Cal and Sever left later than Cal had intended, what with all the reminiscing and hugging. Still, Cal was happy with how far they made it by the time the sun sank behind the horizon. Even pulling the cart, they made pretty good speed alongside the river.

  In no way had Cal gotten her bearings in the last month or so. But she knew that the sun rose in the east and set in the west. They had picked north, toward the mountains, only because Sever had come from the south on the far side of the woodland.

  Cal had never travelled very far on foot before, usually only a few hours at most, and not very often. Aside from the journey to find the hut they were now leaving, neither had Sever.

  Both of them were feeling distinctly worn out after walking most of the river, dragging the cart through tall grass, mud, and brush. But the cart had worked. They took turns pointing out how much harder this would be without the cart, any time they got bogged or had to drag it through particularly dense brush.

  Cal imagined having to carry her whole lathe and shuddered.

  They hadn’t prepared to leave Sever’s house. Hadn’t stopped to make anything or do anything in particular. A combination of hoarding instincts and Sever’s farming instincts saved the day, though.

  A pile of leather and a stack of poles didn’t exactly make a tent, but it was more than close enough for the mild weather they were still having. Though the trees were very much thinning out, it wasn’t hard to gather enough wood for a little fire to cook up some pemmican and pickled veggies.

  Once they’d finished eating, Cal went and dug those pistols back out of the cart and, in the flickering light of the fire, started disassembling them.

  The gun she’d taken from Brother Calvin Preacher was, by a pretty wide margin, the best of the bunch. Cal hated to judge, she’d never made an entire gun in her life, but the set of pistols looked like they’d been made by a machinist with a passing interest in guns who was slowly dying as each gun got worse and worse.

  Cal was pretty sure they would all work, at least. How well and for how long was another matter.

  Sever ruined the mood. ‘How many people have you shot?’ she asked.

  Cal looked up from the pile of gun parts in her lap and frowned at Sever. ‘At least seven,’ she said.

  ‘Is that a rude question?’ Sever grinned. ‘I’ve shot zero.’

  Cal started reassembling Preacher’s pistol. ‘Thirty-one,’ she said. ‘Well… thirty eight now.’

  ‘All dead?’ Sever’s eyes glittered in the way a teenager’s eyes would glitter when asking someone how many people they’d killed.

  ‘That’s not what you asked,’ Cal said, testing the slide. She didn’t like how spongy the spring was, or how it didn’t lock back. It hadn’t been a problem earlier, though, she supposed.

  ‘It’s what I’m asking now,’ Sever pouted. Like many teenaged girls, she was good at pouting.

  ‘Not all of them,’ Cal said, she did some mental math. ‘I’d say about thirty per cent of them survived.’

  Sever did some slower mental math. ‘That’s what, eleven or twelve?’

  Cal shrugged. The handguns were annoyingly easy to fit back together. Annoying because most of the parts were not interchangeable. At least the springs would be, if Cal decided to modify anything.

  Like all of the frontier corps, Cal had been trained in weapon maintenance to a higher degree than most soldiers were. Though no one in the frontier corps operated alone, there was an expectation that any of them could act as their own armourer if they really needed to.

  Cal, out of a mild personal interest, had been trained a bit deeper in maintenance and modification than a lot of the corps were, hence the machining and mild blacksmithing back in the day.

  She very much did not have the tools she would have needed to fix up any of these guns to anything like regulation conditions.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to think about it either, I suppose,’ Sever said.

  Cal shrugged again. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to think about it,’ she said, without thinking about it. ‘It’s… does it matter very much?’

  ‘You were a soldier,’ Sever pointed out reasonably.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Cal sighed. ‘I was, wasn’t I?’

  Sever nodded. ‘It’s alright, I forgive you. You didn’t know any better.’

  ‘Unlike you,’ Cal sighed again. ‘You knew it all, from the sounds of it.’

  Sever snorted. ‘It didn’t feel like that at the time.’

  Cal shrugged. ‘I didn’t feel like a soldier, at the time.’

  Sever shrugged back.

  They sat by the fire a while longer, listening to the river and the chirping of insects.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Sever.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Cal.

  They frowned at the miniscule pile of remaining furs and leathers. Once, some hours ago, there had been more than enough for two people to sleep comfortably on two separate piles. Now, most if it had gone to the lean to.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Cal.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Sever.

