Bone Trail by Paul Stewart

Author:Paul Stewart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Eight

Cody leaned forward, picked up one of the pieces of scrimshaw laid out on the wyrmepelt before him and turned it over in his hands. Then he replaced it.

‘Looking for something in particular?’ the old woman croaked.

Cody did not look up. ‘Don’t rightly know,’ he mumbled hesitantly and blushed.

He picked up another piece. It was round and ­delicate, and made from flawless, cream-white wyrmebone. A whitewyrme had been carved in an oval, its serpentine tail coiling and wings raised. A leather cord was threaded through the wingtips.

‘You fixing to trade for that or not?’ The woman sounded querulous and impatient.

Cody looked up, the carving nestling in the palm of his large calloused hand. The woman was eyeing him suspiciously, as though she expected him to slip the medallion into his pocket and make a run for it.

‘Well?’ she rasped.

Cody stared down at the scrimshaw carving, then back at the woman, and he nodded, the slightest incline of his head. He reached into the side pocket of his breeches and removed two silver coins, which he held out.

‘Not enough,’ the woman snapped, her face crimped and scowling.

Cody shrugged. ‘It’s all I have,’ he said, putting the medallion down and making to stand up.

‘Not so hasty,’ the old woman said, the harshness to her voice softening a tad. ‘What you got in there, boy?’ She pointed at the backpack slung over Cody’s shoulder.

‘Barleyseed,’ he said, and heard her tut dismissively. ‘Red fungus.’ He swung the backpack to the ground and opened it, looked inside. ‘Some heads of bollcotton . . . Oh, and these.’ He pulled out a bundle of bones, the length and thickness of his middle finger. ‘Wyrmebones.’ He handed them to her.

The woman’s interest was unmistakable. She undid the knot in the twine that bound them together and inspected the bones carefully; holding them up to the lamplight, putting them to her nose and sniffing.

‘Wingbones of a mistwyrme,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll take them. Along with the silver.’

Cody slipped the scrimshaw medallion into his breeches pocket and concluded the deal with the two silver coins before climbing to his feet. It was the last of his hard-earned plains money, the two worn silver coins. The other four – gold pieces – he’d used to buy kit and provisions in a dusty little village, the last plains outpost before the badlands.

His fingers traced the carving in his pocket. There was no going back. Not ever.

He looked up at the next terrace. Eli was trading wyrmepelts for crossbow bolts with an armourer in a grease-stained apron and, judging by the man’s waving arms and shrugging shoulders, was getting the best of the deal. Ethan was standing next to him, trying to look knowledgeable and seasoned, holding up the pelts when Eli nodded to him. But his eyes were wary and his smile faltering. Like Cody, he was aware of the kith in the shadows watching their every move.

Micah was further up the rising terraces, on his knees. He had traded the flameoil

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