Outlanders

Chapter 10: Ranger

Caldus lay awake. It was not the first time she had had troubles sleeping, and she knew it would not be the last. The snoring of Eva and her children grated on her like a swarm of insects. Her skin felt like it was made of wool. Drops of sweat ran under her hairline, while her fingers and toes ached with cold.

Caldus sat up and palmed her eyes, then looked around. Zoltána slept with her fists clenched, while Leif lay as limp as a cooked noodle, his face pressed deep into his pillow and his ears flat on the ground. The children slept in a pile around Eva.

Caldus moved herself gently away from Astrapi, then got to her feet. Astrapi stirred, and his pretty blue eyes fluttered open.

"Hey," he whispered to her. "Are you alright?"

"I can't sleep," said Caldus. "I'm going for a walk."

"Can I come?"

"I'd rather go alone."

"Are you mad at me, Caldus?"

"No. I just need to be alone for a while."

"Is that really it?"

"Yes."

"Okay..."

Astrapi lay back down. With practiced silence, Caldus donned a coat and stole out of the room. Before long, she was on the street, watching her breath drift away from her in thin clouds. Her skin bristled against the cold.

Caldus wandered the streets for a few minutes, letting her head clear.

A shriek drew her attention. All over her body, her nerves tightened, and she dashed after the source of the sound, her shoes throwing up mud.

Around several bends, in the only developed section of Kleinstadt, Caldus saw a pair of burly watchmen dragging a bewildered woman in a yellow dress. Behind them, a boy in a cloak sprinted towards her, clutching a coin sack.

"What's going on over there?" Caldus said to the cloaked boy.

"There's a witch," said the boy, stopping.

"A witch? What do you mean?"

"She was making a plague. That's been illegal forever."

Before she could ask anything else, the boy bolted off, vanishing in the night.

Caldus looked up to the watchmen and determined to get in front of them. They turned a corner around a dusty old wooden shop, and Caldus leapt up onto a nearby windowsill, then over the roof and nimbly down to the street on the other side. There, she stood up straight with her fists clenched as the watchmen rounded the corner toward her.

Their victim, she saw, was a woman with long, flowing black hair and a bright yellow dress filthy with mud. The woman looked desperately around, stammering incoherently.

"What are you doing?" demanded Caldus, stepping in front of the watchmen.

"Who wants to know?" one of them growled.

"This pyromancer. I heard that that girl is going in for plague-crafting. Are you going to try and lock me up too?"

"Pyromancy is legal. But this one's a witch."

"No! I am not a witch!" cried the prisoner, in an airy, staccato accent. "I do not know what a witch is, but I promise you, I did not trying to do anyone sick! Please! There is to be some mistake!"

"There is to be some mistake, huh?" the officer mocked. "Save it for the judge."

The prisoner looked pleadingly to Caldus. Caldus answered with a wink, then stepped aside and let the men pass.