People of the Nightland(54)
Skimmer was giving him a wild look, her fragile eyes wide.
Skimmer! Bramble’s dead. He pinched his eyes shut, shaking off the last of the Dream.
Fearfully, Ashes asked, “Mother?” and scrambled to her knees.
“Quiet!”
Skimmer pointed. The gray rays of false dawn filtered through the trees to the east, but between the dark trunks warriors moved. They were working their way down the slope, taking their time, being thorough. In the front, he recognized Keresa.
Windwolf grabbed Ashes and pulled her to the ground behind one of the boulders. Skimmer ducked down beside them.
“Have they seen us?” Windwolf asked, trying to clear the fragments of the Dream.
“I don’t think so, but they may not be the only scouting party out looking for you.”
He spun around and scanned the slopes below them. “Let’s go.”
Doubled over, keeping to cover, he hurried down the trail. Behind him, he heard Skimmer and Ashes stumbling, their moccasins sliding on the gravel.
Ashes whimpered, and in a cold voice that brooked no disobedience, Skimmer hissed, “Stop it!”
Ashes went silent.
Windwolf made it to the base of the slope; the trail forked. He surveyed the forest. The spruce boughs swayed in the wind, their needles glimmering.
When Skimmer and Ashes came to a halt beside him, Skimmer asked, “Do you know these trails?”
Windwolf pointed. “This leads back to Headswift Village.”
“Won’t they be waiting for us there?”
“Almost certainly.”
“Then why—”
“Not now!”
He led them on a roundabout path through the spruce, then charged straight south across a patch of snow shadowed by the trees.
“We’re leaving tracks!” Skimmer’s voice carried the seeds of panic.
“Headed straight south,” he added. “When we reach the other side, we continue south; but just long enough to let our moccasins dry. Then, at the first outcrop of stone, we turn back toward Headswift Village.”
“Do you think it will work?”
“No, but it will take them a while to figure it out.”
Skimmer and Ashes followed him, stepping into his tracks as they left the snow. A finger of time later, Windwolf found what he was looking for. Stepping from stone to stone, they left the trail. Then, well wide of their old route, he led them back north, then after crossing another couple of boulder patches, turned toward Headswift Village.
“Now we run.”
Twenty-one
Young Horehound stopped at the edge of a thick patch of trees. He’d seen smoke rising from the other side with the last light of sunset, and hoped that today he would find Deputy Silt.
Horehound rolled his shoulders and flexed his weary legs. A tall, thin youth, he had seen ten and seven summers. When Chief Lookingbill and Windwolf had picked him for this task, he hadn’t any idea it would turn into such an epic of cross-country travel.
He’d been dogging Silt’s tracks for days, but always seemed to arrive late. Deputy Silt never remained for long in any one place. Not only that, but only yesterday, Horehound had almost stumbled headlong into one of War Chief Hawhak’s Nightland war parties.
His only warning had been the sudden cry of a man in pain. Horehound had dived headfirst into a patch of sumac, and huddled among the stems as Hawhak’s warriors topped the crest of a low hill and filed past. Five of the twenty-some warriors had been limping, the others looking surly.
Horehound had overheard mutters of “ambush” and “stinking Sunpath cowards.”
Only after they were long gone had he crawled out of the sumac and grinned.
He’d had enough of walking through the blackened frames of lodges, kicking at smoking debris, and shaking his head. These people might have been Sunpath, but after the attack on Headswift Village, they were now allies.
He resumed his pace, trotting through a patch of mixed oak and pine. His wary eyes constantly swept the forest, alert for the first sign of movement. Then he caught the faint scent: smoke on the wind.
He pulled up at the edge of the trees, looking out at yet another ruined village.
Warriors walked through burned lodges … probably searching for bodies. They were obviously Sunpath, because a short distance from the village, three tens of Sunpath villagers had gathered. Not only that, none of the warriors wore Nightland garb that sported ravens, black circles, or the other symbols they had adopted after the coming of the Prophet.
Still.
As his gaze took in the clearing, searching for threats, he adjusted the twisted rabbit-fur mantle that draped his shoulders. In the distance he could count four fires that continued to smolder, and though he did not know these Sunpath lands well, he assumed they marked recently destroyed villages. He’d met several groups of refugees on the trails. All were headed north to Headswift Village.