He paused. “First I’m going to where the tomttu said it happened. Maybe I can learn something. Then—I’ll do whatever comes next.”
“What about us? Your army?”
“I’m leaving Jeremid in charge. He’s as good as I am.” He chuckled then, getting up. “In some ways, anyhow.”
She didn’t smile. “When are you going?”
“As soon as I’ve talked to Jeremid. Half an hour.”
She stepped forward, hugged him hard and kissed his mouth, then stood back and looked at him. “Come back to us, Macurdy,” she said. “Come back to me, anyway.”
He didn’t chuckle now. “I will,” he said. “I promise.” And wondered again why she felt the way she did.
When Macurdy got back to his headquarters tent, Fengal was waiting. He was a lean youth of middle height, with a look of wiry strength; overall he made a good impression. Macurdy told him what he needed him for, while a courier went to get Jeremid, who arrived inside of five minutes. Macurdy told him he was leaving, going on a mission that only he could carry out, that would probably influence what they did next. And that the Sisterhood wanted an alliance—that a courier would arrive from them in a week or so. Tarlok would take care of the man.
Then he and Fengal went to the cook tent for cooking gear and rations, and rode out of camp in another sprinkle of rain.
For five long days they rode eastward, ignoring stealth, Macurdy picking up bits of woodscraft from Fengal. The days and nights were showery, with occasional brief hard rains, yet they made only a minimal camp at night, sleeping where dusk found them, spreading their oiled tarp over a quick frame of saplings. They left their cooking gear unused, their only fire at day’s end, to dry or semi-dry their clothes, though they did bake potatoes in the embers. They were up at dawn with the thrushes and wrens, and ate in the saddle: jerky and hard bread, their jaw muscles aching from it, and cold baked potatoes. And occasional wild apples, worm-tunneled but edible, for on the old burns where they stopped to graze their horses, there sometimes were apple trees. Macurdy wondered how they’d come there.
Finally they came to what Fengal said was the Laurel Notch Trail, used much by wildlife and seldom by man or horse. They turned off on it, northward now instead of east. Beside it, in a small wet meadow, they found horse bones gnawed and scattered; by a troll, Fengal said. Macurdy wondered what had become of the rider. As they continued north, he felt a growing tension, an excitement. He felt more alert, it seemed to him, than he’d ever been before.
Now he watched for a tomttu hut; any spell of invisibility or protection should have dissipated, but if it not, Macurdy had no doubt he’d see through it. They crossed through Laurel Notch, and some time later passed a spring, the headwaters of the Tuliptree. Still no hut. He wasn’t surprised. According to Maikel, tomttu didn’t settle in the wilderness. They only traveled, or at most sojourned in it.
What he did find were human bones, the thigh bones long. A tall man then. They weren’t splintered and sucked dry by a troll, nor scored by the teeth of wolf or bear or some large cat. Its bones had been cleaned by smaller teeth, weaker jaws, beaks and worms and bacteria.
Its chest had been cleaved by something long and sharp, seemingly a sword.
He hadn’t found it by the path. He’d felt an impulse to leave the trail, to snoop behind a laurel thicket not far away. Whoever had killed this man had dragged him there out of sight.
“Not all that old,” Fengal said, his voice subdued. “Old bones weather gray. These are still pretty white.”
Macurdy knelt, picked the skull up, looked into the empty eye sockets—and began to tingle. Abruptly disorientation struck him, then momentary confusion followed by an instant of blankness. Yet he didn’t lose consciousness, just his sense of identity and time, looking through eyes not his own, as if he were someone else. It seemed he was striding uphill, breathing deeply, less alert than usual. Sensing nothing peculiar, nothing dangerous. Then a bowstring twanged, and there was a sudden, shocking impact, a horrible penetration that drove the strength from him, and he fell to his knees, staring down at a feathered shaft protruding from below his breastbone. Ambush! He was aware of men in buckskins, with swords, and strove to rise again. Felt a smashing blow cleave his rib cage, then looked down at his body from a viewpoint perhaps ten feet above it.