Ember jerked to a stop, awash with cold dread. It was well known that crows were Corax’s agents, and no well-meaning Linnaean would shoot one. A rogue trying to escape detection? She hadn’t heard of any reports, but it didn’t mean that it was impossible.
She looked back the way she had come, wondering for the first time if she should have gone back to camp with Lance. She was far enough away, though, that it would be nightfall before she could reach the camp again, and the trail would be indecipherable in the darkness.
An ear-splitting wail rose above the noise of the forest. Her head snapped up, recognizing the call of the Fowler’s toad. It wasn’t like when he had acted as a lookout in capture the flag—it was a scream barbed with terror.
She sprinted toward him without thinking. Her fingers ripped the fang knife from its sheath, gouging the rubber coating beneath until fresh blood spilled over the once-again-sharp blade.
The sound of weapons clashing led her through the deep underbrush, thorns tearing at her clothes and vines slapping her face. Desperation made her fast, and she flew over the bloodstained trail, the trees themselves seeming to guide her toward the battle ahead.
At first, it was impossible to locate Daniel amid the tangled limbs and flashing weapons. She lowered herself to the ground and crept closer, the cloud of kicked-up dirt stinging her eyes and the rocks imprinting into her knees.
She used her infrared to separate the fighters from one another: Gunther first, his face pale and terrified as a blow sent him staggering in her direction. The top half of his ear was missing, blood pouring down the side of his head and collecting at his shoulder. The toad was crouched in the bushes behind him, rooting around for something.
The pisces whipped back toward his attackers, and Ember saw them clearly for the first time: two human men, both covered in drapes of sewn-together leaves and branches. They were large and bearded, with limbs like tree trunks and skin streaked with mud. The taller of the two wore a bow-and-arrow strung across his back and wielded a knife; the shorter wielded a machete.
Ember’s stomach lurched. These men were undoubtedly the owners of the camp she had just encountered, and perhaps even of the hunting knife found in the northeast on the first day of the exam. They had been living in Linnaean territory for days; to her knowledge, such an event had not happened for a hundred years.
The fight was rapidly going downhill for the Linnaeans. The quarters were too close for the archer’s bow, but Gunther’s maneuverability was equally affected. He was strong, but he had begun the day injured, and the men were skilled: they fought him without fear, aiming for his unarmored spots and wearing him down—exactly what Ember would have done.
As she watched, Daniel emerged from the bushes behind the shorter man, tripping up his legs. He took advantage of the moment of distraction to throw Gunther his axe—still dulled with the rubber coating—which he had retrieved from the bushes. As the pisces caught it, the taller man steadied the shorter and kicked the squealing toad away.
Ember’s fingers tightened around her knife. Her fangs extended and bloodlust bloomed in her ears like a poisonous flower. In these men, she saw the others that had come before them: those who had threatened the newly delivered Linnaean child, those who had forced a cage around Olga’s mouth, and those who held her father prisoner in the god-forsaken city of Ciradyl.
But underneath her anger was fear. There were no rubber-dulled weapons; no Ophelia to stop the fight when it became too dangerous; no honor code to govern the men’s actions. To fight them was to risk dying.
She squeezed her eyes shut for a half-second and said a prayer to any god or goddess that might be listening, then crept tight to the ground until she was behind the archer’s back.
She sprang at him with her knife outstretched, angling it to slit his throat.
She was fast, but she hesitated in the instant before the blade met flesh. At the same time, a ray of sunlight glinted off of the metal and into the archer’s eye.
He reacted automatically. His arm flew up, blocking the trajectory of her knife. It skittered across his gauntlet and caught him just below the thumb joint, splitting it from his hand. Blood and flesh splattered over them both, and Ember cursed, retreating a half-step.
She had injured him, but he reacted with little more than a grimace. He tightened the gauntlet with his teeth, cutting off the circulation, and faced her in earnest while his partner continued to occupy Gunther. In his dark, impassive eyes, Ember saw the willingness to kill.
He came at her with broad, powerful strokes, a different strategy than he had used against the pisces. That alone was enough to confirm her suspicions that he was familiar with fighting Linnaeans: he could recognize and adapt to their mutations.
She ducked underneath an attack, hissing as the pain in her side flared. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that with only one man to fight against, Gunther and Daniel were gaining the upper hand. She backed up until the three of them formed a triangle, their backs protected.
As they fought, Ember realized that her companions’ injuries and the men’s skill at the blade mattered not—the Linnaeans would triumph. Despite being much smaller in stature, her strength was equal to the men’s, and Gunther’s was far greater. He weathered their attacks and pushed forward, hammering them down with blows from his dulled axe and his fists. Ember and Daniel took advantage of the split-second openings he created, inflicting major wounds and sapping the men’s energy.
For the first time, she could feel what the bishop must fear in them, and it gave her strength. We’re going to win.
It happened in an instant. The shorter man maneuvered himself around Gunther and grabbed Daniel, who had stepped out of their formation in order to attack. He held his machete to the toad’s throat, his eyes glinting with the threat.
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Gunther growled, reaching out, but Ember grabbed his arm, her own knife hanging useless at her side. “Stop. He means it.”
The toad’s eyes were wide, and he struggled until the man forced him still by nicking his neck with the blade. “I-I’m sorry,” he mouthed, tears streaking his dirt-stained face.
Ember tasted blood where her metal-capped fangs bit into her lip. “What do you want?”
“Don’t follow us,” the taller man grunted, “or we’ll kill him. We’ll drop him by the river when we’re sure you’ve beat it.”
“Do you think we’re-” Gunther started to say, but Ember silenced him with a sharp glare.
“Fine,” she spat. The archer nodded, once, his disdain for her on full display.
