old leather, eyes hidden behind thick goggles -- and he swung without thought, caught her under the ribs with all the strength of his hammer-wielding days and the weight of a solid metal tool.
Something cracked. She folded over with a very quiet wheeze.
The man behind her yelled something -- alert, alarm, help, all of the above, none of the above. Sorin stepped up on the ramp and swung again -- arms held out to grab his arms, stop his weapon, but he wrenched it free and there was an opening and he took it.
At the last second he went for the jaw instead of the temple.
He stood there, panting, staring down at the man at his feet and the ruined, gushing mess of his face, and the choked bursts of screams and the curling up, and.
He could have killed him.
Skulls were so fragile when you were used to anvils. He'd always known, he'd always -- he hadn't, not really. He.
God.
He grabbed the keys, caught the man by the armpits, and dragged him down the ramp. The woman was trying to get up. He lifted his tongs.
"Stay down."
She gave a very faint nod, eyes on his face. He wasn't even sure what face he was making. He turned and hurried to the cabin.
The rest of the camp was a roaring mess. A tree was on fire, several bushes. The clanks were -- they aimed so much better, so much faster, and if Velimir had needed to protect Sorin they would both have died.
He fiddled with the levers, couldn't figure it out -- he'd never driven anything but a team of oxen the once, and they pretty much drove themselves from knowing the path so well. The controls were always different from machine to machine anyway -- and then Velimir went flying across the road and hit a rock full force, and he just. He just grabbed the closest lever, pressed a button, tilted it ahead. The transport shuddered, went in a half-circle. Okay. That was something. Now if he turned his -- okay, no, he didn't want to go backwards, not backwards oh hell, what if he ran over the --
Forward. Okay. And this one stick -- okay. Now he was even going in a straight line. Straight-ish.
He throttled them both together and the transport roared ahead.
It bounced on some rocks; the wind got in his eyes through the opening in the front. Over there in the woods Velimir was dodging a jet of lava just in time to get whacked in the face by a stone limb. Sorin gritted his teeth and put more speed in.
Two spiders -- a third spider racing down the slope (a fourth spider wrecking on the slope, who cared) -- and one of them was turning to him and raising those cannons --
He braked as hard as he could, on one side only. The world whirled sickeningly.
Something went clang, metal screeching, stone splintering. He fought the control -- no, not that way -- jammed, no, wait, there. No fire yet. No fire yet.
One spider wobbled, fell, several legs crushed. They were armored all over, those, no convenient openings for Velimir to jump onto and hit the driver, but when Sorin had braked so hard, the curled-up, nonfunctioning one had shot out of the open back of the transport like a boulder out of a giant slingshot.
He raced to where the Jäger sprawled on the ground, almost under the second clank, raced the third clank crashing down the slope like an avalanche. Velimir wasn't moving, wasn't --
He rammed the second clank's legs. Things flew, things crumpled, he was thrown into the controls so hard his breath wouldn't come out and the stone spider was slowly toppling onto his roof, no, fuck it. He throttled the control again, snaked right and then left, and the transport coughed, rattled, shot free.
Velimir. He braked, almost ran him over (oh Baal's Hell was it almost,) reached for the door --
A fist hit the side of the transport. Thump. He craned his head, saw the Jäger crawl up the ramp, crash on the floor like a felled tree.
He hit the gas.
He almost ran over the troop's commander or something. At this point he did not actually mind. If anyone fired lava at them, it missed.
The road was empty. He could swerve and wobble as much as he wanted. He focused on getting them the hell away from there.
--
Took him a long, long time to stop shaking, to think about stopping the transport for a while. Whenever there was a stretch of straight road he would crane his neck and check on Velimir. He didn't like that he was still dragging the unloading ramp, that the back was wide open. (What if he hit a pothole and Velimir rolled out?)
He couldn't even see him breathing.
A half-hour in, Velimir rolled onto his side. Ten minutes later Sorin's next check found him curled up with his back to one of the sides of the transport, a hand gripping the brim of his hat, keeping it lowered firmly across his face.
He breathed maybe a little easier after that.
The front of the transport was dented so hard in places Sorin was surprised it still handled as well as it did. Possibly all the controls and motors were underneath. One of the creases came almost to his knee, and he kept bumping into it when he shifted in his seat. He was lucky there had been no windshield, even despite having to squint against the wind, having his eyes watering so much, because a face full of glass wouldn't have been any better.
The sun was rising toward noon. It was a nice day. Crisp air coming down the mountains, but the sky was very blue.
"Hy gotta haff mine pee break," Velimir told him woozily through the grate. Sorin almost swerved them off a little cliff.
Alive. Aware. Moving. He didn't close his eyes and breathe, because they were in the middle of a fairly sinuous part of the road that hugged the side of this particular mountain. He just kept his eyes on the road and breathed instead.
