| |
I sprung out of bed, startled by the briinninnin noise of my alarm clock, then groaned and flopped back into the covers. The new clock Inese dug out of storage for me started ringing at zero eight hundred. It was now zero eight fifteen. I shut the thing off and straightened my clothes of their persistent wrinkles. Inese lent me a pair of jeans and a t-shirt shortly after I arrived, but they felt so stiff and strange that I only wore them long enough to wash and dry my own clothes in the maintenance room. Besides, Tim and Lance gawked at me whenever I showed up in her outfit, and I didn’t like being stared at.
Wrinkles it was.
Outside, Lance’s alarm clock buzzed through his doorway, and when I knocked I got a half-Russian complaint about being almost ready. That hadn’t changed, at least. I left him there and headed to the kitchen. Tim was already halfway through breakfast. I was surprised he hadn’t gotten up earlier.
“Morning.” I moved to the stove and wrapped a tortilla shell around the powdered eggs Crush left warming in the skillet.
“Good morning,” Tim replied. “How were your dreams?”
Mom once told me that the telling of dreams was supposed to bring everybody together as a whole Community. My dreams hadn’t felt like that lately, with Commander Rick looming over me, scowling and saying lies about how the Community was safe, and Lady Black quietly leading me through the dorm halls with everyone gawking.
“All right,” I lied.
“I was working on a computer program,” Tim explained without my having to ask. “Then I was flying in a large plane, and...”
I sighed and ate my burrito, not really listening until Lance came in with his hair dripping water down the back of his neck. He acknowledged us with a “hi,” then plopped into a chair, squinting as if he wasn’t awake.
“Well?” Tim asked.
It took us both a moment to realize he expected Lance to tell his dreams, too.
“You don’t really want to talk about dreams, do you?” I asked.
“Jenna’s right,” Lance said. “We don’t have to, so why worry about it? Anyway, what’s for breakfast?”
Not exactly what I’d said, but at least I wouldn’t hear about planes and powers again. None of the rebels participated in the telling of dreams. Though I missed the routine I’d had at home before college, dreams weren’t one of them. Mom’s breakfast was.
Half an hour later, Tim and Lance were arguing over the benefits of a second burrito when Inese swung into the kitchen. She wore full combatant armor, like the day we’d first seen her. “You ready, Jenna? We’re going after Gwen.”
I blinked. “They found her?” That was good. Once we found Gwen, Pops wouldn’t have to worry about his team anymore and I might be able to contact my parents.
Lance glanced at me. “I’ll come, too. You might need backup.”
Inese nodded. “The more, the merrier. Tim?”
Tim twisted his fingers around the chain of his charm necklace. “I guess I could use the tablet to run analytical programs on any tracks we find.” He bit his lip nervously.
I didn’t blame him. If it weren’t for already telling Crush I’d help, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to go. My training was nowhere near ready for a full-fledged mission.
“Good. You’ve got ten minutes to get to the hangar. Jenna, I want to talk to you privately.”
“Privately? Uh—sure.”
Inese followed me to my room and waited for me to fasten my armbands. “How well can you control those?”
“Sort of well?” The vines curled at my command, but that was about it.
They might react to fear.
Maybe.
Inese extracted a pistol from the holster at her side and offered me the grip. I recoiled. I’d never held a gun before. Guns were for security. “You aim and pull the trigger,” she said. “Make sure to release the safety lock before you do.”
I stared at it. “I’ve never—”
“Firing is simple.” She stood beside me and showed me the basics: how not to hold the gun, how to release the safety, to shoot with both hands at the largest target, and that pointing a loaded gun at anything I didn’t want dead was a bad idea.
“I’ve got another one in the car,” she said when I tried to hand it back. “Besides, Lance has swords, and Crush and I are training Tim with a pistol. Your vines are great and all, but you may need something with a little more... oomph.”
I felt the weight of the gun in my hand. Its heft made me nervous and insecure. Security had training courses for a reason. What if I shot it wrong?
Inese planted a hand on her hip. “Is the safety lock on?”
I checked it, then nodded. She handed me the holster.
“Good. Let’s get going.”
For the next hour, Inese flew Tim, Jack, Lance, and myself over the ocean, where blue-green waves crested and fell until we sighted land. We flew over a beach, and a short while later, we finally descended into dense green jungle. Inese landed the invisible car in a small clearing, scattering a flock of scarlet macaws.
