Bastion

gonna go in deeper, the wind’s getting me here. Looks like it’s a damn good thing Amily talked me into bringing stuff with me.:
    He moved the fire, first thing; he got a pot and gathered as much of the wood and coals as he could from the struggling blaze. Then he picked up the lantern and moved on, going far into a twisting passage that effectively foiled the wind, to a place where the air grew warmer, warm compared to a cave’s usual temperature. Looking around, it seemed he had found what might have been the bandit chief’s own “quarters.” It was a wider spot in the tunnel. There was a blackened spot on the floor that showed where fires had been built before, and there were four of the sleeping nooks spaced around the walls.
    This was as good a spot to set up as any, and better than out where he had planned on camping. He left the pot on the blackened spot and dragged the rest of the pots in their box down to set beside it. He moved all of the firewood that would fit into one of the “sleeping nooks,” then brought the hay and blankets down to build himself a bed in another, and gradually got things roughly arranged into a comfortable living space. He tried to ignore the fact that there was yet more unexplored passage beyond this, though the dark tunnel did bother him a bit. He didn’t much like being exposed on two sides, even though one of those sides was now pretty effectively blocked by the king of all blizzards.
    Once he was set up, he’d dumped out the pot of coals and gotten a respectable fire going; then he ventured down that unexplored passage a bit farther. It narrowed, then widened again, and a sort of small side cave budded off it. There he was rewarded by a single-hole latrine nook. And this one had a basin that was served by a trickle of water from the rock above, a tiny spring, perhaps coming from the source of their water in the living cave. He tasted it cautiously, and it seemed sweet and good. So he wouldn’t have to melt snow for water.
    That’s an improvement, he thought dryly. All the comforts of home.
    There was still more passage beyond the latrine, but at the moment, he was disinclined to go farther. He had a lot to do.
    When everything was set up, his fire was warming the small space pretty well, and he had done all that he could, he surveyed the space that was going to be his home for the next couple of days with resignation. He was going to get rather tired of meat and vegetable pies . . . but there were worse things to have had with him. These would be easy to heat on a rock at the side of his fire. He could make hot tea. He had a book. It wasn’t a total disaster.
    And I ain’t gonna be there if Lita and Jakyr go at each other again, he reminded himself. That . . . that might be worth a couple days of samey-same food an’ no Amily.
    At least the feeling of being watched was still gone.
    Maybe it don’t like snow any more than I do.
    •   •   •
    He woke to tend his fire—he knew he would have to be very careful with the fire in such a confined space. He was sleeping on very flammable hay, after all. One jumping coal and he would awaken in a very bad situation. He also was the only one here, and if he let the fire go out, he’d have to get it started again with a firestriker in the black dark. Then he went back to sleep.
    He woke a second time. He could still hear the wind howling, faint and far, raging at the entrance. He poked at Dallen and got the equivalent of a sleepy grunt, so evidently everyone else was sleeping too. He made himself a cup of tea and went back to sleep again.
    The third time he woke, he knew he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep again, so he ventured back toward the front of the cave, wrapped tightly in his cloak. There was some pale light reflecting off the back wall of the cave ahead, so he knew it must be daylight. But the wind was still raging out there, and Dallen didn’t give him any indication that he should try to fight his way back, so he went back to his warmer den, already feeling chilled.
    More tea, a sketchy attempt at cleaning himself up, a meat pie, and he was left contemplating several hours of wakefulness and nothing much to fill them with. If it hadn’t been so cold in the treasury cave, he might have gone back to sifting through the sand for more fragments, but that wind would cut you to the bone, even that far inside the cave entrance. He deeply pitied anyone who had been caught out in that and hoped