SHADOW LEADER, page 5
Aranur frowned. “In a few more days, Longear's scouts could have us pinpointed within a few kilometers.”
“Longear's scouts, no matter how good, are still men,” Dion returned.
He gave her a sharp look. “And you run like a ghost,” he said flatly. He stared into the darkness. “All right,” he said finally. “You'll have two hours before dawn. We'll wait until eight for you to return, so you will have another three hours to find out how close Zentsis's and Longear's men are to finding us.” He got to his feet.
“Zentsis's men should not find us before that, Healer,” Gamon added.
Dion turned away to lay out her bedroll, but Aranur leaned down and touched her arm.
“Run safely tomorrow, Dion,” he said quietly. He opened his mouth to add something else, but Tyrel called to him softly from across their camp. He turned and strode away.
She looked after him for a long moment, then shook her blankets out and lay back as Gamon had already done. As she waited for Hishn to return from hunting while the moons crawled slowly across the sky, her ears followed Aranur and her eyes took his image into her dreams.
She wakened to the sense of someone moving beside her. Her hand tightened on her long knife, and she opened her eyes, but she knew at once that half the night had passed. There were six moons in the sky, and beside her, her brother was rolling out his blanket and readying himself for his own watch. She must have been tired to sleep so soundly. She had not even noticed Hishn returning. Had it not been for the warmth against her side, she would not have known where the Gray One had settled for the night. Rhom, hearing his sister's breathing change, paused for a moment. Hishn stirred, and Dion sleepily scratched the wolf's neck behind her ears to soothe her back into her dreams.
“You have last watch?” Rhom asked quietly as he squatted beside his sister and strapped his sword to his hip.
“Wake me a little early,” she murmured, burrowing further into the gray wolf's warmth. “Hishn and I are going to scout the trail before dawn. Aranur will take last watch instead.”
He grinned. “You probably just tell the Gray Ones to do your scouting for you while you sit in a hidden meadow and daydream.”
“You know perfectly well it doesn't work that way,” she retorted. “As if you would notice anyway. Once you hit the ground, you snore like a badgerbear.”
He chuckled, but his tone was softer when he answered. “Get some sleep, Dion. I'll wake you when it's time.”
It was almost exactly two hours before dawn when Rhom woke his twin. He touched her gently under her ear, and she stopped breathing for a second, then resumed, her eyes opening sharply as she smoothed her breath automatically. To one who could not see her eyes, she had merely caught her breath in a dream.
After rolling to her feet, Dion took only a moment to wrap her bedroll and strap it to her pack. Rhom, knowing that she had what she needed in her belt pouches, wordlessly bound her thin pack to his own. As she slung her bow loosely on her back in place of her pack, eyeing her preparations, he silently pulled his extra knife from his belt and offered it to her along with one of his boot knives. The wolfwalker gave him a smile that did not reach her eyes, but she accepted them both. The boot knife was tucked into her right moccasin, where she had kept her own before losing it a few ninans earlier, and the longer sheath was snapped quickly onto her belt. Opposite her sword and her own long knife, the extra blade was a reassurance. Like Rhom, Dion preferred fighting with both hands when it came to blades. As their father often told them, better to parry with steel than flesh.
Hishn, watching the two, stirred finally, stretched, and got to her feet, yawning at their movements. But when Dion motioned, the wolf melted into the woods. The Gray One did not wake anyone else, though Dion's movements caused Gamon to stir in his sleep and Shilia to murmur. Rhom would have shaken Aranur before Dion left, but she held her finger to her lips, and her brother grinned tiredly. Aranur and Dion had spoken civilly to each other the previous night, but the two had been clashing lately. He knew his sister would rather be out of camp when Aranur rose to take her watch. Dion waved and followed the gray wolf down the gully.
The night is quick, Hishn sent as she trotted ahead of the healer. You must run silent, or the prey will turn.
Dion smiled. Gray One, my prey are the hunters, not the deer whose scent tickles your nose. I want the ones who follow us so closely instead.
The wolf paused and sniffed the air, and Dion, waiting, stepped into a shadow where the moonlight did not fall.
They are not yet near, Hishn told her. There is no scent of other men.
Dion nodded. Then let's follow our trail back until we come to the place where we met up with Gamon earlier. Dawn will be close enough by then that we should be able to see our traces well.
I can smell your tracks as easily in the dark as in the light, Hishn complained, looking back at the healer and panting softly. And the deer are close.
Dion shook her head. I have to see our trail with the eyes of a human hunter, Gray One. Otherwise we'll never know how the scouts found us.
Hishn growled low in her throat, but she led off again, her nose dipping occasionally to the ground as she loped. Dion, running behind, knew better than to follow too closely. The Gray One was not like a hound. The wolf continually stopped without warning and turned abruptly back to pick up the scents she had not caught as she ran. And Dion, watching her footing and the treacherous sticks that reached up ankle high, could trip as easily on the wolf when Hishn halted in front of her as on the branches that stuck out over the dark path.
