Emri looked over to Hin now, rather than Remal. “Please,” she said, “May I help?” She sounded sincere, but Remal just couldn’t ignore the way that her face appeared so impassive.
Hin, however, didn’t seem to notice - or, if he did, he wasn’t bothered by it. He gave her a pat on the shoulder such as Remal thought Hin would give to one of his own children in reassurance. “Of course you can help, miss. Do these herbs grow up here in the hills, or where can we find them? We’ll help you gather some.”
Remal deferred to Hin Jeralan’s seniority when the older man suggested they go back to the camp the way they had come; but aside from slight misgivings over the strangeness of the girl, Remal also somewhat resented the curtailing of their scouting mission. He thought that perhaps, once this Emri had shown them what useful plants they could find in the hills, he could turn back and continue scouting the path forward, while keeping an eye out for more of the same plants. But apparently the ones that could be found in the rocky hillside were scarce - even more than plants generally were already in that rough dry area - and by the time she had located one to show them what it looked like, they had already crossed the stream and nearly started back downhill to the lower lands by the lake and the camp. At that point, Remal decided he might as well wait and learn what medicinal plants could be found near the marsh (which Emri said were the more effective ones anyway) and then go back and try scouting ahead, unless by then a decision had been made in any case about the hillside pathway being too much a bother for them to use for moving even a part of the camp.
As for crossing the stream, perhaps it was useful to see how well the path the two scouts had chosen worked for someone who wasn’t as surefooted as themselves… but Emri seemed… so very awkward and uncertain on that type of ground that it seemed one or the other of the men had to catch her from falling or from sliding on loose rocks nearly every other step. And when it came to crossing the stream, they essentially formed a three-person chain with Emri in the middle holding hands with each of the others so one could go ahead of her and one behind. Certainly they didn’t have anyone in the camp who could have so much trouble along a path like this here... except for the very young, the very old, and the ill - all of which the leaders intended to transport in carts instead of having them walk around the lake.
At least twice more on the way to the camp, Remal asked her if she was alright. As before, she insisted that she was. He didn’t want to say to her face that he very much doubted it, but he tried to shoot skeptical looks at Hin when she gave those answers. Hin had clearly noticed even without Remal drawing attention to it, but he was more subtle in inquiring after her health. He asked if she’d been eating well, sleeping well; if she’d been traveling in the open country by herself long and if she’d found shelter difficult to find, numerous other little questions halfway between innocent conversation-making and deliberate fact-finding.
She offered very little information. She said she hadn’t been traveling by herself for too long - which could mean it had been a long time but not too long for her to be able to manage by herself, or it could mean it hadn’t been very long at all. She’d eaten “adequately” lately and she had not had “problems” with finding shelter. Did that mean she hadn’t needed to bother with it yet, or that she had found shelter easily thus far? For all Remal could figure, she could have just started traveling by herself only that very day. But then, he did think the nearest settled lands were more than a day’s walk from where they were. And she didn’t have much with her, apparently. Just a small sack over her shoulder that she started collecting herbs in.
Although they were certain there were no towns nearby, it occurred to Remal that perhaps it would explain things if there was some kind of settlement around, or…
“Is there a town nearby that you’ve come from?” he asked abruptly, “Or did you ride out here on an animal?” He looked around pointedly as though to suggest she might have left such a thing behind and that it might have taken to following along after them. Just because very few people in their camp had their own personal animals to ride (such as a horse) and beasts for pulling carts (like oxen) were far more common in the lands they had come from than beasts for riding, didn’t mean the same was true in this region. It might not be. Or, even if it was uncommon, perhaps she had her own animal for riding anyway and that was how she had come to be up in the hills without looking like she’d walked a far distance to get there, and seeming like she was entirely unused to walking on such ground. It would have to be a sure-footed animal, of course, and-
“Why, no.” Emri said. “There’s no town here, and I do not have an animal for riding, either.” She seemed genuinely confused that he would ask such things; she even had a look of consternation in her eyes, with her brows drawn together somewhat.
Remal raised one eyebrow a little and passed Hin an incredulous look. Did he see how ridiculously improbable this all seemed? There had to be at least one thing that she wasn’t being straightforward with them on, he just couldn’t figure what… or why.
By the time they had got down from the hills and by the lake to the nearest bit of marsh for Emri to look for some of the medicinal plants she expected to find there, Hin had tried a few more attempts at getting more information from Emri that would explain her. She managed - whether deliberately or not - to not really provide much more than she had said already, but then he didn’t really try to get at much in the way of topics other than her health and what she was doing out in the hills by herself. Perhaps the village leaders at the camp would be able to get more out of her; undoubtedly the lot of them would have different things they’d want to know.
Remal just wanted to know if they could really trust a stranger to give unknown herbs to their sick, and what she wanted from them. Even if she meant well, if she didn’t really know what she was doing, she could just make those who were ill even worse. Well before they had arrived at the camp, he’d made up his mind that instead of going straight back to his scouting, he’d use any excuse necessary to stick around and keep an eye on this girl when she spoke to the leaders (and, likely, the Healer) and afterwards for as long as it took to be sure it was safe to have her around, or until she left. They had lost a few of their people to the sickness already, and if there was any way at all he could look out for his people and prevent more deaths, he was determined to do it.
He didn’t want to ever again see a repeat of the two times before when they’d had to bury a significant number of people from the village… the second event was all too near still, only a couple of months back they’d had to cross a bit of a desert area and simply had not been able to manage well on the amount of water they’d collected before going in, and hadn’t been able to find more until well after getting out. The dehydration had been too much for too many of them. But they had brought the fallen all out anyway, and put them in the ground in the same field under some trees. He feared they could lose even more to this illness; already the number who had taken sick rivaled the number dead back then, what was in question was how many of those could get well again. So far, none had.
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