Free Deepwood: Karavans # 2 by Jennifer Roberson Page A

though the oxen were dead and the wagon canopy destroyed, the wagon itself was whole—or would be, when he changed the cracked axle for the new one—and they could walk back to the settlement. There they might be able to find a team of mules or horses to borrow long enough to pull the wagon back to the tent village. Audrun, Ellica, and the youngest could remain there with others while he and Gillan took the team to the wagon, repaired it, and returned to the settlement. He thought it likely that their journey to Atalanda would be delayed a good three or four weeks, but the baby wasn’t due for another four months. They had time. Plenty of time.
     
    In a much better frame of mind, Davyn jogged onwardtoward the forest, the thick, massive canopy of trees growing closer, clearer, larger along the horizon.
     
    TORVIC HISSED AT Megrite, “
Be quiet
.” And when the fear in her eyes told him she might very well cry out in reaction to the terrible scream, he pressed both his hands over her mouth. “No, Meggie. Be quiet.” He glanced over his shoulder, saw rainwater dripping from leaves, drooping tree limbs. But there was no sound—no sound at all. In the wake of the high-pitched scream, everything had stilled. The world seemed to have simply
stopped.
     
    Megritte reached up and tried to peel his fingers from her mouth. He leaned very close, very close, and whispered to her, “We need to hide. Go back in the rocks, Meggie. Go back where we were.”
     
    She climbed unsteadily up into the crevice. There was, once again, just enough room for him. Torvic gathered in folds of fabric, pulling the blankets and oilcloth up again, this time not as shelter but as shield. Hunched next to him, Megritte pressed close. “We have to find Mam and Da. You said.”
     
    Sound began again. Chirps and chitters, clicking. A breeze ran through the trees, pushing leaves against one another in a hissing susurration. The gloom intensified, as if the sun—the
suns
—were sliding below the treetops.
     
    “Torvic, we have to go. You
said.”
     
    “Not now.” It came out trembling. Torvic pressed his lips together and tried again, whispering. “Not now, Meggie. Later.”
     
    The tears had stopped, but her voice sounded pinched. “What made that noise?”
     
    “I don’t know.” The stone beneath his buttocks was chill. He scooted closer to his sister. “We’ll wait a bit, Meggie. Then we’ll go look for Mam and Da.”
     
    “Promise?”
     
    “I promise.”
     
    TIMMON AND ALORN, conscious again, were wind-battered, filthy, scraped, and bruised, but otherwise whole. Bethid handed around the waterskin she’d found and told them to stay put; there was no reason they should do anything other than sit still and catch their breath. Both young men were pale and shaken, and dark-haired, brown-eyed Alorn nursed a long cut above one eyebrow while Timmon, lanky and long-limbed, with blue eyes and light brown hair, pressed a portion of his tunic against his swollen bottom lip to stem the bleeding. In the meantime, those tent dwellers who had fled the settlement began to return, straggling in. Bethid, seeing their shocked expressions, hearing despairing voices, was glad she had a task in looking after her fellow couriers. Others, those who had wisely followed instructions given out by her and Mikal as the stormswept down, now discovered that nothing in the world was left to them save their lives and the clothing on their bodies.
     
    Too much, Bethid knew; simply too much for anyone to wholly grasp, to assimilate. But only days before a party of brutal Hecari warriors had arrived at the tent village, methodically killing one person in ten: men, women, children. They had also set fire to as many tents, culling dwelling places as well. In the days afterward, bodies were buried following various rites and rituals to see the dead safely across the river into a better afterworld, and burned tents were searched for what might have survived the