He might have asked the old man to put in a good word with whatever his tribe worshipped, but the old man was nowhere to be seen. The three horses and mule, saddles and packs removed, were doing a slow graze nearby, picketed to keep them out of Isobel’s way—the mule especially, who’d kept trying to stick his muzzle into whatever she was doing.
Given his druthers, Gabriel would have marched them all out of the meadow entirely. The idea that magicians—one was bad enough, but more than one?—had gathered here made his gut clench and his fingers twitch to curve around his knife’s hilt. Even when they claimed to be allies, magicians were trouble, dangerous trouble. More? Gathered for a purpose unknown?
Not that magicians needed reason for their actions. They were mad as March hares, each and every one of them. And he included Farron Easterly in that, despite whatever aid he had given them previously.
“All else, I can bear,” he told the slow-moving waters of the creek, watching silver-sided fish twist and turn away from his shadow. “Winter storms and dust-dancers, mysterious illnesses, monstrous beasts trying to chew my face off”—and he shifted and winced at the reminder that he was not as healed as he claimed?—“and even being dragged off-Road to ride into unsteady ground like a sunstruck fool. But magicians? It’s too much.”
His hand flashed out, the glint of metal in his hand, and he pulled back with a long, fat fish impaled on the blade, still wiggling in a desperate attempt to get back to the safety of the water.
“Thank you,” he told the fish, knocking it against a nearby stone to end its struggles. “But we need your strength.”
It took time to land another; the streams were nearly barren as the meadows, although fish lacked the ability to flee entirely. The sun had dipped even lower on the horizon, he noted as he rose to his feet, wincing a little. Two would have to be enough for dinner tonight. He cut off their heads and gutted them both, letting the offal float away in the water, reminding himself to refill the canteens from upstream, and turned to see Isobel watching him—or staring at something he couldn’t see; he would not hazard a guess at this point.
He moved to her side and dropped the fish into her hands. She caught them instinctively, shocked out of whatever she was thinking, then gave him a dirty look.
“I catch, you cook.” She didn’t have the patience yet to wait until the fish came to hand; the last time he’d let her try, she’d ended up stabbing herself with the blade, not the fish.
“What about him?” She jerked her head indirectly at the old man, who had reappeared and was now sitting by the fire. He was working a strap of leather between his hands, winding it back and forth to soften the fiber.
“Woman’s work,” Gabriel said, just to see her eyes narrow at him.
A dry, coughing laugh interrupted whatever she was about to say, the old man obviously able to read their body language, even if he didn’t understand their words.
“You’re wearing yourself to a nub, trying to find something you can’t see yet,” Gabriel told her, two fingers on her shoulder to head off any comment she might make. “The fish will give you something to do with your hands instead.”
She made a face at him but didn’t argue further, taking the fish to the fire and sitting—markedly—across the fire from the old man.
Gabriel wiped his hands on the grass, then pulled the frying pan from the mule’s packs and passed it over to her along with a chunk of dried fat.
“Onions,” she muttered. “We need onions. And fireweed or bitterroot. Would it be rude to ask him to go pick leaves?”
It would. But when Gabriel made the hand sign for foraging and jerked a thumb away from the fire, the old man put aside the strap of leather he’d been working on and followed him.
Isobel finished filleting the fish, dropping them into the pan that was sizzling on the fire. There was enough wood nearby, cracking-dry, that they didn’t have to worry about kindling. She had become accustomed to simply pressing a coalstone to create a small blaze, but Gabriel wanted her to remain proficient with flint and steel, too, just as he insisted she learn to forage and not depend on the supplies they carried.
She couldn’t argue with that: she might have become accustomed to dried meats and soaked beans, but that didn’t mean she cared to eat them two meals a day, and certainly, her gut was quieter when they’d greens and fresh meat to eat.
The men came back just as the fish began to crisp, bearing a double handful of the plants she’d asked for. Or at least Gabriel did. The old man’s hands were empty.
She glared at him, and for the first time he stared back at her, dark eyes under a hooded brow, steady as a hawk until she felt uneasy enough to look away. He wouldn’t speak to her, and when he did look at her, it was like that—Isobel glared at the fish instead, which could not stare back.
It was because he hadn’t given them a name, she decided. People needed names. Even the mule had a name. If she knew what to call him, he wouldn’t make her feel so uneasy.