Chapter 6
Emily sat up. The first cold streaks of dawn lighted the hut. Mist shrouded the camp, and only one other man was awake. She carried a basin to the stream and came back with it full of water. Faruk stood in the doorway of his own hut.
“I didn’t expect you to be up so early,” she remarked.
Faruk surveyed the camp. “I’m coming with you.”
Emily froze. “Coming where?”
“To the Lycaon village,” he replied. “I’ve been thinking it over. You shouldn’t squander this chance to find your sisters. That would be foolish. Neither of us wants to separate, so we’ll go together.”
She started to protest, but stopped. This was the perfect solution to her problem. “What about Turk? He wasn’t happy about you crossing the border.”
“It’s all right,” he replied. “One Ursidrean does not an invasion make. He’ll understand that, and if he doesn’t his mate will help him understand it.”
Emily grinned. “It seems like the women call the shots on Angondra.”
Faruk sighed. “It’s always been like that. I’m sure the other factions are the same as the Ursidreans. We have Alpha males, but it’s the females who make the decisions and guide the people.”
Emily glanced toward the stream. “I wonder if they’re still here.”
“They’re here,” he told her.
“How can you be certain?” she asked.
“I can hear them.” He pointed toward the gravel bed where Chris and Emily met. “They’re down there, getting water for their morning meal.”
“How can you hear that?” Emily asked.
Faruk shrugged. “I can hear it.”
Emily headed down the hill. “I better go tell them you plan to come with me.”
He laid a hand on her arm. “I’m coming with you. From now on, anywhere you go, I go.”
Her eyes widened, but she didn’t argue. They strode down the hill together. Emily cast a glance back at the camp. “You better tell somebody you’re leaving. Somebody will have to take over.”
“Marlo already knows,” he replied.
“When did you talk to Marlo?” she asked.
“I didn’t have to talk to him,” Faruk replied. “He saw us together yesterday. He’ll understand we left together.”
“Are you sure?” Emily asked. “Don’t you want to explain it to him?”
“No,” he replied.
They found Turk and Chris standing across the stream where Faruk said they would be. Turk bristled when he spotted Faruk, but Chris smiled at Emily. “I was wondering where you got to. Are you ready to go?”
Emily waved her hand. “Faruk is coming with us. I hope you don’t mind.”
“An Ursidrean can’t cross the border,” Turk growled.
“One Ursidrean does not an invasion make,” Emily told him. “Besides, you two might cut my throat as soon as we get around the next hill. He has to come with me to make sure nothing happens to me.”
Turk glared at her. “We wouldn’t waste our time cutting your throat behind the hill. If we didn’t want you entering our territory, we wouldn’t take you.”
Chris touched his arm. “If he wants to come, let him come.”
“The warriors won’t like it,” he told her.
“You can explain it to them.” Chris wiped her hands on a cloth. “If you’re ready to go, we can go now.”
“We’re ready.” With one step, Emily crossed the border into Lycaon territory. A shiver ran up her legs, but her feet stood on the same solid ground as in Ursidrean territory.
Faruk hesitated to cross. Chris murmured under her breath. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. We don’t want to create an incident.”
Emily stepped forward. “It’s all right. He’s been guarding the border for years, and now he has to cross it.” She held out her hand to Faruk.
He fixed his eyes on her face and took her hand. In an instant, the unbreakable bond holding them together forged a link across the stream, and he stepped across the gap. His foot anchored on solid ground, and the party moved up the hill.
At the top, Emily looked back. Ursidrean territory stretched out of sight to the mountains beyond. Marlo stood on the hilltop across the stream. He raised his hand, and Emily waved back. Then the trees swallowed her up.
Emily settled in for another long day of hiking through the thick forest, and they didn’t stop until sundown. Chris and Turk made camp on a ridge overlooking a river valley running down to wide open plains. “That’s it.”
Emily looked around. “What is?”
Chris pointed to a mist hanging over the forest canopy. “That’s the village.”
Emily frowned. “It’s a cloud.”
Chris laughed at her. “It’s smoke, silly. It’s the smoke from their fires. When there’s no wind, it collects between these ridges and doesn’t blow away so it looks like mist.”
Faruk came to her side. “It’s still a long way down. We won’t get there until late tomorrow.”
“It seems so close,” Emily remarked. “You could put out your hand and touch it.”
“I should warn you,” he told her. “The Lycaon live pretty rough. They don’t have power, and they heat all their water for washing and cooking on open fires.”
Emily gazed down at the mist. “I guessed that from the smoke.”
“They don’t have the comforts you’re used to in Harbeiz,” he told her.
“I’ve spent time in the mountains before,” she told him. “Besides, from what you say, it doesn’t sound much different from your camp on the border.”
He shrugged. “I guess not.”
“Have you seen the Lycaon village before?” she asked.
“No, I’ve never seen it,” he replied.
“Then how do you know it’s rough?” she asked.
He shifted from one foot to the other. “I guess I don’t, really. I only know what I’ve heard.”
“Who have you heard from?” she asked. “Have other Ursidreans visited Lycaon territory?”
“Not that I know of. We only heard things.....” He trailed off.
“It sounds like a typical case of prejudice,” she told him. “You don’t really know anything about them, so you make up stories about how they live rough, without power, and cook on open fires when you do the same thing. That’s how wars get started.”
He changed the subject. “How did you wind up spending so much time in the mountains? How did you come to work on the mountain search and rescue?”
“I took a first aid course in high school,” she replied. “That led to a more advanced first responder course. At the end of the course, the instructor told me I should go out for search and rescue, so I did.”
“You must have been good, to stay with it as long as you did,” he remarked.
“I suppose I was good,” she replied. “I loved it, and I went to all the trainings. I never got tired of learning new things and challenging myself.”
