Page 2 of Family Found

“Well, if you’re going to Earth, we’re coming, but we need to get the information to Esaka before we leave.” Lissir pulled me along at a brisk pace, his merchant’s disguise getting even more waterlogged.

“Yes. We have to inform the Raiken about this,” I said when Lissir ducked under the shelter. His blue-gray hair was dripping wet, and heavy drops fell from the tips of his gray horns. He tried to get out of his cloak, but the strings that drew it shut had taken on too much water.

“Inform the Raiken?” Vergis rubbed his eyes. “Did you pick up something bad in town, Lissir?”

Nokim swooped in to help Lissir by cutting through the knots and pulling the wet cloak off while Lissir wiggled out of it. Nokim had done his best to keep Lissir’s Raiken cloak dry, but in this weather, that wouldn’t make much of a difference.

“Well, as bad as any outpost with Koa Esher stationed there ever is, I suppose.” With a huff, Lissir freed himself of the merchant’s cloak and pulled on his Raiken cloak. “Inkiri feels a mate call.”

Nokim stopped his soothing clicking at Vergis. “Mate call?”

Vergis’s pupils were still too wide, and his hands trembled in the overlong sleeves of his cloak. Where I felt steady now, he seemed shaken. “Wait… You felt that just now?”

“Fellisse, the shelter.” I began pulling it apart. “And yes. It—I’m not sure I can explain, but I know it’s a mate call.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Vergis’s expression was haunted, not scared. I didn’t think he ever got scared, but something was clearly amiss. “We should leave here. I felt magic, a lot of it, and if it was the Koa Esher, I don’t want to stick around to find out what they’ve been up to.”

Lissir grabbed one edge of the tarp to help fold it back up. “And I want out of the rain.”

From that point, we fell back into the practiced routine we always stuck to, especially in hostile territory. We watched the moors while we worked, and we worked fast, with practiced movements that needed little discussion.

Once our shelter was put away, we began the trek back to Esaka. The rain got worse before long, and our progress was slow as a result, seeing as we had to mind where we stepped. The moors could be treacherous on a clear day, but soggy as they were then, they became even more so.

Lissir brought up the rear, and Fellisse and Nokim were in the front while I walked behind Vergis so I could grab him if he stepped wrong. Vergis did not know these moors as well as we did.

The arrow hit a handsbreadth away from Vergis’s leg, sinking deep into the ground. The feathers of the fletching might have been green once, but they too were wet and looked a muddy brown now.

“Fuck.” Vergis cursed in English and pulled his gun. He moved fast and without hesitation.

I whipped my head toward our attackers just as the painfully loud sound of Vergis shooting rang in my ears. One of the Koa Esher went down, Vergis’s single shot hitting its target.

Lissir hissed. “I cannot see them clearly. Five or six?”

There was another shot.

“Four or five,” Vergis said.

Nokim got his own bow ready and loosed. Fellisse picked up Nokim’s bag.

Nokim didn’t even look. He shouted “Green vial!” then his arrow hit, not one of the Koa Esher, but the moor, where the incendiary tip exploded.

The force of the explosion was weak because of the weather, but it was enough to make the Koa Esher break out in shouts. Their scholars were not like any from the Raiken, and Koa Esher soldiers knew to fear our makers in the field, even if they did not wear the protector black.

While they panicked, Vergis managed to hit another one of the attackers before he looked at me. “We need to get going!”

Fellisse pulled a green vial from Nokim’s bag and struck the seal. He tossed it, aiming for the middle distance between our attackers and us. It was a smoke bomb, just something to give us time. Like the explosive, it was weak in this weather, but it afforded us some protection.

“Yes, move!” I waved for Lissir to move up ahead on our line so I could stay at the rear. Better they hit me than Vergis or Lissir.

For the next few minutes, we did nothing but put distance between us and the Koa Esher.

We started out at a run, but it was impossible to keep that pace up for long. I kept looking back over my shoulder. I would spot the shapes of our pursuers through the rain; all we had to do was keep ahead of them, keep out of range. With visibility poor and the moors hungry for them to take a wrong step, that had to be enough.

After about a quarter of an hour, I could no longer see them, but it didn’t mean they were gone. We continued to put one foot in front of the other, sometimes sinking in to the knee. Progress was slow, and every step was hard work. The rain was noisy.

We kept looking over our shoulders to see if they had caught up to us, but with luck, it had just been one of the border patrols, and with more luck, they wouldn’t want to risk getting close enough for Vergis to shoot the rest of them down. Some of the Koa Esher foot soldiers preferred living to dying a zealot.

“At least they didn’t do magic,” Vergis said as he peered into the rain that was closing like a curtain behind us. “I thought they would whammy us with something.”