Pathfinder's Way (18 page)

Shea’s ears turned red. A dozen pithy remarks
wanted to spill from her tongue.

She held them back. It wasn’t like she wasn’t
used to being dismissed. People rarely listened. Even when she was
leading. They scorned her experience and ultimately they died. Why
should these barbarians be any different?

To Eamon, she said, “Look at the cliff. It
has gouges in it from something with claws. Given how high up they
are, it means the thing is big.”

A sharp crack sounded through the air. Her
head turned with the force of the blow, her right cheek smarting.
She touched the corner of her mouth. Her fingers came away red.

Blood.

Bastard.

Almost trembling, she met Lorn’s furious
eyes.

“I’m scout master,” he said tightly. “Me, not
him. You do not go to him when you have issues with my orders.”

He looked at the suddenly quiet men around
him. A few of them held his eyes for a moment before looking away.
Eamon watched Shea closely, noting the slight tremor in her hands
and the rage she quickly snuffed out of her expression.

“Is that clear?” Lorn asked.

Her throat felt tight. Words fought inside
her for release.

He raised a fist slightly. “I asked, is that
clear?”

“Yes,” Shea choked out.

“Good. Because next time I’ll beat you
bloody.” To the others, he said, “Vale, take three men and go down
the left passage. Eamon, you and I will take the rest down the
right. We’ll go on foot, and after you’re done scouting, meet back
here.”

She shouldn’t have been so surprised at the
blow. Really. She’d have done the same if someone had questioned
her orders on a mission. Maybe.

Still, they were heading into danger.

While the men prepared to split, Lorn blocked
Shea’s horse with his. “Not you. Since you’re so scared of
whatever’s out there, you can stay here and guard the horses.
Alone.”

He dismounted, affixed his blade to his belt
and joined Eamon and his men.

“Not too bright are ya, Daisy?” a man said,
walking past her to join Vale.

“Never try to undermine a commander’s
orders,” a voice said from her side. She looked down at light brown
eyes over a big nose and pitted cheeks. “It just pisses them off
and makes more work for the rest of us.”

Having said his piece, the man walked off.
Within minutes, Shea was alone with the horses.

They were all going to die.

Or perhaps not. Maybe they would get lucky
and those marks she saw were old. You never knew.

She dismounted and pulled her pack with her.
Either way, this gave her the opportunity she’d been waiting
for.

She was finally alone. It was time to head
back to Birdon Leaf.

She unhooked her pack from the horse. The
pack she’d picked up on a whim in that tent had turned out to be a
godsend. Not only had it given her clothes to disguise her gender,
but it was packed full of supplies that had come in handy over the
past few days.

Granted, it wasn’t as well packed as Shea
could have done. There were a few items missing, and a few things
that were just dead weight, but it had all of the essentials.

Things like a fire making kit, a canteen for
water, basic food stores and a change of underclothes. It even had
a knife to supplement the one Shea had, and to her delight, Eamon
had outfitted her with a short sword before leaving camp.

The only thing missing was rope, which Shea
planned to remedy by picking through the other men’s belongings. If
she remembered correctly, Buck had used rope to cobble the horses
together a few nights ago when they had to seek shelter from a
storm.

Opening his saddlebags, she dug around until
she felt the rough hemp against her fingers. She pulled it out with
a feeling of satisfaction. She’d been eyeing if for a while now and
knew it could come in handy on her journey. Rope always did. She
took a few strips of jerky from his bag as well, telling herself he
didn’t need it as much as she would.

She headed to the cliff opposite of the
scratches and peered up.

She could barely see the top, high above her
head. The rock was dimpled and pockmarked. Ponderosa clung to
nooks. But for the most part, it was bare and grey. That was good.
Hard rock was easier to climb than dirt. Safer too.

Shea reached down and grabbed a handful of
soil, rubbing it between her hands. It would make them less
slippery while climbing.

