Extraordinary Zoology (8 page)

He imagined one of the villagers clutching it to her chest in terror, praying for deliverance, and instead getting smashed into Urcaen, the world beyond.

He considered what that must have been like for these people, a monster rampaging among them, crushing them and their homes, and all the while Tharn arrows dropping among them, pinning them in the village. The helplessness, the desperation, the despair . . . Lynus shuddered. Then he felt a steely resolve, and the kindling of a small fire of anger.

“Mount up!” called Pendrake. “The trail grows cold, but Morrow willing, we’ll follow it!”

Lynus climbed onto Oathammer. Was he angry at Morrow, the monster, or the Tharn? The oiled bits salvaged from his rifle clinked together in their bag as he settled into the saddle, and he realized he was angry with himself.

They sat in their saddles, Horgash on the back of that enormous bison, Kinik standing next to Edrea, and together surveyed the village from the tree line of the Widower’s Wood. The late-afternoon sun cast long shadows, but the hollow of Bednar was not yet in the shade. In this light, and from this angle, the contours of the churned ground looked like crisscrossing ripples. They seemed familiar, but Lynus couldn’t quite place the pattern.

“Remember those sand serpents, the little ones, east of Sul?” Edrea asked.

“Tiny teeth, wicked poison,” Lynus said. “I was sick for three days.”

“The wavy pattern of soil and pushed berms calls to my mind the tracks those snakes would make in the sand.”

“Curse these old eyes!” Pendrake said. “Edrea’s right! Our burrowing monster didn’t leave footprints for others to cover. It’s a serpentine beast, able to travel unseen, untrackable underground. But here above, its tracks are large enough to not be seen as such.”

“You must move far away to see tracks instead of little dirt-hills,” said Kinik.

Berms
, Lynus thought.
Edrea just used the word. It is berms
.

“But still not so large as a gorgandur,” Pendrake said. “Praise Morrow for sparing us that dark future.”

“On the subject of dark futures,” said Horgash, “the sun is low, and our quarry has a long head start.” He pointed to a spot on the trail that looked, to Lynus’ eye, like any other. “But once they got well away from the village, they did indeed leave some tracks.”

“Lead on, then,” said Pendrake, and they crossed into the misty woods. Lynus grasped the small medallion between his thumb and knuckle, and an old prayer came to his lips, unbidden.

“Strengthen our hands and steady our feet,” he said, “that we may master tribulation.”

“It is a lovely prayer,” Edrea said, “but you might consider granting your god a bit less room to weasel out of the deal.”

Lynus thought for a moment. “. . . that we may master tribulation, and that we may track this particular tribulation, and put an end to it.”

PART II: EDREA

E
drea Lloryrr cast her eyes up into the twisted, leafy canopy of the Widower’s Wood, thrilled at the momentary sensation of vertigo as she strode amid the ancient, towering trees. This deep in the woods the canopy arched overhead like a vaulted ceiling, nearly a bowshot away, and that ceiling was itself probably a bowshot thick. Yesterday they’d passed a downed tree that had been a full hundred paces from rotting root-ball to tapered tip.

The canopy blotted out the brilliance of the afternoon light, leaving a diffuse, grey-green dimness below. Drifting patches of mist and thickets of heavy scrub further obscured her view. Even in the broadest of daylight, the Widower’s Wood was a dark place.

The forest also swallowed sound. Edrea could hear Pendrake riding Codex a dozen paces behind her, and could make out Aeshnyrr’s soft stepping as she trailed the professor on a lead, but she had to strain to hear anything beyond that.

Well, anything except Kinik. The poor ogrun creaked and clomped louder than any two of their mounts put together. Louder than Oathammer eating, even.

Edrea lowered her gaze and scanned again. If she was right, the Tharn had detoured to run up the middle of a stream for almost a day’s travel, hoping to throw off whatever pursuit Cygnar might muster. An effective tactic, but that stream meandered quite a bit. Edrea had suggested a shortcut, a straight path, in hopes of gaining ground.

If they didn’t pick up the trail soon, they would need to go back and—

The bent branch and clear footprint caught her eye from six paces away.

“Hah!” she exclaimed. “I do believe I’ve picked them up again!”

“Well done, Edrea!” said Pendrake. “Take a moment to refine your hypothesis while Codex and I circumnavigate this bit of thicket.”

The print came from what looked like a human foot, but with five indentations past the tip of each toe—toenails thickened and grown into claws as formidable as any beast’s. Tharn, and unmistakably so.

That foot had landed heavily in soft peat, the outer edge digging deeply, suggesting a turn. She looked where it led and saw more bent branches.

The Tharn must have thought their day of splashing and wading would shake all pursuit, because this trail was obvious.
Hypothesis refined
, she thought with a smile as Pendrake arrived behind her.

“They turned here and headed over the rise.” She pointed to the clear signs of passage.

Pendrake rode up alongside her, leaned low in the saddle, and adjusted his spectacles.

“Astutely concluded,” he said, nodding.

“Hah!” said Horgash, the exclamation a rasping bark. “I can make that trail out from back here.”

His voice pained Edrea, not for what he said, but because it sounded like it hurt him to speak. Trollkin voices were almost always great and booming, at once loud and melodious. Horgash’s sounded like his throat was full of scabs.

“Up and over, then,” said Pendrake. “Gained ground doesn’t grant us the luxury of dallying over an obvious track.”

