“I lost track of time, stalking the Huldira.”
“Unwise. A huldira would likely sneak up on you again in the dark.”
“I did realize that. I’ll do better tomorrow with some sleep in me.”
“Not much sleep left to get this night. There’s plans for a larger hunting party when the rest of our rangers return…”
The voice trailed off. Tanis was still holding her basket, Bianca realized. She could practically feel the attention of whoever had stopped them eyeing it with as much suspicion as Tanis had when she’d first given him one, if not more.
“I found this,” Tanis offered after a moment. “Next to some scavenged remains.”
Too long a beat of silence went by.
“I thought, why bring it back empty?” Tanis offered, and Bianca winced. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed it before because she had been too afraid of a stranger, but he was a terrible liar. “And… maybe we could find some use for these.”
There was a noise Bianca recognized all too well, theI’m-not-dealing-with-your-nonsensesort of groan that her troupe director was so fond of making.
“Fine. Give it to the stitchers, but I don’t want to see you wasting your time like that again.”
She only had a moment to wrap her arms and legs around his leg, as he took a careful step forward, shuffling around whoever they had encountered.
Bianca clung to his leg as best she could, but even she could tell this was not how he usually walked.
“Did you hurt yourself?” the other orc called after them.
“Nothing the stitchers can’t fix,” Tanis answered over his shoulder.
Through the movement of his cloak, she occasionally spied glimpses of the orc camp. It was not caravans like Bianca’s acting troupe’s, but tents with patterns woven in the waxed canvas, a number of small campfires sprawled and spread throughout the woods. Occasionally by a cluster of larger, sturdier tents there was a huge bonfire, where more orcs gathered.
His tent was stationed nearly alone as a watch on one edge of the camp. She slipped quickly from the confines of his cloak through the flaps of the tent, with hopefully no one noticing.There was a pile of animal furs on one side of the tent, stacked on top of a wooden chest to keep them off the ground. A small leather and wood box laid near the edge of the bedroll, a little pot of a blue veined plant mostly crushed to ink in it. There was a little metal crucible with its lid askew, a couple still warm coals that heated the tent some.
Bianca could only sightsee for a moment before she had to scurry out of the way, as Tanis dropped to his knees and moved inside after her.
“It was already crowded with only me, so,” he grimaced, an apology for the cramped space. Slowly they worked around each other, until he sat on his bedroll, long legs bracketing her as she knelt in the small space.
It was hardly spacious. Even though she, a halfling, could stand fully in the tent, he could barely sit up without grazing the top.
“Were you at any point going to let me know you didn’t want the others to see me?”
“I thought more would be asleep by now,” he sighed. “Didn’t plan on chatting.”
Meaning, he hadn’t thought about it at all until he encountered someone. “And that back there wasn’t chatting?”
“There's a rule about bringing strangers to the camp during the betrothal rituals’ season,” Tanis muttered, and then did not elaborate. He hadn’t mentioned before he’d be breaking rules to help her. Maybe the problem was really that he didn’t want to have to explain anything at all.
Bianca cast her eyes around the tent. Still, it was warmer inside without the wind, and the bedroll was soft to sit on.
“We can return you to your camp when the patrol falls asleep. Usually around dawn.”
“What till then?” she whispered, nowhere to look but straight into his eyes.
That might have been the first true bit of unabridged emotion to cross Tanis’ face, just a hint of panic, as he seemed to process the idea of the next few hours alone.
In a tent.
With Bianca.
Not that they hadn’t just spent several hours alone together, but there was something about the tightness of the space that seemed more immediate.
