Daylight was something of an exaggeration; the sun was out, somewhere, but the light didn’t seem to get through the constant drizzle and fog or the hanging moss that hung off the dripping early spring tree branches overhead. Reynard brushed some of the mud off his borrowed armor, checked his second-hand weapons for rust. A buzz of pre-mission nervous energy seemed to have taken over the camp; he did his best to ignore it, considered, vaguely, that his hair was getting too long and it might prevent the Nilfgaardians from recognizing him, and, as he decided that there was no fixing the problem in the next hour, Meve appeared.
The mood in the camp seemed to be affecting her, he noticed; she had a strange expression on her face.
“We can’t use you as bait. One lucky shot with a crossbow’s all it would take,” she said, without preamble. He saw Hal coming his way in the near distance; the other man caught his slight head shake and veered off to hang nonchalantly in the background, looking up at the sky.
“I have my reasons, which I believe I have already explained,” he said. She almost rolled her eyes at him.
“If things go wrong -”
“- then we won’t have to worry about any of this anymore,” he finished. “Probably.”
“If I could order you not to go, I would.”
He smiled at her defeated glare. If a few hundred people weren’t around, he thought he might have kissed her; instead, he carefully sheathed his definitely rust-free sword.
“I know,” he said, catching Hal’s eye. The knight made the few dozen yards between them with a rapid stride, reported, officiously, that everything was ready.
“Good,” Reynard said, added, as Hal marched off and Meve’s unhappy scowl returned, “I’ll see you in a while.”
“Be careful, Reynard.”
“I always am.”
