Even if Maldynado seemed content to be judged a fool, he did give her shrewd, speculative looks now and then, the sort that probably meant he was thinking about how untrustworthy she was. Ashara wondered if she should simply tell the group the truth. But then she remembered Tladik’s words, his threats, and worried she dared not do anything except work with him. Besides, would Maldynado and the others believe her if she did tell the truth?
“Ashara?” Mahliki walked over, carrying a stack of compact glass dishes with lids. “May I ask you a personal question?”
“If I’m a spy for Kendor?” Ashara asked, more bitterness seeping into her tone than she intended. She should not have spoken so bluntly, but she knew they were all thinking of it—and perhaps speaking of it in Basilard’s hand language when she wasn’t looking.
“I thought that was assumed,” Mahliki said without any of the same bitterness. Her face was calm, not even judgmental.
“You did?”
“The Kendorian ambassador sent you.” Mahliki spoke matter-of-factly, as if any other conclusion would have been asinine.
Ashara snorted. Maybe it would have been.
“However, from what Basilard said, it was suggested that you have some special knowledge of the forest, of specific plants. I thought you might have more than mundane knowledge.” Mahliki touched her temple.
“Is there a reason you ask?” Ashara considered the stack of dishes again.
“I’m contemplating solutions to what I’ve been thinking of as the amiopoleaia hardwood blight, because I believe that is the root fungus, though it’s been adapted by scientific or perhaps—” Mahliki wriggled her eyebrows, “—scientific means to spread easily and with greater virility than normal. There’s something else that’s off about the fungus too. I got a little light-headed when I was bent over my samples, breathing the air. I believe the spores may have a neurotoxic effect on humans. Insects don’t mind them, though. The spores are attracting numerous bees and hummingbirds and possibly other pollinators too. I’m fairly certain that isn’t a feature of the original. I could be positive if I had access to The Complete Fungal Morphology and Anatomy Manual of Eukaryotes of the Palastak Continent. Native Trees of Northeast Turgonia would also be useful. Unfortunately, both books have spikes sticking through them now.”
“Maybe your library can be retrieved later.” Ashara should have said something more useful, but she was stunned that Mahliki had already identified the cause of the blight—how had she known which fungal disease it had been based on? Especially if she didn’t have her books along to reference?
“Jomrik promised to do that for me personally, even if he has to steal a lorry from the army vehicle pool in order to get back up here. I wouldn’t allow him to get in trouble like that, but it was sweet of him to offer.”
“Yes…” Ashara leaned to the side and caught Jomrik gazing over at them—at Mahliki, specifically. “I imagine men are sweet to you quite often.”
Mahliki wriggled her fingers in acceptance of this—she didn’t seem to be the kind of girl to be oblivious to admirers—then handed Ashara the first glass dish, one full of fuzzy grayish-green blobs growing on a gelatin. “That’s the normal amiopoleaia fungus. This,” she said, handing over another dish, “is what’s growing on the trees around here. I can’t detect anything that would indicate a practitioner had placed spores on them, but as I said, I suspect any tinkering was done in a lab countless generations ago and that we’re looking at the end result, put out into nature to spread like a virus.”
“Generations ago? How quickly does the ami—that fungus procreate?”
“I can only estimate, given that my observations have been interrupted by predator attacks and falling trees, but it seems to double every two to three hours, given adequate nutrients. Its metabolism may increase substantially in a warmer environment, the way standard brewer’s yeast does, in which case, that might explain why it’s become so much more pronounced and prevalent this summer.”
“What is it you think I might be able to do to help?” Ashara said. “I’m afraid I don’t know who created it or how to combat it.”
“No, I didn’t think you would.”
Mahliki was certain Ashara was a spy but didn’t believe she had any knowledge of political happenings back home? That was depressingly accurate.
