Pathfinder's Way

by T. A. White

  Shea reached down and grabbed a handful of soil, rubbing it between her hands. It would make them less slippery while climbing.

  Though scaling another cliff wasn’t exactly how she wanted to escape, she felt it was better than trying to backtrack with the horse. For one thing, the path they’d come through was narrow, and there weren’t a lot of offshoots. The scouts would just need to ride until they caught up with her, and she’d be hemmed in.

  Also a horse couldn’t go all the places a person could. Lastly, few would think she had escaped up a cliff and so wouldn’t look in that direction when it came time to hunt her.

  And she had no doubt they’d hunt her. They would consider her a deserter. They’d come after her even if it was just so they could make an example of her to other would-be deserters.

  She placed her hands against the wall and wedged one foot into a small dip in the wall, so small that it was virtually nonexistent. Hand over hand, foot over foot she made her way up the vertical rock face, using tiny handholds and even tinier foot holds. More often than not she was hanging onto the cliff’s side with just the tips of her fingers.

  It wasn’t her favorite place to be, especially when a gust of wind came tearing through the canyon, pulling at her body and causing her stomach to drop right into her stomach.

  Finally though, she gained the top where she could rest with her legs dangling over the edge. She sighed and leaned back to watch the heavy gray clouds above her.

  Her rest was short. The clouds weren’t the sort to hold her attention long. There were no shapes to be discerned or stories to be imagined. They were just one large gray blob. Not interesting at all.

  Shea sighed and stood, brushing the dirt off her hands. She turned to go and hesitated, looking down at the canyon the men had ventured into. Everything inside her said they were heading into danger.

  Perhaps she should follow just to make sure they were okay.

  She tapped her leg with one finger.

  Why should she? They’d been warned. Whatever happened next was on them. It wasn’t like they’d done anything to deserve her consideration. She grimaced and touched her cheek gingerly. The opposite in fact.

  She started to walk away when a scream rent the air, echoing eerily in the enclosed space.

  She took a step in that direction and stopped.

  No.

  It was on them. It had nothing to do with her anymore. She was out. Free. She could head back to Birdon Leaf with a clear conscience and knowledge about a previously unknown danger.

  The sounds of battle and an animal scream pulled at her.

  On the other hand, perhaps she could gain a little insight into how these strangers dealt with beasts.

  Before she could change her mind again, she found herself running along the edge of the canyon in the direction Eamon and Lorn had disappeared down, telling herself this was just an information gathering exercise. She wasn’t going to interfere. Just see what was what.

  Shea lowered herself to her stomach and peered into the narrow canyon below. She pressed her lips together at the visible carnage.

  From the looks of things, they had been ambushed on their way back. Two men were already in pieces on the ground.

  The first man’s torso had been separated from his lower body and the two pieces lay a few yards from each other. The second man’s body was missing an arm and half of its chest. The dirt beneath him had turned the color of rust from all the blood that watered it.

  An enormous shadow beetle reared back onto its hind legs. Its razor sharp pinchers glistened with liquid. Blood, no doubt. It was easily twice the size of a horse. Its mottled grey shell was beginning to darken to obsidian as it entered a feeding frenzy.

  The thick carapace shell protected its insides from blades and claws, making them nearly impossible to kill. When the shell was grey, it blended with the surrounding rocks easily, making it difficult to spot unless the creature moved. When it got the taste of blood, though, its shell darkened to black.

  Though deadly, it was slow and couldn’t change direction easily. The narrow canyon was the perfect hunting grounds, as its prey couldn’t dodge out of the way. It turned the narrow space into a killing field, making escape impossible.

  Run and it would use all its legs to propel itself after you. The thing was fast too. There would be no opportunity to dodge and trying to defend would be pointless.

  A flash of color drew Shea’s attention. She waited until she saw movement again and inhaled. Eamon and another were alive. They were hunkered down in the rocks, using them to escape the pinchers. It was a smart play as the creature was too big to slide between the boulders, and its pinchers weren’t long enough to reach the men in the crevasses.

