Chapter 28 | Part 4 | The Silence After

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Maris changed Xandor’s dressing at midnight and didn’t wake anyone.

Aldric watched her from his position against the western granite wall, where he’d been sitting for the past four hours with his sword across his thighs, alternating between scanning the tree line and listening to the sounds his wounded company made in their sleep. Xandor’s breathing was labored, a shallow rhythm that caught on every inhale as the damaged muscles around his shoulder protested the expansion. Balin slept with his hand on his sword hilt, a habit he’d developed in the last week that Aldric recognized from his own early service. Dulint didn’t sleep. He lay with his eyes closed and his breathing too regular, performing rest the way someone performs calm when they’re anything but.

Maris unwrapped the dressing, examined the wound by the minimal moonlight that filtered through the canopy, repacked it with the moss poultice Xandor had instructed her to prepare before consciousness left him, and rewrapped it with the clean strips she’d cut from her own spare shirt. Her hands were steady. Her face was not.

“You should sleep,” Aldric said.

“So should you.”

Fair point. He let it stand.

Maris sat beside him and pressed her hands against her thighs.

She was still pale from the fight.

“She saw it before it happened,” Maris said. “Not the ambush. The outcome. Three wounded. Nobody dead. The horn sounding once.”

Aldric processed that. “You saw the result and didn’t warn us.”

“She saw it during the fight. Not before. The visions don’t come on schedule. They come when the Beacon reacts to threat.” Her eyes were fixed on the tree line. “By the time she knew the outcome, the outcome was already happening.”

“That’s convenient.”

“She had seconds.” Maris looked at him. “Enough to see the two on the ridge. She told you as soon as she could.”

He remembered the warning. He hadn’t thanked her.

Wind moved through the pines. Frozen branches creaked overhead. He could hear no footsteps beyond the hollow.

That worried him more than their presence would have.

“They’re regrouping,” he said. “Not retreating. The horn was a recall, not a withdrawal. They’ll come again, better prepared, with more people or a better angle. We hurt one of theirs. They hurt three of ours. We can’t afford another fight like that.”

“Aldric.”

“What.”

“You’re talking like a commander assessing casualties.”

“I am a commander assessing casualties.” He said it without inflection. The Ninth Frontier had taught him that emotions about command were a luxury purchased with other people’s survival. “Xandor can’t fight. His left arm is useless for weeks. Balin can walk but not run. My grip is compromised. You haven’t collapsed yet, which means the next vision that hits will put you down for hours. And the Cube is still broadcasting our position to anyone listening.”

Maris was quiet for a moment. “She saw something else. During the fight. When the Beacon reacted to the grey cloaks.”

“What.”

“They know what the Cube is. Not just that it’s valuable. They know what it does. The way the leader spoke, ‘the device,’ the way he described it as belonging to someone. These aren’t opportunists. They were sent.”

Aldric had already reached that conclusion. Professional coordination, knowledge of his service record, familiarity with the artifact. Someone with resources and intelligence networks had dispatched a retrieval team. The Grukmar scouts had been dangerous because they were numerous and aggressive. These people were dangerous because they were competent.

“We leave at first light,” he said. “Xandor walks or gets carried. Balin stays with us, whatever pace he can manage.

We go north. Fast as we can.”

“Aldric.”

“What.”

“You haven’t slept in thirty-six hours.”

He looked at his hands. The right one was wrapped in cloth that had already soaked through with a thin seepage. The left one was steady. That was the one that mattered for holding a sword if it came to it, which it would.

“I’ll sleep when they stop following us.”

Maris pulled her cloak tighter. The cold was settling into the granite hollow, condensation forming on the rock walls. Somewhere above them, through the canopy, clouds moved across the moon and the light shifted.

“She sees us making it,” Maris said quietly. “Not clearly. Not completely. But the shape of it. Five people walking north. All five.”

“Vision or hope?”

Maris didn’t answer. Aldric let her keep the distinction to herself.

He scanned the tree line.

No horn. No movement.

That was worse.

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End of Chapter 28.4 —> 28.5: The Second Blood: The Choice