Thirty yards ahead, she stopped in the road. With the waning light, it was difficult at first to see what had gotten her attention. Only when they walked up and were nearly on top of it did he and Julianna realize she was crouched over a large pile of horse shit, buzzing with flies.
The girl sniffed the air as though she wanted to inhale every bit of the aroma. Julianna grimaced and made a disgusted noise.
“What’s so special about a pile of manure?” Halliwell asked.
Kara ignored him. She started off again at a trot that he was sure was meant to mimic the horse that had passed along the road recently. A giddy little noise escaped her.
“I’m not sure the girl is entirely sane,” Julianna said, voice low and deadly serious.
Halliwell picked up the pace further, a strange exhilaration filling him as he pushed past his exhaustion. “You think?”
Kara continued to run ahead and passed another pile of horse shit. A few minutes later, they came to a quaint little stone bridge that crossed a narrow but swiftly moving stream.
Halfway across the bridge, Kara dropped to her knees and peered at the stone construction as though fascinated by its design. There was still something childlike about the way she conducted these examinations, but he had begun to think there was more to it than that.
“I’m not sure she’s entirely insane, either,” he said.
Julianna had nothing to say to that. By the time the two of them crossed the bridge, Kara had moved on to the other side of the stream. Halliwell paused and grunted as he dropped into a crouch. He tried to see what had fascinated her so much about the stones that made up the bridge, but noticed nothing but a few muddy hoofprints. And perhaps that had been her interest after all.
“They’ve been here,” Kara said.
Julianna ran to join her. They were just off the road on the edge of the stream. Halliwell took his time, studying the location. There were hoofprints on the far side of the bridge, dug into the dirt as though the rider had drawn back on the reins, causing the horse to slow quickly.
“What is this?” Julianna asked. “Blood?”
Halliwell snapped his head around and stared at the woman and the girl. Kara knelt in the scrub grass on the side of the road and looked more closely. She breathed it in.
“Yes. Human blood.”
She can tell that just from the scent? Halliwell thought. He wished he were more surprised.
“There’s more over here,” he said, pointing out a spatter of dried brown on the ground by the road.
Kara stood up, then spun slowly in a circle as though she could see, with her own eyes, the scene that had played out here earlier that same day.
“There was a scuffle at the water’s edge. More fighting over here. Soldiers were camped on the roadside.”
“Why do you say soldiers?” Julianna asked.
“That many men all in one place. In this part of the kingdom, and without any wagons or horses, they could only be soldiers. Oliver and Kitsune came upon them here and fought them.”
“Is there…” Julianna glanced at Halliwell and the detective saw the fear in her eyes and turned away, striding back up to the road to study the hoofprints. “Is any of the blood Oliver’s?”
Kara did not respond at first, and her silence forced Halliwell to turn and look at them again.
“How could I know that?” the little girl said, wide-eyed and mystified.
“You know a lot of things that surprise me,” Julianna said, the hard edge of suspicion in her voice.
Halliwell figured it was driven more by her own fear for Oliver than anything else and decided it was time to intervene. He gestured toward the flattened, broken scrub grass and the remains of a small fire in the clearing on the side of a road.
“It’s obvious a group of men were camped here, at least briefly. The evidence of a struggle would be hard to miss as well. The blood tells us somebody was wounded. By the amount, and judging by Kara’s assurance that it’s human blood, I’m going to say at least two of them didn’t survive. But there are no bodies, which also supports the military theory. They’d be unlikely to leave their dead behind. The blood’s dry, but still tacky, like fresh paint. Whatever happened here did so today. And if Kara’s right about Oliver and his friend using the Orient Road, then they might have been involved.”
“Oh, they were,” Kara said.
Julianna crossed her arms. “How can you be certain?”
The little girl held up something that was invisible in the dying afternoon light.
“What is it?” Halliwell asked.
“Fox hair. Kitsune has been this way.”
Halliwell left the road again and walked toward Julianna. Her body was tensed like an animal about to bolt. The frustration and fear came off of her in waves. He felt it keenly and knew it well. It was only a fraction of the emotion he struggled to contain in himself.
“They’re still alive,” he said.
She stared at him. “Oh, so you’re Nostradamus, too?”
The detective scratched at the back of his head. “This Kitsune, she’s a Borderkind. Supernatural. Whatever. The point is, she’s along with Oliver to help him, protect him. No way is she going to stand by and let him be killed. If she’s still alive, then so is he. And since Kara didn’t mention any puddles of Borderkind blood-”
The girl squealed and clapped her hands. “Oh, well done! I’d say you’re right about that.”
“So where are they, then?” Julianna asked, walking in a circle, kicking at the scrub grass, peering into the woods and back across the stream and up to the road.
Kara skipped up to the road, spun, and bowed, one hand stretched out to guide the way west, further along the Orient Road. “This way, my friends.”
Halliwell and Julianna joined her and the three of them set off again.
“All right, spill,” Julianna said. “How do we know where we’re going?”
“You got me,” Halliwell replied. “Here’s what I figure. The soldiers weren’t on horses. Somebody came riding up on horseback, or maybe Oliver and his friend somehow got hold of a couple of horses-”
“There was only one rider coming over the bridge,” Kara corrected.
Halliwell smiled. There were a lot of things he knew, but how to figure how many people were on the back of a horse just from its tracks was not among them.
“All right. Point is, the rider came up during the fight. At some point, he pulled the reins. The horse stopped in the middle of it. It’s possible they took the horse away from him.”
Julianna shot him a panicked glance. “Don’t even say that. If they’re on horseback, we’ll never catch up with them.”
Halliwell wanted to tell her that at the speed he was capable of traveling, they were never going to catch up to Oliver anyway, not if Oliver kept moving. But he kept his mouth shut.
“We don’t need to be faster than they are,” Kara said. “Not if we know where they’re going.”
“And do we?”
The little girl gave him a smile that lit up the mischief in her eyes. “We do now. The horseman that came through was riding hard. One rider, alone, moving swiftly. I’d wager that’s a royal courier. If so, he’d have been headed for the summer residence at Otranto. The only reason for that would be if Hunyadi is there.”
Julianna uttered a soft laugh of disbelief. “Wait, you think if Oliver found out that the king was at this summer place, he’d go there? Knowing the guy’s trying to kill him?”
Kara sighed and shook her head, and there was something of ancientness about her eyes then. “You don’t listen. Even if your lover saves his sister, both of them will be hunted and executed unless he can secure a pardon from both kings. Having Hunyadi so nearby would likely be too tempting to ignore.”
“Likely,” Halliwell repeated. “What if you’re wrong?”
Julianna watched the girl closely.
“If I’m wrong,” Kara said, “then we have little chance of overtaking them, unless the two of you can grow wings.”