The three of us and Jack slid out from the car, and the moment we were outside the car’s boundaries, we turned visible. The car lifted away and the wind that startled the birds earlier buffeted against me.
There was plant life everywhere. Sweet-smelling flowers scented the air. Trees towered overhead, growing and reaching for the bright sun. Vines and moss draped from their branches, providing moist shade. Water trickled from a nearby stream. Despite the encroaching heat and warm breeze, the weather wasn’t bad.
“Inese isn’t coming with us?” Tim asked.
Jack pulled his jacket tight, avoiding the troublesome foliage as he plowed into the jungle. “She’ll keep watch from the air in case there’s trouble. Always good to have a fast escape. But, just in case any of those mercs are running about, we’ll maintain radio silence.”
Tim twisted his lips and diverted his attention to his tablet.
That must’ve been why Inese gave me her pistol. She wouldn’t need it—but we might.
“Now,” Jack’s voice cut through the chirruping frogs and cooing birds, “if we do run into trouble, remember that I’m team commander. If I tell you to run, run. I tell you to fight, fight. I tell you to hide, hide. Otherwise you’ll end up dead, captured, or worse.”
“Worse?” Tim squeaked, clenching his tablet. I sighed, fingering the snap that held the pistol in place. It’d be easy enough to get to. I just wished I had more training.
“Made into a beastie.” Jack tried pushing the jungle vines aside with his clawed hands—with little success. “Way I hear it, the transformation isn’t pleasant. It wipes the beastie’s memories and humanity. Lets them be controlled by a beastmaster, someone with the power to control animals. And you three would be beasties if Pops hadn’t decided to save you. Don’t forget that.”
While the idea that beasts could be controlled wasn’t complete proof that the rebels were telling the truth, if we did see a beastmaster controlling those creatures, that cast a decent motive on the Camaraderie for using beasts in the first place. Jim did say the Camaraderie was fighting the Oriental Alliance. Perhaps beasts didn’t question orders. That’d been a problem among soldiers since pre-Community times.
After a long, itchy silence, Jack motioned for Lance to hack the vines from their roots with his sword. I flinched with each stroke, sensing the plant’s separation.
“Any idea what happened to Gwen?” I asked, trying to distract myself from the destruction.
“No idea. Inese had a hunch that she was in trouble. Crush tried to contact her, and when he didn’t get an answer, Pops decided it was time we started lookin’. ” He stroked his stubbly chin, then motioned to me as Lance gave his now-slightly-duller sword a puzzled look. Jack pointed to the tangled mass of vines, roots, and stems. “Huh. The plants are tougher than usual. Jenna, give your powers a shot.”
I smirked. The foliage had held up quite well.
I closed my eyes, imagining the plants moving and untwisting from each other. It was unlikely that I’d be much help, but using my powers was better than letting Lance and Jack destroy everything in their path.
Jack chuckled. “There ya go, Jen. Yer practice is payin’ off.”
Using powers was slow going, even when I tried to focus on using my secondary speed power, but the semblance of a path eventually formed in front of us. Jack grinned, murmuring that he preferred patience over dodging Lance’s wild sword strokes.
After half an hour of untwisting vines to make our own path, the trees gave way to an open, well-traveled dirt road, thereby relieving me from my duties. Large insects landed on my exposed skin and bit my neck and fingers, despite the bug repellant we’d sprayed earlier. I slapped one bug, then grimaced at the welt left on my hand.
At least I was wearing long sleeves and pants when I left the Community. But the sleeves were warm, clinging to my skin from humidity. Russia was never this bad. I wiped my forehead of sweat, and Tim gasped for breath.
“How much farther?” he asked.
“Eh. They’re around here somewhere.” Jack brushed some unfortunate insect’s blood stain from his hand and onto his pants. “I’m surprised we haven’t seen the locals yet.”
“No kidding. We’ve been out here forev—” Tim squeaked, barely grabbing a tree to steady himself as he tripped.
“You okay?” I asked.
He scrunched his nose. “That log felt squishy. Does everything rot this fast in a jungle?”
Jack turned on his heel and knelt where Tim had stumbled. Seconds later, he kicked a pile of broad leaves aside, and the three of us quickly stepped back. Jack’s search had revealed a human body. It was dressed in a plain cotton shirt. Claw marks raked the chest and burn marks scored the corpse.
