"Drop the bag," a woman's voice called from behind her. "And your purse," she added. "Leave 'em on the ground and step back."

"What?"

"Grant!"

A man stepped out from behind the rock face ahead of Hina, crossbow raised and pointed in her direction.

"We've got you surrounded, lady. Drop your stuff and step back."

Hina's eyes widened. "You're not—you're not going to shoot me, are you?" It wasn't hard to sound scared—she was scared.

"Hurry up, lady." The voice was impatient. "We don't have all day."

Hina had walked into a dip between two hills with rocky cliffs on one side—the perfect place for an ambush, or a robbery, she supposed, though it wasn't a particularly busy road. It was early afternoon, the shadows were long and sharp.

She slipped her bag off slowly, turning as she did it to get a look at the woman behind her—there was another crossbow in her hands. Was it just the two of them then? She looked from side to side and risked a quick glance up to the cliff top, but didn't see anyone else.

"Good, now your purse."

Bean shrieked from somewhere overhead.

The sigil sprang into her mind as Hina called it, and she extended a thread of power to it. She untied her purse from her belt, and tossed it to the ground with the jingle of Olivia's coin. Her left hand slipped into the pouch of stones—she took two, held them in the palm of her hand.

"Step back!" the woman called. "Go on, stand on the other side of the road."

Hina did as she was asked, standing with her back to the cliff face, facing towards her bag.

"Good. Stay there, don't move," the woman said.

The man—Grant—walked forward and leaned down to pick up Hina's bag.

She could see both of them now. The woman had her crossbow pointed at Hina.

Hina visualised what she wanted to happen and opened her hand, palm up.

The sigil pulsed within her mind, drawing deeply upon her thread of power as it unfolded. She allowed the sigil to pull her thread wider until it was a broader channel and held it steady there by force of will. The cup filled to overflowing within a single heartbeat.

The man straightened, holding her bag and purse.

Patterns flashed and twisted in her mind. The stones in Hina's hand shot out, one after the other, in opposite directions. Hina threw herself at the ground.

The bow clunked as it fired, followed by another clunk.

There was a wet meaty smack, followed by another, half a second later.

Someone screamed to Hina's left.

The sigil was writhing within her mind, pulling hard on the channel of power, drawing more from her against her will.

Hina bore down with her will, fighting to dismiss it—the resistance broke, and the sign disappeared with a pop.

Her arms stung as Hina picked herself up off the stony ground.

Both bandits were down. The one on the left was still screaming, high-pitched wordless shrieks. The one ahead of her was still. There were two crossbow bolts in the ground near her feet. One angled down like it had come from behind her. A third bandit.

Hina jumped backwards and spun around, looking for the final enemy. Her left hand reached for another stone.

Nothing was moving on the cliff top. Had they run off? Or were they waiting out of sight to take another shot when Hina's back was turned?

She had to grab her things and get out of here. Hina hurried over to the man lying in front of her, picked up the purse he'd dropped on the ground. She tied it to her belt with efficient, practiced motions.

Grabbing her bag by the strap over the man's shoulder, Hina pulled. It was caught—caught around his arm.

A crossbow clunked behind her, a bolt buried itself in the man's back with a wet thunk. She barely heard a distant voice say, "Shit!"

Hina whirled, caught a flash of a figure in the shade of a rock formation above. Not the sigil—not unless she had to—she'd overused it, and it was getting more and more difficult to control.

The familiar patterns to throw another stone came together slowly in Hina's mind—too slowly—Hina needed to spend more time practicing this. Later.

She empowered the working, projected her intent. The stone in her hand went flying up the cliff face. It flew wide of where she'd seen the figure—who wasn't there now in any case. They'd ducked down to reload, of course. More crossbow bolts were coming, Hina had to get out of the open.

Hina turned and ran, looking for cover. There—a rocky outcrop. She dove behind it, stone chips and dirt went flying as another bolt hit the stone nearby.

Another stone in her hand, she risked a glance over the outcrop.

The bandit—a woman?—on the cliff-face was peering down the crossbow at Hina.

Hina ducked back down as the crossbow clunked.

The patterns cycled through her mind as she fed them power, completing the working as she stood with her arm raised high, palm up.

