Chương 30: Chapter 29: Night Watch

Charlotte pulled at the knot around her waist again. Samuel had his eyes closed in the neighbouring tree, but the rope scraping over bark made him open them.

"If you keep testing it, you're going to loosen it."

"I know Daniel tied it properly. I still don't like the idea that one bad turn in my sleep leaves me hanging under a branch." From below, Daniel tipped his head back.

"If it helps, I can redo it before I start first watch." Charlotte looked down through the branches. The red beacon glowed faintly beside his boot, and the least damaged section of Samuel's shield rested against the trunk within reach.

"No. If I make you climb up here again, Samuel will start giving orders, and he's supposed to be sleeping." Samuel opened his eyes.

"I'm trying." Elizabeth shifted on her own branch and worked feeling back into one foot. The safety rope cut across her waist whenever she moved too far. A pair of strengthened vines crossed part of the gap between the two trees, enough to give them another handhold if anyone had to move between branches in a hurry. Nobody suggested a fire. Charlotte opened a ration packet, chewed half a strip of dried meat and stopped. Samuel watched her fold the paper over what remained.

"You spent nearly everything you had today. Try to eat more than that."

"I'm trying. If I keep going, I'm going to be sick." Samuel started to answer, then rubbed his good hand over his face instead. His injured arm remained bound across his chest.

"All right. Just don't put it away yet. We may have to move before morning." Daniel searched his pack.

"My mother swears dry bread helps." Charlotte looked down again.

"Does it?"

"Sometimes. She also swears she can predict rain with her left knee, so I wouldn't use her as a medical source." That got a tired laugh out of Samuel. Daniel found the last oat cake and raised it.

"She is annoyingly good about the rain, though. My sisters used to laugh at her until she started making us bring the washing in before the sky changed."

"You have sisters?"

"Two. Younger. They think the knee is magic. I think they just like making me carry the basket." Charlotte accepted the cake when he passed it up and ate a small piece. She kept the rest beside her. For a while they talked because none of them was ready to sleep. Charlotte complained about bark getting through her clothes. Daniel said the ground was not much better and that he could feel every time one of them shifted above him.

Samuel asked whether the practical still counted if the reserve had stopped following the rules it was built around. Charlotte said that if Crownspire expected them to repeat the assessment after this, she was going home. Elizabeth mostly listened. The forest never became quiet. Small things moved in the leaves and beneath the bark, while deeper vibrations occasionally passed through the roots as larger animals travelled somewhere downslope.

Daniel would stop in the middle of a sentence, place his palm more firmly against the exposed root, then continue when the movement faded. Eventually Samuel went over the watch order. Daniel would remain on the ground first, with Elizabeth awake above him. Samuel and Charlotte would try to sleep. Later, if his shoulder allowed the climb, Samuel would take Daniel's place while Charlotte watched from the branches.

"If either of you thinks something has changed enough that we need to move, wake us before you go checking it," Samuel said.

"I don't care how close it sounds." Elizabeth adjusted the spear across her thighs.

"I won't leave the trees without waking you." He accepted that. Charlotte lay back against the trunk, then sat up again.

"Move your fingers." Samuel stared at her.

"Your injured arm. Move them." He flexed his fingers.

"They still work."

"Good."

"You asked me that ten minutes ago."

"I'll probably ask again." Samuel muttered something under his breath, but he did it when she asked a second time. Eventually his breathing deepened. Charlotte stayed awake a little longer, then curled against the trunk with one hand closed around the rope at her chest. Elizabeth remained awake while Daniel listened below. He had stopped announcing every movement. Earlier he had reported the same herd east of them so many times that even Samuel had stopped reacting.

"You haven't mentioned the herd lately," Elizabeth said.

"It's still going east. At least most of it is." Daniel shifted his palm from the root to a patch of exposed stone.

"It gets difficult when too many things cross the same ground. Rock carries farther, but it also keeps everything together longer. Sometimes that helps. Sometimes I get three different returns on top of each other and have to guess which one I'm following."

"Packed ground is easier?"

"Usually. Unless it's wet, or full of roots, or half the reserve has stamped over it." He flexed his cut hand and changed to the other.

"The instructors make Echo Tracker sound cleaner than it is." Elizabeth glanced at the notebook bulging from his coat pocket. Its corner had swollen from the rain. Daniel followed her gaze.

"That's going in the bin when we get back."

"You were using it this morning."

"I was using it because I paid for it. That doesn't make it good." He pulled it out and showed her a warped page. The inked grid bent with the paper.

"I want stitched binding next time. Proper paper too. Something I can use outside without having to protect it like glass."

"You've thought about this."

"I want to survey." He hesitated, as though the answer should have been obvious.

