Pathfinder's Way (23 page)

Shea bit her lip and crossed her arms in
front of her defensively, looking miserably down at the ground. His
response wasn’t exactly a surprise. She’d known he was going to say
something to that effect, but she’d hoped she could change his
mind.

Seeing the dejected expression on Shane’s
face, Eamon sighed. “I understand your concerns. I even share them,
but there’s not much we can do besides make the best of the
situation. Share with the boys what you know of these beasts.
That’s all you can do right now. You never know, it might save
their lives tomorrow.”

He patted her on the shoulder and headed for
their men. Shea followed, mumbling a reply to Flint’s greeting as
she took a seat beside the campfire. Leaning against her pack, she
stretched her legs out and fished inside the front pocket, pulling
out a small notebook with a pen tied to it. Luckily for her, she
had it stashed in her jacket when Darius and his men took her
captive. Otherwise it would have been lost to her like the
maps.

The notebook’s cover was leather and solid
black. Enough nicks and dents had accumulated on it through the
years to give it an entirely new texture. Rough and pockmarked.
Crumpled loose pages worn smooth from being handled too often
threatened to spill onto the ground. Shea shoved them back into
place before flipping through the entries to the one she wanted.
She flattened the page in question, gazing at the crude sketch of a
shadow beetle.

Pathfinders specialized in many areas. Some
were guides, like Shea, who were embedded into a community and
expected to provide whatever skills it needed. This mostly entailed
leading trading expeditions or acting as the go-to person when it
came to knowledge about beasts, other villages, and the easiest
routes. This was the most common type of position a pathfinder
undertook.

Then there were those who led expeditions
into the furthest reaches of the Highlands to gather knowledge and
perfect the guild’s maps. Only the most talented pathfinders rose
to this station.

Next were the pathfinders who recorded and
safe guarded knowledge from both the current world and the past.
These were the rarest type and even they were broken further down
into subcategories according to the type of information they
recorded.

A younger Shea had once dreamed of being the
last type of pathfinder, what her people called a keeper. As the
brightest apprentice in years, she’d been well on her way to
achieving that dream. She would have been granted access to
archives containing endless knowledge and would lead her own
research expeditions, until the fiasco in the Badlands had burned
away her ambitions. One mistake cost her the position and served to
demote her to a simple village pathfinder.

She might never be able to gain access to the
guild libraries or contribute her own observations for future
generations. That didn’t mean she couldn’t create her own catalog.
It was unlikely anyone would ever see it, but she couldn’t fight
the need to record things. She likened her hobby to a magpie
collecting shiny treasure, only her treasure came in the form of
knowledge gleaned from the world around her.

She read through the entry before adding her
latest observations. Next to the hypothesis of a weak spot at the
back of a beetle’s neck she wrote ‘confirmed’. Under it she gave a
brief description of her encounter and added a few nuggets Eamon
had given her about the beetle’s offspring, including the fact they
used a hard sticky substance to keep their food trapped and
fresh.

“What’re you doing?” a curious voice asked
next to her ear.

Shea’s head snapped up, and she shifted back,
the book held like a club in her hand.

The boy, not much older than seventeen, held
up his hands in a peaceful gesture. He had wide brown eyes and an
engaging grin. Spotty patches on his chin said he was trying to
grow the beginnings of a beard.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” He
folded his legs and sat next to the spot Shea had just vacated.
“I’m Clark.”

Shea relaxed, letting the notebook rest on
her knee. The boy looked expectantly at her and then down at the
book.

“Can I see it?”

Her grip tightened on the leather, not
wanting to share this piece of her. He looked so hopeful, though,
that she didn’t have it in her heart to deny him. Hesitantly, she
opened it to the page she’d been working on and handed it to
him.

He examined the entry quietly, flipping the
page to read the back and then the next entry. Shea found herself
holding her breath but released it quickly, chastising herself.
What exactly did she expect from this boy? Whatever reaction he had
wouldn’t matter in the long run.

“This is amazing,” he said, looking up at her
while he flipped slowly through.

