71 Chapter Seventy-One – A Survivor (1/2)
”One man on horseback, a dozen wolves in pursuit,” Sama informed Briggs, as their course suddenly shifted.
He acknowledged the path through the grass with a glance, looking for signs of blood… and finding a few. ”Injured horse. He won't be able to outrun them.”
”Aye, but the forest isn't far. He reaches the trees, he might still be alive if nothing has come to help the wolves… or maybe even if they have,” Sama said, her pace picking up and now exceeding the swiftest of horses.
”Depending how high he can climb?”
”Or if other watchers drew them off. There are a ton of rangers moving in this area already, I refuse to think this group wasn't being shadowed, and you know they won't leave a trail.”
”Rangers in favored terrain, no tracks, right.” Briggs frowned, Reach ready to snap up and start sniping.
”If he was treed by wolves, they'd howl and bring people in… unless they were drawn off. They could smoke him out and kill him fairly easily, if they didn't want to climb up or snipe him.”
”Didn't see any sign of missile weapons. Not likely,” grunted Briggs, and then stood up with a grunt. ”I see a dead horse at the tree line.”
”All that standing around must be good for something!” she shot back instantly, and he grinned, feeling the wind cutting past his Vajra and doing nothing, as if he was frictionless. No need to squint or brace against it.
”Don't hear anything, and don't see any crows,” he murmured, scanning the area. The treeline grew closer, and they slowed as they came upon the horse.
It looked to have been run to death, by its posture, and then had been torn apart and feasted on by creatures with large and powerful jaws. They scattered a bunch of scavenger birds as they swept up, and Sama reached down to scoop up the saddlebags, still tied to the saddle that had been torn out of the way. She tossed them to Briggs, who set them down behind him without looking through them.
”Footsteps, running, heading further in.” Sama squinted up at the towering trees ahead. ”That one, I bet. It's the only one with a branch down low enough.”
”In armor?” Briggs asked, not unreasonably. It was still ten feet off the ground.
Sama pointed, and Briggs saw scattered pieces of armor scattered around, as if they had been expelled from the body of their wearer at the same moment.
”Oh, nice, a reversed Instant Donning. Clever.” Tremble glowed, and the different pieces started to move, flipping through the air and landing in a neat stack atop the saddle bags. ”Wolves followed him.” He could see the trail clear as mud on the leaves and dirt.
”Yeah, but at a run, so they were a little behind him, at least.” She glided toward the tree only fifty yards away, looking around carefully. ”Okay, coming up on the tree now, they are slowing, circling the tree, his tracks go right up it…” She reached up to a scuff mark on the bark, and Briggs reached up to touch a smear on the green moss of that waist-thick branch.
”Eh.” Sama's head was already turning when Briggs jerked his thumb, and she looked around him to see the carcass of a Warp Wolf sprawled in the undergrowth, two arrows in its side. ”Ah ha. They took off that way.” She pointed to the other side of the big tree, and Briggs leaned around the massive trunk, seeing the trail of the wolves moving off into the undergrowth.
”If their calls brought in help, no way his rescuers could have come back soon. They might even have been run down.”
”They probably would have come back here to check if that were true, but the pursuit might have involved most of the force, with wolves giving tongue.” Sama craned her head back, looking up into the tree. ”Too much brush. Trem?”
”I sense nothing, but it is tall…” The Sword leapt free of Sama's hand and zipped up into the tree, adroitly moving around the many branches, and turning this way and that as she scanned the many branching limbs.
”Oh!” The bloody-glowing blade stopped. ”He's right here, Sama! He looks unconscious, however… and he's still not showing on my Detect…”
Briggs met Sama's eyes. Either not a human, or Warded?
”Be right up.” Sama went right up the side of the tree with Dragon Walk, smoothly gaining height with vertical brachiation parkour to shame a monkey acrobat. In a breath or two, she was eighty feet above the ground, braced between two limbs in a crook of a tree, where their target was wedged.
Briggs watched her unwrap her Amulet, there was a glow of light, and he knew she'd used Healing Soul to stabilize whoever it was.
A moment later, she was crashing down from the tree with a burden on her shoulder, zipping through the branches with uncaring precision. A foot from the ground, her ankle-Tats lit up with misty light, billowing in every direction as she abruptly slowed down, and one second later touched down as gently as a drifting leaf, stopping an inch above the leaves.