Pathfinder's Way (27 page)

That night, she fought the sense of piercing
loneliness as she stared up at the millions of tiny lights dotting
the sky. Rolling onto her side, she closed her eyes and told
herself she was okay with things. She didn’t need to rely or be
relied on by the people around her. Things were fine just the way
they were.

The next day Shea kept away from Eamon and
the others, helping Perry’s men pack up the camp and then slipping
in with his men as they moved out. Eamon, Buck and the others fell
in at the back of the convoy.

Clark appeared beside her not long after they
were under way, chattering nonstop. Shea gave noncommittal grunts
during pauses in the conversation.

She covered a yawn. She hadn’t gotten a very
good night’s sleep, and her eyes stung from the lack of rest.

The third time she nearly cracked her jaw on
a yawn, Clark handed her a peeled stick.

“What’s this?”

“It’s yarrow root.”

That meant nothing to Shea.

She shook her head at him.

He grinned. “So I finally know something you
don’t. I’ll have to write this down so I can remember it
always.”

“You haven’t known me long enough for that
statement to have merit,” Shea told him.

“I feel like I’ve known you forever. I’ve got
this feeling we’re going to be good friends for a long time to
come,” he told her with a mischievous smile.

“Well, don’t you sound confident.”

“You’ll see,” he told her. “I’m never wrong
about these kinds of things.”

“He’s right,” Eamon said, riding up behind
her. “He’s got a knack. Said the same thing to me when he was no
bigger than my hip. Haven’t been able to shake him since.”

“Ah.”

Shea didn’t know what to say to that. Given
yesterday’s events, she couldn’t help the awkwardness she felt at
his arrival. In the end she said nothing, letting Clark carry the
conversation. She pulled slightly up on her horse’s reins intending
to let the two ride ahead of her.

Eamon followed suit letting Clark pass.
“We’ll catch up.”

Clark nodded and shot Shea a sympathetic look
before touching his horse lightly in the side. It moved a little
faster, jostling Clark in his seat as he caught up with someone he
knew further down the line.

Eamon and Shea rode in silence for a bit. She
glanced at Eamon from the corner of her eye. He looked relaxed. Not
at all like they were at odds.

Maybe in his mind they weren’t. After all,
why would a leader care if a subordinate was upset as long as that
subordinate continued to follow orders?

“Shane, how long are you going to continue
like this?”

Shea looked at him startled. “Continue like
what?”

“This.” Eamon gestured between the two of
them.

Shea didn’t know how to answer that. She
thought she was being very civil.

Eamon sighed gustily. “You have to be the
quietest Lowlander I’ve ever met. Usually you have to hit them
upside the head to get them to shut up. With you, it’s the
opposite. I feel like I have to knock you upside the head to get
any words from you.”

Shea shot him an expressive look and guided
her horse out of arms reach.

“Speak boy,” Eamon barked. “Quit giving me
crazy eyes and speak your mind.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Something. Anything. How’m I supposed to
trust you if I don’t know what’s going on in that head of
yours?”

There was that word again.

Forestalling her objection, Eamon said, “And
don’t tell me there’s nothing. You’re too smart for that. And none
of that damn politeness either.”

Argh.

What did he want from her? She just couldn’t
win.

“What the hell do you want from me, Eamon?
First you yell at me for not following orders and then when I do
you’re on my ass for that too. I can’t win.”

“Finally,” he said. “We’re getting
somewhere.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You don’t talk to people.”

“I talk. I talk all the time.”

“No, you don’t,” he said, shaking his head.
“You make statements and then act all butt hurt when people don’t
do what they’re told.”

Shea couldn’t help the sneer of disbelief
that crossed her face. “No, I don’t.”

“Yes, yes you really do,” Buck told her,
riding up on her other side.

What was this? Pick on Shea day.

She kicked her horse wanting away from the
two ganging up on her. It didn’t work. They simply followed.