Though scaling another cliff wasn’t exactly
how she wanted to escape, she felt it was better than trying to
backtrack with the horse. For one thing, the path they’d come
through was narrow, and there weren’t a lot of offshoots. The
scouts would just need to ride until they caught up with her, and
she’d be hemmed in.

Also a horse couldn’t go all the places a
person could. Lastly, few would think she had escaped up a cliff
and so wouldn’t look in that direction when it came time to hunt
her.

And she had no doubt they’d hunt her. They
would consider her a deserter. They’d come after her even if it was
just so they could make an example of her to other would-be
deserters.

She placed her hands against the wall and
wedged one foot into a small dip in the wall, so small that it was
virtually nonexistent. Hand over hand, foot over foot she made her
way up the vertical rock face, using tiny handholds and even tinier
foot holds. More often than not she was hanging onto the cliff’s
side with just the tips of her fingers.

It wasn’t her favorite place to be,
especially when a gust of wind came tearing through the canyon,
pulling at her body and causing her stomach to drop right into her
stomach.

Finally though, she gained the top where she
could rest with her legs dangling over the edge. She sighed and
leaned back to watch the heavy gray clouds above her.

Her rest was short. The clouds weren’t the
sort to hold her attention long. There were no shapes to be
discerned or stories to be imagined. They were just one large gray
blob. Not interesting at all.

Shea sighed and stood, brushing the dirt off
her hands. She turned to go and hesitated, looking down at the
canyon the men had ventured into. Everything inside her said they
were heading into danger.

Perhaps she should follow just to make sure
they were okay.

She tapped her leg with one finger.

Why should she? They’d been warned. Whatever
happened next was on them. It wasn’t like they’d done anything to
deserve her consideration. She grimaced and touched her cheek
gingerly. The opposite in fact.

She started to walk away when a scream rent
the air, echoing eerily in the enclosed space.

She took a step in that direction and
stopped.

No.

It was on them. It had nothing to do with her
anymore. She was out. Free. She could head back to Birdon Leaf with
a clear conscience and knowledge about a previously unknown
danger.

The sounds of battle and an animal scream
pulled at her.

On the other hand, perhaps she could gain a
little insight into how these strangers dealt with beasts.

Before she could change her mind again, she
found herself running along the edge of the canyon in the direction
Eamon and Lorn had disappeared down, telling herself this was just
an information gathering exercise. She wasn’t going to interfere.
Just see what was what.

Shea lowered herself to her stomach and
peered into the narrow canyon below. She pressed her lips together
at the visible carnage.

From the looks of things, they had been
ambushed on their way back. Two men were already in pieces on the
ground.

The first man’s torso had been separated from
his lower body and the two pieces lay a few yards from each other.
The second man’s body was missing an arm and half of its chest. The
dirt beneath him had turned the color of rust from all the blood
that watered it.

An enormous shadow beetle reared back onto
its hind legs. Its razor sharp pinchers glistened with liquid.
Blood, no doubt. It was easily twice the size of a horse. Its
mottled grey shell was beginning to darken to obsidian as it
entered a feeding frenzy.

The thick carapace shell protected its
insides from blades and claws, making them nearly impossible to
kill. When the shell was grey, it blended with the surrounding
rocks easily, making it difficult to spot unless the creature
moved. When it got the taste of blood, though, its shell darkened
to black.

Though deadly, it was slow and couldn’t
change direction easily. The narrow canyon was the perfect hunting
grounds, as its prey couldn’t dodge out of the way. It turned the
narrow space into a killing field, making escape impossible.

Run and it would use all its legs to propel
itself after you. The thing was fast too. There would be no
opportunity to dodge and trying to defend would be pointless.

A flash of color drew Shea’s attention. She
waited until she saw movement again and inhaled. Eamon and another
were alive. They were hunkered down in the rocks, using them to
escape the pinchers. It was a smart play as the creature was too
big to slide between the boulders, and its pinchers weren’t long
enough to reach the men in the crevasses.

