Pathfinder's Way

by T. A. White

  “Uh-“

  “You took it, didn’t you?”

  “I may have, in my haste, gone through your bags, looking for anything that might be of use.”

  “And you thought my rope would be useful?”

  She shrugged. “Well, it did come in handy.”

  “And my knife?”

  “You can never have too many knives.”

  He threw his saddlebag down and glared at her. She spread her hands. “It was either take the rope and save your life or let you get eaten. Are you really going to tell me that you’d prefer to be beetle food?” She jutted her jaw out stubbornly.

  “Enough,” Eamon said, stepping between them. To her, “Where’s your jacket?”

  “My what?

  “Your jacket. The green one with yellow trim.”

  Ah, that. “It’s with the rest of my stuff on top of the cliff.”

  Buck swore. “Hell, he was running.”

  Shea dropped her arms. Eamon’s sharp eyes caught the movement and his face darkened.

  “I wasn’t running,” Shea defended. “I was just moving myself to a better position in case things went bad.”

  Buck looked skyward and shook his head. Eamon folded his arms across his chest.

  “Do you really think I would have come and saved your asses if I’d planned on running?” She could tell by the shift in Buck’s stance that she had their attention and pressed her advantage. “If I’d wanted to run, I could have just left you to your fate. Nobody would have been the wiser, and I could have made it half way home before anyone noticed. If they noticed at all.”

  “Doesn’t matter now,” Eamon said, his voice a deep rumble. “He saved us. End of story. We need to find the others.”

  Buck pointed a finger, “We’ll be taking this up later.”

  Shea rolled her eyes. Yeah. Only if they were all still alive.

  The canyon walls narrowed to a slim slip of space that made it impossible to walk side by side, and Eamon’s broad shoulders blocked Shea’s view of the path ahead. In several spots, the men had to squeeze to fit through. Shea, being smaller, had an easier time of it, though at certain points she had to contort her body too.

  She glanced up at the sky. The gray of the rock nearly blended into that of the thin strip of cloud that was visible, making it difficult to distinguish one from the other.

  Shea stepped up onto a half buried boulder, checking the ground on the other side for any potential dangers before stepping down. Buck followed, placing one hand on the wall to steady himself as he looked over their heads.

  So far there hadn’t been any sign of a struggle. No blood, no bodies or discarded items.

  The three had agreed to maintain silence in case the shadow beetle was attracted to noise.

  As they pushed further into the canyon, the path became more and more impassable and they were forced down twisting corridors and had to climb over fallen rocks. They passed several more burrows, which Shea made sure to point out to the other two. After the last one, Eamon’s face had gotten tight and his eyes hard.

  Why hadn’t the men turned around the moment it became clear the path would be impossible for the horses to travel?

  Shea looked above them again, running her hands slowly down the ravine’s mottled gray walls. So far, no sign of movement.

  Buck stopped when she did, his hand going to the pommel of his sword. It wasn’t the first time she’d gone still, thinking she had seen something, but no matter how many times she stopped to take a closer look at her surroundings, they didn’t complain.

  Eamon held up a closed fist signaling a stop. Buck stepped back and to the side while Shea froze where she was.

  Eamon crouched and pointed at a shred of cloth snagged on a rock about ten feet above the ravine’s floor. Movement on the opposite side caught Shea’s eye. There one moment and gone the next as if something had just slid out of sight.

  She tapped Eamon on the shoulder and then pointed to where she thought she saw movement. Together, they backed out of sight very slowly until a boulder shielded them.

  “Fuck.” Buck’s voice was low and strained.

  Eamon pressed his back against the wall and peeked around it, trying to spot the shadow beetle.

  “I can’t see it.” The skin around his eyes was tight, and the knuckles of the hand clenched around his sword were bleached white. “That means it hasn’t fed, right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?” Buck hissed. “You said if it wasn’t black it hadn’t fed.”