“You’re good at what you do,” Eamon
continued, as if she wasn’t actively trying to run away. “Bright,
observant. But you never take the time to explain. You just make a
statement and then expect everybody to fall in line.”

Shea couldn’t believe she was hearing
this.

“What am I supposed to do? Take the time to
talk when people are walking into danger? They’ll be dead before I
get through the first explanation.”

“Trust takes time,” Eamon said.

Aaannnd, they were back to this.

“You can’t build a rapport overnight,” he
continued, ignoring her small growl. “You want people to believe
you? Well, you’ve got to start small. Explain why something is the
way it is rather than just telling them what to do.”

“Take the shadow beetles, for instance,” Buck
pointed out helpfully.

“I was right about those,” Shea snapped.

“Yes, but no one believed you when you said
there was danger up ahead. What’s the point in being right if you
can’t get anybody to listen?” Eamon said.

The point was that she was right, and they
were wrong. If they’d listened, everybody would still be alive.
They didn’t, so they were dead. Not her problem. She’d done her
job.

Eamon, reading the look on her face, snorted.
“It’s all very well to be right. I like being correct just as much
as the next person, but one day you might regret not being able to
get your point across. Your inability to influence your fellow
soldiers might end up getting someone you care about killed.”

Wouldn’t be the first time.

Sensing that his words had struck a chord,
Eamon said, “Think about it. You’re good at what you do, but you’d
be better if you could relate to your fellow scouts. No one can
survive alone out here.”

Putting those words in her head, Buck and
Eamon peeled away from her and joined Clark up front.

Shea was left alone. Again. She was beginning
to sense a theme.

She spent a good hour pissed at his
criticism. He barely knew her but thought he could tell her
everything that she was doing was wrong.

Ok, so her inability to relate to others or
be remotely diplomatic wasn’t new. She’d had trouble fitting in
with Highlanders and just about everybody else her entire life. At
first it was because she was so young and had come from a very
different background than most villagers. The guild, in many
respects, was much more open minded than those living in the
outlying communities. They were more accepting of a body’s
differences. So few came for training anymore that anybody able to
pass the tests found a place to belong.

Perhaps that’s why it had been so shocking
when Shea reached her first post and found her skills casually
dismissed by the male dominated society of the Highlands.

She could still remember the disaster of that
first mission. She’d lost three men on a routine trade run over
something that could have been prevented if they’d simply
listened.

Could Eamon be right? Could she bear some
responsibility for the loss of life because of her inability to
communicate?

Shea shook her head. Eamon was full of it.
She’d given them her informed opinion. If they ignored it because
she was a woman and an outsider, there was nothing she could do
about that.

Shea kept as far from Eamon and the rest of
the scouts for the rest of the morning. Anytime it looked like
someone was about to engage her, she went out of her way to avoid
them. She was successful in her endeavors until they stopped for
the evening.

Once they’d stopped, Shea didn’t know what to
do with herself. The men worked as a team and whenever she tried to
help she just seemed to get in the way. She’d gotten used to the
responsibilities with Eamon and the others, but this was a
different dynamic, and she didn’t automatically know her
duties.

She drifted toward a group, containing Clark,
playing a card game. She watched quietly for a while, trying to
pick up the rules. It was difficult. It seemed random to her,
lacking any sort of logic. They each held a set of cards with odd
drawings on them. Every now and then one would pick up a pair of
dice and roll them and then play a card.

“Would you like to play, Daisy?” a woman with
a large scar bisecting her jawline asked. Her smile was cunning as
she glanced up at her before picking up the dice and rolling.

“I don’t know the rules,” Shea said.

There was a look between the players.

“That’s okay; we’ll teach you.” This was said
by a man not much older than Clark.

Clark coughed into his hand. Shea’s eyes
narrowed on him. That cough had sounded very like a laugh.

“I think I’ll just watch,” she said.

She didn’t know what they were planning, but
she had no intention of being the gullible newbie.

