Just an animal, then. Sal had feared that they'd encountered more wraiths, or worse, but this creature was little larger than a big dog, with shaggy reddish fur and a broad snout. Nothing more sophisticated than a bow and arrow could have killed it.
Highson still fussed at him, as though unwilling to accept his word that he was okay. ‘It came out of nowhere. Habryn threw something. A knife, I think.’
They both turned to look at the tracker. He had bent over the corpse and pulled a skender steel blade from its throat. Sal swallowed, amazed by the man's speed and accuracy. ‘You know these things?’ he asked.
‘By reputation.’ The tracker ambled back, his eyes avoiding the light, taking in the night all around them instead. ‘They travel in pairs.’
‘We'd better be more careful then,’ said Highson. ‘If that thing had got its mouth around Sal's throat…’
Sal brushed away his father's concern, irritated by it as much as he was at his own incompetence. He should have reacted as quickly and as capably as Kail. He might need to in the future in order to survive the journey.
‘Well, it didn't,’ he said, startled by the brusqueness of his tone, ‘so let's not make a big deal of this. We're tired. We were taken by surprise.’ Maybe, he thought, I have been pushing us too hard. Bruises were already making themselves felt where the bear had hit him and he had fallen on his arse. ‘We won't make that mistake again.’
‘And look on the upside,’ said Kail, his teeth gleaming. ‘We've gained some fresh meat. I think there'll be enough on its bones to feed the three of us tonight. It won't take me long to butcher it.’
Sal swallowed automatic revulsion, telling himself that cooked bear meat was bound to taste better than its blood. ‘We could light a fire,’ he said. ‘Have a proper meal, for a change.’
‘We could.’ Kail nodded. ‘You two keep watch, just in case the mate is lurking around somewhere. The fire might not keep it away for long, if it's as hungry as this one was.’
Highson kept his pocket mirror radiating at full strength while Kail went about his grisly job away from the campsite. Once their packs were placed at the centre of their impromptu campsite, Sal began looking for something to burn. There wasn't much, but it did exist. The bulk of the heat could come from the suitable stones he gathered, but there would certainly need to be real flames on top of them, and real smoke. They would all feel better for meat cooked properly.
The small blaze was crackling happily by the time Kail returned with the first cuts from the dismembered beast. The smell of it roasting sent saliva rushing through Sal's mouth. He had to force himself not to look at the fire and concentrate on the darkness around them instead. He saw and heard nothing untoward. Perhaps, he thought, the scent of blood had frightened the bear's mate off. Nevertheless, he agreed with Kail that watches should be posted through the night, just in case it found the three of them sound asleep.
Sal ate until he could physically eat no more then settled back in his bedroll. He felt warmer with the soothing sound of flames in his ears, even if the wind was cold and his cheeks and toes ached; insulating charms stitched into collars and blankets helped as well.
When Kail volunteered to take first watch, Sal had been happy to accept the offer. His body remained tender from the attack of the bear, and a headache was building in his temples. He drifted off into blackness with the thought that bear meat had been nothing like lamb or rabbit, but a vast improvement on the tough jerky they had picked up in the village below…
Highson shook him awake after midnight. The night was dark and clear. A thin wind moaned eerily through the switchbacks, setting Sal's teeth on edge. That and a slight queasiness brought on by too much food made staying awake easy. Even when his two hours were up, he delayed a little longer to give Kail some extra rest. The tracker slept with a pinched, pained expression on his face, as though worrying in his dreams. Highson's face was barely visible at all, with little more than his nose showing from inside the bedroll.
When Sal finally returned to bed, barely an hour remained before dawn. He fell instantly and deeply asleep, and woke only when a light rain misted over his face. He blinked, startled, and sat bolt upright in his bedroll.
The sun was up, but the camp was silent. Highson lay beside him, snoring peacefully. Kail had slumped over where he sat by the fire, which smoked thinly under the half-hearted shower. Between them, the contents of their packs lay spread out across the stony ground. Something had thoroughly rummaged through them, leaving clothes, supplies and equipment in disarray.
