XVII: Competence, or the lack thereof

It must already be more than clear that I consider my fellow humans to be somewhat dimmer than your average bright spark. Somewhat dimmer than your average muck-covered rock, in fact. Stupidity, however, is one thing. Incompetence is another.

Incompetence is that completely incomprehensible inability to carry out a task you've been trained to do. It's an explosives expert smoking by his bombs, a warrior neglecting to pick up his shield, a medic using cold water to wash bandages. It's the sort of thing that could very easily put me in the mood for six measures of scotch and a night spent cursing humanity. It's something I couldn't help but expect from someone as irritating as Gethan Wrathwrought.

Hence I watched him with eagle eyes as we set up camp. There was no doubt he had been told what to do from the way he undressed the horses and helped me rub down their coats with earth, scouring their gleaming hooves with his boot knife before slapping their rumps and sending them trotting away into the dark. Herd animals that they were, they reappeared as we were going through the back-breaking process of hauling every last bag, blanket and saddle up into the tree I had found – an enormous oak with a suitably broad crown – but didn't loiter too close, thankfully. The last thing we wanted was some dumb gelding giving our position away by loyally standing right beneath our hiding place.

Once in the tree, we rested: breathless, wordless. Soon enough Wrathwrought got up and began wedging the saddles between the lowest gaps in the three main branches, blocking the easiest ways up and fencing us in so we wouldn't roll straight out in our sleep. I went about tying back the thin, flammable branches that overhung the projected position of the fire pit, using the horses' reins as rope. By the time I was done, Gethan had finished his work with the saddles, bored out a circular pit and filled it with dry kindling and the odd larger stick. Sitting back against a branch, I eyed his work sceptically. The saddles looked secure. The pit wasn't too large and the bark around it had clearly been suitably soaked. The firewood was pitiful but hell, we weren't exactly toting around an axe and block. As he finally managed a spark and started the fire off, it really did look like he knew what he was doing.

Almost.

“You mean to tell me we have a fire in a tree and no fucking water to hand,” I said, shortly after the first measly flickers had grown into full-size flames and the truth of our safety precautions – lack of safety precautions – became clear.

“In my defence, I thought you were going to-”

“There is no goddamn defence. Hellfire, did you even wet that fire pit?”

“Of course; plenty of water in our canteens-”

“Drinking water? You used our drinking water to wet tree bark?”

For once, Wrathwrought looked appropriately ashamed. Ears clearly red even in the orange firelight, he cleared his throat self-consciously.

“There's a lake not far from here,” he said, reaching for the lone cooking pot. “I'll go gather some of that.”

I snatched it from him before his hand was even halfway to the handle, taking a certain amount of pleasure from his discomfort.

“Like hell I'm giving you another chance to screw up,” I declared, bounding over the saddles, clambering down the tree trunk and utterly ignoring his hissed calls of protest.

Everyone loves being right. It's not worth denying that as I strode through the forest, keeping to the firmer ground near the bottoms of the trees, I was positively gleeful. That Wrathwrought had undoubtedly been looking forward to praise after trying to hard to impress me made his eventual slip all the more enjoyable; I wondered just how low those punctured high hopes had brought his mood on the way down. Hopefully dirt low.

Low as the lake.