The Devil's Pay (Dogs of War) - By Dave Gross Page 0,16
with the flare to indicate more prints nearby. They were all identical, spaced out in wide, repeating patterns.
“That’s odd,” said Sam after a long look. “Get Crawley over here. I want his opinion.”
“Morris,” said Lister, jerking his thumb back toward the wagon train. “Double-quick!”
“Sir!” Morris set off at a run, squelching with every step.
Sam followed Harrow as he pointed out more and more of the prints. He indicated two parallel trails, one large path of over-trampled Cryx prints, the other the rectangular prints of the lone traveler.
Sam asked, “The Cryx were trailing whatever this is, you think?”
Harrow shook his head.
“You think it was shadowing them?”
He nodded.
Crawley arrived, breathless. Behind him, Morris braced his hands against his thighs, panting.
Sam took the flare from Harrow and showed Crawley the strange prints. The sergeant pulled the goggles down around his neck and squinted at the rectangular depression. His brow furrowed as he followed the pattern of its steps.
“What do you think?” said Sam. “Quadrupedal?”
“Definitely. And extremely regular. Too regular, if you ask me. Even with a new ’jack fresh out of the forge, you expect more variation in the strides depending on its weapon loadout, which way it’s turned, whether it’s carrying something, and all the rest. These steps, they’re perfect.”
Crawley knelt. He plunged his hand into the rectangular puddle to measure its depth. He stuck a thumb into the compressed dirt at its base, feeling the firmness of the ridges inside the print. His eyes half-closed as he performed a silent calculation, “Assuming four legs, I’d say about seven tons. Maybe eight.”
Lister whistled low. “Big as Gully.”
“How many were here?” asked Crawley.
“Just the one?” Sam glanced over at Harrow, who nodded confirmation. “Yep, just the one.”
“Any prints from a controller?” asked Crawley.
Harrow shook his head.
“Is this the thing we’re looking for, Sam?” asked Lister.
“The Old Man’s message said I’d know it when I saw it,” said Sam. “Now that I see it, I’m thinking yes.”
“My question is, are the Cryx looking for it too?”
“Could be,” said Sam. “But judging from the position of these tracks, I’d bet this thing saw the Cryx before they saw it. Maybe they didn’t even know it was here.”
“What about Brocker?”
Sam shrugged. “Could be he was telling the truth. Or maybe the Cryx just got in his way while he was searching for our mystery ’jack.”
“Do we follow these tracks or the Cryx?”
“For now it doesn’t matter. They might not intersect, but they go back in the same direction. Make sure the other scouts see these prints. Put one on either side of the trails, and then Harrow down the middle, between the paths.”
“Yes’m,” said Lister.
“I’m taking the big lugs back to the wagons. I want them fully loaded and ready for action.”
“You got it, Sam,” said Crawley.
“Let’s find this thing before anybody else does,” she said. Then, almost to herself, she added, “And let’s pray the Cryx don’t find us first.”
The third time the supply wagon became mired, Sergeant Crawley called a company-wide halt. After conferring with Lister and the captain, he directed the men to unload the water and food stores and divide the load equally between the empty ’jack wagons. A little more than an hour later, the march resumed with fewer stops for lagging wagons.
Scouts returned to report treacherous ground ahead. Sam directed the warjacks away from the most perilous terrain. Sometimes doing so required a detour, but Sam insisted on caution. Pushing a wagon through a rut was bad enough. No one wanted to pull a warjack out of a sinkhole.
By the time Sergeant Crawley blew the whistle to stop, the Devil Dogs were damp and weary to a man. Those chosen as pickets and sentries grumbled while the rest set to work making camp on the relatively dry patch of ground they had chosen.
Within an hour, the mechaniks, under the watchful eyes of Sergeant Crawley and the captain, were elbow-deep in Gully after Foyle had passed inspection and received a full load of coal and water. Crawley snatched a rivet gun from one of the men and re-secured the plate reinforcing Gully’s venom-burned chassis.
“Look at this,” said Robinson. A lean, ginger-bearded veteran, he lifted a concave object from beneath a litter of leaves. He brushed the detritus away to reveal the toothy upper skull of a bonejack. “This will keep my bedroll off the wet ground.”
“Don’t touch that,” warned Burns. “It’s bad luck.”
“Don’t be such a superstitious ninny.”
Burns showed him a fist. “If you don’t control that mouth of yours, your