“But look at this one.” Mahliki handed her a third dish, this one with shavings of wood inside but without the fuzzy gray splotches. “Remember those early samples I took? Of healthy trees? I smeared them with my nutrient agar to encourage growth and inoculated the sample with spores.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“Exactly. If you look at the shavings under magnification, you’ll see that the spores did munch on my nutrient blend, but I didn’t have enough in there to fuel more than one generation of doubling. The wood itself was not an acceptable environment for the fungus to grow on. I’ll have to ask Basilard for the name of this particular species, and then we’ll look for more of them, to see if all of them are immune to this particular blight. If so, that may give us some clues in finding a means for defense. Right now, I’m making a few sprays and trying them on the fungi, but again, I’m limited in resources. No lab. Not even a microscope anymore. I wish my sister was here. She’s not an expert in the nature-related mental sciences, but she could probably make what I have in mind. She’s in Kyatt, so not exactly close. That’s what brings me to you.” Mahliki arched her brows. “What exactly do you do? I heard something about love and healing salves.”
Ashara had been preparing to answer the question, but the addition made her snort and almost choke.
Mahliki waited patiently, her brows still arched, while Ashara recovered. Apparently, nobody believed the love bit.
“I make potions, and I do sometimes alter herbs to have greater potency, especially in regard to enhancing properties that are desirable for humans. But I…” Ashara groped for a way to say that she shouldn’t help, not with a shaman out there who might very well kill her for assisting the Mangdorians. Still, she felt sick at the idea of letting this blight ravage the mountain forests without doing anything, when it was possible she could do something.
Ashara held up a hand, almost relieved when her senses warned her of something her ears had not yet detected. Not magic, not this time—her neck hairs hadn’t bristled with discomfort yet—but she sensed something more mundane. A soft grunt came from the distance, that of a human, not of an animal.
“Get the others,” she whispered. “Take care. We’re not alone out here.”
“Basilard?” Mahliki asked, but she was already taking back her dishes and turning toward the shady spot where they had left their packs.
“No,” Ashara said.
She waved for Mahliki to join the armed men and unslung her bow, then dropped down behind her boulder, the creek at her back. There were more rocks on the other side of the waterway that would provide decent cover for her. Someone would have to get close to easily target her, and she did not intend to let that happen.
“Is it the shaman?” Maldynado called softly, his voice just audible over the gurgling water.
Ashara waved a hand at him, wanting him to find cover rather than asking questions. But then she realized he had. Maldynado, Jomrik, and Mahliki were behind broad trunks, their rifles pointing in the direction Ashara was looking. The trees weren’t ideal protection, since someone might creep up behind them, but she would have to trust them to take care of themselves while she worried about her own survival.
Movement caught her eye. Someone darting from tree to tree in the distance. With one knee on the ground and the other foot planted, she leaned out slightly, making room to fire with her bow. She spotted someone else about twenty meters away from the first person. Unease crept into her stomach. Multiple enemies. And just because she hadn’t sensed anyone using the mental sciences yet did not mean Tladik was not among them. She glimpsed the fringes of a buckskin shirt. She hoped these might be Mangdorians w
ho were simply approaching warily, since Ashara and the others were all outsiders, but she wouldn’t count on it, not when Tladik had been following them for two days.
A smudge of red warned her of an attack, and Ashara ducked behind the boulder a heartbeat before an arrow glanced off, its fletching an unfriendly crimson. Not a Mangdorian.
A rifle cracked. Maldynado or Jomrik firing. Ashara did not see if anyone was hit. She doubted it. The intruders were still two hundred meters way. She could barely make them out among the trees and undergrowth.
She leaned out again, picking the spots where she would hide if she were staging an ambush. That copse over there? It was only a hundred meters away and the leaf-filled saplings might let someone sneak close to Maldynado and the others without being noticed. She pointed her nocked arrow at it, searching for the movement she thought might come.
The hairs on the back of her neck stirred, and she winced. It might be her imagination, but it might mean Tladik was nearby working his magic too. She almost shifted her aim away from the copse to look for him, but she caught the movement she had anticipated. Someone stepped out from behind one of the thicker trees and aimed at Mahliki.
