Chapter 26

The trip home was faster than the trip out. Everyone was hardened to walking for hours on end, and their packs were lighter, having consumed a great deal of their food. And of course, the return trip was largely downhill.

Ezhno set a hard pace, taking up the rear of the cohort and coaxing the laggards to step up. He also handed out healing water to anyone with blisters, bruises, or other foot issues.

Mato scouted ahead. The healing effect from his guardian rune applied to him, as well as those nearby, and he found he could push himself well beyond normal endurance. This allowed him to hunt, and he brought in deer, squirrels, rabbits, and even fist-sized snails.

About halfway through the forest of giant trees they encountered a Bright Cap bloom. Bright Cap mushrooms only appeared every few years, but when they did, the cap would break free in a spray of light. Then it would drift into the forest canopy, releasing little puffs of glowing dust until it died a few hours later.

“This is auspicious,” Ezhno told the cohort. “You have been blessed to see something that few get to see.”

Of course not all was pleasant.

Moki’s base rune, the one closest to the hilt of his blade, was contagion. Ezhno had given him the regeneration glyph to pair with it. The glyph gave Moki a slow but reliable method of healing, so that he could safely use his own blade without needing a healer nearby.

Naturally the wisdoms were unhappy.

“That is not the recommended pairing,” Poplar said.

“I already told you why I did it,” Ezhno said.

“Why didn’t you choose the growth glyph?” Tupi demanded. “It would have been more powerful.”

“He needed a healing ability. Think about trying to use that blade far from a healer, and how well that would go.”

“We do things according to Sotsona’s will, Ezhno, not according to your so-called wisdom.”

“I like the way you said, ‘so-called wisdom,’ just then,” Ezhno replied.

And that started a fight that lasted for two whole days. Finally Ezhno asked Mato to shield them for a while, just so he could have some peace.

“You’re a bad influence, Mato,” Ezhno said.

“I am?”

“Clearly. I never argued with the wisdoms before.”

“I like to think I helped you grow a spine,” Mato said.

Ezhno stood and raised his eyebrow.

“Sorry, Teacher. That was too far.”

Ezhno smirked at him and sat back down.

* * *

They ran into another cave snail when they were nearly through the forest of great trees. It wasn’t quite as big as the first, but the finders had attacked it before anyone could advise them to leave it alone.

Mato heard the screams and raced back toward the group, arriving just in time to see the snail dragging a finder toward its mouth. He leaped forward and put his shield around the seeker, which held him in place while the snail reeled the dart back in.

He checked the finder for breath. It was faint, but it was there.

Ezhno arrived a few seconds later, having cut the tail off just like Mato had done in their first encounter. Mato let him inside the shield, and Ezhno checked the wound, then started dripping healing water into it.

Outside the shield it was Tupi who killed the creature and collected the essence. He refused to show his new rune, and went off to etch a glyph.

Their patient this time was Yas, one of the finders who had earned a forest blade like Ezhno’s. It took hours of dripping water of life into the snail dart wound before there was any sign of recovery. Then Ezhno began filling cups and coaxing them down the boy’s throat.

Morning brought a very tired, angry trail master before the cohort.

“Which one of you decided you don’t want to get home alive?”

“It was Yas,” Poplar said.

“Did no one try to stop him?” Ezhno asked.

Silence.

“You’re all very brave, but you’re also young and untrained. Do not hunt unless you know what you are doing. Ask someone with experience before you pick another fight with… anything.”

He got a weak chorus of, ‘Yes, Trail Master,’ then turned to prepare his own pack.

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Poplar approached him. “I thought there was no medicine for a snail sting.”

“There isn’t. Or perhaps there wasn’t. He may still die. Mato’s shield has a healing effect now, and between that and the water of life, we may have saved him. I’ll stop every so often and give him another dose.”

“Is there any chance you could have saved the first seeker?”

Ezhno’s shoulders drooped. “None at all. His heart was already stopped when we realized he needed help.”

Poplar bowed his head. “This journey has been a catastrophe. Too many deaths. Far too few successes.”

“Well, let’s get home before anything else goes wrong,” Ezhno said.

* * *

That night they camped beside the gorge. Leelee’s family was away from their village, and Mato hoped all was well.

He spent about an hour sparring with Otaktay, then collapsed into his bedroll.

In the morning he woke, stretched and sat up. Then his eyes lighted on the footprints in front of his shade cloth. He glanced at Ezhno, who was cooking a rabbit over a small fire.

“Tupi?”

“Tupi.”

“I should have woken up.”

“Yesterday was long. You were tired.”

“Still. I need to do better if I intend to grow old.”

