Erasmus Rootwalker's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

For three days Erasmus Rootwalker had checked his traps, and for three days he had found them empty. He knelt in the reeds and pried open a snare made of woven root and bent willow. Nothing. Somewhere in Turbidfen's marsh, a poacher was pulling out the rarest creatures faster than Erasmus could count them. The old forager had set his snares wide, hoping to catch the thief in the act. But the marsh stretched for miles, and Erasmus had no idea which stretch of it the poacher worked. His traps sat useless while pink honeysuckle blooms and spotted frogs vanished from the water. He scraped mud from his beard and looked at his dog. The big hound lay in the reeds, ears up, eyes drifting after a dragonfly that hovered near its nose. "I don't need the bugs today," Erasmus said. "I need a nose." He pulled a scrap of hide from his pouch. He had found it snagged on a broken snare that morning, greasy and reeking of tobacco and blood. Not his. The poacher's. He held it under the hound's snout. The dog forgot the dragonfly at once. It rose, tail stiff, and pushed its nose into the mud. Erasmus followed. The hound cut a straight line through the reeds, west, then south, away from every trap he had set. It stopped drifting after insects. It hunted. Erasmus struggled to keep pace, boots sucking in the black water, until the dog froze behind a screen of cattails and went low. Ahead, a man crouched over a wet sack. He was thick through the shoulders, bearded, a knife hanging at his belt and a strap of pouches crossed over his chest. He whistled through his teeth as he tied off the sack. Inside it, something small kicked and went still. Erasmus knew the face from talk in the village. Errol Stone, who sold exotic furs and meat to buyers who paid in silver and asked no questions. Now he had a name and a place. His hands shook, but not from cold. The hound broke first. It could not help itself. A dragonfly skimmed the water between them, and the dog lunged, splashing loud through the shallows. Errol spun. His eyes found Erasmus in the reeds. For one breath neither man moved. Then Errol snatched up his sack and ran, crashing south through the marsh with the speed of a man who knew every hidden path. Erasmus did not chase. He stood and marked the ground where Errol had crouched. Snares of fine wire lay coiled in the mud, staked along a channel Erasmus had never trapped. This was the poacher's stretch. He knew it now. He crouched and studied the wire snares, learning their shape. Errol knew his face. The hunt would run both ways now.