Tavi looked up, startled. “There aren’t any Marat in the Calderon Valley, Uncle. The Legions keep them out. There hasn’t been a Marat here since they had the big battle years and years ago.”
Bernard nodded. “Before you were born. But two cohorts at Garrison doesn’t necessarily keep them out if they aren’t coming in numbers. There’s a Marat warrior up here, and he isn’t going to be happy that we killed his bird. Neither is its mate.”
“Mate?”
“Marks on the top of her head. Mating scars. We killed the female.”
Tavi swallowed. “Then I guess we should go.”
Bernard nodded, the motion weary, unsteady. “Come here boy.”
Tavi did, kneeling close to his uncle. One of the sheep let out a bleat, and Tavi frowned, looking up. The small flock milled around, and Dodger began to trot about, shoving them roughly back into a group with his horns.
“Brutus,” Bernard said, his voice gruff and unsteady. He drew in a deep breath, expression becoming one of concentration. “Let go of the bird. Take us both back home.”
The stone hound dropped the bird and turned toward Bernard. Brutus sank down into the earth again. Tavi felt the patch of ground he stood on begin to quiver and move. Then with a groan of tortured rock, a slab of stone perhaps five feet across rose up beneath them and began sliding southward, like a raft on a slow-moving river. The earth-raft drifted toward the entryway to the little clearing, slowly gathering speed.
Bernard muttered, “Just wake me up when we get back.” Then he lay down and closed his eyes, his face and body going immediately slack again.
Tavi glanced at his uncle, frowning, and then back at the sheep. Dodger had them herded into the thicket again and had presented his horns—and not toward Tavi.
“Uncle Bernard,” Tavi said, and he thought his voice sounded high-pitched and panicky. “Uncle Bernard. I think something is coming.”
Tavi’s uncle did not respond. Tavi looked around for his uncle’s sword, but he had left it lying beside the herdbane’s body, and it was now two dozen strides away. Tavi clenched his hands into frustrated fists. This was all his fault. If he hadn’t shirked his duties to impress Benitte, he wouldn’t have needed to come looking for Dodger and his uncle wouldn’t have needed to follow him.
Tavi shivered. Suddenly, the possibility of death seemed very real, looming stark and close.
Shadows fell over the valley, and Tavi looked up to see racing clouds darken the sun, and he heard a distant rumble of thunder. Wind made the trees and scant brush begin to sway and stir, and the earth raft seemed to crawl. Though already up to the walking pace of a man, and still accelerating, Tavi found himself desperate to move faster and terrified that it might already be too late.
Tavi swallowed. If something came after them now, his uncle would not be able to help him. Tavi would have to handle it alone.
A high, whistling screech came from the trees to the west of them, up the slope.
Tavi jerked his head in that direction, but saw nothing. The screech repeated itself.
Another herdbane.
A second screech answered it, this time from the east of the earth-raft and from unnervingly close at hand. A third? Brush rattled perhaps fifty paces back in the trees. Then again, closer. Tavi thought he saw something moving toward them. Closing in.
“They’re coming,” he said, in a quiet voice.
Tavi swallowed. Though Brutus might eventually reach the pace of a running man and hold it for hours or days, he wouldn’t get there in time to help them escape. Bernard had no chance at all of evading another herdbane as he lay unconscious, and Brutus’s focus was all on bearing the pair of them back toward home.
Which meant that the only way his uncle could escape was if the herdbanes went looking somewhere else. If someone led them off in another direction.
Tavi took a deep breath, rolled off the earth-raft to one side of the trail, and lay completely still. If the herdbanes tracked movement, surely they would have more trouble with the wind rising and the trees and brush swaying in it. He would remain still for a while and then start making plenty of noise and motion, to draw the hunters away from their vulnerable prey.
Thunder rumbled again, and Tavi felt a tiny, cold raindrop splash on his cheek. He looked up and saw vast and dark clouds growing around the mountain. Another cold raindrop fell on him, and he felt a rush of fear that nearly forced him to empty his stomach. Furystorms could be deadly to anyone caught out in the open. Without the solid protection of the steadholt’s walls or the protection of his own furies, he would be nearly helpless before the storm. Breathing fast and light, Tavi picked up several rocks that seemed a good size for throwing. Then he turned to the west and hurled the stone on the highest arch he could manage.
The stone flew in silence and struck on a tree trunk, making a sharp sound. Tavi pressed against the base of the tree and held still.
There was a whistle from the other side of the trail, and something moved through the brush, toward it. Tavi heard steps behind him, and then a great dark form flashed past him in near silence, a bound that took it across the rough trail Brutus’s passage had made. Another herdbane, this one darker, larger than the first. It ran on its toes, though its talons rattled against fallen pine needles and its feathers brushed through the limbs of the evergreens. It went toward the spot where the stone had landed, vanishing back into the brush.
Tavi let out a breath. He threw another stone, farther away, back toward the clearing, rather than in the direction where Brutus was slowly bearing his uncle to safety. Then he crouched low and headed back toward the clearing himself, tossing a new stone every few paces. The wind kept rising, and more tiny, stinging droplets of near-frozen rain began to fall.
Tavi labored to keep his breathing as silent as he could and crept back to the clearing, quiet as a cat, creeping the last few paces on his belly, under the overhanging branches of one of the evergreens. The sheep were nowhere to be seen.
But the second herdbane was already there.
So was the Marat.
This herdbane stood at least a head taller than the first, and its feathers were darker, its eyes a browner shade of gold. It stood over the corpse of the bird Tavi had killed, one leg cocked up underneath its body, leaning its neck down to nuzzle its beak against its dead mate’s feathers.