  “You’re acting like I’ve spent my life studying these things,” Shea snapped. “The closest I’ve ever been to one was the one I just killed. Usually when I come across beast sign, I know enough to avoid the damn things. Not stroll into its den and poke it with a stick. I’ve only seen this thing twice. Once when it was feeding and had turned black. Judging by the fact these suckers are usually the color of a rock, I figured eating turns them black. But that’s still just a guess.”

  She made sure to keep her voice to a low murmur. If you knew one thing about a beast, people always expected you to know everything.

  Granted, she usually did know more than she knew about the shadow beetles.

  Eamon grabbed Shea by the shoulders, his larger frame dwarfing hers. “You know more about these things than either of us. That means we’re going to be looking to you for answers. It’s not fair, but that’s just the way it is. Now, you know more than you think.”

  Seeing the rebuttal on her face, he shook her once.

  “Neither of us would have known it had a soft spot on the back of its neck just from seeing an eagle attack it once. We would have simply assumed the eagle’s claws were sharper than our weapons. We’re not expecting miracles from you. Just give us what you know. Every piece of information is more than we had before and could give us an advantage.”

  Shea held his eyes, not sure if that had been a motivational speech or just the truth.

  People always expected miracles. They might say they didn’t, but when the dead were lying on the ground, the finger pointing began.

  Always.

  “We could leave them behind,” she suggested watching him carefully, painfully aware of the large paws still on her shoulders.

  His chest expanded as he inhaled sharply, and his hands clenched momentarily, before loosening to fall to his sides.

  Buck’s lip curled in derision as he looked her over, but Eamon watched her as carefully as she did him. “I can’t do that, and unless I miss my guess, neither can you.”

  Shea stayed leaning against the cool rock at her back even when he released her. She bent her head and gripped her forearms.

  Might as well tell them her theories and observations. It was a little late to pretend ignorance.

  He was right in that she didn’t really have it in her to turn her back and leave them to their fate. She didn’t have it in Edgecomb or outside of Goodwin of Ria, and she didn’t have it now.

  “I don’t know how long they stay flushed with blood,” she told them. Before Eamon could get all disappointed, she said, “Tell me everything you remember from when you encountered the last shadow beetle.”

  They took turns telling her about the attack. Buck held himself stiffly as he recounted his friend being torn in two. The man had been laughing at a joke and then suddenly he wasn’t. Instead, he was in pieces on the ground, never to laugh again.

  Lorn had shouted to retreat, and the beetle had taken him next. After that, Eamon had grabbed Buck and squeezed them into a crevasse between two rocks, stabbing at it with their swords when it tried to root them out.

  Shea asked them to repeat certain parts and expand on others. When they were done, she crouched behind the boulder and peered into the canyon, checking for any movement. Her mind churned through the information they had given her.

  She ducked back and sat on her heels.

  “What do you think?” Eamon asked crouching beside her.

  “I don’t think they h
unt by sight or smell.”

  “Why?”

  “Smell because it would have found us by now. Sight, well I didn’t see any eyes on that thing, did you?”

  Buck tilted his head back, trying to remember. Shea hadn’t been in the state of mind to notice much of anything when she was trying to hack its head off. Of the three, he’d been the one to look it over afterwards. Shea had still been trying to wrap her head around the fact that it was over, and Eamon was busy attending to the dead.

  “There were, but they were very small.”

  “Right, that leaves sound. Buck said the first person it attacked was the one making the most noise. Then it attacked Lorn next despite Buck being closer. Also, if it was where I think it was a little bit ago, it would have had a direct line of sight on us. My guess is it’s attracted to vibrations.”

  Buck started looking over his shoulders and up above their heads. “If it’s attracted to sound, wouldn’t it be able to tell we’re here already.”

  “Possibly, but given how big that other thing was I don’t think it’d be able to fit in this tiny space. Besides, these cliffs act as amplifiers, which can make it difficult to tell a sound’s direction. I don’t think it’ll be able to pin us down until we’re in an enclosed space with it. It might know we’re coming though.”

  “So we’ll have to be as quiet as possible going forward,” Eamon said.

  “It’s not just speaking that we have to be careful of. It’s the way we move too.”

  Eamon stood and adjusted the sword at his waist. Buck edged over to peer around their little rock shelter, taking a closer look at both cliff sides.

