"Hey. Wake up." The voice was an annoying buzz on the very periphery of Roland's cognizance. He ignored it, hearing nothing but the vague mumblings of a half-congruous fantasy in the murky darkness of his psyche. He felt so tired. His body was an aching contradiction. "Roland." The voice said, a crusty grate that scratched against his senses as he dreamt of days long passed. Always the same phantasm arose: crisp morning air, a foggy sheen as the door burst open. Loud shouting, clinking chainmail and a bright, burning blaze of magic. The rough shove, the last, longing look, and the tortured cry as the arrows shot forth. "For fuck's sake." Said the voice, interrupting his insensible reverie.
Something prodded at Roland's shoulder. He began to rise, the depths of his semi-conscious swoon parting like thick curtains over his mind as he opened his eyes. The room was a blur, but he felt it tapping at his shoulder like an annoying, stinging gnat. The stale, revolting scent of old death greeted his nostrils as he took his first mindful inhale, glancing down as his sight adjusted to the rush of sunshine coming from the cave's entrance to his right. "
Wake
up, you fickle nonce!" Someone said, poking him hard in the cheek with the offending implement.
In a rush Roland twisted in his bedroll, reaching up with his left hand to grab at the stick that Carl was jabbing like a weapon at his face. His thick fingers wrapped around the haft of the repurposed branch, breaking it in half with a sharp jerk of his wrist. Roland's right hand came around in a clumsy swing, his fist aiming in a curve at Carl's smirking face. The handsome rogue danced back on his nimble feet, laughing in delight at his companion's naked aggression. Roland kicked off his blankets and rose, a stormcloud brewing on his features as he stared down his nose at Carl's conceited, arrogant mug.
"Morning, you churlish git. How was your sleep?" Carl's smile was wide and patronizing. Roland noted with a warrior's awareness that despite his relaxed stance, the man's hand was at his hip, atop the hilt of his dagger. If it came to a fight, the red-maned mercenary would have to break his wrist before he buried the blade in his heart. "Restful, I trust. You know, Derion usually only needed to kick you once in your fat head and you were up at dawn. It's practically midday; you're getting slovenly in your old age, Roland."
"If you draw that wee blade," Roland said, "I will leave your bones for the wolves."
Carl's head tilted down to look at his still-sheathed dagger."What,
this
little thing? It's a hunting knife, you blind brute. I doubt it could even pierce the leathery skin you've got stretched around that boorish neck of yours." Carl laughed at the dark expression that grew on Roland's face. "And even if I did manage to cut your throat, what good would it do me? Your doxy broad has got her number on you. If I harm a hair on your ginger-thicket head, she'll turn me into a man-whore."
"You're already a man-whore." Roland growled, remembering all the amorous nights Carl had spent womanizing with camp followers, or fornicating with blushing whores in the local tavern instead of doing proper soldiering. "Kelsea'll just perfect the process."
Carl quirked a thin, yellow eyebrow at him. His knife-cut smile was irritating to his former comrade's perception. "She's got you calling her by her old name, eh? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised: you always were a sentimental prick deep down, weren't you?" The blonde bowman shook his head ruefully back and forth. "Giving that thing a name is like calling my bow 'Annabelle.'"
"I thought you called it Katrine."
Carl's brow twitched. "Not the point.
She's
less likely to kill you than that creature is, on a daily basis." The bow in question sat off to the side, perched against the wall of the cave like a child cowering from its parent's fight.
"Only if your aim with her is awful." Roland replied, taking a quick glance around in the darkness of the cave. The two of them were alone. "That woman is more human than you think. You'd best mind your tongue."
Carl grinned. "Why? Are you going to ride in on your barded warhorse and sweep the sweet little damsel off her feet? She wants your
manhood
you dullard, not your empty droning. Touch her, breed her - hell,
kiss
her if the mood strikes you - but have a care to remember where the wench has been, and where her head is at now."
