Internally Driven by Ben Burton (best romance ebooks .TXT) 📕

kill you now? For all you know, we might wait for you outside the bar to finish the job. Why would you stop to tell us this when it would just be easier and much safer to move along?" Dirk never really trusted anyone, but he never had any reason to. Henard explained "I'm quite sure you two have no ill intentions. Your brother never drew a knife, or showed any signs of aggression if my memory serves me correctly. You may act as a bodyguard or the fighter between you two, but truly evil people do not travel with the good, even if they are brothers. Even if good and bad did travel together in an extremely out of the ordinary pairing, you two did not finish me off, nor did you take my things, what few thing I did have on me. So even if you were bad people, you at least were not murderers or thieves. How bad could you really be? Even an average person with questionable morals would have found it too easy in that situation to not let a potential threat live, and take relieve a dead man of the valuables he would no longer be needing. As for my interests in you, I am simply fascinated with fate, and I don't think our paths would have crossed twice if it were not meant for us to know one another." They talked through the night and slept much of the next day. Drake was a little upset that their new found friend had delayed their journey almost a full day, but denying Dirk interesting conversation on an adventure was not an option. And a friendly conversation with bookkeeper who you had stabbed, presumably to death, was truly interesting. That was now six years in the past and they had never seen Henard again. Maybe coincidence rather than fate was all that had crossed their paths.

When they came to a small clearing at a bend in the stream they both put their small packs down.

Without saying a word, Drake gathered a few dry fallen sticks to make a very small fire. He then pulled out his canteen and got his brother's as well and went to the stream to fill them. Dirk found a tree a few yards to the south and climbed quite high up looking around and assessing from which direction they were most visible, and from which direction a stray traveler was most likely to come; although, in this place, the likelihood of seeing anything on two legs was extremely slim. Dirk also looked for signs of intruders that did not travel on two legs, such as wild bears, boars, bobcats, beimoths, baslers, and all sorts of other creatures that may have nests or trails nearby. The most dangerous threats, after all, were not passing travelers, or even human.

After Dirk was satisfied with what he had seen he chose a place for their fire and pulled a rolled of leather out of his small pack. The packs that Dirk and Drake carried were very small compared to how most traveled, but experience had taught the brothers what was necessary and what was better left at home. Over the years, they had learned that less was almost always better. If the item was something that they did not use on every adventure, invariably better to figure out how to go without it than to figure out how to bring it along. Anything they brought with them needed to be accommodated, carried, cared for, and protected; taking up valuable space, slowing them down, and adding another responsibility or chore. Ultimately, the more they carried the more attractive they were to passing thieves. Any decent thief is never seen unless he decides you are a worth stealing from. A large pack, or a valuable item left in view is much more dangerous to a traveler than not having an unneeded provision. A large high quality sword does wonders in a full out battle, but to a traveler, it is just an expensive item worth being killed over. The brothers have had their fair share of waking up to missing items, and missing packs, have have unfortunately had a few instances where they'd needed to defend their provisions. The fact that the two were still alive testified that they had become skilled defenders; Dirk more than Drake though. They had unfortunately not always come away unscathed, and each had a few scars to show for it. Even more unfortunately, Dirk knew the sting of taking someone's life, and knew it well. Thieves may not be noble, and some may even deserve to perish. Nevertheless, extinguishing the life that flows in almost anything is a hard burden for anyone to bear. Extinguishing the life of another human weighs so heavily, that it is not uncommon for a first time killer to die himself just from the experience. Even a battle hardened warrior will tell you that taking a life is a horrendous experience that can make you vomit, or confine you to quarters for days or even weeks. The battle-sickness, as it has come to be known, is not something to be taken lightly.

