Bernard muttered, "Just wake me up when we get back." Then he laid down and closed his eyes, his face and body going immediately slack again.
Tavi glanced at his uncle, frowning, and then back at the sheep. Dodger had them herded into the thicket again and had presented his horns-and not toward Tavi.
"Uncle Bernard," Tavi said, and he thought his voice sounded high-pitched and panicky. "Uncle Bernard. I think something is coming."
Tavi's uncle did not respond. Tavi looked around for his uncle's sword, but he had left it lying beside the herdbane's body, and it was now two dozen strides away. Tavi clenched his hands into frustrated fists. This was all his fault. If he hadn't shirked his duties to impress Beritte, he wouldn't have needed to come looking for Dodger and his uncle wouldn't have needed to follow him.
Tavi shivered. Suddenly, the possibility of death seemed very real, looming stark and close.
Shadows fell over the valley, and Tavi looked up to see racing clouds darken the sun, and he heard a distant rumble of thunder. Wind made the trees and scant brush begin to sway and stir, and the earth raft seemed to crawl. Though already up to the walking pace of a man, and still accelerating, Tavi found himself desperate to move faster and terrified that it might already be too late.
Tavi swallowed. If something came after them now, his uncle would not be able to help him. Tavi would have to handle it alone.
A high, whistling screech came from the trees to the west of them, up the slope.
Tavi jerked his head in that direction, but saw nothing. The screech repeated itself.
Another herdbane.
A second screech answered it, this time from the east of the earth-raft and from unnervingly close at hand. A third? Brush rattled perhaps fifty paces back in the trees. Then again, closer. Tavi thought he saw something moving toward them. Closing in.
"They're coming," he said, in a quiet voice.
Tavi swallowed. Though Brutus might eventually reach the pace of a running man and hold it for hours or days, he wouldn't get there in time to help them escape. Bernard had no chance at all of evading another herd-bane as he lay unconscious, and Brutus's focus was all on bearing the pair of them back toward home.
Which meant that the only way his uncle could escape was if the herd-banes went looking somewhere else. If someone led them off in another direction.
Tavi took a deep breath, rolled off the earth-raft to one side of the trail, and lay completely still. If the herdbanes tracked movement, surely they would have more trouble with the wind rising and the trees and brush swaying in it. He would remain still for a while and then start making plenty of noise and motion, to draw the hunters away from their vulnerable prey.
Thunder rumbled again, and Tavi felt a tiny, cold raindrop splash on his cheek. He looked up and saw vast and dark clouds growing around the mountain. Another cold raindrop fell on him, and he felt a rush of fear that nearly forced him to empty his stomach. Furystorms could be deadly to anyone caught out in the open. Without the solid protection of the steadholt's walls or the protection of his own furies, he would be nearly helpless before the storm. Breathing fast and light, Tavi picked up several rocks that seemed a good size for throwing. Then he turned to the west and hurled the stone on the highest arch he could manage.
The stone flew in silence and struck on a tree trunk, making a sharp sound. Tavi pressed against the base of the tree and held still.
There was a whistle from the other side of the trail, and something
moved through the brush, toward it. Tavi heard steps behind him, and then a great dark form flashed past him in near silence, a bound that took it across the rough trail Brutus's passage had made. Another herdbane, this one darker, larger than the first. It ran on its toes, though its talons rattled against fallen pine needles and its feathers brushed through the limbs of the evergreens. It went toward the spot where the stone had landed, vanishing back into the brush.
Tavi let out a breath. He threw another stone, farther away, back toward the clearing, rather than in the direction where Brutus was slowly bearing his uncle to safety. Then he crouched low and headed back toward the clearing himself, tossing a new stone every few paces. The wind kept rising, and more tiny, stinging droplets of near-frozen rain began to fall.
Tavi labored to keep his breathing as silent as he could and crept back to the clearing, quiet as a cat, creeping the last few paces on his belly, under the overhanging branches of one of the evergreens. The sheep were nowhere to be seen.
But the second herdbane was already there.
So was the Marat.
This herdbane stood at least a head taller than the first, and its feathers were darker, its eyes a browner shade of gold. It stood over the corpse of the bird Tavi had killed, one leg cocked up underneath its body, leaning its neck down to nuzzle its beak against its dead mate's feathers.
The Marat was the first Tavi had seen. He was tall, taller than anyone Tavi knew. He looked not unlike a man, but his shoulders were very broad, and his body heavy with flat, swift-looking muscle. He wore only a cloth around his hips, though that seemed mostly utilitarian, worn only to provide a belt to hang several pouches from, and from which depended something that looked like a dagger made of black glass. His hair was long and thick and looked sickly white in the dim grey light that shone through the rain clouds. He had tied dark feathers into his hair, here and there, and they lent him a savage aspect.
The Marat moved to the herdbane's body and knelt over it, reaching out to lay both wide, powerful-looking hands upon the beast. He let out a soft, keening sound, which was echoed by the male beside him, and both went still for a moment, bowing their heads.
Then the man snarled, splitting his lips apart, and his head turned this way and that, looking around him, white teeth bared. His eyes, Tavi saw, were precisely the same shade of gold as the Herdbane's, inhuman and bright.
Tavi remained where he was, hardly daring to breathe. The Marat's features were not difficult to read. He was furious, and as the man turned his head in a slow circle around the clearing, Tavi saw that his teeth and his hands were stained with scarlet blood.
The Marat stood and held a hand to his mouth. He took a breath and blew, a wailing whistle flying from his lips, loud enough to make Tavi wince. He blew a short sequence, the notes higher and lower, long and short. Then he fell silent.
Tavi's brow furrowed into a frown, and he dropped his jaw a little, half-closing his eyes, and listened.
After a time, there came, half-mangled by the rising winds, a whistling answer. Tavi had no way of knowing what the answer said, but that there was an answer in itself was frightening enough. The whistling communication could mean only one thing: There were more than one of the barbarians here.
The Marat had returned to Calderon Valley.
Perhaps they were simply hunting, taking refuge from detection in the humanity-free area in the pine barrens around Garados. Or perhaps, Tavi's panicked thoughts ran, they were the advance scouts for a horde. But that seemed mad. A horde hadn't been seen in more than fifteen years-not since before Tavi was born, and while they had enjoyed a brief spate of victory, destroying the Crown Legion and slaying the Princeps Gaius, the Aleran Legions had crushed the horde only weeks later, dealing them such a deadly stroke that everyone had assumed that the Marat would never return.
Tavi swallowed. But they had returned. And if they meant to return in force, the Marat in the valley were probably advance scouts. If they were, they would never let one rather skinny and undersized boy who had seen them escape to warn others of their presence.
The Marat returned to glaring around the clearing. He seized several feathers and jerked them out of the dead herdbane, then reached up and tied them to strands of his hair. He made a whistling sound at the living herd-bane, moving one hand in a gesture. The bird responded by moving in that direction in long, stalking steps, its eyes sweeping back and forth.