"Where is she?" Roland said, his fists tightening into balls of clenched rage as he struggled to not throw himself at the man.
"Ah, now you're catching on, aren't you old friend?" Carl pointed with his head in the direction of the cave. "That was why I was trying to rouse you from your maiden's slumber: she never came back last night. She's been gone since I got up."
A bolt of energy blasted up Roland's back. Despite his own lingering exhaustion he felt a flutter of aberrant panic rise within him, his mind sparking to the thought of her sudden, immediate absence. "How long?" He said, hoping against hope that the bastard with the wry smile didn't notice the quivering worry in his tone.
"Some time at least. I awoke at dawn to piss, and the little devil was nowhere to be found." Carl looked almost half-relieved at the revelation. There was a malicious gleam in his green eyes. "Do you think if she went and broke her neck in the darkness that you and I would be free from all this mess? Or are we some sort of accursed kin to each other, now?"
"You're going to be dead either way if you don't pick up your damned bow and follow me." Roland said, turning with movements that betrayed his fear as he stalked from the cave.
"What, no packing?" Carl called after him. Roland glanced back at the man.
"Pack up then; I'm going to find her." He said, heedless of his ripped shirt and lack of cloak.
"You do that." Carl said, laughing as he bent down to stuff his spare clothing down his satchel's throat.
Immediately upon exiting the putrid feast hall of their slain monstrous foe, Roland looked down and saw the presence of Kelsea's tracks, still exposed like overt crush marks in the snow. The sky was grey, but the sun's outline could be delineated through the thin cloud cover, shining down a pale, sickly white. Misty tendrils drifted and curled about the plateau, hustling through the creaking limbs with a swift, cloudlike gait. Roland shivered as a fell wind blew down from the mountaintop. He disregarded the needles of cold as he strode, heedless after spotting more of the half-buried tracks betwixt the deepening groves.
As Roland worked his way farther into the forest, he mused that there was a peculiarity in Kelsea's movements; nothing about her footsteps made any sense. As he bobbed and weaved about the brush, he followed a confusing, snaking pattern of frost-strewn tracks that meandered back and forth in a wide, snaking line. It made the Succubus' trail appear almost drunk, or at least unsettled. There was no consistency or logic in her movements: sometimes she'd forced her way through the deepest thickets of brush and through heavy piles of powdered snow, other times she'd actively avoided a more open clearing just off from her chosen direction and instead clambered over outjut boulders sticking up like sinking ship prows from the ground. It all seemed to lead, however, towards some singular point: a direction far into the interior of these dark, foreboding woods.
Carl caught up to him some time later, stepping forth with quick, quiet movements from behind Roland as he followed the far fresher tracks the big man left behind in his wake. Casting a sly wink in his direction, Carl tossed him Kelsea's pack. Roland caught it and slung it over his shoulder without a second thought, and for a time the two continued their slow progress.
Carl, as always, was the first to break the uncomfortable silence. "You know," He said, Katrine in his hands with one of his few remaining arrows slotted in his fingers for safety. "I actually have been thinking about something for a while now."
"What." Roland said, staring ahead past a wall of menacing, black trunks clumped in dense, irregular rows as the two stepped across a frozen rill's flecked, icy trickle. He could barely see through all the piney scrub.
Carl's voice carried in the forest's frigid hush. "What was all that business you tried to pull, back on the High Road a few days ago?"
Roland spotted a stray foot track and resumed his quest, weaving between trunks as the ground began to peak and valley. She had gone astoundingly deep into the interior of the alpine hinterland. Frozen pine cones lay strewn about their feet as they walked, adding a loud crunching element to their tread marks as they moved across the snowy earth. "What do you mean?" He said, only somewhat paying attention to Carl's ramblings.
Carl put a hand upon Roland's shoulder and brazenly turned them face to face. Carl's narrow lips twisted in distaste. His voice deepened, and he did his best affectation of Roland's sonorous mutter. "
Carl, listen to me
