Chương 28: Chapter 27: The Western Reserve

Daniel left the marked route before they had been inside the reserve for fifteen minutes. Samuel let him get a short way up the slope before calling after him.

"The first marker is north." Daniel turned.

"So is the path."

"Then why are we climbing away from it?"

"Because something crossed it." Samuel glanced back at the white stones disappearing between the trees.

"Something crosses every path in here." Daniel crouched beside a patch of dark soil and pressed two fingers into it. Brown-gold mana moved through the ground in uneven pulses. His shoulders settled as he listened to whatever Echo Tracker was returning. Charlotte came closer, careful not to put a boot on the disturbed patch.

"Several things," Daniel said after a few seconds.

"Fast. One heavy enough to break the surface roots."

"How recent?"

"Within the hour. Maybe less." Samuel shifted his shield higher.

"Can you tell what they were?" Daniel shook his head.

"No. Only that they crossed quickly." Samuel looked north again. Daniel stayed crouched, then pulled the cheap notebook from the side of his pack and made a small mark beside the route line. Samuel noticed.

"You're writing it down?"

"The academy map shows where the path should be. It doesn't show what used it this morning." There was no challenge in Daniel's voice, but Samuel looked at the map in his own hand before folding it. Elizabeth followed the slope with her eyes. The undergrowth thinned higher up and curved back towards the marked route beyond the crossing.

"We can go over it and rejoin farther north. Ten minutes, perhaps."

"More if that slope is all mud." Charlotte nodded towards Daniel.

"We asked him to navigate." Samuel rubbed his thumb along the rim of his shield.

"Fine. I'm first. Daniel beside me. If you feel anything, say it immediately." Daniel looked faintly surprised by the position, tucked the notebook away and joined him. The climb was wet, steep and uneventful for long enough that Samuel began glancing downhill at the route they had abandoned. Then Daniel stopped. Two stoneback scavengers were tucked beneath a fallen tree ahead. Their plated backs blended so well with the bark that Elizabeth did not pick them out until one lifted its head.

Samuel had his shield up before it charged. Pale mana flashed over the barrier when the animal hit. His boots slid through the mud, but he stayed upright, and Charlotte threw three seeds into the churned soil beside him. Green cords burst up and wrapped the scavenger's rear legs.

"Second one," Daniel said. It came around the opposite side of the log. Daniel threw his knife too quickly; the blade struck the shoulder plate and spun away into the leaves. Samuel was still pinned by the first animal. Elizabeth lowered her spear and saw, for half a second, the sort of line Lightning Needle wanted. Samuel stood off to the left, Charlotte's vines were wet with mud, and the metal buckles on Daniel's pack kept crossing the moving target.

Kellan had spent too many evenings teaching her what happened when she fired through a bad field. She moved instead. The scavenger rushed past her shoulder. Elizabeth drove the spear down behind its foreleg as it went by, caught the seam between two armour plates and felt the point enter. Not deep enough. The animal twisted hard enough to wrench the shaft sideways, so she released it before it could drag her off balance. Samuel reached the scavenger as it turned back.

His practice sword struck the side of its head twice in quick succession, the second blow dropping it into the leaves. Charlotte still had the first animal tangled, roots cutting grooves through the mud as it fought them.

"Samuel." He turned and finished that one as well. Nobody spoke for a few breaths. Samuel wiped his blade on the grass, pulled Elizabeth's spear free and handed it back.

"You should've called when the second one got past me."

"You already had one."

"I know. Call anyway." He adjusted his grip on the shield, testing his fingers.

"If I hear you taking it, I can finish what's in front of me instead of turning at the wrong moment." Elizabeth thought through the fight again.

"All right." Daniel found his knife under the leaves. A pale scratch ran along the edge where it had hit the scavenger's plate. Charlotte noticed him inspecting it.

"You warned us."

"I also threw a knife at the hardest part of the animal."

"Yes." Daniel glanced at her.

"Next time, don't." He gave a reluctant little smile and put the knife away. They rejoined the marked route above the crossing and reached the first collection area without losing much time. Blue-striped burrow adders nested beneath sun-warmed stones along a shallow ravine. Daniel knelt in the mud again and put his palm flat to the earth.

"Three adults," he said. He frowned.

"Maybe four. Smaller movement deeper in."

"Eggs?" Samuel asked.

"Could be young." Samuel reached for the nearest flat stone. Charlotte caught his wrist before he shifted it.

