Chương 31: Chapter 30: What Followed Them

They ate while walking because Daniel did not want to stay near the trees any longer than they had to. He kept choosing exposed stone whenever the slope offered it. By midmorning the mountains filled more of the northern sky, although every ravine seemed to give the distance back. Samuel led at first, his right arm strapped across his chest. The shoulder had stiffened badly overnight, and on steeper ground he turned sideways so the arm would not swing.

Charlotte watched him do it until his boot slipped from a wet root. She caught the back of his coat and held on until he found his footing.

"Hold still."

"I'm fine."

"Move your fingers." Samuel flexed them without turning around, then started climbing again. Charlotte followed close enough to catch him a second time. Daniel ranged several metres ahead, moving between soil and exposed stone whenever Echo Tracker became difficult to read. The cuts across his knuckles had opened again beneath the bandage. Elizabeth's torn sleeve had been pinned closed, but cold air still found the skin underneath. Around them, the reserve no longer behaved as Crownspire had taught them to expect.

Scaled grazers forced uphill through saplings. A wounded predator crossed their trail and ignored them. Near a stream, two species Charlotte insisted should have attacked each other passed within minutes of one another, both fleeing south. Nobody suggested returning to the examination route. On a broad patch of pale soil Daniel stopped so sharply that Samuel nearly walked into him. Charlotte had already gone a few steps farther.

"Charlotte. Back." She turned.

"Now." The ground moved beneath her boot. Daniel lunged, caught her pack strap and hauled her backwards. They hit the dirt together. His wrapped hand struck first and he swore as an armoured head burst through the place Charlotte had been standing, jaws snapping at empty air. The creature thrashed free, drove downhill and vanished beneath the soil again. A ridge travelled after it through the earth before settling. Charlotte sat where Daniel had pulled her and stared at the hole.

Daniel opened and closed his injured hand. Fresh blood was spreading through the bandage.

"I didn't know what it was," he said.

"I only felt the surface change." Charlotte looked at him, then at the ground again.

"All right. Just shout next time."

"I did." She shut her eyes for a moment.

"You did. Sorry." Samuel crouched beside Daniel as far as his shoulder allowed.

"Two seconds?"

"Maybe."

"If you get that much warning again, yell. We can work out what it is after we've moved." Daniel nodded. After that, the sealed examination objective stayed in Samuel's pack. He checked the map only to keep them north. If Daniel wanted a detour, they took it. Charlotte rejected slopes where the soil would not hold her vines. Elizabeth made them circle far around a wounded predator feeding beside a carcass. Near midday Daniel raised one hand. The others stopped without being told.

He crouched, pressed his palm to the soil, then shifted to a flat stone beside the trail.

"Three lighter traces ahead. Two-legged. Running." He listened another few seconds.

"Two much heavier ones behind them." Charlotte was already looking downslope.

"Students?"

"Probably." She started forward. Samuel caught her shoulder.

"We look first."

"If they're students—""I know." Something crashed through brush below them. They moved. A low ridge overlooked a shallow basin broken by saplings and loose stone. They dropped behind a fallen trunk just as the first runner came into view. Charlotte went still.

"That's Mira." Elizabeth recognised Mira Bell a moment later: two rows ahead in Mana Control and Safety, quick with answers and louder whenever Crownspire served lentil stew. She had once borrowed Elizabeth's notes and returned them with an apology and a pressed yellow flower marking the page she had used. Blood now soaked one sleeve and most of her left side. A boy Elizabeth knew from Applied Alchemy ran beside her with one arm hanging uselessly.

Farther back, a student in royal-scholarship grey stumbled over loose stone and recovered. Daniel's fingers dug into the trunk.

"Owen." Charlotte looked at Samuel.

"Samuel, that's Mira. We know them." The first grave runner came through the trees before he answered. It was longer than a horse and low to the ground, six limbs working beneath a segmented spine. A second followed several metres behind. Samuel's good hand closed around Daniel's coat before Daniel could rise.

"Grave runners. Third-grade. We can't take two." Charlotte was already whispering about vines.

"I don't have to hold them. One leg for a second, that's all. If they fall, maybe—""You're almost empty."

"I know. I still have enough for one try. Samuel, she's right there." Below them, Mira looked back.

"Don't stop. Don't—" The grave runners did not close the distance. Elizabeth watched several strides pass.

"They're waiting for them to tire." Samuel stared at the creatures.

"Then they know they can catch them whenever they want." Charlotte shook her head.

"I can still slow one." Her hands tightened on the bark. Samuel did not tell her no again. He looked at his immobilised arm, Daniel's knife, Elizabeth's spear, then back into the basin. Elizabeth formed the beginning of a Lightning Needle line and let it collapse. The students kept crossing it unpredictably, both grave runners were moving, and even a perfect strike was unlikely to stop one before the cast exposed their ridge. Daniel shifted beside her. Elizabeth caught his sleeve. He turned on her.

