But Ufalla was gone. She dove off the embankment into the muddy water no doubt where she'd seen Tarius go under. She was under too long. Jabone had stripped his cloak and gambeson as well and was ready to go in when Jestia grabbed his hand and then Ufalla came up. She had Tarius, shoving his head above the water, but the current was too strong
"Jestia rope," Jabone said, and there was one in his hand. He braced himself on ground that looked solid and tossed the rope out towards his friends. Ufalla grabbed it and he pulled them to shore with Jestia and Kasiria's help. He had no idea where Kasiria had come from, but he was glad for her help especially when it came to actually pulling them up the embankment and onto the road surface. Jestia may be all over making rope, but she wasn't much help with heavy lifting. Not that it stopped her trying anyway. In fact, he never would have believed she had that much strength.
Ufalla was still trying to get her breath when someone said, "He's not breathing."
Ufalla looked at her brother lying there soaked in mud and she didn't stop to think. She dove on him, struck him in the chest, and then she started to breathe into his mouth.
"What the hell is she doing!" she heard one of the men scream.
"Leave her be, she knows what she's doing, she's a medic," she heard Jabone saying, and realized he was standing beside her. She hit Tarius again and then breathed into him again. Tarius coughed and spit up a bunch of water and then he took in a long, shuddering breath.
He looked up at his sister's mud-covered face and with only a little effort said, "Wouldn't put down a hand to pull me out if I was drowning, aye?"
She laughed and kissed his whole face.
As soon as they'd cleared the bloated creek Derek had called a halt and they started to make camp. "The trail is cold now anyway. An extra day won't make any difference at this point. Walking in the mud has made both horses and riders weary," Derek explained.
Kasiria was called to a meeting with Derek, Richard, and the other unit sergeants.
Jabone was carefully cleaning Tarius and Ufalla's clothes and armor and hanging them to dry as Tarius and Ufalla sat close to a fire wrapped in blankets. To his surprise Jestia came to help him. He looked at her and smiled. She smiled back.
"Maybe now they will quit fighting," she said.
"They'll never quit fighting, Jestia, but at least it looks like she's forgiven him, and maybe he'll finally realize what an amazing sister he has. I was busy messing with Lex. I didn't even think about the fact that he might be in bad trouble. I mean . . . We all swim, right? I didn't think about the current, the undertow. Ufalla, well she always has been able to run like the wind."
"No one but her brother is faster, not any human anyway. We were like a real unit today, Jabone," she said.
He smiled and nodded. "Yes we were."
She was quiet, too quiet for Jestia, and as she was working on cleaning Ufalla's palderons he noticed she had bad rope burns on her hands. He took one of her hands and turned it over to look at it. "You should take care of that, Jestia. Clean it and salve it not fill it with mud and . . . "
"It doesn't hurt," she said. "It doesn't matter anyway." She sighed deeply.
"Yes it matters. What's wrong?"
"Last night I had the dream again," she said miserably. "It was gone and now it's back. I thought
I
had made it go away but most likely it was just all the drinking that had dulled my mind and stopped the dream. As soon as it was out of my system it came back."
"I'm sorry, Jestia."
"I don't know what to do, Jabone."
He took the dirty palderons out of her hands. "Well for starters you can wash your hands and go put some ointment on them. Don't you have a heal wounds spell?"
She forced a smile then. "Spells can't heal, there is only one spell I know of that's in the healing realm and no witch dare cast it unless there is no other choice." She shrugged. "I have potions for healing and like you said I have ointment."
She started to walk away and he took her arm and said, "Jestia, today you made rope when we needed rope, and maybe when we need this Invisible shield you'll make that, too." She smiled then nodded and walked away.
* * *
Tarius looked at his sister as they sat huddled around the fire a group of the men had gathered around forgetting they didn't really like them and all just wanting to know what exactly had happened. Tarius smiled broadly at her.
"What?" Ufalla asked with a crooked smile.
"I tell the tale of Ufalla . . . "
"Brother . . . "
He ignored her, standing on his shaky feet and looking at the men around him. "I tell the tale of Ufalla. Now it was at this time that Tarius, not Tarius the Black mind you but a lesser known, but no less brave hero by the same name had done his sister Ufalla an evil turn and she did vow by a Kartik curse . . . " Ufalla smiled at him and he beamed back at her as his tale unfolded.
