Shea’s hands curled into fists at her side, while she tried to keep all expression off her face. Please, please, please, find something else to talk about.
“Battlefield promotion then,” stick chewer said.
“We’ll need your assistance dealing with the revenants,” Perry informed Eamon. “We’re down to three scouts since our last encounter. Damn things took apart three parties before we could get away from them. Thought I’d lose my men in battle. I was prepared for that. Instead it’s these damn creatures wearing us down.”
“Understood. I’ll prepare my men for the change in plans.”
“We’ll leave at first light.”
Dismissed, Eamon turned on his heel, heading for his men gathered around one of the fires. Shea trailed in his wake.
The sun had begun to sink behind the mountains while they were giving their report to Perry, but little fingers of amber light fought off the deepening gloom.
Shea’s stomach growled at the smell of food, but she didn’t let that distract her. She needed to speak to Eamon before they reached the others.
“Eamon?”
Eamon stopped, looking over in question.
Shea gathered her courage, knowing that she was about to piss him off. Oh well, it needed to be said. If he called her a coward, so be it. “It’s suicide trying to travel through revenant territory.”
“Oh?” He didn’t say anything else, just that.
“Revenants are smart,” Shea said. “And they learn from every encounter with humans. If these guys had trouble with them earlier, they’re going to have twice as much now. Whatever tactics they used last time won’t work because the beasts have already adapted.”
“I see your point, but that doesn’t change the fact our destination is on the other side of their territory.”
“We could go around it,” Shea offered.
Eamon crossed his arms and shook his head. “Not enough time.”
“It’s better than losing half the company to an attack.”
“They’re that dangerous?”
“A small pack? No. But if there are several packs in this area, they’ll call for reinforcements. That wouldn’t be good for us.”
“Perry would never go for it.”
“But-“
“I understand what you’re saying, but we’ll be going through their territory tomorrow. We’ve got orders now. We have to follow them. End of story.”
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?”