CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

Signs

A FTER BREAKFAST, MARTEN BEGAN teaching Tempi and me how to search for the bandits’ trail.

Anyone can spot a piece of torn shirt hanging from a branch or a footprint gouged into the dirt, but those things never happen in real life. They make for convenient plot devices in plays, but really, when have you ever torn your clothing so seriously that you’ve left a piece of it behind?

Never. The people we were hunting were clever, so we couldn’t count on them making any obvious mistakes. That meant Marten was the only one among us who had any idea what we were really looking for.

“Any broken twig,” he said. “They’ll mostly be where things are thick and tangled: waist high or ankle high.” He gestured as if kicking through thick scrub and pushing things aside with his hands. “Seeing the actual break is hard, so look at the leaves instead.” He gestured to a nearby bush. “What do you see there?”

Tempi pointed at a lower branch. He wore his plain grey homespun today, and without his mercenary reds, he looked even less imposing.

I looked where Tempi was pointing and saw the branch had been snapped, but not badly enough to break off.

“So someone has been through here?” I asked

Marten shrugged his bow higher up on his shoulder. “I was. I did this last night.” He looked at us. “See how even the leaves that aren’t hanging strange are starting to wilt?

I nodded.

“That means someone has been by this way within a day or so. If it’s been two or three days, the leaves will brown out and die. You see both close to each other . . .” He looked at me.

“It means you have someone moving through the area more than once, days apart.”

He nodded. “Since I’m scouting and keeping an eye out for bandits, you’ll be the ones with your noses to the ground. When you find something like this, call me.”

“Call?” Tempi cupped his hands around his mouth and turned his head in different directions. He made a wide gesture to the surrounding trees and put his hand to his ear, pretending to listen.

Marten frowned. “You’re right. You can’t just go shouting for me.” He rubbed the back of his neck in frustration. “Damn, we didn’t think this all the way through.”

I smiled at him. “I thought it through,” I said, and brought out a rough wooden whistle I’d carved last night. It only had two notes, but that was all we needed. I put it to my mouth and blew. Ta-ta DEE. Ta-ta DEE .

Marten grinned. “That’s a Will’s Widow, isn’t it? The pitch is dead on.”

I nodded. “That’s what I do.”

He cleared his throat. “Unfortunately, Will’s Widow is also called a night-jar.” He grimaced apologetically. “Night -jar, mind you. That’ll catch at the ear of any experienced woodsman like a fishhook if you go blowing it every time you want me to come take a look at something.”

I looked down at the whistle. “Black hands,” I swore. “I should have thought of that.”

“It’s a good idea,” he said. “We just need one for a daytime bird. Maybe a gold piper.” He whistled two notes. “That should be simple enough.”

“I’ll carve a different one tonight,” I said, then reached down for a twig. I snapped it and handed half to Marten. “This will do if I need to signal you today.”

He looked at the stick oddly. “How exactly will this help?”

“When we need your opinion on something we’ve found, I’ll do this.” I concentrated, muttered a binding, and moved my half of the stick.

Marten jumped two feet up and five feet back, dropping the stick. To his credit, he didn’t shout. “What in ten hells was that?” he hissed, wringing his hand.

His reaction had startled me, and my own heart was racing. “Marten, I’m sorry. It’s just a little sympathy.” I saw a wrinkle in between his eyebrows and changed my tack. “Just a small magic. It’s like a bit of magic string I use to tie two things together.”

I imagined Elxa Dal swallowing his tongue at this description, but pressed ahead. “I can tie these things together, so when I tug on mine . . .” I moved to stand over where his half of the twig lay on the ground. I raised my half, and the half on the ground lifted into the air.

My display had the desired effect. Moving together, the two twigs looked like the crudest, saddest string puppet in the world. Nothing to be frightened of. “It’s just like invisible string, except it won’t get tangled or caught on anything.”

“How hard will it pull at me?” he asked warily. “I don’t want it yanking me out of a tree when I’m scouting.”

“It’s just me on the other end of the string,” I said. “I’ll just jiggle it a bit. Like the float on a fishing line.”

Marten stopped wringing his hand and relaxed a little. “Startled me is all,” he said.

“That’s my fault,” I said. “I should have warned you.” I picked up the stick, handling it with a deliberate casualness. As if it were nothing more than an ordinary stick. Of course it was nothing more than an ordinary stick, but Marten needed to be reassured as to that point. It’s like Teccam said, nothing in the world is harder than convincing someone of an unfamiliar truth.

* * *

Marten showed us how to see when leaves or needles had been disturbed, how to spot when stones had been walked across, how to tell if moss or lichen had been damaged by someone’s passing.

The old huntsman was a surprisingly good teacher. He didn’t belabor his points, didn’t talk down to us, and didn’t mind questions. Even Tempi’s trouble with the language didn’t frustrate him.

