Something that probably wasn’t an owl wooshed by again.
“We don’t like this, Sarge,” said Mishkin and Mushkin.
“Sarge doesn’t like it either,” said Nessilka, “but it’s out there and we’re in here, and it’ll have to come through me to get to you, so go to sleep.”
She was closest to the entrance of the cave, and she’d always had pretty good hearing. She was probably the only one who could hear the other noise—the soft, sucking sound of footsteps in mud, as something walked quietly up the riverbed, fifteen or twenty feet away.
Thhhhwuck. Thhhhwuck.
Swoosh.
She glanced behind her. Murray was the next closest, but he was half-deaf from his time in the Mechanics Corps and the daily explosions. She didn’t say anything.
Her hand tight on the handle of the club, Sergeant Nessilka stared wide-eyed into the dark.
Sings-to-Trees stood on his porch, a cup of tea in one hand, and frowned into the darkness.
He wasn’t particularly scared of the dark. He knew most of what lurked in it, and had occasionally removed thorns from their paws. And although he was careful never to rely on it, he was fairly certain that there was an understanding among the smarter denizens of the forest that he and his farm were off-limits. He suspected he’d been lumped in with the little birds that pick the teeth of crocodiles, something too useful to waste on a whim.
For the predators that went on two legs, there were always the trolls. A desperate man had come to the farm once, and he’d been much more desperate after the trolls got him cornered on the roof and the gargoyle sat on his head. He’d been positively grateful to see the rangers when they came to take him away.
Sings-to-Trees had lived out here for years, more or less by himself, and never had any particular cause to fear the dark.
Still…
There was something odd about the dark tonight.
The elf wrapped his fingers in Fleabane’s ruff. The coyote whined briefly.
He must feel it too.
Sings-to-Trees wished he could put his finger on it. The crickets all sang the usual songs and the fireflies had been out in force through the evening. The spring peepers had mostly stopped peeping, but that was nothing more sinister than the season passing. Early cicadas had begun to take their place.
It wasn’t too quiet. It was a healthy forest at night, so it was downright noisy. The stars were in the usual positions and the leaves were hissing the way that leaves always hiss in the wind.
Still, something was making him uneasy.
Fleabane sighed and flopped against his shins. The coyote’s hackles kept coming up, then easing back down. Sings-to-Trees knew exactly how he felt.
The leaves sighed. The crickets chirped. A lone firefly, still lovelorn, flashed its message to any other fireflies that might be looking for a good time.
The bone deer picked their way across his memory. Attracted to mystical disturbance. Hmmm.
He wondered what a mystical disturbance looked like. He hoped it didn’t feel like this.
On the roof, the gargoyle mumbled something deep in its chest, a gravelly sound of unease. Fleabane whined again.
A leaf insect made its way slowly across one of the porch pillars, its body shadowy green in the light from the doorway. Sings-to-Trees watched it pick its way along, one spindly leg at a time, until it was out of sight.
Still nothing had happened. Still the crickets sang.
The gargoyle’s footsteps paced back and forth across the roof.
Eventually, for lack of anything better to do, Sings-to-Trees went inside, and barred his door against the dark.
TEN
The next day was easier. The Whinin’ Niners had finally gotten their heads around the fact that they were here, in the woods, and not on the battlefield. Goblins are nothing if not adaptable. Fewer bushes were engaged in combat. Everyone had learned to recognize poison oak, and Thumper had remembered how to spot a few kinds of edible berry. Most of them weren’t ripe yet, so breakfast was a painfully sour affair, but it beat starvation.
They walked. They stopped occasionally to drink at streams and soak their hot, sore feet, but never for very long.
Nessilka kept a grueling pace to start. It wasn’t just a desire to keep the wizard behind her, although that was part of it. Mostly, it was the tracks that she’d found in the mud this morning.
They’d looked a bit like hoof prints. Actually, they’d looked a lot like hoof prints, except that most hooved animals did not have claws. She’d always thought the two were mutually exclusive, in fact, but unless they’d been stalked by a deer wearing fighting spurs, she didn’t have a better explanation.
She’d stamped them out—no sense causing a panic—but she didn’t want to be anywhere near the owner of the tracks when they stopped tonight.