“Not surprising.” Maleshi stepped around L’zar when the drow stopped suddenly in mid-stride and tilted his head back, closing his eyes against the morning sunlight. She glanced at Corian, who shook his head and continued past L’zar. “The world without high tech is expanding, isn’t it? Has been since the last Cycle turned.”
“It continues as we speak.” The raug chief grunted in disapproval. “I cannot say how far the Spider’s reach has extended while the Cu’ón endeavored to make his mark. In some ways, it has shortened more than I expected.”
“You mean the Outers, right?” Cheyenne stepped lightly over the loose chunks of rock in their path, warily avoiding the cargo machines as they staggered across the slippery shale. “Because that line’s been changing too.”
“More than any of us realize, I think.”
Cheyenne looked at Maleshi with raised eyebrows. The nightstalker woman pressed her lips together and looked at the mountain range. The skaxen village was just the beginning. Persh’al and I saw the dead land for ourselves, and now we’re following this raug chief with no idea what we’re getting into. Awesome.
* * *
The raug warriors barely spoke as the party climbed steep rock walls and slid into valleys, following Cazerel on his secret path toward a secret location. After the first two hours, Foltr climbed onto a supply cart and set his staff across his lap, grimacing at the ache in his legs. Ember had a good laugh, seeing the wizened old raug wobbling with the cart machine’s unsteady gait.
They stopped for a meal an hour after that. L’zar refused to stay with the rest of them, opting instead to stomp away and sit alone on a boulder beside the clearing in the jagged stone. He crossed his legs beneath him, closed his eyes, and entered a much steadier meditation session than earlier that morning.
The warriors rummaged around in the supply carts and pulled out flat dark-gray rectangles of something edible wrapped in cloth. These were passed around quickly to the chief, Ember, Cheyenne, the goblins, and Foltr, who remained sitting on the supplies. No one asked the oldest magical among them to move aside.
Maleshi eyed the last two bricks of traveling food with a raised brow. The warrior closest to her unwrapped one of them from its cloth, sneered at her, and bit into it before chewing noisily. The other four warriors did the same, chuckling among themselves and stepping away from the carts to sit in a small group. They glared at the general with glowing eyes in various shades of orange and muttered to each other in French.
“Gah!” Byrd pulled his brick of chewy sustenance away from his face and scowled. “I tell you what, man. The original recipe might’ve started over here, but the guys across the—”
He grunted and wheezed when Lumil shot an elbow extra-hard into his gut. “We’re not talkin’ about that. Or the recipe, you moron. Just eat the damn bar.”
The goblin wrinkled his nose as he brought the magical energy bar up to his mouth again, rubbing his gut with the other hand. “Easy for you to say. You don’t have any taste buds left.”
“But my brain cells are all intact, dae’bruj.” Lumil snorted and ripped away a huge chunk of her bar with her teeth, nostrils flaring.
Cheyenne nibbled the sour yet earthy-tasting bar in her hand, feeling it slide a little beneath her fingers through the cloth. He’s right. At least the FRoE improved on the worst-tasting meal ever invented. She gazed around the clearing, ignoring the goblins muttering curses at each other and ducking angry, half-assed blows. Ember was a much paler shade of fae pink as she swallowed her bar and tried to focus on the story Cazerel was telling her about the first time he’d ventured this far northeast into the mountains.
Not a conversation meant for me to hear, probably.
Then the halfling turned her attention to Maleshi and Corian. The nightstalkers stood on opposite sides of the clearing, and while Maleshi gauged what she’d be risking by stalking toward the carts to grab food for herself, Corian stared at the general.
“Something wrong, General?” A warrior lying with his back against a boulder with his thick legs splayed in front of him sniggered and looked Maleshi up and down. “You look like you forgot something important.”
“I haven’t forgotten anything,” Maleshi snarled. “And neither have you.” The nightstalker’s clenched fists trembled at her sides.
“Ah.” Another warrior stood, stalked toward the cart without an old raug sitting on top of it, never taking his burning gaze off the general, and rummaged to pull out a drinking gourd that looked like it could’ve been made either from a sturdy O’gúleesh plant or some kind of animal hide. He sneered at Maleshi, uncorked the gourd, and took a long, messy drink. Then he stoppered it again and tossed the gourd to the other warriors. Laughing, they passed the water around, all of them shooting General Hi’et warning, challenging glances.
Corian finally stepped toward Maleshi and paused to lean toward her. “Keep ignoring them. It’s for a reason.”
“I know what it’s for, vae shra’ni.” The general’s long black hair twitched around her face and shoulders since her head trembled in rage now too. “I don’t need your counsel.”
Corian licked his lips in thought, glancing quickly at Maleshi’s profile, but she didn’t look away from the raug warriors who found General Maleshi Hi’et’s rage over their little prank hilarious.
If Cazerel had picked up on his kinsmen’s blatant disregard for his orders to drop their grudge against the nightstalker woman, he ignored it in lieu of sharing his drinking gourd with Ember.
Corian stepped over to the closest cart and flipped up the canvas tarp, then reached inside to pull out two more energy bars. As he walked back around the cart to Maleshi, his silver eyes flickered up to meet Cheyenne’s gaze, and his eyebrows quickly drew together.
Great. Cheyenne swallowed another nasty bite with
