Zade's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Zade turned north with the cub against his chest and tried to pick up the killer's trail again. He found it inside an hour, a single deep print at the base of a split pine. The shape was wrong for any beast he knew: three long toes, a drag mark behind the heel. He crouched and set his palm near it. The snow was still falling. The edges of the print were already softening. He followed it fast. The trail ran uphill along a frozen creek, then across a slope of loose scree buried under white. He counted six more prints in the next mile. Each one was shallower than the last. The storm was eating them. By the time he reached the ridge, the wind had turned. Snow blew sideways across his face. He knelt at the last print he could see and brushed the surface clear. Nothing underneath but more snow. He walked a slow circle, twenty paces out, then forty. He found no track on the far side of the ridge. He found no track back at the creek. The killer had climbed into the storm and the storm had swallowed the path. The cub shifted under the purple wool and made a small sound against his ribs. Its body was cooling. He pressed his hand flat over the shape of it and felt the fast, thin heartbeat slow a notch. He had a choice and he knew the shape of it before he made it. Push on through the night, lose the cub to the cold, lose the trail anyway. Or stop. He stopped. He cast Nightveil around them both and moved down the lee side of the ridge, out of the wind. Half a mile in, tucked against a rock shoulder, he found a cabin. Dark timber, steep roof heavy with snow, icicles along the eaves. A single lantern hung dead at the door. No smoke from the black stone chimney. No prints in the drift across the step. He drew a spear of shadow and opened the door with it first. The room inside was empty and cold. A stove. A cot. A stack of split wood. Someone had left in a hurry, or had not come back. He laid the cub on the cot and got a fire going. He unwrapped the small body and rubbed warmth back into the fur until the shivering eased. Then he sat on the floor beside the cot with his back against the wood and let the heat reach him. The trail was gone. He had traded another day, and this time he had traded the trail itself. The killer was somewhere ahead in the storm, and Zade no longer knew where. He watched the cub sleep. Outside, the snow kept falling on the last print he would ever find of that hunt. He would have to pick up the trail another way.