Chapter 130: Tracking

He would keep the Imprint well away from the Eleventh.

That seemed sensible. No demonstrations, no casual mention of what had happened in the cave, and certainly no asking the Manager for advice. Among the very few blood users Rook knew of, she was by far the strongest. Unfortunately, she also took an interest in the others that could become difficult to escape.

Her gentleness had never been an act. Neither had the things she did to her enemies.

Rook remembered enough to know that someone using her own Imprint against her, or against the people under her protection, received a particularly unpleasant share of her attention. He had no intention of becoming one of those people. Simply possessing the ability would cause enough trouble.

He might have to change Bastions after this shit was over.

The thought made him sigh.

He liked the Eleventh.

There were relatively few dangerous Abominations near its roads. It rarely involved itself in the competitions that kept other Bastions busy, and its leadership seemed content to maintain what it had. Nobody was constantly trying to claim another settlement, take control of a road or prove that their Reapers were better than those living beneath a different Beacon.

New souls could arrive there, find somewhere to stay and spend a little time deciding what they wanted without immediately becoming somebody’s problem to exploit.

People crossed dangerous stretches of the Underworld just to live there.

No wonder the place was crowded.

Rook looked down at his palm again. He had finally acquired something that might make the rest of the Underworld easier to survive, and it was threatening to make his preferred corner of it intolerable.

He pushed himself upright before he could waste more time thinking about it.

The coffin remained open beside him. He checked the weapons, chose a one-handed scythe with fewer nicks along its edge and set it within reach. The two remaining thunder charges went back into their pouch. He tightened the fastening, closed the lid and lifted the coffin onto his back.

The chains settled across his chest.

He braced for pain that never came.

For a moment, he stood still beneath the weight, feeling the straps press against skin that had been full of holes only a short while earlier. Then he pulled them tight and looked toward the entrance.

The cigar case lay beside his boot.

Part of him wanted to kick it across the cave. The rest of him wanted a cigar. The cravings won against pride so he picked up the case.

Gascoigne had already wasted enough of his time. Rook was not going to make matters worse by refusing something he wanted merely because the bastard had given it to him.

He put one between his teeth, pocketed the tin and crouched beside the lantern. Its frame had bent around the little latch. He worked it open with his thumb, turned the cigar toward the flame and held it there until the end caught.

A faint blue glow spread through the tobacco.

Rook drew in a long mouthful.

He remembered that cigar smoke was not meant to be inhaled. This time, he took it deep into his lungs anyway. It burned on the way down, and he stood with it held inside him for a moment before letting it out in a thick cloud.

“Better.”

He closed the lantern, took it in his left hand and picked up the scythe with his right. The cigar stayed at the corner of his mouth as he stepped outside.

The ledge was empty.

Below it, loose stones marked the place where Gascoigne had kicked the creature away. Dark smears crossed the rock near the entrance. Several long scratches ended at the edge, and more continued down the slope.

Rook gave those marks a brief look before lowering the lantern toward the path.

Two sets of boot prints led away from the cave.

Gascoigne’s were broad and deeply set. Mara’s were smaller, with less weight on one side. She had still been favoring the leg injured on the bridge.

Rook followed them.

At first, he moved slowly. The path was narrow, and too many things had crossed it since they left. Claws had scraped over the boots’ impressions. Several stones had been dragged loose, leaving pale patches where their undersides had turned toward the light.

He stopped where a long groove cut across both sets of tracks.

Something heavy had come down from above.

A little farther on, Mara’s heel had pressed into the dirt beside the groove. Her print lay over its edge. They had passed after it.

Rook continued uphill.

Three hundred years without an Imprint had left him plenty of opportunities to learn other ways of staying alive. He had learned how creatures hunted, where they waited and which noises belonged to something travelling through an area rather than searching it.

He had also learned to follow people who would rather not be found.

Gascoigne had made very little effort to conceal his passage.

He probably thought he had no reason to. After all, who would think that a reaper shot through the chest would awaken an imprint that could heal them. Not to mention, who would ever think A reaper didn’t have a Death imprint.

Rook found the first place they had stopped near a split in the rocks. Several boot marks overlapped on the lower side, while a deep scrape ran across the higher ground. Blood covered part of the wall in a broad splash.

He raised the lantern.

The stain reached higher than Mara’s head. Beneath it, the stone had been chipped by a heavy edge.

‘Gascoigne had stood here and swung toward the slope.’ He thought. ‘And Mara had waited behind him.’

Rook found her prints close together beside the rock, one foot turned outward to spare her injured leg. They continued farther up, still beside Gascoigne’s.

He took another draw from the cigar and moved on.

The trail became easier after that.

There were places where Abominations had trampled away almost every clear impression, but the fighting had left other signs. Blood lay in the cracks. Loose stones had been kicked against the walls. A low patch of brittle grass had been flattened beneath something large, its broken stems pointing across the path.

Rook followed the damage until the boot prints appeared again.

