The Missing Caravans 6

"I think they split up."

The knoll from which they watched the army forge through the wilderness was high above the trees, acquired by taking a winding path to a high mountain meadow.

The trail left by the Lowpool scouting party trod into the dirt by army marching, the group had been nearly paralleling the army's progress in mountain paths pointed out by the village hunter Raun.

One of the few hunters the Lowpool had, a woman named Veris, frowned. "If we continue in this direction, we're going to hit the Shaking Barrens."

"The what?"

She glanced at the townsman who spoke. "It's a mess of tunnels and caves, among the gullies and ravines. The land is uncertain, and may fall out from under you. Little vegetation, few trees to hold the soil together. Good hunting for crystal lizards, bad idea for the average casual stroll."

Raun was studying the illustration Defi made earlier, when they were still in town. "You say this is where you encountered this Shade-fog?"

Defi crawled backward from the top of the knoll. "At least, it's where the tracker thought to check for Shade in the fog. We were walking the bottom of a ravine. The mists were prevalent."

One of the men grunted. "Shade-fog's only effective within a hundred mar, and you need at least three casters. Even if this is an outpost, I expect you were close enough to the main camp that those marchers down below can't miss it. So, hunter? You can get us there?"

"The Shaking Barrens are unavoidable, if this is right." He shook the piece of paper.

Veris joined them, grimaced as Raun pointed out specific landmarks in the landscape drawing. "If that is where your bandit camp is, they must have found a stable cavern somewhere."

"A cavern in the Shaking Barrens?" laughed Tamal. "Might as well tell us to hit a star in the sky."

Veris shook her head. "If you say a hundred people or more…"

"It has to be the Groaning Cliff," finished Raun.

There were multiple groans from various people the party itself.

"Did you have to say it?" grumbled a Genlet hunter. "We're doomed."

Raun smirked. "You town hunters don't stray much from the old paths, do you. There's a dozen places you can enter the Groaning Cliffs, if you're careful."

"Crazy villager," mumbled a voice. There were huffs and sounds of agreement from various hunters.

Ral sighed. "Can any of those paths accommodate us?"

"There's a couple," Raun shrugged. "The most obvious is the one the army's taking, and probably also the bandits since they had to transport the trade goods. If you want a fight that bad, then it's going to be just a bit…tricky."

"It's not the fight that's the problem," Defi murmured. "We'll leave that to the soldiers. It's the people taken."

"That major's making a pretty good distraction already," nodded a grizzled man with eyes like a hawk. "Imagine he thinks the same. I'd rather not be told to turn back now."

"If you want to avoid the army, there is one trail the guild hunters wouldn't take," Raun started to grin.

"Even if they know it?"

Raun's lips stretched wider. "It's called Sleeper's Ravine."

"You're mad."

"Do you want us to die?"

"Don't worry," the village hunter said blithely, innocently, to the protests. "It's not mating season right now."

*

Unlike many of the canyons, which led into another, then another, and another, creating a network of cliffs and gullies across the mountains and into the Barrens, Sleeper's Ravine was closed at both ends. It was more a hole than anything else.

Sleeper's Ravine was not a ravine so much as it was a jagged rip that dug so deep into the earth that the bottom could not be seen. Geven peered into it curiously, Defi beside him.

Geven picked up a rock, was about to toss it in when a hand grabbed his wrist.

One of the hunters glared at them. "Try not to kill us quicker."

Raun led them down the lip of the ravine, to a carved path in the cliff.

Defi looked around in surprise at the numerous flowers that grew on and along the covered path. The place was rife with vegetation and fragrant with the scent of blossoming life.

There was a quiet sleepiness to the place, that made him want to lie down and close his eyes, just rest and let his worries fade away.

He bent down to examine a shimmering between a few blooms of pale yellow, and stopped short, stared in consternation at the white animal skull, shimmering in various colors as the light caught it.

Some mystic animal, probably, that saw its end in this wide garden path high on the side of a cliff.

He reached out to touch the skull in fascination, pushing aside several red flower stalks, to pause at another skull revealed near it, this time a mundane chalky yellow-white.

This one was a human skull, half buried in the sweet-smelling grass. A small black beetle crawling on the rim of sightless orbs flared its white and brown mottled wings as Defi exposed it to the light.

He retracted his hand and stood, looked around with sharper eyes.

Here and there, under flowers, half-hidden under moss and grass, flashes of particular shape, of chalky white and pitted brown; piles of bone under a wash of flowers and growing things, the detritus of years upon years of collection.

The air suddenly seemed too saccharine.

There was a hum from deep in the ravine that he had not noticed before, so naturally did it blend into the background. They had probably been hearing it for a while now, their ears getting used to it as they neared the lip of this boneyard of a hole in the ground.

It was a gentle beguiling hum that contributed to the sleepy quality of the place.

He felt dread curl cold claws at his nape.

"Listen. Flame and Sun Shades on the outside, those who don't have fire sigilcards on the inside. Keep your fire cards ready."

All thirty-two of them were now gathered at the beginning of the path, the trail down the ravine too narrow for more than two people.

"I don't have to tell you not to flare your Shades." Raun continued. "Just don't panic when you see a cloud and you'll be fine."

Defi was confused. "A cloud?"

"Of wasp-beetles. You don't have sigilcards, at all do you." Geven hustled Defi into the center of the formation. "Try to at least have the burst series the next time you go after bandits, hm?"

