Chapter 101. I’d Rather Have the Draft Than the Finished Copy

Chapter 101: 101. I’d Rather Have the Draft Than the Finished Copy

The ridge where we camped was a tilted shelf of gray stone, about forty feet long, with a lip of boulders on the open side and a tumble of scree below.

It wasn’t comfortable... But it was high and dry and hard to approach, and from the outer edge, you could look straight down into the long dark trench of the valley.

I sat with my back against a boulder and my sword across my knees, and Eveline sat a few feet away, with her knees drawn up and her ears pricked high above her head like two flags.

She hadn’t said anything for twenty minutes. I’d been counting the stars to stay awake, and I’d gotten as far as forty-one when I realized she was holding perfectly still.

Not the relaxed stillness of someone watching. The tight, listening stillness of an animal that has heard something.

"Roland," she breathed.

"What is it...?"

"Don’t move... There are men in the valley."

I looked down. I saw dark rock, a smear of pale scree, and the faint silver thread of a stream.

I saw nothing else at all. "Where?"

"Two hundred steps... Maybe a bit more."

"On the old path below the cliff." Her ears had swiveled forward, and one of them twitched like a compass needle. "Three of them there... They’re walking in step."

"One of them is limping, on the left leg, and he keeps shifting his weight when he thinks nobody’s paying attention."

"I... don’t hear anything." Didn’t see or notice I don’t have any animal ears with high hearing?

"I know, but I can." She turned to look at me, and her eyes were enormous and very bright in the starlight. "They’re coming up... They’ve found the trail."

I believed her. I want to say that clearly.

I didn’t hear a sound, and I saw nothing, but I’d spent a week watching this girl count wagons from half a mile away and catalog guard shifts through a hedge.

There wasn’t a moment’s doubt in me.

"Everyone’s asleep," I whispered. "We can’t wake them without making noise."

"There’s a gap." She pointed, past a boulder at the edge of the shelf. "Back there... It’s a crack in the rock."

"I saw it when we arrived... It’s deep enough for two."

"Two?"

"It’s... narrow."

"How narrow?"

She didn’t answer. She just grabbed my sleeve and pulled.

"Whoa! Wait...!"

...

It was narrow. I’m not going to pretend it was anything else.

The crack ran back into the cliff for about eight feet, a vertical slot barely wider than my shoulders, and the only way to fit both of us in was to stand face to face with our arms folded between us.

I turned sideways. And yeah... She turned sideways as well.

We slid into the dark with our backs against opposite walls, and I felt the stone drag at my coat, and then there was nowhere left to go, and she was pressed against me from collar to knee.

This situation again... if this keeps on happening, then I might have a fetish of being stuck with a woman inside a cramped room.

And yes... I ignored her massive tits hard; clearly they were pressed on my chest, and so that... we don’t have to talk about it.

"Sorry..." she breathed.

"It’s fine."

"My ears are in your face..."

I noticed that now because I was looking at something else. "They’re very soft."

She blushed. "Roland..."

I closed my mouth. It was a very good ear, to be honest.

It smelled faintly of pine smoke and clean soap.

Footsteps drifted up from below, so quiet that I could barely separate them from the noise of my own pulse.

I heard the scuff of a boot on gravel.

A grunt... A low voice muttering something about "damned goats," and a second one telling the first to shut up.

A faint, irregular scrape, step and drag, step and drag, that I recognized after a moment as a limp.

Eveline had gone completely rigid.

I can feel how soft her massive tits... goddamn... why do all the SSS-rank female knights have to have such massive tits?

Her heartbeat was hammering against my chest, so loud that I felt every beat in my ribs, and I realized, with a small shock, that she could hear mine too.

She could hear it much better than I could. Her ear was about an inch from my collarbone, and I watched her eyes widen as she listened to my own heart running like a rabbit’s.

"You’re nervous," she whispered, barely moving her lips.

"It’s a normal thing for me when I’m hiding."

"Your heart is going very fast..."

"Yeah... I’m aware."

"It’s louder than the soldiers."

"Please stop telling me that... you’re making it worse..."

The patrol reached the shelf. I could see their shadows moving along the lip of the boulders, three tall figures in dark armor against the stars, spears slung over their shoulders.

The one on the left was indeed limping. They paused about ten feet from the crack, and the leader raised a hand, and I stopped breathing altogether.

We stood there for what felt like a month. And because I was a terrible person with a terrible sense of timing, I started whispering.

"I’ve never told anyone this," I said, so quietly it was barely a breath. "But I did fifteen years of being the village joke..."

"Everyone knew... The kids used to chant a song about me."

"It rhymed Roland with nothing... It wasn’t very good, but it caught on."

She was quiet for a moment.

Then, in the faintest whisper: "That’s awful."

"It got worse... There was a verse about my mother."

"Oh no."

"Alicia was the only one who never laughed... Not once." I smiled. "Even when she was little, even when it would have made her popular..."

"She’d walk past the chanting kids and tell them their rhymes were bad."

"I respect her."

"Everyone does... It’s a problem."

Eveline’s breath hitched, almost a giggle, and she pressed her face into my shoulder to smother it. I felt her shake.

Outside, the soldiers moved on, and the tap of the spear butts faded into the dark.

"My father was a knight," she murmured, when the footsteps had gone. "House Whitehare isn’t a great house..."

"We’re small and poor, and we have about forty acres of rocky land and a very old roof..."

"He fought in the border wars, and he lost two fingers... and he came home and taught himself to farm."

"He’s the best man I know." She swallowed. "And I have a sister... Her name is Marianne."

"She’s two years older than me, and she’s perfect."

"Perfect... like how?"

"In every way... She never spills things."

"She never forgets anything... She embroiders, and she plays the harp."

"She once wrote a speech in perfect Old Elarian for a visiting bishop, and he cried." Her voice was very small. "I’m the one who dropped the harp..."

"I’m the one who set fire to the bishop’s hat... They love me... I know they do."

"But my whole life, I’ve felt like the first draft that somebody forgot to throw away."

My chest tightened.

"I’m not going to say something wise about that," I said. "I’m not wise..."

"I’ll just say that I’ve met your sister’s side of that deal, in my own way, and I’d rather have the draft."

She went very still against me.

"Why...?" she asked.

"Because the draft is the one who stayed up all night counting wagons so she could do the right thing..." I smiled. " The finished copy would’ve been asleep."

For a long moment she didn’t speak. Her breathing evened out slowly, and I felt something relax along her spine.

I think that was the first time I understood how much she’d been carrying.

The patrol was gone. And the valley was silent.

We should have stepped out of the crack right then and gone back to our posts like sensible soldiers.

We didn’t...

Neither of us moved for a long minute.

"Eveline," I said eventually. "You’re not breathing."

"I know..."

"You’re turning purple... I can feel it."

"I forgot to..."

"You can breathe now."

She drew a huge, shuddering gasp, like a diver breaking the surface, and nearly toppled out of the crack. I caught her by the elbows and stifled my laughter against her hair, and she smacked me, very lightly, on the chest.

"It’s not funny...! You meanie!"

"It’s a little funny."

"I was being careful!"

"You held your breath for four minutes."

"I was being very careful..."

We stumbled back out onto the shelf with our faces red and our shoulders shaking, and I’m fairly sure Alicia, lying on her bedroll with her eyes closed, had never been more convincingly asleep.

’This was her plan all along, huh...?’

Oh, Alicia... still the wingwomen that you are.