Koracoo met him as he slogged out of the water and stepped onto dry land. She was less than six hands away, and he felt her nearness like a physical blow.
“Did you find any evidence that they marched through the pond?”
He shook his head. His drenched moccasins squished with his movements. “At first, I thought …” He turned to look back across the small pond to the place where he’d thought he’d seen a track. Steep rocky mountains rose on either side of the narrow valley. Towa and Sindak were still searching the trails that led to the pond. “I didn’t even find a bent reed. Did you find anything around the edges?”
Her face was drawn and pale, and the bones beneath her tanned skin were too sharp. Her unevenly chopped hair stuck out oddly from too much time in the wind. “No.”
He waited for instructions, but Koracoo just hung her head and closed her eyes, as though too tired to think straight.
“Are you all right?”
“Tired. That’s all.”
Gonda turned away and looked northward to where a wall of bruised clouds massed.
She had never asked him what had happened the night of the attack. She was a pragmatist. She’d found him, made sure he was all right, and led him back to the burning village to attend the emergency council meeting. The few surviving elders had all blamed Gonda for the debacle. Koracoo had carefully questioned them, heard their stories, and helped them plan what to do next. Immediately thereafter, she’d walked to the Bear Clan longhouse, pulled out what few belongings she could find that had belonged to him, and set them outside the door—divorcing him.
Less than one hand of time later, they were on the trail, searching for their children. The shame and grief were still unbearable.
“Gonda, I need your advice. What do you think we should do? I’m out of ideas.”
He felt a sudden lightness, as though all the horrors that lived inside him had suddenly dropped away. She needed him. He straightened to his full height. “What’s CorpseEye telling you?”
She pulled the club off her shoulder and held it in both hands. “He’s gone stone-cold.”
The two black spots that dotted the red cobble head of the war club seemed to be looking straight at him, as though to say, Stop being foolish. You know the way.
“Perhaps because we’re on the right trail,” Gonda said.
Koracoo cocked her head doubtfully. “Maybe, but there’s so much I don’t understand.”
“Like what?”
“Why is it that we can track them across bare stone, but not across the ground?”
Softly, Gonda said, “We both know now, don’t we? We’re not tracking warriors with slaves. Warriors heading home wouldn’t take the time to hide their trail this way.”
She jerked a nod. “We both know.”
Hesitantly, he continued, “There’s something I’ve been thinking about.”
“What?”
The sudden arrival of a flock of crows made her look up. The black birds cawed as they playfully dove and soared, their ebony wings flashing in the sunlight.
“I have the feeling we’re tracking an orb weaver, Koracoo.”
“An orb weaver?” They were spiders that spun spiraling webs.
“Yes. Each night the spider’s old web is replaced by a new one, spun in complete darkness by touch alone.”
“You mean she travels at night?”
“I mean she’s a creature of darkness. She stands in her web at night, but retreats from it during the day. I suspect that all of her spiderlings do the same. She orders her warriors to meet in a certain place at nightfall, but at dawn—”
“They scatter.”
Tingling heat flushed his body at the look on her face. She stepped closer to stare him in the eyes. “During the day, they all take different paths to hide their numbers? That would explain some things. It is much easier to track a war party than a single man, especially a skilled warrior taking pains to hide his trail.”
“If that’s what they’re doing, we need a new strategy.”
The longer they stood staring at each other, the more powerfully he longed to touch her. Strands of black hair curled over her tanned cheeks, and there was something about the sternness of her expression—as though she were holding herself together by sheer willpower—that built a desperate need in his heart.
“What are you thinking?” Gonda asked.
“I’m wondering if Towa wasn’t right to begin with. We should spread out more. Work exactly the opposite of how we’ve been working. Instead of walking eastward, paralleling what we think is the trail, perhaps we should work perpendicular, cut across the forest from north to south looking for sign.”