The Fanged Crown

CHAPTER TEN

29 Kythorn, the Year of the Ageless One

(1479 DR)

Chult

A leaf-strewn path led them out of the grove and up a vine-tangled slope toward the heart of the island. They left the corpse tucked in the tree hollow because it seemed a better grave than a shallow hole on the open floor. Although he couldn’t see the sky through the leaf canopy, Harp judged it to be late afternoon. He found it hard to breathe in the heavy, moist air, and soon his clothes dripped with sweat and his flask was empty.

Their previous plans of a quick survey-in and out before nightfall-were looking less and less likely with every step through the brush. They would have to find a place to camp soon. The heat under the trees was rising, and the sunlight beat down through the green of the leaves, casting the world in a pale yellow glow. As the temperature rose, an eerie silence fell as if the jungle’s creatures had retreated into a quiet, shady spot to wait out the worst of the heat.

Beside Harp, Kitto was whistling a tune softly to himself. It was a tune Harp recognized from the Marderward, and the words had stayed with him all these years: “Bitch Queen take my soul away to the depths of the sea. Don’t make me stay one bleeding day. This world is not for me.”

“So what do you think of the jungle?” Harp asked. “Lots of plants, huh.”

Kitto stopped whistling and smiled down at his boots. Since Kitto never had much to say, it had become a joke to talk to him about mundane things, topics that other people would consider normal conversation, but Kitto seemed to think were hilarious. But then, most things that were normal to other people amused Kitto.

“Quite the weather we’re having,” Harp continued. “Did I tell you about the mule? She’s got the mange. We had to put her out of her misery.”

Boult piped up from behind them. “Got a bit of the ache in my neck. Oh, but the crops are quite good.”

“Can you believe the price of eggs?” Harp asked. “And did you hear about Lady Arello and the Captain of the Guard? Scandalous!”

“You’re all insane,” Verran said. “Kitto, you should just tell them they’re all insane.”

They settled into an amicable silence. But their easy trek along the open floor didn’t last long. As the incline became steeper and the vegetation grew thicker, the men spread out as they struggled up the hill, their feet slipping on loose stones that seemed to be only held together by a mat of roots on top of very shallow soil. Kitto stayed close to Harp, which meant the boy had something that he wanted to say.

They were at the back of the group, and Harp found himself breathing uncomfortably hard. Kitto waited with him as Harp paused to catch his breath.

“I need to take better care of myself,” he said, taking a drink of water from Kitto’s waterskin. “Maybe I’m getting too old for this.”

Kitto didn’t look tired at all. The wiry boy was all lean muscle, athleticism, and startling grace. Sometimes Kitto and Boult would have rope-climbing contests up the shroud ropes on the Crane. Boult was agile for a dwarf and much stronger than Kitto, but he couldn’t best the boy’s unparalleled displays of dexterousness.

“Too much ale,” Kitto said in his soft, lilting voice. “And not enough sleep.”

“Yes, I’m sorry about that. But don’t give me too much trouble. That’s Boult’s job.”

Kitto tipped his head back and looked up at the sky, and for the millionth time Harp wondered why the boy chose to tag along with him when there were thousands of people of better quality than Harp could ever hope to be. Kitto was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. He just didn’t seem to be in a hurry to go anywhere.

“I told you that Liel was one of the colonists and that her father was worried that something had happened to her. I just want to make sure you’re all right. I know you and Liel were friends.”

“I’m all right,” Kitto replied flatly. Harp tried to gauge the emotion in the boy’s face, but Kitto was unreadable. With Harp breathing easier, they resumed climbing up the hill after Boult and Verran.

“She took care of you, right? After you left Gwynneth Isle and went to the Wealdath with her.”

“She said I could stay in the Wealdath.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I hated Cardew.”

“That makes three of us,” Harp said wryly as they scrambled up a rocky embankment.

“He knew you were in Vankila,” Kitto said. “I heard him say he was going to make you pay.”

That wasn’t news to Harp, who was fully aware how Cardew had directed the events that transpired during his imprisonment at the Vankila Slab. With a single directive, Cardew had altered the course of Harp’s life irrevocably.

“I tried to make Cardew tell me where you were. But he wouldn’t.”

Harp laid his hand on Kitto’s shoulder. “You couldn’t have gotten me out by yourself. It was better you didn’t know.”

“I should have been there too,” Kitto said softly.