Trees spun, and I pressed my hand against a nearby branch.
Community... I was going to be sick.
“What did that?” Lance asked, staring at it with horrified fascination. I swallowed hard, pulling on every memory I ever had in biology class to keep myself focused. The agent Lance killed seemed pleasant in comparison.
Tim closed his fingers around the light bulb charm. “Wild animal?”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t account for the burn marks.”
The corpse was mutilated. Its face wasn’t recognizable, and a swarm of flies buzzed around the maggots that squirmed across its flesh. Bile rose in my throat. “That’s not going to happen to us,” I murmured forcefully. “It can’t.”
Tim nodded, pale. Though Lance would’ve seen the occasional devastated body in his security classes, and I had the advantage of biology, Tim had neither.
“Tim’s closer than you think. Beasties got this guy.” Jack knelt beside the corpse and pushed it onto its stomach. The bile came back and I scrunched my shoulders. Lance set his jaw; he must’ve been forcing himself to watch.
“You said this place was clear,” Tim yipped.
Jack nodded, somber. “That’s what we thought.”
This was what a beastie could do? The idea that the beast had been human, a student like me, did not settle well with my stomach. There was nowhere to run out here. If one of those beasties attacked us, I wouldn’t know where to go.
I traced the holster of Inese’s gun, wishing I had better control over my powers.
Jack clicked his radio. “Inese? We found a dead local. Beastie attack.”
The radio crackled. “Yeah—looks like beasties have moved into the area, and there’s at least one beastmaster out there.”
Jack frowned. “That’s what I was afraid of. Be ready for a quick getaway. Jack out.” He turned off the radio and straightened his back. “Let’s go. Lance, have your sword ready. Tim, your gun. And Jenna—” He flicked the limp vine around my arm. “You’ve got the whole jungle at your disposal. Focus on the plants and let us know if you feel anything unusual.”
I nodded, mute. Even if I didn’t know how to shoot the gun, I now appreciated Inese’s foresight. I pressed my fingers together, trying not to imagine what could’ve done such a horrible thing to the corpse in front of us.
Clawed and burned—nothing I knew of made burns like that.
Lance stepped over a second disfigured corpse and I skirted around it. There were three more bodies on the trail, each as mutilated as the first. Jack motioned us deeper into the jungle, and I parted the vines that were in our way. They curled like snakes, slithering off the ground to let us pass. Above, a monkey swung from a branch, hooting when I accidentally disturbed its roost with a stray vine.
Jack led us toward a large, stone structure set on a barely marked trail. “Gwen might’ve been around here somewhere.” He led us through a thick of jungle flora, closer to the towering pyramid. Huge chunks of the stone tower had fractured from the upper portion of the temple and now littered the clearing. A few of the giant pieces were covered with a thick blanket of moss; apparently they had been here a while. The other chunks of stone looked devoid of plant life, their breaks fresh and powdery. A battle must have happened here recently, as evidenced by the discovery of several more bodies; some human, some... something else. Tim excused himself from the immediate scene of decay and vomited in the bushes.
This was just like those pictures I’d seen in the brig. The beastie’s corpse lay stretched in an unnatural position. Fine hairs stuck at odd angles from its body where dried blood attracted gnats. Almost human, it had sharp teeth and ears that flattened against its head with pointed tips.
Something had eaten its eyes.
This creature was impossible, an abomination, a monster.
A bright blue butterfly landed on its chest. How could something so beautiful live among this?
Something tapped my shoulder and I shrieked. Birds fluttered from the trees, their colorful wings flashing in the dappled light. I gasped, trying to catch my breath.
“That’d be a beastie.” Jack gestured to the corpse. “And ya ought to keep quiet. Otherwise the locals’ll find us.” He patted my shoulder and returned to investigating the stone structure.
“Aren’t we trying to find them?” Tim asked, his voice shaky. “Aren’t they allies?”
“Sure, but if there’s been an attack recently, they might not ask many questions before defending their territory.”
I clenched my teeth, unable to look away from the corpse.
Beasts. This is what the rebels had warned me about. Beasts were real. “Why would they do this?” I couldn’t believe anyone would create something so monstrous. It wasn’t efficient. It wasn’t right. No wonder E-Leadership kept this secret. If people knew this is what happened to those diagnosed with theophrenia—real or not—there would be chaos.
