Was the hoard…still here?
Geva’s stomach was roiling again, her bile rising, her heart hammering so hard she felt faint. And without thinking, she leapt to her feet, fast enough that the room spun around her — but there was suddenly only one thing, one drive, one goal remaining.
She needed to find Rathgarr.
“Sigarr,” she said, as steadily as she could, as she lurched over to the side of the ring. “Have you seen — or scented — Rathgarr today? Or last night?”
Sigarr instantly paused his coaching of Hauk and Hagen to come over, his heavy brow furrowing. “No, sister,” he replied. “Have you not? Is aught amiss?”
Damn it,damnit, and Geva shook her head, and attempted a casual wave of her hand. “We’ve just had a slight — misunderstanding,” she said, “and I’d like to check in with him, but —”
“I can help,” piped up a familiar voice, and when Geva jerked to look, it was Timo, with a cautious smile on his mouth. “I am sure I can follow Rathgarr’s scent through the mountain, as long as it is quite fresh.”
Oh. Geva couldn’t deny the flare of hope in her chest, her eyes angling helplessly toward Sigarr. Who, gods bless him, was nodding, and waving them toward the door. “You go, then,” he said firmly. “Abjorn and I shall handle the rest of this today.”
Geva fervently thanked him, and then said a quick round of goodbyes to the orclings, with a particular thank-you to Vragi for joining them. And then she rushed after Timo toward the door, only to discover that there were two more teenage orcs lurking behind her. Trygve, looking slightly guilty, and Sune, with chilly, blatant defiance in his eyes.
“Ach, yes, Miss Gee, they must come also,” Timo said, with a quick sign toward them that Geva couldn’t follow. “I shall need their help, you ken.”
Geva couldn’t be bothered to protest, and swiftly led the three of them over to her and Rathgarr’s room. Knowing, now, after weeks of classes, that scent-tracking was most effective when the tracking orc had a clear starting point, and an approximate time.
“So Rathgarr left from here last evening, a while after sundown,” she said thickly. “I didn’t see which way he went, after that.”
Timo was carefully sniffing around the door, with Trygve close behind him, while Sune stood a little off to the side, his slim arms folded, waiting. Until Timo’s eyes glanced up, his head cocking sideways, down the corridor toward the Skai wing. “Rathgarr went that way,” he said, with certainty. “Down into the mountain. And he was… unhappy, ach?”
Geva swallowed hard, but she knew that strong emotions sometimes helped with tracking too, and she twitched a nod. Earning a satisfied nod back from Timo, and an airy wave down the corridor. “Come, then,” he said. “This way. Mayhap bring your lamp, ach?”
Geva quickly fetched the lamp, and soon they were all following Timo through the mountain, heading steadily downwards. Passing through the Skai wing, and then the Bautul, and the Grisk. Going deeper and deeper through the mountain, without stopping, without even any kind of hesitation from Timo. His face held straight ahead, his breaths inhaling steady and slow.
And as they kept walking, Geva felt her dread rising, tightening with every single step. Why would Rathgarr have come all the way down here? What would he want down here? Except for, maybe, maybe,that stinking little room in the Ka-esh wing…
And yes, yes, they were in the Ka-esh wing now, and still going deeper. Not to the library, or the laboratory, or any of the frequently used Ka-esh rooms, but beyond, and below. Deeper than Geva had ever gone, to where there were no lamps, and no other orcs. Only dank, narrow, twisty corridors, lined with empty, abandoned rooms. The walls often rough and cracked, the floors tilted and uneven, sometimes with wet patches — and Geva blanched at what looked like a dark bloodstain, pooled out across the full width of the corridor.
“Are we close?” she ventured, as she gingerly stepped over the bloodstain, but Timo shushed her, and then ducked into a nearby empty room. One that had a few old, dusty furnishings, mottled with damp and age, but Timo ignored them and instead ran his hands against the cracked, uneven walls, breathing in slow and deep.
“Not here,” he muttered to himself, and then moved to the next room, and the next. Walking around that room’s walls three or four times, before doubling back to the first one, and repeating it all over again. While Geva clutched her lamp tighter and tighter, her breaths shallow, her dread now a sickening weight churning in her belly.
Until finally, Timo jerked to a stop in the middle of the dank, unlit corridor. His nose twitching and wrinkling, his eyes casting uneasily about in the shadowy light of Geva’s lamp.
“Rathgarr’s scent is… muddled, here,” he said, with another unhappy twitch of his nose. “He has oft been here, walking here, over and over again, for many days and weeks. So much that I cannot tell where he has now gone, or how.”
Oh. Geva’s stomach roiled again, and she shot a helpless, desperate glance around the dim, eerie corridor, all its shadowy doors looking rather like gaping hungry mouths in the guttering lamplight.Thiswas where Rathgarr had been secretly spending his days?Thiswas what he had been doing? Walking down here, over and over again, forweeks?!
“There must be something else we can do,” Geva’s voice said, hollow and thin in the damp, close corridor. “Someone else who could help. Varinn, maybe?”
Timo grimaced and shook his head, his nose still twitching. “Varinn has gone north with Alma and Ella for the day,” he replied. “I should next say Baldr, but his scent is not now in the mountain, either. But… mayhap we could try Thrain?”
Geva frowned at that, vaguely remembering how Varinn had gently mocked Thrain’s scenting capabilities — but beside her, Trygve was firmly nodding. And after a swift sign from Timo, Trygve rushed away up the corridor, while Timo gave Geva a shrug, and an apologetic smile.
“Thrain is indeed hopeless, when he has had a few drinks,” he said. “But if you can catch him before this, he is one of our best, ach?”
Oh. Geva certainly wasn’t about to argue, though she couldn’t seem to stop moving, pacing a little up and down the dank corridor. While the unease and the dread kept rising, heaving, why had Rathgarr done this, why had he never said…
She absently spun around, and found she’d nearly careened into Sune, who was also apparently pacing, looking far more agitated than she would have expected. And amidst her own rattling edginess, she managed to sign him an apology, and then, after another look at his eyes, one of the simple questions they’d learned.Is anything amiss?
Sune visibly flinched, and now Timo was stepping over too, his head tilting, his nostrils flaring. “Ach, what is it, brother?” he said. “Only the close walls? Or… something you scent?”
In return, Sune’s eyes purposefully flicked away, but Timo stepped over beside him, and bumped him with his elbow. Until finally Sune signed something, very quickly, something that made Timo’s head tilt further, his breath again inhaling deep.
