Pathfinder's Way (26 page)

He was silent as he looked back down at the
small notebook clutched in his hands. Shea started to turn away
when he pulled her into a bear hug and squeezed tight.

“Thank you. I’ll cherish it.”

Once she’d recovered from the surprise, she
smiled and patted him on the back before pulling away.

“I’m glad you like it.”

“Your timing couldn’t have been better,”
Perry remarked.

Fallon observed the controlled chaos as his
men walked from revenant to revenant putting any that still drew
breath out of their misery. Men tended the injured, cleaning
wounds, sewing them up, and in a few rare cases, setting bones.

Perry’s men had taken heavy damage. Few, if
any, were uninjured.

“For a minute there, I thought I’d be meeting
my ancestors,” Perry confided. “Little bastards are cunning.”

“They adapt quicker than expected,” Fallon
said. “We’ll have to clear as many as possible from these hills, or
they’ll just breed more. Better to deal with them now while they’re
weakened, than wait for them to regain their strength.”

“I’ll get my men right on it.”

“No. Let them rest. They deserve it. I’ll
have Darius send a company to destroy any dens later. I need you
and your men with me in the west.”

“Understood. Our mission?”

“A couple of the local villages have decided
not to meet their tithes. We’ll need to educate them
otherwise.”

Perry sighed. “Stupid fools. I’d feel sorry
for them if they had even the tiniest pair of balls.”

Fallon grinned. It was a sentiment echoed
often among his men.

“We’ll just have to force them to gain
some.”

Perry’s expression soured. “That would be
like trying to stuff a rain drop back into a cloud.”

“Surely not as difficult as that.”

“Not nearly as useful either, no doubt,” a
man said crossly, coming to stand by Fallon’s side. He was a short,
stocky man with a barrel chest. Half of his brown hair was pulled
tightly back to tame the wild curls. The skin below the half pony
tail was shaved. Unlike most of the other Trateri who had brown
hair and eyes, his were a startling blue.

“Caden,” Perry said, nodding in respect.

“Perry.” The greeting was returned with the
same respect. “Your men acquitted themselves well.”

“We lost many, but all went down with sword
in hand.”

“Sometimes that’s all you can ask for.”

There was a short silence in respect for the
lives lost.

“When should I have my men ready to move
again?” Perry asked. “We’ll have to send out a team to round up the
horses first. I had the men cut their strings when the revenant
sent out its battle cry. Figured the horses running around might be
enough of a distraction to get our men to the rendezvous
point.”

“I can send a few of my men out to see how
many we can recover. We also brought a few extra mounts if we can’t
round up all of the horses. We’ll stay the night here,” Fallon
said. “You chose the place to make your stand well. It’s easily
defensible and will provide decent shelter from the night’s
cold.”

“Pure dumb luck we made it this far,” Perry
admitted. “One of the scouts you sent happened to have a little
knowledge of the area, which allowed us to make it far enough to
find a defensible position.”

“Oh?” Fallen asked.

“Damnedest thing,” Perry said. “Evidently the
creatures can’t see worth shit. They rely on their nose. If you can
fool it, you can sneak past them.”

“Didn’t seem to help you here,” Caden said,
looking at the fallen.

“If it hadn’t been for those berries, we
would have made our stand much sooner. Probably would have all died
too. We wouldn’t have stood a chance without decent cover at our
back. Whoever you send to get rid of these beasts should be warned.
It might prevent death.”

“Agreed. Write up your observations, and I’ll
send them along with my orders. Darius can pass it to his men.”

“Appreciate it.”

“Tend to your men and give them the news
we’re staying the night,” Fallon ordered in dismissal.

Perry nodded once more.

Caden waited until he was out of hearing
distance to say, “This pack was much larger than reports
indicated.”

“Yes.”

“Much larger.”

Fallon grunted.

“These men are lucky your ghost woman made
her escape. If she hadn’t disappeared, we would have lingered in
camp and been too late rendezvousing with them.”

“Yes. That is one way of looking at it.”