“No, that’s the last place in the world you should have been. Come on, or I’ll make you talk about the latest dress fashions. Ribbons or bows, Kitto? I just can’t decide!”

By the time they caught up to Boult and Verran, it was obvious they had lost the path, or maybe they’d been following the wrong one all along. The ground flattened out again, and they trudged through stands of massive fernlike plants, their leaves covered with a white fuzziness that looked deceptively soft, but on closer inspection was actually made of razor-sharp barbs.

Even the flowers impeded their progress through the jungle. The ground had been overrun with a variety of pinkish blooms that grew on reedy stalks and sent out crimson tendrils to envelope whatever vegetation surrounded them. The tendrils from a single plant could overtake entire sections of jungle floor, engulfing everything in a lumpy red mesh. When the back of Harp’s hand brushed against one of the crimson tendrils, his skin puffed up painfully.

“First lesson of the jungle,” he told his crew as he rubbed salve on the rash and wrapped his hand in cloth. “If it has color, avoid it.”

“Second lesson of the jungle,” Boult replied, picking thorns out of the leg of his pants. “Avoid the jungle.”

“And miss the glorious views?” Harp joked, gesturing ahead of him at the dense wall of thorns that formed a barrier to the north and west. The eastern route was no easier because of a steep vine-covered embankment.

“Have you noticed how the flat land is always followed by a sharp rise?” Verran said. “We’ve been climbing higher since we left the beach.”

“Like we’re climbing a massive staircase,” Kitto said. His comment was followed by a long moment of silence. Harp tried to imagine what such a land formation would look like from a bird’s eye view.

“Or maybe it’s like a pyramid with the steps on all sides,” Kitto continued.

“Either way begs the question,” Boult said. “What’s at the top?”

Although it wasn’t very high, the embankment was nearly vertical. Ropey yellow vines draped the length of it, making it easy to climb. About halfway up, Harp reached for a handhold. His hand touched something reedy, and a blast of orange exploded into the air. Startled, Harp lost his grip on the vine, slid down the embankment, and crashed into Boult. The dwarf managed to keep hold of the cliff despite the weight of his captain and the flock of orange birds that flapped into the sky, screeching their indignation at the disruption.

“Hullo, Boult,” Harp said, who had landed across the dwarf’s arms. “Your assistance is most appreciated.”

“Get off me, you lout,” Boult grumbled. “You’re the worst climber I’ve ever met. You could break your neck walking across a field.”

“Nonsense,” Harp replied, hauling himself upright and resuming his climb past the deep hollow where the cliff-dwelling birds nested. “I’m very agile.”

“Agile like a cave slug,” Boult retorted. “Is there anything you do well?”

“He makes good soup,” Kitto called from below them on the cliff.

“No, he doesn’t,” Boult said. “Didn’t you eat dinner last night? What did you do, Harp? Boil oranges in dirty water and call it food?”

Verran laughed. “I glad that’s not the normal fare on the boat. I was worried I’d starve to death.”

“Kitto liked it,” Harp said as he reached the top of the cliff and pulled himself onto a small rock plateau. “The rest of you have no taste.”

“Not after years of eating your cooking,” Boult said, climbing onto the rock beside Harp.

“Damn, that’s beautiful,” Harp said as they stared out across the horizon at their first unencumbered sight of the open sky since they had left the Crane earlier that morning. In the gathering twilight, the ocean was a deep dusky blue, and they could see the two ships in the cove, surprisingly small in the distance.

“It’s getting dark,” Harp said. “We need to find a place to sleep.”

“I doubt the jungle floor is a good spot for napping,” Boult replied.

“What about here?” Harp asked, looking around. The flat rock was surrounded on three sides by tangled undergrowth. The side that opened to the ocean was level with the crowns of the towering trees they had walked under earlier that day.

“We’d never see anything coming up on us,” Boult said shaking his head. “We might as well slice open our bellies and ring the dinner bell.”

“You’re so dramatic,” Harp sighed. “How dangerous could it be?”

“In a place where the vines can eat you, I think the meat-eaters can probably kill you with a sneeze,” Boult said dryly.

“Poor, delicate Boult,” Harp said, as Verran and Kitto reached the top of the cliff, climbed on the plateau, and laid down their packs gratefully. “Take a rest. I’ll look around.”