"Let go." The first grave runner accelerated. Mira heard it. The forelimb struck her from behind, four hooked claws punching through beneath her shoulder and out through the front of her uniform. Her legs managed another half-step after the rest of her stopped. Then the animal lifted her. Charlotte surged upright. Elizabeth dragged her down before her head cleared the trunk and clamped a hand over her mouth as Mira screamed and the runner shook her. Blood struck the leaves below. The injured boy turned back.

"Mira!" Samuel whispered, "No." The boy made three strides towards her. The second grave runner caught his damaged shoulder in its jaws and tore the arm free. He hit the ground staring at the empty sleeve before blood began pulsing from it. The runner planted one forefoot across his abdomen and drove down. Several ribs broke together. His scream ended in a wet gasp. Charlotte fought Elizabeth's grip, nails digging into her wrist as she twisted towards the basin. Elizabeth kept her below the trunk.

"If they hear you, they come here." Charlotte stopped trying to rise, but her whole body shook. Daniel had gone motionless. Owen kept running. For several seconds it looked as though that decision might save him. Behind him, the first runner dropped Mira. She landed on her side and pulled at the leaves with one hand while her legs failed to follow. Elizabeth remembered the pressed yellow flower because Mira's fingers moved with the same small care she had used sliding those notes back across a desk.

Then the runner bit through her lower ribs. Her hand stopped. The second grave runner abandoned the other boy and went after Owen. He reached the opposite slope, slipped, caught himself and looked back.

"Please." Daniel's breathing changed. Owen dragged himself another step uphill.

"I surrender. Please. I surrender." The runner bit into the back of his skull. The crack carried across the basin. Daniel turned away and vomited into the ferns. Samuel caught the back of his uniform and pulled him lower. Below them, one runner fed from Mira while the other worried at Owen's neck and uniform. Later, the first dragged Mira several metres into the brush. The second tore cloth from Owen, spat it out and lost interest. Charlotte had stopped fighting.

Elizabeth removed her hand from Charlotte's mouth but kept an arm across her until Charlotte pushed it away herself. Nobody spoke. Daniel wiped his mouth on his sleeve and pressed both palms to the ground. Blood darkened the bandage around his knuckles. He listened long after the grave runners disappeared west. Samuel waited. Eventually Daniel said, "They're going." They stayed another ten minutes. Stolen story; please report.

When Samuel finally shifted back from the ridge, Charlotte turned on Elizabeth and slapped her. Before Elizabeth had fully turned, Charlotte struck her again.

"You made me watch her die." Elizabeth touched the inside of her cheek with her tongue. No blood.

"Looking away would not have changed it." Charlotte's hand came up again. Samuel caught her wrist. She tore free, wrenching his shoulder badly enough that he went pale.

"Don't touch me."

"Charlotte—""You stopped me too." Her voice broke.

"She was right there. I could hear her. I know there were two of them, I know that, but she was right there and we just—""I know."

"No, you keep saying that like it fixes something."

"It doesn't."

"You didn't even let me try." Samuel looked back over the trunk. His broken shield lay where he had dropped it. Daniel was still sitting beside the ferns, grey-faced, one hand pressed to his stomach.

"You think I wasn't looking for something?" Samuel said.

"I kept trying to find one thing we could do that didn't put all four of us down there with them. I've got one arm. Daniel had a knife. You could barely keep the trees up last night and—""I know!"

"Then what did you want me to do?" Charlotte opened her mouth. Nothing came out. Samuel's voice dropped.

"I wanted there to be something too." She scrubbed both hands over her face. After a while she asked, "If it happened again?" Samuel looked down at the shield.

"I don't know." Charlotte stared at him. He swallowed.

"No. I do. I wouldn't let us go down there. Not like this." Charlotte turned away. Daniel said nothing. He kept rubbing his thumb across the edge of his bandage as if there were something on it he could remove. They remained behind the ridge until Samuel reached for the nearly empty packet of pain medicine at his belt. Elizabeth looked at it, then at Charlotte's depleted seed pouch and the packs around them.

"We need what they were carrying." Daniel looked up. Charlotte did not.

"Don't."

"Samuel is nearly out of medicine. We have little food left, your seeds are almost gone, and our beacon may not have reached anyone."

"They were just killed," Daniel said.

"Yes." His eyes went back to Owen.

"They have names." Elizabeth did not answer. Daniel's mouth tightened.

"You're talking about them like they're bags somebody dropped."

"We need the supplies."

"They're not supplies."

"No. Being dead makes the supplies available." Charlotte made a broken sound and turned her face away. Samuel rubbed at his forehead with his good hand.

