Once he returned to their makeshift camp, she held out a small metal flask. “A bit early for a drink, isn’t it?” he asked.
“It is to rub into your hands,” she replied matter-of-factly. “This particular alcohol is terrible for drinking, but it will clean your hands before you eat.”
He let her pour a small splash of the alcohol into his palm and them rubbed his hands together as she instructed. The smell was nauseating, as she had warned him it would be, but his hands did have a certain coolness to them that indicated that she could be right about how well it cleaned.
“Do you always carry around a flask of alcohol just to clean your hands?”
She stoppered the flask back up and slid it into a saddlebag. “No. This belonged to one of the Rangers. I forget which one… but he had it for drinking. I saw other value in it and decided it was worth bringing along.”
“It seemed like a nice looking flask,” Kre commented. “I’m sure he’s going to be upset that you absconded with it.
“Well,” he added with a chuckle, “that and all of the other things we took.”
Kitalia said nothing but simply kept packing up her bags and cinching them closed. Kre took the hint and proceeded to pack his own horse. It wasn’t easy, considering that the sun hadn’t even risen yet, but he managed it in between bites of day-old bread. Kitalia rubbed her horse’s neck while she waited patiently for him to finish.
Finally, when he was all set, they mounted up and started to ride at a fast trot. After about half an hour, the sun started to peek over the hills just at the outskirts of his left-side peripheral vision and Kre could finally determine that they were headed pretty steadily to the southeast, though he could not remember enough of his geography to tell what was in that direction aside from more hills.
“Any chance you’ll tell me more about our destination? I’m all for heading off in a generally southern direction to get to the Citadel, but I’m also fairly certain that we’ll run out of supplies long before we get there.”
“We would,” she agreed, smiling at the look of defeat he wore upon hearing her response. She seemed to garner great satisfaction at being as evasive to his questions as possible. It was as if she fed off his general confusion and relished putting him into states of disorientation.
At least, that’s how it felt to him. This time though, he felt that he deserved an actual answer from her. He pulled on his reins and his horse slowed to a stop.
“If you keep slowing us down,” she called back in an exasperated tone, “then we shall never reach our destination by nightfall.”
“If you shared the destination with me, then maybe I can help us get there faster. This is my homeland you know. I’ve lived in Milo most of my life.”
Now it was her turn to be a bit confused. “I thought you lived in Mintas.”
“Yes. Well, Mintas is the name of the town I grew up in, but Milo is the name of the region we’re in right now. The great city of Sandort is the capitol of the Milo Region. That’s where we were originally headed when we met you and the Rangers at the seasonal workers’ cabin.”
“Ah, yes. Your people and your odd naming schemes. I suppose I had heard the term Milo before, but I thought it another city in this area.”
“So, if we’re not heading northeast, towards Sandort…” He didn’t want to press her for an answer, but he hoped that he could entice her to share more about her plans for the two of them.