Free How To Avoid Death On A Daily Basis: Book One by V. Moody

water skins in it.
     
    I felt a bit irked that he hadn’t told us about them before, but it seemed like it was kind of a test to only give us certain things when we asked for them. It made me realise we should have been asking a lot more questions. I tried to think of what else we might need and came up with a complete blank.
     
    There were a couple of soldiers waiting by the exit to the courtyard with a bucket of stew. They slopped out a ladleful into a metal dish and handed it to us as we walked out. It looked like the same stuff we had for lunch, but at least we could add some rabbit to it now.
     
    Two of the other groups had already returned and set up for the night. On the right, the cool kids had a decent-sized fire going, and they had what looked like chickens roasting on a spit.
     
    On the left side, Golden Boy and company had gone one better. They had a whole pig over a roaring inferno. Their fire was huge, and the pig, some kind of boar judging by the tusks, was already a golden brown.
     
    Members of both groups had water skins at their feet or hanging from belts, most of them bigger and in better condition than the ones we got. Apparently they were a lot quicker on the uptake than us.
     
    We headed over to the remains of our fire. It looked piddly by comparison to theirs, but it had been a trial run. We needed to build something that would last us all night. Only there was a slight problem.
     
    There had been a load of firewood piled up against one of the walls that ran around the courtyard. Lots of smaller twigs and branches, and some bigger logs. Obviously the others had used some already. There was still quite a few of the smaller bits of wood, but all the logs had gone. It was pretty obvious where.
     
    “Oh ah, it’ll be alright,” said Flossie, smiling anxiously. “We can still use these small ones to get a fire going. Be nice and cozy in no time.”
     
    True, but for how long? We needed those bigger logs if we wanted to have a fire that lasted more than a couple of hours. I was already annoyed by Grayson’s sneakiness, now this fuckwittery—I wasn’t having it.
     
    I marched over to Golden Boy, leaving the rest of my party to stand and watch from a  distance, of course. Had I stopped to think about what I was doing, I wouldn’t have done it. Probably would have had a panic attack just at the idea of confronting them. Fortunately, I wasn’t thinking at all.
     
    “Hey, why did you take all the larger bits of wood? There’s none left now.” I sounded whiney and like a little bitch, but there was nothing I could do about it now. I was all in.
     
    “Hey, hey, hey,” said the big black dude, putting his hands on his hips and ‘inadvertently’ flexing the huge muscles in his arms. “Easy bruv. We just took what we needed. Plenty left over there.”
     
    “Yeah, thanks for leaving us the twigs. I don’t know if you understand how weather works, but it gets colder at night. If you want a fire that lasts, you need those larger logs to form a base. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
     
    My little speech designed to imply he must be stupid did its job. His smile dropped and he ran his tongue over his lips.
     
    “You want to watch your mouth, mate. No need to be uncivil.”
     
    When a big guy starts talking about good manners, you know he’s lining up a punch aimed at your face. But I was in a strange world, trapped with the Noob Squad, facing imminent death by ogres of one kind or another. I was too pissed off to backdown.
     
    “Really? You think taking more than your fair share and leaving others to freeze is civil behaviour? Take what you want and the hell with everyone else, that’s your idea of being a decent human being? Your mum would be proud of you, would she?” I threw in the mother thing because all the black guys I’ve ever known held their mothers in high regard. To a ridiculous degree in some cases. Racist stereotype? Possibly, but when you’re up against a guy who