  “We’ll spread out so if it attacks, the rest have a better chance of doing something,” Eamon said softly. “We know its weak spot now. We have a chance.”

  Shea’s expression said ‘what the fuck is that going to do?’

  “This is what a scout does, Daisy,” Buck said with a jaunty grin. “We go where others fear to tread. It’s why we’re the best of Hawkvale’s Army. Men fight for the privilege of being a scout. Father’s train their boys from birth for the sole purpose of joining our ranks. Who wants to be swinging a blade while hemmed in on their left and right when they have a chance at true glory? We slay beasts, and we’re not afraid of anything. Not even death.”

  Buck drew his blade, crouched before looking to both sides and above, and then moved forward, walking as lightly as possible.

  Eamon’s large body was framed in the opening as he looked back, giving her an inscrutable look before he too moved into the ravine. Unlike Buck, he didn’t crouch or hunch as if expecting a beast, but he did give everything a once over before stepping quietly out of their hiding place.

  Shea sighed and drew her blade. She couldn’t let them go alone. They didn’t know it, but pathfinders had a similar mentality and were considered just as elite among her people. If she let them go alone, her dignity would never bear it.

  Here goes.

  As she stepped out, her body tensed for a blow that never came. She moved carefully, picking each foot up and setting it down softly before shifting to move the other foot, ensuring that she didn’t accidently kick any pebbles or step too hard. All the while she was on the lookout for any odd shapes, weird outcroppings or movement in her peripheral vision.

  Buck had made his way to the cloth fluttering from the cliff. After scrutinizing the rock around the fabric, he pulled it down. He examined it before sticking it in his belt and returning to the middle of the canyon.

  A tunnel, about half the height of Eamon, burrowed into the soft rock of the cliff. She edged around it, leaving a wide space between it and her. The empty blackness taunted her with what might be waiting to pop out. It was too small for an adult beetle to fit through. It had to be one of the ones the mother had dug to lay her eggs.

  Shea crossed in front of it as quickly as she dared. Buck, on the other hand, approached stealthily and stuck his head in, trying to see into the black.

  When he caught her eye, he gave a shrug that said he was curious.

  These guys were crazy.

  She followed Eamon, keeping an eye out and her weapon loose in her hand.

  Still no sign of the others. Where did they go? It wasn’t as if there were a lot of places to hide. The sheer cliffs offered no shelter, and there were no boulders or trees to conceal themselves behind. Just rocky dirt. And burrows.

  She froze, twisting to find Buck sticking his head down another one.

  They couldn’t be that dumb, could they?

  Eamon had stopped moving and was giving the burrows an assessing glance. He looked over his shoulder and tilted his head at the dark hole.

  Yep, they could be that dumb. Shea mouthed a curse.

  That’s why Buck was so all fired curious about the damn things. He thought their people might be in them.

  He backed out of the latest one and shook his head at Eamon.

  To those unfamiliar with the shadow beetle, it would have made sense to seek shelter in one of the smaller tunnels. The shadow beetle was too big to follow. It would seem like the safest place if you didn’t know about the hundreds, possibly thousands, of eggs filled with ravenous baby shadow beetles, just waiting to hatch.

  Buck straightened and pointed at the tunnel he just checked, making the sign for tracks. It was no bigger than waist high and only about two feet across. He’d found several footprints in the dirt in front of it.

  They shared looks of equal distaste.

  None of them wanted to head down into the dark. Eamon rolled his eyes up to the sky as if to say ‘why me?’ while Buck rested one arm against the stone and covered his eyes.

  Eamon crouched to the side and cupped his hands around his mouth whispering as loud as he could into the dark, “Vale? Anyone? Are you alive down there?”

  Buck and Eamon tilted their heads, trying to hear a response.

  Shea turned partially away and raised her weapon as she scanned the canyon. When no response came, Eamon duck walked a few feet, trying hard not to bump his head on the ceiling. He repeated the call.

  A shout ripped through the blackness. It was piercingly loud in the quiet.

  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 direct
ion.

  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.