Through the Wildwood by M. R. Mathias Page B

the birds he saw circling earlier, he decided they might have been carrion marking the source of the stench. Curiously, he wondered why the smell of death wasn’t alarming him.
    None of the wolf-riding Kobalts were to be seen now. Apparently this is where the ugly little creatures wanted them to be. The group that had camped in this clearing before them had obviously gone in the way the smell was coming from, but they hadn’t been in a hurry. The spacing of the tracks showed that they had ridden and walked away at a casual gait. There were five, maybe six horses and three sets of prints left by standard boot-clad feet.
    Had they been herded this way too? Vanx doubted it, but the possibility lingered in his mind. Kobalts couldn’t know that he was half Zythian and had senses as keen, or even keener, than their own. They couldn’t know that he knew how many dozens of them were out there surrounding them, nor that he could smell the death that lingered not so far away.
    “It’s full of pouches of herbs and powders,” Matty said. “Some rocks and some scrolls too.”
    “What good would it do you, woman, if it was full of gold?” Trevin asked.
    Matty turned with a snarl on her bruised face. “Maybe you could just live off your woman’s coin if she—if we survive all this.” Her angry tone lost some of its steam as she continued. “If I walk out of the Wildwood alive, all I got, is all I got.” She sighed, seeing that Trevin was no longer paying attention to her. Instead, he was getting Gallarael out of the saddle.
    “There’s not much work for a girl with one hand,” she finished in a whisper.
    Vanx bit his tongue for Darbon’s sake. The boy was obviously blind to Matty’s current occupation.
    “Help me lay out her bedroll, Matty,” Trevin said through his struggle to get Gallarael down by himself. “Please,” he added when she hesitated. She let out another huff and went to help him.
    By then Darbon had a kindling fire burning inside the ring of rocks and was adding pieces of deadfall to the blaze as he found them. Once the fire was raging and some extra wood was stacked, the boy began building something. Vanx was impressed when he realized it was a sort of rack they could use to dry Gallarael’s clothes.

    Darbon almost spoke up for Matty, but the words she had chosen to defend herself hurt him so badly that he couldn’t speak. She’d said that if they got out of this mess, all she had was what she had. Where did that leave him? He knew that he could find work with a smith in any village or town; he was already well trained. Old Uncle Elbar had taught him all sorts of tricks of the trade. He could work lumber too, like his father had before he died. Remembering the loss of his uncle at the hands of the trolls made him sad. Matty’s comments only served to add to the lonely feelings that were suddenly assailing him. But still, when she saw the drying rack he had set up and smiled at him, he couldn’t help but smile back.
    “After it gets dark we can sneak off to wash our clothes by the stream,” she whispered to him seductively.
    “What about those things out there and their wolves?” Darbon asked, the true nature of her suggestion lost to him.
    “You can bring your bow, if you’re afraid,” she said with a smirk that left him confused, but no longer dwelling on the loss of his loved ones.

    While the others settled in and the sunlight faded from the sky, Vanx took one of the bows and disappeared into the forest. He had no problem shafting a fat rabbit and pinning a lazy pheasant to her nest. The latter was the better of the two kills because the bird was sitting on a trio of eggs, and Vanx loved eggs more than most any other food in the wild. He had intended to go on and scout what the source of the rotten scent was, but the promise of freshly scrambled eggs brought him back to the fire.
    They ate like starving dogs. Even unconscious Gallarael reflexively gulped down the chunky broth Matty