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For weeks there’d been not the slightest sniff of rain. The landscape Fox and Jackal scurried through, headed north, had been a desolate one even before it had burned; dry rocky ground, covered in short prickly grass and scrubby spruce for as far as the eye could see. The flames had reduced the grass to nothing, and the spruces were skeletonized. They might have been the only two living things for a hundred miles- but they knew that their pursuers were closer than that.
A cool, wet breeze whipped up ash-devils around their feet.
“Rain, Jackal!” Fox crowed between breaths, looking back at him with a wild-eyed grin. “It’s coming for real this time! It’ll wash our tracks away! They’ll never find us!”
He smiled back briefly; he didn’t have the breath to reply. He thought she was right about the rain. The gloomy ceiling above them had dropped noticeably over the last couple hours, to the point that it could have now been late evening, although he knew it to be early afternoon. The wind smelled of rain. Yes, it was coming, all right, and he wanted very much to share the boss’s optimism about what this meant. But his mind was filled, to the exclusion of almost everything else, with concentration on an endless series of small individual tasks: step, breathe in, step, breathe out, over and over in such a way that the pain would not overwhelm him.
It was very difficult. It was not an ideal circumstance in which to be optimistic.
“Keep up, will you? Look!”
He put on the best burst of speed he could manage and squinted past Fox to try and see what she wanted him to look at. It was something square, standing out in stark white on the dark grey landscape but increasingly obscured by a strange thickening of the air in front of it. The wind picked up, flinging mist and ash against his face.
“It’s coming! Hurry!”
I’m trying! he screamed inside. Her footsteps ahead of him were loud, and he followed them, watching the ground, watching his footsteps. The rain closed over them in a rush, obscuring even that view, and he was running blind until-
A small hand closed over his upper arm, and he put on the brakes, catching himself with a gasp against a cold metal wall.
That strange white thing was now a looming white wall. It took him a moment to make sense of it. The rain was washing ash off of it in steady grey streams that flowed across the ground, running and pooling into the hardened tire-ruts that stretched away from the structure into the gloom. It was the trailer half of an old Guild rig, abandoned here for who knows how long, turned almost into a landscape feature by the fire that had licked over it.
“We can wait it out in here!” Fox called over the clamor of rain against metal. With a grunt she climbed up onto the narrow ledge and began wrestling with the metal bar that held the door. “Jackal, help me open this thing!”
Jackal felt a cold sort of resignation wash over him where he stood, half-leaning against the trailer, rain streaming down his face. He didn’t think he could do it. He was going to have to stop pretending in just a few moments.
He had been pretending for hours and hours, ever since they’d fled from the outpost at the edge of the woods. He could tell that Fox still considered it a victory, she wasn’t pretending- her good mood had been about all that had kept him moving- and maybe she had good reason to. She’d started the fight, and had only a black eye to show for it, as well as the ivory-handled knife they’d looted as proof of their victory. He’d ended the fight, and to show for it he had the blood of two different people on his clothes and a pain in the right side of his chest that was edging closer and closer to unbearable.
He stepped away from the trailer, breathing carefully, and placed both his hands on the part of the bar that he could reach from where he stood. His own movements felt slow and stupid- movements without intent, without even a hope of success.
“On three?”
He could already almost feel the future pain. It made him clench his teeth hard, but he braced one foot behind him and got ready.
“One, two, three,” Fox said, and then threw her weight against the rusted lever. Jackal felt it shift, and added his strength to hers all at once. You were supposed to rip off the bandage, right? What did that mean, anyway? Regardless, the effect was immediate; the bar moved with a grinding groan, and Jackal gasped.
He thought he must have been stabbed, it was so instant; the muscles of his chest and shoulder locked up and he let go of the lever, curled forward around his suddenly paralyzed right arm, and fell to his knees in the mud. The pain took this show of weakness as an opportunity to attack again, spreading a rain of needles outward from that point.
Over the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears, he heard the splash of Fox jumping down from the ledge. When she spoke, her voice had risen somewhat. “Get up, the door's open. You have to get in. Come on.”
Right again. He had to get inside. She was pulling ineffectually at his left upper arm; he ignored it and let out his breath in an agonized groan as he dragged himself upright.
Just a little further up was safety.
He made it, barely, then shuffled further into the dusty dark and rolled onto his back, utterly exhausted. He heard the door close with a clang, shutting out the faint trace of light that had still been seeping in through the clouds and plunging them both into blackness.
She crawled over to him and sat down, and her hands brushed across his chest for a moment before finding the zipper of his sodden sweater and undoing it.
“Here?” she asked with a light touch, and he hissed.
“Yeah.”
“You're okay.” It was mostly not a question, and there was a note of admiration in her voice.
“Mmm-hmm,” he agreed. The stabbing had settled down into a steady piercing burn. There was room for a tiny bit of optimism now. He was okay, as long as she didn't ask him to move, or say much, and as long as he kept breathing in this careful shallow way he was breathing now.
There was a rustling beside him. Fox took the knife that was her prize from her bag; he could hear the metallic noises as she inspected the blade, and her hum of approval. It must be a nice one.