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In a little clearin stands a tall bull pine Tracker circles frantic in front of it There’s a crow spiked to the trunk Jest above head height Wings spread wide Dead

Nero

My heart seizes I stop I fall to my knees

Everybody’s come runnin, weapons in hand Their sleep broke by the racket Ash lights the ith a torch

Emmi screams when she sees hiit at him It’s Nero, please, soh!

Molly runs to E Coh’s here On his knees Holdin me I cain’t breathe Cain’t breathe Nero No Ash, he says Take him down, please

She’s the tallest of us all Gawdaht me, Tommo He holds the torch close With her pocket knife, she starts to prise the spikes froawdsake, she says Somebody shut Tracker up

He’s still howlin an yammerin his distress Mercy soothes him with soft words, soft hands He quiets to a pitiful whi as she frees it They’re so careful So tender Makin sure they don’t hurt him They cain’t He’s dead He cain’t be h holds me to him

Hey Saba? says Ash C’ht caution I stuently in ht Take a look, she says

Tohts him with the torch His sleek black body His soft smooth breast My heart lurches The breast feathers shine full an glossy Nero’s breast don’t look like this His feathers is still growin back From the wound that DeMalo’s hawk dealt him Fer a moment, I cain’t take in what I see Then the truth starts to smoulder

Well? says Ash

It ain’t him, I says This ain’t him The breast feathers It ain’t Nero

They exclaim an crowd in to look I couldn’t hide that Nero’d bin injured So I fixed on a likely tale of a hawk attack on hi to patch hiht lies They all listened with one ear, if that At the tis to concern us

My brain starts to tick Clear an calot a lump in his neck Seems to be some kinda bubo

Emht, she says It ain’t him But I don’t unnerstand

Somebody wanted us to think it was him, says Mercy

But why? E?

The Tonton, says Tommo They’re the only ones spike like this

If it was Tonton, we’d be dead, says Ash Another Darktrees

But I’ DeMalo would do To send it How easily he could kill us the auy on his own, says Touy couldn’t take us all on, but he could leave a e A warnin You’ll be the ones spiked next tiht

DeMalo could of had us followed froht of acted on his own If there was somebody hid here in the woods, waitin fer their moment to play this foul trick, surely Tracker would of sniffed ’eular an often

Ash, I says You an Tracker did a sweep soon as you got here, right?