Orc And The Lastborn [Progression, Gunpowder Sword & Sorcery]

She dug out the mattresses from behind the bunks and dragged them over to an iron brazier pedestaled in the center of the bunk room. With the adze of her alpenstock she cut the mattresses into strips and piled them up. Their insides smelled of mold. She chose a number of the driest cuts from the pile and she placed them in the brazier in such a way to promote the flow of air that was needed. The pedestal had been blocked out of white marble and she asked its permission before sparking the flint. The fibers caught immediately and burned very bright and very hot but they had no last. By the time she put away the flint another needed to be slabbed on. In the flare of the firelight she hurried over to a bunk frame and segmented it out and chopped it apart. She turned back to the brazier and threw on the wood. There the tongues caressed the lengths of the frame. She saw the carved initials of their onetime occupants and sweethearts. She thought of them all floating in the sea. What made them float like that, she wondered. No dwarf ever floated of their own accord, living or dead.

It was pitch dark outside. She put another piece of bed frame on the brazier and then she took another one out and walked with it held up as a torch. At the entrance to to the tower she called out to Orc and then she pitched the firebrand into the road there. She went back inside. She hoped he hadn't caught the cat.

She sat there. More bedframes to break up. Stones she was tired. She shouldn't have given away the last of her food. Not for a cat. She wouldn't eat a cat, would she? She supposed she'd never know what she'd not eat until she was starving beside it. She supposed she was starving now.

She unrolled her bedding. When she laid upon it she could feel her joints creak. She was hungry. She tried to think of anything else. She was very hungry. Elk flank and gravy. Warm beer and pine nuts roasted up over the open forge. Lowlander sourdough dipped in nakbutter. The heat convecting up from the forge and flowing into her home rich with the char of the Karakos' pepper-rubbed wooly.

She heard his tread in the doorway. She opened her eyes and saw him standing at the entry. The blanket was damp at his shoulders and she saw evidence of fresh snowfall there and she saw a tiny furface peering out from the folds under his chin.

"It snowin?"

"Yeah."

"Ye set up a catchment?"

"Yeah."

"Yer friend help ye?"

He looked down at the cat. "Yeah."

"Ye keepin it?"

"Yeah."

"Not eatin it?"

He shook his head. "She's got no meat on her."

"Aye."

"We'll need to fatten her up first."

"Another mouth te feed's just what we need."

He came and sat across from her and he stretched his free hand to the fire and then pulled it back and ran it over the cat's head as if scooping heat on. It flattened its ears with every pass.

"She'll get by on scraps," he said.

"Well aren't ye just perfect fer each other."

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It appeared to her as if he smiled but perhaps it was a trick of the firelight.

"Ye got any of that shellfish left?"

"No."

"Ye give it all te the beast?"

"Yeah. I'll get you back what I borrowed."

"I didn't mean it lek that."

"It's just we haven't seen anyone else."

"I said I didn't mean it lek that."

"And we survivors will have to stick together."

She fed a cut of frame to the fire. "Aye."

"You know the saying about going far."

"I'm not arguin."

He scooted closer to the fire. He let the blanket drape off of his shoulders. He held the cat in the crook of his arm. She didn't much look at it. She almost wished he'd cook it up after all.

"There's a hundredweight of fish just lyin out there," she said.

"I looked through them. Even the shellfish have gone to rot."

"I'm willin te chance it."

He shook his head. "You're not thinking right."

"Me brain must needs feedin."

"We'll find something."

She looked at him, at his chest behind the cat. "Yer gettin skinny."

"I've been worse."

"Maybe those folk have somethin te eat."

"The dead?"

"Aye."

"What, in their pockets?"

"Aye maybe."

"There's nothing out there."

The fire crackled. All the mattresses burned through and now well into their meager supply of wood. She managed the fire and he continued to brush warmth into the cat pressed into his chest.

"Ye hidin a dove over there or what?"

"She's just happy."

"Aye she ate me dinner."

"I said I'd get you back for it."

They sat in silence a while. The cat kept on with its little rumbling.

"You've not spent much time with animals," he said.

"We don't keep beasts."

"Except naks."

She shook her head. "They keep us."

He looked into the fire as if contemplating this.

"Uhquah had that mule," he said.

"Aye but he was a lowlander."

She looked over at the remaining wood. She leaned back and looked through to the kitchen. "What in the glacier's gizzard did folk around here eat?"

She looked at him, at the fire. He looked back.

"We're idiots," she said.

She got up and pulled a brand from the brazier. He put the cat up on his shoulder and it clung there, its nails all sunk into his skin. He gathered up the wood and he followed her through the kitchen and to the locked door. He arranged the wood along its bottom. She held down the brand at either end and the kindling caught and she tossed it down. They watched together as the fire roared up and scorched up the wood and then died down. The door stood as it was but for some blackening, and they were out of fuel.

Her eyes were watered up, perhaps from the smoke that choked the room. "What kind of wood won't burn?" she said.

"We need a hotter fire."

She shook her head.

"We'll scare up some wood in the morning and have another go."

She left him there and went back to the brazier and laid down on her bedding. Out of the smoke. The floor was cold. The wool blanket had gone cold too. The few embers left glowing in the brazier offered no heat.

She heard him come in and stand over her.

"Ye have anythin te eat?" she said.

"No. You already asked."

"I know."

"Are you alright?"

"I'm cold and hungry enough to boil yer hide if ye ask me that again. Pile on that blanket and get down here."

He laid down beside her as had become their custom. For the first time his skin felt warm against hers. She turned and shifted back under his arm and she felt a kind of scraping and pinching in her stomach. She just needed to eat.

"There weren't any boats in the harbor," she said.

"No."

"I suspect there won't be many fish left te the sea neither."

"There may be. We get far enough offshore, deep enough to have not got scalded."

"How are we goin te do that without a boat?"

She felt him pull her a little closer. "We'll figure something out."

"How're we goin te cross the sea? Get back te the mountain? Back te me da and Khaz."

He didn't say anything.

"How're we goin te find Dara?"

"I don't know."

"I'm so hungry."

"I know."

She closed her eyes. She was too tired to weep. Her body began to tremble and in its stiffness each jerk was an anguish. She felt his arm pull her in and his chin come to rest against the top of her head.

"Ice of the dragon it's cold. Why's it so cold?"

"There's no sun."

"No moons no sun no stonesdamned food. Aren't ye cold?"

She felt him shift.

"Here," he said.

She felt the little feet creep up to her hip and then along her side. She felt them knead up the back of her arm then they finally settled between her shoulderblade and his chest, just under where his arm came across her. She could feel the thing purr. She rested her head on her hand. For the first time that day she didn't notice how hungry she was.