Pathfinder's Way

by T. A. White

  “How?” Shea asked as she climbed over one of its legs.

  The limb was twice the thickness of her body, and she had to step up onto it before stepping down. Buck reached out to steady her as she joined them.

  “Turns out the burrows are connected. Since we couldn’t get out the way we came because ole pincher here was trying to dig in, we had to go further down the burrow. That’s when we found the others.” He pointed his chin at the men who examined the beast with bewildered expressions on their faces. “They’d been caught in some kind of substance so we cut them out. Then we just kept following the tunnel.”

  “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.”

  Chapter Nine

  “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 ligh
t 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.

  There were murmurs of agreement.

  “We lost entire tribes warring against each other,” Sam said. “Resources are scarce in our land, and the battles for them can be savage. He instituted brutal laws that benefited him and his council. We broke apart as a people. Hawkvale changed all that when he won the right to rule and began uniting the clans. The Trateri believe he will lead us into a golden age that will rule over all of the Broken Lands.”

  Sounded like Fallon had united the Trateri by giving them a common enemy. People tended to forget their differences and band together when they had something to fight against.

  From their story, it didn’t sound like he’d be content to conquer just the Lowlands. To unite the Broken Lands, he would have to conquer the Highlands, Shea’s home. That couldn’t happen.

  She looked at Eamon. “And you? Do you believe he will lead the Clans to a golden age?”

  “I don’t know.” Eamon’s eyes, even cast in shadow, pierced through Shea. “But if any man can, it will be him.”

  Focus shifted off Shea and onto conversation about their friends and family. Shea didn’t know any of those they were talking about, so it gave her an excuse to bow out of the conversation.

  Her mouth full, she chewed thoughtfully as she listened to them giving each other a hard time. They seemed to enjoy coming up with the best insult. It was easy to be around them, and more than once she smiled in response to a particularly good zinger.

  This was what she liked about being in the field, the easy camaraderie. It was something that had been missing in her life for a while now.

  Before long
, she made her way into the darkness to relieve herself, making sure she was far from prying eyes. Preparing to turn in, she found a relatively flat spot on the ground and pulled out a small blanket to cover her body, laying her jacket on top for extra warmth and arranging the pack she’d retrieved from the top of the cliff behind her head as a pillow.

  She found herself softening towards her companions, no matter how many times she told herself that they weren’t her friends.

  They treated her as an equal. Like someone whose opinion mattered. It had been a long time since she had that, since before the Badlands, if she had ever had it to this extent at all. She thought she might have been building toward this type of give and take with Witt and Dane, but that had been taken away before she knew if it was real or not.

  She shut her eyes, determined to get some rest before they woke her for her shift as night watch in a few hours.

  It didn’t take long for her body to sink gratefully into sleep.

  Eamon rose from the pile of stones he’d been examining. They were assembled into a pyramid, and a short stick stuck out of the side. It pointed to the left.

  “Looks like you knew what you were doing after all,” he told Shea, coming to stand beside her horse. He tilted his head back to smile at her.

  She gave a short nod, her eyes going back to that pile of rocks. They had found signs where a large group had set up camp, but she hadn’t been sure it was the group they were looking for. Judging by the quick smiles of the men, nobody shared her concerns.

  She had a feeling it had something to do with that pile but was afraid to ask in case it was knowledge a real scout would have.

  They no doubt had their own trail sign to communicate with their people. Shea’s people had a method as well and used it for things such as a warning someone of danger or as a signal that they had come this way.

  She couldn’t help but feel like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. They’d been on the trail for eleven days now, and she was beginning to worry they weren’t going to find the company they’d been tasked with locating. For the past day every time Eamon or one of the others had glanced at her, she’d tensed thinking they were about to challenge her abilities.