“Rumbler,” she said, and pointed. “There’s the cougar’s trail! Do you see it? The weight of his paws pushed up the stones. The trail is right there. It’s been there all along!”
Rumbler lurched to his feet. “Where? I don’t see it.”
“Maybe you’re not tall enough. But it’s there! Right over there. I promise!”
His white cape swung around him as he scrambled across the treacherous slope looking for the piles of stones. When Rumbler reached the trail, he stood up, shouting, “Wren! Look! Do you see those big oaks to the north? That’s Paint Rock Village!”
Wren followed his mittened hand. Twenty or more ancient oaks formed a half-moon in the forest, their bare branches stretching high above the normal canopy. Against the gleaming dawn sky they resembled blackened skeletal arms, hundreds of them, reaching out, trying to touch … something.
Rumbler trotted along the cougar’s trail, his moccasins slipping on the talus, calling, “Come on, Wren!”
Twenty-Three
Dark blue Cloud Giants gathered overhead, pulling spindly veils of snow behind them. Against the golden sheen of sunrise, the veils shimmered and wavered as though dancing over the hills on their own feet.
Elk Ivory stopped to watch them. The cold morning air carried the earthy fragrances of wet bark and spruce needles. She breathed them in, enjoying the moment’s rest. Feet pounded behind her, accompanied by heavy breathing and curses as the remainder of the war party navigated the mud.
Acorn came up beside her, and wiped the sweat from his brow. The ridge of hair down the middle of his shaved skull sparkled in the sunlight. He’d removed his bear-hide cape, rolled it up, and tied it over the top of his pack. Sweat stained the arms and chest of his red shirt.
He panted, “Why are we … stopping?”
“I was waiting for you to catch up.”
He gave her an incredulous look. Murmurs broke out behind them as warriors came through the mud, stopped, and began asking questions.
“Are the tracks the same?” Acorn asked as he crouched in the mud to examine them.
“Yes,” she answered.
Despite the river of meltwater around their feet, the tracks couldn’t be mistaken. Three people had walked here last night. Two men and a woman. One of the men was Blue Raven. The size and shape of his feet had been etched on her souls during the days when they had warred together. She would know them anywhere. But she had no idea who the other two people might be. The woman’s tracks did not belong to Little Wren, and not a single track had been left by a boy.
“I wonder who they are?” Acorn said as he rose to his feet. “Accomplices? From the Turtle Nation?”
Elk Ivory rubbed her fingers over the smooth wood of her bow, slung over her right shoulder. “I do not want to believe it,” she said, “but it is possible.”
Acorn propped his hands on his hips and let out a deep breath. “It does seem that things have changed, Elk Ivory. Perhaps Blue Raven was carrying the boy all along, heading for a planned meeting where he would deliver the boy to his Turtle relatives.”
“If so, where are they headed now?”
He lifted his hands. “A safe village. Perhaps Sleeping Mist. They hate us. They would certainly harbor a Walksalong traitor.” Acorn shifted uncomfortably. “It must have occurred to you by now that they may be paying him. I do not know how they might have arranged such a thing, though I have considered that the culprit might be that ugly Trader, Cornhusk, but however they managed it—”
“If they managed it.”
“Yes—if,” he granted with a wave of his hand. “I imagine they would have offered great wealth to the man who rescued their Powerful False Face Child.”
Her gut knotted. If Blue Raven had done these things, she truly did not know him. She gazed at the tracks. He had a distinctive crease in the bottom of his right moccasin; it zigzagged across the middle of his foot.
“You must admit,” Acorn said softly, for her ears alone, “it seems that Jumping Badger was right. We have not seen one track that we could definitely say belonged to either a little boy, or a girl.”
“All that means is that Blue Raven has not caught up with them yet.”
“But he ‘caught up’ with two other people. He walked into their camp, and sat before their fire. As if he knew them.”
Elk Ivory thought about that as she studied the trail. The moccasins they were tracking had churned up the mud all the way down to the meadow in the valley below. Was that smoke? Rising from the edge of the meadow? It might be mist curling up. She kept her eyes on it. “He did not walk into their camp without hesitation, though. You saw the tracks. He stood behind the boulder for some time before he showed himself.”