Korrak's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

The back gate slammed behind them. Korrak burst into open air with his shotgun ready. Cold wind hit his face. Wagon tracks cut through the dirt ahead. His clan, the Ashmarked, had been hauled this way minutes before. He followed the tracks at a run. Then the ground changed. The dirt ended. Hard rock spread out before him. And the tracks split into two. Korrak dropped to one knee. Two trails scored the stone. One bent left, down a slope toward broken hills. The other ran right, over flat rock toward a stand of dead trees. Both looked fresh. He could not tell which wagon carried his people. He touched one groove, then the other. His breath came fast. Pick wrong, and his clan slipped past the last reach of daylight. "Wheels don't lie," Mittsu said behind him. The huge mutant crouched low, scales dark in the gray light. His brother had died in this mine. He wanted this hunt as much as Korrak did. He ran a thick finger along the right-hand groove. "Empty. See how shallow? No weight. Decoy." He moved to the left trail. "Deep. Heavy load. People." Korrak stared at the two grooves. He could not see the difference Mittsu saw. "You're sure?" "No," Mittsu said. "But I've tracked six months. I trust the deep line." Freya scrambled up onto the rock. The half-goblin child pointed her staff at the left trail. Small lights drifted from the tip and floated over the stone. They pooled in one groove and skipped past the other. "The lights like this one," she said. "There's something warm down there. Lots of somethings." Fizzik caught up, breathing hard. A green puppet snapped onto his hand. "A wet nose knows!" the puppet squeaked. The gnome sang a low, humming note. The sound rolled down both trails and came back. He tilted his head. "The left one swallows my song. A crowd eats sound. The right one echoes empty." Caoimhe knelt at the fork, egg tucked under one arm. She pressed her palm flat to the left groove. Her jaw tightened. "Warm," she said. "Bodies passed here. Not long ago." She looked up through her glasses, cold and certain. "Left." Every sign pointed the same way. Korrak stood and slung the shotgun over his shoulder. "Left. Move." They ran down the slope. The deep track led them around a bend. There the wagon sat, one wheel cracked against a rock. Empty. No people. No driver. Only chains coiled in the bed and a torn scrap of gray cloth. Korrak snatched it up. He knew the weave. An Ashmarked cloak. Mittsu studied the ground past the broken wagon. Footprints scattered in every direction. "They unloaded here," he said. "Split them up. Marched them off in groups." Korrak closed his fist around the cloth. He had picked the right trail. His clan was near. But now there was no single path to follow, only many. The hunt had just broken into pieces.