Or rather, the threat was standing still in front of them, body turned so that it blocked their way, neck lowered so that it seemed to be staring directly at them from under the many-pronged antlers spreading like a crown over its head.
“Wapiti,” Gabriel said, a hushed tone, as though afraid to spook the creature. Isobel took in the bulk of it, easily a match for broad-chested Steady, and the wicked-looking tines of its antlers, and swallowed hard, trying to make herself as small and still as possible. It was after rutting season, but you could never tell what might set a bull off. Underneath her, Uvnee let out a soft huff that sounded terribly loud, and the creature?—wapiti, Gabriel called it—snorted at her in return, a louder, wetter noise.
Then it shifted, the neck lifting until its head was level with theirs, and Isobel was caught by the intensity of its eyes: the head might look like a deer’s, but there was no dumb beast staring back at her but an intelligence, sharp as an arrowhead and just as deadly.
Next to her she could hear the creak and rustle of Gabriel shifting in his saddle, the clink of a hoof against a stone, the soft breathing of the horses, but everything else was held silent, even the air around them.
Then the great deer snorted again, louder, and shook its head, the rack of bone coming terrifyingly close to them, before it wheeled and bounded off, faster than she would have thought it could move.
“That . . .” Her voice caught in her throat, stuck between fear and awe. “That wasn’t just an elk.”
“Not just,” Gabriel said, his voice as hushed as hers and just a little shaky. “Isobel, in all my years, I’ve encountered a total of four spirit-animals, and three of them have been since riding with you. I can’t say it’s a change I welcome.”
Four, Isobel thought, remembering the owl who had not spoken, then frowned, counting back. “Three? Two. The snake, and this . . .”
“And a second snake, when . . . It doesn’t matter,” he said, cutting off whatever he was going to say. “Just that next time you ask if something’s watching us? Assume that the answer is yes.”
He flicked Steady’s reins, and the gelding moved forward again, Uvnee following without her having to give a command. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the mule still standing there, its ears pulled back as though it weren’t convinced the elk wasn’t going to return.
“Flatfoot, come,” she called to it as though it were a dog, and the mule shook its head briskly but followed, blowing hard through its nose in protest.
“There’s something strange, though,” Gabriel said once they’d caught up with him.
Isobel felt a giggle bubble up, deep in her chest. “Stranger than that?”
“Look around you, Isobel. Your people back in the village, they said their animals had run off, yeah?”
She nodded. “Not the dogs but their goats, yes.”
“There’s grazing enough here for an entire herd of elk, and that should mean predators as well. But there’s no sign of elk or wolves, not for days, not even a curlhorn, and the last cat we’ve seen sign of was the one that attacked. We haven’t seen so much as a rabbit in days.”
Isobel looked around as though something would appear to prove him wrong, but all she saw was the same steep meadow, scattered with occasional scrub brush, with trees along the slopes, and beyond that, the flat-topped mountains. He was not wrong; even close to towns, there was more life than this—birds overhead, skittish rabbits and gophers underneath. . . . All they were seeing were butterflies; all they were hearing were the occasional bird and insects.
“You said yourself they ran off when the ground shook. That would explain why the cat was so starved, if all its prey ran off and it was too sick to follow. And maybe why the hunting camp was abandoned.”
“Likely.” Gabriel took his hat off and swiped his hand through his hair, then replaced the hat again, tugging it down over his forehead. “That’s why I had us take on extra supplies. But when people and animals both abandon an area, and there’s a wapiti guarding it . . . that’s never good news. Not ever.”
If there had been good news, they wouldn’t be here, she thought but saw no point in saying. He knew that too. “You think we should turn back?”
“I think a wise man would have turned back days ago. But the wapiti let us pass. If the spirits are upset, they’re not upset with us.”
Isobel’s palm itched, and she glanced down at it as though there might be an answer there. But skin, grimed with sweat, told her nothing. No summons, no guidance, only the lingering memory of that echoing silence, of being pushed away rather than drawn in.
Something in the hills didn’t want her there. And she might be a fool, but that only made her more determined to go.