Chapter 11: A Shot in the Dark

Eight hours later...

Time: November 26, 8235

Abigail roused from her slumber slowly, smiling as she realized I was petting her head, tracing a fingertip lightly across her temple. "Oh, that feels so nice," she murmured. She opened her eyes. "What time is it?"

"2:30 AM. Up for some walking?"

Abigail yawned and nodded. "Sure. Wait! Won't the bears be active soon?"

"Exactly. Think Abigail! When the bears are the most dangerous, where would you rather be? Mobile and in control of your environment, or a fixed target waiting to be ambushed?"

Abigail blinked at me and sat up. "No contest! Let's get going!"

My wife quickly got up and dressed before going out to relieve herself. But when she poked her head outside the tent she exclaimed, "Snow!"

"Yeah, there was a burst of it while you slept. It's clearing out nicely though." We both admired the stars as we took down the tent. I smiled at the sight of the brilliant moon, and how it wouldn't set until shortly after sunrise. Perfect! I thought we were in excellent shape, and the survival test was beginning to feel like a walk in the park.

We left our campsite around 3 AM. I had studied the maps of our route closely, and with my perfect memory I knew exactly the direction we should be heading. Walking side by side and a few meters apart, we started munching some food bars and hiking south southeast.

We made good time through the woods, covering three kilometers in the first hour, constantly alert for bears. We began angling towards a large expanse of lake.

"We just have to clear the water to the east," I commented as we walked. "Then we'll head due south along the shoreline."

Abigail nodded, intently scanning a nearby fallen tree as a possible ambush point.

We soon made it to the lake shore. We had a nice piece of relaxed hiking ahead of us. The deep forest had receded more than a hundred meters from the lakefront, depriving our adversaries of ambush cover, and I wasn't worried about the bears springing up out of the unfrozen lake. The bright moon provided ample illumination, and our primary worry became not to twist an ankle on a rock beneath the snow. Treading carefully, we began to relax as we continued our way south.

"So Ilias," Abigail asked. "How was your month?"

"Super busy. I spent half my time at Bandar Arenas." I paused for a moment and then laughed. "And it felt as if I spent the rest of the time in supersonic jets. I was in a dozen different townships, often for only a few hours at a time."

Abigail nodded and laughed back. "I suspected as much! Mudar?"

"Yeah. And it wasn't just negotiations with Royalty. For me, it was also a crash course in inter-Guild diplomacy. I was often the only CL-12 in the room. All the top commanders in the other Guilds wanted to know that the deals had my personal approval. It was driving my superiors crazy!"

Abigail chuckled. "Your ride on the Lion?"

"Yeah. My Guild tried to keep it quiet for a while, but word finally leaked out. There was one other person in history who tried a full ride, back within a hundred years of the Great War. His name was Raghib, and he didn't make the gate at CL-13. I'm the first person to ride this far."

We talked for hours as we hiked, making great progress, four kilometers an hour. We spent most of the time talking about our childhoods, what it was like to grow up. Our experiences were so different! Boys and girls are raised so differently. Both genders are separated from their mothers about a month after birth. By law, infants are then sent to nurseries in different townships. The children are segregated by gender even then, and once they are transferred to monasteries in their third year, their experiences are completely different.

At the beginning of what I thought was the pre-dawn twilight, I looked at my watch. It was 6:42 AM, thirty-two minutes before sunrise. Abby and I had been keeping an excellent pace, pausing only for brief five-minute rest stops. I looked up ahead at our trail and thought it was the perfect time for a real break.

"Abby, let's rest here, have some breakfast. We'll start up again in an hour."

"Sounds good to me!" She unslung her pack and set it by her feet. "Why such a nice break?"

"Oh, a couple of reasons. Take a look up ahead."

Abby stared for a moment and nodded, telling me she understood my point.

Our open area by the lakeshore was disappearing. A short ridgeline had been approaching the lake edge from our left as we walked, slowly squeezing the width of our safe meadow. The deep forest was currently only forty meters away, and up ahead we could both see that the forest would soon be coming right to the water's edge. I unslung my pack and brushed the snow off a boulder by the water's edge. Abby picked another boulder and did the same. The lake was still unfrozen, and in the moonlight very beautiful.

But it was no time to be lulled into complacency by the idyllic landscape. The next hour would be the most dangerous part of the day, and it was an obvious choice to spend it in an open area.

Abby smiled at me. "So much darkness! The sun won't rise for another half hour!" she exclaimed as she sat on her boulder and wiggled her feet. She pointed to the eastern horizon. It had a faint suggestion of pink. Abby shook her head. "It seems so strange!"

"Well," I smiled. "Qataban was what, sixteen degrees southern latitude? We're probably right at forty-five degrees north. Yeah, I can guess this is quite a change. You'll find Jizari and Bandar Arenas are even more extreme, if we ever wind up living there."

I turned on a pair of small binoculars and took a quick sweep of the area, making sure nothing was sneaking up on us in the darkness. We were fine.