Pathfinder's Way (19 page)

Buck was behind him staring up at the beetle
in amazement.

“How did you know to attack it there?” Eamon
asked. “Swords didn’t work on it when we tried. They just bounced
off. So did our arrows.”

“You ever encounter a golden eagle?” Shea
asked, knowing the answer. Of course they had. Everybody had. It
was the reason they had chosen to take the canyon riddled with
beasts over the plains above them. The golden eagles were similar
to their smaller brethren except in color and size. The ones Shea
were talking about were roughly the size of houses and could carry
a horse off if they were hungry enough.

Eamon arched an eyebrow. “Yeah, so?”

Shea wet her lips and nearly groaned in
relief when Buck tossed her a water bag. Evidently killing beasts
made you thirsty as hell.

She felt a moment of sorrow. She normally
tried to avoid killing beasts; they were just doing what they were
born to do. Hunt, eat, procreate. They couldn’t help their
instincts and blaming them was like blaming a snowstorm for being
cold.

Sometimes, though, it was unavoidable. When
it came down to her or them, she’d choose herself.

She took a long swallow of the water, her
throat working. A trickle streamed from her mouth in her haste, and
she wiped at it with one wrist.

Ah. That hit the spot.

Looking up, she blinked when Eamon looked at
her expectantly. “Few years back, I was doing some hunting and got
pinned down by one of the Shadows. Thought I was done for when an
eagle came plunging out of the sky and just killed it with one blow
to the back of its neck before carrying it off.” Shea rubbed at the
black stains on her hands. “You see, the shadow beetle’s shell is
thick and impervious to most weapons, or beast claws for that
matter, but there is one spot on its body that is entirely
vulnerable.”

“Its neck,” Eamon guessed.

Shea nodded. “Its neck. Most of its predators
come from the ground so its shell evolved to protect them from
those attacks, but for whatever reason, it never developed a
protection for its neck.”

“How’d you get on top of it?” Buck asked. He
was now standing right next to the beetle, and as he spoke reached
up to run one hand along its carapace.

Shea turned and pointed at the rope dangling
from the cliff.

Buck whistled low and shook his head. “That
takes balls.”

“I didn’t think it would actually work,” Shea
confided. She was still jittery from the adrenaline rush.
“Actually, I wasn’t sure any of the plan would work. I’m kind of
surprised it did. I definitely didn’t expect it to be so hard to
saw through its neck once I was up there.”

During her confession, Eamon’s eyebrows had
arched higher and higher until they almost disappeared into his
hairline, and his frown got darker and darker.

Buck shook his head. “You’re fucking
insane.”

“Would you rather I just let you two be
beetle food?” Shea snapped, feeling a little defensive.

“Now, don’t go getting defensive. He’s not
arguing with what you did. We’re both rather attached to our
limbs.” Eamon grimaced in the direction of one of the bodies.

“Nope, not saying that all,” Buck agreed.
“Appreciate it, but doesn’t change the fact that you got a couple
screws loose.”

Shea lifted one shoulder. He may have had a
point. “So are you two the only ones left?”

Eamon turned on his heel and strode to the
closest body, the one that had been ripped in half. Shea wrapped
her arms around her knees as he turned the torso onto its back and
then dragged its lower half over to arrange it in a macabre parody
of a whole person.

Guess that answered that.

“It ambushed us on our way back to the
horses,” Buck said above her head. He had finished examining the
shadow beetle and now watched Eamon with his arms folded over his
chest. “It got John first. Lorn tried to run. You see how well that
went.”

He nodded his head at the body missing its
arm and half its torso. Shea could just make out the back of Lorn’s
head. After a moment, she realized she recognized the clothes he
had been wearing, though they were a different color now.

“We took shelter in the rocks. Didn’t think
we were going to make it out this time. Not 'til you showed up
anyway.” He ruffled her hair briefly. She nearly fell over in
shock. “Guess you’re not such a waste of space after all,
Daisy.”

“Gee, thanks.”

Eamon dragged Lorn’s body to join the other
and bent down, fussing with his neck.