Sal's cry of alarm woke Kail with a start.
‘What?’ The tracker took in the ruin of their camp with one sweeping glance. He looked equal parts haggard and appalled. ‘How did this happen?’
Sal left that question unanswered. He was already sorting through the scattered items, dividing them into three piles in an attempt to see what was missing. It seemed obvious that Kail had nodded off during his watch, leaving the camp exposed, but he didn't want to openly accuse the tracker of anything, especially after the previous day's discussion about blame.
‘Was it the bear?’ asked Highson, emerging sleepily from his bedroll.
‘No.’ Kail had stood on cracking limbs and was staring in puzzlement at the ground around the camp. ‘Bears don't use charms. Not in my experience, anyway.’
Sal followed the direction of Kail's gaze and saw too the black circle enclosing the campsite. Arcane symbols surrounded the circle, drawn, Sal realised, just outside the warm glow cast by the fire. ‘Is that charcoal?’
‘Yes.’ Kail looked angry, now.
‘I recognise these signs,’ said Highson. ‘Whoever drew them wanted to keep us quiet while they took what they wanted. What's missing, Sal? Give us the bad news.’
That was the odd thing. ‘Nothing,’ he said, checking through their belongings one more time to make sure. ‘It seems to be all here. Even the bear meat. Nothing's been taken.’
‘That doesn't make sense.’ Highson squatted next to him to double-check.
‘I agree, but there it is.’ Sal ran a hand through his long hair. ‘It could be worse. We could have been murdered in our sleep.’ Despite the evidence of the charm, part of him was still annoyed at Kail for letting this happen. If Upuaut had been behind this particular gambit, or something even nastier…‘What about tracks?’ he asked Kail. The tracker had stepped outside the circle to inspect the stone surrounding it. ‘Can you tell who or what did this?’
The tracker shook his head. ‘There are some marks over here—’ He pointed back the way they had come, where a shelf of rock overhung the path downhill. ‘I can't tell what made them. It was big, whatever it was.’
‘A man'kin?’
Kail shrugged.
‘Do you think one of them could have doubled back on us?’ asked Highson.
‘It's possible,’ Sal said. ‘Why, though, I don't know.’
‘We were being tested,’ said Kail, looking now at the jagged stone surfaces above and around them. ‘Someone wanted to know more about us than they could tell at a distance.’
‘That seems an awful lot of trouble to go to,’ said Highson.
‘I can't think of another explanation.’ The tracker sighed. ‘Not one that makes any sense.’
‘How do we stop it happening again?’ asked Sal.
‘I don't think it'll happen again. Whoever did this learned everything they needed to know. If they'd wanted to hurt us, they would've done it when they had the chance.’
‘Even so…’ Sal bit back a sharp retort. ‘They might change their mind. Or it could be someone else, next time. I don't think we have any choice but to take precautions.’
‘Yes, that's fair.’ Kail turned his gaze on him. ‘I'll think about it during the day. In the meantime we should get moving again. We've slept in so we're already running behind.’
‘Yes.’ The passage of time worried Sal almost as much as the violation of their security. Not only were they already late to set out, b
ut now they had to repack everything. He set about the task with dismal determination. His fear of falling further and further behind Shilly was now compounded by this new fear: that someone was following them. A distinct feeling that he was being watched only made matters worse, and it kept him looking back the way they had come or up at the mountainside ahead, although not once did he see anything out of the ordinary.
Hardly reassured, he shouldered his burden when the others were ready and they continued on their way.
Habryn Kail walked furiously in the footsteps of the man'kin, conscientiously noting the comings and goings of familiar tracks. The broad round feet that left deep indentations or crushed pebbles probably belonged to the Angel, the large man'kin Sal and Shilly had met in the forests. Others were smaller: clawed stone feet with three toes; flat pads that seemed to have no toes at all; at least one set of Panic prints visible in patches of soft earth; and human tracks that didn't all belong to Shilly. It proved, as always, a challenging study, and was occasionally sufficient to distract him from the issue weighing most on his mind.
