Chapter 36: The Bait

"Warrior, look," Kaela whispered, touching her arm.

Seraya dragged her eyes away from her own backpack with effort and followed her point, noticing three of the Obsidian Maw women picking up spears and heading toward the mouth of the hollow.

For a moment she watched them motionless, trying to guess whether they were truly going to check the trail left behind, or if they already knew exactly where the four of them were hiding. Kaela shifted closer, fingers tightening around her spear, while the other two companions glanced behind them, as though every rustle of a branch might herald an ambush from the rear.

"They're hunting for us," Kaela murmured so quietly Seraya could barely hear. "What do we do?"

"Nothing for now," she replied, backing cautiously away from the rim. "Keep your heads down. Maybe they only know someone followed them."

She slid deeper into the scrub, minding that the tip of her spear didn't poke above the leaves. The others followed suit, flattening themselves against the ground with such palpable tension that for a moment she heard only their shallow, rapid breaths. She breathed shallowly too, because as much as she wanted to believe they had found decent cover, the hand sign flashed by the woman at the stream kept looping in her mind.

They know someone tracked them... But do they know how many of us there are?

She waited a good while before daring to crawl back toward the rim, and peering through the brush, she saw that the three warriors who had left the hollow were gone. The remaining four were still down below, but their demeanor offered zero clue as to what was happening in the woods, so Seraya slowly drew her head back, feeling a deepening dread of a situation where any move might play right into the enemy's hands.

They could be backtracking along the trail, sweeping further out, or lying in wait barely a dozen paces from their blind, and Seraya had no way to check without giving away their position.

Kaela gave her an inquiring look, but received only a curt gesture to keep waiting.

The passing moments dragged on so slowly that Seraya began to feel every pebble digging into her stomach and every shift of cloth against her sweaty back, but she held her ground, listening intently. Finally, a louder scream rose from the stream, making all four of them flinch almost as one.

"Please, no! Don't kill me!"

Seraya recognized Raska's voice and instantly crept closer to the edge, gently parting the branches. Looking down, she saw one of the women hauling the bound captive toward the flat rock by the water. Raska dug her heels in, jerking her shoulders and thrashing her head, but a second warrior clamped a hand onto the nape of her neck, while the leader with Seraya's backpack picked up a sharp stone blade from the ground.

"Fuck..." Seraya breathed, feeling all considerations of waiting patiently lose their meaning in an instant.

Kaela peered down beside her, her jaw tightening, and when she spoke, her voice trembled with terror mingled with desperation.

"We have to do something. They're going to kill her."

Seraya swept her gaze over the four women below, then glanced toward the direction where the other three had vanished, forcing her thoughts into something workable. She knew it could be bait, that Raska's screams might be calculated precisely to draw them out of hiding, but if she didn't act, all their strategizing would become moot for a far grislier reason in seconds.

Fine, so you want me to show myself... Let's see if you're fast enough to pull off whatever you planned.

"I have an idea," she whispered, turning to her companions. "But we'll have to take a gamble."

Kaela nodded almost instantly, and the other two women leaned close, listening intently as Seraya pointed to the narrow defile leading into the hollow, explaining that she would try to draw the enemies away from the captives. She couldn't be sure if all of them would take the bait, or how much time they had before the scouts returned, but if she could monopolize their focus, the rest of the squad would have an opening to strike from ambush.

"Don't wait for a clean opening," she added, looking each of them dead in the eye. "We might not get a second shot."

One of the women swallowed hard, while Kaela glanced down at her wounded leg, tightened her grip on her spear, and met Seraya's gaze.

"We'll do it."

Seraya answered with a curt nod, though inside she felt like she had just volunteered to dive into an open jaw and pray the teeth clamped shut a fraction of a second too late.

They descended the slope swiftly, using the trees and rolls of the terrain for cover, and once her three companions took up positions flanking the entrance of the hollow, Seraya paused for a heartbeat behind the final trunk. She heard her own ragged breathing, felt her damp palms slip on the wood, and for a split second felt the urge to close her eyes, as if that could make someone else take the next step.

Instead, she gripped the spear, stepped into the open, and shouted before she could second-guess herself.

"Hey! Get off her!"

The woman holding the stone blade halted her hand and turned her head. The others followed suit, visibly startled for a moment that the very person they might have anticipated had stepped out in plain view.

Seraya lifted her chin, trying to look far more confident than she felt.

"Yeah, I'm talking to you! Put that rock down before you hurt yourself."

The leader narrowed her eyes, scanning Seraya's face and her modern clothes, before her mouth twisted into a snarl of recognition.

"It's you... You killed the Sacred Serpent!"

Of course she remembers... Fucking brilliant. At this rate they'll be handing out 'Wanted' posters at the edge of the woods.

The other captive women began crying out to her at once, straining against their bindings with rekindled hope, but Raska, who had been pleading for her life seconds before, now lay limp beside the boulder, having apparently passed out cold from pure terror. Seraya spared her only a fleeting glance, because the leader hurled the stone flake aside and reached for a spear, her eyes never leaving Seraya.

"Warrior?" she echoed with a mocking laugh. "Let's see if you're just as brave when your turn comes."

She charged first, and the other three fell in behind her immediately, so Seraya didn't stick around to hear more threats. She spun around and bolted toward the defile.

Behind her erupted shouts and the rapid drumming of boots against dirt, and glancing back for a fraction of a second, she realized her pursuers were closing the gap far faster than she liked. The exhaustion from the trek and previous sprints still weighed down her legs, so pretending to be easy prey didn't take much acting.

At the mouth of the defile, she let herself stumble on the uneven ground and crashed onto her side, bruising her hip hard, but kept her spear clutched tight, twisting to face the charging woman.

