~~~~~
Saan’s mind was muddled in a post-waking haze. Eyes still closed, she wondered why her soft bed was now hard as a rock. She took a deep breath, smelled grass and trees and an undertone of lingering wood smoke. Water gurgled nearby, different and calmer than the sea ebbing near her beach village of Nebasht. Then in a rush, it all flooded back to her. The daytime drives, the nighttime camps along the river’s flow, her three travel companions. She opened her eyes a slit and frowned at the early morning sun slipped through the crack, partially blocked by a web of eye lashes.
The world was sideways because that’s how she lay. The still-healthy but yellowing dew-coated grass looked taller than it was, the trees behind them crossing her vision left to right. The water she heard was the sound of a short, shallow tributary, a branch of the huge Hodenaxi River. The waterway was twenty paces away and, like the other nights, they camped north of the water but close to it, their all-terrain parked further inland. The twins were inside the vehicle this time, their night for cushioned comfort, though that was relative with how cramped the vehicle was compared to the enticing openness of camp.
Still getting her head on straight after some sleep and the memory-filled dream, she remembered the night before. They had fresh fish for dinner, caught and cooked by her, the only one with fishing experience. The twins had gone into the forest and found mushrooms, some roots, and herbs to liven it up. The city-boy Nes had the job of maintaining the equipment, which he did admirably, and Saan figured it was at least partially as a thank you for not having to eat rations during this voyage; they always saved part of dinner for the next day’s lunch, only eating the nutritionally ultra-balanced ration bars for breakfast, and only because they devoured Husband’s leftovers the first afternoon in a too-large meal.
Her mind moved on, to the present. She was on a bedroll, using her folded-up jacket as a pillow. Saan moved her head a bit and her eyes more, and saw the dying campfire and beyond that, Nes. He stood rigid, hands balled into fists at his sides. She was still tired, felt like she didn’t get enough sleep after her turn at watch, and closed her eyes, now moving to the future and why they were traveling in the first place. Her mind sank at the thought of what she needed to do: ask the Ko Monasi, her people, specifically the chiefs in her hometown, to repay a favor they owed Dastou. She didn’t know what that favor was, though, and had the feeling that the Saint wasn’t trying to be cute about not knowing either. It would have been an easy tactic to avoid giving details and therefore avoid her response of “that does not seem important enough for me to retrieve,” using disingenuousness to keep the secret, but with that all the trouble they went through before he split them up, it was bad leadership to act that way. In her dream, Uncle June told her that Saint’s don’t like, but in reality he said they don’t lie often, and Dastou wouldn’t lie to her about why she had to come here.
But her assignment, her duty, that wasn’t what bothered her; it was the fact that it involved having to go home, a place she dismissed from her mind as a lost cause when she left to join the Academy. She knew she’d have to go back sooner or later, and leaving her mother to know nothing about her seemed cruel. Uncle June was a different matter – he made plans to meet with her and his brother, Sigrid, twice a year. That family connection helped keep her sane during the first months at the school, when everything else in her life had been cut off so completely. Thinking of her loyal uncles calmed her, and Saan began to drift away.
With her eyes closed and nearly asleep again, she heard Nes moving around in front of her. Then came the unmistakable sounds of a gun being picked up, its safety thumbed off. Saan opened her eyes again and saw Nes standing with his assault rifle in hand, looking into the trees, his back still to her.
Why would he be... the howling. That’s what woke her up in the first place. Saan sat up on her bedroll like she sat up during that dream of a remembered conversation with Uncle June, with worried shock. Another series of howls came, and every muscle in her body became tight as a bowstring.
“By the black void not here,” Nes cursed in a shaky whisper. “Not here.”
He would mean not in a wide open space where the animals could run at the travelers from any and every angle, a place where they were begging to be slaughtered. Saan stood up, faced the same direction as Nes, and looked into deep woods and hills. Her instincts bristled and she turned to see the Stroffs only two strides away; they had the look of interrupted sleep on their faces despite having so skillfully snuck up on her. Goner failed to hide a casual peek at Saan-Hu’s chest in her tight tank top, and she stared daggers at him for a second, letting him know to be more respectful. She bent down, picked up her folded jack, shook it loose, and slid it on.
The twins’ semi-hushed voices were sharp, clean, and clear. They were spotter and sniper, and they were specifically trained to communicate either as little or as quietly and unmistakably as possible.
“What was that?” asked Evara. “That doesn’t sound natural to here, not by a long shot.”
“I damn near wet myself when it blasted through here,” added Goner, keeping his eyes up where they belong. “Whatever those three things are, they make my spine crawl just from the sound.”
“Three,” Saan said, blinking. “How do you know there are three?”
Evara shrugged. “We’re good.”
Nes had turned and come around the dead campfire to the others. “Can you tell where they are?” he asked.
