“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.
Shea followed his gaze. All this time writing her observations down thinking nobody would ever see them, much less think them relevant. At times she had struggled to keep going as she wondered at the point of continuing.
This, in some small fashion, was her dream realized but not in any way she had ever imagined.
Chapter Ten
Shea tilted her head back to examine the gnarled branches of a tree. The dead forest inhabited a thin strip of land only a few hundred meters wide but stretched in either direction. Charred from some long ago fire, the trees’ bark gleamed white and smooth against a sky pregnant with rain clouds.
With every step, fine ash floated up from the scorched earth. It was a barren wasteland where nothing grew, marking the beginning of the revenant’s territory.
There should have been some sign that the earth was healing, a glimpse of green against the unrelenting gray and black, birds returning to make nests. Something. Instead, it was just a strip of land that the living had permanently abandoned.
What could have happened here to so totally consign the area to the realm of the dead?
Clark had told her that when Perry’s men fled past the first dead tree the revenants refused to step foot onto the scorched land, instead pacing back and forth as if an invisible wall separated them from their prey. Shea shivered. She could see why. Even the still air made her think of dead and decaying things.
Even knowing that revenants waited on the other side, she looked forward to putting this dreadful place behind her.
Quiet gripped the morning. There was none of the neighborly chatter that usually characterized a movement. Everyone jumped at shadows. Even yesterday’s cheerful Clark had gone missing, leaving a watchful stranger whose hand never strayed far from the blade at his hip.
There was a collective inhale when the men stepped over the clear line dividing the dead zone from revenant territory. A pall dropped over the group, turning the mood thick and heavy with grim anticipation.
A heightened awareness took hold as everyone anticipated an attack.
As the morning wore on, the group moved further into revenant territory. The forest here was thin and sparse and the underbrush thick. It made it challenging to move quickly, especially since they were going out of their way to avoid making noise. The rolling hills made it difficult to see any distance, which was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it might hide them from the revenants but it would also prevent them from seeing the revenants approaching until it was too late.
It was decided last night that riding horses would make them easy pickings for the revenants as the creature was too small to hit with a sword from horseback but was perfectly capable of leaping up to tear out a horse’s throat or drag a rider off its back.
Sweat dampened Shea’s hair as she trailed behind Eamon. They’d walked a fair amount, but not nearly as far as she’d have liked. Having a large party like this made it difficult to move with speed, especially when they were trying to be as stealthy as possible.
They were heading west and slightly south, hoping to skirt along the edge of the beasts’ territory.
A low warble from the front of the line alerted Shea and the others. A man held up his closed fist, signaling them to stop and find cover if possible. He pointed at the ridge running parallel to them.
A single revenant was silhouetted against the sky, its head lifted proudly as it glared out across its territory. Shea held her breath. If it let loose an ululating wail, they were all dead.
A sigh went through the company when it disappeared back into the brush.
“That’s it? That’s what everybody is so afraid of?” Sam asked. “It can’t be too difficult to kill that thing.”
Eamon cuffed him on the back of his head. “Quiet.”
“It might be easy to kill one on one,” a man said softly from behind Shea, “but it hunts in packs. I’ve never seen a more cunning animal.”
“Looks like your little berries worked, boy,” the man told Shea.
She glanced at her companions. “It works better if you all would just. Quit. Talking.”
A choked noise came from Eamon.
She frowned at him. He looked away, but not before Shea caught a hint of a smile.
Thought it was funny, did he? Well, she’d see how funny he thought it was when the revenant returned to check out all this noise. The berries disguised their scent. They didn’t mask sound.
The march resumed. The men held themselves in a constant state of readiness, with hands clutched around weapons.
The first test was passed. If they were going to retreat, now was the time.
The commander ordered them forward, further into revenant territory.
The sounds of animal life were muted in these woods. That had less to do with the company’s presence and more to do with the revenants acting like a scourge on the earth. They had no sense of self preservation. They killed and killed until there was nothing left. Then they would move on like a pestilence. Intelligent they might be, but they had no sense of restraint. They were extremely aggressive to everything.
They had an amazing sense of smell, which made up for their poor eyesight. Pickleberries were one of the most pungent smelling plants in the Highlands or Lowlands, and even a human could smell a small bush from a fair distance. Before they had set out that morning, each man had been instructed to rub crushed pickleberries on his pulse points, neck, chest, groin, and under the arms, in the hopes that the smell would conceal his scent.
It was better to slip through unseen than try to fight them off one by one.
And it seemed to be working too, until one of the beasts stumbled through the brush right on top of them.
Before Shea could move or shout, a man from Saw Grass drew his blade and threw himself at the revenant. Two men followed, killing the beast before it could emit more than a pained yip.
“Shit,” Shea breathed.
There was a heartbeat of silence and then a chorus of screeching howls mourned their pack mate’s death. The din of dozens of revenants rose as they raced through the hills all around them.
“That is not a small pack,” Shea observed softly, listening.