“Hrmm?” Jack turned as he pulled his gnarled, reddish hair into a ponytail and out of his face.
“Why would anyone create this—this creature?” A burning fury curled in my throat. Fury that the rebels would lie and say the leaders who created peace could do such a thing, and fury that those same leaders might’ve actually done the accused.
Jack scowled. “The Camaraderie of Evil calls themselves evil for a reason. Whatever else they might try to hide, they ain’t hiding that fact.”
No leader would call himself evil. It wasn’t natural. But neither was this corpse. A disease couldn’t cause this kind of physiological mutation. The cat-like eyes. The pointed ears. The thicker brow and elongated limbs. It couldn’t. There had to be something else involved in the transformation.
Lance stepped cautiously around the body, while Jack examined the stone structure. He traced his finger along a jaguar carving that stylistically morphed into a serpent around the temple’s base.
I shut my eyes and tried to think of something other than beasts: a blue and green flag with a little gray stick figure family on it. Safety, security, efficiency—stitched into the fabric, beasties lying dead on the ground...
I shivered. Something was watching us.
I scanned the trees and the undergrowth, my hairs on end. I’m just nervous, that’s all.
There was nothing out here but a line of plant growth tracing to a bundle of vines that clustered high in the trees above the temple.
A bead of cold sweat trickled down my back, and I hurried to where Jack inspected the temple’s stone blocks. He scratched at the moss and chipped the stone, then inspected the chips between his claws. “Looks like the damage was recent,” he murmured, looking up at the top of the temple.
I followed his gaze. The stairway was broken halfway up the temple’s side. The whole upper section had crumbled. Broken stone smothered the thick grass, crushing the plants that now lay dying for lack of sunlight. I withdrew my senses, unnerved. I could feel the plants dying. Craving light, nourishment—
Life.
Overhead, a bird cawed and rustled through the thick canopy, vanishing into the bright, cloudless sky. I shuddered and glanced over my shoulder, making sure the dead beastie hadn’t suddenly returned to life. Beyond the broken stalks and vines, the trees glowed with power. Pulsing and thrumming with uneven energy. Whispering...
Maybe being around this many plants so soon after discovering my powers was a bad idea. Or maybe full-immersion was better. Who knew?
I wriggled uncomfortably. I could sense the weight of something pressing into the grass behind the temple. The plants there felt different from the drooping ferns close to me. But they also felt different from the plants being crushed under the weight of the stones. The pattern felt wrong. More organic. I circled around the stone structure. I could see Lance from here, so long as I walked far enough out from the temple’s base. Lance knelt at the beastie’s corpse, examining it closer and prodding it with a stick.
He had more nerve than I did.
The other side of the temple greeted me with a rotten, horrible stench. I gagged and held my hand over my nose. A pile of bodies both human and beast lay stacked across each other, each mutilated with burn marks or disjointed jaws and heads. Some were strangled from vines wrapped around their throats.
Nutrients for the forest.
The jungle crowded in on me. Too much plant life, too much decay. I shivered. Nutrients for the forest? What was I thinking? Community... this place was horrible.
I took a deep breath, and once I was sure my legs weren’t going to collapse under me, I staggered forward, trying to get a better idea of what happened. Some bodies had metal spears goring their chests and legs, while others held those bloodied and forgotten spears. Though many of the victims wore green uniforms and camouflaged gear, some had plain clothes.
“Jack? I found more bodies...” My voice reached a higher pitch than I knew possible.
Jack sprang over a log, pursued by Lance and Tim. When he saw the pile, he moved forward and pushed the bodies off one another, faster and faster.
Minutes later, he stepped away and let out a heavy breath. “Gwen isn’t here.”
Relief surged through me and Lance let out a low whistle. If we weren’t careful, that would be us in the pile. Goosebumps rose on my skin.
Jack brushed his hands of pollen and dirt, then grabbed his radio and spoke into it. “Looks like the locals had a bout with mercs. Not sure who won.”
“Any sign of Gwen?” Inese’s voice crackled from the speaker.
“No. She’s not here. We’re heading to the nearest village coordinates to see if they know anything.”
“All right. Be careful.”
“Careful? That’s my middle name. Same goes to you. Jack out.”
