Brotherband 3: The Hunters by John Flanagan

the leaf mould that covered the ground, studying the latest sign of Rikard’s passing. She stood up, brushed the damp bark and leaf fragments from the knee of her tights, and looked up into the tree canopy. Thorn followed her gaze. The light that filtered down through the leaves and branches was much dimmer now.
    ‘Not much point going on if you can’t see his tracks,’ he agreed.
    She nodded. ‘We’ve got maybe another half hour. Then I’ll have to stop. Can’t risk missing his trail in the bad light. We’d have to backtrack tomorrow and that’d cost us more time than we’d save by going on.’
    ‘Fine,’ said Thorn. This was her area of expertise, after all. She’d done a masterful job so far, spotting the small signs that Rikard left behind. Thorn had found himself enjoying watching her at her task. He had a deep respect for people who possessed skills that he didn’t, like Hal’s unerring accuracy as a navigator and his ability to sense wind and tide changes.
    The small signs that she indicated and explained to him were obvious – once they had been pointed out. That was always the case, he knew. It was easy to notice something once somebody else had noticed it for you and drawn your attention to it. He knew that without Lydia, he would have stumbled blindly through the forest, while Rikard moved further and further away from him. That thought prompted a question.
    ‘Are we getting any closer to him, do you think?’
    Lydia paused and looked over her shoulder at him. ‘How would I know?’
    He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I thought you trackers could work out stuff like that. Like when you’re following an animal, you poke around its droppings to see if they’re still moist. That sort of thing.’
    She turned fully now to face him and frowned at him, hands on her hips.
    ‘I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention,’ she said, ‘but, up until now, we haven’t found any of Rikard’s so-called “droppings”. And if we do, I’m certainly not going to go poking around at them. You feel free to do so if you want to,’ she added.
    Thorn looked a little aggrieved. ‘That was just an example.’
    ‘It was a pretty bad one.’
    She turned away and began following the faint signs in the soft forest floor once more. After some twenty metres, her eyes intent on the ground ahead of her, she remarked casually, ‘Have you noticed he’s slowly veering back to the east?’
    Thorn hadn’t. On the deck of a ship at sea, with a clear sight of the sun’s position in the sky, he was able to orient himself instinctively. Here, in the gloom of the forest, with the sun an invisible and indistinct presence, it was a different matter – particularly as the light deteriorated.
    He glanced now at the nearest trees, looking for the moss that grew on their trunks. Here in the north, it grew thickest on the south side. He realised that she was right. Rikard had been heading due west for some time. Now he had changed direction. The path they were following headed south-east. And as Lydia continued to track him, it veered further to the left.
    ‘You were right,’ she said. ‘He’s heading for Pragha.’
    Thorn grunted. ‘I may have been right,’ he admitted. ‘But I never would have found him. This will take him in a wide loop to get there.’
    She glanced at him with interest. In her experience dominant males – and Thorn was certainly one of those – never admitted that they had made a mistake. Usually they would bluster and rationalise to prove they had really been right. Her regard for the shabby old warrior grew accordingly. He was obviously confident enough in his own abilities to admit to the occasional failing, and to give due regard to others. Knowing Thorn’s penchant for teasing her, however, she decided it would be wiser not to let him know that her respect and affection for him were growing.
    There was a small rivulet in their path and she stepped carefully through it. The water was barely