Not an hour went by in which Kail didn't berate himself for falling asleep on his watch that morning. His lack of care profoundly unsettled him, charm or no charm. But for dumb luck, he and his companions should have been dead and cold hours ago. There was no getting around that.
Sal and Highson knew it too. That was the worst part. He had let them down in the worst possible fashion. For a while, he considered suggesting that he should turn back—beaten by age, frailty, incompetence—before convincing himself of the ridiculousness of that plan. He had only made one mistake, and they would need him in the coming days. Neither Sal nor Highson possessed the skills of tracking and foraging that he did, and they would rely on those, and more, as the path became steeper and more rugged in the days ahead. There was no getting around that.
Before the day was halfway done, with the sun peering over the crest of the mountains and scattering the last wisps of cloud that had dogged them all morning, the ground kicked beneath them, as it had on several occasions during their tortuous ascent. Kail froze, listening carefully. A sustained rumble that might have been thunder echoed along a nearby canyon. It grew louder instead of fading away. The ground beneath him began to shake again, and his palms broke out into a sweat.
Avalanche.
He had no memory of the landslide that had almost killed him ten days earlier, but he knew enough to be afraid. He turned to face the others. The looks on their faces told him that they had realised too. Sal looked up, seeking the source of the noise, but echoes made it hard to find. Instead, Kail looked for shelter, and found some in the form of a narrow crack between a canted slab of rock and the cliff it leaned against. Pointing, he urged Highson and Sal ahead of him, noting distractedly how similar they looked when they ran. They weren't good sprinters but they possessed incredible stamina, as the uphill trek readily proved.
The rumble grew louder. Kail slipped into the crack after his two companions and held his breath with them. The landslide didn't have to hit them to end their lives. Burying them in the crack would be enough, unless Sal could find a way out. The thought of being entombed again held no appeal at all.
The roar of falling stone peaked and began to ebb. They saw no sign of it from their cramped hiding place. Still, Kail waited until only echoes remained before even considering stepping outside.
He had half-expected the landscape to have completely rearranged itself—the noise had been so loud—but nothing appeared changed at all. Feeling slightly foolish, he suggested a quick stop to settle their nerves.
Sal would have none of it. ‘No,’ he said, ‘we've delayed enough already today.’
Kail didn't argue, although the tightness across his chest urged him to. Warden Rosevear's Changerich salves were doing a good job of repairing the wound inflicted on him by the Swarm, but the endless climbing and the heavy pack he wore were taking their toll. He would never admit it to Sal—who, he was sure, had a pretty good idea of how much the wound still bothered him, since nothing much escaped those blue-flecked eyes—but the thought of sitting down for an hour sounded like a pretty good approximation of paradise.
They hiked on, following the trail of the man'kin and keeping their ears open for any secondary rockfalls that the first might have triggered. The journey was uneventful until they rounded a knifelike spur surmountable only by leaping from one smaller boulder to another. There, as Kail lifted the brim of his hat to take in the way ahead, he saw just how simply and thoroughly Sal's plans had been thwarted.
The source of the avalanche lay far above them. Whatever caused it had sent a vast shelf of ice and snow crashing hundreds of metres down the relatively bare mountainside below. The dirty white scar left in its wake stretched right across the man'kin's path, fanning out as it hit less precipitous terrain below. For a worryingly large distance, the trail was buried under metres of unstable debris.
‘This isn't good,’ said Highson.
‘That's stating the obvious,’ Kail muttered. Mindful of any sudden loud noises, he trotted to the nearest edge of the avalanche's wake. Sure enough, the trail vanished under it and showed no signs of emerging. Even the shape of the terrain beneath was difficult to make out.
‘I don't believe it,’ said Sal, tugging back his hood to expose his horrified face. ‘This can't be happening.’
Kail watched him closely. The young man was perpetually poised on the brink of violence, to himself and those around him, and that only worsened when he became upset. Ever since Shilly's disappearance, he had been bottling his emotions under incredible pressure. The Change boiled around him like a stormy sea.