“Thanks,” she mumbled. It was ridiculous to
feel a sense of accomplishment from a few words of thoughtless
praise. He’d never seen the archives in the Wayfarer’s Keep. He
didn’t know what amazing was.

“I mean, really. This is amazing. I’ve never
even seen some of these beasts and wouldn’t know the first thing
about dealing with them. You’ve cataloged what types of
environments they like to live in, strengths, possible weaknesses.
Here you have a section on what worked against,” he squinted at the
writing, “an Anzo Scorpion. Nasty creature. Where did you get the
idea to do this?”

Shea shrugged noncommittally. She couldn’t
very well tell him she’d been training to do this since she was
younger than him.

He didn’t hesitate to continue, his words
running together in an endless stream. “The possibilities with
something like this are endless. If even one scout in a party had
something like this, it would make things so much easier. We could
save lives. We might even have a chance against some of these
beasts.”

Shea plopped her chin on her knee, wondering
if he would even notice if she left. He didn’t seem to need anyone
to carry on a conversation, happy to just talk and talk and
talk.

He finally looked up and noticed her
attention had wandered. He laughed and handed her book back to her.
“Sorry about that. I tend to ramble when I get excited. You’re
Shane, right?”

She blinked at him and leaned back. How did
he know her name?

Seeing the distrust in her expression, he
laughed again. “Relax. Buck’s been bragging about this amazing
Daisy who saved all their asses from death. Said that you got a
battlefield promotion to full scout. I just got rid of my yellow
ribbon a few weeks ago so I know how exciting that is.”

Shea’s eyes began to glaze over again at this
onslaught of information.

“Just tune Clark out, lad. He’s a good boy
but tends to let his mouth run away with him when he gets excited,”
Eamon advised, setting his pack down next to Shea’s.

“Eamon!” Clark cried, jumping to his feet and
bounding over to clap Eamon on the back. Eamon grinned and slapped
him on the back in return. “It’s good to see you. I hear you and
your boys are going to be helping us tomorrow.”

“You heard right. We’ll be traveling with you
for a spell before we head back to the main body.”

“That’s a relief. I don’t want to think what
might happen if we attempted this with what remains of our
company.”

“How bad was it?” Eamon asked, his voice
low.

Clark suddenly seemed older and more mature
as a shadow crossed his face, signaling a deep grief. “Bad. We lost
four scouts and nearly twenty soldiers before we could put enough
distance between us and them.”

Eamon looked pained at this news, and he
shook his head in sympathy, giving Clark’s shoulder a squeeze.

“They won’t say it, but the men are uneasy,”
Clark said quietly. “They’re saying these things aren’t natural.
That they’re demons from the underworld.”

“They say that whenever they encounter
something new.”

“Maybe. But you didn’t see the way these
things hunted. It was like they learned from us. They were
intelligent.”

Eamon’s were troubled as they met Shea’s. The
lines bracketing his mouth deepened.

“I hear you had your own problems on the
trail,” Clark said, breaking the silence.

Eamon nodded slowly and this time it was his
turn to have his face pulled tight at the thought of friends who
hadn’t made it. “We lost five.”

Clark winced.

“I didn’t know you’d been given your own
team,” Clark said, trying to steer the subject to something less
grim.

“Haven’t been,” Eamon said. “Our scout master
died in route. I was next in command.”

“Fate’s a funny bitch, ain’t she?” Clark
commiserated. “I know it’s not the best way to assume command but
congratulations anyways.”

“Thanks, kid. You too. I know you’ve been
looking to lose the yellow for a while.”

Clark grinned, letting the seriousness of the
past few minutes drop. “The green looks good on me, doesn’t it?” He
pretended to preen despite not having a spot of green anywhere on
his person. “Much better than that yellow.”

“It does indeed,” Eamon agreed.

“Hey, did you see that book your boy’s got?”
Clark asked, jerking his thumb at Shea.

That rat bastard was telling on her!