"Surprised you didn't try to pee out of the back."
"Did," the Jäger replied plaintively. "Ken't hold on to the side und aim mine prick both, und Hy almost fell right out not holding on."
Red fire. Would Sorin have noticed if he'd fallen out? Probably not for another twenty minutes, and in the meantime he might well have rolled over the cliff. Blast it.
"I'm stopping as soon as restarting won't send us toppling overboard," he said.
"Hm?"
"This thing has a bit of a kick on starting," he started to explain, but Velimir just winced at him, confused, eyes squinty, so he gave up. "How bad is your head?"
"Hy'm not letting you look."
Accent mostly dropped, even. So... Pretty bad. He was aware, he was talking, he was even mostly logical, and if his nerves could grow back Sorin was almost sure his brain could fix itself with time, but obviously that wouldn't be happening straight away.
"Another five minutes," he said, voice gentling. Velimir nodded wordlessly and sank to the floor, fingers wound through the grate.
He found a good stopping point another five or six turns in, a deep recess into the cliff with slopes encasing them on both sides, cutting off most of the view. There were no trees, mostly thorn bushes, and enough space to restart the transport without shooting overboard, if it deigned to restart. Sorin parked and climbed out.
It involved kicking the door out of its frame, because it was well and truly stuck, but like hell he was letting it stop him at that point.
He went around the truck, finding Velimir already wobbling his way down the ramp. The Jäger seemed relatively steady on flat ground; Sorin watched him, but didn't follow. If he could do his business without his hand being held, that'd be good for both of their prides. Still keeping track of him, Sorin went to check out the bushes for edible berries.
He found a little stream -- not a surprise, from the greenery springing around it -- and crouched and drank his fill from his cupped hands. The water was snowmelt-cold, almost painful on his fingers but perfect down his throat.
Velimir joined him at a wobble and almost took a header into the water. Sorin grabbed his arm to stop him, until he realized it was deliberate. The Jäger splashed his own face vigorously and rubbed it, before even drinking. Half of his face was pretty much purplish-brown. Sorin wondered how bad it had been a hour ago.
"Feeling better?"
"Some. Hrngh. Ooh, berries."
They sat on a rock and ate berries. When the pouch Sorin had made of the bottom of his shirt was empty they got up and checked the bushes for more. Sorin found a nest -- some small bird, the eggs were tiny -- and let Velimir have three of them. He slurped up the contents of the fourth. Not a lot of protein, but it was still something. Knock on wood that he didn't get sick from eating it raw.
He went back to the transport to check it for anything useful. He found maintenance kits, mostly, nothing edible, and no bottle he wanted to empty of its oil and put drinking water into. Why couldn't the spider drivers come with their snacks and conveniently leave them behind? Unfair.
And that stupid ramp. Hrrmgh. Thankfully it wasn't hard, closing it; just a matter of turning a winch and locking the chain. It grated a little, but the roof wasn't twisted enough out of true to prevent it.
Oh, right. "You want to ride with me in front, or sleep in the back?" he called out to Velimir.
"Hy think Hy sleep enough." Velimir yawned, jaw opening a bit too wide to seem natural. "Can Hy drive?"
Sorin snorted. "Haha, no. Come on, then, I don't want to stop that long yet. Who knows when they'll catch up."
Velimir dragged his hooves to the cabin and climbed in, claws planted in the wooden seat to haul his weight up. Sorin followed, closed the door; the door didn't stay closed. He decided that too bad, he had no rope to tie it with so it may as well flap away.
It took him a few minutes to remember how to start the vehicle.
The transport jerked ahead and in a half-circle. Sorin brought it back under control and started driving down the winding road again.
It only took him five minutes to notice Velimir's tense shoulders and the way he cringed subtly before each hairpin turn.
"So uh, do hyu think Hy could try de driving thing maybe."
"Do you know how to drive this?"
"Doesn't look hard--"
"Hah! Denied."
Velimir sank into his seat, pulling the hat low on his face. "Sveetie -- hhhg cliff!"
Sorin rolled his eyes. Drama queen. Sorin didn't second-guess every step he took when he ran in the woods with Sorin on his back, no matter how close to tree trunks and wild beasts they got, did he? And Velimir got them a lot closer to tree trunks and wild beasts. Inches away, sometimes. Granted, the transport was pretty huge, but still. "I've got it under control."
"Ken hyu haff it under control slower?"
Sorin breathed through his nose. "It doesn't go slower. Or if it does I haven't figured it out." Velimir was making him stressed out about driving again. "It's fine, I've got it under control. I just need to concentrate, you know, anticipate the --"
"Ken Hy be sick."
"I've got it under control, if you stop distracting me."
Velimir didn't say another word until they were back on somewhat flatter terrain, some thirty minutes later. When Sorin risked a glance off the road to check on him, he found him asleep, wedged in the corner. He kept driving.