Sindak sighed. “Me, too.”
As they approached the hickory, the cold indigo shadows of the massive limbs began to enfold them. Sindak tugged his cape more tightly around him, and circled to the left. His own tracks were unmistakable. Last night’s mud had squished up around his moccasins, leaving clear prints that, this morning, were crusted with frost.
Sindak stopped and waited for Koracoo, and eventually Gonda, to arrive.
Sunlight tipped Koracoo’s lashes with gold as she looked at him. Even exhausted, trail-worn, and filthy, she was still a beautiful woman. Her large dark eyes resembled black moons, and the dawn light blushed color into her small nose and full lips.
In an irritated voice, Gonda said, “Did you plan on showing us something, Sindak?”
“What? Oh … yes.” He turned, embarrassed. Had he been staring at Koracoo? “This is where I hid last night to allow the warriors to pass by.”
“And where were the warriors?”
Sindak gestured out toward the trail that forked thirty paces away. Towering pines scalloped the edges of the path. “The warriors came up the trail and took the fork that heads off to the west.”
Gonda shoved black hair out of his eyes before he stalked over to examine the trail.
Koracoo said, “Where did you leave the children’s tracks?”
Sindak swung around. “Right back there, War Chief. In that grove of chestnuts.”
Koracoo’s gaze traveled up the trunk of the closest tree and into the branches that stretched almost two hundred hands in the air. On one of the largest limbs, a squirrel sat chewing a chestnut. Discarded bits of the nut fell from its jaws and floated down like brown snowflakes to litter the ground at the base of the tree.
“Koracoo?” Gonda called. He was kneeling in the frosty trail, outlining something with his fingers.
She turned and frowned. “What did you find?”
Gonda waved her over. “Come and see for yourself.”
“He must have found the trail of the warriors who chased me last night,” Sindak said, and trotted toward Gonda.
Sindak and Towa arrived a few steps ahead of Koracoo and the three of them bent over Gonda, trying to see what he’d discovered.
Gonda tipped his chin up to look at Sindak. “I thought you said there were three warriors? I only see the tracks of one man.”
Sindak’s bushy brows pulled together over his hooked nose. “I heard the footsteps of three people,” he insisted. “At least for a time. Then two vanished, and only one remained.” He straightened and looked behind him, to the south. A mixture of pines and birches gleamed in the sunlight. “Perhaps the other two veered off back there somewhere.”
Gonda grumbled under his breath, and Koracoo said, “Gonda? See if you can find any other tracks in that direction.”
Gonda rose to his feet and started walking back along the trail, searching. Sindak turned to go with him, but Koracoo said, “No, stay here, Sindak. Help me follow out these prints. Towa, why don’t you go and help Gonda.”
Towa’s mouth pursed distastefully, but he said, “Yes, War Chief,” and trotted away.
Koracoo watched him go with narrowed eyes. When he was out of earshot, Koracoo looked at Sindak. “What do you see down there in that track, Sindak?”
Sindak knelt to examine it more carefully. In places the frost had created a strange pattern of tiny intersecting bars. It almost looked … “Blessed Spirits,” he whispered. “That’s a herringbone design! You don’t think—”
“I’m not sure what to think.” Koracoo swung CorpseEye up and propped the club on her left shoulder. The breeze blew her chopped-off hair around her face. “I wanted to get your impression before I brought it up with the others. Did he sound like a big man when he passed you last night?”
Sindak thought about it. “It was raining, War Chief. The wind was blowing through the trees. There was a lot of noise. I can’t say for certain.”
She watched him through hard, unblinking eyes. “What else did you notice?”
He flapped his arms against his sides. “Not much. As I said, for a time I thought I heard three people’s steps, then two vanished … and at one point I would have sworn I smelled rotting flesh.”
Koracoo cocked her head. “Rotting flesh?”
“Yes, the tang reminded me of a two- or three-day-old battlefield.”
Koracoo rubbed her thumb over CorpseEye. “Anything else?”
He thought about it. “I heard a rattle, like branches clattering together in the breeze. And, off and on, I heard the man speaking to someone. I couldn’t make out any of his words, but he sounded sad. At one point, I thought he called—”