The humans began their retreat through the underbrush, one facing forward and the other backward with Daniel sandwiched in the middle. Ember held a finger to her lips, but the moment they were out of sight, she leaned close to Gunther. “Follow them, quietly.”
“We’ll kill them,” he said, and they took up the trail together, for once in perfect agreement.
They picked after the men with painful slowness, Ember’s barely controlled anger simmering beneath the surface. The enemies were only human: eventually, they would have to stop and drop their guard, while she could survive for days without sleeping or eating if she had to. Now that they had been spotted, they would need to flee quickly, and Daniel would be a hindrance; they would intend to offload him one way or another.
They had hiked about a mile before the men stopped in a clearing at the top of a hill. She could see their backs and Daniel’s crouched outline, and she held up a hand to Gunther, indicating that she would approach first.
Something large flickered in her infrared, and she only had time to spin around before two figures dropped down from the nearest trees, sleek brown weapons with long metal barrels trained on her and Gunther. Shotguns.
“Shit,” she said aloud. It was a fucking set-up.
“Throw down your weapons,” one of the figures, a woman, ordered. Ember glanced at Gunther. “Put them down! You don’t want to see what this thing can do to you.” Grimacing, Ember dropped her fang knife and Gunther his axe. “Push them away!” she said again, and Ember nudged it out of reach with her boot.
Placated, the woman approached Ember and her partner approached Gunther, holding the shotguns to their backs. “Walk forward.”
Ember did as she was told, noting that the humans retrieved the dropped weapons. When she slowed her pace, the cold metal of the barrel poked through her shirt, and she gave up the prospect of a surprise attack. What an evil thing, she thought, a weapon that requires no strength, and little skill; that kills without the wielder needing to see their opponent’s face.
The Linnaeans were led into the clearing that served as the group’s main camp. Daniel knelt in the center, his hands tied, surrounded by a total of five humans. Ember could have kicked herself: the original two men must have been a mere hunting party, and in her sleep deprivation and hunger, she hadn’t considered the possibility of there being more lying in wait.
“Get down,” the woman ordered Ember and Gunther, and they followed her direction and joined Daniel. The humans’ guns stayed trained on them, but they made no attempt to tie their hands, likely unwilling to get close enough.
“Ember,” Daniel whispered, and she angled her head toward him.
“What?”
He made a small noise, pointing to something with his chin, and she turned her head just barely to see a lump lying nearby. At first, she thought it was an animal—the humans’ dinner, perhaps—but when Daniel shifted out of her line of vision she realized it was a Linnaean: the insect TA, his throat cut open like a goat’s.
Daniel gagged, and Gunther made a small sound in the back of his throat. They intend to kill us, Ember realized. Of course. Their mission necessitates they remain undetected.
For just a second, she pushed her fear and anger aside. She knew little about shotguns, except that they were loud and inaccurate, and the humans wouldn’t risk alerting other Linnaeans unless there was no alternative. Instead, they had rounded her and her companions up so that they could be killed without a fight—and she absolutely was not going to let that happen.
The two gunmen, the woman and her partner, stood to the side of the kneeling Linnaeans, while the other three men stood in front of them. She glanced at Gunther and Daniel, hoping her eyes told them what to do.
She wiped her expression blank, sparing a thought for Jisu, who she hoped was safe in the south of the forest. “You killed him,” she said, raising her voice to call the humans’ attention to her. “You don’t know what the hell you’ve done.”
The shorter man laughed, but the archer held out a hand to stop him. “She looks familiar, doesn’t she?”
The three humans crowded closer, looking at Ember’s face. One of them drew in a quick breath, his eyes widening. “Like that woman-”
“Now!” Ember hissed, and the three Linnaeans threw themselves toward the humans. Ember lunged sideways, wrapping her hands around the barrel of the female gunman’s shotgun and wrenching it aside. She swung her back leg in a power roundhouse kick, connecting to the woman’s head with enough force that she dropped like a sack of potatoes onto the forest floor.
Ember didn’t stop to verify that she was dead—instead, she spun around to check on her companions. Gunther and Daniel, who had been encumbered by the toad’s bindings, hadn’t succeeded with their gunman before the other humans had overwhelmed them.
Ember threw herself into the fray, but it was too late. Two of the men pushed Gunther and Daniel away from them, and the gunman leveled the shotgun.
It was as if his finger pulled the trigger in slow motion. Ember screamed, but Gunther reacted the fastest, shoving Daniel out of the line of the shot. The bullet connected at the side of the pisces’ ribcage, and the effect was devastating.
The roar of the shot drowned out the thump of the bullet entering Gunther’s body, but Ember saw how it ripped through his armor like a knife through butter.
She knew instantly that he was dead; she didn’t wait to watch the aftermath. Instead, she grabbed the gunman from behind, struggling against the other hands on her, and managed to wrench the gun from him. With four-on-one, though, she knew that she would be overwhelmed.
But she would make them pay for Gunther’s death first.
A sense of calm settled over her, and she felt the latent power simmering beneath her skin. She tensed, springing off of the chest of one human and arching over another, landing on his shoulders with her thighs gripping either side of his neck. Her momentum took them both down, and she scrambled to be on top, her fist connecting to his face until it was mangled beyond recognition.
Hands reached for her, yanking her free. She clawed at them like a wild animal, but they were insatiable, and she was rendered immobile at last. There was another presence in the clearing, or perhaps in her mind—something so suffocating that she was hardly aware of the humans anymore. So this is death.
A black blur darted across her field of vision, and one of the men was peeled away from Ember before anyone could react. He fell to the forest floor, his throat torn out by a pair of canines.
Jisu had arrived.