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OATHBREAKER

One

It was a dark and stormy night... .

:Pah!: Warrl said with disgust so thick Tarma could taste it. :Must you even think in cliches'?:

Tarma took her bearings during another flash of lightning, tried and failed to make out Warrl's shaggy bulk against watery blackness, then thought back at him, Well it is, danmit!

Tarma shena Tale'sedrin, who was Shin'a'in nomad, Kal'enedral (or, to outClansmen, a "Sword-sworn"), and most currently Scoutmaster for the mercenary company called "Idra's Sunhawks" was not particularly happy at this moment. She was sleet-drenched, cold and numb, and mired to her armpits; as was her companion, the lupine kyree Warrl. The Sunhawks' camp was black as the in-side of a box at midnight, for all it was scarcely an hour past sunset. Her hair was plastered flat to her skull, and trickles of icy water kept running into her eyes. She couldn't even feel the ends of her ringers anymore. Her feet hurt, her joints ached, her nose felt so frozen it was like to fall off, and her teeth were chattering hard enough to splinter. She was not pleased, having to stumble around in the dark and freezing rain to find the tent she shared with her partner and oathbound sister, the White Winds sorceress, Kethry.

The camp was dark out of necessity; even in a downpour sheltered fires would normally burn in the firepits in front of each tent, or a slow-burning torch would be staked out in the lee of every fourth, but that was impossible tonight. You simply couldn't keep a fire lit when the wind howled at you from directions that changed moment by moment, driving the rain before it; and torches under canvas were a danger even the most foolhardy would forgo.  A few of the Sunhawks had lanterns or candles going in their tents; but the weather was foul enough that most preferred to go straight to sleep when not on duty.

It was too plaguey cold and wet to be sociable. For heat, most stuck to the tiny charcoal braziers Idra had insisted they each pack at the beginning of this campaign. The Sunhawks had known their Captain too well to argue about (what had seemed at the time) a silly burden; now they were grateful for her foresight.

But with the rain coming down first in cascades, then in waterways, Tarma couldn't see the faint glow of candles or lanterns shining through the canvas walls that would have told her where the tents were. So she slogged her way through the camp mostly by memory and was herself grateful to Idra for insisting on an orderly camp, laid out neatly, in proper rows. and not the hugger-mugger arrangement some of the other mere officers were allowing. At least she wasn't tripping over tent ropes or falling into firepits.

:I can smell Keth and magic,: Warrl said into her mind. :You should see the mage-light soon. :

"Thanks, Furball," Tarma replied, a little more mollified; she knew he wouldn't hear her over the howl of the wind, but he'd read the words in her mind. She kept straining her eyes through the tem-pest for a sight of the witchlight Keth had prom-ised to leave at the front-to distinguish their tent from the two hundred odd just like it.