Shea stood and looked around. There. That
tree would do.

She rushed to it and dropped the pack on the
ground, pulling out her rope and tying it around the base of the
tree. She slipped a glove onto her left hand then reached down and
picked up her short sword with the right.

Now came the tricky part.

Reaching inside for her calm center, she
closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

This was such a bad idea.

Breathe in.

She could do this.

Breathe out.

She stepped to the edge of the cliff and
looked down. The creature wasn’t exactly under her, but that was
okay. She took five steps to the right, the rope following her.

She looked down.

This was such a bad idea.

She stepped off the ledge. The bottom shot up
from her stomach and into her throat.

The rope slid through her fingers. It jerked,
and she swung out and over the creature. She let go and was
falling.

Falling.

Then landing with a thud, her hand clenched
in a death grip around her sword. She rolled, almost falling off
the creature’s back, before her shirt caught on one of the spiny
spikes on its shell, and she halted, dangling with her shirt half
over her head.

She had the presence of mind to wrap one hand
around the spike, brace her feet against its shell and crawl walk
up its back as the shadow beetle thrashed beneath her.

The shirt began to tear sending her sliding
before she managed to lurch up and hook her hand into a groove on
its shell. She held on as tightly as she could. If she fell now,
she was dead.

The creature settled back onto the ground.
Before it could rear again, Shea was up and crawl running across
its back until she reached its neck.

Through it all she held onto her sword. It
wasn’t easy and her left arm screamed from the strain of doing the
work of two, but finally she was where its carapace met the round
little head that had a horn that looked like a horseshoe sticking
out of it.

Straddling its neck with her legs and aiming
the pointy part of the sword at its neck, she raised her hands
above her head and brought it down hard, the blade entered and the
beast went mad under her, nearly unseating her. She held on as it
careened into a wall.

She really thought that blow would have
killed it.

She tried to yank the sword out. It was
stuck.

Come on, damn it.

She heaved with all of her might. It slid out
a couple of inches and then got stuck again.

You. Will. Come. Out.

She wiggled the sword, sliding it out a few
more inches. The beast heaved under her.

Almost there.

She lost her grip and went flying for all of
a second before she came to a sickening stop, her knee on fire.

Somehow. Miraculously. She hadn’t lost her
seat, her leg having gotten stuck.

She grabbed the sword with both hands and
heaved, leaning backwards and pushing away with her legs. It came
free with a lurch, nearly toppling her backwards.

Free now, she hacked at the neck under her
with frenzied slices, her hands slipping as black blood coated the
sword, her hands, her clothes.

Still, she didn’t stop. Not even when the
creature was lying still. She just kept hacking.

“Daisy. It’s dead. Kid, stop. It’s dead. How
long do you intend to keep working at it?” Eamon inquired from
somewhere below her.

Dazed, she looked up and then around, only
now realizing she was still seated on the shadow beetle, and it
wasn’t moving.

“Not that we don’t appreciate the save, mind
you, but hacking away like that has to take energy that might be
better spent elsewhere.”

She blinked at him and then blinked at the
slivers of white and black flesh where the beetle’s head used to
be. She lowered her sword and backed away, having a brief moment of
panic when her leg wouldn’t come loose. Buck came forward and
helped her twist it free.

She crawled off the beetle and dropped to the
ground.

The good solid ground that wouldn’t flail
beneath her or send her crashing into one of the cliffs.

She sat down abruptly, her legs not wanting
to support her now that what she’d done registered. Her hands shook
as she placed the sword on the ground before her. She could have
died. Probably should have.

That stunt with the rope gave her chills now
that she thought about it. If she’d let go even a second earlier or
later, she would have plummeted a lot farther than she had and
probably been trampled or torn in half by the beetle.

A pair of boots stopped before her. Shea
looked up to see Eamon staring down at her with his hands on his
hips, an intense look on his face.