The Trek: Darwin's World, Book II (The Darwin's World Series 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

plenty of time. But if she turns back before she gets to the river, we can just let her go. She won’t have found anything, and we can keep going until we get to the spot and dump Matt’s bow and arrows in the river; his spear too, if we can find it. We can brush out the tracks where we tossed the body in just to make sure there’s nothing to find, then catch up to the tribe. If anyone asks where we went, tell them we just went hunting because the tribe was short of meat. Everyone got that?”
    He got three grunts in return, all the trotting men were able to spare.
    They continued along the track. Pavel would have to call a break soon. If not, some of his poorly-fed men wouldn’t be able to keep going.
    By midday, the small column had slowed to a walk. Pavel’s followers now showed signs of balking even at the slow pace.
    At least, the river was now close, only a few hundred yards ahead. Something might have come down to the water to drink; their water gourds needed refilling anyway.
    #
    Lilia’s tracks had left the trail half a mile back and none of the exhausted men realized it.
    She had recalled that Matt had said he and Pavel would go south; that’s where Pavel and his followers would have come from when they rejoined the tribe. She reasoned that she could save time by taking a more-direct short cut and picking up their trail nearer the river.
    As it happened, she soon found their trail. The tracks showed that three men had traveled northwest together. She realized immediately that this didn’t jibe with what Pavel had said, that Vlad had remained behind to look for Matt’s body. So Pavel had lied.
    The first thing she found while following the footprints was Matt’s steel-bladed spear. There was no mistaking it; that spear had stood beside the cabin door and she’d watched Matt use it a number of times. If Matt had indeed fallen into the river, how had his spear come to be left here? Unless Pavel’s men had ambushed him here? But there was no bloodstain on the ground and no sign of a struggle. Curious; the tracks didn’t make sense. Why carry a spear this far, only to drop it beside the trail?
    Lilia picked up the spear as she thought. She slung it over her shoulder and followed the trail to the river.
    The next unusual thing she found was a disturbed section of ground, perhaps thirty yards back from the river. Searching carefully, she found where a small amount of blood had sunk into the dirt. Circling, examining the ground for more evidence, she found several arrows where they’d fallen out of Matt’s quiver. A short time later she found his bow, still strung, lying with the quiver containing the rest of his arrows.
    She unstrung the bow…it took all her strength to bend the limbs…and hung it across her back with the spear. Picking up the spilled arrows, she replaced them in the quiver and added it to her burden.
    Lilia soon found a second trail that joined the one she’d been following. This one had been made by two men; could it have been made when Vlad and Gregor joined Pavel?
    Other tracks led to the river. Two men had made them, and the depth of the tracks showed they carried a heavy load. They had stopped briefly near the river; the tracks were muddled from their moving about. From there, the tracks lay alongside twin drag marks, but all of the tracks stopped well back from the water’s edge.
    So; the two had likely been carrying Matt’s body, perhaps after he’d been shot from ambush. The small amount of spilled blood likely meant he’d died instantly.
    She glanced back at the bloodstain and felt a tear spill down her cheek. Angrily she wiped it away. There would be time enough to weep for Matt later. As for the accomplices, arrows would do just fine for them, but she wanted to see Pavel’s face when her spear went into his guts.
    No tracks led downstream. She wondered briefly why the drag-marks had stopped where they did, then realized the river had been much higher when they passed three