“No sudden moves” he said softly.

Instinctively she matched his tone. “What?” She shuddered in place suddenly as strangeness began to register.

“Hold on, I’ll explain. Just a minute.” There was a muted splash. “Oresus, everything’s okay, but I need you to wake up quietly for a minute, okay?”

“W-what?”

“Don’t move. We’re on a raft, heading downriver. I don’t want you to fall in.”

The two looked around. “H-how?”

“You were both very tired. You kept half-waking up as I moved you, but every time I reassured you, you just fell back asleep.” They could hear the grin in his voice. “It was adorable.”

Ignoring him Emokha pushed on. “Why is it darkh?”

“It’s a stealth raft. Also, the sun is beginning to set.”

“W-will they be here soon?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure how they found us the first time, so they might be here soon. I figured if we didn’t move though they’d be able to find us for sure, so we’ve been heading down the river for a couple hours. If they track by scent…”

“Oh.” After a pause excitement began to come through his voice, even though he stayed quiet. “Oh! That m-might work! W-when I tackled that guy into the water he got confused!”

“Khonfused how exactly?”

“H-he panicked. D-didn’t know which direction was up. J-just thrashed around.”

“So they deal with immersion poorly. Another addition to their list of weakhnesses.” She paused for a moment, then continued. “In the fight I diskhovered they are poor fliers. The lesser ones ride on some sort of skhaly bird monsters, but they are not very maneuverable. The greater creatures can fly unaided, but although they are fast they are also not very agile. I was able to wear them down enough to discover fire is effekhtive against them as well.”

Gloe’s head popped back up between them with a slushing sound. “Sweet. Do you have any molotovs left?”

“No, I used the last of them on their leader. “What are you trying to akkhomplish down there?”

“I made the raft from debris from the boats we sank. A basic layer with space for you two to lie down, and a camouflage section on top to keep it looking like detritus. That doesn’t leave a way to steer, so I’m doing it from underwater.”

“Isn’t that r-really hard?”

“Yeah. It’s kind of fun though. I expect we’re going to start hitting more things as the light fades though. The sky is cloudy so I don’t expect a lot of moonlight. I’m imbuing the whole raft, so we should hold together. Just hang on.”

“Won’t we b-be trapped if they find us?”

“If that happens I’ll drop imbue and you can just kick the camo off. No one seems to have found us so far though. We’ve passed several scouting groups investigating to the east. No alarms so far.”

“How long khan you kheep this up?”

“I dunno. Maybe indefinitely, as long as ya’ll keep having nightmares?” He shook himself slightly. “Tch. Get some sleep. I stuck some food in between you, and you can scoop water from the river.”

“W-what is this?”

“I think it might be hardtack or something? It’s a little waterlogged and disgusting, but our attack was pretty thorough, so I couldn’t find much. Sorry.”

“It’s fine. Thankh you.” Mandibles clicked for a bit. “They will find us eventually. We should rest while we khan.”

“I g-guess.”

“Sleep well you two.” Gloe went back underwater, then popped back up. “Oh yeah, if you gotta use the latrine you can use my hole. Just give me a bit of warning first, yeah?”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Shut up Zekhow.”

...

“We have to go. There’s a huge group coming up the river. Fast.”

“Okhay. Pickh a direction and we’ll swim out.”

“No, pop that beam and come out the top. The water is really cold.”

Without questioning Emokha pushed a beam off of the camo layer. Quickly gathering up her pack and bedding she popped her head out, then wriggled free. Oresus was right behind her. Once they were on the bank Gloe leapt out of the water, landing in the trees beyond them.

“T-there’s snow.”

“Yeah, we really had a cold snap. Think you can tree run? Otherwise I’ll carry you. I don’t think we should leave tracks on the ground.”

“Are you well? You haven’t slept in days. Your skhin lookhs…unwell.”

“It’s frostbite and hypothermia I think. I’m regenerating. We’d better go.”

“Should I c-carry you? I think I can tree run if w-we don’t go too fast.”

Gloe held up his shaking hands, then contrasted it with a steady raised foot. “No, I can control it if I focus. Let’s go.” He took off along to the south along the tree branches. After sharing a long look of misgiving the other two followed, Emokha hovering to the side in case one of the others fell.

