“What can we do for you, Lord Rahl?” an older man with a flat cloth hat asked. “Do you wish some horses saddled and brought out?”
“Actually,” he said, still looking around for any sign of her, “I sent a Mord-Sith to do just that quite a while ago. Her name is Vika. Why didn’t you get the horses for her?”
The men all shared puzzled looks.
The older man pulled off his cap and smoothed back his thin crop of gray hair. “A Mord-Sith?” He frowned as he gestured at Berdine. “This would be the first of those ladies we’ve seen all night, Lord Rahl.” He turned one way, then the other, looking around at his men. “Anyone see the Mord-Sith?”
The men all shook their heads, mumbling that they hadn’t.
Richard gestured. “I thought I saw her go that way, by that building. Would some of you take a look, please, and make sure she didn’t fall and hurt herself or something.”
“Stranger things have happened,” the older man confirmed.
Men ran off to do Richard’s bidding. He saw some of then trot off to go between the buildings, checking where he said he had last seen her. It wasn’t long before they all straggled by, looking disappointed and shaking their heads. They all reported that they had found nothing.
Richard put his hands on his hips as he looked around. It didn’t make any sense. Vika couldn’t have vanished into thin air. A frightening thought that had been in the back of his mind was beginning to seem like the most likely explanation. Could it be that one of the Glee had snatched her and taken her back to the goddess? That seemed far-fetched, especially since he didn’t even know if that was possible. Finally, he had an idea.
“I need something to see with,” he said to the gathered men. “Bring me a torch or lantern, please.”
“We try not to have torches around the horses and all the hay,” the gray-haired man said as he replaced his hat on his head. “We have plenty of lanterns, though.”
When he gestured the order, one of the men rushed to retrieve a lantern. He pulled one off a hook on the corner of the closest building and rushed back to hand it to Richard.
“Thanks. You can all go back to what you were doing. I’ll take it from here.”
Lantern in hand, Richard marched off to have a look for himself. Berdine followed close on his heels.
Going around the building where he had last seen Vika, Richard started searching the soft ground looking for any sign. In the shadows between the buildings, and with the clouds, it was quite dark, but the lantern gave him enough light to see what he needed to see. There were a lot of footprints. Most of those prints were older, while a few were from the men who had just checked for Richard, looking for Vika.
Before long, the confusion of prints sorted themselves out in his mind and Richard found what he was looking for: prints from Vika’s boots. He recognized the size and the shape. None of the prints from the men’s boots looked similar. Had there been more light, he would have been able to also recognize Vika’s unique gait from the angle and depth of the impressions made by her boots, along with her height and weight.
He followed her footprints between the buildings to the end where she had turned behind the building to Richard’s left. He also saw larger prints from a man, but it was hard to tell if Vika had been following him or he had been following her.
Then Richard saw something that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
5
Richard squatted down, holding the lantern out close to the ground to better highlight the ridges and depressions. There, in the soft dirt, he could see where Vika had come to a stop, and a short distance beyond that, where she had gone to her knees.
His blood ran cold when he saw that the man’s prints tracked around her while she had been there on her knees to turn and stand before her. In his mind, as he stared at the prints, Richard could picture a big man standing over Vika.
It made no sense, but the tracks were clear in the story they told.
“Someone has taken her,” he whispered to himself.
Berdine leaned in with alarm. “Taken her? That’s crazy. Who in the world could take a Mord-Sith?”
Richard gestured behind, then along the building, and finally to the prints on the ground before him. “Her footprints came from between the buildings, where I saw her go, then around behind the back of this building to right here.”
Berdine smoothed a hand back over her hair as she straightened after peering at the ground. “If you say so, Lord Rahl. I can read books, but I can’t read footprints.”
“Well, I can. Look,” he said urging Berdine to lean in again as he pointed. “See there, those impressions? That’s where Vika walked up to here and right there is where she knelt down.”
“Knelt down?” Her nose wrinkled skeptically. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. See this?” He hovered his hand over the indentations made by Vika’s knees. “See this depression? That’s not a footprint. It’s a knee print. It’s deeper where her knees bend and gets shallower as it goes back toward her ankles. See those little round impressions? Those are from the toes of her boots as she was on her knees. She knelt down right here.”
Berdine squinted in the lantern light. “I guess I can see what you’re talking about. It does make sense now that you explain the depressions in the ground.”
He touched the edge of the indentations. “See this? You can see where the wrinkles of her leather outfit as she knelt made these rows of little marks.”
Berdine leaned in, looking more closely this time. “All right, I see what you’re talking about now. But why would Vika kneel down in the dirt back here, in such a dark, out-of-the-way place?”
With his fingertips, Richard touched a couple of the other footprints. “These prints here are from a man who is big, but not as big as me. They come in here beside Vika’s prints—not in front of or behind, but beside her prints—then … ” He leaned over to point out the important part. “… then, see here? He walked around Vika right here, when she went to her knees. Right there. See that? See the prints turned around right there, the toes pointing toward her, right in front of her knee prints?
“That shows that he stood in front of Vika when she was on her knees.”
Berdine blinked as the meaning of it all sank in.
“Look at these prints here. After he stood there in front of her, she got back up. See that sideways indentation? That’s the side of the sole of her boot pushing the dirt sideways from her putting weight on her right foot as she got back to her feet in front of the man. That’s her prints standing, then, right in front of where she had been kneeling, right in front of the man facing her.”
Berdine was staring, her eyes wide. Her face had gone ashen.
Richard flicked a hand. “Then, the man’s prints twist around and they both go off in that direction, down that way, with the man leading, Vika right behind him.”
Berdine swallowed. Her blue eyes welled up with tears.
“He took her,” she said in a meek voice choked with those tears. “Lord Rahl, he took her.” She gasped back a sob. “It can’t be, but that’s the only explanation for why Vika would leave you without her protection, and why she would go to her knees like this.”
Richard finally stood. He whistled for the others; then he looked down at Berdine. “Berdine, what are you talking about? Do you know something about this?”
She choked back another sob as the others rushed around the building and came to an abrupt halt, looking expectantly at the two of them. Richard signaled them to be quiet and wait.
“It can’t be,” Berdine said to no one in particular as she stared off in the direction he had taken her. “But it has to be.”