COMMAND THE TIDES - Wren Handman Page 0,54

away, her hands out in front of her, and glanced back toward the camp. She took one more step, and then she heard a soft, wailing cry from behind her. She spun, afraid she was surrounded, and saw two smaller snouts in the bushes behind her.

Her back was turned when it hit her, and she felt sharp teeth tearing into the flesh of her leg. She screamed in pain and surprise, and then lost her footing and fell down. She thrashed wildly in an attempt to dislodge whatever had clung to her, and heard a grunt as she smashed it to the ground. She was crying, she thought, and was furious at herself for it, and she felt blood welling from her leg. There was a nest of badgers behind her, and the mother was coming at her viciously, anxious to protect its young. She felt almost sorry for it, but its teeth in her leg were sharp, and she could feel the skin tearing as she screamed again. She kicked out with her other leg and felt it connect, heard a sharp crack and the sound of the animal hitting the ground, and then Jeremy was there, Sarah close on his heels, both of them with swords drawn and wild expressions on their faces.

“It’s fine. It’s fine,” she gasped, struggling to keep back the tears, but it was no use and they were falling despite herself and she turned her face away, making a pretense of pushing herself off the ground.

“I’ve got her,” Jeremy told Sarah, and then he came forward and caught her around the shoulders, helping her to sit.

Taya heard Sarah pause before moving back through the trees, but her only concern was not to cry, to not show such weakness. Not here, not when she had done so well, when the danger was so close to being passed.

“Did it get you badly?” Jeremy asked her softly, and he turned her leg to examine the bite.

“Ashua! That hurts!” she snapped, and then the tears were falling again and she was wiping them away, cursing herself.

Jeremy caught her hand in one of his, applying gentle pressure to the wound with the other. “It’s not a weakness, Taya. You don’t have to be ashamed.”

“There’s too much to mourn. Too many tears to cry. If I start…” Her voice hitched. “If I start I’ll never stop, I won’t be able to, I never will.” She stumbled over the words, but they had lost their meaning because tears were streaming down her face.

He knelt beside her and put his arms around her, and she leaned her head against his shoulder and let the tears come. For Annelle, for herself, for her store, for the pain, for the drowning, for the blood, for the future that loomed so dark and so uncertain, for it all.

The pair returned to camp quietly, and if Sarah had seen the beginnings of the flood, she let no hint of it leak to the others. Jeremy bandaged her leg and told her to get some sleep, and if the smiles that passed between them seemed deeper or closer, no one remarked on it. She crawled into Jeremy’s bedroll and her head fell against the pillow, and finally, after so long, she could close her eyes without forcing them open again, could succumb to the exhaustion without fearing the dark. Nothing had changed. She was exactly where she had been moments before, but somehow everything had changed. She was no safer, or less alone, or drier, and yet she felt somehow safer, and less alone. No drier, of course…

They let her sleep through the day, not giving her a watch, and when evening hit the company began to travel again. They went by night, moving carefully, wary of Darren’s wounds and enemy soldiers. By day they would make camp, sometimes with fires and sometimes without. It was a hard journey, and rough work keeping wounds clean so they would not fester. There was never enough time to sleep, it seemed, and never enough to fill their stomachs.

Taya woke in the evening with tired eyes that refused to obey her, and when she collapsed into bed the next morning it was with every muscle in her body protesting. She had never traveled so hard in her life, nor gone so long in such proximity to others. She learned a lot about her companions: that Liam was rougher when he was worried, that Sarah had a beautiful singing voice, that