The mountainside was still eerily silent as we dragged the injured closer to recovery. No bird calls, only some rustling of leaves that couldn’t be accounted for by the wind, and the soft grinding scrape of two travois being pulled over dirt and stone and grass. Either the Picker bands were hunting the wildlife to nothing or there was some other mystery to the mountains we hadn’t learned yet.

I didn’t particularly want either option to be true. We already had the threat of death bringers, sleep inducing fog, and a possible monster living in a lake of fire. Though if it was overhunting that could draw the ire of the Beastwatchers or the goddess Herself. And that was ignoring the more mundane problem of not having enough to eat because the animals couldn’t reproduce quicker than they were being killed off.

Neither option was something I could solve right now, if the bands would even listen to an outsider, but they nagged at the back of my mind all the same. Instead, what I could do was put one foot in front of the other and keep an eye out for any murderous idiot who might jump us for daring to step into their territory.

Nerco hadn’t wanted to let us go, but between Prevna’s persuasive persistence and her people’s condition she hadn’t had much choice. Either she let us take the injured or they’d be as good as dead by the time Mishtaw and the others returned. If she had kept us back and sent the injured regardless, they would have been in the same predicament that had gotten Harup to ask for help in the first place: choosing between leaving the camp or the injured vulnerable. And if they sent all of their best with the injured they’d be more likely to lose them completely in a bad fight.

So really it was a decision between possibly saving the injured and almost certainly delivering the people the band depended on to survive to be killed. Before we had pushed the issue Nerco had settled on hoping the injured would recover on their own.

We had three band members with us besides the injured. Way too many to pull into the shadows with us even if Prevna and I had been better at it than most whisper women. Harup dragged the travois with the old man who switched between sounded like he was going to cough out a lung to nearly catatonic. Another large man, Emre, who looked similar to Harup, dragged the other travois with the fever ridden younger man. The injured woman stumbled along behind them with gritted teeth and as little movement jostling her arm as she could manage. I learned her name was Kuma. The last band member that had been sent along with us for some unfortunate reason was…Jika.

She ranged a little ahead so at least I didn’t have to watch her sidle up to Prevna, but I still thought that practically any other band member could have acted as guide—if we even needed one in the first place since Harup, Emre, and Kuma had all visited the other band before. I couldn’t say if that was true for the other two injured since they didn’t have energy to waste on speaking.

All in all it had typically taken them around half a day to travel to the healer before the Fangs stole territory from between the two Picker bands. Now it could take half again as long as they tried to slip beneath the Fangs’ notice. Silence and careful movements would be needed to not give ourselves away, but I wasn’t sure we could manage it between the old man’s coughing fits and the travois.

The mountainside’s silence amplified every little noise we made, but our silence also seemed to deepen the silence around us. No one spoke. We used simple gestures when we had to and that was it. Quiet so absolute it weighed on you, the occasional gesture, and the knowledge that if we made the wrong move people could end up dead.

The Fangs’ wedge of the forested mountainside didn’t look any different from the Red Hands’ except that the border had been marked by teeth. Dangling from branches, perched on roots. I didn’t look too close but it wasn’t a stretch to realize they weren’t all from beasts.

I wasn’t sure if it was good or bad sign that they seemed to know they shouldn’t truly flaunt what they were doing. If they had thrown that they were taking the goddess’s domain for themselves in the goddess’s face then they likely would have already been taken care of between Her wrath and Her Peacekeepers. But if they had done that, the damage likely wouldn’t have been contained to just their band. Like with the southwestern region that had fire taken away for a single tree being burned, the whole area could have been condemned as an example for the rest of Her territory.

It still could be.

Those teeth could be insult enough.

Finding a balance between speed and stealth provided practically impossible. Every minute was another chance for the old man to cough, every burst of movement to reach the healer quicker another chance for the Fangs’ to hear something else that didn’t belong to the forest. Nor did it help that we froze more than once at a rustle or other small noise, trying to determine if it was harmless or the smallest of warning before an attack.

The air grew warmer as the sun rose high overhead but we didn’t stop for a midday meal and it didn’t grow so hot that we could forget the goddess’s cold. She always had some kind of reminder between a chill wind or a cool shadow even during the middle of the warm season. The air was refreshing as well with the smell of pine and sap.

I didn’t find it refreshing that death bringers could leap out at us at any moment. I tried to comfort myself with the knowledge that we were as likely to hear them as they were to hear us in the quiet, even though that wasn’t strictly true.

Before we had crossed the line of teeth, Jika had murmured that it had taken them a couple hours to sneak around the band’s patrols and out the other side of their territory before, but they had only one mostly mobile injured person then. I had expected it to take longer—and it did—but what we hadn’t expected was the lack of patrols.

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It should have been a relief but, instead, it became an ever growing strain. Had we somehow missed them? Had the Peacekeepers’ censure drawn them away or scared them into submission? Were they following us even now? Waiting for the perfect moment to strike?

I glanced over my shoulder more times than I’d like to admit. Prevna bumped shoulders with me once when she caught me at it, along with a tight smile, but I could tell the worry ate at her too.

Silence and stillness where it shouldn’t be. I could feel the memories of traveling through the thick fog on the shore pulling at me but I grounded myself in the moment with the smell of pine and how far out I could see between the trees. The different way I moved and the lack of Prevna’s hand tugging me along. No sand or cloying white mist to be found.

Shouting. A scream. Something moving fast with little care for snapped twigs or clattering pebbles.

