look so easy?
‘You’re moving rather quickly,’ he said, if only to break the ambience.
‘I’m sorry,’ she replied acidly, ‘would you like to stop and paint a picture of the scenery?’
Lenk let that particular barb sink into his flesh, not bothering to pull it out or launch one of his own. He sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth; perhaps, he thought, he should wait before attempting to mend things with the shict. She didn’t seem to be in the mood for reconciliation at the moment.
No, no, he scolded himself, if you don’t do it now, she’ll just get angrier and do worse than bloody your nose. His eyes drifted down to the hunting knife strapped to her leg. A grimace creased his face.
‘What I mean,’ he replied, ‘is you usually take longer to find a trail.’
‘In most cases,’ she nodded, ‘but this particular quarry has a few exceptional qualities.’
‘Such as?’
‘For one, there’s still a great deal of noise in the forest. Prey, like birds and bugs, always go silent when a predator is about.’
‘You said a few qualities.’
‘Well, there is something more.’
‘What?’
‘It’s a ten-foot-tall fish that walks on two legs and reeks of death, you moron,’ she snapped. ‘If it’s anywhere on this island, it’ll be disgustingly hard to miss.’
He chose to leave that one in his flesh, as well. It would be easy, he knew, to sling something equally venomous at her. In fact, as he noted a particularly thick branch just next to her head, he realised it would be even easier to repay her for her earlier violence.
All you have to do is reach out, and . . .
He shook his head to dispel that thought. While he knew there to be very few problems smashing someone’s head into a tree couldn’t solve, this was not one of them. Tact, however little use an adventurer usually found for it, was called for in such a situation.
‘That’s all there is to it, then?’ he asked, hoping she didn’t note the civil strain in his voice.
‘In this particular case, yes.’ She ducked under a low-hanging branch. ‘Let me ask you something.’
His entire body tensed; questions from the shict, lately, had served chiefly as preludes to violence.
‘Have you thought at all about how you’re going to fight this thing if you find it?’
‘Would it distress you to hear that I don’t know?’
‘No more than usual.’
‘Well, I’ve been giving it some thought,’ Lenk replied. ‘The Abysmyth can’t be hurt by mortal weapons, and that’s about all we’ve got. But it can be hurt by fire. Dread can do something about that and, if we’ve got time, we can get torches.’
‘It’ll be hard to make a fire when it’s eating our heads.’
‘You think it eats heads?’
‘Sure.’ She shrugged. ‘It seems like the kind of thing that eats heads.’
He smiled.
‘Dreadaeleon has his headache, however.’ She grunted as she pressed her lithe body between a heavy stone and a tree trunk. ‘I’ve never seen him use magic in such a state, but I wager it won’t be pretty.’
‘You mean the spectacle of him straining himself beyond his limits?’ Lenk struggled to follow her through the squeeze but found his waist caught firmly in fingers of stone and wood.
‘I was thinking more about the greasy splatter that the Abysmyth will make of him.’ The shict took his hands in hers and, with a strained grunt, pulled him free. ‘This is all assuming quite a bit, though.’
‘Right.’ He paused to dust himself off. ‘We have to find the stupid thing first. Khetashe willing, we’ll spot it before it spots us.’
‘And then?’
‘Then we run away and hide until we can get fire.’
‘Not the bravest strategy.’
‘Bravery and effectiveness are rivers that run in different directions.’
He caught her staring at his shirt and followed her gaze. Even after he had brushed himself off, the forest proved less than willing to let him go: all manner of burrs, thorns and leaves clung to his garments. He glanced back up and she met his gaze, smugness leaking out of her every pore.
‘Perhaps you’d like to take a moment to rest,’ she said, leaning against a tree and folding her arms across her chest.
Reeking, pointy-eared know-it-all.
Despite having led the way through the underbrush, Kataria was completely free of scratches; nothing more than a slight smear of sand marred her flesh. He focused on it unconsciously, observing the sole discoloration to her pale skin, shrinking and growing with each unhurried breath she took.
Arrogant little . . .
A breeze muttered through the canopy,