Children of The Underground

Chapter 6: The Upyr

Drazhek and Misha were walking up the hill. Without the Brass Compass, their travel had slowed down into a crawl. Misha led the pair, as usual, relying on both her memory of the path they traveled and the sharpened instincts she developed on the path of the vedmak.

To Misha, a vedmak's "instincts" were actually quite simple. Deep down, at some level, all creatures foreign to the zone sensed something deeply wrong with it. It was described by many of her old partners—Boris The Wolf and Lena The Gunslinger, for example—as the sense of being watched. But to Misha, it was more of a premonition, the sense of one's impending demise. Once you stopped to listen to that premonition, it'd even tell you what sort of death awaited you. If you felt your skin prickle, it suggested lightning. If it grew a little hot and you started sweating, then fire was your foe.

But that fear was buried below all the other fears you felt in the zone. Especially the overarching, yammering fear that told you something wasn't right in the zone. That you had to get out by the shortest and fastest route possible. And zones, in their infinite cruelty, often made the shortest route the most deadly.

That's why vedmaks went in groups. Or at least in pairs. Humans felt less fear when they were around one another, and the fear of the zone could be sharpened into something useful. The Fear, the greatest one that people felt in the zones, would make people cautious and cunning, but wouldn't paralyze them.
Misha glanced back at Drazhek, saw the grim determination as he held his blunderbuss, then went back to navigating. Drazhek understood implicitly the second reason for traveling in groups—the power of trust. People became braver, more reliable, more resilient, when they knew that someone depended on them. They coordinated better when they trusted one another, and listened to each other better true.
We need to find you a nickname she thought. They call me 'The Magpie', on account of how often I find good shit in the zone. And since even a day in the zone no longer makes you a pravichok...

"Misha, how much farther?" Drazhek asked. His tone was impatient, but he sounded more scared than annoyed.
"Just a little further..." She replied, a little impatiently herself. She resented him a little for breaking her concentration, but she knew it was just their predicament. They were both on edge from the loss of the Brass Compass. "Hey, Drazhek...So what exactly are you're going to make?"

"It's called a Cherenkovo Device." He replied. The tension in his voice had slackened. "You take a can or a jar, any kind of box would do, really, and you tie a wire through it. After tying the wire, you attach a ribbon of flattened orichalc to it."

They cleared the forest, and now were standing at the clearing on top of the hill. The sky was a pearly, greyish white from last night's thunderstorm. But it was bright out. Good weather to look for scrap metal.
"I can talk for hours about the Cherenkovo device. But I think it'd be easier to show you..." Drazhek holstered his blunderbuss and walked past her. He then turned around, simultaneously pulling out the pistol he had strapped to his thigh. "Cover me, will you?" He asked, handing the pistol to Misha.
"You know I will," Misha replied, clasping the pistol in her fingers. She reached for her blunderbuss, hesitated, then drew her sword instead. It was a long, single-edged weapon that curved back a little at the tip, like a cavalry saber. For a hilt, it had a wooden, two-handed grip and a simple, metal crossbar.
Drazhek nodded with approval, and started walking towards the corpse pile. Misha followed, gun clutched in one hand, sword clenched in the other.

When they reached the corpse pile, Drazhek knelt into it, and began stripping the bodies. Misha watched as he first began tearing open rucksacks and purses. He found two rectangular hand mirrors couched in orichalc, promptly stuffing them in his rucksack. After a minute or more, he found a lantern. Not an autotorch, like the ones they had. Not even one that took burning fuzz as its fuel.