The six moons lit the trail brightly, and they made good time. Although Dion worried at first that they could run right over a camp of scouts, the gray wolf reassured her that there were no men close by. According to the wolf, they were safe on the path for at least an hour.. By the time the black shadows had become a light gray, the wolfwalker had reached the spot where Gamon said they had stopped for a break half an hour before she and Aranur had joined the others the day before. She glanced around. She was a few kilometers beyond where she and Aranur had met up with Gamon, and her legs had long since passed the state in which they complained about the pace. She was ready to rest.
We can wait for full light here, she told the wolf. She would need to be able to see Gamon's backtrail clearly from that point on.
Hishn's eyes gleamed dully in the gray light. The field rats are thick in these clearings. Her voice was wistful, and Dion, feeling the gray beast's hunger, smiled briefly and shoved the wolf away.
Go get your breakfast, she told Hishn. I'm going down to the stream, and I'll be there for a while.
The wolf disappeared without further urging. Dion, catching the edges of the Gray One's hunt, knew that Hishn's mind would soon be unreadable. The bloodlust of the Gray Ones was strong. She closed her mind to most of Hishn's thoughts, and thought instead of Gamon's trail as she made her way toward the small river. According to Gamon, Namina and her brother Tyrel had refilled their water bags there.
The place where Tyrel had chosen to reach the water was a pocket in a tumble of granite boulders. Once inside the pocket, Dion rounded a rock and found that the twisted path opened onto the stream suddenly. Back on the main trail, the ground had hidden the stone beneath a thin layer of soil, but here, where the ground was exposed to the wind from the cut in which the river ran, the rocks were dried and old, crawling beside the stream like ancient badgers. Crumbled stone formed paths that held no prints of wildlife, and the swathes of vines and shrubs that grew up the sides of the massive rocks hid lichen that was hundreds of years old itself, judging by the width of the orange and purple growth rings. The wolfwalker glanced around as the sky lightened. In spite of the exposed stone, there was enough brush there that even if Gamon had taken his whole group through, the shrubs would have sprung back and covered his trail within hours. She could see nothing that would cause another tracker to suspect that path.
But there had to be something. Even if they had already crossed Bilocctar's borders, Zentsis—and Longear—would have no reason to place scouts so thickly unless Aranur and the rest had been discovered. She found herself waiting impatiently for dawn's light. The moons were no help in the predawn gray. They only made the shadows at the base of the boulders seem darker, and she wanted to run the trail quickly. But all she could do for the moment was wait.
She leaned her head against the cool stone as if it would clear her head by its touch, but a glint of light caught her eye as the sun finally broke over the top of one of the round rocks.
Dion glanced to her left, then frowned. Two long threads dangled from an overhanging branch at the stream, and she straightened and reached for them, untangling them from the limb on which they had caught. Her face was suddenly serious. Threads from Namina's tunic. The young girl had stood too suddenly, gotten caught, and yanked herself free. And Tyrel had missed it. Dion wound the threads around her finger until they formed a knot, then tucked the tiny bundle into one of her belt pouches.
It was lighter now, and Dion, after returning to the main trail, followed Gamon's path back another two kilometers until it led her to the creek again. From there, the path broke away from the stream. She dipped a hand to the water and sipped warily, watching the banks above and below her as she did so. She considered her position. If Namina and Shilia had been careless near the water, the scouts might be following the stream, not Gamon's trail, as Aranur had thought. If that was true, then she should stay with the stream. She had found little on the trail itself. Although, if she waded downriver, the noise of the water would make it more difficult to hear, and the reflection of light on water would trick her eyes into seeing movement in the forest when there was none. She would have to rely more on Hishn's ears and eyes than her own. After a moment, she dried her hand absently on her leggings, then waded into the knee-deep water, grimacing at its chill.
Around her, the water burbled at her calves, and she made her way over the river rocks easily, avoiding the few places where mud had settled between them. The current ran quickly, but though the few snails she disturbed would climb back on their perches within minutes, a footprint could stay in a sheltered pocket of silt for hours.
She saw no sign of Zentsis's scouts on the banks, but the creek was winding through an increasingly rocky canyon where debris cluttered the eddies that clung to the higher walls. Hishn, on the west side of the stream, had sensed no one nearby, but Dion was uneasy. She scanned the banks carefully.
Half an hour later, Dion was almost convinced that there was nothing in the river to betray Gamon's group. Aside from the two threads from Namina's tunic, she had found nothing amiss, and the water, deeper since another creek had joined the first, was cold and fast, prompting her to withdraw when possible. She had already climbed out several times to pass small falls. The last fall, a good five meters high, had forced her back upstream before she found a clear place to get out and make her way around. The overhanging trees and the steepness of the walls over what had become a widening river did not allow for quick passage, and once inside the rocky canyons, Dion had to allow for more time to retrace her steps. She paused at the edge of a deep pool, which she would have to swim in order to reach the next shallow stretch of rocks. She made a face at herself. Her leggings were already heavy and so stretched by the water, that she had had to stuff them deeper in her boots. If she continued, her tunic and jerkin would be in the same chilled state, as well. But, she admitted, it would take another ten or fifteen minutes to work her way back upstream far enough to go around again. Hishn appeared briefly as a silhouette at the top of the canyon, and Dion smiled. The wolf was not one to get herself wet if she could help it, and the Gray One's amusement at Dion's determination was clear. But Dion could waste no more time.