He grabbed one of the cleaner spears and thrust its shaft at me. “You need a weapon.” When I protested that I had a gun, he added, “Something you know how to fight with. Warning—tip’s electrified.” He pressed a button on the shaft, and the pointed tip crackled. He grounded it against a metal buckle and the corpse danced.
I stepped back. The staff looked long and unwieldy and... electrified. And I hardly knew how to fight with it. On the other hand, Lance glared at me with jealousy.
Totally taking the spear.
“Look,” Jack continued, “this mission’s more dangerous than we thought. Be on your guard at all times—”
“Where’s Tim?” Lance asked. We looked around us, silent. No sign of Tim.
My heart skipped a beat. If he got lost, he might suffer the same fate as the corpses in the clearing. Jack must have had the same thought, because he sprang from his crouch and raced to the other side of the temple, only to stop there and scowl. Tim stood beside a battered stone door, scanning the markings with his tablet.
“Unfortunately, that translator doesn’t translate ancient hieroglyphs,” Jack said.
Tim glanced up. “It doesn’t?”
I peered over Tim’s shoulder. Recent pictures of the temple covered the tablet’s screen, and he switched to a transliteration document filled with partially completed sentences.
Jack gently pushed me aside, then gaped at the tablet. “That’s impossible.”
“What is?” Tim double-checked the screen. “Everything’s right here.”
Jack snatched the tablet and traced his claw down the scrollbar. “I’ll be damned. It does translate hieroglyphs.”
Tim’s eyes darted from the screen to Jack.
Lance peered around Jack’s shoulder. “Cool.”
Jack showed us the half-completed translation. Since the document hadn’t been grammatically corrected, the fragments were a conglomeration of verbs and nouns and descriptors, like a set of shuffled grammar cards.
I pushed the tablet back to Jack.
“Using techno sight and super intelligence to translate ancient documents. Crush’ll want to see that.” Jack took a moment to scout for signs of danger, then checked his own tablet for maps to the nearest village. “Let’s keep moving.”
Lance prodded at vines with his sword while I nudged them aside with my powers. I was now the most heavily armed of us four—given that I had vines, a gun, an electric spear, and the whole jungle at my disposal—but I barely knew how to use any of the weapons in question.
We walked for a solid hour without finding anything, and all of us, except Jack, had half-empty water bottles. “Are we there yet?” Tim complained. He had already shoved the tablet into his pocket and abandoned his attempts at translation. Lance took another swig from his canteen, then woefully shook it. It sloshed, emptier than mine.
“They should be within a mile.” Jack said. “We’ll find—”
“¡Manos arriba!” a rough voice snapped. Seven men in t-shirts pointed rifles and silvery-white spears at us with tips that crackled with electricity. They had golden skin, dark eyes, and dark hair. They’d seen a lot more sun than even Jack had. Tim stared at them... canteen shaking in his hands.
“Or they’ll find us,” Jack muttered. “Hands up.”
I swallowed hard and did what he said.
“¡Tiren sus armas!” the man at the front demanded. I took a wild guess that he was their leader.
Hopefully a friendly leader.
“Put down your weapons—slowly,” Jack said.
My hands shook as I set my spear down on the grass, though there was nothing I could do about the plants around my arms. A local held the tip of his spear mere centimeters from my face. A little spark nearly connected with my nose—deterrent enough from trying to use a gun I couldn’t aim.
“We’re friends,” Jack said carefully. “We’re with the Coalition of Freedom—unless you’ve recently joined the Camaraderie?”
The leader stamped the butt of his spear against the ground, ranting in stilted English. I could barely comprehend his accent... and I didn’t understand enough Spanish to catch the other bits.
“Where did you get the spear?” The leader’s face twisted into a hateful snarl, and he pointed to the spear lying in the dirt. I gulped, willing myself not to step back. Electrified or not, I had no desire to be shish-kebabbed.
Jack kept his voice even. “There was a pile of bodies by a ruined temple. I gave her the spear so she could defend herself from beasties and mercs.”
I wanted to clench my hands together to keep them from shaking. This wasn’t the Community, where guards were focused on our safety. We were the trespassers. There’d be no day in the coolers; no chance of appeal. And they had spears! Who carried spears in this day and age?
Except Lance. Lance didn’t count. He’d been fascinated with swords ever since I’d known him.
