Wren lightly pushed the boy closer to me. “He said you owe him a story. Entertain him while I wash these.”

She hefted a bundle of dirty clothes higher on her hip that she had stolen from beside my pack. I had left them there so they wouldn’t contaminate my other things until I had a chance to wash them myself.

“You—I—” I felt the heat rising along my neck and swallowed to regain control of my words.

“Those are mine.”

She waved my statement off. “I’d be fixing Breck’s things too if she hadn’t gotten to hers already. Fair is fair, since you both risked your necks to save us.”

Breck looked up from where she was inspecting her knife in the hollow. “I’m not bed bound nor are we paired. I can take care of my own.” There was a bit more edge of challenge to her tone than Wren’s statement seemed to warrant.

Still, I didn’t hesitate to use her argument for myself as I crossed my arms. “I can take care of my own things too.”

Wren was wise enough not to comment on the fact I had barely moved from the spot I used for my night watch or the bruises and bandages she could see. Instead, she deliberately crossed the sandbar and crouched down to start soaking the clothes. The stream’s edge was maybe five feet from me.

“Fair is fair.”

Fern chose that moment to slip into the conversation. “They weren’t the only ones who risked themselves.”

Wren smiled up at where she sitting on upper edge of the bank, all guileless beauty and innocence. “I didn’t think you got dirty.”

Fern’s voice became the slightest bit defensive. “I prioritized getting everyone we could to safety.”

Wren nodded. “And we’ll get everyone else soon.” Her gaze lowered to where I was still sitting in silence. “His story?”

The boy was hardly the only one who would hear it. We were in too close quarters for that, but I had promised and there wasn’t much else to do at the moment unless I wanted to attempt to take my clothes back from Wren. Besides, the more everyone knew about how both sides of the operation had gone yesterday the better we could plan for the next one.

And the more time that went by before I pushed for a strategy meeting, the more time there was for the hunter squad to show up. Now that I was mostly out of commission, both in resources for traps and physically, I wasn’t…quite so eager to steal the mission from them. The others hadn’t gotten away from the festerlings completely unscathed either, and I was becoming painfully aware that the costs of rushing the others’ rescue might outweigh the cost of losing a day or two waiting for the hunter squad to arrive. We could lose more than that when it came to recovery time from injuries, not to mention the resources that had already been ruined between our various run ins with the creatures. Spears weren’t always easily replaced.

Not that we would let them rot, like I told the kid, but suddenly it felt like I had a lot more to consider than I had the morning before.

Things I could consider while everyone else was distracted with a story.

“Do you still want to hear about how I killed the festerling?”

“You killed one on your own?” Nii interrupted at the same time the healer gasped from within the hollow.

I ignored both of them and patted the sand by my side.

A bit self-conscious, a bit excited, the boy settled down next to me. “How did you do it?”

“Well, there I was, barely a stone’s throw from the festerlings’ nesting ground. Perfectly placed on the edge of the area I trapped earlier…”

There might have been a bit of embellishment for the audience as I gestured and told them how the festerlings fell for my traps and my quick thinking as I led them on a chase. Just like I might have downplayed the situation when I got to the point when I got shoved through the haft of a spear—“it broke and I got away”—but they got all the details they needed to know. The traps slowed the festerlings and I killed the last by stabbing it in the stomach and I escaped after Breck’s distraction drew the new arrivals off.

Besides, it seemed like they were counting on me to come up with our next plan, which meant I was the only one who needed to know the full scope of my reasons for why the new plan would be the way it was.

The boy sat, rapt with attention for the entire tale. He even cheered when I described how I shoved the creature off of me heroically after I slew it and took a leg as a trophy. He got a small smile in reward for that.

Then it was time to convince Breck to tell her side of the story. “Care to tell how the river operation went?”

She had slipped her knife back into her belt and settled back against the hollow’s curved wall, giving her full attention to the story I had been spinning. At my question, Breck stiffened for the barest moment before she dipped her head in acknowledgment.

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

“This won’t be a proper story. I don’t have my mother’s tongue for tales as I focused more on following her footsteps in earning them.”

Her account did come out more like a report, but it did its job to layout what had happened on their end. A few times, she purposely drew in Fern to tell her side of things, too.

The river had worked well. It hid both their body heat and their movements. After they heard me scream, they rushed up the bank to where everyone was being held near the bottom of the tree. Fern got to Sid and pulled the healer into the shadow paths while Breck hauled Nii and Wren back to the river. A few festerlings swarmed after her before she could get all the way there, so she dropped them in a tree’s shadow and fought defense until Fern returned. Luckily, it seemed like most of the festerlings had swarmed after me when I disturbed their quiet.

Fern got Nii and Wren through the shadows, but when she returned to get Breck, she found that the other girl had killed one of the festerlings and badly wounded the other. Breck told her to rescue someone else. Then she used her blessing to draw in the surrounding festerlings, including the two playing guard over the remaining captives. Fern took advantage of the opening and saved the closest person she could reach, the boy, while Breck took on festerlings as they leapt out of trees and scurried across the ground. All of them screaming together, so that it felt like the air hummed. That’s what drew off the festerlings that had been searching around me after I killed my own festerling.

