The tension mounted in Kest’s shoulders. Try as they might, his companions made too much noise. The zephyrs radiated irritation at their riders’ incompetence. It was muted in Kest’s senses. He had avoided their thoughts and their companionship, so he had no more than a general sense of them. A toddler could do better. The fact that he could feel their frustration at all meant that the beasts were not far from biting. He paused their progress and dug a few dried frogs out of his pack, feeding one to each of the ill-tempered mounts.
It was the humans that were the problem. They simply had no skill for stealth. Even Gamarron, who was more careful than most, let his sleeves catch on twigs and thoughtlessly brushed branches and spider webs away from his face. A child could have followed his trail, and an earless hind calf would have heard him coming. The others were worse. Guyrin, for all his cheeriness, had a muttering tic that left him whispering to himself whenever he wasn’t actively engaged in conversation. It was likely a side effect of the drugs he’d been overdosing on for years, but at the moment Kest felt no sympathy.
He tried to compensate by increasing the distance at which he was scouting in front. Perhaps then he could encounter whatever might be out there before it became aware of the party blundering through the green. An inadequate measure, but it was the best he could do. He pushed the patch off his insect eye to focus on the trail sign.
The trail left by the Naga arrowed deep into the wilderness. Placing himself mentally on the map Gamarron had showed him, he estimated that the battlefield had been a dozen kilometers northeast of the city of Far East, meaning that this trail led toward the trackless jungle deeps in which the Naga home city was likely to be found. He took pride in finally doing his job while at the same time worrying that he was leading them all to their deaths.
The land they traversed was flat and densely forested, allowing him to widen his lead in front of the others – he was far nimbler on foot than a zephyr could be in all the undergrowth. It looked as though the Naga soldiers moved quickly and in a straight line. The very fact that there were no castoffs of food or bits of broken equipment was impressive– it bespoke an oak-hard discipline and sense of thrift that even a Pacari raiding party might not have matched. If all the Naga are so disciplined, and they’re so much bigger and stronger than we are, why haven’t they swept humans off the Mainland by now? It was an uncomfortable thought to have while hunting them.
And then the trail ended. The telltale bend in the grass he’d been following widened into a broad circle within a clearing, the grasses visibly trampled here. On the far side of the clearing, the ground sloped down, the telltale glimmer of water showing through the grass. The brackish scent of marshland announced itself among the green. The trees ahead were shorter and twisted, mosses trailing from the branches to drink from the water. Far ahead he could see glimpses of open water between the boles of the trees. They’d reached the swamp. The Naga’s trail led straight into it. Now what?
The others caught up and joined him in the clearing. “Where to, tracker man?” Nira said. He flipped down his eye patch hastily, not looking at her.
“I’m not sure,” he had to admit. “We’re on the edge of the marsh now. I can track them a bit further through the mud, but once they’re on the water… they won’t break branches and they’ll swim in the clear channels. I can’t track on the water; there’s just no trail! I... I’m sorry, but… another five minutes of slogging through mud and I’ll lose them.” The words tasted sour in his mouth. “I can’t do it.”
Gamarron trembled. “We cannot stop. Think of something.”
Kest tried to keep the cringe he felt off his face. “I’ll try, but…”
“This is why I brought you!” the old man snapped. “You must find them.”
“Hey!” Nira said, scowling. “Lay off, grandpa. He’s doing what he can.”
“Children, children. No fighting!” Guyrin called from the back, wagging a finger.
Gamarron clutched his robe in his hands and visibly fought for calm. “Forgive me. I am unsettled. I know you are giving your best effort. Please think.”
Kest clenched his teeth and nodded.
“Wings,” Guyrin stated definitively. The others stared at him. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? They flew the rest of the way. I mean, unless they have a chaos wielder with them, which sort of strains credibility, since I don’t think a Naga could ever find the Chaos, much less drink it – though why not?” The young man sometimes rambled this way, arguing both sides of a point with himself. The rest of them were accustomed to it. “Yes, you could move people from one place to the next with the Chaos, just, you know, blink and you’re there, but...” he laughed shakily, “I really wouldn’t recommend it. Each person is a variable – well, a variable compounded on itself, really. Trying to force too many variables with your will is like trying to push an apple through a keyhole. Which is to say, you can do it if you want to badly enough, but you probably won’t be able to use the door afterwards, and you definitely won’t want the apple.” He smiled triumphantly, having proved his case conclusively in his own mind. “So the only option remaining is flight. I’ve never seen a snake with wings.”
“If you’re going to talk so much, can’t you at least make sense?” growled Renna, rousing herself.