"Only what we actually need. Leave the rest alone." Daniel checked the ground before any of them descended. The smell reached them halfway across the basin: blood, opened bowel and damp soil. Flies had already gathered. Charlotte went to Mira. She crouched beside her and tried three times to undo the fastening on the seed pouch.

"She always carried too many." Nobody answered. Daniel knelt beside Owen. He removed the academy badge from the ruined uniform, tried to wipe the blood from it and only smeared it farther. His fingers kept moving over the metal for several seconds before he stopped. He took Mira's next. Then the third student's. Daniel wrapped all three badges in clean cloth and placed them away from the recovered equipment. Samuel saw what he was doing and said nothing. Two waterskins were intact.

Food went into Elizabeth's pack, rope to Charlotte, bandages and salve to Daniel. Mira's beacon was crushed. The third student's was still sealed. Charlotte broke the wax and pressed the crystal. One tone sounded. Then a second. The third completed normally. They all waited. Nothing answered.

"Did it go through?" Daniel asked. Samuel looked at the crystal.

"The sequence finished. I don't know if anyone heard it." Charlotte held it tighter.

"Then shouldn't we wait?" Samuel looked across the bloody basin and towards the trees where the grave runners had disappeared.

"Not here." She did not argue. She slid the beacon back into its case and clipped it securely to her pack. The strongest pain medicine lay beneath the third boy. Elizabeth shifted his torso enough to reach it. His remaining hand slid from his chest and struck her wrist. It was warm. For one reflexive instant she expected the fingers to close. They did not. The hand slipped into the blood, and nothing in the body corrected the position. Daniel saw. He looked away before she did. They redistributed the extra weight.

Samuel carried only the medicine pouch and broken shield. Charlotte tightened her own pack rather than ask Elizabeth for help. Daniel spoke only when Echo Tracker gave him something useful. The climb took hours. No one tried to repair the argument. Daniel checked every quiet stretch of ground before trusting it. Charlotte conserved her mana and used her hands whenever she could. Samuel's sling loosened with sweat and eventually had to be retied. He tried twice one-handed before the knot slipped loose again.

Elizabeth reached for it. Charlotte looked at her. Samuel closed his eyes briefly.

"Just do it." Elizabeth tightened the sling. He bit the inside of his cheek and said nothing. Later they crossed the track of something enormous that had stripped bark from three trees at the same height. A pack of predators passed below without hunting prey running less than twenty metres ahead. Far west, smoke rose above the forest. Charlotte stopped.

"Could that be an instructor?" Samuel watched it for several seconds.

"Could be. It's west." She knew what he meant. North was the mountain and the route they had chosen. West was an unknown detour towards a fire they could not identify.

"We're not turning around for smoke," Samuel said. Charlotte kept looking at it, then followed. By late afternoon the soil had thinned between slabs of mountain stone. Daniel's tracking became less certain. On one broad shelf he stopped with both palms down and stayed there until Samuel came back to him.

"I'm not sure." Samuel waited.

"Something deep. Maybe underground. Or the rock is carrying it from farther away. I can't separate it."

"Towards us?"

"I don't know." Samuel looked north.

"All right. North for now." The vibration faded before Daniel could isolate it. He found the cave less than an hour before sunset because the slope around the entrance returned differently from solid rock. The narrow opening widened several metres inside. Daniel checked the floor and walls before saying nothing large had used it recently; there were cracks farther back, but no den he could feel. Samuel inspected the entrance and sat against the wall.

"I can defend that better than a tree." Charlotte lowered her pack.

"I'm not climbing another tree tonight." Daniel put one hand to the cave floor and listened. Inside, the air was dry and unexpectedly warm. Farther in, the stone beneath Elizabeth's palm was warmer than the wall beside it. The difference was small; she could not tell where the heat originated. Outside, one distant fire had become three separate orange patches. Samuel finally took the stronger pain medicine. Charlotte sat with Mira's seed pouch in her lap without opening it.

Daniel placed the wrapped academy badges on the stone between them. Nobody spoke for a while. Elizabeth looked at the bundle until Mira's hand pulling through leaves returned to her mind, followed by Owen begging on the opposite slope. If the grave runners had crossed one ridge farther north, Daniel might have been the one lying below them. She kept trying to find a decision inside that fact and could not. Daniel's head lifted. His palm hit the floor as the badges clicked against the stone.

The vibration came through the mountain slowly enough that the metal rattled a second time before anyone spoke. Dust sifted from one of the cracks farther back. Charlotte moved nearer the entrance.

"Daniel?" He had both hands down now. Outside, one of the distant fires rose above the treeline while the vibration weakened under his palms. Smoke that had been drifting east flattened, twisted, and began moving the other way.