The leader slowed down with smug satisfaction, evidently deciding there was no longer any need to hurry.

"Run," she sneered, closing in. "Let's see how much further you - "

"Now!"

Seraya's shout cut right through her words. An instant later, Kaela and the others burst from both sides of the defile. Instead of trying to spar spear-to-spear right away, they hurled heavy rocks snatched up from their hiding spots. The stunned warriors had time only to turn their heads before the first impacts struck home, the narrow pass instantly erupting in screams and violent chaos.

One Obsidian Maw woman reeled back against the rock face, a second dropped to one knee, and the third tried to raise her weapon, only for Kaela's companion to tackle her before she could regain her balance. The element of surprise was brief, but enough to shatter their formation completely. The leader spun away from Seraya with an enraged bellow.

"You'll die for this!"

She lunged toward Kaela, leveling her spear, and the sheer sight of the charging brute made the three Emberfrost women hesitate almost simultaneously. They had been raised their entire lives to dread the Obsidian Maw, and even now, with dazed enemies before them, deep-seated instinct proved stronger than a fleeting tactical advantage.

Seraya cursed, scrambled to her feet, and brought the shaft of her spear down across the back of the leader's skull with every scrap of strength she could muster.

The wood snapped with a sharp crack. The woman staggered forward two uneven paces before managing to spin around and face her.

Seraya looked from the splintered shaft in her hands to the woman who was still on her feet despite the blow, a cold shudder running down her spine.

You've got to be shitting me...

"Don't just stand there!" she yelled at her companions, backing away from the thrusting tip. "You're not done yet!"

Kaela shook herself out of the stupor first and threw herself back into the fray, the other two following her lead, keeping the dazed enemies from getting up to reinforce their leader. Seraya had no time to track the scuffle beside her, as the woman wielding her backpack bore down on her again, forcing another desperate dodge.

The blow to the head had clearly slowed the brute, but it hadn't sapped her raw strength or ferocity. Seraya retreated among the rocks, warding with the splintered shaft, fighting to maintain distance. A spearhead whistled past her ribs so close she instinctively sucked in her gut, and on the next thrust she had to throw herself sideways, nearly losing her footing once more.

There was nothing graceful about this fight, nothing to be admired from afar.

It was pure exhaustion, ragged gasps, and a desperate struggle to ensure each frantic step wasn't her last, while her opponent pressed forward with a rage that made Seraya want to start screaming as shrilly as Raska had.

"Kaela!" she yelled, batting away a shaft that jabbed dangerously close to her face.

Reinforcements arrived seconds later, when the three Emberfrost women finally subdued their opponents and charged in with leveled spears. The leader caught the movement out of the corner of her eye and stepped back, trying to reposition so she kept them all in front of her, but between the skull blow and the frantic melee, her footing was nowhere near as steady.

Even so, she fought like a cornered beast.

Seraya watched her deflect Kaela's spear, dodge another thrust, and snap back to exploit the slightest opening. Every lethal twitch was a stark reminder of how close they had come to slaughter had they rushed into the hollow without a plan. Only repeated strikes and draining stamina finally made the woman's defense unravel, until she reeled against a rock and collapsed heavily onto one knee.

Kaela closed in, chest heaving violently, fear on her face giving way to something new - almost disbelieving.

They had beaten them.

The warriors of the Obsidian Maw, whose very name had been enough to spark sheer terror, now lay broken on the ground, and their leader could no longer rise despite digging her fingernails desperately into the dirt around her spear.

"You... won't escape..." she rasped, lifting her head to glare at Seraya with pure venom. "The others... already know..."

Her voice trailed off, and as her body slumped onto its side, Kaela kept her weapon leveled for a long moment, as if unable to accept that she didn't have to deflect another lethal blow.

Seraya stood a few paces away, a wave of nausea so potent washing over her that she had to tear her gaze from the blood-soaked ground. Just minutes ago she had told herself this was strictly a rescue mission, but seeing the bloody aftermath, she couldn't divorce herself from her own hand in it, regardless of knowing their enemies would have shown them no quarter.

Breathe... Not now. Get the others out first.

She swallowed hard, walked over to the corpse, and used the splintered shaft to snag the strap of her backpack, gingerly sliding it free without letting herself check the contents just yet. The familiar weight of the pack in her grip was so strangely grounding that she squeezed the fabric tight for a second before turning to her companions.

"Come on. We need to untie them."

Kaela gave a nod, and the other two women moved to follow Seraya, but after barely three paces, all three ground to a dead halt. The warrior only realized a second later that the footsteps behind her had ceased, glancing back with an irritation edged in cold dread.

"What now?"

Kaela was staring past her shoulder. When she raised a hand, her fingers trembled so noticeably that Seraya didn't need an answer to feel every muscle in her body snap rigid again.

"They're back..."

Seraya spun around to see three silhouettes tearing through the timber straight toward the mouth of the hollow. The glint of spears and those familiar faces instantly brought back the scouts who had slipped away after that quick exchange of hand signs.

They hadn't gone far.

They must have been circling nearby, listening for the sounds that would betray the intruders' location - and Raska's screams by the stream had likely been bait all along to flush out whatever remained in hiding.

Cold sweat prickled beneath Seraya's clothes as she realized how razor-thin the margin had been before all four of them were crushed in a pincer between the two groups. Had the leader not recognized her and charged in a fit of rage, had the guards stayed with the captives, or had their ambush taken even a minute longer, the returning scouts would have trapped them in the defile before they could even blink.

She tightened her grip on the strap of her reclaimed pack, staring down at the dead leader whose dying words suddenly made terrifying sense.

Damn it... It really was a trap.