The stone shot up the cliff-face, right where she'd been aiming, this time.

A yell followed, and a figure slid, fell forward down the cliff. The woman landed nearby with a crash and a clatter of sliding stone.

And then there was silence.

The first woman had stopped screaming—Hina wasn't sure when. The only sound was the wind, and the birds screeching. A lot of birds screeching.

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Bean flapped down to land on Hina's shoulder. "Bad bird!" he croaked. "Bad bird!"

The volume of the birds increased a deafening cacophony of flapping and screeching and cawing.

Hina ran back to the man who was lying on the strap of her bag and pulled with all of her might. The man shifted, his body turning onto its side as her bag came free. As he moved, his face came into view. It didn't—it wasn't the right shape.

"Run, girl," Bean muttered. And then his voice rose to a shriek. "Run! Run!"

Hina swung her bag over her shoulder and sprinted down the road to the east as the wave of birds descended behind her.

When she looked back from a little way up the road, the bodies were hidden by swarms of red feathers. Person-sized carrion birds snapped and fought over the remains.

None of them were paying any attention to her now, but when they were done with the corpses? Hina hurried away up the road.

It was a shame. Hina was sure that the bandits would have been carrying valuables, things she could have used. Or maybe not—there were three of them, and Hina had only passed a handful of other travellers on this road. How lucrative could banditry be, given the circumstances?

Though, she supposed, the inn-keeper had warned them about bandit season. And the last set of travellers that she'd passed, a husband and wife travelling with a loaded pack-beast, had warned her about bandits in the hills. She hadn't been sure what to do with the warning. She was obviously going to continue travelling either way. There were no other roads on the map to where she was going.

If any one of a number of things had gone differently, Hina would be dead.

She'd nearly died.

Either from having had all of her supplies stolen while she was much too far from the nearest town, or bleeding out on the ground, pierced in the guts by a crossbow bolt.

She had been lucky.

And luck was not something that you were supposed to rely on in the wild. Or anywhere. She didn't believe in it. It wasn't part of her plan.

But Hina didn't know how she could have been better prepared.

The stones and the sigil and the patterns had worked. If she hadn't had them she would have died. And that was... fine. Fine as a last resort.

But they hadn't helped her to avoid that kind of situation, and they wouldn't have helped if any of those crossbow bolts had been better aimed.

She shivered.

A whirlwind of stones would protect her from crossbow bolts. But she was a long way from being able to manage that—didn't know of a theory that would let her control the stones outside of her ambit. Maybe if she'd offered enough power to the sigil—but that seemed like a risky thing to do. And anyway, Hina didn't have enough stones in her pouch for a whirlwind of stones.

But in any case, that wouldn't do much against a crossbow bolt that she didn't see coming. Unless she kept it up all the time, which she certainly couldn't do. Not any time soon.

She had to be ready for the next time.

She didn't have any way to detect trouble before it happened. Other than listening to the warnings of fellow travellers.

She had to do better. She had to be better.

Hina had stopped walking—she wasn't sure when—and she was standing still, staring at the road ahead of her.

The sound of the birds was dull roar in the distance.

A little off to the side of the road, Hina set her bag down on the ground. She took up her wand and made a barrier. And then she sat and breathed.

She was faintly aware of large red shapes passing overhead nearby, but she ignored them. Friendly talons pressed in sharp against her shoulder. She ignored those too.

Hina breathed. Deep breaths in and out. She was safe within the barrier. She breathed for a long time. Safe.

After a while, Bean shifted, impatient. He tugged at her hair and nibbled at her earlobe, gently.

She sighed. "Okay, okay." She stroked Bean's head, turning to look at him. He leaned into her hand. "You did good today. Thank you."

"Good bird?" he tilted his head.

"Good bird," she agreed.

He fluttered over to her bag and pecked at the opening before turning to look at her with his pitch black bird eyes. "Break-fast?"

"Okay, sure. We can eat."

Bean cackled and hopped out of the way to give her room to open the bag.

Hina munched on some of the leftovers from yesterday, dipping her spoon into the pot, while Bean ate from his own bowl, beak clacking againt the ceramic bowl she'd put his food into.