Dirk carried the roll to the stream and soaked it in the water for a few minutes. When he unrolled it, it was a fairly large, very thin piece of leather with tiny holes throughout that had been rolled up around four small metal rods, and contained four thin leather chords. He used it to create a shelter, only a couple feet off the ground, much to small to sleep under. Through experience, the two understood that a fire, so necessary for cooking captured food, keeping them from freezing on cold nights, sterilizing questionable water, utensils, and the occasional bloody dagger, and affording them the pleasures of a warm cup of tea, was also a signal calling curious travelers and thieves, a beacon for anyone that may be trying to track them, and attraction for all sorts of nocturnal wildlife, both harmless and hunting. The soaked leather tent covered the light quite well, and even absorbed and dissipated the smoke through the small holes to a point where it was barely visible. It helped retain the heat and allowed food to be cooked underneath it with a much smaller fire, which was also necessary since the fire had to be contained to the small area protected by the leather tent. As with their lighter packs, smaller fires were found to be far superior, being much easier to build and maintain throughout the night, giving off less light and heat, but still sufficient for the needs of the two men. Drake pulled out a pack of five small rods bound together, and proceeded to fit them together end to end. It was thin metal spear, less than half an inch in diameter, but about four feet in length and had a barbed tip. He wrapped the leather binding tightly around one rod near the end to make a handle, and then quietly walked down to the stream and waited patiently perched on an exposed tree root on the bank with his spear held high, still as a rock. As he waited, Drake pulled out a large rectangular shaped item covered in cloth of his brothers pack that was obviously the largest item either of them carried. He unpacked it and put fit together two boxes with trap doors out of the pieces inside. Once put together the two traps resembled tree roots, made of a dark hard wood, with slightly rounded sides and top. Looking in from the open side, it was hard to tell the traps were not fallen hollow logs. The inside of the trap was fitted with a thin handleless blade that came down with the trap door, hopefully killing whatever had curiously gone inside. After about twenty minutes, Dirk heard the splash of his brother's spear finding its target, followed by the splashing of his brother chasing it through the water. "Damn it! This thing needs to be remade to fit together better. It falls apart more than it stays together these days!" The spear, not one solid piece and not actually bound together at the joints had a tendency to come apart when used, especially when it found larger, wigglier prey. A single piece spear was not a practical piece of equipment to carry, as they had found out early on in their adventures when Drake's previous fishing spear went missing in the night along with Dirk's favorite shot sword and short bow that he had carried with him everywhere since he was old enough to travel. Dirk was so angry when he woke the following morning, that even Drake was afraid to speak to him. They had traveled in silence until the sun set on them the following night. They knew each other well, even in their early travels, but that day had actually taken them in the wrong direction and left them hungry and lost. Some lessons are hard learned, and that was the true beginning of their understanding the that bringing less does not mean you are less prepared, but quite the opposite. Though it was frustrating to have a fishing spear that falls apart occasionally, or not so occasionally as had been the case recently, did not actually take away from the functionality of the spear. A spear fish is a dead, or soon dead, fish, and even if it manages to travel downstream it never makes it it far, and the current inevitable gets the end of the spear caught in brush near the bank no more than forty yards downstream.

One of the more interesting tools the brothers owned was a sparking tool invented by a close friend and blacksmith they had known all their lives. It was a an interesting piece of formike, a light grey rock speckled black fragments. Formike was not an uncommon rock, and most people had a few pieces for lighting fires. It was extremely rough and when metal was rubbed quickly over the black specs, sometimes sparks would fly off the sides. Successfully sparking and directing those sparks was tricky though, and the harness of the rock had ruined the knives of many travelers. This piece of formike however shaped into a cylinder, and somehow Brown had created a slightly jagged whole about an inch in diameter through the center. With the rock, he smithed a small, short rod that fit this whole, and barely slid through it when the tool was empty. The idea was to fill the center with dry leaves, tree fiber, or even a piece of cloth, and then quickly shove it through the other end with the rod. The rod would strike the black specks through the center of the rock and concentrate the sparks on whatever was inside, lighting the fire. It worked quite well, and the brothers were very thankful to have such a tool.

They built a small fire, and their dinner tonight, much like many nights together was nothing more than somewhat less than half of a quite small fish each cooked over a small fire. The tail end of the fish, along with enough meat to be enticing went into one trap placed at the base of an extremely large nearby tree that towered over their meager camp site, and the head went into the other trap placed on the opposite side of their camp, at the base of the smaller the branchy tree that Dirk had climbed earlier that night, taller than most of the nearby trees, but not by much. Drake had found that, though not actually necessary, a small pouch of spices was well worth carrying, and although Dirk had been very against it, arguing that compromising on even the smallest items, would add up to much unneeded burden, he had come to appreciate Drake's stubbornness on this particular item over the past few years. Drake had