Now he had turned pale and stood without moving, eyes fixed on the devastation before them. His hands shook only slightly, but revealingly.
‘Nothing's going right. Maybe we should turn back.’
‘Hey,’ said Highson, looking at him in surprise. ‘You don't really mean that.’
‘Don't I? If we hadn't been held up this morning, we'd be under that pile right now.’
That was a sobering thought. ‘We always knew this climb was going to be dangerous,’ Kail said.
‘Maybe I didn't. How could I have? I've never been on a mountain before. I've never tracked man'kin moving at speed. I've never had to worry about freezing in my sleep, or being eaten by a bear.’ Sal rounded on him. ‘Can you tell me it's going to be any easier from here? That we've survived this long by skill, not luck?’
‘I think we should take that rest stop we talked about earlier,’ said Kail, not wanting to agree with Sal under these circumstances. He too shared the certainty that all hope of finding Shilly was now lost—unless they could shift several thousand tonnes of debris in a matter of hours, and he doubted if even Sal in a bad mood was capable of such a feat.
Highson agreed immediately. ‘That's a good idea. My nerves could definitely use some settling.’
‘It won't make any difference,’ said Sal woodenly. ‘At least if we turn back, it's downhill all the way.’
Kail untied the water from his hip and took a deep swig. He needed to think. There might be a way around this situation. The man'kin's tracks would resume on the far side of the avalanche's trail of debris. All they had to do was find them and they could move on. Yes, it would remain dangerous, and probably become more so the higher they went. But giving up at the first serious hurdle wasn't in his nature. And it wasn't in Sal's, either.
A new thought occurred to him. What if the avalanche had been triggered deliberately to put them off the trail? That was a possibility he couldn't afford to ignore. But who might do such a thing? The man'kin themselves?
Kail understood, then, exactly what was going through Sal's mind. Shilly had gone willingly with the man'kin. Perhaps she didn't want to be found by anyone, Sal included.
Kail felt for him. ‘This was an accident,’ he told Sal, putting a hand on his shoulder that was instantly shrugged away. ‘We'll find her. Don't worry.’
&
nbsp; ‘You won't,’ said a voice from above them. ‘And your young friend is right. You have every reason to worry.’
Sal, Highson and Kail instantly turned. The Change turned with them, kicking up an expanding bubble of dust and pebbles. Highson put himself physically between Sal and possible attack and formed an open-handed Y with his outstretched arms and body. Kail tugged off his right glove to free his fingers.
On top of the spur of rock they had just passed sat a strange figure, a manlike thing with qualities that weren't entirely human. The size of a small child, with an underfed, bony look, his face was narrow, as though squashed between two hands. His blade-like nose had a sharp upward bow to it, like a skinning knife, and his eyes formed a disconcerting V to either side. His mouth was pursed in a piercingly sharp smile.
‘I won't hurt you,’ said the figure, ‘unless you give me good reason to.’
‘Stay back,’ warned Highson.
‘Oh, I will. I can smell you from here.’
‘Who are you?’
‘I'm Pukje, and I've come to do you a favour. In fact, I've already done you a favour, although you might not see it that way. I've been watching you for a while now. You're determined to get yourselves killed, aren't you? Perhaps I should let you, but I feel oddly compelled to offer you my aid instead. I have these flashes of selflessness occasionally. One day I'll get them seen to.’
‘You're the one who searched our camp last night,’ guessed Kail, not believing for a second that the creature's motives were so ill-defined.
‘What if I am? I did you no harm.’
‘You want something from us,’ Kail persisted. ‘Something you didn't find, otherwise you would've just robbed us and moved on. What is it?’
‘Wouldn't you like to know, warden man?’ The creature's eyes narrowed and his smile became markedly malicious. ‘It's not in that pouch around your neck, if that's what you're wondering. I took a good look at your pretty bauble while you snored on. Do you have any other secrets you'd like to share with the group? Who Vania is, perhaps, and why you carry her letter with you everywhere you go?’
The Devoured Earth Page 4