After his second rest, he reached up to continue on and quickly let his hand drop back down. The exhaustion had set in and he felt as if he couldn’t push anymore with his arms.
“At least the slide back down the chimney will be fun, although I guess it does end in the fire,” he murmured to himself.
“I thought I told you to stay quiet,” came the familiar and always seemingly disapproving voice.
Kre glanced up and saw Kitalia’s head poking through a hole in the side of the chimney, about two feet above him. “Hurry up,” she ordered, and then she pulled her head back through.
“A thousand apologies,” Kre remarked drily to empty air. “How about a hand? No thanks, I’ll be all right.”
Invigorated by that bit of anger towards his companion, who seemed to make everything look so easy by comparison, Kre found the energy to climb up the last few feet until he could hook a foot through the small rectangular opening. He then carefully reached out with a tentative hand, trying to keep his balance now that only one leg and one arm were holding him securely in place in the chimney. He gripped the top lip of the opening and relaxed a bit, pausing to let his body unwind from the bout of climbing.
A sharp jab to his shin almost made him fall once again, as his leg automatically recoiled requiring that he immediately shoot his other leg and hand forward to the opening, as if he were doing some sort of aerial dance. He hung there for a moment, fingers white from gripping the opening, holding him in place, and his legs mostly useless except that they remained hooked in the bottom of the opening. The rest of his body was suspended in the chimney still and, again, he wondered briefly how much fun it would be to slide back down the chimney, this time head-first.
A strong hand gripped each of his wrists and pulled sharply, lurching his body forward as his fingers lost their grip on the rim of the doorway. His face flew dangerously close to the side of the chimney and he forced himself to duck his head down and scramble his legs forward to stay in a mostly supine position as he slid through the hatch.
Kitalia released his wrists and moved to close the small doorway in the side of a tree trunk. Once closed, even Kre who knew where it was, could not see any indication that it existed, so naturally did the hidden door meld with the rest of the tree.
“Fascinating,” he muttered.
For that he earned a flick to the side of his head. When he turned to say something accusatory to Kitalia, she had a finger to her lips and a stern expression on her face. Then she motioned to her ear, tapped twice, and motioned out past the bushes which surrounded them.
Now that Kre was focusing his attention, he could hear the soft jingle of harnesses in the distance, and the clip-clopping of horseshoes on the hardpacked forest floor. They were faint, but they were there. They seemed to be coming closer as well. Kitalia gripped her dagger tightly, not wishing to need to use it without knowing how many were out there, but ready just in case.
Kre wished he had some weapon of his own, though he admitted to himself that it might prove more dangerous to him given the great difference in skill between him and a group of highly trained fighters. So instead, he picked up a large rock in each hand and nodded to Kitalia, who smirked, but nodded back. That was about the most approval he had gotten from her so far.