HS&S:WT Short

[sabremeister]

Trepid Explorer

"Spread your legs."

"What? Why?"

"We need accurate measurements for the saddle."

"I've told you before, I'm not riding."

"You either ride or get left behind."

"I'm driving a cart. My mission requires more equipment than can be carried by a horse."

"Carts are too slow. We'll give you an extra animal for your stuff."

"Fine, have it your way."

Epiridus spread his legs and stood like he was riding a horse. The mercenary armourer, who doubled as a farrier, saddlemaker, and quartermaster, bent down and ran a length of string from knee to knee, first in a straight line, then following the line of Epiridus' legs.

"Ye Gods. I don't think we've got an animal small enough to fit the saddle you'll need."

"Oh no," the scholar deadpanned, "I guess that means I'll have to go by cart instead."

"Hff. We'll see. We'll find one somewhere."

Since the armourer had stood up and was turning away, Epiridus brough his feet back together. "How can you even get a saddle made to my size overnight anyway?"

"We got a wizard. They can do loads of shit like that, it's dead handy."

"Marvellous. Are you done?"

"Yeah, mostly. You can piss off if you wanna."

"I think I will."

Epiridus left the armourer's office and headed for the officers' mess of the mercenary company he had been assigned as an escort on his mission. He was a scholar, specifically an historian, and he had resided at the court of King Aspartane of Chalgan for nearly ten years now, giving the royal court and associated nobles and generals and wizards an historical perspective on current political events. The Realm of Chalgan was not an overly powerful one, but it was one of the Big Four countries of the North - the others being Galorndan and Turnobae (which were currently joined at the hip), and Morat. Ever since the last of the Wizard-Princes of Morat had been ripped limb-from-limb by a demon, King Aspartane had decided that his country's intelligence services weren't all they could be, due to the fact that they hadn't even noticed their neighbouring country had launched a covert assassination mission centred around a prodigous spellcaster who had triggered the Turnobanian court's diviners as soon as she arrived in the capital. To rectify this problem, instead of straining the Realm's resources even further, he decided that sufficiently close studies of the past could indicate what future actions other countries would take, and why. Hence, he had hired Epiridus and four others.

The historians had barely predicted the war with Ras Natara; once warnings from King Dashell had started arriving, they had the necessary hint to look in that direction. They had also predicted that Turnobae-Galorndan would commit all their forces to opposing it, and not try and take advantage if their neighbours did the same. While King Aspartane had believed them, not all of his noble advisors could be convinced, and it had been an uphill struggle to get them to agree to the degree of commitment that Dashell had asked for.

Since the war had ended largely due to the efforts of the same Destiny-riddled prodigous caster on a secret mission away south in the Sylliku Wastes, and there had been rumours of her finding and destroying a lost civilisation down there, King Aspartane had decided that the Sylliku Wastes required greater study. He had already sent three purely military expeditions to carve a safe path to the heart of the wastes, and two other research missions of wizards and priests; now it was the turn of the historians, and Epiridus had drawn the short straw.

Why historians? As their name implied, the Sylliku Wastes were uninhabited - apart from a few settlements of outlaws and so on, that is. But they hadn't always been so. Over a thousand years ago, the Sylliku Wastes had been home to an empire that had conquered almost all of the North. True, it had only lasted a few decades before uprisings combined to form a rebellion and beat them back to their starting point, but it had still managed a never-repeated feat. The Ras Natarans hadn't even conquered half as much as the Syllikus had, and most of that was thanks to the fact they had a fully grown dragon with them. Anyway, the thinking among the court was that if anything were to be found that the Realm could use to its' advantage, it would be from the remains of the Sylliku Empire, and probably closely tied to the rumoured lost civilisation. Hence, they needed to send someone who could dig up an interesting-looking thing, and work out at a glance whether it was the key to an ancient artifact of great power, or just a bandit's lost belt buckle or scabbard tip.

Epiridus still wasn't sure why they thought that needed an historian. Surely an armourer, or a blacksmith, or a potter, or a mason, or a jeweller, or just about any craftsman, would be better than a scholar - someone who knew what the shape of useful things were, rather than someone who would need to look it up. At any rate, he had been selected to go, and that meant taking a pile of reference books (to see if anything found had been encountered before), cataloguing supplies (so that anything they found could be re-examined by a proper expert later, and they would still know where it had been found), and a few magical devices known as clay feet (which were used to indicate whether there was anything underground, which it accomplished by aiming a thunderclap spell straight into the ground it was placed on, and if there was to illuminate its' outline on the surface). Plus, of course, all the usual travelling and camping supplies and equipment.

