The Warden by Daniel M. Ford

Author:Daniel M. Ford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

15

THE WILDERNESS

Aelis quickly realized that she needed to take three paces to Tun’s one, and that he wasn’t inclined to make allowances by shortening his stride. So three paces to one it was, and after an hour she was feeling the strain.

The Worldsoul could undertake Her seven-hundred-year change before I open my mouth to complain or ask him to slow down, she told herself.

Just as she was thinking that, Tun paused, and she was embarrassed enough at how glad she was of even a moment’s respite that she felt a furnace of anger, directed inward, beginning to burn in her stomach. Her guide knelt and lowered his face to a few inches above the grass while she fumed at herself.

“He passed this way. Fast, but not in haste. Soon after his brother was stabbed. He has many hours on us.”

“What does that mean, and how do you know?”

Tun looked up at her. She had trouble reading his face. His protruding teeth, which she was trying not to think of as tusks, changed the entire structure of his expressions. But the way his huge eyes narrowed, she was reasonably certain he was puzzled at her questions.

“I would have thought that rhetoric is something you studied, hmm? Fast—he is moving quickly. Not in haste—he is not doing so at the expense of care.”

That only stoked Aelis’s anger further, but Tun went on, pointing to the ground. “As to how I know, I read the sign. He is careful, but he leaves prints, and he is not making counter-sign, not that it would matter if he did.”

“Why wouldn’t it—”

“Because counter-sign is all but useless when a man is traveling alone. You can disguise numbers, you can misdirect pursuit, you can make the pursuit fear ambush, or try to disguise an ambush that is coming. An array of tricks. But the point is,” he said, standing up and brushing at the front of his coat, which hung so long that the fringe swayed above his knees, “counter-sign does not erase the signs of passage, it changes them. He is relying on his head start, and his speed. And he is right to do that.”

“When it comes to sign and counter-sign and tracking and all matters of this nature, would we save time by assuming that you’re right, and I have nothing to contribute?”

Tun’s lips curled in what she imagined was a faint smile. “Probably.”

“Then how do we catch him?”

“He began his flight with great energy. Fear makes light steps and broad strides. He will tire faster than we will. Grow hungry. Doubt will begin to form, like grains of dirt in his boots. Then grow to pebbles. We will catch him.”

“But not by standing here,” Aelis said.

“No. Not much in the world is done by standing.” Tun tapped at the ground, at something indistinguishable to Aelis, with the unshod wooden point of his staff. “He is doing the skirmisher’s run.”

“Two running steps, followed by a walking pace, yes.”

“Ah.” Tun smiled again behind the small sound of surprise he’d made.

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