  Shea stood and looked around. There. That tree would do.

  She rushed to it and dropped the pack on the ground, pulling out her rope and tying it around the base of the tree. She slipped a glove onto her left hand then reached down and picked up her short sword with the right.

  Now came the tricky part.

  Reaching inside for her calm center, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  This was such a bad idea.

  Breathe in.

  She could do this.

  Breathe out.

  She stepped to the edge of the cliff and looked down. The creature wasn’t exactly under her, but that was okay. She took five steps to the right, the rope following her.

  She looked down.

  This was such a bad idea.

  She stepped off the ledge. The bottom shot up from her stomach and into her throat.

  The rope slid through her fingers. It jerked, and she swung out and over the creature. She let go and was falling.

  Falling.

  Then landing with a thud, her hand clenched in a death grip around her sword. She rolled, almost falling off the creature’s back, before her shirt caught on one of the spiny spikes on its shell, and she halted, dangling with her shirt half over her head.

  She had the presence of mind to wrap one hand around the spike, brace her feet against its shell and crawl walk up its back as the shadow beetle thrashed beneath her.

  The shirt began to tear sending her sliding before she managed to lurch up and hook her hand into a groove on its shell. She held on as tightly as she could. If she fell now, she was dead.

  The creature settled back onto the ground. Before it could rear again, Shea was up and crawl running across its back until she reached its neck.

  Through it all she held onto her sword. It wasn’t easy and her left arm screamed from the strain of doing the work of two, but finally she was where its carapace met the round little head that had a horn that looked like a horseshoe sticking out of it.

  Straddling its neck with her legs and aiming the pointy part of the sword at its neck, she raised her hands above her head and brought it down hard, the blade entered and the beast went mad under her, nearly unseating her. She held on as it careened into a wall.

  She really thought that blow would have killed it.

  She tried to yank the sword out. It was stuck.

  Come on, damn it.

  She heaved with all of her might. It slid out a couple of inches and then got stuck again.

  You. Will. Come. Out.

  She wiggled the sword, sliding it out a few more inches. The beast heaved under her.

  Almost there.

  She lost her grip and went flying for all of a second before she came to a sickening stop, her knee on fire.

  Somehow. Miraculously. She hadn’t lost her seat, her leg having gotten stuck.

  She grabbed the sword with both hands and heaved, leaning backwards and pushing away with her legs. It came free with a lurch, nearly toppling her backwards.

  Free now, she hacked at the neck under her with frenzied slices, her hands slipping as black blood coated the sword, her hands, her clothes.

  Still, she didn’t stop. Not even when the creature was lying still. She just kept hacking.

&n
bsp; “Daisy. It’s dead. Kid, stop. It’s dead. How long do you intend to keep working at it?” Eamon inquired from somewhere below her.

  Dazed, she looked up and then around, only now realizing she was still seated on the shadow beetle, and it wasn’t moving.

  “Not that we don’t appreciate the save, mind you, but hacking away like that has to take energy that might be better spent elsewhere.”

  She blinked at him and then blinked at the slivers of white and black flesh where the beetle’s head used to be. She lowered her sword and backed away, having a brief moment of panic when her leg wouldn’t come loose. Buck came forward and helped her twist it free.

  She crawled off the beetle and dropped to the ground.

  The good solid ground that wouldn’t flail beneath her or send her crashing into one of the cliffs.

  She sat down abruptly, her legs not wanting to support her now that what she’d done registered. Her hands shook as she placed the sword on the ground before her. She could have died. Probably should have.

  That stunt with the rope gave her chills now that she thought about it. If she’d let go even a second earlier or later, she would have plummeted a lot farther than she had and probably been trampled or torn in half by the beetle.

  A pair of boots stopped before her. Shea looked up to see Eamon staring down at her with his hands on his hips, an intense look on his face.

  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 wi
thout 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.