Warrior of the Wild(59)

“I’m not sure whether to be touched, or offended that it’s taken you this long to realize that.”

“Touched,” Soren offers.





CHAPTER


17


The next morning, Soren and I pack for our trip up the mountain. It doesn’t take long. My few possessions are always in my pack. It’s mostly a matter of gathering food and blankets.

Then it’s catching ziken for my armor.

“Typical,” Iric says after the three of us have wandered for a quarter of an hour. “The beasts always show up when you don’t want them to, but the moment you actually need one they’re nowhere to be found!” He pauses after a few hundred yards to hack off the head of a snaketrap that’s grown into the path and casts it aside. He does this every time he comes across one.

“Hasn’t been able to stand the sight of the things after twisting his ankle in one,” Soren whispers to me. “Happened after the first month we were banished.”

I don’t blame Iric in the least. The plants are vile, and the smell of a slowly digesting and rotting snake is hardly something one could forget easily.

Eventually, a ziken does cross our path. It’s chasing some rodent through the undergrowth, but it stops as soon as it sees us. Soren, being the closest, decapitates it with two swings. One to knock it off balance and one to sever the head.

“Good,” Iric says. He looks between the dead ziken and me. Looks me up and down. “I’ll need two more to cover her in hides. Just in case.”

By the time we catch two more ziken and drag the carcasses to Iric’s forge, we’ve lost most of the day. Soren and I aren’t about to start the climb when the sun will set soon, so we postpone a day.

Soren doesn’t seem bothered by the delay. I would be beyond frustrated, and I’m impressed by his patience.

First thing tomorrow morning, we will start the climb.



* * *



AFTER A FULL NIGHT’S REST, Iric sees us off. “Don’t die. I will be very put out if I go through all this trouble to make you armor only to have you snuff out of existence before you get to try it on.”

I hide my grin. “Don’t worry about me. I’m good at staying alive.”

“Keep Soren alive for me, too.”

“Of course.”

Soren scoffs. “You’re talking as if I’m useless with an ax.”

“Nah,” Iric says. “I’m only worried you’ll be too distracted to keep an eye out for danger.”

Soren darts a glance in my direction and grins. “I’ll be fine.”

Iric looks between the two of us. He sighs. “Also, if you two want to, you know, be together, you now have my blessing.”

I blink several times before I can form words. “What are you talking about? We’re not holding ourselves back on your behalf.”

“Whatever you tell yourself, Raz. Do whatever you like on the mountain, just do not tell me about it when you return. Oh, and do hurry. Some of us have our own romantic attachments we’d like to get back to. Have a lovely time! I’m off to the forge.”

Iric spins on his heel and disappears down a trail. I’m left spluttering in his wake.

An awkward silence fills the space between Soren and me after that, so I start walking toward the road.

“You could have said something,” I say as Soren falls into step beside me.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. At the very least you could have smacked him upside the head.”

“I was so sure you were going to.”

“I was too stunned to do anything. He’s gotten cheekier.”

Soren actually grins at that. “He gets that way when he’s in a good mood. He’s excited to see Aros soon. Won’t you be in a good mood once you kill the god?”

“I don’t know how I’ll feel.” I sidestep a dangling branch and leap off a tilting rock on the ground.

“Me neither. I’ve spent so much time worrying about Iric, I haven’t had a chance to think about what completing my mattugr will mean for me.”

We veer around a tree so large, its base is twice the width of the tree house.

“Iric said you used to be different,” I say.

There’s a hitch in Soren’s stride. “What did he tell you?”

“You were arrogant and good at getting into trouble—and getting out of it. You were the best warrior in your village and the most sought after. Ladies hung off you.”

Soren drags a hand down his face. “Ladies did not hang off me.”

“No? What, then?”

“Well, they were there … It’s just…”

“I’m beyond amused watching you fumble for words.”

“It wasn’t like I was with a different girl every night. I had a lot of friends who were girls, and they hung around, and—”

“So they did hang off you.”

Now he glares at me. Actually glares. “And I suppose men didn’t flock to you back in Seravin?”

“Are you joking? A girl acting in a man’s job? One who wasn’t delicate or feminine or pretty? They wouldn’t come near me.”

He huffs out a breath of air, as if waiting for me to turn it into a joke. Then he realizes I’m serious. He searches for the right words, and I’m suddenly mortified to think he’s trying to make me feel better.