Breck killed a second festerling before that second wave hit, but once she saw them coming she dropped into the shadow paths and waited awhile before slipping out again and dashing for the stream. It wouldn’t surprise me if she needed the time to recover from the creatures’ spit as well.

After that she made her way back to the bushes she watched over the others while Fern got them moved to the new hideout. Fern was couldn’t make any more trips through the shadow paths after that, not without more rest. So, she took over watching the others while Breck made her way back too the stream and our current hideout on her own. I wouldn’t be surprised if I made it back to the bushes shortly after they both left.

Still, the whole retelling was a sheer reminder of how skilled Breck was at fighting and surviving. If she hadn’t been able to hold against the creatures hemming her in on nearly all sides the plan wouldn’t have worked. For all that her blessing seemed to give her an extra edge as it called the creatures she fought, I knew I wouldn’t have been able to hold out if I had been in her same position.

The boy’s eyes were even wider with hero worship after Breck finished her report. It probably helped that while she didn’t exactly look great and untouched, she wasn’t having the same mobility problems as me.

I refrained from indulging him anymore after that.

Which worked out since Wren had finished washing my clothes. Chirp and her went back to keeping him entertained in their own way while I took the time to think as I waited for my clothes to dry.

Sid was fixing up the cold midday meal when Fern dropped down next to me and whisper-hissed for everyone to get in the hollow. She snatched my drying clothes off the cluster of branches and river debris Wren had propped them up on before racing into the hollow herself.

My whole body protested against the movement but I kept my expression neutral as I crawled into the hollow. I ended up pressed against Nii’s legs with Breck on one side and the wall on the other as we all pressed back as far as we could from the entrance. Nii looked like she wanted to object to my proximity—and normally I wouldn’t have wanted to be so close to anyone else either—but there was one main reason for why Fern would have rushed us into the hollow.

The festerlings were on the move again.

Given that they were ambush predators I was a bit surprised with the effort they were putting into their search, but we had riled them up, and, with the bit of intelligence they had, perhaps they knew we couldn’t get far.

We all tried to breathe as little as possible as we strained our ears for whatever had tipped Fern off. It took several long moments before I heard it. The quietest rustle-thump that wasn’t in time with the wind and that had too much weight behind it to be a squirrel. The sound of the festerlings leaping from tree to tree as they searched for their prey.

Slowly, the noises got louder as they drew closer. Breck shifted slightly with her hand on her knife, ready to attack if they made their way down to the sandbar for some reason. Nii also had drawn out her long bone needles. Each one was as long as my hand from wrist to fingertip. Wren and Fern had our remaining two spears while the healer kept the boy quiet while clutching at his food supplies.

Which left me with my sling, my knife, and my stolen festerling leg. I clutched at the thing, ready to use it as a terrible spear or club if I needed to, but in my current condition I knew I was better as a shield for someone else rather than trying to hold up a fight. Not that I was going to give up as soon as I saw a festerling.

We waited.

And waited.

Scuttling and shifting needles whispered together overhead until I wanted to curse at them just to break the tension.

We waited.

And the noises slowly became fainter and fainter as the festerlings moved on. Stillness and silence kept their hold on us for minutes longer until the boy whispered, “Are they gone?”

Wren sent Chirp out to check with a warning to keep his distance from the tree limbs, just in case. I wasn’t the only one who remembered the birds’ dire warnings about getting snatched out of the air and eaten.

I tried not to be obvious about keeping my gaze on Wren while he was gone, but I couldn’t help the need to check on her. Things were bound to go very, very poorly if he didn’t return and while I would never admit it, even I felt worried for the obnoxious fluffball.

A happy twitter greeted us before Chirp fluttered back into the hollow and relayed the rest of his message to Wren.

She repeated it us, “They’ve moved on. Nothing in the trees or bushes.”

Everyone relaxed.

I shifted away from Nii. She put away her needles while everyone else relaxed their hold on their own weapons. Fern gave me my mostly dry set of clothes. Sid got back to putting the midday meal together with the boy’s help. It didn’t take very long.

We still kept to the hollow while we ate, just in case, and then Fern decided it was time to break the silence on what we were going to do next.

She looked me straight in the eye as she spoke, “Do you have a plan for how to rescue the others, Gimley? Or would you rather wait for the hunter squad this time around?”

Everyone’s attention swung to me. I only let them see confidence on my face. “Of course. Since we have more people this time, I was thinking that Nii could snipe the festerlings while Breck acted as the frontline again. If Wren was fine with it and she could convince other birds, Chirp could lead a distraction with them.”

Fern raised her eyebrows. “And what would you—” She stiffened as her head cocked to the side. The way whisper women tended to when they were listening to whispers on the wind.

When Fern turned her attention back to me her gaze told me I had been saved by a thin, thin margin. “The hunter squad will be here soon.”