Caden took in the carnage. “This gives me a
bad feeling. You think there might be a traitor in our midst?”

Fallon didn’t answer as he watched the men
drag the revenants’ dead bodies off into the trees.

His silence was answer enough.

“Well. Shit,” Caden said. “That’ll make
things difficult.”

A ghost of a smile crossed Fallon’s face.

His attention caught on a slim figure lurking
by the horses. It was the boy he’d pulled a revenant off of in the
battle. He was a tiny thing but brave as fuck.

Fallon had seen him tangle with that monster,
sure the boy was dead before he hit the ground. Somehow he’d
managed to survive and was in the process of killing the beast when
Fallon guided his hand in the deathblow.

Something about the boy was familiar, but he
couldn’t quite place it. His coloring said he wasn’t Trateri.
Lowlander, maybe? He’d never seen a Lowlander with hair so oddly
colored. It was a matted black and stuck straight up from his head
in clumps.

He was a scrawny thing with barely anything
to him. If Fallon hadn’t seen his bravery in battle first hand, he
would have had his trainers defending their reasons for putting
someone like that in one of his best units.

The boy noticed him and froze, his eyes going
wide and slightly panicked before he abruptly headed for the big
man directing several soldiers.

Hm. Definitely a Lowlander.

Ah, well. Maybe he was familiar because
Fallon had conquered his village or something.

Dismissing the boy from his mind, Fallon
joined Perry and his second in command to discuss plans for the
morning.

Shea glued herself to Eamon’s side and kept
her head down.

That was close. She shouldn’t have panicked
like that when she found Fallon’s eyes on her. She might as well
have put a sign on her that said “guilty party here.”

She needed to act like one of the guys and
that meant not acting like a squirrelly Daisy who had never set
foot outside the fence.

When nobody pulled her out of the group, she
relaxed slightly. The first meeting with anybody new was always the
worst. Once they accepted she was a guy, they never thought to look
deeper.

It looked like her luck still held.

Eamon finished giving his orders to the
men.

Shea quickly fell behind him. “What do you
need from me?”

“Oh, so you’re talking to me again?”

She paused. “I wasn’t aware that I’d ever
stopped.”

He gave her a stony look.

She wished she could achieve that level of
withering scorn and disappointment with just a look.

“What?”

“You’ve been acting like a little bitch since
I bandaged you up.”

“You call that bandaging? More like a
mauling,” Shea muttered.

“I let you get away with your little
tantrum,” Eamon continued, not responding to her comment. “You’re
Lowlander. You don’t know better, and normally you’re a damn good
scout. However, you’re Trateri now, and I’m you’re superior. Word
of warning, you’d better sort yourself out and straighten up, or
this life is going to get a whole lot more difficult for you.”

Shea listened, stunned and a little more than
insulted. She had not thrown a temper tantrum. She didn’t even
think she’d thrown them at the age where they were considered the
normal behavior for children.

This was the most she’d heard Eamon speak,
except maybe when he was ripping her a new one right after the
fight. She didn’t know what had set him off this time.

“All I asked is if you needed me to do
something,” she said in her defense. She hadn’t even copped an
attitude. She even made sure her face was perfectly neutral. She
knew better than to challenge someone’s authority like that.

Eamon’s anger took on a near physical
intensity.

“You know perfectly well what I’m talking
about.”

She did too. Though, nobody had ever
complained about the non-challenging way she had of challenging
someone. After all, everything she did was in line with the correct
behavior of a junior addressing a senior.

She gave him a confused expression and
frowned as if she was thinking hard. “I have no idea. I was just
trying to do my job.”

The air got even tenser.

Perhaps pushing him wasn’t the best idea.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Forget
it. Buck, keep the Daisy busy and out from under foot.”

Eamon turned his back on her and moved
away.

Shea stared after him, a little baffled. That
was it? After that scolding, that’s all he had. She was expecting
more.

