Chapter 35: My Backpack?!

The two companions looked from Kaela to Seraya, visibly as stunned by the sudden change as the wounded woman herself, who moments ago had been convinced she was going to die at the edge of the dunes.

"Warrior, what about her leg now?" one of the women asked, edging closer, while Seraya wiped her mouth and inspected the calf once more, gauging whether the dark discoloration was continuing to recede.

"Looks better for now," she answered, looking up at Kaela. "But if it flares up again or you feel faint, speak up immediately instead of pretending you caught a branch."

Kaela nodded with a solemnity that made it look like she had just received the most vital command of her life. Seraya tore a narrow strip of fabric from the frayed hem of her own clothes and wrapped the wound, securing the makeshift bandage so it wouldn't shift with every stride. Done, she helped the woman into a more comfortable position, then glanced at the bundle of Silverflower, remembering that people in far worse shape were still waiting on them back in the valley.

"We need to find the others and head back," she said. "Niva, your sister, and the rest can't wait on us spending the whole day out here."

At the mention of Raska, Kaela's face hardened at once, the gratitude she had shown Seraya giving way to cold anger.

"If she had done her damn job, we wouldn't have had to run for our lives," she muttered, knuckles whitening around her spear shaft. "First she brewed that cursed soup, and now she couldn't even keep those beasts distracted for a few minutes."

"Aye," one of the companions chimed in, scooping her gear from the dirt. "She was with the rest of them; it's not like she was on her own."

Seraya raised a hand, cutting short the rising grievances; as much as she wanted to give Raska a piece of her mind, any more bickering now was just wasted time.

"We'll settle up with her later. First let's find them and figure out what happened."

None of them argued this time, and Seraya noticed the three women waiting on her decisions with a focus far sharper than before. It was no longer just about the title of First Warrior or tales of a slain serpent; they had seen her go back for Kaela and treat the wound, clearly deciding she was worth following even when she didn't explain every single move.

Kaela rose gingerly, testing whether her leg could bear weight, and fell in between the others, who supported her over the rougher terrain. They moved slower than before, giving the sandy border a wide berth, while Seraya kept looking over her shoulder, having zero desire to test whether the creatures still intended to stay on their side of the line.

The clearing where they had left Raska and the others was deserted.

Seraya halted by the familiar trunk, scanning the bushes and straining her ears for a beat, but heard neither voices, footsteps, nor even a hushed whistle that might suggest the women had merely fallen back a short distance.

Kaela looked at the churned ground, then at the empty woods, her face flushing with outrage.

"They left?" she asked in disbelief. "They abandoned us out there and just walked off?"

One companion cursed under her breath, while the other scanned back toward the valley, as if hoping to spot Raska retreating in the distance and give her a piece of her mind even from here.

"When we get back, I'm telling Vaelira myself," Kaela fumed. "We nearly died because of her, and she couldn't even wait!"

Seraya didn't answer; her eye caught a wooden spear lying against an exposed root, and stepping closer, she spotted another half-buried beneath crushed leaves. A few paces off lay more shafts, strewn as if dropped in sheer panic or surrendered under force, surrounded by a mess of trampled footprints.

She crouched, examined snapped twigs, and swept her gaze over ground scuffed far more violently than any normal march would warrant.

"Doesn't look like they left on their own."

Kaela cut off mid-complaint, staring down at her in reluctant confusion.

"Warrior, they're gone."

"Exactly, but their weapons aren't," Seraya replied, pointing to the scattered spears. "If they just turned tail and headed back to the valley, why leave these behind?"

The women looked at the spear shafts, their anger slowly ebbing into unease. Every one of them knew how scarce weapons were in Emberfrost. In some families, a single spear had to serve multiple hunters; abandoning five at once wasn't something anyone did just because they got tired of waiting.

"They could've panicked," Kaela said, though the words lacked the bite of her earlier anger.

Seraya picked up one of the spears, checked its tip, and glanced back at the churned dirt.

"Maybe, but someone else was here. Look at all these tracks, and the way those branches were snapped."

One woman stepped closer, studying the prints before slowly raising her head.

"You think something attacked them?"

Seraya pressed her lips thin, because the answer creeping into her mind was far worse than running into another serpent.

"Remember whose territory we're on the edge of?"

Kaela went rigid. From the look on her face, Seraya knew she didn't need to utter the name, though one of the other women breathed it aloud in a near whisper:

"Obsidian Maw..."

At the sound of the name, Kaela's grip tightened on her spear shaft, her wolf ears pinning back as if trying to shut out what she had just heard. Seraya was already familiar with the dread with which Emberfrost spoke of their neighbors, but now she saw something deeply personal - the last scrap of color drained from Kaela's face.

"Maybe a beast after all," Kaela said, staring at the scattered weapons. "They could've fled, and..."

She trailed off, unable to make the explanation fit the tracks on the ground, but the reality of the Obsidian Maw was too terrifying to accept without resistance. When she was younger, both of her mothers had been captured by that tribe and never returned; she and her elder sister had been forced to grow up with the knowledge of what had become of them.

Now her sister lay unconscious back in the valley, and Kaela stood paces from where the very monsters she had feared since childhood might have struck.

Seraya studied her closely, but didn't pry. Instead, she pointed to the tracks trailing through the trees.

"If it were an animal, I'd expect different tracks," she said. "These are feet, just like..."