She slid the book out of sight as she became
the center of attention. Clark rolled his eyes and reached around
her as she tried to block him. He pulled the book out of her
resisting fingers.

“Get a look at this. I bet there’s even an
entry about revenants in here.” He flipped through the worn pages,
taking care not to handle them too roughly, while Eamon peered over
his shoulder in curiosity.

“Here it is.” Clark shoved the book, opened
to the entry in question, into Eamon’s hands.

Eamon’s eyebrows lowered as his eyes moved
from side to side. Shea’s fingers itched to snatch it away from
him. She didn’t like people looking through her things.

She glared at Clark whose lips twitched in
answer.

Eamon flipped the page and read to the end of
the entry before looking up at Shea. “This is really detailed.”

“I’ve encountered them a time or two in the
past.”

“From the sound of this, more than a time or
two.”

She lifted a shoulder and found a spot to
stare at on his chest, not wanting to answer the questions she knew
were in his eyes.

She could feel the heat of his stare on her
bent head as he looked from her to the book in his hands. She
imagined he knew how unlikely it was for the average Lowlander to
have compiled the information in the book. For starters, most
Lowlanders couldn’t read or write. Beyond that, the kinds of things
noted in the entries weren’t something a regular person would
notice. It was the kind of stuff people only gleaned after
extensive training and experience. Lots of experience. No doubt
Eamon was asking himself a lot of questions right now. Questions
Shea couldn’t afford for him to ask.

Snapping the book shut, he said, “Come with
me.”

Shea’s head shot up to see Eamon moving
quickly away from her. Confused and with her mouth slightly open in
shock, she glanced at Clark who watched with a bright look of
interest. He shrugged. “Don’t look at me. You’d best follow. Eamon
doesn’t like repeating things.”

Her mouth snapped shut, and she leapt into
motion, catching up with Eamon and tagging along behind him as he
threaded through the camp.

“Sir.” Eamon stopped in front of Perry and
waited to be acknowledged.

“What is it?”

Eamon knelt down and slid the book in front
of Perry. “You might want to read this.”

The corner of Perry’s mouth pulled down in
displeasure. “I don’t have time for games. There’s a-“

His voice trailed off as he caught sight of
the smooth charcoal lines rendering a revenant. With a skeptical
glance at Eamon, he picked up the book and read the description.
When he was done, he leaned back, tapping the book on the makeshift
table while studying Eamon and then Shea in turn.

“Where did you get this?”

Eamon gestured behind him at Shea. “It’s the
boy’s.”

Those fierce eyes focused on Shea, studying
her with a greater intensity than they had earlier that
afternoon.

“This pickleberry juice.” Perry checked the
journal to make sure he was saying it right. “Is it hard to
make?”

Eamon nudged her when she was silent a moment
too long. “Not at all, sir. All you need to do is crush the berries
against your clothing and skin. The plants are all over these
hills.”

Perry leaned forward placing the book in
front of Eamon. “Ensure this information is distributed to my
scouts and then the rest of the company. Send him and several
parties out to find these berries. Enough for the entire
company.”

“Yes, sir.”

Eamon spun and strode off. Shea lingered a
moment looking in slight confusion between his retreating back and
Perry, who was examining the map. Then she trailed after Eamon as
he pulled several men from their campfires and assembled them in a
small gathering.

Buck stopped by Shea and squinted at the
group. “What’s going on?”

Clark interrupted before Shea opened her
mouth. “Your boy there might’ve given us a fighting chance
tomorrow.”

Shea disagreed. “I don’t think that
information is going to have the effect you think it will. It was
just an observation I made during my last encounter. It’s never
been verified.”

Clark shrugged. “Maybe not, but we know more
about the enemy than we did an hour ago. If nothing else, it’ll
help the soldiers see the beast as something that’s killable. You
don’t know how important that is. If they think something is
impossible before they even start, they won’t last long. This way
they have hope. Sometimes that makes all the difference.”

Clark watched as Eamon held up the book and
explained what needed to get done before the morning. The men and
women listened intently, their faces focused as they internalized
his words.