The World Which Is

chapter 46

Over the next treen, I learn I need to get at least one other item.

A razor, as my beard starts coming in and...it isn't pretty.

Once Brandon stops laughing after he notices the patchiness, he tells me it's not that uncommon at my age. Using soap and a sharp knife, he shaves it off, and it takes nearly a week before it's noticeable again, just as patchy.

The traveling goes surprisingly well. Up with the sun, Silver buffs us after breakfast. Then we walk until noon, eat, get buffed again, and we walk again. Even when it rained, it never hit the 'I'm miserable' stage of being soaked.

Throughout the days, Brandon points to the sky and asks me to predict the weather. I screw it up, of course, and he explains how to go about taking in the shape and grayness of the clouds, the sound of the insects, the feel of the air, and a lot of other things that don't always make sense, and use that to work out what the weather will be like later in the day.

He sucks as a teacher, but at least there's no way under the system he can't make me 'not learn'. Worse that happens is I don't benefit from a teacher's bonus to my learning.

He did the same when we encountered animals. And at least once a day, he had me pick up a trail to track.

The days are leisurely, and even Helen stops grumbling about it after a while and just enjoys the quiet of the wilderness.

They aren't all without events.

One lesson in following a trail led to a boar. We were close enough by the time we saw it that it had noticed us and charged. We couldn't get it to give up the chase, so Brandon stunned it with a blow to the skull it and we moved on.

When I pointed out that he'd said animals would leave us alone if we didn't disturb them, his reply was that not every animal was the same. Then grinned and added. 'It's what makes this fun.'

We made camp well before the sun reached the horizon, and once we were setup spent time training. My archery, swordplay, blocking and dodging all got good workout, and Brandon insisted I train hand to hand with him.

I'm surprised at how few bruises I go out of those sparing matches.

Then we ate, trained some more, and as the sun vanished, me and him read while Helen and Silver trained some more.

Magic training involves a lot of talking about it, from what I gathered.

The only 'incident' relating to me being hunted, and it might not even be related—Brandon said they could have been a patrol taking us for brigands—was around London. It's about half the size of Toronto, Helen explained, and the only actual settlement between it and Detroit after the Nation of the People. We had to cross the road again, and we missed a group on horseback. They yelled after us as we rushed to the other side.

I heard them trashing through the trees for a bit, but they never caught up to us.

We explored a few more abandoned buildings, but unlike Brandon's eternal enthusiasm with them, after a while, they all felt the same to me, and none had anything of interest.

* * * * *

"I don't think it's going to rain anymore," I tell Brandon, looking at a sky filled with wisps of clouds ahead of us and the dark ones behind us. I'm pretty much just playing the odds here. I still can't get anything out of what's up there or around us that clues me in. But he nods.

"Lets look for something elevated and make camp. Hel, will that desiccate spell work on the ground like it did to dry us off? Otherwise we're going to want to make beds so we aren't sleeping on soggy grass, and those are less comfortable than the ground."