Eric walked up to her back and sat behind her. "Your brother weaves a good tale."
"That he does," Ufalla said with a smile. Jabone had told her that Eric was a woman and she felt a certain camaraderie for her that Kasiria obviously didn't because . . . Well wasn't she doing exactly what Ufalla's godmother and hero Tarius the Black had done? "So, what's your real name?"
"Aricia, I actually prefer Eric," she said pulling a face. If her hair hadn't been cut so short, if her shoulders weren't so broad, and if she hadn't been purposely trying to look like a man, she might actually be an attractive young woman.
Ufalla nodded, listening to her brother. This story wasn't just a thank you, it was an apology, and how could she not forgive him? Jabone was right, he was just a dumb ass, and while he no doubt resented her, he had never actually hated her. They had both nearly died today. That put a lot of things in perspective. All things considered, an ill thought out coupling between a couple of drunken whores hardly seemed the sort of thing one should hold an eternal grudge for.
"Do you have any other siblings?" Eric asked conversationally.
"We have a younger sister and brother, what about you?" Ufalla asked.
"Two, both much older and male. I haven't seen them since our father died four years ago. They just sort of left me to find a husband or fend for myself."
"And you chose the military."
Eric nodded. "Really it was either that, whore myself out, or accept the hand of my only suitor—a much older man with bad teeth and breath to match."
Ufalla laughed then and slapped the other woman on the back hard and said still in a whisper, "Then it had to be the army didn't it?"
Eric smiled nodding her head hard.
Ufalla looked at her brother as his story wound down. He was making her sound much more magnificent than she actually was and she smiled proudly and said, "That's my big brother."
* * *
Jestia woke in the dead of night in a cold sweat. The colors in the dream were even brighter now. She knew what that meant; the time was getting closer.
Ufalla stirred but stayed asleep her brother now curled around her. They shared warmth and so did Kasiria and Jabone. She was the only one that was cold. Cold and alone and missing her friend desperately.
Why can't you just be my friend? Why do you have to keep loving me?
But she knew now that wasn't the real problem. The dream had little to do with her, she didn't seem to be able to affect it which was frustrating and shook her to her core.
She needed to sleep but even with bedrolls the ground was hard and it was cold and if she couldn't keep the dream from happening she was always going to be cold and alone.
* * *
The next day they got to the Jethrik settlement of Grey Noke—or at least they got to the pile of ash that used to be Grey Noke. Half-burned poles stuck up into the air as a testament of what had stood there. Otherwise you never would have guessed humans had ever dwelt there. It was dead in a way that chilled you to the bone, and Kasiria knew she wasn't the only one feeling it.
Their unit walked around the ruins. What clues the fire hadn't destroyed the torrential rain that followed had. There were no tracks, no pieces of cloth to show which direction the Amalites had come in or which way they had gone. That didn't stop them all from looking. The entire troop had been walking around searching the area and the ruin for most of the day.
"What do you think?" Kasiria asked them as a group when they had stopped to drink some water and take a break.
"There aren't any bodies," Jabone said curiously, and the other three nodded.
"Could they have burned up in the fire?" Kasiria asked.
"There wasn't enough heat for that. There would have been something," Ufalla said then explained. "We burn animals when they die in case they were diseased. A goat is about the size of a small man. You have to work on it, keep feeding the fire constantly for a day or more, and even then there are pieces of the bigger bones left. There are none here. I've been looking and . . . Not so much as a piece of skull."
"Wild animals?" Kasiria offered.
"Wild animals also leave something, usually the big bones. And there were hundreds of people here not to mention livestock. That's a lot of wild animals. You don't by any chance think a lion ate the bodies and then threw the bones back in the fire to burn, do you?" Jabone was short with her which he'd never been before and she was instantly crushed. "I'm sorry Kasiria. I'm not angry with you but there is nothing left of over three hundred people. That just can't be."
"Is it magic?" Tarius asked Jestia.
"No, a magic trail that strong wouldn't have been washed out by fire or rain," she answered. "Besides, death magic takes a toll on the caster."
"Did they take them as slaves do you think?"
"Doubtful," Ufalla said, "Wherever they are hiding food would be scarce and slaves eat."