I kept an eye on the guy in front of me. He narrowed his eyes, checked my arm bands, then murmured something in Spanish to one of his friends. A rifle pointed my direction. Stupid efficiency. I was the most heavily armed. They probably thought I actually knew how to use everything. I tried to give them a nervous smile, but neither of them moved their weapons.
“We’re looking for a friend—Gwen Vansant,” Jack told them. “She had information from one of your villages on the Camaraderie’s movements.”
The discontented murmur from the men made me wonder if he’d said the wrong thing. “They took her in an attack,” the leader said. “We lost several members of our militia.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack said grimly.
“The Camaraderie showed interest in the temple. They stole la piedra de los viajeros. We had asked Gwen to hide it.” Then he added something in Spanish, but I didn’t catch what.
“I see,” Jack said, obviously getting more out of the stilted conversation than I. “A stone. Any idea who took Gwen, and where?”
The leader shrugged. “Mercenaries. Thieves. We wounded them. Trailed them. Quit when we reached the facilities.”
“The facilities?” Jack’s quietness made me shiver. What were the facilities?
The leader wrinkled his nose. “Yes.”
“Can you take us there? If we’re going to save Gwen, we’ve got to get going.”
“Vamos,” the leader called to his men, and they directed their weapons away from us. My “captor” grabbed my spear from the ground and tossed it to me. The weapon landed awkwardly in my hands.
They led us down a narrow trail that was covered in wood chips and surrounded by encroaching walls of green foliage.
“Nothing good’ll happen if Gwen is in Camaraderie hands,” Jack told us. “We need to find her before they have a chance to interrogate her. Her life-spirit power will give her some ability to hold her own, but not much. Not if they bring in higher-end telepaths.”
“Where are we going?” Lance asked.
“One of the Camaraderie’s bases.”
He didn’t say anything further. The silence wracked my nerves until finally, Lance peered over Tim’s shoulder. “Any luck with that translation?”
Tim nodded and showed him his progress. “The gist of it says, ‘Beware the changing guardian; he who carries the five stones travels time in the circle of stone at the longest day.’ Portions of it are missing, though; some of the sentences are incomplete.” He scratched his sandy hair.
“Time stones?” Jack shook his head.
“That’s what it says. It also says something about ‘deities.’ What does ‘deity’ mean?”
Jack blinked and glanced at him over his shoulder. “A deity is one of their gods or goddesses.”
Tim tilted his head quizzically.
“The powers that be? Gods? Really high-ranking leaders?” Jack rubbed his forehead in exasperation. “Didn’t you study mythology?”
“Mythology isn’t practical,” Tim said matter-of-factly. He clicked out of his translation document, revealing a background shot of Lady Black perched on the rising sun half-cog, her signature scrawled across the portrait.
Lance smirked and nudged Tim in the ribs. “Neither is having pictures autographed.”
“At least I got one.” Tim yanked the tablet away defensively.
I groaned. “For the love of the Community... you’re arguing over an autograph!”
Jack frowned. “Practical or not, those beliefs were their way of life. Still is, for some of them. Just like those autographs are part of yours. Anyways, if you see some strange stone lying around the facility, grab it. I think these guys are gonna want it back.”
“It also says something about jaguars bringing the stone from the sky,” Tim said.
Lance burst out laughing. “Space cats, right?” He turned to Jack. “Don’t you have a comic where the bad guys came from Mars?”
Jack waved his hand at the notion and I shook my head. We were heading to an enemy facility and they were jesting about space cats and time travel.
At least we’d die amused.
“¡Bestias!” a man shouted, and the nearest locals vanished into the undergrowth.
The macaws stopped chirping and fluttered away in a rainbow of feathers. Jack waved us into a thicket. “Quiet. Don’t start fighting unless absolutely necessary. Stay back.”
I huddled in the bushes. Waiting...
A soft breeze rattled the leaves. Sweat trickled down my back. Heavy, flowery fragrances clogged my nose, threatening to make me sneeze. I had no idea how long I hunched there, brushing the damp soil with my fingers and sensing the nearby plants.
There was no sound but wind. A few of the locals moved forward, their spears low and almost out of sight. An unnatural weight shifted behind me.
My breath caught in my throat. A man crouched in the trees, his white armor glinting in the tiny spot of sunlight peeking through the leaves.
He raised a crossbow and sighted an arrow.
He was aiming at us.