Ashara fired. Her arrow sprang from her bow, whispering through the air and pegging the archer in the throat before he could loose his own weapon. The man tumbled backward, rattling the branches in the copse. Maldynado and Jomrik, alerted to the threat, fired indiscriminately. The archer was already dead, but another figure raced out of the back of the copse, alarmed by the gunfire.
Ashara had the better angle. She shot him between the shoulder blades. He tumbled forward, a braid of red hair dancing in the air before settling to the ground. The hyper alertness of battle charged through her veins, making her react rather than experiencing deep thought, but the fleeting realization that she was killing her own people crossed her mind. She didn’t know what to do about that. The first arrow had come in her direction. Still, with a sick certainty, she knew there would be consequences.
More gunshots came from the men—Mahliki was firing, too, but to the rear of their group. She must have spotted someone trying to circle around them. Fortunately, she had dropped to her knees behind a log, so she was protected from both sides. Good, because Ashara feared she was the main target here. Tladik must have figured out that she was the one with the potential to solve the blight problem. The intruders might be shooting at Ashara, Maldynado, and Jomrik, too, but only because they needed to get through them to kill Mahliki.
More crimson-fletched arrows flew from the trees, and Ashara ducked again. She shifted so that she could lean out on the other side of her boulder. That was when she spotted a warrior coming at her from upstream, from the direction of the lake. No more than ten meters away, his moccasins glided soundlessly over the rocks, any noise he might have made muffled by the gurgling water. In one hand, he held a big axe, and in the other a smaller weapon, a tomahawk. It was poised to throw.
Though her nerves jangled with alarm, and it was all she could do not to flail in her attempt to nock another arrow quickly, experience and the knowledge that she had survived countless battles guided her hands, keeping them steady. She rolled sideways, splashing into the creek at the same time as she nocked her arrow. She came up in the water, aware of the tomahawk buzzing past and clacking off a rock. The man was less than five meters away when she fired. It was far enough. The arrow took him in the chest. He staggered and toppled into the stream, but not before her second arrow joined the first, to ensure he would not rise again.
As Ashara turned to check on the others, an invisible force wrapped around her neck. It felt like huge, rough hands pressing into her throat, cutting off her airway, but nobody was there. Instinctively, she clawed at her neck, as if she could tear the person’s grip away. But logically, she knew that this was a shaman’s attack, and that the practitioner might be a hundred meters away.
Panic welled in her chest, and her lungs strained, trying to gasp for air, but she did not drop the bow. She pulled another arrow, wincing as the pressure grew stronger, harder. In addition to denying her air, it created pain. A flash of fear ran through her at the thought of her windpipe being crushed, of being like Basilard, unable to ever talk again. If she lived.
She lifted her bow over the boulder, an arrow ready, though an irritating tremble plagued her hands. She willed them to still even as she searched for the shaman. If she found him and shot him—or even distracted him enough so that he released his hold—her body could have all the air it wanted.
There. The firefight was still raging between the rest of her group and the archers out in the woods, but she spotted a solitary figure without a weapon raised. He stood behind a tree for cover, but part of his torso and his head leaned out. It was not Tladik or anyone she recognized. It did not matter. He was staring at her—targeting her.
With her arms burning from the effort of holding the bow taut—and from the lack of air flowing to her limbs—she loosed the arrow. He raised a hand, and it bounced off an invisible barrier a foot in front of him.
Ashara slumped against the boulder. The pressure on her throat had lessened for an instant, but it returned again right away. She didn’t want to give up, but she hadn’t been able to inhale so much as a tiny gasp of air.
She lifted her arm to reach for another arrow, but her numb, fumbling fingers couldn’t grasp one. Blackness edged her vision as dark dots swam through it. The shaman blurred. She looked toward Maldynado and the others, as if they could save her, but they were busy defending against the archers. She tried again for an arrow. The shaman smiled slightly and shook his head. Bastard.
But then he jumped, glancing down, as if a snake had appeared at his feet.
