Celestara Veylin's Arc

Chapter 8 of 9

Zax wanted to move at once. Celestara knew they could not. The caller waited in the low eastern ground, ringed by dead water. To kill it she had to stand close. But she owned no blade, no gun. Only her claws. And her claws marked her as a hunter of the pack. The moment she struck, the caller would feel her true mind behind the blow. Then the whole horde would turn on her before the caller died. She told Zax the problem plainly. "I have one weapon. This." She raised her gray hand. "If I use it, the caller knows me. My claws are slow. It will not die in one strike. And a second strike comes too late." Zax slapped a magazine into his gun. "Then you don't get close." He held the weapon out to her, heavy across both hands. "You kill it from a distance. It never sees your face. Never feels your reach." She took the gun. It was heavier than she guessed. Zax showed her the grip, the trigger, the way to brace the stock against her shoulder. He set a dead branch on a stone across the courtyard. "Squeeze," he said. "Don't pull." She fired. The gun kicked. The shot went wide and cracked the wall. Zax winced. He fixed her stance, pressed her elbow down, told her to breathe out first. She fired again. The branch jumped off the stone. They worked until dusk. Her human hand ached and her ears rang. But she could put three shots in a small mark now, standing still. A gun asked nothing of her claws. It reached across a plain. The caller would feel a hunter answer its call, then die without knowing why. "One thing," Zax said. He counted rounds into a spare magazine. "You'll get one burst. Maybe two. These things swarm. Miss, and they're on you before you reload." "Then I will not miss," she said. She thought the plan was whole. It was not. As she cleaned the barrel the way Zax showed her, the truth landed. The gun solved her weapon. It did not solve the swarm. To reach the caller she had to walk into the gathering, past hundreds of its creatures, wearing their shape. If even one sensed her mind behind the mask, the caller would learn of her long before she found her shot. Celestara set the gun down. "I can kill it now," she said. "But I have to walk through the whole horde to do it. And I have to keep them fooled the whole way." Zax met her eyes. "Then we leave at dawn," he said. "And you'd better hold that mask tight." She looked east, toward the dead water she could not see. She had her weapon at last. The walk to use it would be the hardest thing she had done.