Tanax’s talent for stumbling into every patch of brambles and hanging vine in the forest bordered on the supernatural. At the moment, he’d managed both at once, flailing at the vine that had attached itself to his pack while stumbling deeper into the pricking bushes. His swearing was clearly audible above the rustle of branches.

“If this were a comic opera,” Varo said, “about now a beehive would drop on his head.”

Maya sniggered.

“Mind you,” Varo went on, “a friend of mine died that way. Turned out he was allergic to beestings, and he swelled up like a balloon.”

“That’s terrible,” Maya said.

“Dunno. With his last words, he swore the honey was worth it.” Varo shrugged and started forward. “I’ll go and offer my services. Why don’t you check in with the rear of the column?”

Maya trudged back through the woods, cresting a low ridge. She looked around for Beq and found her standing stock-still between two trees, frozen in an awkward position.

“Um. Is something wrong?” Maya said.

“Shhhh!” Beq hissed. “Stay there!”

Maya’s hand dropped to her haken. “What’s going on?”

Sweat dripped past Beq’s spectacles, pooling in a drop at the end of her nose. She was breathing in shallow gasps.

“If I move,” she said, very quietly, “it’s going to bite me.”

“What’s going to bite you?”

“The snake!”

“What—” Maya looked Beq up and down, spotted the bit of bright green, and let out a long breath. “Beq. That’s a well snake.”

“I don’t care how good of a snake it is—”

“As in the kind you find down wells,” Maya said patiently. She crossed the distance between them in a couple of strides and plucked the thing off Beq’s shoulder. She must have knocked it off a branch. The snake was about half a meter long, and its scales were the bright green of fresh leaves. Maya held it behind the head, and it coiled its length around her arm. “We found these all the time back on the farm. They’re harmless.”

Beq, who’d flinched at Maya’s movement as though she expected imminent death, uncoiled slightly. “Really?”

“Really.” Maya put the snake on the nearest tree branch. “I guarantee it was as terrified as you were.”

“I doubt that,” Beq said. She heaved a sigh of relief, looking distrustfully at the snake as it wound rapidly away. “I thought it was going for my throat.”

Maya grinned, and after a moment Beq grinned back at her, a broad, goofy smile that did strange things to Maya’s innards. Apparently oblivious to the effect she produced, Beq stretched and adjusted her heavy pack.

“Well,” she said. “So much for my reputation as a bold hero.”

“Heroes have to start somewhere,” Maya said as they started walking toward the others.