Harp pushed his way into the undergrowth on the far side of the plateau. Once he was inside the thicket, he followed a finger of rock that stuck out among the treetops. The rock jetty ended just a few feet from the top of one of the soaring trees. The wide leaves and thick branches above him hindered his view of the sky, and it was a substantial drop to the ground. But from where Harp stood, he was close to the thick woody vines that he’d noticed from the ground. They grew between the trees, lacing the branches together and forming paths in the air wide enough for a man to walk more or less comfortably, if he had any sense of balance.

Harp squatted down and held very still; soon wildlife began emerging from the tree cover. A little monkey-like creature with dark golden fur and an extremely long tail moved slowly along the vines, sniffing the air as if he knew that something wasn’t quite right. The creature reached one of the wide, rough-barked trunks, gracefully scampered up into the leaves, and disappeared overhead.

Maybe it knew a safe place to spend the night. Harp stretched out to grab the nearest vine. Grasping it with two hands, he swung over the expanse. He kicked his legs, trying to get a footing on a wider vine below him. His shoulders aching, he overshot it twice and was very glad that Boult wasn’t there to see his clumsy moves. When he finally found his balance, he walked carefully along the springy vine. The leaves were mere inches from his head, but the distance to the ground made him surprisingly dizzy. Harp had spent a good portion of his life working the tall sails of ships and had never had a problem with heights. Maybe the heat of the jungle was getting to him.

When he reached the trunk where the golden monkey had disappeared, Harp had a harder time climbing up the trunk, but he shimmied up and poked his head unceremoniously through the leaves. In front of him was a natural floor formed by a tight mat of branches interwoven as they sought the sun and tangled on the roots of canopy ferns. Holding onto a vine, Harp jumped up and down on the floor to see if it would break under his weight. But jumping on it did nothing but sway the branches and disturb a few birds.

The natural platform was surrounded on all sides by leaves, and on one edge was a white flower the size of a boulder. With the palm of his hand, Harp scooped up some of the water that had collected in the petals and refilled his flask. The sky had dimmed from blue to purple. As for places to camp in the jungle, the leafy platform was more comfortable than they deserved.

As he made his way back to collect his friends, Harp could see a band of blue river cascading down from the inland mountains. Based on Avalor’s information, he knew that the colony was less than half a mile from the river and only a mile inland from the cove. From his vantage point, Harp had a sense of where the colony should be. They must have taken the wrong path out of the grove. After a night’s rest they would make their way to the river and head up the northern bank. The colony should be easy to find from there.

“You got lucky,” Boult said, when he saw the treetop hideaway that Harp had found for them.

“Nah, I’m just smarter than you.”

“What did you do? Follow a monkey?”

“Shut it, dwarf,” Harp said. “You would have just shot it. And then where would we be?”

“Eating dinner,” Boult replied.

In the gathering twilight, they ate a quick meal of hard bread and dried meat. No one talked much as they stretched out to sleep on the springy branches. As the moon rose above them, none were prepared for what the jungle became after darkness fell. It was the noisiest night any of them had ever experienced. It seemed as if every creature in the jungle was agitated, angry, or just generally homicidal. Harp wasn’t sure about the other men, but every time he dozed off, a sound of crashing, hissing, or gnashing startled him awake. It happened so many times, it was almost amusing, except for the fear he felt when the treetop shook under the heavy footsteps of some night wanderer who prowled the jungle below.

At some point in the night, Harp dozed off and rolled on his side. Awakened by a growling noise that sounded inches away from his ear, he opened his eyes. Through the gaps in the branches under him, he could see a black shadow lumbering across the forest floor below. In the faint light from the moon, the creature looked like it was tall enough to reach up and grab him through the canopy if it wanted to. Ambling between the buttress roots, it suddenly stopped and took several raspy breaths, as if it were tasting the air. The dark shape twisted, and Harp could see two yellow eyes glowing through the gloom. Still half-asleep, Harp reassured himself that getting eaten by a forest beast wasn’t the worst way to go.

“Put me out of my misery,” he whispered to the monstrosity below him. “I haven’t had the guts to do it myself.”

But the monster seemed to lose interest and moved into the shadows. The way it vanished from sight made Harp wonder if it had been more spirit than flesh. In the last moment before dawn, the din of the jungle finally ceased. The nighttime chaos was banished with the dawning of the sun, and a serene quiet accompanied the first rays of morning light. Finally, Harp dropped off to sleep.