Edrea nodded and strode up the trail. They’d been pushing hard, tracking for twelve hours each day. Pendrake had expressed little hope of catching up to the Tharn—a war party on the move certainly pushed as hard or harder than the five of them could—but it wouldn’t do to let the trail go cold. This shortcut was likely only worth a half day’s gain.

The new track led over a small rise and into an enormous hollow. The bottom of the hollow was invisible, obscured by what looked like a long lake of fog. The trees were farther apart here but grouped into tight stands, and the canopy above remained unbroken.

Edrea stopped at the top of the rise. Heavy mist and forest shadow meant it was going to be difficult for the others to see down there. She could weave sight for herself, but that might prove a bit of a strain atop the fast pace of the day. Her exultation at picking up the trail faded as fatigue caught back up to her. It was hard to outrun.

“I suspect,” said Pendrake, riding up and stopping beside her, “they came this way for water.” He pointed at one of the stands of trees thrusting upward from the mist toward the center of the hollow. “Giant bald cypress. Growing, no doubt, out of the body of water from which this heavy vapor originates.”

Edrea drew in a deep breath and started forward again, picking her way carefully down into the hollow. Descending into the mist was like wading into murky water. From above, it was a slowly rippling, pale grey boundary. Below, everything was dim, and Edrea could only see a few paces in front of her. But that was far enough to show her another bent branch.

“The mist is thick, but I still have the trail.”

“Good,” Pendrake said. “I’ll keep you in sight as we follow.”

Edrea continued her descent. After another dozen paces, the ground leveled out and became soggy. She scanned the soft ground and spied several small, water-filled indentations—more footprints.

She squatted and examined them closely. The toe-and-claw pattern was still visible. In some soils, that detail would dissolve in just a few hours. She pinched a bit of the loamy soil, rubbing it between her fingers. It held its shape better than sand or loose soil would.

“We are very definitely catching up. These prints were made sometime yesterday.”

“Excellent work, Edrea!” Pendrake said. “At times like these, I wish you were a student, so I could reward you with high marks.”

High praise was enough, but Edrea chose to revel in the moment rather than say so.

“Professor,” Lynus said, “this fog is unusually thick, even for these woods. Swamp gobbers have been known to generate fog like this to facilitate an ambush.”

“If a Tharn war party came this way, it would have scared off gobbers and bogrin alike,” said Pendrake. “Besides, I expect the five of us look rather imposing, especially with Horgash and Kinik in our number.”

Edrea spied something she hadn’t seen since entering the woods—signs of permanent habitation. An eight-foot length of wooden walkway jutted out of the mud. Part of a pier, perhaps, but significantly narrower than would be comfortable for humans or Iosans, let alone trollkin or ogrun. It was maybe three feet wide. Barely enough room to walk single file, and none at all to get work done loading and unloading boats.

But that width was just right for gobbers. They and their slightly larger cousins, bogrin, would be right at home working atop this, out over whatever nearby body of water it used to jut into.

“Well!” Pendrake said as he rode up behind Edrea. “Gobbers indeed!”

“It looks like part of a pier,” she said, “but I haven’t found the lake yet.”

They heard splashing, followed by a sharp curse in Molgur-Trul, the trollkin tongue. Horgash was making a spiteful and entirely dubious claim regarding Greta’s lineage.

“You mindless rug-rack!” he continued in Cygnaran. “Just because you smell water doesn’t mean you get to drink it!”

“We’re over here,” called Pendrake.

“I can hear that,” said Horgash. “Greta was following just fine, but I suppose thirst and pigheadedness got the best of her.”

“I found a bolt!” Kinik said. “For a ’jack, yes?”

“Let me have a look,” Lynus said.

Edrea could barely make him out, a slim, dark-grey silhouette on horseback, just a half head taller than Kinik afoot.

“The full technical term is ‘counter-threaded joint bolt,’” Lynus said.

“The full technical term is hardly what’s important about that piece of hardware,” said Pendrake.

Kinik said, “Strange for a ’jack bolt to be in woods without a ’jack, yes?”

“Strange for a ’jack bolt to be in woods
with
a ’jack,” Lynus said. Did he realize he was being a bit cruel?

“Not at all,” said Pendrake. “Not if this pier is any indication. There might be a gobber village around here, and they can travel pretty far afield scavenging.”

Horgash emerged from the depths of the mist, followed by his bison. “Greta probably has the right idea,” he said. “Her nose is good. I say we water our mounts here and scan the lakeshore for more Tharn tracks. In this soft soil we might be able to get a sense of their numbers.”

The shore was less than a dozen paces to the right of the track Edrea had been following. It was littered with planks. A few pilings—the remains of the pier—jutted up out of the water like stumps.

The horses agreed with Greta about the quality of the water, but they seemed a little skittish. Aeshnyrr drank in quick nips, stepping back from the edge after each pass, and Codex twitched his ears while lapping. Sensible. There were a lot of things that might lurk under dark, still waters like these, waiting for thirsty prey.

Oathammer had his muzzle so far into the lake, Edrea wondered whether Lynus’ gelding was trying to drink through its nose.

“Definitely a good place to water,” Pendrake said. “I can see why a band setting a hard pace would detour here, though they should have topped up while moving through the stream.” The professor scratched his chin. “Then again, the stream is a slow one, and if they were in a hurry they’d have been kicking up silt. I certainly wouldn’t wish my own water bags half-f of mud.”

Edrea considered their next steps. “In this mist,” she said, “we can either stay with Greta and the horses or scan the shore for tracks. We can’t do both without splitting up. I can’t see more than a half-dozen paces in any direction.”