“What’s he doing?” Shea asked.

Buck looked down at the top of her head with
a thoughtful expression. “You’re not Trateri are you?”

Shea’s shoulders stiffened.

He was asking the sorts of questions she
really didn’t need him to be asking. For her disguise to work,
people couldn’t be curious about her. They couldn’t look twice
because if they did they might see that her bones were too small,
even for a seventeen-year-old boy. That even a boy would have an
Adam’s apple and that her cheeks were entirely too smooth, missing
the pimples and baby fine hair that came with puberty.

“Is that a problem?”

He pursed his mouth and shrugged. “Just
strange is all. Normally the Scout’s trainers don’t take any but a
Trateri as an apprentice. They don’t usually trust throwaways.”

Shea shot him a sharp look.

He smirked at her. “That’s what we call those
that we take from the villages. Because their people threw them
away for a few months more of safety.”

Throwaways.

Huh.

Shea crooked one side of her mouth.
Unbelievable. Cruel but true.

“Thought us being integrated into your army
was the whole point of us becoming ‘throwaways’?”

He nodded. “In theory, but in reality
throwaways aren’t trusted. They’re used as filler. Most of you go
to the frontlines or work as cooks or launderers. You’re the first
to die in battle with your own people, or you’re given jobs that
you can’t cause a lot of damage in.”

“So we’re thrown away twice.”

“Not you, though.”

Shea slouched and looked away. She needed him
off this topic.

“He’s preparing them for their trip to the
afterlife.”

Shea looked up in alarm. “We don’t have time
for a burial. Shadow beetles live in pairs.”

“Relax, our people aren’t interred beneath
the ground like you mud squatters. If a body can be taken back to
camp, we offer them up to the sky and give them a funeral
pyre.”

Shea blanched. That was even worse. No way
could they lug two dead bodies smelling of blood and meat all the
way back to camp without encountering beasts.

“Since we’re a very warlike people and most
of us die in battle, this often isn’t possible. Eamon will cut
their hair and take their amulet. Later, he’ll burn the two items
so their spirits have a path to follow to the other world.”

Shea relaxed. That wasn’t as bad. Though she
would prefer to be out of here sooner rather than later.

“You really think there are more?”

“I know so.” She gestured at the bodies. “The
shadow beetle didn’t eat the bodies. Means it probably has young it
wanted to feed. Where there’s young, there’s usually a mate.”

“Great.”

Pretty much.

Eamon insisted they head back to the horses
first to see if the others had returned.

Shea didn’t like the idea much, but with Lorn
dead, Eamon was in charge. Since she’d given up her opportunity to
escape, she was back to playing the obedient soldier.

One day she was going to get control of
herself and stop doing stupid shit to save ungrateful idiots.

For now, she waited by the horses with folded
arms and a tapping foot. She wanted to be gone. Hanging around
wasn’t smart. Not with a mate and possible young still out
there.

Vale and his team weren’t back yet.

Shea had a strong feeling they weren’t
coming. She’d noticed at least one burrow hole in the rock walls.
It probably led all the way to the other canyon. Chances were good
the other group had encountered the same problems as Eamon’s.

“We need to go after them,” Eamon said,
coming to stand beside Shea.

She sighed. She knew he was going to say
that.

“Is there any way to see that thing before it
strikes?”

She tipped her head back. That was a good
question.

“Chances are it’s gotten to Vale and his
team. If it has glutted itself on blood, it’ll lose a little of its
camouflage. If it hasn’t eaten any of them yet, it will only be
seen once it moves.”

“Where’s my rope?” Buck asked from behind
them. He held his saddlebag up and then glared suspiciously at
Shea. “I’m also missing a knife.”

She turned away and made a face at the
canyon. She’d forgotten about that. That meant her pack was still
sitting at the top of the cliff.

“Uh-“

“You took it, didn’t you?”

“I may have, in my haste, gone through your
bags, looking for anything that might be of use.”

“And you thought my rope would be
useful?”

She shrugged. “Well, it did come in
handy.”

“And my knife?”

“You can never have too many knives.”

