Oathblood

leaving an unreadable, hard, rutted surface. There was no trace of the wagon or the horses they'd been following. Even Warrl couldn't get a scent on a surface like that.

That would have been all right, since with Need to guide them, they knew which direction to go, but they hadn't gone a league before the road split into three, all of them going south. Pick the wrong one, and their quarry would get so far ahead they'd never catch up. She sat and swore, silently, staring at the damned triple-fork, as Warrl scouted ahead on the frozen surface, hoping for a trace of scent or some other miracle to give them a clue. Then, beyond expectation, the miracle occurred. :Mindmate!: the kyree called excitedly. :Here, the middle road! I have a patch of Kira's and Meri's scent!:

Now Tarma swore happily. 'Warrl has a scent!' she called to the other two, and sent her mare loping down the uneven surface as they followed the kyree. Warrl went on ahead, reporting tiny patches of scent at uneven intervals, confirming that the first patch wasn't a fluke.

'What is he picking up?' Kethry asked, wonder-ingly. 'What could he possibly be picking up?'

'I don't know,' Tarma began, 'Maybe one of them managed to rub a hand on a wheel, but you'd think he'd have picked that up before this-'

'I think I know!' Jadrie suddenly said, and urged her horse ahead of theirs. She dangled down from the saddle in a trick Tarma had taught her and snatched something tiny off the top of a rut without pausing, then turned her horse and came back to them. 'Look!' she said in triumph, holding up a tiny thread of white. It didn't look like anything.

'What in-' Tarma went cross-eyed trying to look at it.

Jadrie grinned. 'It's the white silk embroidery thread I gave Meri for Midwinter. Remember, you've trained Kira, and she knows she has to leave us something to follow. I bet they're cutting it up and dropping it out of the wagon.'

'I bet you're right.' She turned her attention to the kyree and thought at him. Warrl, if you lose the trail, check to either side of the road. You're following bits of silk, and they might blow off the road itself.

:Clever girls!: was his comment, and with that sure guide, they were able to increase their pace to the ground-eating lope that best suited the kyree, even when the road branched, and branched again.

By midmorning, they came upon the kidnappers' camp, with the scent of the girls all around it. The ashes of the fire were cold, but Tarma knew the kidnappers couldn't have increased their lead by much, if anything. Warrl reported that the girls had been sick, which didn't surprise Tarma at all, and didn't worry her too much. That was a natural reaction to what had happened to them, and it was encouraging to know that Warrl reported no signs that the children had been mistreated in any way -- no blood, no torn-out hair, the scent of fear but only what he would have expected. He would be able to scent a drop of blood too small to see; even bruised flesh would leave a 'different' odor to his keen senses. And as for other kinds of abuse -- well, those would have left clear scents as well, and Warrl found nothing of the sort.

They didn't spend too much time at the campsite; there wasn't much it could tell them that they didn't already know. The snow was too trampled to tell how many men they were facing, though Warrl's guess was around twenty. There was one place where a small tent had clearly been set up, and that meant these kidnappers had a leader, someone who considered himself too superior to the others to sleep beside the fire with the rest of them. There was no scent of the girls at that spot, and it wasn't likely they'd be allowed out of their prison, especially at night, so the tent had to belong to the leader.

They set off in much less than a candlemark, and when the road forked again, Warrl ranged up both forks until he found another bit of silk, giving them the right direction. But it wasn't until they came across a horse- dropping that was still faintly warm that Tarma knew for certain that they would be able to catch up to the kidnappers.

Twenty men against the two of us? Well, I'm sure Leslac would assume it was no contest, but I'm not that sanguine. Still, if they'd camped last night, they would probably do the same tonight; they could stay out of spotting range with Warrl to scout, and creep up on the camp tonight.

'We're catching up -- which means we'd better think of something. Keth, I don't suppose you could cast some sort of magic that would put them all to sleep, could you?' she asked, a little doubtfully. After all, she'd never seen Kethry do anything of the kind -- but it was worth asking about.

Beside her, the sorceress tucked her hair under her hood as she replied, moving easily with her horse. 'That only happens in childrens' tales and bad melodrama,' Kethry said, then shrugged an apology. 'Sorry, but that's how it is. Even if I could, it would be a sure bet that men as organized as these are would have a countering magic in effect. I see your point, it would be convenient if we could put the whole encampment to sleep and just pluck the girls out of it.' She chewed her lower lip. 'Let me think about it, and I'll tell you what I can do, other than call lightning down on them, or something equally spectacular and dangerous.'

'Spectacular would be a bad idea,' Tarma agreed, and Jadrie nodded, so she added for Jadrie's benefit, 'Because-?'

'We don't know who these people are or where they're going; we don't know who is watching for them or coming to meet them. Doing something spectacular could bring down more trouble than we can deal with.' Jadrie had that lesson by heart, at least. 'The ideal thing would be to draw them out of the camp, one at time, and pick them off that way,' Kethry mused. 'But we'd have to do it quickly enough that they wouldn't notice until we'd whittled their numbers down to a manageable size.'