They tended their horses and while Karigan collected wood and laid it in a charred stone ring a previous camper had built, Fergal squatted at the edge of the lake staring into it, or so she thought. Suddenly he jerked and pulled and there was much splashing. He whooped in delight. To Karigan’s astonishment, he grabbed a large, silvery fish by the gills, pulled it out of the water, and held it up for her to see.
“We will have trout tonight!” he proudly declared.
Karigan was impressed. He showed her his fishing kit of string and odd hooks wrapped with colorful threads, which he claimed looked like the bugs the trout liked to eat. Having grown up on the coast, Karigan’s experience with the tools of fishing ranged from heavy deep-sea hooks, to nets, weirs, traps, and harpoons. Not that she engaged in fishing herself, but she had spent enough time on the wharves of Corsa Harbor to have known the men and women who fished for a living. If her father had not fled Black Island when he was a boy to seek his fortune elsewhere, she supposed she would have grown up to be a fishwife. The thought was not an appealing one.
After Fergal caught a second monster of a fish, he chopped off their heads and gutted them with expert, deft strokes, then extracted the bones. When he finished, he rummaged through his saddlebags and produced little sacks of spices which he sprinkled liberally onto the fish. He left them in their skins, and wrapped them in leaves to cook among the coals of the fire Karigan had started.
“Learned to fish when I got sick of horse meat,” Fergal said, the flames playing in his eyes as he poked the coals with a stick. “My da thought it was fine when he didn’t have to feed me.”
Karigan waited to hear more about Fergal’s da, the knacker, but he said no more and seemed content to watch the fire. She wasn’t going to press him, considering his actions of the previous night.
The trout, when it finished cooking, tasted better than anything Karigan had ever eaten. Or maybe it was just the alchemy of the cold air and the stars shining above that made it taste so good. Whatever it was, she hoped Fergal had opportunities to catch more trout along their journey.
“It was a long way from Arey,” Fergal said unexpectedly, as though there had been no intervening time between midday, when she tried to draw him out, and now. Maybe it was the companionability of the meal and campfire that inspired him to speak, or the time had simply come. Karigan dared not interrupt for fear he’d withdraw again.
“I thought I was running away from my da,” Fergal continued. “I wanted to often enough, but it turns out I wasn’t really running away, but running to Sacor City because of the call. It came on me fast, so I didn’t take too much with me. Just the clothes I was wearing and my fishing gear. One minute I’m washing down the floor in the shop, the next I’m running out the door all sudden like. Didn’t know where I was going at the time, but I always seemed to want to head west. Slept in barns, under trees, in abandoned cots. Sometimes there was just the stars, like tonight.” He laughed. “Good thing it was summer.”
He went on to describe how he had worked his way west in exchange for food, and had even hitched up with a merchant’s caravan coming over the mountains. Sometimes he’d fished if there was a stream or lake along the route, or built traps with his own hands to snare small animals. Karigan found herself impressed with how he’d made his way, surviving by virtue of his own ingenuity.
“I was hungry and cold some of the time,” he said. “It wasn’t bad though. Folks were good to me—far better than my own da, but I couldn’t stay anywhere long. I had to keep going till I reached Sacor City. And now to be a Rider—that’s like heaven!”
Karigan could see that being a Rider was a definite improvement over the knacker’s shop. He didn’t have to go into detail about his life with his father for her to make guesses about how hellish it must have been. Despite his harsh life, he’d shown himself as resourceful and clever during his journey to Sacor City, which only made sense since Green Riders shared such traits.
“Thank you for telling me about your journey,” she told him, and she meant it.
He glanced sharply at her as if expecting to be mocked or lectured, but then nodded and relaxed when she remained silent.
A pair of raccoons hissed at one another over the fish guts, which Fergal had dumped by the shore. Better raccoons than bears, Karigan thought, though they were making enough of a ruckus to be mistaken for bears. Eventually they sorted out their dispute and toddled off with the offal, one casting the Riders a bandit-faced glance, the firelight catching in its eyes before it vanished into the night.
The raccoon reminded Karigan of the masked thief she had fought in the Sacor City War Museum. She had not thought much of him since their encounter—she hadn’t had time!—but now her thoughts strayed to him, and she wondered what he wanted with a bit of ancient parchment. It seemed beneath him somehow. She’d expect him to be more interested in jewels and gold. Maybe, as Mara suggested, the parchment gave directions to a hidden treasure.
She shrugged. Sacor City was miles away, and she would never know what value the thief placed on his plunder. That would be for the constabulary to figure out, but somehow she didn’t think they’d ever catch him.
With the raccoons gone and Fergal staring into the fire, the night grew quiet, except for the hiss of flames and gentle lap of waves upon the shore. If loons called this lake home, they were long gone, well on their way out to sea for the winter. It made the lake seem desolate, knowing she would not hear their haunting calls this night.