"You spend a lot of time writing outside." Elizabeth asked what kind of surveying, and Daniel talked longer than he seemed to intend. Road gradients interested him most. Rivers too, especially places where old maps no longer matched the water. A municipal surveyor had worked near his home the previous summer, and Daniel had followed him around whenever he was allowed. Mostly he carried stakes and fetched tools.

The first time he was trusted to record a measurement, he wrote the number backwards and did not notice until they had walked half the section.

"I thought he was going to send me home," Daniel said.

"He made me walk it again instead."

"That was more useful." Daniel smiled.

"That was roughly what he said, except with more swearing."

"If you get a post after Crownspire, would you stay near home?"

"For a while, probably. My father thinks I should take whichever office pays best and stop pretending I'll get to choose." He rubbed his thumb over the notebook's ruined corner.

"He's probably right about the first part." A vibration moved through the root. Daniel's hand flattened over the root. Somewhere below them, a branch broke. He listened until the movement had passed across the slope.

"Large. South of us. Still moving east." He waited another few seconds, then sat back. The notebook reminded him of something.

"Ruby Haberling uses the sort of paper I want." Elizabeth turned her head.

"You know Ruby?"

"Not really. Everyone in Materials knows her." He told Elizabeth about a cracked crucible and the twenty-minute argument that followed. Ruby had insisted the fracture was old. Instructor Ilyan had insisted students always blamed equipment. Daniel had been nearby trying to finish his own work and had listened despite himself.

"Was she right?" Elizabeth asked.

"I think so. The crack was dark inside before they heated it." He paused.

"I stayed out of it. I was already redoing two measurements because Owen Hale pointed out I'd copied one of the scales wrong." Elizabeth remembered Owen then: narrow face, mathematics seat near the windows, ink on his fingers. Daniel went quiet for a moment.

"I've been trying to pick out some of the other scholarship teams when I can. Owen's was one of them."

"Could you?"

"Earlier, maybe. I'd get four lighter returns moving together and think it was a team. Then something heavy would cross the same ground and they'd disappear into everything else." His voice tightened.

"After the stampede got bad, I couldn't tell much at all." Elizabeth did not offer reassurance she could not support. A faint scratching came from below Charlotte. Daniel stood so quickly his shoulder caught the hanging rope.

"Something's in the tree." Elizabeth already had the spear in hand.

"Which one?"

"Theirs. Inside it." He pressed his palm to the bark. Elizabeth reached with Mana Sensitivity at the same time and caught two faint amber disturbances climbing inside Samuel and Charlotte's trunk. A third moved inside her own. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Wake them." Daniel struck the shield fragment against the tree. Samuel jerked awake and swore when his shoulder moved. Charlotte woke more slowly, then scrambled upright when bark split beside her knee. The first cutter forced its wedge-shaped head through below her branch. Daniel drove the broken shield edge against it from the ground, but the creature clung to the trunk and snapped at him. Charlotte kicked as the second broke through beside her leg. Her safety rope caught her weight.

The cutter tore loose, struck a lower branch and dropped beside Daniel. He stamped on it twice. The disturbance in Elizabeth's tree reached the surface. Her rope stopped her leaning far enough to use the spear normally, so she shortened her grip and waited until the bark lifted. She drove the point into the gap behind the cutter's head and pinned it against the trunk. Across from her, Samuel got his boot against the first creature while Daniel struck from below again. It finally tore free and fell.

Charlotte was breathing hard.

"Are there more?" Daniel put his palm against the trunk. Elizabeth sent Mana Sensitivity down through her own branch and across the strengthened vines. Smaller traces remained deeper in the bark, but nothing else was climbing.

"Nothing moving towards us," Daniel said.

"There are little ones deeper in the trunk. Feeding tunnels, I think." Charlotte stared at the torn bark beside her knee.

"I don't want to sleep in this tree anymore." Samuel leaned his head back. Pain had stripped the sleep from his face.

"Neither do I."

"Then can we move?" Daniel checked the roots and the slope below.

"There's more movement down there again. We'd have to cross it before finding another tree." Samuel took a moment before speaking.

"The last instruction we got was to stay off the main routes and hold defensible ground. We have height and solid roots. I'd rather know what's inside these trunks than walk blind and find something worse." Charlotte still looked unhappy.

"I know," Samuel added.

"I hate it too." She looked at the hole once more, then began checking the branch beneath her with what little mana she had left. They did not settle quickly. Charlotte made Samuel flex his fingers again. He complained this time, and she told him she did not care. Daniel listened to both trunks before returning to the root. Elizabeth shifted along her branch until blood returned painfully to her foot. Near the changeover, Samuel began climbing down. His first few steps were manageable.

Then his boot slipped on one of Charlotte's handholds and his injured shoulder jerked against the sling. He stopped with his forehead pressed to the bark. Daniel moved beneath him.