We froze, glancing at each other. According to Jika we were near the border. Run for the border and hope whoever it was didn’t follow us? Hide and hope they didn’t see us? The old man sputtered out a breath and before he could cough out his next one we were moving. Stealth, trying not to jostle the injured, none of it mattered now. Someone was coming and, like as not, they’d have no problem with trying to kill us when we couldn’t fight with the same abandon.

Prevna and Jika pulled ahead with their long legs but the rest of us couldn’t match them. Kuma was pale and looked ready to faint from the pain of trying to run with her injuries, the men had the weight of two other full grown men dragging them down and the travois could be awkward to run with. Perhaps I could have caught up with Prevna. I wanted to. But some part of me, the part that been conditioned for a whole childhood, refused to leave behind my charges. Doing so would have meant failure and ruin and punishment.

Nothing I could abide.

Whatever was crashing through the forest got closer. Closer. Movement out of the corner of my eye.

I glanced over to see a woman, red smeared over her face, coming over a small rise barely fifteen feet away. She saw me in the same moment and her gaze caught on my black lips. She screeched.

Others came over the rise as she darted for me. Two figures, three, five…I couldn’t pay attention to if there was more as I ducked away from the knife the woman plunged at my face. I used her momentum to trip her and send her sprawling. She barely missed the travois as she hit the ground and Kuma kicked her in the side as she stepped past to keep running.

I followed after as I pulled my spear free. It had a heft I could use to bludgeon our attackers and was easier to control than sling and stone while moving. A man came after me next and I whacked him in the knee before slamming the butt of my spear into his chest as he stumbled. He went down wheezing. I silently thanked Mishtaw for training me in how to fight more than monstrous fish.

A different man charged Emre from the side and sent them both stumbling into Harup. He got tangled up in the travois and all of them went down. Cries of pain and grunts of effort came from the pile of bodies and poles but before I could start forward to help fingers curled around my braid and yanked backwards. A line of fire scraped along my back as I twisted to shove my spear in my attacker’s stomach. The first woman. I hit her again in the breast and she released my braid as she stumbled back. The haft of my spear connected with her temple and she dropped unconscious. I snatched up her knife this time and shoved it in my belt so she couldn’t nearly plunge a knife in my back again.

I glanced over the battlefield. Prevna and Jika were fending three attackers, all of which seemed more focused on Prevna than the Picker girl. Kuma was trying to help the two injured men from their ties to the travois while Harup and Emre wrestled with two attackers trying to knife them.

A seventh attacker was slipping from behind a tree to attack Kuma from behind. Storming coward.

“Kuma!”

She turned to look at me, but she wouldn’t be quick enough to completely dodge her attacker. I threw my spear. The attacker flinched back even though it would have missed by a good inch even he hadn’t. I wished that much distance had been intentional, but his flinch gave Kuma the time she needed to turn on her knees and lash out with her good arm. His nose crunched as I sprinted towards them. Kuma cried out and recoiled as her injuries protested the quick movement. The man spat blood and lunged for her throat, knife still in hand.

One step, two. I was there. I tried to knock his hand aside, pull his arm back. He elbowed me in the gut. My turn to lose my breath as he went back for the kill. Kuma tried to dodge but she’d be too slow. I let myself collapse so I could slip under the attacker’s arm and shove her down.

Something plunged into my shoulder blade. I screamed and elbowed the man in the head. I took the moment he took to shake his head to locate what I needed. A shadow. Dark enough and big enough for two in a crook of roots.

Prevna and I could take each other in and out of the dark shadows most of the time. I had successfully taken Mishtaw into the shadow paths a handful of times.

This was different.

I didn’t care.

The attacker needed to be gone.

I elbowed him again. Kneed him in the jaw as he dropped to one knee. Then I grabbed a fistful of his hair and stomped down on the shadow.

The path didn’t want to open. It tried to make me think it was a tent flap that was two small for two people our size, tied shut with dozens of knots. I didn’t care. That wasn’t the image I needed it to be. I needed it to be the depths of a lake, deep and dark and impassive to any fools who sank into the water. That was the reality. The path. Water flooded over leather and rope in my mind and there was the sinking, gravity shifting sensation of entering the shadow paths.

The attacker threw up and I hesitated. Hazy smoke and the oil slick floor all around us. All the warnings I had heard to never let go of a whisper woman’s hand in the shadow paths rose up in my mind. Warnings…and a promise. If he hadn’t tried to knife me again I’m not sure if I would have pulled him back out or left him there.

But he did and I released his hair to shift backwards. Maybe I could have grabbed him again, but he needed to be gone. I stomped down on the oil slick floor and the next thing I knew I was back in the sunlit forest. Alone.

Pain was starting to flare and burn from my shoulder, blood causing my tunic to stick to my skin and pull, but I ignored it in favor of the sounds of fighting.

Prevna and Jika had put two of their attackers down though they both had blood more blood on them than I would have liked. Their last attacker didn’t look like she’d be up for much longer. Harup was pounding into a man on the ground while Emre lay nearby, not moving. I wasn’t sure if he was dead or unconscious. Other attackers were also down while Kuma was staring at me from where she was still crouched next to the two wounded men.

I smiled back at her, though I think it turned into more of a grimace, as I forced my focus on what has happening in front of me instead of what I had done. There was little I could do about it now.

Prevna’s opponent yelled as Prevna snaked out a hand and brushed a finger against her throat. Then the attacker was on the ground and no longer a worry. I pulled some rope free from my belt and set about tying up the other attackers so we wouldn’t have any other surprises.