They descended the slope towards the lakes at Death’s suggestion. The one eye warg was leading, following intuition more than traces, for the elf, wounded or not, seemed to leave none. But he bet on her being thirsty and the lakes were the only source of water outside the tall walls of the keeps. The rock wall shading the lakes sure looked like an attractive hiding place. The smell of the fat crawlers living by the ponds, and on them, and on everything else that was there made him sick. Now, in the cool of the hours before morning it was anyway less insufferable than under mid-day sun. They had used the repulsive things for food more often than he wanted to remember, especially the weaklings and the mindless trolls. There was no ban on hunting for any other food but one had to find his own better food if he did not like what was given to them. And the game was rare in these parts.. Both fur and feather covered one and the armor-canned food, he grinned at his own joke.
They circled each of the lakes, each on a side, looking for steps in the mud at the edges, and they were not wrong to do so. At the last one in the row of small lakes indeed the mud held the traces of boots, recent and next to some wet herbs, crushed and thrown in the mud. The steps and the wet herbs were on the side of the lake next to the wall, the side Luntshadun was on so she howled short and low enough so that only Death from the other side would come to the calling. He showed from the shadow in front of her almost instantly and shortly evaluated the finding.
“Good. She can’t be far ahead now”
“The herbs would be dry already, she was here a little while ago. She’s just steps ahead of us! And she has nowhere to go! Let’s hurry or she’ll walk intro one of the guarded camps before we catch her”
The older warg wrinkled his face in a hard to read grimace.
“I would not bet on that just yet..”