"Don't," Samuel said.

"I haven't said anything."

"You were about to."

"I was going to tell you where the next foothold is." Samuel stayed still for another breath.

"Fine. Do that." Daniel guided him through the last few steps. When Samuel reached the stone, sweat had dampened his hair despite the cold. Daniel handed him the shield fragment but did not immediately climb away.

"Your shoulder's worse."

"It's stiff."

"I can feel you moving every time it hurts." Samuel glanced at the root beneath Daniel's hand.

"You can tell that?"

"Only when you shift your weight." Samuel adjusted the shield against his good side. After a moment he said, "That call you made when the ravager turned probably kept it from hitting me again." Daniel looked down at his knuckles.

"I missed the first one."

"I missed the first one too."

"I thought it had killed you when your shoulder went." Samuel kept his eyes on the dark slope.

"For a second, I thought so too." Samuel cleared his throat.

"You should sleep."

"You should too."

"I will when somebody else is on the ground." Daniel climbed into Elizabeth's tree, tied himself close to the trunk and was asleep within minutes. Charlotte took the upper watch from the neighbouring branches. Before turning towards the forest, she called softly down to Samuel, "Move your fingers." Samuel looked up at her.

"You're going to do this until morning, aren't you?"

"Yes." He moved them. Later, when Daniel was asleep beside Elizabeth, Charlotte leaned across the gap.

"His shoulder looks worse."

"The swelling has increased."

"I can see that." Charlotte lowered her voice.

"Do you think his arm is going to be all right after this?"

"The circulation is intact, and he can still move his fingers. I can't tell you more without examining the joint properly." Charlotte nodded, though she kept watching Samuel below.

"My mother told me this assessment was ridiculous," she said.

"Not Crownspire. Just this part. She kept asking why they needed to put me in a reserve when I wasn't planning to join the military. I told her there would be instructors everywhere and that the wards made it safer than walking through half the capital after dark."

"The assessment is normally controlled."

"I know. That's what bothers me. I wasn't lying to her. I really thought she was worrying over nothing." She found the rest of Daniel's oat cake beside her and ate it slowly.

"She's going to remind me of this for years if we get home." Elizabeth considered correcting the conditional, then decided Charlotte would not find it useful. Charlotte picked at the edge of the oat cake wrapper.

"My father would have agreed with Crownspire, though. One of my brothers came home feverish from a trip once, and Father still made him carry his own cases upstairs because he was fourteen and apparently that was old enough not to be fussed over. I thought my brother was being dramatic when he complained." She looked down at Samuel again.

"He does that," she said.

"Samuel. Acts like if he can still stand, everything else can wait." Elizabeth watched Samuel shift the shield fragment for the third time, trying to find a position that did not pull on his shoulder. Charlotte rubbed her hands together.

"Do you think anyone got the beacon?"

"I don't know."

"What if they didn't?" Elizabeth said nothing.

"I know you don't know," Charlotte murmured.

"I keep asking because I don't have anything else to do with the question." The forest moved below them. Both girls stopped talking while Daniel slept between roots and branches and Samuel listened from the ground. After that, the night blurred. A cluster of gliding mammals crossed above them at one point. The rope cut circulation to Elizabeth's leg again. Samuel and Charlotte traded places in low voices. At some point Daniel woke, saw Samuel still on the ground and climbed down.

Elizabeth caught only fragments of their conversation.

"The red looks weaker," Daniel said.

"It might be your eyes."

"I've checked it enough times to know what it looked like before." Samuel was quiet briefly.

"I've checked it too."

"Do you know if two pulses are enough for them to find us?"

"No."

"What about the first signal?"

"I don't know that either." Daniel exhaled.

"I hate this."

"Yeah." Their voices dropped too low for Elizabeth to follow. When she next opened her eyes, grey light had begun separating the trunks. Daniel was already kneeling beside the exposed root. He tried the soil, then stone, then returned to the root and stayed there longer than he had the previous evening. Samuel stood nearby with the shield fragment tucked against his good side.

"What are you getting?"

"The big herds are farther east." Daniel changed hands. His movements were slower now.

"Medium trace north. Two smaller ones west, circling. Wait." Charlotte started climbing down behind Elizabeth. A branch broke downslope. Another followed farther west. Daniel kept listening.

"Something injured is coming uphill behind where we slept." Samuel looked towards the mountain route.

"Can we stay long enough to eat?"

"I wouldn't." They lowered the packs first. Samuel's shoulder had stiffened badly overnight, and getting him out of the tree took longer than everything else. Charlotte nearly dropped the ration bag because her fingers were still trembling. The beacon went back into its case, its glow faint but present. The sun had not cleared the canopy when Samuel finally reached the stone. Daniel checked north once more, and they started moving.