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Sinnie followed Nicolas, Carl, and Finn as they followed the drag marks down to the valley floor, where they found a large flat rock near the river that had been the site of a large fire, with burn marks and a few fragments of bone scattered among the ashes. Nearby were six roundish stones set atop freshly dug earth.
“They bury their dead,” Carl said, almost to himself.
“They have art, language, and culture,” Finn added.
“They kill children and old women,” Nicolas said, breaking his silence for the first time since they had descended into the valley.
Sinnie stood silent, her stomach moving in a slow churn. She, Carl, and Finn had killed six warriors, and while they could have been a scouting group or a random group of roving marauders, they could just as easily have been a small nomadic clan traveling with their families. Which would mean that, instead of hunting killers, her group might be hunting mostly women and children. Not that women couldn’t be killers, she thought, picturing the face of the female Maer laying among the ferns. If the remaining Maer had children with them, there was no doubt they would fight to protect their own, maybe even harder than the warriors. But would Sinnie be able to shoot them down as she had those who had attacked them on the road? She hoped not to have to find out.
†
SINNIE WALKED BEHIND Nicolas, scanning the woods ahead for Maer, or whatever the hell else might be out there trying to ambush them. The Maer seemed to have entered the shallows of the river after cremating their dead, so there was no trail to follow, but Nicolas said he knew the way to a likely hideout, a decent-sized cave he had used once when on a long fishing trip with his father. It was several hours downstream, and they followed the river bank among the ferns and scraggly bushes beneath the towering trees. The valley floor was littered with rocks, large and small, which would provide ample cover for an ambush, so they moved slowly, talking little, on alert at all times. Sinnie’s arm grew tired from trying to hold the bow ready, so she carried it low, with an arrow nocked, pulling up from time to time to keep the movement fresh.
They stopped for a quiet lunch shortly after midday, sitting in the shelter between several large rocks while they took turns scouting from atop the boulders. Nicolas did not eat much, his face fixed in a rictus of nervous stoicism. He watched Carl and subtly mimicked his every gesture, which brought a smile to Sinnie’s face for the first time all day. She knew Nicolas’ father had died in the service, and the boy had had to grow up fast, like a lot of kids in the village. By age ten they were expected to work alongside their parents for half a day, leaving the other half for learning, either with Elder Gummache for reading and worldly studies, with Mr. Massey for swordplay, or with one of the craftspeople in the village as an apprentice, which was another word for unpaid servant. But it was their lot, and the children seldom questioned it, and even if they had, what else could they do but go along? Nicolas was nearly of age to join the service himself, and he was trying hard to be the soldier he was expected to be, but his face betrayed his fear. Sinnie wondered if he was afraid enough.
After an hour or so, they saw footprints in the mud along the game trail they had been following. Nicolas and Carl studied the tracks for a few minutes, trying to determine how many had passed that way.
“At least four, maybe as many as eight or ten,” Carl stated, shaking his head. “I do see some that are smaller and some that are bigger, but more than that I can’t say.”
“Smaller, like, child-sized?” Sinnie asked.
Carl outlined one footprint with his finger. It was less than half the size of the others, and indentations from toes were visible in the mud.
“It would have to be. At least two, maybe more. I don’t know.”
Sinnie’s gut roiled. Nicolas nodded but said nothing. Carl looked up, moving his hand in the direction of the sun’s progression. It was now afternoon, and if they were going to head back, they would have to leave soon, for they surely didn’t want to get caught out after dark.
“I figure we can go another hour at most before we would have to turn back, or continue on and find a place to hole up at nightfall. Do you know of any other place nearby we could take shelter?” Carl asked Nicolas.
Nicolas furrowed his brow and shook his head. “I don’t know of anything closer to the village,” he said. “There are a few large rocks we could camp besides, but we would still be exposed.” Carl chewed his lip, looking at each of them expectantly.
“Thoughts?” he asked.
Finn held his finger in the air, opened his mouth, then closed it again.
“What is it?” Sinnie asked. Though she trusted Carl and Nicolas’ experience in such matters, they were so focused on the soldiery details that she hoped for a fresh perspective.
“Well, we’ve been walking for, what, three, four hours, right? And I’m just picturing, I’m wondering, wherever they are, why would they be staying so far away from the rockslide? Maybe...I don’t know, maybe they had a spot closer to Holden’s Glen, but now they’ve left it to go somewhere else for some reason?”
“Maybe they’re on the move, now that they’ve lost the bulk of their fighters,” Carl opined, “and they’re off to seek easier targets.”
