Page 3 of Challenged

A crack cuts through what I am saying, and my body drops suddenly. I scramble, grabbing at the branches around me, only to hear more splintering wood. I am not high up enough to injure myself badly if I land well, but the shock of falling has me disoriented. I throw my hand out, jabbing with my claws, and take a relieved breath when they sink through bark into wood. My shoulder jars as it takes my whole weight, but it orients me, and I grip at the trunk with my knees to steady myself as I pause. Take a moment.

I have landed little more than knee height off the ground and look ridiculous, gripping to the trunk of the tree as if to save myself from mortal injury.

“Well,” I say, setting my feet on the ground and pulling my claws from the tree, sheathing them once more. “That was undignified.”

Another raskarran would be far too busy laughing at my misfortune to pay attention to anything else, but Jaskry ducks to pick up one of the fallen branches. They are not small. I do not feel I was wrong to believe they would take my weight. The one I grabbed to slow my fall was smaller, but I still think it should have bent, perhaps cracked a little, not ripped from the trunk completely.

“Look at this,” Jaskry says, gesturing me to his side.

He holds up the branch, showing me the broken end. Immediately, it is obvious that the wood beneath the bark is thewrong colour. Instead of the light, yellowish colour it should be, the wood is dark, almost grey. The texture is wrong also. It looks rotten. I touch a finger to it, find the wood is spongy. Soft.

“No wonder it did not take my weight,” I say, looking round at the rest of the trees. “Do you think the others are similarly affected?”

“I think we should be very cautious as we climb to find out.”

We each pick another tree at random, going for different varieties from each other and the first tree. It does not take me long to find more rot. My second handhold sags, my claws ripping through the soft wood beneath the tree’s bark. I drop the short distance back to the ground, then scrape off the bark, digging my claws through the rotten wood to find the extent of it. It spreads about a hand span in all directions and goes deep into the trunk.

Behind me, I hear Jaskry drop to the floor. He comes to my side, clutching another rotten branch.

“What kind of blight is this?” he asks, as he examines the rotten spot I have excavated.

“None I have ever seen before,” I say, the unease I have been feeling intensifying.

“We should strike out in different directions,” Jaskry says. “Return here once we have checked five other trees.”

I nod, and at once we head off, me running back towards the Mercenia hut, Jaskry away from it. I run hard for a brief time, putting some distance between myself and the afflicted trees before I stop and start to check others.

I try to choose very different trees - young, old, different species, different surrounding terrain. I pick one that grows close to the stream, one that is close to rocks, another in open space. In all but the one nearest the stream, I find rot immediately. The one by the stream I think is unaffected until I test a branch with my weight and feel it give.

Jaskry is already back when I return to our meeting place.

“Every tree I checked is similarly afflicted,” I say.

He nods, confirming his own findings were the same.

“I checked the bushes and other plants,” he says. “Close to the water, the djenti bush grows well enough, but there is very little growing further into the forest.”

This is not necessarily abnormal - the trees take up most of the water and light. It is difficult for anything else to grow in their shadow. But there should be some plants struggling to thrive in the small pieces of sunlight that fall between the leaves.

“The carros vines are thin also. I tried my weight on one and it stretched and snapped immediately.”

I try to recall if I even saw any. Find that I cannot.

“It explains the lack of creatures,” I say. “If the plants do not grow well, then there is no food for the plant eaters. They leave, and there is no food for the hunters.”

Jaskry nods. “The blight covers a large area, if all the places we have set traps are affected.”

A troublesome thought, but less troublesome than the nature of the blight itself.

“It affects all the trees and the plants,” I say, looking round. “What manner of blight passes so readily between the different types?”

The furrow between Jaskry’s brows grows deeper. “A dangerous one.”

The chill of the cold season seems to deepen all at once, settling into my bones.

“Come,” I say to Jaskry, my heartspace heavy. “Gregar needs to know that yet another danger is lurking in these trees.”

CHAPTER TWO

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