People of the Lightning(163)

“Yes. They are both barechested, dressed in breechclouts.”

Diamondback had to hold his breath to keep from retching. He backed up a few paces, examining the swollen, rotting bodies. One man had been darted through the right eye. The other’s skull had been crushed by two powerful blows from a warclub.

Diamondback’s eyes widened. “Blessed Spirits, Dace,” he said. “I know that man on the left, the one with the crushed skull. He used to be Cottonmouth’s War Leader! I’ve seen him five times since last summer. Every time Windy Cove Village was attacked, and again when he led his warriors against our scouting party.”

“And the man on the right?”

Diamondback shook his head. “I don’t think I recog—” His brows pulled together suddenly. “Wait.” He edged forward three paces to study the fletching on the dart. “Dace! My mother killed these men! This is her dart. I would swear to it!”

“So she came this way.”

“Yes, certainly.” Diamondback bent over and began scanning the ground. “Look around, Dace. Do you see any tracks? Was Pondwader with her when she was attacked?”

Dace began looking, but he said, “It has rained since these men died, Diamondback. Even if Pondwader was with her, we may never find evidence of it.”

Diamondback pushed aside a palm frond and gazed at the sheltered spot beneath the stems. Nothing. “I know, Dace. I just hoped we could give Kelp some good news.”

In a soft voice, Dace asked, “Are you still worried that Pondwader may not have found Musselwhite?”

“The only thing we know for sure is that Cottonmouth’s warriors scattered through the forest after they attacked Windy Cove Village, and that my mother encountered and killed two of them. As for Pondwader …”

Dace knelt and scrutinized an indentation in a patch of old leaves. It might have been a sandalprint, but it wasn’t. “You mean he might have met some of those warriors, too—but before he could reach Musselwhite.”

Diamondback heard the hurt and fear in Dace’s voice. He said, “Don’t worry yet. Pondwader may be fine. I just wish we had some way of knowing that he’d met up with my mother. I would feel better.”

“So would I. I …” Dace fell to his knees. “Diamondback?”

“What? What did you find?” He hobbled over and braced his hands on his knees.

In the sand beneath a dense cluster of palmettos, Dace pointed to a clump of leaves, then looked up at Diamondback. “That looks like a bloody sandalprint to me,” he said.

“Can you pick it up, Dace? Let me take a closer look.”

Dace gathered the leaves and handed them to Diamondback. Four oak leaves with several pine needles. Clotted together with old blood. And the blood had a distinct pattern, from the woven sole of a sandal. “She must have stepped in her victim’s blood and tracked it in this direction. See if you can find another one, Dace!”

Dace crawled forward on his hands and knees, looking in every sheltered location. “Diamondback? Look at this … . And this! Here’s another one!”

Ropes of thick vines draped an oak’s branch. Dace held them aside and pointed. The crescent shapes of two right sandalprints pressed into the soil. Diamondback slapped Dace on the back, then surveyed the route they had come, from the bodies, to the bloody leaves, to these prints.

Ominously, Diamondback said, “Mother was in a hurry, Dace. She was running. See the length of her stride here? And she was running in a straight line. That’s not like her. Not when she’s on a war walk. She must have been very worried about something.”

Dace straightened up and frowned, drawing the line in his imagination. “About something on the beach? Out there?” He gestured with his chin to a grove of mixed palms and pines.

“Let’s go see.”

They sprinted forward, shoving through blossoming knots of wild alamanda vines. Petals fluttered around them. Some landed in the sweat on their bare shoulders and stuck there like a mottled yellow cape, others crushed beneath their feet, releasing a rich sweet fragrance.

When they reached the grove, Diamondback looked around and said, “Let’s spread out. We can cover the beach more quickly.”

“Good idea.”

The sand here shone brilliantly white in the slanting morning sunlight. As Diamondback searched the area beneath some hanging clusters of palm berries, he spied something black.

“Dace?” he called. “I found charcoal! Someone built a fire here.”

Dace trotted over and they both bent down, surveying the black specks. Diamondback unbelted his hafted knife and dug a small hole through the layer of wind-deposited sand. The deeper he went, the more charcoal he found. Large chunks filled the old firepit.