So the trip started off pretty well and went dramatically downhill, or rather uphill, from there. The first day, they climbed a mountain. The plan was to then go down a mountain and go up another mountain, and then repeat the process. On the second day, when Elliot was on watch, he left Luke sleeping as a hilarious prank to enliven the mountainous monotony, and laughed and laughed when they saw Luke’s furious face peering over at them from the mountain path miles above them.
Then Luke jumped. The moment in which he was outlined against the blue sky, making an impossible leap, burned itself into Elliot’s vision even when he shut his eyes in horror.
He opened them to see Luke landed, safe and sound and with Dale Wavechaser clapping him on the back.
“Oh my God,” said Elliot, and sat down abruptly on a rock with his head in his hands. “Oh my God, your whole life just flashed before my eyes. Blond annoying smugness, weapons, weapons, annoying smugness, little kiddy weapons, right back until you were a fat smug baby. Oh my God.”
Luke cleared his throat and gave Elliot a brief pat between the shoulderblades. “I’m okay.”
Elliot thought Luke might be pleased that Elliot was upset. Elliot found this outrageous.
“I don’t care!” said Elliot. “I care about gravity and how it doesn’t work that way! Does nobody else care about gravity? Why isn’t your leg broken? Why aren’t both your legs broken?”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” Luke said dryly.
“I’ve seen Luke jump from many similar heights before,” said Serene. Elliot thought he might actually have a heart attack. “Is that an abnormal ability for humans?”
“Yes, you heedless elven wretch!” Elliot exclaimed. “No, Serene. Forgive me, Serene, I didn’t mean that, I’m overwrought. But seriously, are none of the rest of you the least bit concerned? Do you think people can defy gravity through, like, being awesome? Do you not know that’s ridiculous?”
Elliot kept demanding answers until the entire troop, apparently finding the subject of Luke defying the actual laws of nature very dull, demanded he switch conversational topics.
“The dwarves say that this area is both barren for mining purposes and, get this, structurally unstable,” said Elliot obligingly. “Isn’t that amazing? I’m so glad we’re going on this life-threatening field trip.”
“Nobody asked you to come,” muttered Darius Winterchild, Delia’s twin.
“Nobody asked you to breathe out IQ-lowering air in my vicinity,” said Elliot, and glared at him until he went away.
“Yeah,” Luke said, ignoring this byplay. “But come on, you can’t always trust dwarves.”
Elliot gave him a look of withering scorn. Luke, used to it at this point, did not seem unduly affected.
“You’re from the human world and maybe you don’t know,” he said. “But they’re—I mean, some of them are nice, obviously, I’ve met some very nice dwarves, but there’s a tendency to be a bit cunning? My dad says so.”
“It’s true,” said Captain Briarwind, who was really young for a captain, a bit spotty, and had a distressing tendency to look heroworshipfully at Luke. “They’re a low and cunning folk.” He did not seem to be making a pun. “They’d lie, cheat, and steal for gold.”
Elliot could not believe that idiots like Captain Briarwind and Captain Whiteleaf got missions while Captain Woodsinger hardly ever did.
Both Luke and Captain Briarwind seemed blissfully unaware that one of Elliot’s friends from council-training course, Myra, had dwarf blood.
“Don’t either of you talk to me,” said Elliot, and stormed off.
Serene went with him. “The dwarves were our allies once before humans were,” she remarked. “And perchance will be so again. Moreover, I have observed that humans speak of elves in a similar fashion.”
“Perchance they’re total idiots,” said Elliot. “Well, at least this is a fool’s mission.”
“Not necessarily,” said Serene. “Trolls often occupy the territories dwarves have deserted. They eat sediment, you see.” She reached back and gave her bow a slow, disturbing caress. “I think there is an excellent chance of a good fight.”
“I’m sure trolls are also lovely and misunderstood,” said Elliot, and started violently when the rushes to the non-cliff-edge side of the mountain path rustled. “Luke!”
The rushes parted to reveal that their opponent was very small, but definitely not a dwarf.
“Oh dear, a child,” said Serene, moving backward with more alacrity than elven grace. “Could someone fetch a man to see to it?”
The group stared at her, as one.
“In elven society caring for the children is considered a task for the menfolk,” said Elliot, sighing and wondering why nobody else ever bothered to read a book.
“Of course it is,” said Serene. “The woman goes through the physically taxing and bloody experience of childbirth. A woman’s experience of blood and pain is, naturally, what makes womenkind particularly suited for the battlefield. Whereas men are the softer sex, squeamish about blood in the main. I know it’s the same for human men, Luke was extremely disinclined to discuss my first experience of a woman’s menses.”
Luke stared ferociously into the middle distance, obviously trying to visualize himself somewhere else, having an entirely different conversation. Serene patted him on the back.
“Perfectly all right, I should have had more respect for your delicate masculine sensibilities.”
“Thank you,” said Luke, sounding very far away.
“What, you people expect women to tear apart their bodies and then go to all the bother of raising the children? That takes years, you know,” Serene remarked sternly. “The women’s labour is brief and agonizing, and the man’s is long and arduous. This seems only just. What on earth are men contributing to their children’s lives in the human world? Why would any human woman agree to have a child?”
“The more she talks the more sense it all makes,” said Elliot. “Has anyone else discovered that?”
“No,” said several of the cadets in unison.
Elliot wanted to please Serene, so he looked to the child. Her hair was sticking up in tufts, and her face was stained with the juice of berries. She seemed altogether a sticky proposition. Elliot was not accustomed to the company of any children younger than himself, but he’d read that you were supposed to praise them and pat them on the head.
“Well done for not eating any poisonous berries,” he said, gingerly patting. “Unless they were slow-acting poison, of course.”
The child opened her mouth and gave an earsplitting howl. Elliot snatched his hand back and jumped away.
“Elliot,” said Luke. “You’re not supposed to pat children on the face and ear.”
Luke knelt down and whispered in the child’s ear, then smoothed her hair back from her sticky face and did something where he pretended to produce a dandelion from her ear. She beamed at him, and he smoothed her hair again.
“There,” he said. “You’re safe now. I’m Luke. You’re safe with us. Let’s go find your people.”