"I'll make note of it." He'd rather not make a habit of bandit hunting.

"If we aren't flayed down to the marrow today, I'll do temple work every day for a month," laughed the person before him.

"If you do not shut up, it will be my knife you feel in your bones and my teeth in your flesh," came the strained retort.

The formation started to move forward at a fast walk, Raun at the head, the others in a streaming tail behind him.

Defi put together the pieces and nearly stumbled.

There were insects in this ravine that ate people?

Truly, there were downsides to pretending to be a local. Not being able to ask the questions he wanted was possibly the most frustrating. Then again, he could pretend to have grown up cloistered in a farm and never taught anything about the world? He laughed inwardly. That would likely be even more troublesome.

In any case, it didn't matter.

Either way he would still be here, jogging alongside sharp-eyed hunters and grim-faced former soldiers, running with the young bloods of Genlet and the Lowpool.

Where else would he be?

He was not one to leave comrades behind.

"Trouble," sang a call from the front. "Run faster!"

Their boots thudded in faster rhythm in that flowery corridor cut into the cliff. No one spoke, only ran.

The humming within the ravine was now evident, no more the gentle lazy air but an uneasy expansion of sound.

From the lightless depths of the ravine rose two curls of smoke, twining around each other like a lover's reuniting embrace, singing to each other in low voices.

"Territory dispute, ready fire cards!" One of the hunters growled. "Steady there! If you turn their attention to us, by the Bridgemaker I will throw you into the ravine myself!"

"Crystal drake ahead!" came the urgent call from the front.

"What!?" The cry came from multiple throats.

"Chelua, we're damned."

There was a reptile sunning itself on a ledge up ahead. It was as long as four men lined up head to toe, from the tip of the long snout to the spiked tail. A horned frill swept back regally from the back of its head. It rolled over on seeing the group, eyes intent, body crouching in that anticipatory manner that predators had. Between its limbs, there were folds of scaled skin. In its mouth were the sharp teeth of the carnivore.

Defi surmised that it was a glider, not a flyer. In this corridor with no way except forward or back, they were exposed.

"Flare!" came the roar.

"Are you mad?!"

"Just do it!"

Defi's sight became a rainbow of color, motes of power in various color surrounding the group, shimmering around him. Almost like a fire-festival, where they shot flames that burst into colorful flowers in the sky before burning out in sizzling showers.

The Current swirled within him, as if happy to see the sight.

Unfortunately, the only thing he could do was let the Current flow into his limbs and alleviate the fatigue.

"Wasp-beetles, incoming! Ready fire cards!"

The crystal drake's head swung to the ominous buzzing, spread its arms and legs, and jumped from the ledge. Even such a majestic creature would run to escape the cloud made of insects individually thousands of times smaller than itself.

Fire bloomed around Defi, a roar that nearly drowned the buzz of the wasp-beetles.

A sharp pain pierced his neck. He clapped a hand to it, looking to see a dead insect in his palm, its wings in mottled white and brown.

"Keep going!"

Defi fumbled in the pouch attached to his belt, grasping one of the few sleeping oil bombs he had left. He peeled away the protective layer, activated it, and hurled it as hard as he could into the dark mist of small insects blown back by the fire of the group's sorcerers. The cloud was only just recovering as more wasp-beetles rose from the depths of the ravine.

The sleepbomb exploded, only visible because of the sudden thinning it created in the swarm, spreading from the area of explosion.

It gave them a few seconds of breathing room.

"Fire!"

They entered a tunnel, the bright sunlight suddenly extinguished. Unlike the sunlit walkway, the tunnel was devoid of vegetation, the walls dark and the only light was from the torch cards of the sun sorcerers.

"Faster! Move!"

In the tunnel, only the people at the back could protect them. Defi palmed another sleepbomb, waited until everyone was inside, and tossed it behind them to detonate at the tunnel entrance. At the very least, it would give them another few seconds. The smoke lingered in the enclosed space.

He quickly followed the others.

The tunnel ended in a layer of rock.

Raun activated a card and the wall crumbled.

"Don't dawdle now," the hunter laughed even as he slapped a wasp-beetle from his arm.

Beyond the tunnel was a cavern, wide as a palace, with the ceiling maybe fifty mar above them.

The last of them rushed out of the tunnel.

Raun activated two cards. One a stream of fire that swept through the tunnel to scour it clean, and second a wall of stone rose to cover the tunnel.

Defi glanced around, shaking his coat vigorously. The others were doing something similar, frantically ridding themselves of the last of the wasp-beetles. None of them escaped without a few stings.

Raun grinned. "That wasn't so bad."

Ral glared at him, wiping beetle juice on his trousers. "When, precisely, is mating season?"

"After the rains, so maybe around first fall or so."

Ral stilled. "First fall is less than a sennight away."

"It might have been a poorer idea than I thought, but we're alive, eh? The swarm was good luck even. We never would've gotten past the drake."

Ral forcibly refrained from comment. He stalked away.

Everyone here had their reasons for coming, their friends and family not the least. Though the expressions on the thirty people's faces were not the best, it was true that they were alive.

For more than a few of them, being alive and mobile was enough.

Defi could clearly see the thought on their faces. He was the same after all.

Being alive and mobile meant they still could do what they needed to.