Hunted by Lindsay Buroker

had read of witches animating inanimate objects
and controlling them, and thought that a more likely explanation
for the swarm, but she could not be sure. She lacked the breath to
share her speculations.
    Cedar grunted, then cursed. He was running
directly behind her and taking the hits.
    “You don’t have to...do that,” she said.
    The effort of holding the pace was catching
up with her. Without the packsack, she would have an easier time,
but she was unwilling to leave her tools behind. She could have
dropped the drill or the metal carcass, but she might find another
use for the former, and she had to check out the latter as
soon as there was time. This woman’s work was incredible.
    “Veer right,” Cedar said. “The river bends
ahead, and we’ll run into some rapids if we keep going
straight.”
    “It’d be nice if...someone would have...made
a trail for us.”
    “We’ll meet up with it soon.”
    When Kali tried to follow his instructions
and run right, movement in that direction made her falter. Two of
the creatures swooped out of the canopy.
    Cedar’s rifle cracked. One of the constructs
flew backward, smashing into a tree. The other returned fire. The
bullet was too small to track, but Cedar cursed and dropped his
rifle. He snatched it up and caught up with Kali.
    “They’re herding us,” he said.
    Yes, she was getting that feeling. “To corner
us...at the river? I’m hot and tired enough to jump in and...take
my chances with the current.”
    “With all that gear?” Irritating that he did not sound out of breath. “You’d sink like a gold
bar.”
    Before she could think of a retort, the trees
and undergrowth ended, and she stumbled onto a granite bank, damp
with spray. In the center of the river, white rapids frothed and
churned, but Kali’s gaze went to a shallow niche filled with calm,
dark water—and a brown-clad figure standing in a metal boat. No,
not a boat. The lower half of the flying machine, the half they had
not found in the wreckage. The furnace and boiler appeared
undamaged, and puffs of gray wafted from a narrow smokestack. Some
sort of screw-style propeller kept the
flying-machine-turned-land-vehicle-turned-boat from drifting out
into the rapids.
    Kali slowed down, not sure what to do next.
Stop and talk? God knew she was curious about this woman. Or turn
right and run downriver, taking her chances navigating the
treacherous slabs of rock framing the waterway?
    Cedar had no trouble deciding what to do: he
fired his rifle.
    The transparent barrier still protected the
piloting area, but since the woman was standing, her torso rose
above it. The bullet slammed into her chest. Or it should have. It
clacked, as if hitting rock, and ricocheted off without the figure
reacting. Actually she did react. She tilted her head and gave
Cedar a look that managed to convey, even with goggles covering her
eyes, pity for such a simple creature whose only solution to
problems was gunfire.
    He seemed to get that message too for he
growled like a bear roused early from hibernation.
    Click-whirs grew audible over the roar
of the rapids. The flying constructs drew closer, forming a tight
semicircle at Kali and Cedar’s backs. One buzzed a couple of feet
from her ear.
    “What do you think of my cicadas?” the figure
called. The head wrapping did not cover the speaker’s lips, so the
voice came out clearly. It definitely belonged to a woman, an older
woman, Kali guessed. “Incase you’re thinking of fleeing, I should
inform you that you’ve experienced only Setting One of their
firepower. There are three settings.”
    “Who are you?” Kali asked. Maybe the
question should have been, “ What are you?”
    Though the voice and the swell of a bosom
beneath the brown wrapping made femininity clear, Kali struggled to
believe this was a mere woman. Cedar had shot her the day
before—they had seen blood—but no sling cradled the arm, nor
did the figure appear wounded now.
    “Who do you think I am?”