Raveler: The Dark God Book 3 by John D. Brown Page A

remembered River saying that Moon was a smuggler. “You trade with them despite the restrictions, don’t you?”
    “You think I’m going to follow the law set down by some Mokaddian Divine?”
    “That’s how you made a living with your wife, smuggling woodikin goods outside.”
    Harnock gave him a look and said nothing.
    Talen continued, “Which means you’ve got a contact out on the coast. But I thought you didn’t want to get close to the settlements. I thought you said that was dangerous.”
    Harnock looked at River. “Does he always talk this much?”
    “Yes,” she said.
    Harnock grunted, then said, “Follow me, and keep quiet.” Then he began to walk up through the orchard.
    As they walked, Talen spotted many more ropes and platforms in the distance and realized the orchard was large, even if it wasn’t kept in the fashion of the clans. And they didn’t have to walk far before Talen saw his first woodikin. The creature sat high up in a tree, watching them. It was hairy, but wore some kind of tunic and carried a small bow. It had a mane of white fur.
    Harnock shouted up to it in a language Talen did not understand. The woodikin blew a whistle of sorts, then continued to watch them.
    “What do we do now?” asked Talen.
    “We wait. There will be some discussion and barter, but this tribe of Orange Slayers owes me. They’ll give us passage through the borders of their tanglewood and out to the other side.”
    The woodikin tribes and nations named themselves for various things. There were the Long-bodies, Bear Eaters, Toadmen, and dozens of others. The Orange Slayers were named after a giant hornet with an orange head. The hornet sometimes grew as long as a man’s palm and had a wing span of almost five inches. They looked like sparrows when they flew. Everyone knew about orange slayers and their dagger stings—it’s what the woodikin had sent against the humans in the old wars.
    Which was why the clans destroyed their nests whenever they were found. In the old wars, some of the Koramite settlers had died from the stings, but in battle the woodikin wasp lords had used them more to strike fear in the hearts of their enemies, distracting them, injuring them, breaking their lines, making it easy for the woodikin warriors to pick them off. How the woodikin controlled the wasps, nobody knew.
    Talen himself had seen the bodies of a small nest of wild orange slayers. A farmer had destroyed the nest at night by knocking it into a large barrel of water, putting a lid on it, and drowning the creatures. Afterwards, the farmer had cooked some up for eating and sold others for a fine price. At the time, the sight of the wasps’ large bodies and stingers and powerful-looking jaws had filled Talen with dread. He couldn’t imagine facing a swarm of thousands of the creatures. The old settlers had worn thick clothing and special hats with netting as defenses, but even those sometimes failed. Talen had nothing of the sort here—just his tunic and trousers. Furthermore, his head, neck, arms, and feet were bare. He began to feel very exposed.
    “What do we do if they send their hornets at us?” Talen asked.
    “We run,” said Harnock.
    Talen looked at River in alarm.
    “Relax,” River said. “I doubt they use wasp lords to protect orchards.”
    “Not unless they’re expecting a raid from an enemy tribe,” said Harnock. “We’re very close to Spiderhawk territory.”
    “Spiderhawks?” Talen asked.
    “Another tribe, named after the black wasps that attack large spiders and drag them down into their holes.”
    An insect flew by, and Talen jumped, but it was just a plain old fly.
    Above them the woodikin made more calls. Flute-like whistles responded from deeper within the forest. A look of concern crossed Harnock’s face. He yelled up to the woodikin watching them from above. His voice seemed full of anger.
    The woodikin yelled back down.
    “He says we’re thieves, and that we are now property of their