“I thought I was dead too,” Syman confessed as Lyra kissed him, letting her tears flow down her cheeks.
“Never leave me like that again,” Lyra cried. “I cannot handle the thought of either of you dying to get me to Alamar. From now on, we stick together.”
Syman smiled and broke his embrace with Lyra. “Master Caulder’s students do not die easily,” he joked and immediately wished he had not spoken. Visions of all of the dead cadets at the Academy flooded his mind and he shook his head vigorously to clear the images.
“Sorry,” he continued solemnly. “I am not sure exactly what happened. After you two left, I moved further back into the forest so that I could see the close half of the bridge and nothing else. It limited my view of the invaders, but it limited their view as well. They could not hit me with their archers and I still commanded a view of the bridge. I shot the first man over and another fell while trying to charge over and dodge my arrows. They stopped trying to cross for a long time and I thought I could hold them all day that way until I remembered the other group and wondered how long it would be before they got to me.”
“So you slipped off and made a run for it?” Antello guessed.
“No,” Syman answered. “The strangest thing happened right before my eyes. I was focused on the bridge waiting for the next invader to try crossing and suddenly there was an explosion and the close end of the huge tree rose several feet and crashed back down. It teetered on the edge for just a moment before it went crashing down into the canyon. At least I think it was an explosion. I really do not remember the sound of an explosion, but I do remember the sound of that giant fargi crashing into the canyon. The ground shook when it hit the bottom.”
Antello reached for a strip of meat from the fire pit where the invaders had cooked a deer and Syman leaped and knocked his hand away.
“Don’t touch it!” Syman shouted. “Look at the invaders. They died in their sleep and their skin is sort of blue. I think they ate poisoned meat or maybe drank something poisoned.”
Antello yanked his hand back and turned full circle to look at the invaders, counting as he did. “There should be two more if this is the group that passed us last night. Maybe we should get out of here and talk on the way.”
“There are two more farther out in the forest,” Syman informed them. “They were probably guards.”
“How did you find us?” Lyra asked. “I did not expect to ever see you again.”
“Getting here was not much of a problem,” Syman replied. “Following the trail of a group this large was easy, even in the dark. I stopped and slept a bit during the night and started tracking again as soon as there was light available. This must be the group that broke off and looked for another way across the canyon. If so, then the other group will be along sometime today. I stumbled across one of the guards first and realized he was dead. Someone cut all of their horses free too. I saw several of them wandering around.”
“Did you find anything missing when you awoke this morning?” Lyra quizzed. “Perhaps a small piece of jewelry or something like that.”
“No,” Syman shook his head. “I don’t care for jewelry much, but nothing was taken as far as I know. Why?”
“Lyra lost a chain from her neck and I lost the pin that Master Caulder gave me,” explained Antello. “Someone or something stole it from us last night. There is something very strange going on in this forest and I am anxious to put it behind us.”
“I agree with your feelings,” admitted Lyra, “but let’s not be too hasty. Maybe we can learn something from the bodies, like who they are and who hired them.”
“I have been going through their belongings,” Syman stated. “Someone was here before me though. Not a coin on them. There are some trail rations that I have been thinking about taking if I can be sure that they are not poisoned, but I am afraid to chance them. My supplies are about done.”
“Ours too,” agreed Lyra, “but I am hesitant to eat anything from this camp. I don’t want to end up as a blue corpse. Did you find anything that would identify them?”
“One thing I noticed that was curious,” Syman revealed. “Each of them has a small tattoo on the inside of his wrist. It is very small, but it looks like a coiled serpent with wings. I have never seen anything like it.”
Antello and Lyra walked to one of the corpses and examined the tattoo, shaking their heads as neither one of them recognized it.
“If someone has already looted the bodies, then we are wasting our time here,” argued Antello. “The other group will be coming for us and when they find this group, they will be mighty mad. They will think we did this.”
“I can’t see how they could be any more determined to catch us than they already are,” sighed Syman. “Still, we should use our time wisely. The tracks of the wandering horses may help us. I suggest we turn and head east for a while. They have been following us south for sometime and this may give us a chance to lose them.”
Antello and Lyra quickly agreed and the trio mounted and headed eastward. The forest looked the same and Lyra wondered how Syman could know that they were heading in any particular direction, and finally realized that it didn’t matter much. Getting away from the invaders was the important task at hand. They would eventually get out of the dreadful forest and then they could worry about finding Alamar.
The trio trudged through the seemingly endless forest without talking, each lost in their own thoughts. Lyra’s mood brightened when she saw a deer and a few small animals. It made the forest seem a little friendlier to her. At high sun, the sunlight invaded in patches and turned portions of the forest floor green and brown. Lyra began to shake the eerie feeling of the forest when Syman halted the procession and signaled for silence. They sat silent and still for at least five minutes before anyone spoke.
“I could have sworn I saw somebody up ahead,” Syman sighed. “Maybe I have been leading too long. I will let Antello lead for a while before I give everyone a nervous breakdown.”
Lyra smiled and nodded, but Antello frowned.
“It was small and brown,” Antello stated. “Not sure what it was, but I saw it too. Moved quicker than any person I ever saw and I didn’t hear a sound from it.”
“It was human, wasn’t it?” quizzed Syman.
“Not sure,” Antello stated flatly and then shook his head. “No, it couldn’t be. Too fast for a human and definitely didn’t make any noise. I bet it was a spirit. Probably floats above the ground.”
“Well whatever it was,” Lyra interjected, not wanting to return to her old feelings about the forest, “we do not have time to play with it. I will lead for a while.”
Before anyone could object, Lyra moved past the boys and continued in the direction that Syman had been going. She kept her eyes moving, searching for any sign of the spirit, but she saw nothing, heard nothing.
Flat on the top of a small hill, just off the track Lyra was holding, a pair of brown eyes watched the small procession go by. When the trio was out of sight the small woman prepared to rise, but instead turned quickly at the sound of someone making a stealthy approach behind her.
“They saw you, you know,” the newcomer berated her. “I heard them talking about you.”
“Only you could get this close to me, HawkShadow,” she smiled, rising to greet her friend.
“You should have killed them as I killed the others, Misty,” the young man stated. “Why do you ignore your trust to the Sakovans with this group?”
“I do not ignore my obligations, HawkShadow,” MistyTrail insisted as she pushed her short brown hair out of her face. “My job is to eliminate any trespassers. I have not decided that these three are a threat to us. They are my responsibility and you will not interfere with my actions.”
“I will if they get far enough into the Sakova to come to my attention,” the tall blond man asserted. “I will let you toy with them here in the fringes, but do not let them come closer to the homeland.”