Gods, I had never seen Atrius grin like that. I thought he was going to weep with joy.
“But there’s an entire nest of slyviks between us and the end,” I said.
Atrius’s face fell.
“Right,” I said.
The slyviks liked the colder air. Most of their nests were near the northern border of the cliffs. We’d gotten lucky and stumbled upon a whole damned mess of them. I couldn’t count exactly how many I sensed, but I knew it was a lot. The best I could give Atrius was, “More than fifteen.”
His expression didn’t change at all, but I could tell just how hard he was working for that stoicism. “And less than?”
I didn’t answer for a long moment. And then guessed, “Fifty?”
Atrius hissed a curse, and Erekkus threw back his head and laughed and laughed.
I couldn’t blame him. I wanted to laugh too.
So how could an exhausted, half-starving, injured group of soldiers, forced into narrow, slow lines, defeat as many as fifty of some of the greatest predators nature or gods had ever produced?
We’d stood together, silent, for a long time, all mulling over that question.
“We’re overdue for rest,” Atrius said at last, which I knew was his way of saying, I have no idea what to do and I need time to think about it.
No one had any better ideas.
After thinking it over for a few more hours, the main conclusion we came to was that we were screwed.
We couldn’t fight our way through the slyviks—a single juvenile had nearly killed Atrius and me. Even prepared, there was no way we could handle dozens of them, especially with no space to maneuver. They were aggressive creatures. They wouldn’t just let us pass.
Erekkus, Atrius, and I talked in circles, trying to find a solution. Which really meant that Erekkus and I talked, and Atrius sat there stonily, staring off into the middle distance, looking furious, and occasionally chiming in with some idea we all knew wouldn’t work, including him.
Eventually, in a fit of frustration, I went back to the stone and felt it, reaching through the threads again.
“What are you doing?’ Erekkus snapped. “You said there was no other way.”
He was getting very, very testy.
I shushed him and leaned against the wall.
Yes, I’d already confirmed—multiple times—that there was no way to circumvent the nest, at least not without running a very high risk of sending us all off to our deaths.
“So what are you looking for?” he asked, irritated, and I shushed him again, louder.
“Let her work!” another of the soldiers barked, and Erekkus whirled to him, fists clenched, obviously desperate for an outlet for his frustrations.
Weaver save us. Men.
I tried to ignore the squabbling in the background and focus. Honestly, I couldn’t have answered Erekkus’s question if I’d wanted to—I didn’t know what I was looking for, other than some piece of information I’d missed, something critical that would save us. A miracle, I supposed.
The slyviks hadn’t dispersed, and they hadn’t gotten any less active. Actually, perhaps there were even more of them than before, though it was impossible to tell for sure. There was a lot of interference in the threads from this far away, partly because slyviks’ movements were especially difficult to track, and partly because there were so many other nests nearby in other branches of the paths. All those movements blurred together from so far away.
It was strange, I thought sleepily, that such territorial creatures— Something hard jostled against my back, knocking me away from the wall. I let out an oof as a stray elbow clipped my ribs.
I came back to awareness to Atrius shouting at Erekkus and the other soldier in clipped, harsh Obitraen, the two men hissing curses at each other as they reluctantly separated.
Atrius returned to my side and stared after them disapprovingly.
“Childish,” he grumbled. “They need to be thinking about more than their egos.”
I shrugged. It was almost a little comforting that men fighting for dominance over things that didn’t matter was universal, human or— I stopped breathing. My hand flung out to Atrius’s shoulder. When I let out a weak laugh, he gave me a look that questioned my sanity.
He was about to question it even more.
“I have it,” I said. “I know how we get past.”
41
It was probably when the slyviks roared, all together, that I thought maybe this was not the best of ideas.
One slyvik’s scream was a bone-chilling sound—dozens of them, layered on top of each other, echoed like an orchestra of death. We were so close to them now that their smell stung the air, a scent of decay and blood. I no longer had to sense them through the threads—I could feel their movements through the vibrations in the rock as their powerful bodies hurled from wall to wall.