Guild Of Zeroes

Chapter 20

Sunlight arced down through the leaves, filling the clearing with shafts of golden light and making the dew on the grass sparkle like diamonds. Lilting birdsong mixed with the buzz of hunter flies scudding over the surface of the river. A bass leapt free of the river, swallowing one of the flies. It hung there for a moment, water drops transfigured into drops of molten gold by the sunrise. The fish splashed back into the water. I let the moment wash over me, wishing that it would never end. Well part of me did. Half of myself wanted to stay here forever, to let the rest of the world burn and simply throw down my weapons and leave it all behind. The other half couldn't escape the killing fields. It was trapped in that howling dark of blood and terror, and all it wanted to do was throw itself further into the abyss. Part of me wanted desperately to avenge Hawk, to tear Wraith apart for what he'd done, to stop him before he turned the world into a land of the dead.

But for now, what I really wanted to do was sit down, and stop giving a damn about the rest of the world.

I walked to the chests that our mentor's had left us and dug around until I found the Aqua Vitae and Mouse's tattoo needles. I poured myself a small cup of liquor and watched the bass catch more flies. With a deep breath, I thought back to the road that brought us here, the drake hunt, the battle at the village, communing with the storm serpents, everything leading up to Hawk's death. It was a major miracle that I was still alive. Above all else, I had been lucky. I took a sip of the Aqua Vitae, wincing as it burned all the way down my throat. The drink set a fire in my chest, warming me from the inside out. I found Hawk's note, and reread her words. I couldn't lead the Guild. I was no hero.

But what choice did we have? We weren't the best option, hell we probably didn't even make the top ten list, but we were all the Guild had. With half the other apprentice's dying in the halls of the medica, the other half still missing, and all the senior Guildmaster dead, we were the only ones left.

And we couldn't fight Wraith alone.

I cursed the fact that we were part of Tower Four and not the Phoenix Roost, if we were there, then it would be easy enough to get a message to the rest of the Guild. The Roost made most of its coin running messages for locals towns and they kept an entire aviary full of messenger falcons. I went back to the chest of supplies and found a map stuffed in with the spare weapons and our armour. The Roost wasn't too far away. The problem was it in the middle of a damn desert and the only transportation we had to hand was a boat.

Mouse slid out of the tent with a yawn. "Morning. You're up early."

I pointed at the map in front of me. "Doing some thinking. Some planning. Mostly struggling to think of how we're going to cross the desert."

"The desert? You're thinking of heading to the Roost?" Mouse asked. "That's—"

"Stupid?" I interrupted. "I know it's probably a dumb plan."

"No," said Mouse. "I was going to say it's as good a plan as any. It's about a hundred times better than anything I was going to plan."

"Yeah? What did you have in mind?"

Mouse sat next to me, and tapped a swath of forest to the far west. "I was thinking we head here. There are miles and miles of nothing out there. In a terrible situation like this, it's not a bad place to hide. The family hunting cabins might still be there, if we're lucky."

"We'll keep that in mind as plan B. Did you spend a lot of time there growing up?"

"More than I would have liked," said Mouse. "It always seemed like we went there whenever there was trouble. Whenever things were going wrong that's where I'd run. It's why I don't believe Stargazer when he says he knows I could be a leader. I'm a coward, Snip. I always have been. It's probably the only thing I'm good at."