“Sometimes, kid, you’re really not too
bright,” Buck said, shaking his head. “It’s pretty amazing given
how smart you are in other things.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Buck peered down at her, studying, weighing.
One corner of his lips tightened. “Yeah, you do. But whatever, if
you want to make life harder on yourself, that’s your business. For
now, go help Perry’s men set up tents.”

Mentally shrugging at his dismissal, Shea
moved off to help the others. Clark gave her a small smile when she
grabbed the other end of the pole he was trying to lift.

“Clark,” Eamon called. “Grab one of the
horse’s the Hawkvale brought and saddle up. We’re going to do a
brief recon of the immediate area.”

Clark shot her a quick, concerned glance
before hurrying away without a word. Shea pretended not to hear as
Eamon called for Sam and Flint as well. She waited for her name to
be called. She felt his eyes rest briefly on her.

“What about me?” Buck asked.

“Stay here. Keep an eye on things.”

There was a slight pause and then a murmured
affirmative.

Shea worked steadily, not letting herself
linger on one task for too long. She kept her head down and avoided
meeting anybody’s eyes.

“Thanks a lot, Daisy,” Buck muttered as he
bent to help her carry some of the kindling she was gathering for
the fire pit.

Shea frowned after him. “It’s not my fault he
left you behind.”

Buck dropped the kindling rather loudly next
to the rest and walked back to the forest line. Shea trailed behind
him.

“Someone had to stay behind and keep watch on
your dumb ass.”

Shea was really getting tired of being called
dumb. She’d had one brief moment in battle when she’d gotten lost
in thought. Yes, it was admittedly not her smartest move. One that
could have gotten her killed.

Regardless, she thought she’d proven by this
point that she wasn’t stupid. One unguarded moment shouldn’t undo
all of the other times she’d come through for them.

“Eamon could have taken both of us along,”
she pointed out coolly.

He barked a dry laugh. “Not likely. If he
can’t trust you, he doesn’t have much use for you.”

Shea snorted. “What has he been doing all
this time, then? It’s not like he knew me in the beginning, and yet
I managed to get you guys to your rendezvous. Now all of a sudden
my job depends on trust. That’s convenient.”

“You were an unknown entity then. Someone we
didn’t trust or distrust, and if you recall, you didn’t get
anywhere near a map until after the shadow beetles.”

He had a point there.

“A squad like ours is dependent on the bond
of trust between every person on the team. When that bond is
broken, it places everybody in danger.”

Shea had never trusted her companions. “None
of you have ever made a mistake while in the field? I’m not proud
that I lost focus out there, but it’s hardly a reason to imply I’m
no longer dependable. The only person whose life I put in danger
was my own.”

“Wrong. If you had fallen, Eamon would have
broken the line trying to save you. I would have followed because
he’s my comrade and friend. Clark might’ve followed because he
worships Eamon. That’s three lives that would have been in danger
due to your carelessness. Not to mention the others because we
would have left a hole in their defenses.”

Shea hadn’t thought of it that way. She was
so used to acting on her own and only being able to count on
herself that she had never considered how her actions might impact
others.

“Just now’s the first time you’ve even
admitted that you might have been wrong. Instead, you shut all of
us out and acted like a sulky, spoiled child. Making a mistake
isn’t the problem; not owning up to it is. We don’t need someone
who’s unable to acknowledge their flaws.”

Shea didn’t have a response for that and
busied herself gathering the rest of the wood. Having said his
piece, Buck stalked off taking his kindling with him.

After she gathered enough wood for several
fires, Shea sought out another task and then another after that
until night fell.

Shea didn’t want to admit that Buck might
have been slightly correct in his assessment. It had been so long
since she’d been accepted or trusted by the people she led, that at
the first sign of criticism, she shut down.

Even when Eamon and the other three rode back
into camp, she kept to herself. Taking her dinner and leaving the
comfort of the firelight to eat in solitude in the darkness.

Perhaps it was best to end things here before
she got more involved. She’d never been particularly good at
relating to others. Seemed things hadn’t changed.

She should continue with her original plan
and look for her chance to slip away.