WOT Adv 196

--- The Wheel Turns ---

It was late afternoon when Fiznak finally drew rein. Something had caught his eye. He sat astride a bay stallion whose sides were wet with perspiration and its sides heaved in and out as it exhaled air threw its nostrils and shook its head, jingling the bride.

"Hush!" Finzak said soothingly, patting his horses head and walked his mount closer to study what looked to be a tree trunk into which was embedded the point of a wooden crossbow bolt. The wood on the bolt wasn't weathered at all, but appeared new.

Fiznak had left Tanchico shortly after noon when he managed to locate the gate guard who had been on duty during the early pre-dawn hours and after questioning the man, and spending some coin on a few drinks, had managed to find out from the man's slurred sentences that a woman matching Keb's description had left the gate heading for the ferry that led across the Andahar and to the road south east towards Elmora. Fiznak purchased two horses at inflated prices and had ridden all afternoon to catch her. But he hadn't seen her.

The more he saw of the road, the more he increased his speed. There had been groups of refugees ranging through the wilderness and on the roads, dirty hands and grubby, hopless faces yearning for any meager assistance he could give them. Fiznak knew that such pitiful folk could and would turn to crime if desperate enough. They might not attack a large armed borderlander wearing a breastplate, but they might choose a young woman. Could she be in danger?

So Fiznak had proceeded at neck break speeds galloping down the road, running one horse until it neary stumbled and then switching to his spare.

A breeze blew along the road as Fiznak considered what the crossbow bolt meant. Fall leaves fluttered to the ground carpeting the relatively well kept road of hard packed earth, drifting onto Fiznak's green cloak. He wasn't much of a tracker, but even he could see hoof prints that had churned up large chunks of earth and wild grass as a horse had gone up a steep incline at a near gallop.

Something unusual had happened here.