Horizons

18 Running to Conclusions

"Look Simon, you call me Master one more time and you're fucking walking," Izzy stated, quite annoyed. Simon and Grand Master Isabella were seated beside each other on the driver's bench of the wagon that was heading to Lorristown with a contingent of Caretakers. "Hey Heaven, what do you call me?" She called out to the spear carrying outrunner to her left.

Heaven, one of the more weathered Caretakers flanking the wagon, turned around with a confused look on his face, glanced back at his other roaming peers, and took the opening Izzy had just given him. "Old-Lady Izzy, the bag of bones, dust queen of the ancients." he replied. The group of caretakers flanking the wagon let out a collective, "Ooooh" and laughed, celebrating the creativeness of the jibe.

"You little shit!" Izzy bellowed. She quickly turned to glance at the back of the wagon. "Tan," She called out to the surrounding company, "where the fuck's my spear, it's thirsty for whelp blood." The group all started laughing and Heaven parodied jogging further away from the moving convoy." Tan! You hid it, didn't you, you little fucker." The group laughed again. "Ah screw it," She said after her search ended fruitlessly. "Heaven, you're lazy ass is just jealous that I'm up here and you're down there."

Simon was surprised with the lack of reverence these rangers showed the Grand Master of their order. His eyes darted skeptically around the Caretakers, suspicious of what would come next. Pete was still passed out in the back of the wagon, his worry had stolen a good nights sleep from him, and he was now catching up, even though it was well passed dawn and the wagon's lack of suspension jostled him endlessly.

"Tan! You mind telling our Engineer friend how you address me?" Izzy queried of the slightly less gruff Caretaker.

"Just your name, Izzy. Couldn't you tell him yourself?" Tan had an impulse to trash talk her by questioning here senility, but this moment was a little unusual and he decided to be straight and see where this was going.

"See, when we're out ranging, there is absolutely none of that hierarchy bullshit the rest of the orders cling to like a mother's tit." Izzy started explaining to Simon. "When we're out in the bush I need to know the people out here are free to tell me what they see and think, we Caretakers rely on each other's candor so that we can stay alive. If someone feels that I somehow know better then them, they might not speak up, and the rest of us will be in danger. We're a team out here, and if one of us is better than the rest, dumb shit will happen. Get it. Stop being dumb, you're Simon, I'm Izzy, we're equals out here. We need you to start thinking that way."

"Yeah Simon, stop being a little bitch!" Shouted a Caretaker named Vanessa, who was taking up the right flank.

Simon, trying to think of something ribald to say as a response, had nothing. So, he answered generically. "I'll do my best." It seemed to work, the Caretakers all let out a hardy laugh in response.

The party, a wagon surrounded by a dozen or so Caretakers had been rolling late into the night, at about the two thirds point to Lorristown they made a simple camp and rested for the night until sunrise. The envoy had broken camp very quickly this morning after eating a breakfast of crackers, cheese, and some venison jerky. For most of this journey Simon had been worried about being away from the planning, and still very concerned about the danger they were about to walk into. Some of the previous day and most of this morning he had spent probing the Grand Master, searching for any insight she might have, or any advice she could give. He didn't know what he expected of her, everyone was equally in the dark, but he needed to find something, anything that he could add to his metrics. He thought that maybe she would shed some grain of wisdom, some anecdote that would sway his opinion and give him some semblance of confidence in their inexperienced and entirely theoretical plan. All she had given him up until this point were grunts, nods, and the odd acknowledgement that the questions he was asking were important, even though there were no answers. At least he knew now why she had appeared to be getting more irritated throughout their encounter.