Beardy Beardingsson's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

At dawn Beardy climbed the ridge where the orb had stood. He knelt in the dirt and squinted with his one good eye. The watcher's boot prints faded into stone. Tracking by sight alone would get him killed. He returned to his forge and pulled an old metal box from a crate. Dials, a green glass screen, a rugged casing. He pried it open and fit the orb shard inside, wiring it to the needle. The screen flickered. He carried it back to the ridge and swept it slow across the rocks. The needle jumped. A faint trail of the rival's strange residue glowed on the glass, leading down the slope. Beardy grinned for the first time in days. He could not see the spy, but now he could follow them.