“Raptor,” he whispered, his lips brushing the edge of her ear.
She heard the horses whinny and paw at the earth, ready to bolt. Lily turned under Tristan until she could see up and caught her breath. Circling above them, still hundreds of feet in the air, was something the size of a small aircraft. She saw the wings beat once lazily and it climbed up onto a higher updraft and flew away, as if it sensed it had been spotted.
“It’s enormous,” Lily said, still unable to completely grasp what she was looking at.
Caleb crouched down next to Lily and Tristan and shaded his eyes to look up. “They can carry a full-grown man away in their talons,” he said. “They just swoop down, and all you hear is a shout that fades away, like someone jumping off a cliff.”
“How many times have you crossed the mountains, Caleb?” Breakfast asked.
Lily repositioned herself and saw Breakfast pinned under Una the same way she was pinned under Tristan and she gave him a weak smile in camaraderie.
“Only twice before, to get to the buffalo-hunting grounds. I’m not much of a buffalo hunter. Rowan and his dad used to go every—” Caleb suddenly broke off and looked down, his brow furrowed.
Lily knew she was holding her breath and forced herself to let it out. Every time she heard Rowan’s name it knocked the wind out of her—out of all of them. It was like he was still with them, riding on the currents above them and casting a shadow upon the whole group.
Over the next few days as they crossed the mountains, Lily’s neck got sore from constantly scanning the sky. She wasn’t even aware that she was doing it half the time. Fear would slink in every few paces, and she’d have to glance up. The raptor stayed with them, biding its time, and waiting for the moment when they got careless. It got close enough once that Lily could make out its bald head and scaly talons. The greasy black color of its feathers reminded her of a giant buzzard. Caleb had told her that the hooked beaks had teeth. After that, Lily pictured a feathered pterodactyl when she thought of it. The one consolation was that raptors couldn’t hunt at night. But that was when the lion Woven came out, and Lily’s tribe traded an aerial terror for a terrestrial one.
The raptor got one of the pack ponies on the fifth day in the mountains. They all felt a pounding rush of wings, saw a flash of greasy black feathers, and the pony, the extra tents, and the grain it was carrying disappeared in one swoop.
It was the lions that got one of the braves. He was picked off so quickly, he didn’t even have a chance to scream.
Lily noticed that there was a kind of begrudging respect that the Outlanders reserved for the Pride, the Pack, and the Hive that went hand in hand with a deeper kind of hatred. It was a personal hatred they felt, one that outstripped the disgust and loathing they seemed to feel for the insect, simian, or reptilian type of Woven. Of course, Lily wanted to ask either Caleb or Dana why that was, but the time couldn’t have been worse for questions—not when the loss of one of her claimed was still so near.
At first the group didn’t dare go out into the brush to try to fight the Pride for the body. It was too dark to risk it, and the brave was already dead anyway. But as the night wore on and the tribe had to listen to the lions snarling and snapping at the other as they fought over the feast, it wore away their morale, and at Lily’s patience.