Chương 57: Chapter 58: Shardbacks

No one spoke until the grass stopped moving. Halden released my arm.

"Now we leave." Talia looked at the dead Shardbacks.

"Not yet." Halden's expression flattened.

"No."

"The pelts are worth a pretty penny if he can take them without cutting himself open." She pointed with her sword at the slate-spiked body I had killed.

"Road money, trade samples, proof of route danger. Also educational." I stared at her.

"Educational?"

"You have Beastcraft, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Then craft beast." Halden looked from her to the western track, visibly measuring impatience against value.

"One. Fast. No entering the square. No touching the fox unless you know what you are doing." Talia's smile returned, thin and sharp.

"He definitely does not. That is why this will be useful." The Shardback looked worse up close. Its slate spines grew through the hide in layered ridges, each plate overlapping the next with narrow seams of tough skin beneath. The back pelt was not soft and would never become a cloak unless the wearer hated chairs, but the plates had density, pattern, and flex where they joined.

Shield trim, armour reinforcement, tool guards, maybe Eisenfeld curiosity if Merris had been right about foundry towns valuing strange material. I drew my iron skinning knife and knelt beside it.

"Do not start at the back," Talia said.

"I wasn't."

"You were looking at the back."

"I was thinking."

"Dangerous stage before wrong action." I found the belly seam where the plates thinned, then the fold behind the foreleg I had cut during the fight. Beastcraft woke through my fingers, more alert than it had been with ordinary animals. The Shardback was not a normal beast wearing armour. The plates were not simply growths on top of hide. They rooted into connective ridges beneath, drawing mineral through the body in faint lines that reminded me unpleasantly of the basalt square.

Cut wrong, and the pelt would tear around the plates. Cut worse, and the plates would spring inward under tension, slicing hand, wrist, or forearm. I slowed. Talia crouched opposite me, watching.

"There it is."

"What?"

"The moment you realise value has teeth after death too." I slid the blade under the first seam. The hide resisted like wet leather wrapped over stone. My gloves protected the worst of the scraping, but the plates still caught and dragged. I had to cut beneath the roots without severing the connecting line that held the slate pattern together. It was more like taking apart a bad knot than skinning.

Ironwood Strike itched in my grip even though I held a knife, not an axe, because resistance kept asking to be solved by force. Beastcraft answered differently. It showed where the body had built itself around pressure, where the plates grew from need, where the value lay in not breaking the pattern. The first strip came free ragged at one corner but intact enough to fold. Halden made a thoughtful sound despite himself. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. Talia said, "Again."

I wanted to tell her we were in a hurry. I wanted to say Halden had already said one. Instead I moved to the second dead Shardback, the one she had cut at the throat. Her sword had spared most of the body. That had not been accident. The pelt was better, the slate rows cleaner, and the beast's side had not been hacked by my axe. This time I started cleaner. Behind the leg. Under the thin seam. Lift, do not pull. Cut around the plate root, not through. Let Beastcraft read the body before the knife argued with it.

The pelt loosened in one piece, heavier than expected and cold against my wrists. I nearly smiled, then saw the albino fox beyond the western line and lost the expression. Talia followed my gaze.

"That would sell for more." I did not answer.

"A clean albino ritual skin near Derwold? Merchants would invent new adjectives for the price." Halden said nothing, which meant he knew she was right and disliked that she had said it. The fox lay where the blood lines pointed west, pale and small and arranged by hands that had cared only about use. Skinning it would be easy, physically. Valuable, certainly. Merris would have known exactly how much. Arra could have named the quality of the fur.

Eisenfeld might have paid well for proof, curiosity, or ritual material. My hands remembered the doe. Orven's blood. The feeling of walking into someone else's secret and becoming part of its cost.

"No," I said. Talia watched me carefully.

"Because it is sacred?"

"Because it was used."

"That is not an answer most merchants respect."

"It is mine." She nodded once, and the mockery did not return. I still went to the fox. Not into the square, not past the western stones, but close enough to crouch beside the body where it lay just outside the line. I did not take the pelt. I used the tip of the knife to lift one edge of cut fur near the throat, just enough to see the wound path beneath. Beastcraft pressed through me so sharply that my breath caught. The skin around the cuts had not merely been opened.

It had been prepared to carry something out, blood drawn through channels, heat removed from places that should have held it, small nerves severed in an order that kept the body alive longer than mercy allowed. Not hunting. Not sacrifice as villagers understood sacrifice. Extraction. The world narrowed to pale fur, crimson lines, and the knowledge that I understood more than I wanted. ABILITY ADVANCED Beastcraft (E1) has advanced to Copper (mid).

You can better read ranked anatomy, altered tissue, ritual damage, and material value in beasts touched by external forces. The words came cold. I sat back on my heels and wiped the knife clean in the wet grass with more care than necessary. The fox's eye stared past me toward the north road, though its blood pointed west. Talia's voice was quieter.

"What did you see?"

"Enough." Halden looked toward the Derwold.

"Then we leave with enough." I wrapped the two Shardback pelts badly but safely, then cut free one claw and a small slate plate sample from the first beast. The pelts took more space than I liked, but Merris's pack accepted them after Halden repacked the rations with irritation and mathematical precision. Ten spaces. Ten protected decisions. Two of them now held proof that the road north had teeth and that the western track had hands.

"We are not checking the centre?" I asked once the pack was closed.

"No," Halden said.

"The ritual—""Is west. Our road is north."

"That thing went west."

"Excellent reason not to follow it." Talia wiped her blade slowly.

"He is right." I looked at her.

"You agree with him too quickly."

"Yes."

"Why?" She glanced toward the square, and for once there was no smile at all.

"Because Copper can enter old places too. Leaving is the rare part." The stones stood around the fox in their broken square, basalt faces wet with mist, old cuts unreadable, buried connections still humming faintly under my awareness. Somewhere past that forest were elves. Somewhere near it, or inside it, Crimson Elves had been working recently enough for blood to remain wet after rain. Dunmere's ritual had not been a stray horror. It had been one touch from a hand that had fingers elsewhere.

We moved without resting. Halden led us around the edge, giving the square more distance than he had before. Talia walked backward for the first dozen paces, watching the stones until the mist took the centre from view. I followed last. My shoulder throbbed where the old Shardback had struck. My sleeve was torn. Arra's coat had held. The new axe had held. My hands had reopened, but the gloves had kept the plates from taking fingers. Iron gear, not Copper. Still alive.

At the rise beyond the stones, the road split fully. West vanished into Derwold beneath black branches and old mist. North climbed toward wet hills, broken bridges, human farms, dwarf roads, Eisenfeld, steel, and whatever version of myself could survive reaching it. I looked north because that was the road that helped Dunmere. The heartwood bird cooled only when the last basalt upright passed from sight. Talia noticed. Halden noticed her noticing.

Neither of them said anything, which made the silence feel older than the stones.