“Was the rest of your family involved?” he asked.
She made a face. “No, none of them was ever interested in that sort of thing. My family was always very sedentary. They never did anything physical, and they never understood why I loved search and rescue so much. They used to make nasty jokes about it.” She turned away.
Faruk followed her gaze down the hill. “I’m sorry to bring it up.”
“Don’t be,” she replied. “I’m glad to put that part of my life behind me.”
“You can spend all the time you want in the mountains here,” he told her. “The Ursidreans belong to the mountains. That’s what makes us different from the other factions.”
Emily cocked her head. “Do you want to know something interesting? My dad used to say the same sort of things about search and rescue that you just said about the Lycaon. He couldn’t understand why anybody would want to sweat and puff to hike all the way up some mountain, just so they could camp in a flimsy tent with no power and no hot water and no cable TV. He thought anybody who did that must have some kind of mental disease.”
Faruk sighed. “I can see why you’re happy to get away. Was your husband the same way?”
“No, no,” she replied. “I met him on search and rescue. We did it together for three years before we got married.”
“And after that?” he asked.
“After that, I was too busy helping him raise the kids to have time for search and rescue. Then, after he died, the whole thing lost its appeal for me. I hadn’t been into the mountains since he died - until now.”
He hugged her around the shoulders.
“What about you?” she asked. “How did you get onto the border patrol?”
“I got called up when I was five, just like every other Ursidrean cub,” he replied.
Emily’s eyes popped open. “Does that mean the Ursidreans have some kind of military draft? I didn’t know that.”
He nodded. “It’s not really a military draft. It’s a civil labor pool. When a cub reaches maturity, you report to the labor pool for assignment. If you’ve had any special training before that, you get assigned to your specialty. If you don’t, they can assign you wherever they need people. That could be the military, it could be the border patrol, or it could be any civil station in the city. You never know where you’re going to end up.”
“And then do you stay there for life?” she asked. “Does that become your permanent vocation?”
“Only if you want it to be,” he replied. “If you don’t like it and want to do something else, the labor pool assigns you somewhere else to go.”
“So that’s what happened to you?” she asked. “They assigned you to the border patrol?”
“No,” he replied. “I had special medical training and disaster management training from my academy days. They assigned me to the infirmary.”
Emily gasped. “The infirmary!”
“You didn’t know, did you?” he asked. “I was going to be a doctor.”
“What happened?” she asked. “I thought you didn’t like the infirmary.”
He laughed. “And now you know how I ended up here. I told the labor pool I didn’t want to stay underground in the city for the rest of my life. They asked me if I still wanted to do medical work and disaster management, and I said yes. So they sent me to the border patrol to be a medic. End of story.”
“And you’ve been here ever since,” she concluded.
He nodded. “I’ve been happy here.”
She eyed him. “And you never had any desire to go back to the city?”
“None at all.” He cocked his head. “Why do you ask?”
“What if you find a mate?” she asked. “What if you had cubs of your own? You couldn’t raise them out here.”
“Why not?” he asked.
She looked around. “Where would they stay? Where would they be born? How would they learn what it means to be Ursidrean?”
“I would teach them what it means to be Ursidrean.” He smiled. “I am Ursidrean.”
“But they wouldn’t know what the city is like,” she pointed out.
“There’s more to being Ursidrean than living in the city,” he replied.
“You know what I mean,” she told him. “They wouldn’t have access to the Academy and all the other resources the city has to offer.”
“I thought you loved the mountains,” he countered.
She turned bright red. “Who said anything about me? We’re talking about you.”
He gazed back down the valley. “Right.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about those things,” she told him. “Don’t tell me you’ve never once considered your future.”
“I have thought about them,” he replied. “But since I don’t have a mate, and I’m not likely to have cubs anytime soon, what’s the point of planning the whole thing out? If I had a mate who wanted to live in the city, I suppose I would have to deal with that when the time came.”
Emily kept silent. He stroked her arm and pressed her hand, but she didn’t respond.
“Why do you take this subject so seriously?” he asked.
“You know why,” she murmured.
“Tell me anyway,” he told her. “I want to hear you say it.”
“Here we are, holding hands and hugging each other,” she replied. “You said you didn’t want me to leave, that you were looking forward to spending time with me and getting to know me better, and now we’re deep in Lycaon territory together. Are we on the way to being mates? Or is this just a joy ride through the countryside, having a good time while it lasts?”
“We’re not on a joy ride through the countryside,” he told her. “We wouldn’t be deep in Lycaon territory together if we were. I would have chosen a much more hospitable place to take you for a joy ride.”
Emily shook her head. “Then we have to think about where this is going. Are we on the way to being mates?”
He cocked his head to one side. “I don’t know. Are we?”
“Is that what you want?” she asked.
“Is that what you want?” he asked.
She smacked her lips. “Stop repeating the last thing I said and answer me.”
“Okay,” he replied. “I wouldn’t mind if we were on the way to being mates. As a matter of fact, I would be delighted. There. I said it. Are you satisfied?”
She relaxed and squeezed his hand. “Good. That’s how I feel, too. But I wouldn’t want you to give up your life in the mountains for me if you didn’t want to.”
“And I wouldn’t want you to live like Chris and Turk if you didn’t want to,” he replied. “Just because living in the mountains along the border has worked for me all these years doesn’t mean it will work for you—or for us, if it comes to that.”
Emily frowned. “I’m glad we agree on that, but it doesn’t get us any closer to solving the problem.”
“There is no problem,” he replied. “We aren’t mates.”
“When will we be?” she asked. “When will we even know if we’re going to be?”
He shrugged. “Do we have to answer all the questions of life right now?”
Emily closed her eyes and lifted her face to the glowing sunset skies. “No, we don’t.”