The Dusk Country: A Historical Fantasy Series (The Peacemaker’s Tale Book 4) by W. Michael Gear & Kathleen O'Neal Gear

Author:W. Michael Gear & Kathleen O'Neal Gear [Gear, W. Michael & Gear, Kathleen O'Neal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wolfpack Publishing
Published: 2024-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

14

Cord silently eased through the moonlit trees east of the campfire. He’d followed Odion’s path to the place where the boy had been captured, studied the two sets of tracks, then backed away and taken the long way around. After he’d followed the river south for a few hundred heartbeats, he’d circled back to the east to approach the fire through the woods rather than the noisy brush. A dense stand of maples surrounded him. The bed of moldering leaves that covered the forest floor was damp and quiet to walk upon.

He slipped from behind the trunk where he’d been hiding and moved to the next. The earthiness of freshly fallen snow suffused the air. From his new position, he could see the low fire built in the hollow beneath the uprooted tree. It cast reflections upon the long, crooked roots. But he saw no one sitting around the flames.

Was the fire a lure, meant to draw in the enemy? He suspected that the first man to walk into the light would find an arrow through his heart.

Somewhere close by, one or two warriors would be watching the fire. Where?

Dark shapes covered the ground; most of them were bushes, or saplings, but a few might be hunching men. His gaze lingered on those shapes, searching for movement. Even the most diligent warrior moved on occasion, adjusting his cape, shifting his weapons, drinking from his water bag. Unless of course, he knew he was being watched; then he froze. But in that case, Cord would already be dead.

Down the incline near the place where Odion had been captured, a vague ripple touched the darkness, like a voluminous coal black cape whipping in the wind. When the figure moved toward Cord, floating across the snow as though weightless, Cord’s fist went tight around his war club.

Black Cape moved into the trees and seemed to hover between the tree trunks as though examining the tracks that led to the fire.

Cord hesitated. He had his bow and quiver. He could have easily shot the man, but…he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. A man, for certain, but he moved with an almost eerie grace. Barely a whisper of his cape disturbed the stillness as the figure glided behind the trees and continued at a leisurely pace up the hill to the northeast, starting and stopping often enough to convince Cord he was following a trail.

Cord remained perfectly still, watching until the man disappeared over the low hill.

Then Cord faded back across the leaf mat to the shadowy well behind a maple trunk and waited, listening. His four summers as a war chief, and ten summers as a warrior before that, had trained him well. He could smell peril; the forest stank of it. The silver brightness of the moonlight winking from the snow made the stillness all the more ominous. But he had the odd sense that this man was not the source of it. Something else was out here with them, and it breathed the darkness like a hunting bear.

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