Page 16 of Challenged

“It is a subtle sickness, difficult to spot. I confess, we only discovered it after a branch that should have taken my weight snapped beneath my feet, revealing a rot at the centre of the tree.”

I loose my claws, scrape them lightly over the bark, looking for a spot where they sink through more readily than they should. It is a matter of moments before I find it, and I scrape out some of the rotten wood to show Gregar and Anghar.

“It is not everywhere within them. Just patches. But enough that climbing them is hazardous. The branches are similarly affected.”

Anghar turns to the tree and unleashes his own claws, making to climb up. He gets a few arm spans up the trunk when he hits a patch of rot and his claws shred through it, causing him to sink back down. Only a quick stab of his other hand into a different part of the trunk saves him from tumbling as I did. Carefully, he resumes his climb, examines the branches. The first is old and extremely thick, taking his weight without issue, but he reaches up to grab another, only for it to snap in his hand the moment he tugs on it. He drops back to the ground, examining the end of it.

“I wonder if any of the elders have seen this before,” he says, holding the branch out to Gregar.

Our chief looks at it, bending it to test its strength. It splinters again immediately.

“It is a wonder that any of the branches remain attached when they snap so easily,” he says, looking above us. “Karvin is the oldest of us here. I will speak with him, but somehow I doubt this is something even the eldest of our elders will have seen before.”

We all look in the direction of the Mercenia hut.

“It seems unlikely that the hut could cause a blight,” Anghar says, though he sounds uneasy to claim it.

“And yet it also seems unlikely that it could be unconnected,” I say, voicing the feeling I am certain they share.

Gregar’s brow furrows, a deep line forming at the bridge of his nose. “If the hut was unsafe, my Liv would not have consented to come here.”

“None of the females would have,” Anghar says. “Sally is quite content to have little Marsal here and I do not consider her a fool. She must be confident of her daughters’ safety.”

“Basran and his tribe lived here for three seasons,” Gregar says.

“They were not well,” Anghar says.

“From lack of good eating,” I say. “It is not just the trees - the other plants are similarly affected. The bushes and the vines do not grow, so there is no food for the prey creatures. They have either died or left to find better forage.”

“And when they went, the predators left with them,” Anghar says, looking round. “There is an unnatural quiet here. My spirit has been unsettled since we drew close, but I assumed it was simply the presence of the Mercenia hut affecting me.”

“The reason we have all failed to notice there is something seriously amiss before now,” I say. “Any sense of wrongness we have felt, we have dismissed without investigation.”

“And now we have another problem to deal with when we are so close to leaving this place,” Gregar says with a huff. “How far does it spread?”

“That will be our first task - to map it. But it is going to be a large area, based on what we have found so far.”

“A burn?”

“The only way, I think.”

“How many seasons since we have had to do a burn?” Anghar says.

“Many,” Gregar says. “But we have contained any blight in our trees as soon as it was noticed. Basran either did not notice or did not care.”

“Either seems possible to me,” Anghar says, his expression wry. He walks up to another tree, examining it with his claws. “You say the plants are affected as well as the trees. You mean to say that more than one variety of tree is afflicted with this blight?”

“All that we have tested,” I say.

He turns and starts walking back to us, his brow furrowed in thought. “That is not how blights work. They affect certain trees, not all. They-”

His arms flail as his foot sinks into the ground with a squelching noise. I leap to his side, gripping him at the elbow until he finds his footing, pulling his boot out and setting it gingerly down again, testing his weight before committing. His boot is covered in a dark brown slime, the smell of it rancid.

“What is that?” Gregar says as I crouch down to investigate.

It is much the same as the branches - only worse. The rot in the roots is so advanced it has turned them to mulch, the weight of Anghar’s foot more than enough to crush them. I press down on the roots, see how far they remain spongy. It spreads some distance, but only really gets bad close to where Anghar trod.

“More rot,” I say, rising to my feet. I try to brush the slime of the roots off my hand without getting the stink of it on my clothing. “The worst I have seen yet.”

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