And then the screaming began. Harp jerked awake, as the high-pitched wails rang across the jungle, reverberated against the mountains, and echoed back across the valleys. A call of feral pain, it was loud enough to leave a ringing in his ears and primal enough to make his blood run cold. He heard the splintering of wood as something massive crashed through the undergrowth, followed by a thud that rattled the ground and jostled the branches under them.

“What is that?” Verran asked, his eyes wide and fearful. “What makes the ground shake like that?”

“Let’s get out of the tree before we’re tossed out,” Harp said. They hurriedly gathered their things and made their way back to solid ground.

They left the tree crown and climbed back onto the rocky plateau. As they climbed to it, two unseen adversaries faced off somewhere in the direction of the river. They could hear the sounds of ripping skin, snarls and gnashing, and giant bodies flattening the landscape as they fought.

“What’s that sound?” Verran asked. “Is it coming toward us?”

“Verran!” Boult snapped. “Why do you keep asking us? Am I not standing beside you? Do you see a spyglass in my hand?”

“You don’t need to bite his head off, Boult,” Harp chastised him. “What, a little rumble in the jungle makes you crabby before your morning cup of tea?”

“If I had a cup of tea in front of me, I wouldn’t be in the stupid jungle,” Boult shot back just as the sound of a bone snapping echoed across the clearing. As the thrashing between the beasts intensified, the birds in the trees screeched a harsh cacophony of warning calls. Kitto covered his ears as an unnatural screech of pain pierced the air. Then something very large fell very hard, shaking the ground again, and it was quiet.

“Did it die …” Verran started to ask, but he caught Boult’s glare and shut his mouth.

Harp motioned for the others to follow him and scrambled through the undergrowth and down a rocky slope in the direction of the river that he’d seen the night before. As they neared the river, the ground leveled out, and he could hear the rushing of water. They came out of the trees at the edge of a small valley and the place where one of the monsters had met its end in the morning’s battle. A gargantuan lizard, easily twenty-five feet long from the tip of its spiked tail to the front of its fanged maw, was sprawled across the ground. Its pebbly yellow skin had black stripes branching out from its spine, and given its muscular haunches and tiny front legs, it must have walked on its hind legs.

“If that’s not at the top of the food chain, what is?” Harp said as they walked down the slope to the corpse of the monster. The monsters had felled several of the large trees that ringed the valley, and as Harp crawled over one of the massive trunks, he saw claw marks slashed deep across the bark. When they reached the corpse, they stopped and stared in wonder at the massive creature splayed out in the crushed and bloodied underbrush.

“I thought they were nightmares,” Kitto said quietly.

“What were, Kitto?” Harp asked.

“The monsters I saw last night,” Kitto told him.

“No, I saw them too,” Harp said as he circled around the lizard. Bony frills stuck out around the base of its skull, which was twisted sideways on its neck. Gaping wounds bisected the lizard’s back, and thick blood still oozed out of the claw marks, although the creature was decidedly dead.

Verran was standing near the lizard’s head with a thoughtful look on his face and his head cocked as he inspected the lizard’s blank yellow eyes. Each was bigger than a man’s head and had a dark, vertical pupil that reminded Harp of a snake’s. In death, a thick, cloudy shroud covered the eyes, and buzzing insects were amassing along their edges.

“Whatever killed it had to be bigger,” Verran said. “Look at the way the neck is snapped.”

“And why didn’t it stay to eat it?” Boult asked, swiping an insect away from his face. Carrion bugs were moving into the sticky gashes and buzzing over the bloody ground.

“It could have been a purple worm,” Verran suggested. He sounded almost excited at the idea of seeing monsters he had only heard about. “Or maybe a basilisk. Did you know it can petrify you?”

“I know that I don’t want to spend another night in the jungle,” Boult said. “Let’s get going.”

“A hydra!” Verran continued. “What if it was a hydra? The only way to kill one is to cut off all of its heads. Did you know that?”

“If we run into a hydra, I’m going to kill you, Harp,” Boult said.

“If we run into a hydra, I’m going to kill myself,” Harp told him.

They had just reached the other side of the depression when Kitto turned around and looked behind them with a puzzled expression on his face.

“What’s wrong?” Harp asked him.

“What’s that noise?” Kitto asked. “Is that the water?”

