Krayzor's Arc

Chapter 13 of 16

Krayzor pulled the sled into the tree line where frost slid off the branches in slow drops. The drums had grown since dawn. Three rhythms now, layered and crossed, rolling through the wet woods from different ridges. He could not tell which beat belonged to which clan, and one wrong turn would carry him straight into a spear wall. He knelt in the snow and unrolled a strip of pale hide marked with charcoal lines. Each line was a beat pattern he had logged from past councils, faint as veins on a wing. He pressed his ear to the frozen ground and matched what he heard against the marks. Two beats lined up. The third did not. The kitsune watched from the sled. Her ears twitched, sharper than his. She lifted one finger and tapped the air in time with the strange rhythm, then pointed left, toward a clearing where the frost had melted into a wide gray scar of churned mud. Boar tracks. Wide hooves and bare feet. A hunting party had crossed there within the hour. Krayzor's chest went cold. He had been about to angle that way. The third drum was the Boar clan calling its hunters home, and home was the ground he had nearly stepped onto. He shifted the sled rope to his other shoulder and turned them hard right, hugging the line where the two friendly rhythms overlapped. They moved between the wet trunks while the drums kept talking above them. Twice he stopped and checked the hide. Twice the kitsune tapped the beat and nodded him onward. The Boar drum faded behind. A friendlier pattern grew clear ahead, steady and slow, the signal of a clan that had already planted its staff beside his skull. By dusk he reached the edge of an allied picket. Scouts rose from the brush and lowered their spears when they saw the dragon skull at his hip. He had read the drums right. He had kept her alive, and he had kept himself out of Boar hands. But the picket captain told him the Boar clan now knew exactly which banner had stolen their scout, and they were marching, not tracking.