She wondered if it was worth going back to search the bodies. The birds wouldn't have been interested in anything she was interested in, after all. Would they have left by now? She couldn't hear them anymore.

The risk was that the screaming and the screeching had attracted something else, something worse than the bandits and the big carrion birds. Something that might have scared the birds away.

Or maybe they were just done. Enough birds like that could strip a body in minutes, that's what Hina had read.

Carrion birds were common in the mountains to the south—these mountains—but they were rarely a risk to a healthy traveller, or that's what the book, Dangers of the Halsea, said.

The books weren't always right. Hina was beginning to realise that now.

If she was going to go back, she wanted to do it soon. Before any other travellers came along and took the spoils for themselves. Hina imagined piles of silver shining in the sun. A hoard of stolen treaure that could solve all of her problems.

Bean was finishing up his bowl of beans.

Hina wondered if he could go and look for her. He could fly and talk, after all. If there was anything nasty waiting nearby, he could fly away. Maybe he could tell her about it. If he could understand the request, that is. Hina still wasn't sure how much Bean could understand.

She looked at him, and he looked back at her, tilting his head. She held out her hand, and he hopped up onto it with a little chirrup. "Good girl," he said.

It was worth a try.

She took up her bag and stepped across the barrier, which broke with a loud snap. She walked back down the road a ways, and then stopped. She turned to look at Bean, perched on her shoulder.

"Bean?" She held her right hand out, and he hopped over to it with a chirp.

He looked at her, tilting his head.

"Bean, I want you to fly ahead to where the bodies were, and tell me if there are any beasts there now."

He looked at her, tilted his head to the other side.

"Can you do that?" she asked, feeling foolish. He was just a bird, after all.

Bean croaked. He flapped his wings and flew off, flying low to the ground along the road.

He was heading in the right direction at least.

Hina sat back down to wait.

The pouch of stones was feeling lighter on her belt. It was about half full, maybe sixteen or seventeen stones left inside it? She'd lost a few practicing her workings, and a few on the road to Blandmanch.

She counted them out, one by one, and then put them back in the pouch. Fifteen stones. Not many at all.

Even if there weren't piles of silver, Hina needed to go back to collect the four stones that she'd thrown at the bandits, if she could.

She supposed she could replace them with other stones—she should be keeping an eye out for suitable rocks as she walked.

But there was something about these shiny black rocks that felt special. They felt good in her hands. Heavy, yes, but something more that Hina couldn't quite put her finger on. There was a depth to them.

The thought triggered the memory of Olivia talking about trinkets. And yes, there was a kind of trinket-like depth to these stones, though they felt entirely different to the ring and the salt-shaker. Weaker, perhaps. But still different to a regular stone.

She picked up a stone from the ground nearby which was about the same size, though rough and with jagged, uneven edges. It was light by comparison. And less—less deep.

Hina felt for her well—found that she only held a sliver of power, after the fight, after the barrier. No surprises there—it was more power than she'd spent all at once ever before, with the way her well had been growing.

Was she able to cycle again today? It would be the second time—she'd cycled this morning. She'd only managed to cycle twice in one day once before, and she'd been exhausted for a whole day after that.

Spreading her feet wide for balance, Hina felt for the potentia in the air around her. She drew it in, cycling one breath at a time until he well was full.

The ground looked soft and appealing, but Hina stood, wobbling just a little. The wave of dizziness passed.

She heard Bean's croaking caw before she saw him. He flapped in towards her from her right. "Well, hello. Welcome back."

Bean croaked as he fluttered down to land on her shoulder.

"Did you find the place? Was there anything there?"

"Bad thing," he croaked. "Bad thing."

"There was something there?"

"Bad bad," he said again. "Bad thing. Bad bad."

"Is it coming this way?"

"No no," he croaked, "Good girl."

"Do I need to run?"

Bean tilted his head at her. "Break-fast?"

"I guess that means no." Hina passed the bird a roasted bean from her pocket. "Good bird."

Bean cackled. "Good bird."

She supposed that was useful information. There was something scary where the bodies had been that she would have to run away from, if she was closer.

Hina would have to try again in the morning.