"Leave that." He looked at her hand until she removed it.

"There's dusk moss underneath. Silver-root uses the same damp layer farther uphill, and if you collapse the burrow here you'll compact half the bed."

"We need the venom sac."

"And three mana-active plants. We can get both without ruining one to reach the other." Samuel looked from the stone to the slope above them.

"All right. Show me." Charlotte fed thin roots into the burrow from two sides, far more carefully than she had used the vines in the fight. The soil moved a little at a time. Something shifted below the stone. Samuel set the edge of his shield near the opening. The adder struck. He trapped it just behind the head. Daniel caught the tail and lost half a step when the snake tightened.

"Help." Elizabeth pinned the upper body with the forked branch they had prepared. Daniel's boots slid again.

"More than that." Samuel swore and leaned harder into the shield. Once the head was secure, Elizabeth cut through the spine at the base of the skull. The body kept moving beneath their hands for several seconds, and Daniel held on until it stopped. Elizabeth opened the specimen and removed the venom sac without tearing it. Charlotte watched long enough to see what she was doing, then turned towards the ravine.

"You're very comfortable with that." Elizabeth sealed the sac inside the academy container.

"It's anatomy." Charlotte looked back at her. Whatever else she had been about to say disappeared when Samuel asked where they should search for the first plant sample. Charlotte took over from there. She showed them three silver-root species that Elizabeth would have called identical at first glance and separated them by the shape and branching of the leaf veins. Once she started explaining the difference, she continued past the point Samuel had clearly understood it.

"The centre vein isn't the useful part," Charlotte said, holding two leaves side by side.

"Look where the smaller branches divide. This one forks before the edge. This one reaches the margin first. If you only look at colour, you'll collect the wrong species half the time." Samuel looked at the leaves again.

"I believe you."

"I know. I'm making sure you can do it if I'm not standing beside you." That ended his objection. The first embercup Elizabeth found was rejected because the seed heads had not matured. Charlotte found a better specimen twenty minutes later on a warm slope riddled with fire-aspected beetle tunnels. Daniel cut down the search time by finding underground water and recent animal trails.

He also kept adding small marks to his notebook: a stream bend that sat farther east than the academy map suggested, a drainage hollow hidden under ferns, a section of path where packed earth changed to fractured stone. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. After the second detour saved them from walking back on themselves, Samuel stopped questioning every turn. They ate beside a stream around midday.

Daniel opened a waxed cloth packet and produced four dense oat cakes. Charlotte stared at the pile.

"My mother packed eight," he explained. Samuel accepted one.

"Eight?"

"She thinks Crownspire doesn't feed me."

"Does it?" Daniel took a bite.

"In a legal sense." Samuel laughed, and Daniel looked down at his cake before adding, "I ate two yesterday. If I bring too many home, she'll assume I hated them and change the recipe." Charlotte tore off a piece of hers.

"What does she change?"

"Usually dried pear." Samuel looked down at his cake.

"That sounds better." Daniel studied him for a second, deciding whether it was safe to say what he was thinking.

"You have expensive opinions about bread." Samuel frowned, then laughed when Charlotte did.

"It's pear."

"That's what makes it worse." After that the conversation stopped behaving like a team discussion. Charlotte complained about academy porridge. Samuel claimed South House had once served him an egg that bounced. Daniel described his mother stretching one chicken through four meals and a soup until his father stopped asking what meat was in anything. When Samuel asked whether Daniel planned to keep mapping places after Crownspire, Daniel answered before caution could return.

"That's the idea. Roads, bridges, mines if I can get assigned to them. Echo Tracker helps, but I still need to know what the ground is supposed to look like before I trust what I'm feeling." He tapped the notebook beside his knee.

"If I'm good enough at it, someone pays me to spend all day complaining that their maps are wrong." Samuel looked at the cramped notes.

"You'd enjoy that." Daniel smiled into the last bite of his oat cake.

"Probably." Elizabeth ate half of hers and wrapped the rest. By mid-afternoon, the forest had become quieter. She first noticed it because their boots sounded too loud. Birds still called somewhere above them, but the gaps were longer now. The displaced scavengers from that morning came back to her, along with the tracks Daniel had found near the gate. Daniel stopped beside a shallow game trail.

"Too much traffic." Samuel doubled back while Elizabeth crouched beside the prints. Hoof marks crossed claw marks. Smaller tracks had been pressed over by heavier ones, and most of the broken stems leaned east. Daniel put his palm to the soil.

