The Nomad - By Simon Hawke Page 0,70

there would be nothing to construct it from. And there was no one there to ferry them. Not a soul lived around the silt basins, or anywhere else within miles of Bodach.

The only other possibility was for them to make their way to the small village of North Ledopolus, on the north bank of the estuary, and perhaps find a raft there that they could take across, but then they would have to drag the raft with them all the way to the silt basins, and making the detour to North Ledopolus would take them just as long as it would take to reach Bodach by land.

No, Valsavis thought, they would have to go around the silt basins, and on foot, the journey would be brutal and extremely time-consuming. What could they possibly be thinking? Unless, perhaps, there was something he simply did not know.

He replenished his supplies and drew more water, then mounted his kank and started out the gate. The road from the east gate of the village led back to the canyon pass through the Mekillots. They would have to leave the road sometime before they reached that pass. And they had not gone out the west gate. He had described them in detail to the gatekeeper at the east gate, and the man had remembered seeing them leave just after he began his shift the previous night. He insisted that they had gone out on foot.

It was still early in the morning. The gatekeeper was just getting ready to go off shift when Valsavis questioned him, which meant that they had left late last night. At most, they could have no more than six or seven hour’s head start. And they would be traveling without having had any sleep. Valsavis shook his head, bewildered. They must have lost their minds. It seemed unbelievable that they could be so foolish. What did they hope to accomplish by this? Did they really think that they could lose him this way?

He followed the road leading back to the pass, riding slowly, watching to either side to see where they had gone off. Logic dictated that they would have gone off to the left and headed straight south, but they might have tried going off to the right and doubling back, just to throw him off the trail. After he had ridden a short distance, Valsavis found the spot where they had left the road. And it was to the right. He grinned. Just as he had anticipated. They had doubled back. Did they really hope to fool him that way?

However, his grin soon faded when he saw that their trail led not back the way they came, on a course doubling back parallel to the road, but north, toward the slopes of the lower foothills. They were going in the exact opposite direction, toward the mountains! Why?

After a while, he came to a pagafa grove, and there the trail simply ended. He dismounted and looked around, puzzled. He carefully checked the entire area. There were antloid tracks everywhere. Could they have fallen prey to antloids? Again, that did not seem to make sense. They were not inexperienced city dwellers. Far from it. They would not have simply stumbled upon a group of antloids. And antloids did not generally go out of their way to attack humans. Or elflings, for that matter. Workers did not attack at all, and soldier antloids attacked only if they felt their warren was being threatened, or if they had a queen with them. It was said that pyreens had an affinity with nature’s creatures, but then the trail he had followed showed only two sets of tracks—Sorak’s and Ryana’s. There was no sign of the Silent One. Valsavis looked around. The branches of the nearby trees were stripped, and some of the dagger plants had leaves removed, as well. The ground all around the area, and especially in the center of the pagafa grove, showed a great deal of activity. What had the antloids been doing? And why had Sorak and Ryana come here?

In addition to the branches that had been neatly stripped off by the antloids, there was also evidence of branches that had been torn off and broken by a violent storm, but it was a storm that appeared to have been extremely localized. Such things were known to happen in the desert, Valsavis realized, but it was curious that it should have happened here, with all these other curious signs. He