He did not need every step. He needed enough to know where they had gone between one clear mark and the next.

At a wider stretch of ground, he found the scar left by Mara’s thunder charge. It was obvious from the unfortunate rock that was blackened. Small pieces of broken casing lay among the stones, and dust had been blown clear of several shallow cracks.

Rook stopped long enough to find the tracks leading away from it.

Both sets.

He let out a breath through his nose. “She had survived her clever little idea. That was something.”

Beyond the blast, Gascoigne had been busy. The ground was stained in several places, and one section of the path looked as though bodies had been dragged across it and beaten against the rocks. Little remained of them now.

Whatever else Rook thought of the man, he knew how to clear a road.

That would make catching him more pleasant. It would also make what happened afterward considerably less simple.

Rook kept moving. Higher up, the dirt gave way to bare stone. The tracks vanished.

He followed the easiest line for a few paces, then stopped where the ground divided around a large outcrop. Both sides looked passable. Neither offered an obvious print.

He lowered the lantern and studied the edges.

A boot had scraped dirt onto the rock to his right. Farther along, a small tuft of grass had been pressed flat beneath a stone that had recently shifted. He went that way, passed around the outcrop and found a shallow burn mark below the path.

Something red lay inside it.

Rook rested the scythe against a stone and crouched. He picked up the object between two fingers.

It had been cylindrical before the heat split and softened one end. The red coating had peeled away in places, exposing dark metal beneath. He brought it closer and smelled old powder through the tobacco smoke.

Firecrackers.

“Haven’t seen these in a while…” He muttered.

Reapers used to carry them into places where shouting would draw attention too quickly and a thunder charge would draw far too much. A few thrown down a side path could keep nearby Abominations occupied long enough for someone to slip away.

Rook turned the spent canister over.

“I need to find this guy’s supplier…”

He set the burnt cannister down and collected his scythe.

The creatures’ tracks crowded around the burned patch, then continued into the cut below it. Rook stayed above them. Another small scorch mark showed farther along, followed by a scrape on the upper edge of the path.

Gascoigne had kept his decoys below the route he intended to use.

Once Rook recognized the arrangement, the empty stretches became less troublesome. He checked the ground above each place where the creatures had gathered, looking for the lighter signs of two people passing while the noise held attention elsewhere.

A little higher, he found Mara’s footprint in a pocket of dust.

Rook climbed until the path reached a fork, then stopped.

The higher route continued toward the western ridge Gascoigne had described in the cave. The other bent around a shoulder of rock and began dropping toward the far side of the mountain.

The prints took the lower route.

He stood there for a moment, smoke drifting past his face.

“So much for the directions, the bastard lied to us…”

Perhaps Gascoigne had changed his mind after leaving the cave. Perhaps he had decided that an injured soul would be better taken somewhere he knew, or that giving Rook any chance of following would be an unnecessary risk.

The first directions that Gascoigne had told them to go to might have been false from the beginning.

Rook could hardly object to that part on principle. He had misled enough strangers about his own destination. A shared resting place and a cigar did not oblige a man to explain where he lived.

Shooting someone did make the lie considerably more irritating.

He looked along the lower road.

Whatever Gascoigne had intended, Mara’s uneven steps continued beside his. That mattered more than anything the man had said in the cave.

Rook followed them downhill.

The ground grew quieter beyond the ridge. The distant cries were muffled by the mountain, and the breeze no longer reached him as strongly.

The trail was still fresh. Dust had not settled into the deeper marks, and several broken stems remained bent against the soil. With Mara slowing Gascoigne and the worst of the creatures already dealt with, Rook could begin making up some of the distance.

He lengthened his stride, planning to catch up faster and get some well deserved revenge on the man with the Bulnderbuss.

A scrape came from the rocks ahead.

Rook stopped with one boot raised, then lowered it carefully.

Something moved out of a narrow gap beside the road.

At first, the lantern caught only a pair of branching antlers. They rubbed against the stone as the creature turned its head, knocking loose a few grains of grit. A long arm followed, then a bent shoulder and the rest of a roughly human body.

It straightened in front of him.

Second Rank, third at worst.

Its mouth had the thick, loose shape of a fish’s, opening and closing as it drew in the air. Rows of long, needle-like teeth showed behind its lips. Its fingers reached well below its knees, each ending in a narrow claw.

The creature lowered its head.

Rook’s eyes moved over its shoulders, elbows and legs. He noted the cramped space behind it, the loose footing beneath one foot and the reach of those claws. Familiar observations, made before he had finished drawing his next breath.

Then his attention settled on its chest. The core would be somewhere inside.

For once, finding it might allow him to do more than plan which parts to cut away first.

He set the lantern beside a rock, where it would light the road without sitting beneath his feet, and raised the scythe.

The Abomination spread its hands.

Rook blew a long stream of smoke past the corner of his mouth.

“Let’s see how this Culling thing works, then.”