A ripple moved along the canyon wall and something scrapped against rock.
"Fuck, it heard that," Shea hissed.
"Eamon, it's coming," Buck said urgently. "You need to get out of there. Get out of there, Eamon."
As if a veil had been lifted, there came a pouring of screams from the dark.
The creature above them leapt.
Shea ducked, feeling the great immenseness of it pass within inches of her. She landed hard on her stomach and rolled, watching as the camouflaged bulk of the beast eclipsed Buck and the tunnel Eamon had been investigating.
"Shit," she said, popping to her feet.
Once there, she wasn't quite sure what to do.
She took a step in the beetle's direction before moving to the side then back again. She paced back and forth. What should she do? Were the others dead?
The beetle clawed at the surrounding rock, trying to dig its way into the hole. It reared back and then rammed the rock again and again.
Shea felt a little relieved. Buck and Eamon must have escaped down it.
As it crushed rock under its pinchers and then flung it aside to widen the burrow, Shea became a little worried.
They needed a distraction.
She backed away, banging sword against rock, screaming and shouting to get its attention. She made as much noise as she could, hoping to distract it for just a little bit.
It worked, too.
Its digging paused, and the beast scuttled back to face her.
Shea gulped. She hadn't really thought of what to do after she got its attention.
She took another step back as it cocked its head before rubbing its front legs together. She lunged away from the rock she'd been banging against right as it pounced. She crawled before leaping to her feet and running in the opposite direction.
A high-pitched chittering came from the beetle. She ducked and rolled again, barely evading a pincher. She coughed as she got a mouthful of dirt and rolled again to avoid being skewered by one of its legs, only to wedge herself against the cliff. She had no room to move.
It rose above her, exposing its underside as it prepared to deliver the killing blow. She tried to duck, but there was nowhere to go. She curled into a little ball, protecting her head with her arms.
This was it.
She was about to die.
Moments passed and pain didn't come. Her limbs remained attached. There was a thump; the ground shook.
She lowered one arm, peeking above it. The creature lay on its stomach, looking like a particularly large misshapen bolder. Blood oozed out of a gaping hole in its now oddly shaped head.
Her eyes widened in disbelief. She used the wall at her back to stabilize her as she climbed to her feet.
Eamon rose into view above the beast's inert body, his sword resting over his shoulder.
"How did you? Where did you?" Shea gaped at the dead beast and then up at him.
"Is that what we looked like when you saved us?" Eamon asked, the skin at the corner of his eyes crinkling.
Shea's mouth snapped closed.
"Bet you're glad you told us about their weak spot now," Buck said, lifting a leg to step over one of the beast's mammoth limbs. Two men followed him, their clothes dotted with blood. One had several strips of cloth wrapped around his arm to stem the flow of blood that even now was saturating the fabric to drip in a steady trickle down his arm to his hand.
"You're alive," Shea said stupidly.
It was hard to wrap her head around this turn of events. Moments ago she had been preparing for death. Now, the beast was dead. It was taking her a moment to catch up.
"Yup." Buck sheathed his sword and put his hands on his hips.
"And you're unharmed as well," Shea told Eamon.
He jumped to the ground in a lithe movement and joined Buck. "You ever going to come out of there?"
Shea started and looked around. The cliff was at her back, and the creature had collapsed right in front of her. It had barely missed squishing her beneath its mass.
"How?" Shea asked as she climbed over one of its legs.
The limb was twice the thickness of her body, and she had to step up onto it before stepping down. Buck reached out to steady her as she joined them.
"Turns out the burrows are connected. Since we couldn't get out the way we came because ole pincher here was trying to dig in, we had to go further down the burrow. That's when we found the others." He pointed his chin at the men who examined the beast with bewildered expressions on their faces. "They'd been caught in some kind of substance so we cut them out. Then we just kept following the tunnel."
"We had to fight our way past some hatchlings, but their shells are a lot softer than the adults," Buck interjected.
"How'd you get on top of the damn thing without it noticing?"
He turned and pointed at one of the burrows that was several feet off the ground. "I just waited for you to draw it near and then I jumped on top of it. After that, I attacked its weak spot like you said. Worked pretty well."
"You killed it? With just one blow?"
Unbelievable.
Eamon looked at Buck and then back at her and lifted one shoulder. "Yup."
Bastard.
Shea couldn't believe it. One hit. It had taken her several. How many, she wasn't exactly sure since she'd lost count in her terror.
Men had all the advantages. If she had muscles as big as his, she was sure it would have taken her only one hit too.
"Where are the rest?" she asked when she only counted three standing around.
Buck's eyes went to the ground, and Eamon's mouth tightened as he shook his head once.
Oh.
She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together. Poor souls.
Of their eleven-man party only six had survived. With no wounds, Eamon and Buck were in pretty good shape, but the three they'd rescued looked shell shocked and a little worse for wear. All of them bore cuts and were covered in blood. Theirs or their companions.
"Well, where to next?" Shea asked.
"Vale didn't make it, but I managed to get the map off his body. Now if I'm reading this right," Eamon pulled a folded piece of paper out of his waistband. He squinted down at it. "Hm."
Shea rolled her eyes and snatched the thing out of his hands.
"Where are you trying to go?"
"What? You think you can read that, Daisy?" one of the rescued men asked.
Shea ignored him.
"We've been going in circles for several days," she said, thinking out loud. She scanned the map. "Not that that's surprising given this chicken scratch."
"Watch it, kid," another man said gruffly.
"They tell you where on this thing you were supposed to go?" she asked Eamon.
"Hey, Daisy. You best show some respect," the man started.
Eamon cut him off with a gesture. Aiming a frown at her, he took the map back and scanned it. He pointed at their destination.
Shea took the map back and stared at it thoughtfully. It wasn't the worst thing she'd ever seen, but it certainly hadn't been done by anybody who cared about precision.
She looked up at the sky. Before they did anything else, they needed to get out of this canyon.
"Might be a good idea to get out of the canyons," she told Eamon. "If we head to high ground, it'll be easier to get our bearings."
He was silent for a moment. Shea waited. Either he trusted her and her abilities or not.
The others didn't. They saw her apparent youth and equated it with inexperience. Didn't matter as long as Eamon trusted enough to let her get them out of this kill zone.
"You think you can do this?" he asked her.
She lifted one shoulder. "Better at guiding than I am at beast killing."
One side of his mouth quirked. "Guess we'll see."
She restrained the urge to smile back and said nonchalantly, "Guess so."
All humor dropped from his face as he looked at the others. "Well, you heard him. Head back to the horses. Night's not far off."
Chapter Nine
"Whoever made this map should have their pens and ink confiscated before being dropped in the middle of nowhere with no supplies. Then we'd see whether they thought they did a thorough job," Shea muttered looking from said map into the distance.
None of the landmarks matched. Details were missing. Important details. The kind that could mean the difference between life and death.
Near as she could tell they were somewhere to the southwest of the encampment. She thought they were only about seven days ride, but given how lost Vale had gotten them, they could be closer.
"What're you complaining about?" Eamon asked, joining her as she plotted, or attempted to plot, a route to rendezvous with the rest of the company.
"This." She held up the map and shook it. "What do they expect people to do with this garbage? Certainly not navigate. I mean half this shit isn't even on here. Like that mountain or that canyon we just came from. The stuff they say is here, isn't. According to this, we should have passed a river a few miles back. I didn't see anything resembling a river or a streambed. Did you? Nothing. Nothing was there."