Power Trio

“Axe.” Dee squats down, peers at the tracks that wind through the pale birches.

Nick scans the wilderness. “Axe. Should I be looking for something?”

“Any movement. Use it in a sentence for me.”

“Your axe is sharp.”

“Why, thank you, Nicholas.” She hears a tittering bird call.

Deer spotted.

She stands up. “Deer up ahead. The radio almanac says there’s dryads in these woods, so no guns unless we need them. Don’t want to damage the trees too much, risk one getting tetchy. They spread the word, start herding the prey away from you.”

“That’s what the spears are for?”

“Yep.” Dee folds hers out and locks the shaft in place. “Plus, this'll be good experience. Purer this way.” She lets out a whistle, listens for the response. Graila: confirm deer spotted. Her sound filters through the trees.

A chiming trill in return. Confirmed.

She whistles low to high, ends on a warble. Move it north. We catch.

“Get ready,” she murmurs. Her tangr’ak fizzes and hums. That confidence, that certainty. “We hurl, and if we miss, we keep tracking till we tire it out.”

Nick mirrors her unpacking motion with his own spear. “I’ve never thrown one of these.”

“That’s the reason we’re out here.” She punches his shoulder. “You’ll try it, you’ll probably miss, and I’ll tell you what you did wrong. No sweat.”

She rests a palm on his stubbly head and pushes it down, crouches them both behind a tangle of lianas. “Let it glow,” she whispers. “Keep the ember lit, even in the quiet. That’s the real trick.”

They wait.

“Hey. Nick.”

“Yeah, Dee?”

“You got any jokes?”

“What did the bra say to the hat?”

“What?”

“You go on ahead and I’ll give these two a lift.”

She snorts out the beginning of a laugh and covers her mouth, which just makes him laugh too.

“Shut up, man. You’re gonna scare the deer,” she whispers.

“You’re gonna scare the deer.”

“When the packmistress does it, it’s called tactical intimidation.”

They lapse into silence.

“What do you call a fly with no wings?” Dee asks.

“What?”

The crunching of snow. The crackle of dead wood. Dee holds up three fingers, drops them one-by-one until her hand’s a fist. They break cover as the deer comes bounding through the trees. Dee rears back and with an explosive exhale, she lets her spear fly.

It carves a gash along the deer’s flank, just shy of sinking into the meat of its shoulder. Nick’s whiffs, twists upward and clatters on a low branch.

Dee springs out from the brush, whooping and running. “At ‘er, Nicky!”

Nick stumbles to his feet and sprints to catch up. “What did I do wrong?”

“Too back from the balance point.” She inhales through her nose, fills her lungs with that crisp air full of promise and the scent of blood. “We got a trail, though. Soon as the adrenaline wears off, it’ll be limping. You got tangr’ak still?”

His tongue darts out and moistens his lips. His breathing is pitching up. “Yes.”

“Let it burn.” She jukes under a low branch. “Let it fuel you. Run faster and further than any of them human kids you grew up with.”

They follow the twisting line of blood their quarry’s spilled into the snow. Those hoof prints are faltering as its adrenaline’s cooked off.

“This is crazy.” Nick laughs into the cold air. “I’m not getting tired. I’m not a fucking runner.”

Dee laughs with him. “Tangr’ak, man! I’m telling you!”

They crash through the treeline into a clearing. The tracks stop. So does Dee.

Aw, shit.

Something else has gotten to their quarry first. Something hulking, ten feet long, and covered in bristling spikes. Its head shoots up from the gore of its meal. Dee and Nick have just delivered dinner right into the clutches of a quillbear. And it’s looking at them like they’re dessert.

Nick takes a step back. “Are we okay?”

Dee takes the scene in. Fallen trees, dug-out snow and earth. That’s a den and this is a mother. They are not okay.

“Do exactly what I say.” She clicks open the snap fastening her revolver to its holster. “Soon as it moves, you run back the way we came. Do not stop and do not fight. I take this.”

The quillbear takes another step toward them. She pulls her pistol. “Go.”

Nick sprints. So does Dee, the other direction, taking aim.

The hammer snaps down and the revolver roars. A shallow pockmark tears open on the quillbear’s hide. Gets its dander up and that’s about it.

The quillbear shrieks with rage, clearing the space between them in the length of a heartbeat. As it careens toward her, Dee drops to the snow, bracing the revolver in the crook of her other arm. As soon as that underbelly is visible, she’s got her shot. Right in the thin-skinned breast and through to the heart.

The crack of a rifle and the quillbear staggers to one side, another useless crater opened in its blubbery torso. God fucking dammit. Nick must have seen her drop, thought she’d fallen. In his head he just kept the packmistress’s guts from unseaming.

He’s fucked everything up.

Dee takes a desperate snap shot, but her target is moving away from her fast. Right toward the dumbass half orc who thought he was playing hero. Its claws extend. She screams in anger and fear. She’s about to see Nicholas Voraag disemboweled in front of her.

Graila comes tearing into the clearing, a shrieking green blur. She lands a flying shoulder check on the quillbear. The beast lists to one side, howling and swiping at the orc. She howls back. Blood splatters across the trees.

Dee bolts toward the huntress and the quillbear as the beast rakes its claws along Graila’s shoulder. “Down!”

Graila drops into the scarlet snow. The quillbear is on its side, scrambling to rise, its belly pale as the winter.

Thunder reverberates across the snowscape, ringing Dee’s ears, as she empties all four remaining bullets into the quillbear’s heart. It lets out a plaintive huff, sounding more annoyed than anything, and dies, a dark stain spreading from where it lays.

Dee rushes to Graila’s side. The orc has slumped against a tangled oak, cradling her arm. Foot-long quills protrude from it. The white gleam of bone. “Warrin!” Her bellow carries through the trees. “Wounded!”

Graila’s hunting partner is already sprinting toward them across the forest floor. He skids to a halt next to the tree.

“Morphine,” Graila hisses, and he digs through the satchel at his waist. Dee straightens. Tend your fire. She slams the bars back down over her mind, smothers her spitting tangr’ak to a vicious simmer.

Nick is staring at Graila’s shredded arm, mouth ajar. “I didn’t—”

Dee seizes him in cold fury and pins him to a tree, her forearm up against his neck. “Do exactly what I say. I tell you to do something you do it, Nick. I had the shot.”

“I’m sorry,” he wheezes.

“Save it for Graila. She’s the one paying for it.” She drops him back to the ground and kneels next to Warrin. “How bad?” she murmurs.

“Bad.” Warrin’s pulling a gel pack out of the satchel. “Without a hospital, it’s permanent damage. Nowhere’s close enough to work.”

“Fucking Nick,” Graila hisses. “Tuskless idiot.”

“I can fix it.”

Warrin’s unrolling gauze. “We can get those quills out, stop the bleeding. But the tendon is cut.”

Dee’s holding Graila’s unruined hand tight. “Do what you can.”

“I can fix it,” Nick repeats.

Dee snarls and punches the tree Graila sits beside so she doesn’t put her fist through the newbie’s empty pink head. “You’ve done enough damage, Nick. Let Warrin do his job.”

“Get me a guitar.” Nick’s face has become a determined mask. “I can fix it.”