They waited and waited. Her eyes kept drifting shut of their own accord before her body stiffened and jerked back to wakefulness. Now is not the time to fall asleep! As hard as she tried, though, she couldn’t stop it, and a drafty, drifting eternity of slumps and starts played tricks with the passing of the night. In those moments she spent in the in-between places of consciousness, she dreamed of the zephyr beneath her. It wasn’t an interesting dream – the beast had been bred in a stable by indifferent managers, fed regularly but treated badly, and spent its days trying to chew through the boards of its stall to attack its neighbors. In a moment of wakefulness, she wondered if she would spend the rest of her sleeping life plagued by the minutia of others’ lives. She’d started to recognize these dreams as a part of her Pure Light gift and was learning to live with it… but nearly everything she saw was boring. At least it doesn’t happen every night. She fell back into the memories again and again, wishing she could dream of something else.
At some point, she roused to see Kest holding out his hand toward them from his sentry post near the screen of leaves. Quietly, carefully, he put his hand to his lips, and she knew that the moment was upon them. She strained her eyes to see through the dark gaps in the leaves. Was that someone moving out there? No, it was just the foliage swaying in a breath of wind. Her sleepiness was gone, and she gripped her makeshift club until her palms hurt.
Then she heard the crunch of dead leaves. The sound stood out from the usual nighttime noise like fresh paint on old wood. The shifting shadows beyond their hiding spot suddenly resolved themselves into a man armored in polished bone. His helm was a two-horned skull with fangs framing his face, and he held a thorned whip in his hand. Nira felt a spike of surprise; she knew of men like this. They belonged to the mercenary band she’d intended to join with Fi when first she fled home. This is not how I hoped to meet the Bone Army. He was walking along the bank of the stream on their side, moving carefully, head tracking back and forth. Every few steps he knelt to check the mud at his feet. He wasn’t a large man, but he carried himself with a dangerous grace. He was only a few meters from Kest.
She could see him so clearly through the gaps in the leaves that it seemed utterly impossible for him to miss seeing them. His eyes swept in their direction multiple times. Errant glowflies beyond the stream revealed two Bone Army men on the far side. They had one of the koira with them, and it snuffled dutifully at the ground.
Nira held her breath. The man closest to them was right alongside their hiding place. If Nira had been standing where Kest was, she could have reached out her little branch and tapped the horn of the man’s helm. He paused, knelt again, checked the dirt, and stood back up. He knuckled the small of his back and cussed softly. We’re not the only ones who are tired. Who knew how many nights of sleep this squad had missed catching up to them? The man sighed and moved on.
Another ten minutes of stillness and they’d be out of sight. Another ten minutes beyond that and it would be safe to move, and they’d lose them for good. Just a little longer.
Guyrin farted.
It was a loud, long, unmistakable blast. The drugged man gave a tiny giggle in his sleep. They all stared at him in shock, and then Kest burst into motion, springing from his hiding place directly at the man by the stream. The young Beast Rider swung a leaping haymaker at the tracker’s head and connected with his nose just as he turned around. The man went down in a heap, and Kest rolled him down the bank and into the water, yelling, “Go! We have to go!”
The zephyrs responded far more quickly than the humans, trundling out of the trees and down the muddy bank. Nira held tight to her zephyr’s ears and hunkered down, trying to make herself as small a target as possible. Sure enough, moments later she heard the spit and hiss of thorn-throwers mingling with the cries of their pursuers. Her mount whickered in irritation and snapped its sharp teeth as it took a thorn in the flank.
More men rushed from the underbrush as they fled, and the koira started baying as they lunged toward the zephyrs on their six short legs. The mounts stepped and shied as the smaller beasts nipped at their leg. One koira came alongside Nira and she leaned over, swinging her tree branch hard. It connected with the thing’s ribs, and it whined as it fell away.
A line of fire circled her wrist and she was jerked clear of her mount, crashing painfully to the mud on her shoulder. Nira clawed at the pain; something pricked her fingers. She got to her feet and was once more jerked off balance, led by that burning wrist. Looking up, she saw that the man in the stream had regained his footing and had latched on to her with his whip. It was a thorned vine whip,