...

“That is qhuite the flotilla.”

“W-why would so many be heading this way on the river? Away f-from the battlelines.”

“I suspekht we are exhtremely misfortunate. See those banners? I recognize their format, if not the specific configurations. There are nobles onboard. Many of them.”

“But still, w-why are they heading away from the war?”

“Many nobles do not enjoy the privations of campaigning in winter, so wars often slow down then. It would seem that the demons have decided that winter is imminent and begun returning to their winter qhuarters early.”

“Oh. So soon there are going to be r-reavers everywhere.”

“So I surmise. We will not be able to survive roaming and raiding as we did before. We need to withdraw and reassess. The qhuestion is where we ought to go, and how we will proceed there safely.”

“M-maybe we should try to get back to the deep wyld? We could probably build something w-warm and hidden there if we tried.”

“True, although they know we favor that area now. They may khome looking for us as winter sport. Additionally we have strayed qhuite far, and we no longer dare try to prioritize speed over stealth as we once did. I have misgivings.”

“W-where else could we go? The border with Nalost is heavily patrolled, and rendezvousing with your people would require us to go even farther.”

“True. Zekhow? You’re unkharakhteristikhally qhuiet.”

“If emotions are anything to go on some of those boats are full of prisoners. So I’m being helpful by not suggesting we go down there and kill every demon we can before we die.” He grinned.

“Oh.”

“I hadn’t khonsidered that. Perhaps I didn’t wish to.”

They sat in silence for a while, all deep in thought. “H-hey, what is that in the sky?”

Emokha peered at for a moment, her ability breaking through the distance. Then she sank deeper into the underbrush. “Demon flyer. That decides for us. We’ll have to go south. If we are spotted from the air with this many high-level demons nearby it would be khatastrophikh.”

“I w-wonder how many of the returning demons will be flying?”

“When I was being edukhated for possible khonflikhts with the demons I believe they mentioned that the demon military has entire units of fliers. They ride on aeriel khreatures, like those vampires did.”

“Oh. L-like the Skyguard in Nalost. We c-could be in a lot of trouble.”

...

They were. As the days flew past so did the returning demon fliers. Individually they were probably no threat, but there were so many demons returning home or to garrison for the winter that even being spotted once could have led to a pile-on of military units and reavers that would have spelled the group’s doom. All day they crept through the countryside, avoiding settlements and roads, lying still in bushes as demon units marched or flew by. Barely making any progress.

The nights were not much better. Fewer demons were on the march, but the vampires were on the hunt. Fairly literally. Now that they knew the things could fly they spotted their aerial search patterns from afar. At that point they could either creep away painfully slowly or find a good hiding place and hole up until the hunters moved away. Either way they didn’t get very far.

The only bright spot was that the vampires did not seem to have enlisted anyone to look for them during the day. Perhaps they didn’t want to share the blood, or maybe the lead vampire was still smarting from his body being destroyed, and wanted revenge. Either way it was probably the only thing keeping the group alive.

It was a thin reed to cling to. Emokha and Oresus were struggling with the building fatigue and tension, and starting to get sloppy. Gloe was fine of course, but that only got them so far. Worse, they couldn’t just try to hang on until they reached their destination, because they didn’t have one. The fliers kept forcing them to react, so they were completely off any plausible course. They really weren’t sure where they were, they just kept moving in a way that would keep them out of sight- moving away from fliers and along cover.

It wasn’t a good decision, but what else could they do? Skirting groups of reavers too closely would be suicide. It would just take one with a detection ability and they’d be swarmed over. They couldn’t move openly even at extreme range either. They didn’t look like demons, they weren’t dressed properly for commoners and they were moving the opposite direction from everyone else. Any flier noticing a single discrepancy could do a flyover to check it out, and then it’d be all over. So they had to stay far away from everyone and under cover.

Perfectly rational, but they all knew that wouldn’t get them out of this intact. The timing was misfortunate, but they’d actually been really lucky to have noticed the demons returning before they were spotted. Since then there had been several times they’d been trapped between multiple groups but they’d always found someplace to hide. Their luck couldn’t last though. And it didn’t.