"And they couldn't afford to let even one of them escape," Jabone said, "because if they did they would run to the nearest garrison and give away their hiding place."
"It would take a lot of energy to make sure they didn't escape," Tarius added. "Besides what exactly would they need slave labor for?"
Kasiria noticed Jestia's silence. "What do you think Jestia?"
"I don't think. I know." Jestia looked up at her with haunted eyes. "They are taking the villagers and everything else and eating them. They're cannibals."
"How do you know that?" Kasiria asked. She alone seemed to be questioning Jestia's preposterous answer.
"I just know," Jestia said.
"It's the only thing that makes sense," Tarius said.
"They're eating our people. That makes sense to you?" Kasiria said.
Jestia took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then said, "It takes a lot of big, strong, healthy fighters to take on three hundred angry and armed villagers. We know the Amalites," all the Kartiks spit, "don't let their women fight, so somewhere there is a mass of them. What are they eating? They can't be growing crops or raising livestock or someone would find their fields and so find them. They have resorted to cannibalism. All of you," she flipped her hand around in the air to indicate not just them but everyone in the troop. "You all stupidly think that they have just started regrouping. No! These people have been hiding since the Great War. Maybe longer. Hiding and breeding and multiplying like flies. Don't you get it? There are thousands of them. I have seen them swarming in my mind, they have run out of anything to eat. It's perfect if you think about it, they get rid of their enemies and they fill their larder at the same time."
A chill went up Kasiria's back as she remembered Hellibolt's words and she knew that Jestia was right. "How are we going to find them? Do you have some spell?"
Jestia shook her head no. "Everything I have would need tracks or something they left behind and I already cast to find both and found neither."
"Could you?" Kasiria asked pointing at Jabone, he shook his head.
"Too much rain," he said. "Even if I was fully catted out I wouldn't be able to pick up their scent. I smell nothing of them now and they have a very distinctive smell."
"We have to be close to them," Jestia said. When they all stared at her vacantly she sighed. "They couldn't have horses because if they had enough horses to carry enough men to do something like this surely the dozens of patrols the army has had combing the countryside for months would have found them by now."
"Where the hell are they hiding?" Kasiria asked no one in particular.
"This is the Amalite territories. Very little of it has been explored and less of it mapped," Jestia said. "They could be hiding almost anywhere—a box canyon, some secret valley."
"In a hive," Jabone said. They all just looked at him and he smiled, looking some embarrassed and explained. "That's what my madra called it because what else would you call something filled with hundreds of stinging beasts?"
* * *
They made camp just outside the ruins, and Derek called a meeting of the whole troop.
"Please attend," the field herald ordered, and the group was silent.
"All right. We've sent two men back to have more supplies sent because ours are getting low. We're going to stay right here and patrol this area thoroughly for several days riding out 'til midday and then riding back to camp. We will be spread thin. We will ride in twos for the sake of safety. You will have to stay on your toes and keep your eyes and ears open. We are looking for anything—a scrap of cloth, broken limbs, turned stones—anything. I can't express enough how vigilant you must be at all times. When you are all the furthest out there will only be the two of you. If you are attacked no one will be able to hear you scream. You will come back on the same trail you went out on, and the next morning if no one has found anything then we will start out again, each pair taking a different route. We will do this 'til we have checked every inch of ground or found some evidence of which direction our enemy has gone."
Jabone thought it a sound plan, and smiled.
He is my madra's student, for that is just what she would do.
He could smell the evening meal and his stomach rumbled, he was hungry.
I hope it's not beans again, I nearly burst trying not to blow wind in front of Kasiria last night and Ufalla and Tarius liked to killed us all trying to out do each other.
He remembered the night before and smiled. In spite of the great stench that had caused Kasiria to open the tent flaps and Jestia to cast a spell to banish odor which left the tent with no smell at all—which had been quite odd when he thought about it—it had been good to see the siblings getting along. He was sure it wouldn't last. Tarius's ribs would stop hurting from where his sister had beaten him back into life and he'd forget that his sister had risked life and limb to save him. Ufalla would forget she'd dove into the waters of death to rescue him and he would annoy her and they'd start fighting again, but at least it would be what he was used to and he doubted they'd ever be able to take each other for granted again.