Pathfinder's Way (21 page)

“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.”

“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.”

“Thought you had this. Are you sure you’re
not just lost?” Eamon asked skeptically.

She shot him a nasty look before continuing,
“I’ve seen some pretty shoddy maps before but nothing as half-assed
as this.”

Eamon shrugged and rested a hand on his
sword’s pommel while scanning the terrain. “They do the best they
can, but they’re limited by the intel they get from the field. Most
scouts can read a map okay, but they can’t describe the terrain
well enough for the cartographers to draw an accurate record.”

Then they should get their asses into the
field and do their bloody job.

She yearned for her own detailed maps back
home. Not that they would do much good here. She was further south
than she’d ever been and had never mapped this area. If she had,
she wouldn’t be having problems.

“Are you telling me you can’t do it?” He
turned to motion one of the others. “If so, I’ll have someone else
take over.”

Shea’s head shot up. She glared at him, her
pride stung. “Did I say I couldn’t do it?”

“That’s what it sounded like to me.”

“Well, that’s not what I said. I can find my
way anywhere. This shitty little map is just an annoyance, that’s
all.” She glared at the man joining them.

Eamon lifted his chin at the man. The man,
noticing the daggers currently shooting his way, smothered a smile
before heading back to the small campfire.

Shea grumbled, turning back to her map. She
lifted her head and peered into the distance. It was late
afternoon, and they had decided to make camp while they got their
bearings.

Two days had passed since the encounter with
the shadow beetles, and the group was beginning to appreciate
Shea’s insights into the world around them. Saving someone’s life
had a tendency to do that.

Try as she might, she couldn’t get the map’s
features to line up with the terrain. She sat back and pinched the
bridge of her nose, finding new respect for Vale’s navigating
skills. It was no wonder they had gotten so lost if this was what
he’d had to work with.

She sighed and pulled out a pen before
bending to make notes, crossing off features that were wrong and
writing in the correct ones. She didn’t like drawing all over
someone else’s work, but she needed a way to keep track of the
landmarks they passed.

At least she knew they were heading south
with a western slant.

The light faded as Shea continued to work. By
the time the map was illegible, she had a general idea of the
direction they should take tomorrow.

Finished, she folded the map up and stuffed
it into a pouch in her jacket before climbing off her boulder and
joining the rest at the campfire. They had chosen a rock overhang
for shelter, one to partially block the light of the fire and two
for protection from the wind. Though the days were warm, nighttime
temperatures dropped significantly out here.

She plopped down next to Buck and accepted
the plate of warm food he handed her. One of the boys had shot a
hare that afternoon, and they made stew with some wild potatoes
Shea dug up. It was the first warm meal they’d enjoyed since
leaving the encampment.

At the first taste, Shea shoveled two more
mouthfuls in, swallowing without really chewing. Somehow food
always tasted doubly good on the trail, probably because there was
so little of it.

The meat was tender, and they had found some
type of herb to dump in the pot, too. Shea tried to identify the
interesting taste but gave up. Cooking wasn’t exactly her strong
suit. She knew enough about plants not to kill herself but had
absolutely no idea how to combine ingredients to make something
tasty. She was just grateful one of the men did.

“What do you think, Shane?”

Shea gulped her latest mouthful down and was
already lifting another spoonful to her lips when it dawned that
they were talking to her.

She should be used to her new name by now,
but the men called her Daisy more often than not. It made it
difficult to get used to a name she was so rarely called by. She
didn’t always react immediately.

She looked up to find all eyes on her.

“About what?”

Sam snorted and handed her a piece of hard
bread. She took it gratefully.

Eamon said, “I know the food’s good, lad, but
I promise it won’t disappear if you slow down a bit.”

Shea stuck her bread in the stew and spooned
some of the liquid over it, hoping that by the time she ate the
rest, it would be soft enough not to break teeth.

“Do you think Hawkvale’s right? That the
Lowlands can be conquered and united under one banner?”

