As Satchel forged ahead beside them, Viv couldn’t help watching out the corner of her eye, surprised by his silence and the alertness of his posture, an aggressiveness she’d never observed in him. Her first inkling of potential menace had been those deadly-looking fingers, and that had bloomed into a larger uneasiness.
Although she was increasingly positive it wouldn’t matter anyway.
Signs were scarce—no trampled grass or torn earth, no evidence of hunting. Spinebacks were messy eaters and untidy with their leavings. If they were in the area, she didn’t think they were nearby, and she had a growing conviction that the pack had moved on entirely.
Still, they’d made the journey. There was no reason not to check the area. She was impatient, but she could be thorough. At least, that was what she told herself.
They combed the meadow and slowly began to track through the shallow valleys between the hills on the other side of it, which were studded with shale and half-buried boulders.
“Well, this is a pain in the ass,” muttered Gallina as she shoved away another sheaf of grass at her eyeline. Viv was relieved that she was the one finally complaining.
“We should give it another hour, at least,” said Viv, scanning upslope for any sign of a den or burrow.
Satchel scrambled ahead of them, nimbly crawling over boulders and dancing across shale. He was remarkably agile, and little bursts of blue licked along the script on his extremities as he moved.
Suddenly, he stopped and glanced off to his left. Viv froze, following his gaze. A pile of stone sat wreathed in scrubby brush.
The homunculus signaled to them. Viv gestured to Gallina, who straggled behind, wearying of the climb with her shorter stride.
They joined Satchel to survey what he’d found. Fans of tossed dirt flanked an entrance where some animal had excavated a natural cave into a larger space. Splinters of shattered bone speckled the churned earth. Viv would’ve had to get on her hands and knees to enter, but Gallina or Satchel could probably make their way inside without issue.
That would’ve been foolish, though.
“They are there,” whispered Satchel, an eerie whistle in his echoing voice.
“How can you tell?” asked Gallina.
“Because of what they touch,” he replied cryptically.
And then as though in response, a sound like flint dragged down a granite wall echoed from the cave.
“I’ll be damned. That is a spineback den,” said Viv. “Well, we’ll just have to flush them out. Nobody’s going in there.”
She unbelted her saber and stowed it safely behind a boulder with the satchel, then unslung Blackblood, letting its comforting weight drag on her muscles all the way up to the shoulder.
Viv already had a hand to her mouth, sucking in air to shout, before she caught herself. Her companions regarded her expectantly.
“It isn’t that complicated,” she continued. “I’ll make some noise, and they’ll come piling out. Then we’ll put an end to them. They’re not that bright. I’ll post up and give them a big target, and then …” She raised the point of Blackblood suggestively.
Gallina had a pair of knives in her hands already and glared up at her. “And let you have all the fun? Not gods-damned likely. That big hunk of metal ain’t fast. I’ll be up top.” She gestured at the small outcropping of stone above the tunnel, and without waiting for an answer, she headed off.
Viv almost protested, but then watched as the gnome quietly circled the bushes, until the thatch of her spiky hair appeared above the tunnel. Her blades winked in the sun.
She flicked a glance at Satchel. “This is about as much planning as I ever manage. Are you good?”
“Indeed,” he replied. She waited a beat, in case he needed time to do the thing with his fingers again, but he simply stood there.
Well, she hadn’t expected to need his help anyway.
And she was impatient to live all the way to the edge of things again.
Sucking in a huge breath, she bellowed at the top of her lungs, “Hey, you gods-damned bastards!”
As a battle-cry, it left something to be desired, but they were just dumb beasts.
Her shout rebounded off the bluffs to the east, and when the echoes died away, there was only silence.
They strained for any sign from the yawning mouth of the burrow.
“You sure they’re in there?” hissed Gallina, popping her head up a little higher.
Then the first spineback exploded from the darkness.
Its body was lean and wolflike, ribs like slats, back scaled with rank upon rank of stony spikes. Its eyes were white, gem-like, and its jaw hung low, crammed with teeth like broken fence palings.
Viv brought Blackblood around in a flat arc, catching the thing mid-leap. The stone on its back shattered with a terrific crack, and it was flung upslope, folded nearly in half. Its jagged, chuckling roar faded like rocks tumbling down a ravine.
She was dimly aware of a blue glow to her right as Satchel did … something. The fragments of bone in the dirt began to shiver, as though the ground were quaking.
There was no time to think about that, though, as two more spinebacks burst into view. Gallina dove toward one, dragging a knife along its ribs, the other plunging for its belly.
Viv grinned wildly, already bringing the greatsword back into play on the backswing, heaving up to take the other spineback in the chest.
She was so committed to the swing that when a blur of motion caught her eye from the left, there was nothing she could do but grit her teeth and fling up an elbow.
She only had time to think, with detached annoyance, There’s another gods-damned exit to the burrow.
The elbow saved her ribs from the spineback’s teeth, cracking its jaw closed, but did little to arrest its momentum. It barreled into her and sent her sprawling.
Though her original swing was fouled, it still caught her first target. The spineback howled and tumbled past, ripping Blackblood from her grip and rolling end over end in a tangle of limbs and teeth.
Then Viv was on her side, breath blown out of her, twisting, bringing both hands up to scrabble for the windpipe of the one on top of her. Its jaws snapped inches from her face, breath rank, spittle spraying her cheeks. She got her fingers around its throat and squeezed, bracing to heave it off her, but the angle was all wrong.
She heard Gallina distantly shouting, and a gathering hum and rattle somewhere above her head. An incandescent flash of blue made her squint, and then the air was filled with the sound of a hundred wasps.
The spineback squealed and shivered as it was struck from every direction at once. Viv was sprayed with something wet and hot, and the creature seized, twitching galvanically, then slumped all at once.
She rolled and tossed it to the side, staring in bewilderment.
It wasn’t even alive enough to breathe its last.
Uncountable fragments of bone had punctured it from every conceivable direction.
Viv made it to her knees and stared at Satchel, the blue glow ebbing from the inscriptions along his limbs. His eyes were white hot, already subsiding.
“What the shit?” said Viv.
Gallina staggered up to them both. “Eight hells. You just—” She waved a hand through the air and made a whooshing noise.
Satchel shrugged, and Viv thought he looked embarrassed. “Bones,” he said.
“Well, this is a gods-damned surprise,” puffed Gallina. “When you said you served your Lady, I gotta say, I thought you meant, like … tea.”