The invisible hands grasping her throat disappeared. Ashara had no idea what had happened, but she gasped in air at the same time as she drew the arrow that had eluded her. Even as she readied her bow to fire, the shaman’s head was jerked back. For an instant, she thought someone was standing behind him, but the figure disappeared before she glimpsed more than a dark arm. She loosed her arrow, but soon realized it had been unnecessary. The shaman was already toppling forward, a bloody gash across his throat.
Not sure who her new ally was, but thinking Basilard must have returned to help, Ashara crouched behind the boulder again. She sucked in deep breaths of air as she searched for her next target. There were only a few arrows left in her quiver, so she couldn’t waste them.
But after one more crack from a Turgonian rifle, the forest fell silent. Nothing moved among the trees. A number of Kendorian archers lay dead in the leaf litter.
“Maldynado,” a woman’s voice called in Turgonian from beyond the trees where the Kendorians had been shooting, “we’d appreciate it if you lowered your weapons. I believe we’ve efficiently eliminated the threats from your perimeter.” The speaker paused for a moment, then said, “All right, I mostly tripped over roots and stayed out of the way, but my comrade efficiently eliminated threats.”
Maldynado lowered his rifle, the most genuine smile Ashara had seen from him splitting his face. “Would your comrade happen to be someone dark, deadly, and phlegmatic?”
“He’s not all that dark. We were down in the desert, and the sun lightened his hair, so it’s even blonder than usual.”
“Did it also lighten his disposition and his wardrobe?”
“Ah, not considerably, no.”
The woman—and whoever was dark and deadly—was camouflaged well. Even with her speaking, it took Ashara a moment to pick her out of the foliage. The dark-haired woman’s face was smeared with dirt, an effect that might have been deliberate or the result of long days on the road, and she wore brown trousers and a vest over a green shirt that blended into the forest. Her hair was back in a bun, and when she stepped out from behind the tree, her weapons were visible, a short sword, a pistol at her waist, and a crossbow slung across her back, along with a rucksack. She walked toward Maldynado, an arm lifted in greeting. Ashara searched for
the second person, but did not see him yet.
“Who parked the steam lorry in a stake-filled pit, Maldynado?” the woman asked as she approached.
“Why are you looking at me and saying my name as if you’re certain I was responsible?” Maldynado leaned his rifle against a tree, hopped the stream, and strode toward her, his arms spread.
“You’re the only one I know who crashes steam vehicles regularly.”
“Only when you’re at my side, directing me to do so. I have no idea why I always get blamed.” Maldynado embraced the newcomer, lifting her off the ground with his enthusiasm.
Mahliki and Jomrik had stepped out from their hiding spots. Neither seemed surprised to see the woman.
Ashara stood, debating whether she should join the group or go retrieve her arrows and search the bodies for orders or information as to how many more might be about. If these were the same people with the wagons, they had left them behind for the attack. She suspected they only represented a small subset.
She glanced upstream, thinking to start with the tomahawk-wielding Kendorian, only to spot someone already crouching over the body. She flinched in surprise, reflexively reaching for an arrow.
The man in black stared at her, no hint of alarm in his hard, dark brown eyes, but there was a warning there. And a throwing knife rested in one of his hands, one he could probably hurl before she could shoot an arrow.
Ashara lowered her hand, realizing this must be the comrade the woman had spoken of, for his tousled blond hair did have a sun-kissed look about it, or maybe it was the contrast of the olive skin that made it stand out. From the hair coloring, Ashara might have guessed him a Kendorian, but his darker skin and angular facial features seemed more fitting for a Turgonian. As did his plethora of weapons. She didn’t see a firearm or bow, but the hilts of throwing knives and daggers of various sizes stuck out of arm sheaths, belt sheaths, and calf sheaths. She wagered the man never had trouble finding tools to wrangle a tough steak into manageable pieces. She also wagered not many people made him put those knives to use; he had an aura of danger about him, his face cool and flinty, giving nothing of his thoughts.