With that thought, she waded deeper into the pool until the cold water reached her thighs and threatened her footing. Beneath her feet, the river rocks shifted awkwardly, clacking and burping with suddenly freed air pockets. Above the water, Dion's teeth chattered to punctuate the rocks' rhythm. Best to get it over with quickly, she thought. She shook to rid herself of her shivers, then took a breath and knelt until the current pulled at her neck. The shock of the cold water forced her breath from her lips, but she struck out in a strong side stroke while the water pulled her along and the weight and drag of her sword and bow pulled her legs down awkwardly in the water. Kicking vigorously, she kept her head above water. A few seconds later, her knees hit stone painfully and she scrambled against the current onto a more shallow plateau, her breathing fast and deep with the exertion. Her jerkin hung down heavily, and the water that weighted it dripped off in steady runnels, but the sound was drowned in the rush and clutter of the river where it crossed rocks a few meters away and dropped again.
There were still no signs to indicate people. No cloth torn from a shirt in a crossing; no shards of arrows floating in the stream. No upturned rocks or shifted logs where a man had been careless or a young girl had slipped. Dion shook her head. Gray One, she called as she shivered in the wet chill of her tunic. Do you sense anything on the path?
Only Gamon's day-old scent. What my eyes see is not what you would recognize. No other human would know this trail.
The wolfwalker frowned. Finally she wrung out the edges of her tunic and waded toward the shallow rush of water that led on down the river. She had rounded a bend and reached open ground again when the canyon walls fell away abruptly on one side of the river and the water curled and boiled from currents that cut across each other over the hidden bottom boulders. Something caught her gaze. Tracks. And not those of Gamon or his group. She dropped lower in the water and made her way near enough to the shore that she could cling to a submerged log and hide in a shadow.
The footprints in the nearby mud were fresh. Dion, close enough to see the sharp edges of the tracks, stayed on her knees, leaving only her neck and face above the surface. She shivered constantly, but forced herself to memorize the prints. There had been three men, she saw, and they had come by this morning: their tracks obscured those of the night animals, and only a few morning bird tracks marred the freshness of the men's. Hishn, who was trailing from the top of a bald ridge, pulled her lips back from her teeth, and the wolfwalker smiled without humor, her expression like that of the wolf. The Gray One answered with another snarl, dropping to the ground and laying her head on her forepaws as she watched her companion below.
The current tugged at Dion's legs, and her scabbard banged gently against her thigh with each surge of the stream. From where she was kneeling, she could see the tracks clearly, and she stared at them until she knew them and their owners by heart. One of the scouts was tall and thin: his stride was too long for a short man, and the prints did not sink deeply into the damp soil. He turned his right foot out slightly. The wound that had caused his foot to turn out must have been old: he did not walk with a limp. The second man, the one with the burden, was of average height and build, but had large feet. Whatever burden he carried, it was in a basket rather than a pack; the imprint where it had been set down was sharp and round rather than dull and shapeless. Dion puzzled over the basket, but then turned her attention to the third set of tracks. This man was tall like the first one, but built more like Rhom, she suspected. Even though the scout was careful to place his feet where they would leave light tracks, his weight was heavier in the dry soil than it should have been. He had studied the river as she was studying the bank, and she looked around thoughtfully, wondering what he had seen.
She eased herself over the log and close to shore—-and then halted. There, in an eddy not three meters away and barely a meter to the left of the tracks of the scouts was what she had been searching for. Not a careless track, a broken branch, or the silt from the upstream crossing, but something else. A washcloth. It floated against a branch in the water and called itself to the eye by its flatness where the branches and grasses were sharp lines in the water.
Dion splashed through the water, losing her footing once as she stepped in a hole. The river closed over her shoulders and dragged her along several meters before she could get her legs back under her. Then the stream tugged at her clothes, urging her past the eddy where the water ran slow and shallow, but Dion caught hold of a long log and pulled herself back. The thick cloth swirled and tucked itself under the edge of another branch, only to wash out again with the river's surge. Behind her, a river snake's head floated gently to the surface, but she paid no attention; only mud and stone-suckers were dangerous, and they preferred a wide or sluggish river or swamp to the clear running flow of this stream. No,” it was not mud eels that worried her. It was the glint of light off Namina's washcloth that caught Dion's attention and fear.
She pulled the cloth off the log. The fabric had not been in the water for long—-there was little dirt caught in its weave. If Dion had been one of Longear's men, she would have known that she was not far behind her prey. That clump of cloth was like a road sign pointing upstream.
Her face grim, Dion looked back up the cliff. Gray One, she sent urgently, cross over. We must get back. These tracks are fresh from this morning.