Harp heard it too, and it wasn’t water. It was a punctuated clicking that sounded like something he’d heard before, but he couldn’t quite remember when. Before his mind could settle on what it was, it grew louder. A large ant appeared at the top of the slope on the other side of the depression. About the size of a dog, with curved tusks like a boar, and a segmented body. The ant hesitated for a moment. Its beaked jaw clicked together rapidly, sending an almost metallic sound ringing through the trees.

“Why is everything huge in the jungle?” Boult asked.

“At least there’s just one,” Harp pointed out. He was disconcerted by the enormity of insect too. But before his words were fully formed, another ant appeared on the horizon followed by two more. Boult glared at Harp accusingly.

“You can’t hold me responsible … ” Harp began as a flood of the shiny black insects surged over the slope and skittered across the ground. Before the men could make a move, the ants engulfed the lizard’s corpse until none of the yellow and black skin could be seen through the writhing ants’ bodies.

“We’re all right,” Harp said in relief. “They just want the meat.”

“Look at that!” Verran gasped as a much larger ant made its way down the slope and into the depression. The size of a small horse, the ant’s reddish shell was the shade of rusted metal. Like the smaller ants, the queen ant had an armored body and spindly legs that looked too skinny to hold up the bulk of her body. Unlike her soldiers, she had the tattered remains of papery wings. The queen didn’t participate in the feasting frenzy but instead skirted the edges of the swarm as her bent antennae quivered rapidly.

Flashes of white appeared through the swarming mass of black, and Harp studied it curiously for a few moments. Then he understood exactly what he was seeing-the white was the lizard’s bones picked clean by the ants. Looking at the horrified faces of his companions, they had all reached the same conclusion. Even a lizard that large wasn’t going to satisfy the ants, not when there was something else available, namely three men and a dwarf. As they turned to run, the queen ant swung her head in their direction with her beaked mouth clicking open and closed. As if of one mind, the army of ants skittered across the clearing toward the crewmates, leaving only a pile of bare bones in their wake.

“To the river!” Harp shouted as they sprinted across the uneven ground toward the sound of rushing water.

But when they came closer, they saw the river was far below them at the bottom of a narrow ravine. The fast-flowing water had carved a channel deep into the earth, and there was no obvious route down the dirt banks. Jumping was possible, but it would be easy to break a leg on the narrow lip of dry ground at the edge of the water, or get swept into the rushing current of the river. They ran north along the ravine with Kitto leading the way as he leaped effortlessly over the clumps of ferns and rocks scattered on the ground. The ant soldiers seemed to have fallen back.

“The bastards are flanking us,” Boult shouted. Through the gaps in the trees on their left side, Harp could see that Boult was right. A line of ants had moved ahead of them on their left, forming a half-circle around them. Once the ants overtook them, they would be trapped against the edge of the river with no means of escape.

“Since when are ants so smart?” Verran gasped as he ran beside Harp. Harp was equally shocked that the ants could execute such a trap, but he was breathing too hard to respond. As they ran, Harp saw a tree with vines dangling down to the ground. Up a tree was better than over the edge of the ravine, he thought. At least it would give them time to come up with a strategy of their own.

“Climb!” Harp shouted, grabbing a vine and pulling himself up as his feet scrabbled for traction against the bark. Boult was close behind him, while Kitto and Verran scurried up another tree that was across the clearing.

“Can ants climb trees?” Verran called from the other tree.

“Not sure,” Harp gasped, as he perched on one of the branches and surveyed the ground below. These trees weren’t as tall as the ones they’d slept in the night before, and the vines weren’t as thick. At the moment, the ants weren’t climbing; they were just milling around the bases of the trees. Boult and Harp climbed to the widest branch and waited to see what the ants would do. In the moment of calm, Harp realized he was trembling, not only from fatigue but from fear as well. As a younger man, he’d been stronger and faster than most men his size and went into battle with no hesitation. There had been too much comfort in his life in recent years. His body didn’t remember how to react to danger.

“Look at the big ant, Harp,” Boult said after a moment. “I think it’s giving orders to the smaller ants.”

“How can you tell?” Harp asked. The red queen paced back and forth across the clearing below them, moving between the two trees where the crewmates had taken refuge.

“Just watch,” Boult said impatiently.

The queen moved through the swarm, its jaws clicking loudly. It would pause, change directions, and resume the rhythmic noise again. Harp recognized a pattern in the clicks-Boult was right. The queen was telling the soldiers what to do. The smaller ants began to methodically move up the trees. They didn’t climb quickly, but in answer to Verran’s question, they could definitely climb trees.