The twins looked at each other, as if calculating without speaking, Goner talking aloud first. “Um... five?” Goner wondered.
“What? No, four,” Evara argued.
“Sounds like five to me.”
Saan was looking back and forth between the Stroffs, and every time she opened her mouth to speak she was interrupted by one of them.
“Well then, you’re an idiot,” Evara snapped. “It’s four at the outside.”
“And the echoes from the mountains?”
“Mountains?” Evara countered, irritated. “Close to here, they’re more like hills that always have a little too much dessert. Four.”
“I swear to the living Saint, you’re a dunce,” Goner said. “It’s five. Remember that desert walk when we were eleven? You swore those bobcats were too far to sense us coming, and you got a bite mark on your leg for it.”
“What? You think I haven’t gotten better at echo location since then? You arrogant, smug...”
“Privates,” called Saan in her best drill sergeant tone of voice, interrupting the girl mid-insult. “I will decide what’s right. Evara, you say four kilometers, and you are the spotter, so I will trust you.”
Evara turned her face to Goner and stuck her tongue out at him. Saan cleared her throat, and the girl snapped her head to the superior officer when called again. “Evara. Explain further.”
“Uh...” started the girl, “four kilometers sounds right, maybe just a little more. The echoes traveled through the low valley, we probably only heard the last of those along with the fading real noise. I’d say they climbed high before they yowled, too, just for effect, and maybe to throw off any distance calculation we’d make. A good tactic for a predator, but that’s not really gonna fool me.”
Saan was silent for several seconds, ignoring the obvious jab Evara took at her brother, and started thinking, coming up with a plan or... something.
Goner spoke up to break the silence. “Are those the things that came at you underground, in the monastery? The fasshim or whatever that Vaiss had with him when he took the Caravan?”
“Yes,” Saan-Hu said. “I would remember that sound anywhere. They must have been sent out of the Caravan after you two and Crawford, or maybe let go to chase us down if Tryst was still in contact with Vaiss, told him we got away. In any case, we cannot travel further. We are one-and-a-half days from Nebasht, and if the fasshim follow us we will lead them there.”
“Aren’t your people pretty well armed?” asked Nes.
Saan shook her head
. “For hunting wild animals. You were with me in the monastery, you know these things are smarter than that.”
“Still,” Nes continued, “we’re only what, three hundred something kilos away?”
“Three-hundred-and-fifty-seven,” said the Stroffs simultaneously.
“Still creepy, but that’s not far, and we have a vehicle that’ll more than likely outrun the animals. It doesn’t matter if they’re absurdly smart for animals, it’ll be us and a village versus three big antelope-bears, and no peace-making Stitch to stop us.”
“And if something goes wrong with our vehicle?” asked Saan rhetorically, knowing that she was in command and was simply explaining the motive for her order rather than debating. Nes wasn’t being dismissive, either, only thorough, so she wasn’t harsh with her answer. “Or we have to take a wide arc while driving as those things cut through the forest, getting there faster than we can? We are already behind schedule by half a day due to unforeseen terrain, and I expect it to be no better on the last leg of our trip. I will not risk a single man, woman, or child to a surprise assault from these things, so we must take care of them ourselves.”
Nes sighed and nodded his agreement. Saan would know what her people are capable of, after all. Despite her belief the village itself would be fine, the children of Nebasht are allowed to play within supervisory range of the town. Spotters kept an eye out for danger and her people’s guardians were notoriously skilled, but she had no idea how fast their fasshim enemies could run and hunt. If the animals were too fast and the guardians too slow, a hail of arrows would not reach one of the creatures before it tore into a boy or girl, or their chaperone, with those frightening, nightmarish teeth of theirs.
“Is there any other disagreement on this?” Saan asked, hoping there wasn’t.
Goner shrugged. “We’re almost always ready to fight.”
“And occasionally we’re itching for one,” added Evara.
Saan guessed that was the case, but wanted to make sure and hear it aloud, if only to soothe her own nerves.
“Good,” Saan said. “We have seen that these creatures are far more intelligent than normal animals, and a simple trap or entrenchment tactic will not work. We need to take inventory and see what we can use.”
In the next few minutes, they searched their all-terrain for anything they could put to clever use. After the foursome collaborated on the type of plan Dastou would be proud of for its sheer risk, they got to work on implementing it. Saan gave herself to her thoughts as she prepared and brought up anything at all that would distract her. Academy schedule changes, event planning, what her first house would look like, the next time she’d have a chance to get stoned with Nes, ex-girlfriends – that last one was cycled through quickly. Before she knew it, an hour had gone by and they were almost ready, and she realized that she’d much rather think about ex-girlfriends than what her team was about to try.
~~~~
Blurred Weaponry (Saints of the Void, Book 1) Page 35
