“Let’s find a couple of restless dyheli and our camping gear and see what’s to be found.” Wintersky pushed away from the table and paused again. “Is Kel likely to be useful on this trip?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at the sudden thought.
Darian shook his head. “Our birds will be good enough scouts to keep an eye out for trouble. Any tracking will be by small signs, on the ground. I doubt that anything will be visible from the air.”
“Right enough. I’ll meet you at the Vale entrance with my gear and food - you get your gear and the dyheli.” When Wintersky made up his mind to do something, he got to it at once, and went at it with all his focus on the task - another thing that made him such an outstanding tracker. He was already out the door by the time Darian got to his feet.
He went first to the dyheli meadow, where he paused and sent out a general thought to the herd, which was divided pretty equally between those who were grazing and those who were taking their ease. Does had young at their heels, sometimes twins; young dyheli had all the wide-eyed innocence of any young thing, but were not much more intelligent at this stage than a human baby. Their bodies were capable of a great deal, but not their minds. When danger threatened, a doe would literally take over the mind and body of her baby to get it out of harm’s way, controlling it so that it ran swiftly and surely at her side. And if the entire herd panicked, the king stag assumed control of all of them.
Darian did not leave the does out of his general message, although he knew that at this time of year, no female would leave the herd, not even a young or old one with no youngster of her own. Females were instinctively attracted to the babies, and willingly served as nannies and surrogate mothers, giving the blood-mothers time to graze in lush pastures on their own. There was no such thing as an orphaned dyheli; a youngster whose mother died was immediately adopted by one or more childless females, and any female with a baby of her own would allow the orphan to nurse. The youngsters stayed with their mothers for up to fifteen years, nursing for the first two, then continuing to learn as they grazed for the next ten to fourteen years.
Darian sent the equivalent of polite throat-clearing to get the herd’s attention, then Mindspoke. :Wintersky and I are going to do some cold-tracking for the next two days. We would like two friends to help us with this; is anyone interested?:
Young adult dyheli were always restless and ready for an adventure, and at least nine heads popped up at that. He waited; there was some silent conferencing among the would-be volunteers and with Tyrsell, who had the last word, and then two young stags separated from the herd and trotted eagerly toward him. Their large eyes were bright with excitement, and they made no pretense of being anything but enthusiastic.
:I am Jonti,: said one. :This is my twin, Larak. We have not been far outside the Vale before, and we hope that will not cause a difficulty.:
“Then you should enjoy this,” Darian said aloud. “We’ll be off in a place where I don’t think any of the herd has been before; you’ll be first to scout it.” The stags switched their stubby tails with excitement, and followed behind Darian as he led them toward his ekele, heads bobbing with every step. On the way, he encountered a hertasi and requested it to bring riding gear for him; it nodded and continued on its way. Darian had long since decided that the hertasi were constantly in mental contact with each other - what other explanation could there be? This hertasi probably would not be the one to bring the tack, but someone would show up with saddles before he’d finished packing.
His camping gear was ready; it was always ready, since Meeren took it away as soon as he returned from a trip, cleaned, repaired, or replaced whatever needed tending to, and repacked it for him. He got the packs out of the storage chest where they stayed until he needed them, then rummaged through his closet for his oldest scouting clothes. He didn’t think he’d need more than one change of clothing, but he packed three - because accidents happened, and wet clothing was an invitation to serious illness.
It didn’t take him long to gather his things, but when he walked out of his front door, there was tack waiting beside the young dyheli, and no sign of the hertasi who had brought it.
Dyheli tack consisted of a saddle with belly, chest, and rump girths, stirrups, and a very thick saddle pad. It didn’t take long to get the two stags harnessed up and his packs fastened to the saddle; he mounted up, and all three of them headed for the Vale entrance.
As promised, Wintersky was waiting, with his own packs and a waterproof pair of saddlebags containing their provisions. In no time at all, he too was ready and in the saddle, and they were on their way.
“So, where are we going?” Wintersky asked curiously.
“North of the village, almost directly north,” Darian replied. “It’s part Pelagiris Forest, part meadowlands, with the river running along one side, a couple of ponds and some streams. That’s where my parents had their traplines. My thought is that we’ll see if we can find anything left of the traps, first. If we can, we’ll know that, whatever happened, nobody worked the lines and collected the traps.”
This time both Wintersky and his dyheli turned their heads to look at him. “You think perhaps someone took them captive, then harvested their traps and everything in them?”
“That’s one among many possibilities,” Darian pointed out. “One of the more remote ones, I’ll admit, but if that was what happened, I think it’s important to know that.”
:Blood Bear might not be the only pack of hunters who know where the village is.: That was Jonti, who sounded curiously unmoved by the observation.
“That’s entirely true,” said Darian, and left it at that.
They rode past the village without going into it. Darian didn’t comment on that openly, but he felt that seeing the village and calling up all of its memories would unfocus his concentration on the task at hand. According to Darian’s best recollection, his parents worked an area that was several days’ distance from Errold’s Grove. But they had traveled on foot, in the winter. He and Wintersky were going by dyheli-back, at a lope, in the spring. They should reach the area where his parents had last been well before nightfall.
They stopped at a stream around noon for a brief rest and lunch, and in late afternoon, when they were close to the area where Darian expected to find things - if there was anything to be found - they stopped to set up for the night. It was time for Darian to try his luck.
Darian got down off Jonti, and stood quietly, closing his eyes, blocking out the world, bit by bit. Wintersky went straight to work, dismounting and taking care of the dyheli stags and setting up camp. It might seem as if he was the one doing all the work, but that was not the case and he knew it very well. Darian’s search would take as much energy as he was using; perhaps more. That is how the Hawkbrothers were; as long as one did equal work, in one’s own way, there were no complaints from others of the clan.