Page 44 of Into the West

“We’ll take it from here, Baron,” the woman said, with a quirk of her eyebrow that said, wordlessly, It’s about time you stopped mother-henning everything.

He flipped the long rein tethering Arial lightly to the barge over to the land and jumped off the barge. Arial had already moved off the path for the towing animals, and waited patiently for him to mount.

Was I that obvious? he thought ruefully. But of course, he already knew the answer to that question.

It was the third afternoon since the three river-hunting groups went out that Jonaton and Briada came riding back downriver to the base camp.

Delia could not have been happier to see them.

It had been bad enough that immediately after their encounter with the lizard-bear, Amethyst reported the attack of the terror-birds on the main convoy. At that point Delia had been as nervous as a cat surrounded by hunting dogs. It seemed far too much of a coincidence to her—first the snake-dogs, then the lizard-bear, then the terror-birds. Either this wilderness was crawling with hungry monstrosities, or something or someone was stalking them. Maybe even testing them.

She perched on the roof of the barge beside Amethyst, because otherwise she’d just have been lying in bed with her eyes wide open, jumping at every sound. She went to sleep only after she kept nodding off, and was up at the first light, long before anyone else, and again sat on the roof of the barge, scanning the sky. She knew what she was going to do, of course, if those things came after their group. Just what she did with the geese. Of course . . . they were much bigger than geese, and she planned to slam them into the ground at a distance and fill them full of arrows while they were still stunned. It was a strategy that should work for birds or dogs. She tried not to think about the fact that Kordas had tried shooting the birds to no effect—after all, she could put some extra force into her arrow strikes. It should work. Right?

She stayed up there until after breakfast, then Sai sent her and Venidel out as usual. She hadn’t wanted to go cut fodder, but there really hadn’t been a choice; the horses needed it, and there were two mages awake and ready to respond if anything attacked. Right? But at least they were cutting fairly close to the camp, so she could keep one eye on the sky and one on the short, but sharp, scythe in her hands.

And as soon as luncheon was over she took her position on the top of the barge again, even though her eyes burned with fatigue, and she would have given up Daystar at that moment if it meant she could take a nap.

So when two moving specks appeared on the horizon, she stood and pointed and croaked “Something’s coming!” and felt her gut knot up with fear as Sai and Endars dropped what they had been doing, peered in the direction she was pointing, and took a “ready” stance.

And a moment later, when those moving dots resolved into Briada and Jonaton instead of a pair of lizard-bears or some other horror, she felt ready to weep with relief. Of all the people she wanted right now, those two were at the top of the list. What Briada couldn’t eliminate by brute force, Jonaton could probably set on fire or turn inside out, or just make it explode. Sai had admitted in Delia’s hearing that the only reason the Six Old Men hadn’t decided to become the Seven Old Men was that Jonaton wasn’t old. In every other way, he was the equal or superior of one of the Six.

“Hey!” She waved down at Sai and Endars, in case her eyes were sharper than theirs. Their heads turned. “It’s Briada and Jonaton! They’re back!”

The camp erupted. Sai hastened to stir up something quick for them to eat, Venidel hauled two of the more choice fodder bundles to the upriver side of the camp for their horses, and everyone else gathered to greet them. Not shouting and making noise—not a good idea to attract the attention of anything that might be out there in the woods. But waving was quiet.

They didn’t even bother to dismount before speaking. “Rapids end at a forest and there’s a strong ley-line there,” Jonaton said as he was swinging a leg over his horse’s rump. “I planted an anchor and I connected it to the ley-line. As we figured, just like we did downstream, we’re going to have to set the Gates half on land and half in the water, because the river is so wide.”

“What else is on the other end of the rapids?” Endars asked, helping Jonaton with his saddlebags and the saddle.

“Weird forest,” Briada added, shaking her head as she unbuckled her horse’s saddle and eased it off its back. “Very, very weird forest.”

“How weird is weird?” Sai asked, while Venidel took over rubbing down her horse, then leading it to the fodder, and Endars did the same with Jonaton’s horse.

Jonaton made a gesture of helplessness. “You’ll just have to see it for yourself,” he said, after a long pause during which he seemed to be groping for words. “Well, anyway, the good news is that once the Gates are up and linked, we’ll be able to feed both of them off that ley-line. So, how bored have you been?”

Delia burst into laughter that was only a little bit hysterical.

Jonaton gave her a side-eye, but sobered when Sai described the lizard-bear and how Delia had driven it away. He didn’t say anything, but she saw something in his eyes she had never seen before when he was looking at her.

Respect.

He’d been mildly annoyed when she’d been dropped on the crew by Kordas. He’d covered it well, and he hadn’t treated her unkindly, but it was clear he had a good idea why Kordas had sent her to the group. Then, once she proved herself useful, he approved of her, but she got the feeling he still wanted “the child” back at the convoy.

But now she had his respect. And despite being ready to drop, she felt a sort of energizing glow.

Then Sai brought Amethyst into the conversation to have her retell what had happened back with the main convoy—both Lord Hayworth’s defection and the attack by the terror-birds—and Jonaton’s eyes narrowed, as did Briada’s.

But before he could say anything, Sai held up a hand. “Let’s discuss further when Delia isn’t falling over. She’s been bravely watching the skies just in case for far too long, and I think she needs a nap. Tonight, over dinner. I’ll make something good.”

Despite the fact that her legs felt completely boneless, Delia was already halfway to the door of the barge by the time Sai finished that sentence, and she bundled herself up in her sheepskin coat, pulling her legs up to her chest, without bothering with blankets.

Briada came and woke her for supper at sunset, which was, as Sai had promised, good. The soup was as thick as gravy, and very spicy. With the soup was flatbread with some of their precious cheese rolled up in it and melted. Sai had been managing to grind grain into flour for flatbread almost every day, with the aid of an ingenious rig that Hakkon contrived, using the river- current to power the hand mill. She nibbled her share to make it last while the rest discussed these new attacks. Overhead the stars were out, but in the west there was a rapidly fading line of umber-to-red light, showing the sun hadn’t quite sunk.

“I don’t think the bear was an attack,” she put in, between nibbles. “It acted surprised to find us.” The water lapping against the hulls of the barges only made her feel colder, but her feet were toasty, and she wanted to be part of the discussion instead of shunted off to the side.

“It acted as if it had poor eyesight as well,” Sai agreed. “Which is odd, because bears have vision as good as we do.” He toyed with the ends of his long hair. “Lizards don’t have good distance vision, though. Perhaps that’s the answer.”

“It also didn’t act as if something was urging it on beyond its own idea we might be good to eat,” Endars observed dispassionately.