She instinctively pointed down at her own leg, then looked at her boot from her old world and stopped, seeing three pairs of eyes following the gesture.

"Well, not like mine," she corrected with a huff. "You know what I mean."

Under different circumstances, someone might have cracked a smile, but now they all stared down the trail where the prints vanished. Seraya felt the weight of having to make another choice - one she wanted no part of and had no good plan for.

"Do we go back for help?" one woman asked. "Vaelira could send more warriors."

Seraya looked at the bundle of Silverflower, then at the abandoned spears. The thought of Niva collided violently with the image of five companions being marched to their slaughter.

Of course it couldn't just be about the damn flowers... Now I have to drag Raska out of yet another disaster.

"If the Obsidian Maw took them, by the time we get back with help, there might not be anyone left to save," she answered, her grip tightening on the spear.

Kaela swallowed hard.

"So what do we do?"

"We track where they took them, and try to get them out."

No one answered right away. Seraya saw in their faces that following that trail took far more courage than wading back into the serpents' nest. She wasn't nearly as skilled at reading tracks as she liked to pretend either, but they didn't look like the march of an entire war party, so she clung to the hope they were dealing with a small scout crew.

There was another reason she kept to herself: if Raska tried to save her own skin, she wouldn't hesitate to babble about Seraya, her presence in Emberfrost, and everything she knew about the death of their totem. In that case, today's abduction would merely be the opening move of a nightmare that followed them straight back to the valley.

"I'm not looking to take on all of the Obsidian Maw," she added, catching their expressions. "First we see how many there are and what they're up to."

Kaela looked to the others, then nodded, though fear still held her features.

"We'll follow you, warrior."

Seraya sighed inwardly; it hardly sounded like a war cry from heroic champions, but she couldn't ask for more when her own heart hammered at the thought of closing in on cannibals. They gathered the abandoned spears, divided them up, and set off along the trail, one woman still supporting Kaela across the rougher patches to keep her from straining the wounded leg.

After a tense trek through the trees, a scream pierced the air.

Seraya froze, holding up a hand. As the others halted in their tracks, another voice carried from ahead - ragged, shrill with terror, and suspiciously familiar despite the distance.

Raska.

Seraya let her breath out slowly, checked the terrain, and pointed toward a ridge rising beside the trail. From there they should be able to peer into the hollow below without blundering into plain view. Kaela nodded, and they crept upward with care, taking pains not to dislodge loose gravel. Reaching the crest, they dropped flat among the low scrub.

The sight below tied Seraya's stomach into a knot.

A narrow stream trickled through a small hollow, its banks churned to bare dirt. Scattered among the rocks lay bones - too distinctly shaped to pass off as game scraps. Further out sat a skull half-buried in the sand, alongside dark stains across flat boulders that made her wrench her eyes away.

Raska and the others lay bound tightly in vines across the stream, their struggles reduced to frantic shudders and squirming away from the women standing nearby. One captive wept, another begged for release, while Raska babbled disjointed words Seraya couldn't quite make out.

None of the captors seemed inclined to answer.

Five women were sorting through knapped stone blades, testing edges and lining up selected pieces on a flat rock, while a sixth sat slightly apart, propped against a boulder. She was built like a fortress, and the way the others glanced at her for subtle hand gestures made it clear she called the shots.

This isn't their main settlement... A forward camp, or a butcher site where they haul their catches.

Seraya swallowed, trying not to look at the bones littering the water's edge, but the sight of sharpened stone flakes and bound companions made it clear they didn't have the luxury of time. She didn't know how many minutes remained, but nothing happening down there looked like preparations for a release.

Kaela edged closer, her lips brushing Seraya's ear.

"Warrior, do we strike?"

Seraya looked at the six women, then at the five bound captives, fingers tightening around the spear beside her, painfully aware that wanting to help wasn't the same as having a plan.

"Wait a second," she whispered. "I need to see how we can approach them."

Kaela nodded, though her trembling hands betrayed what it cost her to lie so close to Obsidian Maw cannibals. Seraya scanned for cover, avenues of descent, anything that might tilt the odds without a suicidal head-on charge. They had the high ground and extra spears, but also a wounded warrior in tow, while the enemies below looked rested and thoroughly in their element.

Come on... I can't just charge down the slope hoping they'll run away from my title.

Just then, another woman entered the hollow.

Emerging from the tree line, she halted by the stream and locked eyes with the leader by the boulder, flashing a brief hand sign that snapped the others to attention. She hadn't spoken a word, yet the women knapping stone shifted their posture, reacting like people who had received an order they dared not acknowledge aloud.

Seraya frowned, leaning in toward Kaela.

"Why is she signaling with her hands? Can't they just talk?"

Kaela froze, staring at the scout with terror so stark Seraya felt a cold dread trickle down her spine.

"They can," she whispered. "But that sign... means someone followed them."

Seraya slowly turned her head.

"What?"

"They know about us, warrior."

For a beat, Seraya heard only the sound of her own breath. Looking back down, she saw the woman who had been lounging against the boulder rise to her feet and reach for something resting against the stone. She hoisted it by its strap, weighed it in her grip, and turned it slightly, revealing a shape Seraya could never mistake for anything else in this world.

Her eyes went wide, the words slipping from her mouth before she could remember to keep quiet:

"Holy shit... That's my backpack!"