Shea paused with her mouth open before
setting her spoon back in her bowl. “I don’t know enough about the
situation to comment.”

Buck scoffed. “Never known a Daisy to be shy
about shooting off at the mouth about things they don’t understand.
You must have
some
opinion. Everybody does. Go ahead boy,
don’t be shy. We won’t clap you in irons if we don’t like what you
have to say.”

Shea shifted, uncomfortable to be the center
of attention. Up until now she had tried to stay mainly on the
fringes of the group, not joining conversations, just doing her job
and observing.

“It’s just campfire chatter,” Eamon informed
her softly. “A time to bitch and groan about what the higher ups
are doing. Nothing ever comes of it.”

They said that now, but they were Trateri.
Shea was not. They could get away with saying a lot more than an
outsider.

“What about you?” Shea challenged.

“Ah, but we know what we think,” Buck
returned. “And you would too if you’d been paying attention over
the last few days. We’re interested in what you, a native
Lowlander, have to say. You’d know more about this land than us. Do
you think it’s possible to conquer this place and hold it?”

That would be true if Shea had been a
Lowlander. She did know a lot about the country as it paid for
pathfinders to know everything about the different places they
might visit. Still, there was a wide gap of knowledge between
someone born and raised here and someone making short forays into
the area.

Still, it couldn’t hurt to share a few
insights with them. Just a few, though. Nothing that might make her
stand out.

She shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe some of
it.”

“Aw, that’s not an answer,” Sam said. “Stop
being such a pussy and pick a side.”

“No, no,” Eamon said. “I want to hear what he
has to say.”

Shea stared at them, running her tongue over
her teeth. How much should she tell them? “You know by now that the
Lowlands aren’t really a country. There’s no central government
ruling the people. It’s just a bunch of isolated villages and towns
with loose ties to each other. Each governs itself and outsiders
are viewed with suspicion.”

“This isn’t news,” Buck groused. Flint,
sitting next to him, gave him a shove.

“I say ‘maybe’ because there
is
no
real ruling body that Hawkvale can defeat. Since that’s the case,
he’s going to have to conquer each village individually, not only
that, but he’ll have to find a way to rule people used to having no
ruler.”

“On the other hand, no real government means
no standing army to defend the land,” Eamon pointed out.

“True. I’ll give you that. But right now, you
can’t even find all the villages because even the villages aren’t
sure where each stands. I think there’s a strong possibility that
he’ll claim some of this territory for his people, but the more
isolated sections that no one ever visits?” Shea shook her head. “I
don’t see that happening. The Lowlands haven’t been united in over
five hundred years. Not since the cataclysm. Who’d even want to
anyway? Place is a shit hole. Just a bunch of uneducated,
superstitious louts afraid of the outside world and unwilling to
challenge the status quo.”

“Spoken like someone who’s never been thirsty
a day in their life,” someone muttered.

Shea jerked towards the voice but couldn’t
identify the speaker. Her lip curled. “You think this place isn’t
full of challenges? Look closely next time you’re in a village. You
might be surprised at what you find.”

She looked each man in the eye, noting those
who dropped their gaze after a moment.

“You speak like you’re not one of them,” Buck
observed.

That’s because she wasn’t.

“I’m a throwaway, remember? Not a lot of love
lost on either side.”

“That’s cold. Don’t think I could take that
viewpoint even if I was exorcised from my clan,” Sam said.

“And you? What do you think?” Shea asked
Eamon.

He might have said earlier, but she hadn’t
been listening.

Shadows danced across his face as the fire
flickered. “In the end it doesn’t really matter what I think.
Possible or not, Hawkvale thinks the Broken Lands can be united as
they were before the cataclysm. That’s enough for me.”

“That’s a lot of faith to have in one
man.”

“Fallon Hawkvale is a hero to the Trateri,”
Sam said softly. “His grandfather was the last Hawk of the Trateri
until he was challenged by his nephew and killed through
deception.”

“That was a dark time,” one of the older men
said.