Mantle of the Gods

I heard the Noble before I saw him.

“You are not tearing that down!”

As Aelin and I came out of the underbrush we saw Rix cutting the vines she had used to lash the stakes together. The redheaded Shooter had already disassembled enough posts that a monster would be able to get into the clearing, so I didn’t understand why Edward was trying to stop her now.

“You!” The blonde-haired Noble stormed over to the edge of the fence, pointing at me, “Tell her to stop breaking that!”

I eyed Rix, who seemed oblivious to the commotion around her.

“You think I can get her to do anything?” I nodded in her direction, “You’re acting like you think I’m the party leader.”

“That’s because you are!” Edward began jabbing his hands in her direction, “Tell her to STOP!”

“Go ahead and help her.” I signaled for Aelin to move.

“But it’s about to get good.” The blonde woman moaned.

“You can hear while you’re stacking posts.”

She frowned but trudged over to where Rix had begun dropping the posts and started stacking them.

“You… But… You have to…” Edward’s face was red and his veins were starting to pop out, “That’s not what I told you to have them do!”

“Because I can tell them what to do?”

“YES!”

“Since I’m the party leader?”

“EXACTLY”

I waited for a moment, but what he had been saying didn’t sink in.

“Are you going to tell them to stop?” Edward stomped his foot.

“No.” I stepped over the barrier, which forced Edward to back up, “Because we are moving camp. So as the PARTY LEADER, as you pointed out. I am telling you to get over there and start pulling up the stakes.”

“But that’s…”

“NOW!” I took a step forward, which would have brought up almost nose to nose, but the Noble stepped back.

The anger vanished from his face as he scrambled away from me.

All of the berries were gone. I hadn’t expected there to be any, but that didn’t help to endear the spoiled Hitter to me. I knew that we needed to establish team cohesion, but that wasn’t going to happen until Edward stopped seeing the rest of us as being there to serve him.

I gathered up the bark plates and then started stacking the rocks from the firepit. The fire had died a long time ago and it didn’t look like anything had been added to it to try to keep it going. It was just as well. I smoothed out the remains of the fire and covered it with dirt. The last thing that I wanted was for a forest fire to start because of the remains of our campfire.

I looked over at where Rix was still cutting away vines, but she was almost halfway around the fence. Edward and Aelin were starting to catch up to her.

“Rix,” I motioned at Aelin, “Are you good if I take Edward and a load back to camp?”

The redhead looked at me, nodded and then went back about her task.

I was curious about why she said so little and was quick to put distance between herself and anyone else, but now really wasn’t the time to ask. I honestly doubted that would be a question I would receive an answer to for a long time.

“Edward, start loading up as many of those stakes as you can carry. Aelin help him get a good load, then go back to helping Rix.”

Edward started gathering stakes without complaint or comment. I was glad that I didn’t have to argue with him.

“Gotcha!” Aelin started stacking stakes on the blonde Noble’s arms.

I watched how many stakes Edward loaded up with, then grabbed about two-thirds as many. I thought that would be a decent way to keep up the appearance of not having as much power as our Hitter.

“We’ll be back as soon as we drop these off.” I turned towards where we had left the other two.

“We’ll be fine.” Aelin pointed at the monster that was still hanging on the forked stick, “We can always wade out into the water.”

I had completely forgotten about the monster. It was still just as lifeless as when I had placed it on the other side of the fence.

“Cool.” I motioned with my head, “Come on Edward, Let’s go.”