Thwei'kha Bhu'ja's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

The false trail ran east through wet ferns, and Thwei'kha Bhu'ja knew it would fail by dusk. Fox musk washed off in dew. Bear fat thinned in sun. The wounded creature would cut the loop, taste the trick, and come back on its own path. He needed to be at the split rock before then, waiting, with the beast pinned inside its own door. He crouched at the edge of the gouged trees and studied the ground. The den mouth sat past a low run of scarred pines, under a stone shaped like a broken tooth. The smell there was wrong, sharp and metal. Skar'khan came up beside him, club low, breath quiet. The goblin's skull belt clicked once against his hip and then went still. Thwei'kha pointed at the split rock, then at the pines above it. He drew a line in the dirt with one claw. A drop. A snare. A closed door. "I go in," Thwei'kha said. "You hold the mouth. When it comes back to den, it must find the way shut." Skar'khan nodded. He unwrapped a coil of braided sinew from his belt and tied one end high on a leaning pine. The mechanical raccoon crept from the ferns with its blue eyes bright. Thwei'kha tapped its plated shoulder twice, the way the trapper woman had shown him. "Run the false line back on itself," he said. "Bring the smell here. Then run." The raccoon's ears twitched. It turned and slipped downslope, quick and low, laying fox scent in a curve that would pull the creature straight to the tooth-shaped stone. Thwei'kha entered the den. The passage narrowed and stank of old kills. Bones lay in stacked rings, cleaned the way the first skull had been cleaned. He set his spear against the wall and worked fast. He rolled a flat stone across a soft spot in the floor and dug beneath it. He drove three sharpened stakes upward from the pit and covered them with hide scraps and dust. Then he backed out, sweeping his prints. At the mouth he braced a deadfall log on the sinew Skar'khan had strung, angled to drop across the entry once the beast crossed inside. Any weight on the trigger line, and the log would seal the den with the creature pinned behind it, standing on the stakes. They moved uphill and waited in the pines. Wind shifted. The raccoon came back first, ducking into the ferns behind them. Then the sound Thwei'kha wanted, a long dragging breath, wet, low, moving fast up the false curve. The black shape came through the trees on four limbs and two, tail lashing, jaw open. It went straight for the tooth-shaped stone. It crossed the mouth. The log fell. The stakes caught. The den sealed with the creature screaming inside.