“It’s impossible to learn Bones and Cards by
just watching,” a deep voice said beside her.

Shea jumped, her heart surging into her
throat at the unexpected words. Fallon watched her quietly before
his gaze shifted to the players as they sprung to their feet.

“Please. Sit. Continue your game.”

The game slowly resumed as Fallon lingered by
Shea.

She wondered if it would arouse suspicion if
she made an excuse and walked away.

“The point of the game is to gather the most
points before the deck runs out,” Fallon told her.

Shea’s eyebrows rose slightly at the
statement, and she nodded wordlessly.

What would be a good excuse? It had to be
important enough to call her from his company but not enough to
arouse his interest.

“Points are anything that have a bone on
them. The dice tells you which set of cards hold ascension for each
turn. It’s a game of strategy more than anything.”

“Sounds like it’s based more on luck than
anything else,” Shea observed.

She fought against a wince. Why did she have
to engage? What did she care what kind of game it was? She was
trying to find a reason to politely leave.

Fallon chuckled, not offended at her
disagreement. “I can see how it would appear so to an observer. Do
you have another set I can use to show my friend the game?”

The woman with the scar nodded and reached
behind her into a pack, withdrawing a set of beat up old cards and
an equally dinged up set of dice.

“Oh no, that’s not necessary. I’ve never been
very good at games.”

“Nonsense. It’ll be fun, and if you run with
this group for very long, it’s practically a prerequisite that you
learn if you want to fit in.”

That’s just it. Shea didn’t care if she fit
in and didn’t intend to stick around for very long.

“Come.” Fallon found a place for them to
comfortably sit. “Normally, you play this with four people, but it
can be played with just two. There are seven types of cards.
Warlord, scout, adviser, soldier, assassin, healer, and bone. Each
type can do different things. Each role of the dice tells you how
strong an action is for your turn and the possible reward.
Traditionally, we used bones for the bet and to keep track of
points. Now, they use rocks to represent camp chores.”

The cards blurred in his hands as he began to
shuffle. Shea was already confused by the rules. It hadn’t been a
lie when she said she wasn’t good at games like these.

“We each start with seven cards.” He dealt
the cards to Shea and himself. He also upended a bag of colored
marbles and parceled out 5 blue ones for each of them, 3 red ones
and 2 yellow ones. “We’ll play the first few rounds face up so that
I can explain what each move and card means.”

Shea found herself interested in spite of
herself as he explained what each card meant and how each round was
played. He was patient as he reminded her several times that the
scout could not also take on the warlord’s role and that the healer
could not kill the assassin.

She frowned down at her cards when he rolled
a three. The number utterly destroyed her hand. She had several
options left but strongly suspected that Fallon held the warlord
and adviser, two cards that when paired were some of the strongest
in the deck. The three would limit the actions he could take but
not enough. She could pair her healer with her assassin or use the
scout to supplement the assassin but the damage done to his cards
might not be enough.

Hmm.

There might be one way. It was risky though
and would mean rolling over and letting him win unobstructed until
the right moment. If she won the game, it would be by the skin of
her teeth and if her gamble failed she’d lose by a landslide.

She’d have to be sneaky to keep him from
suspecting.

She peeked over at him, allowing a brief
glimpse of worry to appear on her face. He regarded her with the
same impenetrable expression he’d had the entire game.

She played her two weakest cards before
picking up two more from the deck to replace them. He countered
with stronger cards, winning the hand. The next several hands were
more of the same.

Fallon regarded the bent head before him.
He’d thought the boy would be more of a challenge. Granted, it was
the first time he’d played Bones and Cards.

The game was a good chance to see how another
person’s mind worked. Were they an aggressive player? Rash or
cautious? Fallon hoped to learn something of this unknown entity
with the game. So far, all he’d learned was that the boy couldn’t
bluff worth a damn. Every expression was written on his face,
letting Fallon know as clear as day what was in his hand.