Page 2 of Challenged

I nod. “We should have. So why have we not?”

I rise to my feet, scanning the ground for any signs of animal activity. Footprints, scratches on the tree bark, scat. Signs will not be in every corner of the forest, but looking round at the trees, I should see something.

“Perhaps they feel the same unease we do from the Mercenia hut,” Jaskry says. “Or were scared away by the humans and their terrible weapons.”

“If it was less than a season since the humans left, I might agree. But some nineteen seasons later, I feel the forest creatures should have grown bold enough to approach. To discover there was no danger remaining to them.”

“Then some other danger. Basran.”

I consider the tribe chief who made the Mercenia hut his home. A cruel and lazy individual by Sam and Dazzik’s accounts. He showed signs of eating well, but his tribe around him hungered. Because the hunting here has always been poor or because they made it that way? A tribe so far strayed from Lina’s ways perhaps would not hunt with the preservation of populations in mind.

“Do you think Basran’s hunters could have hunted the creatures here to the point of extinction? Forced them to find territory further afield?”

Jaskry’s expression is tight. “I believe they would have been careless enough to risk it. But to actually achieve it?”

Uncertainty gnaws at my spirit, also. It is a neat explanation. Convenient. If Basran is responsible, there is nothing to be concerned about. The creatures will return slowly as they realise he and his hunters are gone. Balance will return to the forest,as it always does. Perhaps it is that convenience my heartspace rejects - the sense that things cannot be that simple scratching at my skin.

“It would certainly explain why they travelled so far to attack Walset’s tribe,” Jaskry offers, as if trying to convince himself as much as me. “They would’ve needed the supplies to get through the big rains, if this was the state of the hunting in the sunsets before.”

“We know they were not eating well.”

The few that Jestaw managed to round up and take to Darran’s old village were desperately thin when we reached out to them after the rains.

Jaskry grimaces. “I want to believe it, but I feel…”

“As though there is something else going on here,” I finish. “The same feeling fills my heartspace, also.”

Jaskry nods. “Basran’s tribe saw out three rainy seasons here. Even if they ate richly for two and a half, I don’t think it would be enough time for them to have killed or driven out every creature under the trees.”

“Well, not every creature,” I say, leaning in to my habit of teasing, hoping to lighten the atmosphere. “Even raskarrans of Basran’s ilk would not stoop to eating krenittas.”

Jaskry’s serious expression does not shift. He is not the most easily amused of my brothers, but I feel I deserve at least a flicker of a smile. Instead, he gestures around us.

“Listen,” he says, voice low.

I do, turning my senses further outwards than just our immediate area. I have been listening hard for any hint of approaching feet, any suggestion that one of Basran’s tribe brothers might still be lingering in the area. Many died by Dazzik’s hand, but many more fled to who knows where. Nursing their wounds and filling their empty bellies far from here, with no inclination to return to the strange straight hutthat Mercenia built in our trees, I hope. But relying on hope alone is a fool’s game, and for all I might play the fool, I am not one. I am not a warrior, but I will do my part to keep my sisters - both frozen and not - safe.

“What am I listening for?” I ask after a moment, when nothing obvious sounds.

Jaskry just watches me. Waits.

I frown, hearing nothing. But then that sinks into my headspace. I hear nothing. No animal cries, no bird calls. The forest is normally a song of noise whatever time of day it is, but the forest here sounds empty. Only the rustle of leaves in the wind accompanies the sound of my own breathing, the beat of my heartspace.

“Too quiet,” I say, the unease growing deeper with each passing breath.

Jaskry nods. “It has only truly struck me today how quiet the forest is here. I would understand if Basran’s hunters had driven out the creatures of the ground. But they cannot hunt the entire sky. Where are the birds?”

I look up at the canopy overhead, searching for signs of nests. I spy one almost immediately, a tangle of twigs shaped into a round structure, sound enough to survive the constant downpour of the big rains. The clever workings of tiny beaks and feet. I point it out to Jaskry.

“A glance inside will tell us how long since it has been inhabited,” I say, walking over to the tree it is in and loosing my claws.

I scale up the trunk swiftly, resting my weight on two of the thicker branches just beneath the nest. It is in an awkward position - the entrance pointing away from the best perches. I lean out, stretching myself to reach the branch it sits on, then putting my weight through it so I can lean just a little further and align myself with the entrance.

“Empty,” I call down to Jaskry. “There are some feathers left behind. A doors bird nest. They line their nests with mosses, but there are none left inside, just the decomposed remains. So it has been abandoned some time.”

“At least a season,” Jaskry says. “Longer, perhaps.”

I push away from the branch, shifting my weight back onto the better perch. “Well, one abandoned nest might just be that. But if we find the same in-”

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