He looked out toward the east—the way that Hesseth was facing—and thought, At least if it’s animal she’s smelling, it might serve as game when it gets here.
If we can kill it, he told himself soberly.
And: If it doesn’t kill us first.
Shoe leather scraped on the rock behind him: it was Hesseth, coming down from her guard position.
“Joining me for breakfast?” he asked her.
“Hardly.” With a quick glance over her shoulder she stooped down, and with agile hands she began to place the food goods back in their pack. “We’ve got problems.”
He capped the canteen in his hand and put it down. “They getting close?”
She glanced up at him. “Maybe.” Then down again, to the packages she was quickly storing. “The scent’s faded. It was coming straight at us and then it faded. Suddenly.”
“What do you make of it?”
“Something was upwind of us. Now it’s not.” He knew her body language well enough to see the tension in her movements, to hear the tautness in her speech. “Animals will do that. Hunting animals. When they get close to their prey, they position themselves downwind . . . or at least where the wind won’t betray them.”
He felt something tighten inside him as the understanding came. “Not the habits of a tree-eater.”
“No.”
She had finished with the dry goods now, and he helped her tie up the canteens and the water skins. The first aid kit was lying out on the rock; he closed that up and packed it, too.
“If they’ve been upwind of us up until now, then how would they know we’re here?”
She looked at him. The was a spark of incredulity in her eyes, as if she couldn’t understand why he would need to ask her that. “The trail,” she said. “They’re following our trail.”
It hit him then. The trail they must have left behind them, paved in blood and sweat and fear. Not the kind of thing a man might follow easily, but it would stand out like a beacon to any predator.
Damn!
He stood. The wind ruffled his sweat-stiffened hair as he looked about the island, assessing their defensive options. Bad, he decided. Very bad. The low mound offered them a good enough vantage point but no shelter to speak of, and there was none within sight. None within miles, he thought, gazing out upon the flat wasteland surrounding them. In another time and place he might have noted the location of major tree-clusters and worked them into his defensive plans; in this time and place he would rather walk naked and unarmed into a den of ravenous meat eaters than ever approach one of those things again.
“Get the girl,” he said quietly.
He checked his weapons as Hesseth went to Jenseny, loading the projectile weapon Tarrant had left with them. Like the western springbolt it would launch a metal-tipped quarrel with good speed and reasonable accuracy; unlike a springbolt, it would only do so once before needing to be reloaded. Not a good situation if there was a whole pack of animals on the way, he thought grimly. Didn’t the Neocount have a gun? He seemed to remember it at one point. Was it tucked into the pack Tarrant had left behind? He began to go look, then reconsidered. This was a hostile land, undeniably sorcerous in origin, controlled by an enemy adept who even now was focusing his attention on them . . . in short, if ever there was a situation asking for a misfire, this was it. No. He’d take his chances with the simpler weapons, and not give the Prince such an opening.
Then Hesseth was beside him, and the girl was with her. Eyes bloodshot, weaving slightly, she looked so small and so fragile that he could hardly believe she had made it this far. He’d known a lot of children who couldn’t have.
“You okay?” he asked gently.
Her face was drawn and pale and there were deep circles under her eyes, but she nodded. From her movements he guessed that she still hurt badly—probably along her back, where the tree roots had pierced her flesh—but she obviously wasn’t going to admit it. Still afraid, he thought. Still convinced that if she hurt too much or feared too much they might leave her behind. As if that was an option in this place.
Someday this will all be over, he promised her silently. Someday we’ll be able to take you away from here and find you a real home, where you can grow up in peace. Where you can be a real child again.
“I’m going to Work,” he warned them.
He turned to the east and braced himself. Maybe it was foolish to Work again, but the way he figured it the Prince already knew where they were and what they were doing here, so he wasn’t going to make matters worse by Grafting a Knowing in their defense. He used a visual key, a linear pattern that he traced with his mind’s eye in order to focus his consciousness-
The Knowing took shape suddenly, brilliantly, before him. He saw a scaled animal, obsidian black, whose long, low body flowed over the ground with serpentine grace. The narrow head sported sharp white teeth that glinted in the sunlight as it opened its mouth to take in the smells of the region; its talons flexed on the hard black earth as it caught the scent of blood. In the distance similar creatures were moving silently, swiftly, their movements so perfectly coordinated that it seemed as if some single will might have organized them. As well it might have, Damien thought suddenly. How much sorcery would it take to reach out from the Black Lands and take control of these creatures? Very little, if they had been created for that purpose.
Suddenly cold, he turned to Hesseth. He didn’t have to say anything; the look on his face said it all.
“Assst,” she hissed. “A pack?”
“Maybe worse,” he told her. “Maybe a pack under somebody’s control.”
“How many?” she demanded
The vision was gone now; he shut his eyes and tried to resurrect it. “At least a dozen,” he said finally. “Maybe more.”
“Predators,” she mused. “But how? There’s no game here.”
“There’s us,” he reminded her. “And all the victims of the trees. Maybe the roots don’t use up all the meat. Maybe there’s enough left for scavengers.” And sometimes living bodies, too, immobilized by the power of the tree. He remembered the skeletons that had been torn apart, limbs and torso and head and tails each gone to provide an individual meal. There would be other game, too, men and animals not yet claimed by the trees’ power but affected by it, who lacked the strength to run and the clarity of thought to defend themselves . . .
Like we were last night. Like we might be again, once we leave this island.
“We can’t defend ourselves here,” he heard himself saying. “Not if they surround us.” There were species that did that, he knew. Pack instinct. Those were the most deadly hunters of all.
“Where can we go?”
He looked around helplessly, knowing what he would see. A grouping of trees here and there on the plain, one low dome of crusted lava. Otherwise: Flatness. Emptiness. A total and absolute lack of shelter, for God alone knew how many miles.
He felt panic rising inside him, drew in a deep breath as he struggled to fight it down. He had faced worse than this, hadn’t he? He’d done it and come out on top. He would come out on top of this one, too.
“Undying Prince be damned,” he muttered. The man had made a crucial mistake. By forcing them to Work to defend themselves he might have managed to locate them, but now that they had given themselves away they had no more reason not to Work the fae. He drew in another deep breath, reaching out to take hold of the earth-currents. Not a Knowing this time, but a Locating. Something focused on the concept of defensive ground, something that would help them find a place where they could put their backs to a wall—so to speak—and face their enemy together.
“South,” he whispered, as the information came. “Due south. Almost a mile.”