She opened her eyes, wincing against the light. Tarma stood about twenty paces away; just beyond her was Daren, lying up against another tree, as though he’d impacted and slid down it. Fine mist drooled down onto her face; droplets condensed and ran into her eyes and down the sides of her face to the back of her neck. Her mouth was dry, and she licked some of the moisture from her lips.

Looks like he got some of the same treatment I did, Kero decided, and shivered. Even wet, her wool clothing would keep her warm, but she must have been lying on the cold ground for a while and it had leached most of the heat out of her body.

“You’ve managed to botch everything I told you to do,” Tarma said coldly, arms crossed under her dark brown rain cape. Her harsh features looked even colder and more forbidding than usual. Her ice-blue eyes flicked from one to the other of them. “First you don’t even bother to set up a plan, or agree on who is going to do what. Then you, Daren, storm off into the game leaving behind a trail a baby could follow, so that Kero has to spend twice the time she should covering it for you. Then you, Kero, let Daren waste his time in a fruitless search when you knew from the moment you saw Warrl’s tracks that he was chasing a wild hare. Then you both start arguing at the tops of your lungs. An army could have come up on you and you’d never have known it until it was too late.”

She glared at both of them, and Kero didn’t even try to move under the dagger of that stare.

“Keth was working with me on this,” she continued, pitilessly. “We decided to make this run dangerous for you, to teach you that if you fouled up, you’d get hurt; just like real life. You triggered one of her booby traps with your arguing. And that’s exactly what it caught; two boobies, two fools who couldn’t even follow simple orders to keep their mouths shut. Well, I have a further little assignment for you: get home. There’s just one catch. Until you cooperate, you won’t be able to find your way back.” She smiled nastily, and turned on her heel, stalking off into the rain. In the time between one breath and the next, she was gone, as if the drizzle itself had decided to step in and hide her.