“Kill the big ant,” Harp urged.

Boult pulled his crossbow off his back, loaded a bolt, and fired it at the queen. The bolt hit square at the base of her neck, but it bounced off her shell harmlessly. Boult tried two more times, and while his aim was dead on, the shell was too thick to penetrate.

“She’s got to have a weak spot,” Boult said in frustration. “But I’m not hitting it from this angle.”

“What do you need?” Harp asked.

“The underbelly,” Boult said. Immediately Harp began to move down the trunk and grabbed the longest vine.

“Don’t you dare!” Boult shouted when he realized what Harp was intending to do.

But Harp was already sliding down the vine. “If I can’t flip the big one over, then I’ll lead her to the cliff,” he called. “All of you fire at once, and we’ll knock her over the edge.”

“Get back here!” Boult shouted. “The small ones will eat you first!”

But when Harp dropped to the ground, it was the queen ant that charged him while her troops continued their methodical climb up the trees. The queen was so fast that Harp had to scramble backward to get away from her, tripping over the underbrush and falling on his back. The ant lunged at him, her tusks slicing through the air and her beaked mouth easily capable of snapping his head off his neck. Harp twisted out of the way, scraping his chin against a rock and getting a face full of mud. Pushing himself to his feet, he pulled out his sword and ran to the edge of the ravine.

“Maybe flipping her isn’t such a good idea!” Harp yelled.

“Get her between you and the cliff,” Boult shouted.

But that was easier said than done, and the ant seemed to have the same idea about knocking Harp into the river. Every time Harp tried to switch their positions, the ant lunged, forcing him to go on the defensive. Harp got the unsettling impression that she was toying with him, and as soon as she tired of the game, he was going to be the one squished on the ground.

“Last try!” Harp yelled. “When I go down on the ground, shoot at the same time!”

“No, Harp!” Kitto shouted.

Harp dodged as the ant lunged at him. With a burst of speed, he sprinted away from the ant to the edge of the ravine. Planting himself a few paces from the drop-off, he let the queen charge him. In the instant before she smacked into him, Harp dropped backward onto the ground, raised his sword, and plunged it into her underside just as she barreled over him.

When they saw Harp fall backward onto the ground, Kitto and Boult fired arrows that struck the ant’s back, but they bounced harmlessly off the hard shell. Instead, it was the ant’s own momentum that propelled her to the very edge of the ravine. The creature struggled against gravity, her legs skittering for a hold on the muddy bank before she flipped over the edge, taking a smattering of loose earth, Harp’s sword, and Harp with her.

“Harp!” Kitto screamed, as Harp disappeared off the edge of the ravine.

“Hold him, Verran,” Boult shouted. Verran grabbed Kitto’s arm, but the boy jerked it away.

Kitto started down the trunk, and Verran grabbed his elbow again. Kitto glared up at him furiously and pulled away.

“The ants will leave,” Verran assured him. “And we’ll go after the captain.”

Kitto looked doubtful, but he hesitated. Just as Verran said, the rank-and-file ants didn’t know what to do without their leader. The ants on the tree trunks dropped to the ground and milled around in confusion, eventually wandering in different directions into the underbrush. A few walked directly off the edge of the ravine and into thin air, following the path of the queen. As the horde dispersed, the crewmates scrambled down the tree trunks, but the few remaining ants didn’t seem to notice them.

Kitto ran to the edge where Harp had disappeared, dropped to his knees, and peered over the side. “Do you see him?” Verran asked.

Boult stood at his shoulder. “It’s not a vertical drop, Kit. He could have grabbed onto something. And I can’t see his body.”

“Let’s find a way down,” Verran said. A few paces up the river, a faint path traversed the bank down to the river. Halfway down the trail they could hear Harp calling to them over the rush of the river.

“See Kitto?” Boult said. “You’re not going to get rid of him that easily.”

Kitto’s head was tipped forward, so his shaggy black hair covered his face, and he didn’t say anything until they reached the bottom of the ravine. Harp was waiting for them by the river, wincing as he rubbed his shoulder. His face was muddy, and blood from his chin had dripped onto his sweat-stained shirt.

“Are you all right?” Kitto asked.

“Hah, stupid ant,” Harp said. “Lost my sword, though.”

“Bad luck,” Boult said.

“Maybe not,” Harp said, pointing downriver. “I found something else.