  Experimentally, they tried making two separate piles of the furs and leathers, just to be sure that there weren’t enough left. There weren’t enough left.

  ‘Looks like…’

  Cal couldn’t see Sever blush in the darkness of the shelter. She knew Sever was blushing.

  ‘Can’t be that bad,’ Cal said. ‘I bathed like, yesterday.’

  Sever frowned, she was definitely still blushing. ‘I haven’t bathed in like… three days I think.’

  ‘You’ll have to sleep downwind, then,’ Cal said. ‘It’s fine.’

  There was no wind in the shelter, that was the point. Sever didn’t bring it up.

  Cal woke several times during the night when Sever rolled over and kneed her in the back, or stretched and smacked her in the face.

  And yet Sever had the absolute gall, upon waking, to say: ‘You move around in your sleep a lot.’

  ‘You move around a lot in your sleep,’ Cal said.

  ‘No you,’ Sever countered.

  ‘No you,’ Cal proclaimed.

  ‘No you,’ Sever announced.

  ‘No you,’ Cal reciprocated.

  ‘No, we,’ Sever grinned.

  ‘Good idea.’ Cal got up.

  Though it felt like they should be in a hurry, Cal was insistent that they should not be in a hurry. Especially as the river pushed into the mountains and the ground got more uneven and stonier. Cal had not made any spare wheels and there was little chance either of them could carry the cart with the amount of pickling pots in the back.

  When they stopped for breaks and meals, the two of them took turns craning their necks to try to see someone coming up behind them, but no one was.

  They stopped earlier that night, both feeling quite worn out from a whole day’s worth of travel. After some dinner, Sever decided to try sewing a tent together to see if she could make the leftover pile bigger.

  Despite feeling pretty worn out already, Cal decided to see if she could find some animals to hunt. One way to make the pile bigger was to add more to it. She did take Preacher’s gun, and a spare magazine, but she also took one of the throwing spears they’d been using to hunt before. If anyone was following them, a gunshot would be a great way to find them.

  She failed to hit a fox with a spear, and decided to go back to camp. They weren’t in need of food.

  Sever was making pretty good progress on the tent, she’d gotten most of one corner sewn. Cal knew how to sew in the same way she knew how to do a lot of things she’d never done before. Technically she had sewn something before, way back in the children’s home, but she’d only done it the once.

  Cal decided this was a perfect opportunity to learn how to sew.

  She sat down next to Sever and peered at her hands.

  ‘What?’ Sever said.

  ‘I’m learning how to sew,’ Cal said.

  Sever snorted. ‘Get to it then.’ She handed Cal the threaded needle she was currently using. ‘Like this…’ And she guided Cal through her method for sewing the tent.

  Why Sever had given Cal this part to sew became fairly obvious fairly quickly. She’d already punched all the holes for the seam, so Cal had very limited opportunities to mess up the shape of the tent too severely. And if Cal did mess up, which Sever assured her she would do, it would be easy enough to fix.

  Cal messed up once and, despite the feeling like she’d ruined everything, Sever was right and it was quite easy to fix. She just carefully reversed the last few stitches until the botch was removed.

  Cal wasn’t sure if it was just that her job was very easy, or if the knowledge that she couldn’t mess this up too bad helped her relax, but not only did she not mess it up again, she felt quite relaxed while she did.

  By the time it was too dark to keep going, they’d just about gotten the back corners sewn together. Since the weather was still conducive, they spread more leather and furs over more poles and, once again, only had enough leftover to have to share.

  They had a slightly bigger pile to share this time and, while Cal did get woken up a couple of times, she slept better than she had the previous night.

  The going got even slower the next day, as the ground got hillier around the river. But Cal continued to insist that they not hurry. When they craned their necks to look behind and around during breaks, they still couldn’t see anyone following.

  Again, they stopped a bit early to keep working on the tent. Cal worked on the seams while Sever worked on sewing the panels together. And they were actually done before nightfall this time. They even had a flap that could be laced shut for a door.

  Cal was proud of Sever. Sever was proud of Cal.

  There wasn’t enough leftover bedding for two comfortable beds.

  Cal slept even better that night.