Bastion

taken thought for sound carrying to the main room as well—or, possibly, from it—because the tunnel kept turning, like a snake. He wondered if this passage hadn’t been where the occupants bedded down their youngsters, once they were old enough to sleep away from their parents safely. It would make a lot of sense in a communal space to put all the little ones together with a supervisor or two.
    The passage made a hairpin turn, then another, and he realized he could hear absolutely nothing from the main room. With glee, he examined each of the nooks in this new section until he found the best one. It actually had a ledge all around the sleeping hollow where they could put things and a hole in the wall that surely had been intended for a hook or support for a lantern. That seemed to indicate his guess had been right, and this was the sleeping place of one of the older supervising—beings? No way of telling if these nooks had been for lizards or humans.
    He spent the rest of the time moving everything from the existing nook to this new one, adding more hay and another feather comforter, then went out to the smaller woodpile inside the cave and rummaged until he found a forked stick of about the right diameter to hammer into that hole in the wall.
    “Listen for me whacking on somethin’ would you?” he asked Jakyr as he passed. Jakyr nodded absently, intent on something he was simmering. “I’m gonna pound a lantern hook inta the wall, and if you cain’t hear it, you won’t hear nothin’ from there.”
    It wasn’t easy to drive the branch home without ruining it, but after a couple of false starts, Mags got it hammered in securely enough it would actually take his weight as he tried to pull himself up off the floor with it. The lantern hung perfectly on it; it would certainly take an earthquake or worse to dislodge it. Pleased with the results, he went back out to the main cave. Jakyr looked up at him as he entered.
    “Just in time, the soup is ready. When are you going to do your hammering?” the Herald asked.
    “Done,” Mags smirked, and took the bowl and the bread that Jakyr was holding out to him. “If you didn’t hear that, ’specially the swearin’ I did when I hit my hand, you ain’t gonna hear nothin’.”
    “Congratulations,” Jakyr said, with no more than faint irony. “And now you will also be spared Lita’s snoring. Perhaps I should go looking for a similar nook.”
    Since Lita had not snored once to Mags’ knowledge, he just held his peace and ate his soup. Jakyr made the most excellent soup. Somehow no two batches ever ended up tasting the same.
    “What’s the plan for the next town?” he asked instead. “Let Bards and Healers go first, instead of us, and feel the place out for us?”
    Jakyr paused in his eating, as if that hadn’t occurred to him. “That’s not a bad thought,” he said. “Provided we can get her Bardic Majesty to agree with it, I like the plan.”
    Mags smiled to himself. If there was one thing he was certain of, it was that he knew exactly how to get Lita to agree.
    Even if it meant he was going to get one less night with Amily than he really wanted . . .
    “Lemme say somethin’ about it, then you come up with all kinds of ideas why that won’t work,” he suggested. “Lita’s bound t’object, you fight a bit with her, then let ’er get ’er way.”
    Jakyr eyed him favorably. “Mags, you are a manipulative young man. You have unplumbed depths to you. I like it.”
    It had been a long ride, and Mags was tired. He was also keen to try the new sleeping nook and make sure it was going to be comfortable and warm enough for Amily. He volunteered to wash the dishes and did so; Jakyr retired to his own nook before he had finished, so he was left to bank the fire and make sure all was safe until morning. The Companions had come in by themselves, of course, so after making sure they were warmly blanketed and had water and fodder, he took a lantern and went to his new bed.
    It must have been fine after he’d warmed it with his body, because he didn’t remember anything past starting to relax in the silence and the dark.
    •   •   •
    He went out hunting while they waited for the others to arrive, and a plump young buck with only two points to his antlers made too tempting of a target to turn down. A clean shot through the eye took him straight to the ground, and Dallen turned up wearing a spare horse-collar so that Mags could lash