The party moved in an unordered formation, shouting Mikko’s name as they went. The forest bounced back the echo of their shouts and there was no response, yet they continued anyway.
“Here,” Hermon called suddenly.
Everyone turned. He was to their far left, standing in front of a rough-barked tree. “It is wet,” he said, inclining his head towards the bloom of wetness at the foot of the tree.
“This is where Mikko did his thing,” D’rmas said, casting his eyes about the surrounding area.
“Could he have taken off?” Eldana inquired.
“Mikko!” Hermon called.
Just then, they heard the snap of a branch. They turned towards the source of the sound, their hands reaching for their weapons. Siem had notched an arrow already. They heard a branch snap again, and this time they were sure of the sound’s direction. Their hearts beat in anticipation as they waited.
Without warning, a robust deer walked out to them from the cover of trees.
“Pheew,” Hermon sighed.
Eldana and Siem had relief burnished clearly on their faces. D’rmas just grunted.
Without warning, there was a tight twang as Siem let her arrow loose. The deer fell to the ground with an arrow sticking out of its heart.
“What did you do that for?” Hermon cried with disbelief.
“One, it got me all worked up for nothing. And two, it is meat. The dried stuff we have in our bags probably will last longer than anything we try to find here. It will be wise of us to assume that there will come a time when the woods will offer nothing in the way of food. Best we stock up and eat now.”
“Ah, I like her,” D’rmas told Hermon.
“We still have to find, Mikko, don’t we?” Eldana asked.
“Yes, of course,” Siem replied. “Hermon you will stay behind and prepare the venison, while the rest of us continue the search.”
“Is that not dangerous?” Hermon asked. “Me, alone in this forest?”
“Don’t be such a whiner, Hermon,” Eldana berated. “You are not alone in the forest. We will be here too, just in a different location. We cannot all stay behind. We do not have time to spare. Mikko is still out there, come on!”
Hermon tilted his head and pressed his lips tightly together. “I owe Mikko a punch,” he said.
“Ah, on that I agree with you,” D’rmas said. “He will get more than that from me.”
Hermon drew a dagger from its sheath hanging on his belt. He sharpened the dagger on a whetstone before he knelt beside the dead deer. Eldana, Siem, and D’rmas left Hermon and the sound of shredding flesh behind, venturing deeper into the forest.
“How I wish we had a seer,” Siem said, after almost an hour of shouting Mikko’s name in the forest and coming back with nothing. “Locating Mikko would be like this.” She snapped her finger.
“None of you know how to work seer magic?” D’rmas asked. His tone held the mild inflection of surprise.
“Do you?” Eldana asked.
“No,” D’rmas replied. “That is beyond the standard magic of my clan. I just assumed that you two would know how to handle it.”
“No,” Siem replied. “Seer magic is not my best suit either. I tried it during my training, fell sick for almost a week. I did not try it again.”
“What do you do then, when you want the services of a seer?” Dramas asked.
“I get a seer. Or I use other mediums. Though they are nowhere as effective as the seers, they serve their purpose.”
D’rmas was about to bring Eldana to answer his question when she called out.
“Hey guys, why does this look familiar?”
D’rmas and Siem stopped in their tracks and walked towards where Eldana was standing with her head slightly bowed, looking over something on the ground.
Siem’s eyes bulged with recognition. There, lying on the floor in careless abandon, was Miko’s magic cloak Siem lifted it with the tip of her arrow and inspected it. She found nothing on it that would shed more light on how it had come off its wearer.
“We are sure this belongs to Mikko, right?” Eldana asked.
“No Eldana, the evidence is too overwhelming to think this as a coincidence,” Siem said.
“Indeed,” D’rmas agreed.
The three of them fanned out into the forest, calling Mikko’s name at the very top of their voices. But they got nothing in response.
“Merai midri.” D’rmas said, stretching a splayed palm towards the forest ground. Immediately, bright imprints of footsteps glowed from among the leaves. First, it was a single pair. They moved around in a circle, but a circle without a definite circumference.
Then Eldana gasped. “Look.” She pointed; her eyes lit with alarm.
More footsteps began to appear coming towards the single pair. Whoever it was that owned the multiple footsteps, turned back to where they came from when they had gotten close to the person with the single pair of footsteps. When they disappeared, the single pair was no longer there. They were gone, like they had never existed.
“Are you guys thinking what I am thinking?” Siem asked.
D’rmas and Eldana responded simultaneously. But their replies could not be more different.
“That Mikko was a spy and this was the rendezvous?” D’rmas said.
Eldana on the other hand said, “That he may have been abducted.”
However, as soon as she was done speaking, both her and Siem cast D’rmas a stare.
“What?” D’rmas asked. “That too is a suitable explanation!”
After a while, he said, “Whatever we choose to believe, one thing is clear. If we decide that the individual footsteps that have just been revealed belong to Mikko, then he was alone, and when more people came towards him, he left with them. Whether it was by coercion, or by his will.”
“What do we do?” Eldana asked. “We cannot just surrender him to the uncertainties of his fate.”
“Going after those footsteps
