Outcast (25 page)

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Torak's battle against ancient evil continues in
Oath Breaker.
Read on to see what happens next.

SIX
The sinew had cut across Wolf's foreleg. It was scarcely bleeding and he wasn't in pain, but Torak insisted on rubbing in a salve of yarrow leaves in marrowfat which he made Renn produce from her medicine pouch.

"He'll only lick it off," she told him, and Wolf immediately did.
Torak didn't care. It made him feel a bit better, even if it didn't do much for Wolf.

He'd nearly missed that sinew. What if he had, and Renn or Fin-Kedinn had suffered for his mistake? The mere thought made his belly turn over. It only takes one mistake, just one, and you've got to live with the

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consequences for the rest of your life.
Squatting on the bank, he mashed a handful of wet soapwort to a green froth, and washed his hands.
He glanced up to find Fin-Kedinn watching him. They were alone. Wolf was drinking in the shallows, and Renn was already in the canoe. Fin-Kedinn emptied the waterskin over Torak's hands. "Don't worry about me," he said.
"But I do," said Torak. "Saeunn meant what she said."
The Raven Leader shrugged. "Omens. You can't live your life by what
might
happen." He shouldered the waterskin. "Let's go."

They followed Wolf up the Blackwater until long into the night, then slept under the canoes, and headed off before dawn. As the afternoon wore on, the Forest closed in. Wakeful spruce thronged the banks, dripping with beard-moss, and even the trees not yet in leaf were vigilant. Last autumn's oak leaves rattled in the wind, and ash buds glinted like tiny black spears.

At last, the hills bordering the Deep Forest rose into view. Torak had reached them two summers before, but then he'd been further north. Here they were steeper, stonier: sheer walls of gray rock, hacked and slashed as if by a giant axe. The hammering cries of black grouse echoed like falling stones.

As the light began to fail, Wolf leaped into the river
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and swam across. Once on the north bank, he gave himself a good shake and set off. Then he doubled back, snuffing the mud.

They edged into the shallows, and Torak got out to examine the mess of tracks. No wonder Wolf was puzzled: they were almost unreadable, as a boar had recently taken a wallow.

"This isn't only Thiazzi," said Torak. "See that heel print? It's not as heavy, and the weight's more to the inside of the foot."
"So someone was with him?" said Renn.
He chewed his thumbnail. "No. Thiazzi's tracks are darker, and a beetle crawled over the other's but not over his. Whoever it was, they came before." Wolf had smelled something. Leaving the canoes, they went after him, into a gully cut by a stream feeding into the Blackwater.
Twenty paces up, Torak stopped.
The footprint shouted at him from the mud. Bold, mocking.
Here I am.
Thiazzi stamping his mark for all to see.
"The Oak Mage," said Fin-Kedinn.

It told Torak a lot more than that. A single footprint is a landscape which can tell a whole story if you know how to read it. Torak did. And before leaving the Seal Island, he'd studied Thiazzi's tracks till he knew every detail.

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He found more. He made the gully reveal its secrets. "He left his dugout in the shallows," he said at last, "then climbed up here. He was carrying something heavy on his left shoulder, maybe his axe. Then he retraced his steps, got into his dugout, paddled away." He clenched his fists. "He's well fed and rested, moving fast. He's enjoying this."

"But why come here?" said Renn, looking about her.
"I don't like it," said Fin-Kedinn. "Remember that sinew. Let's go back to the boats."
"No," said Torak. "I want to know what he was doing."
Fin-Kedinn sighed. "Don't get too far ahead."
Warily, they advanced: Torak and Wolf first, then Renn, with Fin-Kedinn at the rear.
The trees thinned, and Torak clambered between massive, tumbled boulders, while Wolf bounded lightly ahead. The trail veered to the right. The trees ended.

Torak found himself on a huge, desolate hill of bare rock. A hundred paces above, the crown was streaked black, as if by fire. Before him, the slope was a chaos of fallen trees thrown there by a flood, with boulders jutting through like broken teeth. Below, the Blackwater coiled around the base of the hill and disappeared between two towering rocks that leaned crazily toward each other. Beyond these great stone jaws rose the looming oaks and jagged spruce of the Deep Forest.

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Wolf pricked his ears. Uff! he barked softly.
Torak followed his gaze. Under the willows overhanging the river, he saw the flash of a paddle.
Wolf bounded down the slope. Torak ran after him, nearly losing his footing as a tree trunk shifted under his boot.
"Torak!" Renn whispered behind him. "Slow down!" warned Fin-Kedinn. Torak ignored them. He couldn't let his quarry escape now.
Suddenly there he was, not fifty paces away: driving the dugout with long, powerful strokes toward the Deep Forest.

Wobbling and lurching over the fallen trees, Torak pulled an arrow from his quiver and nocked it to his bow. He no longer heard the others. All he heard was the splash of Thiazzi's paddle, all he saw was that long russet hair lifting in the breeze. He forgot clan law, he forgot everything except the need for revenge. A log rolled beneath him. Something snagged his ankle. He kicked himself free. Behind him, a loud snap. He glanced around. In one frozen heartbeat he took in the trip line lashed to the trigger log, its end sharpened to a point and smeared with mud to hide the fresh-cut wood.

The hill of logs began to move.
You fool. Another trap.
Then the logs were crashing toward him and he was
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yelling a warning to the others and leaping for the nearest boulder, flinging himself into the tiny hollow beneath it; and logs were bouncing over him, smashing into the river, sending up plumes of water. Huddled under his boulder, Torak heard laughter echo from hill to hill. He pictured Thiazzi's dugout sweeping between the great stone jaws, disappearing into the Deep Forest.

Then the whole hillside was giving way, and Fin-Kedinn was shouting, "Renn! Renn!"