“Mato.” Ezhno pointed across the gorge. Mato studied the grasses, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

“I don’t see it.”

“It is the grass. Poplar and Tupi both have grass blades.”

Which meant they would have a substantial stealth advantage until they reached the trees a hundred or more paces beyond.

“What do we do?”

“Cross quickly.”

* * *

Mato and Ezhno crossed right after breakfast, while the cohort was packing up. They scouted across the band of grass and into the forest a little way, then returned and signaled the others to join them.

Their plan was to get the first seekers and finders across, then move into the forest before Poplar and Tupi could betray them.

Then the shouting started. Seekers and finders were pointing into the air, and Mato looked up to see a shape like a serpent, with brown and white feathers. It had great wings, and flew with strong, slow flaps.

“Mato, can you put a shield in front of it? Maybe if it hits something solid, it will fall down where we can fight it.”

“I can try, but I need it to come closer.”

Its body was at least a hundred feet long, and its belly was covered in broad scales. The head was birdlike, particularly the raptor-like beak. As it flew over it let out a shriek that nearly knocked Mato to his knees.

Ezhno raced to the edge of the gorge and screamed at the cohort, “Move! Get across the bridge and join Mato!” He waved his arms frantically to encourage them.

They had a minute while the serpent banked in a large circle, and then it passed over them again, lower this time. Mato put up his shield, and this time the shriek was a bit less dominating.

Moki raced out of the bridge’s anchor tower and over to Mato. “What do we do?”

“Try to get it to land. Be ready to hit it with contagion and your serpent blade.”

“Okay. I can do that.”

Otaktay came next, running out as the serpent banked hard.

“Come on,” Mato yelled, and raced toward the seeker. Moki pounded after him.

Another shriek ripped through the air, and Otaktay collapsed, sliding across the ground on his face. His arms and legs twitched, but he didn’t look like he would be up soon.

The serpent cruised in, flapping its wings hard, and the draft nearly knocked Mato off his feet. He made it to Otaktay just before the serpent and pulled hard through his guardian rune. The shield popped up, and the massive beak slammed into it, knocking Mato back. He bounced off of the shield wall behind him, and fell on his face.

Moki dragged him up. “Come on, Mato, we need you!”

His shield had a large gap where the beak had slammed into it. Mato pulled harder, and his sanctuary glyph shone through his shirt as the gap closed up.

The serpent came around again, and Mato braced himself and cast a new, simple shield in front of it. He screamed in defiance as it hit, and the impact drove him into the wall of the bubble shield again.

“Mato! Mato! Mato! Wake up! It’s coming back.” Moki’s screaming helped drive some of the fog from his brain. He looked where Moki was pointing, and saw the serpent headed their way. It reared up, preparing to hit them with another shriek, and Mato cast a shield around its head, tuning it to block the sound.

They could see when it shrieked, and then it flopped to the ground.

“Go, Moki, go,” Mato said. He raced beside the finder, trying to reach the serpent before it woke up.

Ezhno reached it first and leaped onto the body, then with a pair of frantic swings of his sword he severed one of the creature’s wings. That woke it up.

Mato barely got his shield up as the huge beak snapped at them. Again he was thrown against the wall of his shield, but he was better prepared this time and managed to right himself without help.

Otaktay tried to stab at it with a knife, but the blade bounced off of the shield. Mato glanced around and found Moki, blade in hand, waiting for another chance to strike.

Then the hits came, almost like a woodpecker. It hammered at the shield, trying various angles and slowly crawling in a circle, looking for a weakness or a hole. Every hit jarred Mato and sent him staggering. Some of them even pierced the shield a bit, and he dragged at his guardian rune, struggling to keep up with the onslaught.

A cloud of darkness puffed out behind the serpent, and then it whirled and struck into the cloud over and over. The serpent roiled through the cloud, searching, and came away with a long cut in its side, below the neck. When it regained control of itself it turned and crawled toward the forest as fast as it could go.

Ezhno ran after it, waving for Mato and Moki to follow.

It took another quarter hour to catch it, but when they did it was clearly out of fight. The three of them plunged their swords in, and after a couple more minutes they got a solid jolt as essence flooded into their blades.

Each of them received the feather rune.

“Pretty rare for all of us to receive the same rune like this.” Ezhno shaved some slices from the serpent’s beak while he spoke.

“That was harder than the draxotherm,” Mato said.

“I would imagine,” Ezhno said. “Small parties like ours don’t even try to fight them. If we hadn’t been caught in the middle of crossing the bridge, I wouldn’t have tried it either. The only time humans kill feathered serpents is when one of them is foolish enough to attack a city.”