The reason for the rush was that the Realm's intelligence services had, for once, actually found something out before it was too late. The Caliphate of Hadin had, somewhat naturally, given their position between Chalgan and the Sylliku Wastes, found out about the missions the Realm were mounting there. In order not to lose out on potential finds in territory they considered they had first dibs on, they were mounting their own expeditions. It was now a race.

The first few missions had been able to obtain permission to march through Turnobae and Hadin, along the coast. However, now that Hadin was in on the game, Chalgan had been informed that any further expeditions they sent would not be permitted to go further than Bizen. Since Bizen was close to the Turnobae-Hadin border, and quite a distance away from the area where Hadin stopped trying to claim authority on the northern fringes of the Sylliku Wastes, this was less than ideal. Further complicating matters was that Turnobae-Galorndan had said they would not be able to take ship in Cholbug so they could sail the rest of the way. This meant that the expeditions had to head north from the Chalgan capital, Zarbel, to their one major seaport, Etsyn, and sail from there right around the bulge of the coast. Of course, once they were round the bulge, they could save some time by cutting straight across the Bay of Discord and making landfall more than halfway along the Syllikun Peninsula - but no Chalganite captain really liked sailing out of sight of land at night. So the Realm had to pay through the nose to get a ship captain willing to take a straight-line route instead of following the coast, had to pay to lay in more supplies for the expedition to last the longer journey, and had to factor in at least three days journey time heading in the wrong direction.

Epiridus was not familiar with the term "logistics", but he was damn glad he was not responsible for it for this expedition.

Sitting in a lone chair in the officers' mess, he mentally ran down a checklist of all the things he should have done before departure, which was to be dawn tomorrow. As far as he could recall, he had done everything required of him, and everything he needed to do on a personal level. The Syllikun Wastes were legendarily dangerous, haunted, cursed, and other unpleasant words, so he had put his affairs in order in case he didn't come back. Not that he had many affairs to put in order - the court saw to most of his daily needs, he didn't have a ladyfriend, wasn't engaged in a personal project, owed no money, and owned no business. Maybe a hair-raising, hurried, grave-robbing expedition to the Sylliku Wastes would help liven up his social life when he got back - if he got back.

He was just musing on what sort of a social life he would be able to gain when he thought he heard someone say his name. He stirred and looked over his shoulder towards the doorway, from where he had heard his name.

"He's in there," someone was saying, their arm visible through the doorway.

"Thanks," a female voice replied, and she stepped into view as she entered the room. She scanned the room and located Epiridus quickly, and with only the briefest hesitation walked over to him. She was considerably younger than him, dressed in sensible travelling clothes, and utterly gorgeous. As soon as Epiridus realised she was heading his way he hauled himself to his feet. "Are you Epiridus?" she asked as she arrived in front of him.

The historian forced himself to blink, and that seemed to snap him out of the trance he'd been in since he first saw her. "Ah, yes," he said. "Yes, I am."

"Good." She held out her hand for shaking, which Epiridus did purely on reflex. "My name is Gertrude, I've been assigned as your assistant."

"Assistant?" he managed.

"Yes, on the expedition to the Sylliku Wastes." She seemed to be waiting for something, but Epiridus had no idea what it might be until she asked if she could sit down.

"What? Oh, yes, yes, please do. Sit... sit down." Epiridus blinked again and shook his head as she moved past him to retrieve a nearby chair, then they both sat facing each other.

"I must say, I'm very excited to be going on this expedition. It'll be my first major assignemnt outside the city."

"Uh, yes, mine too."

"Really? But you're so much older than me, surely they must have sent you out of Zarbel for something before now?"

"Well, no, not really. I'm an historian, I do most of my work in a library."

"Oh," she said in a considerably less enthused tone than she had been using up to now. Epiridus took the opportunity of her deflation to try and work out what was going on.

"I, er, I hadn't been told I was to have an assistant," he said. "Any idea why you were assigned to me?"

"Oh, no, I haven't a clue. I mean, I just assumed it was the sort of thing that happened, I don't have any experience of how all this academic stuff works."

"Er, okay. What are you?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"What are you? What is your discipline?"

"Oh, I see, yes. I'm an archaeologist."

"An ... archaeologist?"

"Yes - I dig up the past and analyse it."

Epiridus sat back and pinched the bridge of his nose. Her beauty was damaging his ability to think. "This expedition is going to the Sylliku Wastes, so there will likely be plenty of past to dig up, but I can't help but wonder why you weren't given an expedition of your own?"

