“I saw movement,” he whispered. “To the northeast, yonder. Whatever it was, it disappeared behind some dunes. I ran forward, but all I found were tracks.”
“What kind of tracks?” Vixa demanded.
“Hard to tell. This ground doesn’t hold them well. Maybe a four-legged animal of some kind. Big, too,” Vanthanoris replied.
“How big were the tracks?” Esquelamar asked.
The elf warrior held his hands apart about sixteen inches.
“Show us the trail,” Armantaro said, rising. In a flash, the agile Vanthanoris was loping up the hill. The others struggled through the sand after him.
On the lee side of the ridge, they saw a line of prints starting on the left, southeast, and moving in a curve, paralleling the contour of the ridge.
Harmanutis dropped on his stomach and sniffed the prints. “Saltwater,” he reported. “Whatever it is, it came out of the sea.”
“A sea turtle?” suggested one of the sailors in a hopeful tone.
“Nay,” Esquelamar said, dismissing the suggestion with a wave of his hand. “A turtle’s got flippers. This creature leaves a distinctive trail.”
“Well, it went that way,” Vanthanoris said and started off again. His long legs covered the ground rapidly. The rest of the party hurried along in his wake.
They headed right, following the gully’s curve. Vanthanoris, his hunting blood up, forged ahead. Vixa and Harmanutis jogged after him, panting with exertion. The fetid sea-stench grew stronger.
Suddenly, Harmanutis lost his footing and slid down the slope. Vixa, one hand on her sheathed sword, went after him. About the time she reached the bottom of the slope, a shout split the air. It was Vanthanoris from above-calling for help.
Vixa was still several steps away from Harmanutis. Struggling to his feet in the stinking bog, Harmanutis called to her, “Go, lady! I’m with you!”
The princess ran splashing along the bottom of the gully, scanning the landscape for sight of Vanthanoris. She caught a glimpse of movement at the top of the next ridge. Then she froze in place. Harmanutis, coming up behind her, likewise halted. A tall, upright figure was silhouetted against the bright sky. All she could make out was a dark figure. It was not shaped like the stocky, muscular Vanthanoris, but it seemed to be a person, definitely not a four-legged animal.
“You there!” she shouted. The dark figure turned away, disappeared over the hill.
“Go help Van!” Vixa ordered Harmanutis. Out came her sword. She charged up the slope.
By the time she reached the top of the hill, Vixa was puffing. Her labor went unrewarded. There was no sign of the dark figure, only more undulating ridges of sand. She stood for a moment, scanning left and right. Still nothing.
Vixa turned right, strode along the rim of this dune until she saw the rest of her group collected in the bottom of the gully. Esquelamar and the sailors had caught up at last. She called down to them, “Hello! How’s Van?”
Armantaro and Harmanutis moved apart, revealing the young warrior. Vanthanoris waved to the princess. Vixa skidded down the dune. When closer, she saw that Vanthanoris had a gash on his forehead.
“What happened, Van?” she asked.
“I was hard on the trail, lady. As I rounded the bend there, I caught a glimpse of something green moving. I challenged it, and it split in two!”
“Split in two?”
“Yes, Highness! What we thought was one four-legged animal turned out to be two two-legged people, walking in step together.”
Vixa looked back at the ridge top. “I saw one of them,” she said. “Did you get a close look?”
“No, my lady. I couldn’t see them well. But they were covered with this.” He held out a hand. In it was a swatch of green material. “They were lying in wait for me as I rounded the bend. When they attacked, I managed to tear this off one of them.”
Vixa took the green material from the warrior’s outstretched hand. It was damp. “Looks like seaweed.”
Esquelamar examined it. “The fisherfolk call it eelweed,” he told them. “Comes from the deepest parts of the ocean. Most people see it only when it gets caught in a fishing net.”
The stems of the weed were woven together, like cloth. There even appeared to be threadlike strands of green sewn through the seaweed, for all the world as though it were a square of cloth. This was no bit of camouflage picked up at random. Someone had taken time and trouble to fashion the fronds of seaweed into a leafy covering.
“Well, these two brigands were draped in it,” Vanthanoris stated. “They saw me, jumped apart, and one of them thrust a short spear at me. I ducked, but it grazed me. That’s when I gave the call. One ran over the hill, that way. The other one ran down the draw.”
Armantaro was nodding. “This changes everything,” he said. “If there are armed foes about, the ship may be in danger.”
The sailors were all for turning back right away. Esquelamar glared at them until they subsided into silence. “There’s no need to panic,” he said calmly. “Some other boat has fetched up on this unforeseen land, that’s all. Vanthanoris ran into another scouting party. He startled them, so they attacked and ran away. There were two of them-if they’d wanted to kill him, why didn’t they?”
“But the seaweed-” objected Harmanutis.
“There’s probably several hundredweight of eelweed lying around here. This sand heap rose up from the depths, did it not? It must have brought the eelweed with it,” was the captain’s reasonable response.
“I agree with the captain,” Vixa said. She tucked the swatch of eelweed into her belt. Esquelamar was probably right in his reading of events, but the woven eelweed was certainly one more peculiar detail in an increasingly odd situation. “We should finish what we came here for.”
A bandage was tied around Vanthanoris’s head. With Harmanutis in the lead, the small band continued their march toward the center of the island. The hills got higher, and the ravines between them got deeper. Here and there were more tracks in the sand, pairs of deep indentations, but they saw no more figures, weed-draped or otherwise. They plodded up hill and down dale, sweat-drenched, until Harmanutis topped the final rise and cried out, “I see smoke!”
The rest of the party slogged up the ridge to join the corporal. “Smoke means people,” Esquelamar said.
One of his sailors muttered, “What is there to burn on this sand pile?”
Standing alongside Harmanutis, they saw the white smoke soaring skyward from a distant point. The smoke did not rise in long plumes, but in distinct, rolling puffs.
“How odd,” Vixa said. “Is someone signaling?”
“That’s not smoke,” said Armantaro. “See how it disperses so quickly? That’s steam, by Astra! There must be a geyser behind that hill.” The old colonel allowed himself a smile. “No wonder this island is not on the charts. It must have been created by a recent upheaval of the subterranean regions.”
The elves hurried on. Vixa and the younger soldiers arrived first at the pinnacle. As they had hoped, the view was spectacular. Looking back the way they had come, they could see Evenstar, surrounded by muddy water. A considerable distance to the west, a strip of brilliant blue revealed open water. However, it was a long, long way from the stranded ship.
A fresh billow of steam erupted below them. As the wind whipped the steam away, the source of the eruptions was revealed. Two large openings marred the hillside below.
“This I must see,” announced the captain. He started down the hill.
“Keep clear, Captain,” Armantaro called. “The steam can scald you.” The master of Evenstar, acknowledging the warning with a wave of his hand, kept going, followed by his crew.
The warriors lingered atop the sandy hill, discussing how best to move the ship to that tantalizing stretch of blue ocean. A flurry of action interrupted their debate. Just as Esquelamar and the three sailors reached the closest steam vent, three large, weed-draped figures burst out of the cavelike hole, brandishing short-handled spears.