He threw his saddlebag down and glared at
her. She spread her hands. “It was either take the rope and save
your life or let you get eaten. Are you really going to tell me
that you’d prefer to be beetle food?” She jutted her jaw out
stubbornly.

“Enough,” Eamon said, stepping between them.
To her, “Where’s your jacket?”

“My what?

“Your jacket. The green one with yellow
trim.”

Ah, that. “It’s with the rest of my stuff on
top of the cliff.”

Buck swore. “Hell, he was running.”

Shea dropped her arms. Eamon’s sharp eyes
caught the movement and his face darkened.

“I wasn’t running,” Shea defended. “I was
just moving myself to a better position in case things went
bad.”

Buck looked skyward and shook his head. Eamon
folded his arms across his chest.

“Do you really think I would have come and
saved your asses if I’d planned on running?” She could tell by the
shift in Buck’s stance that she had their attention and pressed her
advantage. “If I’d wanted to run, I could have just left you to
your fate. Nobody would have been the wiser, and I could have made
it half way home before anyone noticed. If they noticed at
all.”

“Doesn’t matter now,” Eamon said, his voice a
deep rumble. “He saved us. End of story. We need to find the
others.”

Buck pointed a finger, “We’ll be taking this
up later.”

Shea rolled her eyes. Yeah. Only if they were
all still alive.

The canyon walls narrowed to a slim slip of
space that made it impossible to walk side by side, and Eamon’s
broad shoulders blocked Shea’s view of the path ahead. In several
spots, the men had to squeeze to fit through. Shea, being smaller,
had an easier time of it, though at certain points she had to
contort her body too.

She glanced up at the sky. The gray of the
rock nearly blended into that of the thin strip of cloud that was
visible, making it difficult to distinguish one from the other.

Shea stepped up onto a half buried boulder,
checking the ground on the other side for any potential dangers
before stepping down. Buck followed, placing one hand on the wall
to steady himself as he looked over their heads.

So far there hadn’t been any sign of a
struggle. No blood, no bodies or discarded items.

The three had agreed to maintain silence in
case the shadow beetle was attracted to noise.

As they pushed further into the canyon, the
path became more and more impassable and they were forced down
twisting corridors and had to climb over fallen rocks. They passed
several more burrows, which Shea made sure to point out to the
other two. After the last one, Eamon’s face had gotten tight and
his eyes hard.

Why hadn’t the men turned around the moment
it became clear the path would be impossible for the horses to
travel?

Shea looked above them again, running her
hands slowly down the ravine’s mottled gray walls. So far, no sign
of movement.

Buck stopped when she did, his hand going to
the pommel of his sword. It wasn’t the first time she’d gone still,
thinking she had seen something, but no matter how many times she
stopped to take a closer look at her surroundings, they didn’t
complain.

Eamon held up a closed fist signaling a stop.
Buck stepped back and to the side while Shea froze where she
was.

Eamon crouched and pointed at a shred of
cloth snagged on a rock about ten feet above the ravine’s floor.
Movement on the opposite side caught Shea’s eye. There one moment
and gone the next as if something had just slid out of sight.

She tapped Eamon on the shoulder and then
pointed to where she thought she saw movement. Together, they
backed out of sight very slowly until a boulder shielded them.

“Fuck.” Buck’s voice was low and
strained.

Eamon pressed his back against the wall and
peeked around it, trying to spot the shadow beetle.

“I can’t see it.” The skin around his eyes
was tight, and the knuckles of the hand clenched around his sword
were bleached white. “That means it hasn’t fed, right?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?” Buck hissed. “You said if it wasn’t
black it hadn’t fed.”

“You’re acting like I’ve spent my life
studying these things,” Shea snapped. “The closest I’ve ever been
to one was the one I just killed. Usually when I come across beast
sign, I know enough to avoid the damn things. Not stroll into its
den and poke it with a stick. I’ve only seen this thing twice. Once
when it was feeding and had turned black. Judging by the fact these
suckers are usually the color of a rock, I figured eating turns
them black. But that’s still just a guess.”