Jim Butcher - Captain's Fury

He would need his strength.

Regardless of what he did with it.

Dreary days and miserable nights blended into one long, slow, ugly ordeal, and Amara grew heartily sick of swamps and everything to do with them.

The days were all the same. They started at first light, with a cold breakfast. Then they would slog forward through endless mud and shallow water. They would stop for rests, but increasingly, as the days went on, the stops seemed to do less and less to allow them to recuperate. Bernard sometimes managed to find dry wood that would burn without giving off too much smoke, but there was never much of it, and he was willing to chance only tiny fires.

They would cook whatever meat Bernard managed to shoot-the garim provided most of their foraged fare, though the meat was tasteless and oily. They could never chance a fire at night, as Bernard said they could be seen from miles away, and without a fire, the nights became something utterly miserable.

They would stop on dry ground to rest-but "dry" was a relative term in the swamps. Moisture seeped in through blankets and clothes regardless of what they tried to prevent it, until Bernard collected enough of the smaller garim hides to provide a single sleeping mat. One of them had to remain awake at all times, so they couldn't huddle together for warmth, and as a result what little sleep Amara did get was attenuated by her constant shivering.

And, of course, absolutely every part of the day was accompanied by thousands and thousands of insects that crawled, insects that flew, insects that swam, and Amara found herself constantly brushing them from her eyes and nose and ears and mouth, like walking through some endless living curtain.

When first light came, they would rise and set forth again.

And so endless days passed.

Though Bernard claimed to feel better, he did not offer to lead them again, and Amara saw him rubbing at his eyes or temples when he thought she wasn't looking. The First Lord, for his part, continued to drift in and out of sleep, and if he did not recover from the steady fever, at least he did not further deteriorate, either.

They had stopped for a meal an hour before, and Amara still hadn't gotten the taste of the oily garim meat out of her mouth, when she saw movement in the swamps ahead. She stopped, holding up a hand, and glanced over her shoulder at Bernard.

They were standing in waist-deep water, and Bernard immediately laid his bow and quiver across Gaius's floating stretcher and crouched until only his head was showing. Amara followed his example. He moved soundlessly through the water to stand next to her, squinting ahead.

Amara lifted her hands and called to Cirrus, willing the fury to bend light in the space between her palms. The air there blurred for a moment, and then came into sharper focus, magnifying her view of the area ahead of them.

There were three men moving through the swamps. They were dressed in garim-hide cloaks, trousers, and boots, and the mottled hides of the swamp lizards blended in perfectly with all the green and grey and brown around them. In fact, Amara never would have seen them at all except for-

She willed Cirrus to draw her view even closer to the three men, and she focused on the one in the lead. Around his throat was the gleam of a polished, metallic collar. With her fury's help, she was even able to make out the word engraved on the steel: Immortalis .

"Immortals," she whispered. "They're Immortals, Bernard."

He said nothing, but she saw his eyes flicker with concern. The enslaved warriors had been driven beyond madness by the furycrafted collars that controlled them. Kalarus's Immortals had been responsible for the deaths of dozens of Citizens on the Night of the Red Stars. They were virtual juggernauts, entirely insensible to pain, completely focused upon serving their master, Kalarus. Amara had seen Immortals simply ignore swords thrust through their throats, limbs severed from their bodies, accepting hideous wounds more than willingly in order to strike down the targets their master had sent them to eliminate.

"Crows," Bernard murmured.

A moment later, Amara saw something else, through the haze of humidity, beyond the patrolling Immortals.

"Bernard," she whispered. "I can see the mountains."

He took a deep breath. She felt his hand move to her and rest for a moment on the small of her back. "How far?"

"Ten miles?" she guessed. "Twelve?"

He nodded. "Close."

"The patrol is passing us," she said. "We can push through today if we hurry."

She had already begun to move forward when Bernard's hand slid around to press against her stomach and hold her back. "Wait," he said quietly.

"For what?" she asked.

"If Kalarus has his Immortals here," he said, "then they're looking for us, specifically. He wouldn't send them out unless he thought it was that important."

"Agreed," Amara said.

"Those three are the sentinels we do see," Bernard said. "But I'm more worried about the ones we don't."

Amara frowned. "What do we do, then?"

"We watch them," he said. "We wait. We'll see how regular their patrols are and look for a way to slip through between them."

"Wait?" Amara said. She looked at the vague, vast forms of the mountains in the distance. "We're so close."

"We can't get sloppy now," Bernard said, his voice solid, certain. "We wait."

"I thought you were worried about someone catching up to us from behind."

"I am," he said, nodding. "But the men coming behind us have to search miles and miles of swamp, sweeping along in one big, slow line. The Immortals have a much smaller area to watch."

"What happens if they catch up to us while we're waiting?"

"Pretty much the same thing that happens if we rush out there and bump into a gang of Immortals standing sentry in a hidden blind," Bernard said.

"That's not terribly encouraging," Amara said.

"I can't take you anywhere." He gestured around them, pausing to brush a swimming serpent, nudging it gently aside. "No matter how nice it is, you always seem to think it could be just a little bit better."

Amara's stomach twitched in tiny jerks, and her quiet breaths of laughter stirred the water beneath her nose and mouth.

"Plenty of trees," Bernard said. "A beautiful view." He slapped at himself as one of the stinging flies that filled the swamp struck at his ear. "Friendly neighbors."

"You know me, Bernard. I'm just one of those women who needs someone to do everything for her."

His eyes wrinkled at the corners, and he started snorting quiet laughter, too. "Crows, yes. That's you."

"I have a suggestion," murmured Gaius. "If you're both quite finished amusing one another."

Bernard gave Amara a sidelong look and his hand moved under the surface of the muddy water.

She clutched at his wrist and tried to glare at him as her cheeks turned scarlet. "Pardon, sire, of course."

Bernard grinned and turned his attention forward once more.

Gaius coughed a few times. "I would suggest that you wait until near sunset, Countess, and then fly an aerial reconnaissance. It's generally easier to spot hidden sentry posts from above."

"What if they have Knights Aeris about?" Bernard asked.

"We've not heard any windstreams of late," Gaius replied. "Besides. Even if there are enemy Knights Aeris, the Countess is more than capable of handling herself. And in the meanwhile, we can observe enemy movements before drawing any closer."

Amara glanced at Bernard, who frowned pensively for a moment, then nodded. "They already know we're about. It might be worth the risk to know more about what's immediately ahead." He grimaced down at the water. "Going to be a little damp while we wait, though."

"We'll take turns on the stretcher," Gaius said. "I won't need both legs to support my weight in the water."