true, the Goiri’s bones were nothing but a threat to her.
This part of the swamp was nearly as dead as the parts covered by deeper water, except for the birds living in the treetops. From the sound of it, the trees were teeming with them, probably all of the variety that ate insects, which were becoming quite abundant.
When Isabel came across a different set of footprints, she stopped to examine them. A closer look told her that it was two men, walking in each other’s prints. Soldiers from Karth had found her friends’ trail and were following them. She wondered at the meaning of it. Were they lost or were they scouts? Did they have some means of communicating with the bulk of their forces? And how close were the Sin’Rath witches? Isabel was far more concerned about running into them than she was about the soldiers. Her shield spell made her all but invulnerable to normal weapons, but the witches were something else altogether.
She slowed her pace, taking more time to stop and listen for the enemy in the mist, but the fog had a dampening effect, muffling sound and limiting visibility. After some time, she decided the dampening effect worked both ways and started moving more quickly again, still stopping to examine the trail from time to time, but not as often.
Before long, she thought she heard a voice up ahead. She froze, listening intently, caution mixing with trepidation. She heard it again and started moving, swiftly but quietly closing with the soldiers.
“We’re lost,” one man said.
“All we have to do is follow these tracks and they’ll lead us right to the rest of the men,” another said.
Isabel could just make out their forms in the fog ahead. She stopped, crouching down behind a stump, and considered her options. They were soldiers of Karth, either controlled by the Sin’Rath or acting on orders from someone who was. Ultimately, they were innocent, undeserving of the swift death that Isabel could have easily delivered. But that inconvenient fact presented a dilemma. While they were innocent, they were still after her. What’s more, they were going to wind up at the boathouse just ahead of her and discover that they were following the wrong set of footprints. Lost and alone in the swamp, it was hard to say how they would react to her arrival.
She had to subdue them or lead them astray … but how? She decided to follow at a distance, even though they were traveling slower than she would have liked, while she waited for Alexander to check in on her. She didn’t have to wait long.
“How long have you been following them?” he asked quietly, appearing next to her.
“Half an hour,” she whispered. “I don’t want to kill them, but I need them out of my way.”
He smiled at her and winked before vanishing. She crouched in the mist, waiting. A few moments later she heard them shouting.
“Stop!”
“You’re our prisoner!”
Then she heard running, muffled by distance and fog. She waited until Alexander returned.
“They should be off chasing ghosts for a while,” he said. “You can get ahead of them for now.”
“Keep an eye on them for me?”
“Of course,” Alexander said and then he was gone and Isabel was again moving through the swamp, remaining vigilant but focusing on covering ground as quickly as possible. She knew they would probably double back when they lost Alexander in the mist. If they got back on the trail, they might reach the boathouse before she could build any kind of decent raft, and given the death leeches in the water, Isabel wasn’t willing to cut corners.
Then she stopped dead in her tracks, blinking in wonderment, remembering that one of the jars of powder in Hazel’s workshop was labeled concealment. She wasn’t sure what that meant, but it was certainly worth a try. She found the jar of dust and carefully sprinkled a pinch on the ground behind her. The trail left by her friends’ passage as well as her own vanished for twenty feet. Smiling fiercely, she raced forward another twenty feet and sprinkled more powder, erasing any evidence of her passage for forty feet. Satisfied with the effect of her vial of magical powder, she forged ahead. Even experienced trackers would be thrown by the sudden disappearance of tracks that were so clearly evident before. At a minimum, they’d have to circle to reacquire her trail and that would take time.