"Oh goodness, they'd never give me an expedition! I mean, apart from the fact I'm a woman, I'm only twenty-one!"

"Well then, why not send you on an expedition with your master?"

"Master?"

"The person who taught you to do archaeology."

"I don't know. I imagine he'll be sent on one sooner or later."

"Urrgh!" Epiridus slumped over and rested his head in his hands, elbows propped on his knees.

"Are you alright?" Gertrude asked.

"No," he growled. "The people running these missions have gone and fucked things up!"

"I'm sorry?"

Epiridus sat up and looked at her - then blinked and forced himself to focus only on a very small part of her face. "You're an archaeologist. You dig up the past and analyse it. You write down your results and put them in a library, and grab anything that looks interesting and put it in a museum. I'm an historian, I dig up reports in libraries and look at stuff in museums, and I analyse them, and write another report for the library. For you, field work is going to somewhere with ruins and poking around for a bit. For me, field work is going to the library and poking around for a bit. They've got me doing your sort of field work, and you've been sent as my assistant instead of the other way around!"

"Oh. Well, I suppose when you put it like that, it is rather counter-intuitive, isn't it?"

"Yes, yes it is." Epiridus sighed, then stood up. "Right, well, now that you're here, I can go to the palace and get them to take me off this blasted expedition, and you can go and do your field work undisturbed."

Gertrude stood up as well. "No, please don't do that!"

"What? Why? Look, I know you're young, but you'll have to lead an expedition sooner or later. May as well be this one, because there's no point both of us going, is there, not when your speciality is far better suited to what'll need doing than mine is."

"But - but I can't!"

"Of course you can. What's stopping you?"

Gertrude shrank back and looked around nervously. "Can we talk privately?" she asked in a whisper.

Epiridus' eyebrows jerked up. "Okay," he shrugged. "We can use the room they gave me for tonight. Follow me." He led the way out of the mess, up the stairs, along the corridor, and in through the last door on the right. It was a tiny and very sparse bunkroom, with nothing in it but the beds against the wall, and two chests opposite them. "Here," he said, holding the door open for Gertrude, "they said I could use this. Apparently this is where they put all their clients' watchdogs for missions."

"They didn't offer me a room," she said as she came in. Epiridus closed the door and gestured to her to sit if she wished. She shook her head and continued. "The reason they didn't offer me a room was that I haven't told them about my official capacity yet."

"I'm sure they-" Epiridus began, but she raised a hand to cut him off.

"I haven't told them about my official capacity yet, because I, strictly speaking, don't have one."

Epiridus just looked at her blankly. "What?"

"The truth is, I wasn't assigned as your assistant, I decided to come on my own."

"What?"

"I ... I heard about the expedition while I was reading up on the Tower of Morss - it's not archaeology, but it's likely to become so soon, at the rate things are going. I've been cooped up in this city forever, never having a chance to go anywhere. And then I heard about the expedition, and ... and I heard you were going on it, and I decided to go as well. And here I am."

Epiridus tried to process what he'd just heard. "I'm sorry, but that still doesn't make any sense. I get why you'd want to go on an expedition, but why this one? And what has me being on it got to do with anything?"

"I, I should probably dismiss the Disguise spell, shouldn't I?"

"What?"

Gertrude reached up to a brooch she was wearing and rubbed it quickly. She flickered, and she was no longer an utterly gorgeous young woman. She was a rather nondescript slightly-older-than-when-disguised woman who Epiridus could vageuly recall seeing around.

"Well? What do you think?"

"Is your name still Gertrude?"

"Oh, yes, it is. I mean, it would be silly to get myself a disguise for three months and call it a different name, wouldn't it?"

"Yes." Epiridus nodded vaguely. "I'm sorry, but what has your Disguise spell got to do with wanting to go on an expedition?"

"It's not any expedition! It's an expedition with you!"

Epiridus' eyebrows tried to achieve orbit. He made his way past Gertrude and sat heavily on one of the chests. "Thank you for the vote of condifence, but I still don't understand?"

She sat opposite him on the edge of the lower bunk. "I spend a lot of time in the same library as you. I see you working every day, and I see someone who I want to spend time with, who I want to get to know, and now that you're going to the Sylliku Wastes you may never come back, and I just couldn't bear that! So I made a plan to join the expedition, quite unofficially, so that we could spend time together and get to know each other, and if we never come back then at least our last memories will have been of each other!"

It took Epiridus several moments to process this. "You ... you want to come on this expedition because ... you fancy me?"

"Yes!"

Epiridus closed his eyes and tried to process that. Eventually he opened them again. "You could have just asked if I wanted to go for a drink sometime!"