Even so, it took hours. A full half day. Then, when I thought we were finally finished, Marten turned us around and started leading us back toward the camp.

“We’ve already been that way,” I said. “If we’re going to practice, let’s practice in the right direction.”

Marten ignored me and kept walking. “Tell me what you see.”

Twenty paces later, Tempi pointed. “Moss,” he said. “My foot. I walked.”

Realization dawned, and I began to see all the marks Tempi and I had made. For the next three hours, Marten walked us step by humiliating step back through the trees, showing us everything we had done to betray our presence there: a scuff against the lichen on a tree trunk, a piece of freshly broken rock, the discoloration of overturned pine needles.

Worst of all were a half-dozen bright green leaves that lay shredded on the ground in a tidy semicircle. Marten raised an eyebrow, and I blushed. I had plucked them from a nearby bush, idly shredding them while listening to Marten.

“Think twice and step carefully,” Marten said. “And keep an eye on each other.” He looked back and forth between Tempi and me. “We’re playing a dangerous game here.”

Then Marten showed us how to cover our tracks. It quickly became clear that a poorly concealed sign was often more obvious than one simply left alone. So over the next two hours we learned how to hide our mistakes and spot mistakes that others had tried to hide.

Only then, as afternoon was turning to evening, did Tempi and I begin searching this swath of forest bigger than most baronies. We walked close together, zigzagging back and forth, looking for any sign of the bandits’ trail.

I thought about the long days stretching out ahead of us. I’d thought searching the Archives had been tedious. But looking for a broken twig in this much forest made hunting for the gram seem like going to the baker for a bun.

In the Archives I had the chance to make accidental discoveries. In the Archives I’d had my friends: conversation, jokes, affection. Looking sideways at Tempi, I realized I could count the words he had said today: twenty-four, and the number of times he had met my eye: three.

How long would this take? Ten days? Twenty? Merciful Tehlu, could I spend a month out here without going mad?

With thoughts like this, when I saw some bark chipped off a tree and a tuft of grass bent the wrong way, I was flooded with relief.

Not wanting to get my hopes up, I motioned to Tempi. “Do you see anything here?” He nodded, fidgeting with the collar of his shirt, then pointed to the grass I’d spotted. Then he pointed to a scuffed bit of exposed root I hadn’t noticed.

Almost light-headed with excitement, I pulled out the oak twig and signaled Marten. I twitched it very gently, not wanting to send him into another panic.

It was only two minutes before Marten came out of the trees, but in that time, I had already formed three plans as to how to track and kill the bandits, composed five apologetic soliloquies to Denna, and decided that when I got back to Severen, I would donate money to the Tehlin church as thanks for this tangible miracle.

I expected Marten to be irritated that we’d called him back so soon. But his expression was purely matter-of-fact as he came to stand next to us.

I pointed out the grass, the bark, and the root. “Tempi spotted the last.” I said, giving credit where credit is due.

“Good,” he said seriously. “Good job. There’s also a bent branch over there.” He gestured a few paces off to the right.

I turned to face the direction the trail seemed to indicate. “Odds are they’re going to be north of here,” I said. “Farther from the road. Do you think it would be better to scout things out a bit now, or wait until tomorrow when we’re fresh?”

Marten squinted at me. “Good lord, boy. These aren’t real trail signs. So obvious, all so close together.” He gave me a long look.“I left them. I needed to make sure you weren’t going to glaze over after a few minutes of looking.”

My elation fell from some place in my chest and landed around my feet, shattering like a glass jar tipped from a high shelf. My expression must have been pitiful, as Marten gave me an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. I should have told you. I’ll be doing it off and on every day. It’s the only chance we have to stay alert. This isn’t my first time hunting through haystacks, you know.”

* * *

The third time we called Martin back, he suggested we make a standing wager. Tempi and I would win a ha’penny for every sign we found, and he’d win a silver bit for every one we missed. I jumped at the offer. Not only would it help keep us on our toes, but five-to-one odds seemed rather generous.

This made the rest of the day pass quickly. Tempi and I missed a few signs: a log shifted out of place, some scattered leaves, and a broken spiderweb. I thought this last one was a bit unfair, but even so, by the time we headed back to camp that evening, Tempi and I were two pennies ahead.

Over supper, Marten told a story about a young widow’s son who left home to make his fortune. A tinker sold him a pair of magic boots that helped him rescue a princess from a tower high in the mountains.

Dedan nodded along while he ate, smiling as if he’d heard it before. Hespe laughed in places, gasped in others, the perfect audience. Tempi sat perfectly still with his hands folded in his lap, showing none of the nervous restlessness I’d come to expect from him. He stayed that way through the entire story, listening while his dinner grew cold.

The story was a good one. There was a hungry giant and a riddle game. But the widow’s son was clever, and in the end he brought the princess back and married her. It was a familiar story, and listening to it reminded me of days long gone, back when I had a home, a family.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 610