Thwei'kha Bhu'ja's Arc

Chapter 2 of 7

Thwei'kha Bhu'ja stood in the yard with the blood trail steaming at his feet. The spear had come back to his hand slick to the grip, and the wound on the beast was deep enough to leave a scent any hunter could read. He could read it. So could the creature. It had tasted his blade and his musk in the same breath. Now it knew him by smell, and a wounded thing that knows you does not run forever. It circles back. He stepped inside the pine cottage and shut the door. The trapper woman sat on a stool with a short blade across her knees. The gray mechanical raccoon crouched by her boot, blue eyes blinking slow. Skar'khan came in last and set his stone club against the wall. Thwei'kha spoke first. "It has my scent. It will hunt me before it hunts anyone." Mara Slatewhisk did not argue. She stood and pulled a clay jar from a shelf above the hearth. "Fox gland," she said. "And this." She lifted a second jar packed with pale rendered fat. "Bear. I trap them for the fur. The stink covers everything." She set both jars on the table between them. "Strip the leather. Rub it in. Burn what you wore at the door." He took the jars. The bear fat was cold and heavy. He worked it into the seams of his harness, into the shaft-wrap of the spear, into the pads of his feet. The fox gland went last, thin and sharp, laid over the bear grease like a second skin. Skar'khan watched from the corner with his mouth tight. The goblin knew what masking scent meant. It meant walking back into the woods as prey wearing another animal's face. Mara knelt by the mechanical raccoon and tapped its shoulder plate twice. The eyes brightened. "It runs paths I don't walk," she said. "Water crossings. Deer runs. It can lay a false line for you between here and the ridge." She looked up. "But once you cross the gouged trees, it turns back. I won't send it into the den ground." Thwei'kha nodded. He gathered his stripped leathers, walked to the hearth, and fed them into the coals. The wool caught fast. Smoke climbed the chimney with his old scent inside it. When he stepped out of the cottage he smelled of fox musk and bear fat and nothing of himself. The raccoon slipped ahead into the ferns, weaving a track that bent away from the true path. He followed. Skar'khan came at his heel with the club across his back. The blood trail of the wounded creature ran north toward the split rock. Thwei'kha's own trail ran east, false and reeking. He had bought himself the first move. The beast would cast for him and find fox instead. By the time it understood the trick, he meant to be standing at the mouth of its den.