"Different animals," he said.

"Same direction."

"Water?" Charlotte asked. He glanced over his shoulder.

"Behind us." They continued north with less conversation than before. An hour later Daniel stopped so abruptly Charlotte almost walked into him. He crouched at once, palm against the earth, and his expression changed before Samuel had finished pulling the shield from his shoulder.

"Hold. Six nearby." Daniel shifted his hand.

"No. More." The others waited.

"Twelve." His breathing shortened.

"At least sixteen. They're closing." Samuel drew his sword.

"Close in." Only then did the first needle-mouthed vermin appear beneath a fern. A second pushed through the brush farther left, and the rest followed in a rush. Charlotte's vines broke the front into narrower approaches. Samuel held the centre behind his barrier. Elizabeth kept the spear low and watched space rather than bodies, the way Kellan had drilled into her. Lightning Needle never became more than a possibility.

Daniel crossed one firing line before she had fully formed it in her head, and she abandoned the skill.

"Left," Daniel called.

"Three." Charlotte turned before they reached her.

"Behind the fern. Two more." Samuel shifted his barrier. A smaller vermin slipped through and ran straight at Daniel. He saw it coming and hesitated anyway. Elizabeth stepped across and thrust. The spear hit too far back, tearing through the flank without stopping the animal. It twisted around the shaft, jaws snapping close enough to brush air against her shin. Daniel kicked it away from her leg and dropped to one knee with his knife in both hands. He drove the blade beneath the jaw.

The point met almost no resistance. Surprise flashed across his face as the vermin convulsed and collapsed against him, and he let go of the handle.

"Daniel." He looked at Elizabeth.

"Are you hurt?" He glanced down at himself.

"No."

"Behind Samuel." Daniel pulled the knife free, wiped it once on the grass without looking at the blade and moved. The fight dragged on. Charlotte's vines became thinner and slower. Samuel's shield arm dropped a little more after each impact. Elizabeth's hands began to ache around the spear. Daniel kept calling movement from behind Samuel, though his voice roughened as the minutes passed. When the surviving vermin finally broke and fled, nineteen bodies remained among the ferns.

Charlotte sat on a fallen log and bent forward with her hands on her knees. Samuel flexed the fingers behind his shield rather than telling her to stand. Daniel had wiped his knife several times and still had blood near the guard. Elizabeth drank from her waterskin. Her fingers shook against the leather. Nobody commented on anyone else's hands. After a minute Samuel said, "We should move before something follows the noise." Charlotte nodded. She got to her feet on the second attempt.

Daniel checked the trail before they left and stayed with his palm against the soil for longer than usual.

"More movement east."

"How much?" Samuel asked. Daniel shook his head.

"Too much overlap." They reached the northern ridge later than planned. The academy marker stood in a clearing above a narrow valley. Charlotte copied the carved symbols while Samuel watched the tree line. Elizabeth walked around the marker and found fresh hoof prints crossing the academy route from west to east. Several kinds. Enough that she stopped trying to count them. Daniel had gone to the edge of the clearing. He looked at the map first, then put one hand to the ground.

Charlotte was halfway through the inscription when she noticed him.

"Daniel?" He raised his free hand. The stone beneath Elizabeth's fingers trembled. Samuel turned. A second vibration came through the ridge, heavier than the first, and loose grit hopped across the marker. Daniel came upright.

"That isn't one creature." Birds erupted from the western canopy before anyone answered. Hundreds rose together, maybe more, filling the sky above the trees while branches began breaking below them. Samuel opened the route map.

"Which way?" Daniel was already crouching again.

"East. Mostly." He shifted his hand and frowned.

"No. It's spreading through the ravines. Low ground too." Charlotte folded the copied inscription, missed the crease and tried again.

"Stampede?"

"Several." The next vibration ran into another before it faded. Soon the ridge was shaking continuously beneath their boots. A projected voice burst from the nearest observation post.

"All student teams take cover immediately. Do not engage migrating creatures. Move to reinforced terrain and remain off primary routes." Static tore through the next sentence. Samuel stepped closer, straining to hear.

"Instructors are responding to a containment breach. Beacons are for direct threat or medical emergency. Remain—" The message broke apart. The blue light atop the post flickered, steadied for a second, then went dark. Daniel dropped both hands to the ground. Nobody interrupted him.

"We need higher ground."