“They still have to pay for what they did,” Nicolas said, his face somber. “We can’t afford to let them go, or they might come back with more fighters. We have to end them.”
“Either way,” Sinnie broke in, “we don’t want to be out here after dark, not unless we have a place to hole up.” Nicolas’ attitude was making her nervous. If they found Maer children, would he want to end them too?
“If they are in the cave Nicolas knows about, we should find them soon enough,” Carl said. “And if they’re not there, we have a ready-made place to camp out.”
“Yes, but what if we find the cave and we see that there are more of them than we can handle?” Finn stood closer to Sinnie, and she sensed he was taking her side.
Carl nodded. “You both make good points. I have an idea. What if we head up the valley back to Hollow Road and make for the overhang where we stayed the other night? It shouldn’t be too far from here, and it’s fairly defensible. Then we can head out at first light and hope to find them in the morning, when we have the day to figure out what to do.”
Nicolas gritted his teeth but said nothing. Sinnie exhaled a breath it felt like she’d been holding in for an hour. Finn touched her lightly on the shoulder, and she put her hand on his for a moment, feeling a small drop, then another as a fresh round of drizzle filtered through the trees. Carl adjusted his pack and started the long, wet climb out of the valley.
†
THEY DARED NOT SET a fire in the overhang, so they huddled in the damp and the dark as the mass of stone drained the heat from their bodies. Nicolas fell asleep almost immediately, his soft snoring barely audible over the light patter of the rain.
“The poor kid’s exhausted,” Finn said.
“He’s got a lot to prove to himself,” Sinnie added. “I kind of feel sorry for him.”
“He’s not used to the weight of the mail,” Carl offered. “They make us wear it all day long in the service, even when we’re a hundred miles away from combat. It takes a while to get used to. But he’s a strong one. Did you see him lifting those stones yesterday? He’ll be worth two of me someday, if he doesn’t get killed doing something stupid.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Sinnie brought out the wineskin her mother had sent with her. It was filled with berry wine, which was strong and sweet, just what she needed to ward off the chill, and to chase away the worry about what Nicolas might do.
“Don’t mind if I do.” Finn raised the wineskin and smiled. Or at least Sinnie thought he smiled; there was almost no light piercing through the clouds and rain, so all she could see were the outlines of her friends, shadows upon darkness. Carl took a small sip, no doubt focused on the day ahead, which Sinnie was trying her best to keep to the back of her mind.
Just a month ago, she had been shooting flaming arrows through flaming hoops to the delight of the crowds that came to see Hertle’s Amazing Variety Show, and carousing with the lively acting troupe after the show. Like Ginnie, the bearded lady, who sometimes played the Maer daughter when they performed The Maerwife, the story of a prince from ancient times who fell in love with a Maer. The role of the Maerwife was played by an actress in a furry mask, but Ginnie’s bearded face served her well as the half-Maer, half-human daughter, a tragic figure who drank poison to escape from the cruel treatment she received from society. Sinnie hadn’t thought much about it at the time, but now she wondered if it might have been based on a true story; surely the Maer were not so different from humans that they could not have children together.
When Finn woke her for her watch, the skies had cleared, so there was enough starlight she could make out the shapes of the trees opposite the overhang, which seemed to move and rustle with unseen enemies. About an hour into her watch, as she squatted against a wall to stretch out her muscles, she heard a scream ring out from the valley, faint from the distance but unmistakable. Moments later, she heard the scream again, and a chorus of shrieks and cries joined it. She shook Carl awake, and he scrambled to his feet, fumbled his sword into his hand, and blinked out into the darkness. She kept her hand on his shoulder, shushing him gently, as the screams rose and fell, then went quiet, all except one voice, a male, she thought, which continued off and on, weakening, until at last the valley fell silent.
“It has to be the Maer,” Carl whispered. “I can’t imagine any reason humans would be in the valley in the middle of the night, unless it’s a hunting party from Greenvale. But they would have been warned by now.”
“Maybe whatever got Ms. Stepple is after the Maer,” Sinnie said as the tiny hairs all over her body spiked with dread.
Carl nodded, touched her on the shoulder, and lay back down. “Whatever it was, it should be far enough away that it doesn’t concern us immediately. Wake me up if you hear it again; I’m going to try to get a few more winks before the sun comes up. We have a big day tomorrow.”
Sinnie stared out into the darkness, her head spinning with images of Maer adults and children being torn apart by a shadowy, mysterious beast.