The going was, well, wet. The tree branches dripped with collected dew that hadn’t escaped with the morning’s mist, and had an annoying habit of dripping in that spot at the back of someone’s neck where it runs down their spine, thoroughly soaking every part of their shirt. Dayton and Cara slogged through the freezing cold water, their feet blocks of ice, from hillock to hillock. 

 

They took a generally westerly route, though the web of hidden sandbars occasionally made direct progress impossible. 

 

When they stopped on a slightly bigger-than-average bump for a midday bite, Cara sent up a quick prayer to the local marsh god that they were going the right way, letting a few crumbs fall to the ground. 

 

Dayton did the same, she noticed, though neither said what their prayers had been. 

 

He’d loosened the baby kaprid’s cloth muzzle, too, much to Cara’s displeasure, to feed the infant a soft piece of jerky. It snapped up the snack, tilting its head back to let the meat slide down its gullet. 

 

Cara shuttered and looked for the next stretch of riverbed that would lead them—with the luck of the gods—out of the river part of the swamp and onto (reasonably) dry land.   

 

They came across nothing more dangerous than otters and squirrels, thankfully, though Cara did spot what looked like a den beneath the roots of a water-loving tree and pawprints that were so fresh, they were still filling with water by the time the pair stumbled across them. 

 

The tracks were those of a cat and a bird, though so closely mixed together Cara couldn’t be sure if they were from two separate creatures passing at the same time… or if they were from the same body.

 

Cara checked to make sure her sling was ready to be used at a moment’s notice and moved on from the spot.

 

Dayton handled his burden manfully. Cara had to admit that she was impressed with his endurance, and said so. He snorted at the compliment.

 

“The monks didn’t believe in idle hands,” he said, “and I’ve done my fair share of penance.”

 

Cara grunted as her foot stumbled on a hidden rock. She came down harder than she’d intended on her injured leg. A spasm of red-hot pain turned her grunt into a gasp. 

 

“Rock, sorry, I’m fine,” she said before he could ask what was wrong, covering her reaction and pain with a quickly asked, “But penance? Your hands are petal-soft, like you’ve never done anything worth doing.”

 

“Praying to the gods is always worth doing,” he replied piously.

 

“It makes your hands rough, does it?”

 

Cara meant only to tease him, to distract herself from the pulsing stabs of heat that seemed to grow stronger with each step she took, but Dayton took her question at face value. 

 

“Work to any of the gods or goddesses should always make your hands rough, or so says the abbot. Crafting is blessed by both the dark and the light, and so they forced us to learn something of all of them in the hopes we’d find a specialty.” 

 

Dayton sighed. “I never did find a craft that was worth chafing my fingers for. It took me weeks to soften the calluses from the month we trained at archery.”

 

Cara bit her lip and counted to sixteen. It wouldn’t help anyone if she unleashed the sudden surge of jealousy that welled within her stomach. All she’d ever been able to train with was a common sling. 

 

Here Dayton was, letting lessons she would’ve chopped off a limb to get fade away because he didn’t like a little rough skin. 

 

Her attention wavered from the path ahead. Her foot kicked something solid, and she sprawled forward. Instinctively, she threw out her hands to catch herself, already cursing the damp sleeves she’d have in addition to the wet trousers— 

 

—but her palms landed on springy moss and ferns. The soft fronds felt cool and soft against her skin.

 

They’d reached an edge of the waterlogged swamp. The shore only rose a few inches above the swamp water, but Cara was already mostly out of the water. 

 

It was such a relief to finally be on a flat surface that didn’t immediately soak every exposed limb that she just lay there for a moment, enjoying the almost bouncy feel of the moss beneath her.

 

“Cara? Are you okay? Cara!” Dayton’s panic practically pulsed in waves. Cara heard him hurry toward her, sloshing in the shallow water, and stop when he saw why she hadn’t moved. 

 

“Thank all that’s holy, land!”

 

Dayton quickly scrambled up beside her, sitting so that his back rested against the chest strapped to his back. 

 

He rubbed where the buckles strained at his shoulders. “Do you think I can take this thing off now? It’s damned heavy.”

 

“Not quite yet.” With a groan, Cara rolled onto her side and got a hand underneath her so she could lever herself back into an upright position and stand. “Let’s find someplace a bit drier, and we can settled down there. I don’t think even you can light moss with your ‘trade secret.’” 

 

Cara rolled her stiff neck and refused to massage her wound. Free of the cooling water, it flared with heat every time she took a step. She hoped that Dayton thought the dark spot on the bottom of her trousers was a water stain.

 

Dayton eyed the moss speculatively, then shook his head. “Start it, maybe, but not keep it going.” He held one hand up, and Cara grabbed it to haul him to his feet.

 

Cara tried to keep her ears sharp, as she had during their trek through the water, but it was like her leg was sapping all her strength and attention away from the outside to focus on the pulsing that had settled, bone-deep into the slash wound. 

 

Her head began to bow to look at the game trail they were following more often than the way in front, and she got slapped in the face more than once with a tree branch. 

 

It was a measure of Dayton’s exhaustion that he didn’t bother to make more than a breathy quip each time it happened.

 

That lack of attention almost got both of them killed, because the next thing she stumbled over was a bunyip.