Vance thought it sounded like a waste of time. “We’ve got this one day to prepare and you’re making cord? If I were you, I’d be looking to that axe of yours.” He glanced at the weapon, propped up against the wall of the cave near the older man. “Test the edge. It’s blunt.”
Lars tore off another strip of leather and grunted. “It is not.”
“Show it to me.”
Setting down the leather and knife, Lars pushed himself to his feet. His back made a cracking sound and, not for the first time, Vance wondered at the skinner’s age. Lars grabbed his axe and brought it over.
Vance took the weapon. The axe was short but heavy, with a haft of timber and a half-moon blade of bone. Vance ran the edge of the axe over his forearm, pushing it against the hair. “See?”
“What about it?”
Vance handed Lars the axe and again picked up his sword. He scraped the blade along his skin. A single swipe shaved the hair from a patch on his arm.
Lars scowled and inspected his axe. “I haven’t sharpened it in a while, that’s all.”
“The problem is you keep taking off more of the edge. If you hone with a smooth stone, you’ll need to sharpen it less often. Here.” Vance handed Lars the stone.
Lars hefted the stone, as if he wanted to throw it at Vance’s head, but then he stalked away. Vance smiled as Lars sat down with his axe. Gathering his collection of blades, Vance sheathed them one by one, then took them to his pack. He hummed a tune to himself, pleased that the cave was peaceful.
A loud whirring came from behind him.
His head jerked round and he stared at Ruth. She was hunched over a circle of stones with a bow in her hand to start a fire. Her brow furrowed as she worked, yanking the bow back and forth to spin a long stick against a piece of flat wood on the ground.
Ruth’s short wavy hair was a dark shade of red, the color of the wasteland. She was pretty, with brown eyes and full lips, and wore a snug leather vest and trousers.
Vance watched while she grimaced and moved her arm furiously. Clearly she needed his help.
“Here, let me do it,” he said as he approached.
He knelt beside her and took the bow from her hands. She gave him a dark look, but he ignored her and began to saw with the bow. He frowned. He might not be as strong as Taimin, but the muscles in his arm were burning after just a few pushes and pulls. The stick caught in the bowstring and kept jumping off the flat timber beneath it, forcing him to stop and start again. He clenched his jaw tightly. His frown deepened.
Ruth gave a short laugh. “You’ve never used a bow to start a fire, have you?”
She snatched the bow back as Vance tried to think of a retort. Readying herself, she lifted her arm and started again. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and then smoke curled from the base of the pointed stick. Ruth set down the bow and put some dried grass to the smoldering wood. A tongue of flame caught hold and expanded as she fed the growing fire with twigs.
“You know weapons,” she said. “But when it comes to survival out here, you’ve got a long way to go.”
Vance felt a spike of irritation. “I do know weapons,” he said. “What’s yours?”
“I’m a healer. You know that.”
Vance grinned. “So you can’t fight, or you won’t?” Slowly he shook his head side to side. He let the silence grow and added a stick to the fire. His good mood began to return.
All of a sudden, Ruth left the fire and walked over to Lars. Vance turned and watched closely.
“Can you spare some of that leather?” Ruth asked the skinner. Several lengths rested at Lars’s feet as he honed the edge of his axe.
“What for?”
“Can you or can’t you?”
Lars scratched at his thick black beard. “Take what you need,” he said with a shrug.
Ruth sifted through the leather strips, then took some with her to the far side of the cavern. Without asking, she bent and grabbed one of Vance’s knives. Vance scowled, but she didn’t even look his way as she sat down near her own blanket. Wondering what she was up to, he watched as she began to work at the leather.
He raised his voice. “What are you making? A sling?” he asked.
“Something like that.”
Spying movement at the cave’s entrance, Vance saw Taimin and Selena enter together. Taimin looked tired, and when Vance saw the size of the sand lizard on his shoulder, he could understand why. Selena looked much the same as always: pretty, but in a delicate way, slight and slender with long hair as black as night, and high cheekbones. Like Taimin, she wore basic traveling clothes, dusty but well made.
Vance tilted his head. Taimin’s limp looked worse than usual, but he knew better than to say anything as Taimin walked toward the fire and set down the dead sand lizard.
Vance glanced up at his friend. “Any trouble out there?”
“None,” Taimin said.
Selena opened her mouth, and a shadow crossed her odd-colored eyes—one green, the other brown—but she didn’t say anything.
Inspecting the sand lizard, with its gray hide and three horns, Vance wondered if Ruth was right. He knew about weapons, and had once earned a living trading them, but that didn’t mean he was used to the constant danger out in the wasteland. He couldn’t imagine going out alone and facing down such a menacing creature.
He hoped that no one else knew about the fear he was trying to hide.
The cave’s entrance was dark. Nightfall had descended on the plain. The meal was done, and the coals had settled down to red embers.
As he sat with the fire in front of him, Taimin rubbed his foot. The throbbing had settled to a constant ache. He had to hope he would feel better by the morning.
He was trying to put on a brave face, but in truth he was afraid about letting his companions down. Until he met Griff, he had never strayed far from the homestead where he grew up. Now he was making a long, perilous journey.
He reminded himself of what he knew about their destination. In Zorn, they had discovered a map of the wasteland with a symbol—a marker—twin to the one at the city itself, but also connected by a few bridging lines to the firewall. While the marker was in a barren desert with few features, their hope was to find a path through the firewall to the lush paradise that Taimin and Selena had seen from the sky.
The well in Zorn was dry. Without water, death would come to the city. If Taimin and his companions were successful, they could lead everyone to a verdant land, filled with rivers, lakes, and oceans.
While Selena, Vance, and Ruth slept nearby, Lars also faced the fire. Thinking about Zorn made Taimin again wonder at the city’s mysterious builders.
“Where did they get the stone?” Taimin asked. His brow was furrowed as he stared into the coals. “The city was built on a plain.”
Lars grunted. “Plenty of stone around.”
“White stone? That much of it?”
“Lad, we might never find out who built Zorn. It was hundreds of years ago, long before our time. I’m more interested in what’s outside the firewall. Water to drink. Animals to hunt. Trees to build houses with. Good soil and space for crops to grow.” He poked at the embers with a stick and tossed up fiery sparks. “Freedom to roam.”
Taimin remained pensive. “They were tall.”