Prince Nera Mossveil's Arc

Chapter 17 of 23

They rode north until the trees opened onto a stretch of frost-bitten meadow, and Nera pulled up short. Prints crossed the grass in three directions. Split hooves. Fawn-sized. Fresh enough that the frost had not yet reclaimed them. He swung down and read the ground. Four fawns, maybe five, scattered from a single point by something that had come through hard. They had not stayed together. That was the problem. He could track one and lose the rest, or ride wide and gather none. Without a call the animals knew, they would bolt from any rider before he closed the gap. Atletha dismounted beside him. She watched him read the prints and did not speak until he stood. "You need a lure," she said. "Something they remember." He nodded. The herd master's horn was three days behind him at the hall. The scent-cloths were with Bristle. He had ridden out with a map and a mount and nothing that smelled like home to a young animal. He looked back down the track they had come up. The animal fairies' woven house sat two hours behind them, warm floor and paw prints on the door, his son inside it and the wounded fawn drinking milk on its feet. That fawn had walked with the herd. It carried the herd's smell in its coat. "We go back," Nera said. "An hour lost. Not more." They rode. Dusty met them at the gate with his wings folded tight and his hand on the latch before Nera spoke. Nera told him what he needed. A cloth rubbed against the healing fawn's neck and flank. Something that would carry to the scattered ones on the wind and pull them in. Dusty did not argue the cost to his patient. He went inside and came back with a folded square of undyed linen, warm from the animal, and a second cloth soaked in the milk the fawn had been drinking. "Hang the linen upwind," he said. "Wet the second on your glove. They will come to the hand that smells like the jar." He held the cloths out. "Bring my fawn's kin back. He will want them when he stands." Nera took the cloths and tucked them into his coat against his skin to keep the scent live. He mounted. Atletha was already up. They rode back to the meadow at a hard trot, and he hung the linen from a low branch upwind of the prints and waited with the wet cloth on his glove. The first fawn came out of the brush within the quarter hour, ears forward, nose working. A second followed at its flank. Nera did not move his hand. He had a lure now. The scattered ones would come to him. The rest of the road north had shape again.