The next day found us bright and early, after we had spent another night in the grove Sigmir and I had camped in. We had made some plans the night before, mostly that we wouldn’t invest too much time in the search for the local bandits, while also learning more about the areas further to the west.

Western Aretia was, just like the rest of the continent, a bit of a mess, politically. There were a lot of city-states, similar to Neamov, with smaller towns and villages filling up the various safe places in between. While there were some dangerous, even very dangerous places, mostly in regions that were dominated by swamps or within the mountains, the overall region was relatively safe, especially compared to the northern forests.

The most dangerous predators in these lands were sapient, which was why the first stop, after breakfast, had been the location where we had seen the two scouts last. While we had no idea whether they were part of the group we would be paid to hunt down, it seemed to be a good place to start, even if the trail had had enough time to thoroughly cool. Yet, a cold trail was better than no trail at all, and there was the hope that maybe, just maybe, Adra, with her innate connection to the land, and Ylva, with her nose, would be able to pick something up where Sigmir had failed to find anything.

While Lenore was keeping an eye open, flying overhead, the rest of us was watching and waiting while Ylva tried to find a scent. After a couple of minutes with her nose to the ground, she finally gave up, without having anything to show for her trouble. Either the time had been too long, or the people who had been fleeing had done something to obscure their scent or a combination of those two. Or something else entirely.

But where Ylva’s nose failed, Adra and a strange combination of magic, innate dryad ability and classical tracking-skill were able to achieve results. I didn’t even try to ask how she spotted what she had found, while I might get an explanation, I had doubts I would understand it. What I had been able to sense was enough to remind me that she was a creature of the land, with an innate bond to nature and plant-life, in a way that I couldn’t even begin to understand.

Anyway, however she had done it, she was quite certain that she had found the track, even though almost four days had passed since the persons who had created it had left. Swept along by Adra’s enthusiasm, we began following the tracks she had found, going north, away from Neamov and the ancient road, towards the foothills.

It didn’t take us long to stumble upon the first obstacle, or rather, the scouts we had driven away had used that obstacle to obscure their tracks. There were a few streams of water coming from the mountains and the tracks we had been following led right into one of them, without coming out the other side. While I wasn’t a trained tracker, the others had been teaching me some of the basics, especially when it came to evading tracking and obscuring your tracks by mundane means. Using a flowing body of water had been one of the easiest ways they had suggested, to simply move into the shallow part, continue for some distance inside the water before leaving it. Bonus-points if you managed to find a nice, hard surface to leave the water, where leaving tracks was unlikely, making it even harder for potential trackers to detect the point you moved away from the water.

Obviously, the scouts had employed that basic, yet incredibly effective, tactic and let the water wash away any sign of their passing. Again, Adra used her magic, chanting softly and slowly, the sound of her voice shifting in tone and timbre, almost as if she was singing. Her performance took almost a minute, reminding me that runic magic was far superior to the slow chanting-method, and afterwards, I could feel her power radiate outwards for a moment, moving along the stream.

“Great.” she spat out a moment later, her voice indicating her annoyance. “There are two tracks leading away from the water, one some distance up-stream, the other a bit further down-stream.” she added, clearly unhappy about it.

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“They split up?” I asked, a little uncertain, splitting up seemed to be a bad idea, if you were trying to escape.

“Either that, or they created a false trail, before doubling back and continuing to the other location. Both are possible ways to evade trackers. We’ll have to check them out one by one.” she explained, before turning to follow along the flowing water.

The rest of us followed along, without much choice about it. I had a feeling that it had only been the first of multiple tricks employed by our quarry to evade pursuit.

Soon, my feeling was confirmed in an unexpected way. After moving downstream for a few minutes, Adra stopped and pointed to the other side of the brook, where the area was turning a little muddy, the water creating a swampy area. Even I, with my admittedly mediocre tracking-skills, was able to see the tracks leading away from the water. It was so obvious that I got the feeling the tracks had been created on purpose, to lead us on a false trail.

“Can you go over to see if there is smell?” I asked Ylva, after taking a glimpse at Adra, who was frowning unhappily.

Ylva gave me a growl of acknowledgement, before bounding through the water, spraying some of it around herself when she got to the other side. She put her nose to the ground and quickly gave us a negative assessment, there was no smell on these tracks, either.

“It’s too obvious.” Adra grumbled, while I mentally asked Lenore to join us, her ability to see magic potentially giving us a hint of what was going on.

“Wouldn’t you want a false trail to be obvious?” I asked, before realising the point. A false trail only worked if the trail was convincing, we had been almost unable to follow their tracks previously, now they turned incredibly obvious? That only made sense if there was deception involved, making the false trail lose it’s meaning as a distraction.

“Unless that is what they want us to think.” Olivia threw in, interrupting Adra who had given me a response in line with my own thinking, that the trail was too obvious to mislead us.

“It matters not. If we follow it and lose some time, we don’t lose much. We are already days behind them, what difference do a couple hours make?” Sigmir said, her voice quite calm and unexcited. It seemed that she wasn’t too fussed about the bandits, either we’d find them, or we wouldn’t.

While the others discussed our path ahead, I looked through Lenore’s eyes, trying to see if there were remnants of magical activity. As obvious as the tracks were, they might simply be the result of a spell to create a false trail. A spellcaster might design a spell that left such obvious tracks, to confuse and confound a tracker after them, if they, themselves, were not too competent in stealth. Alas, there were no magical clues to be found.

“We might want to take a look at the other spot you divined first, I would prefer to avoid tracking through that boggy mess over there.” Olivia suggested, after taking a closer look at the swamp on the other side.

“Fine by me. Though, I doubt it’s going to really help.” Adra nodded, turning back and moving the way we had come from. Again, we followed along, moving slightly up-hill, towards the mountains. We crossed the spot where we had originally reached the river, continuing on for a couple of minutes, until we got to a rather rocky area, just the kind of terrain I had been taught to use to evade pursuit.

“Over there.” Adra told us, pointing to a large rock by the river. While I couldn’t detect anything about that particular rock, Adra sounded excited, happily crossing the river with swift strides, taking a very close look.

“They used the hard ground here, let’s go after them.” she enthused, quickly gesturing for us to follow. Shaking my head, just a little, I decided that I wanted to stay dry. Luckily, I had used the last few days to train myself in aerial movement using the Eisblumen-vines. Using them as stilts was a little awkward, but I managed to get across without getting wet. Until Ylva, in the manner of canines everywhere, stood right beside me when drying her fur, by vigorous shaking.

Now, with everyone at least slightly wet, we continued on, following the invisible tracks that only Adra, thanks to her magic, could detect.