In the end the search party ended up bigger than I expected, but since we didn’t know what we’d be facing it couldn’t hurt to put numbers in our favor. As long as no one got loud or stepped on a twig.

Which was why Andhi and Ulo weren’t going. We didn’t need an argument or fight in the middle of the woods while we were trying to rescue Juniper. Andhi still had the decency to look worried about her but Ulo just seemed annoyed that I was taking charge again. Maybe they would have joined if I wasn’t the one putting the search party together but I wasn’t about to coddle them and back out of it.

Wren and Dera were also staying in the Rookery to help Tufani and calm her down once she learned we had taken off into the woods without her permission or other support. She’d be the most likely to listen to them and hopefully that meant the punishment wouldn’t be too severe when we returned, especially if we did return with Juniper.

The rest of the cohort was coming with me. It had taken awhile to get in contact with everyone but I had found Prevna and Wren first and they had been insistent on checking in with everyone once they understood this was what needed to be done.

Like I thought, Breck was all in for the excitement and Prevna was set on finding Juniper so she’d know she wasn’t abandoned. They’d be taking the lead on tracking this time around. Nii and Ento were in charge of taking care of protecting the group’s flanks while Idra and Loclen would be in the middle. Idra got the middle so her shield could cover everyone while Loclen wasn’t thrilled about heading into unknown danger. She insisted on being in the middle in case everything went wrong and I let her since that meant we would still have her shrouding ability if we needed it. Which meant I ended up in the rear and had to make sure nothing snuck up on us while also keeping half an eye up front so I didn’t run into anything stupid.

I would have preferred to be on one of the flanks or the middle but even I could admit that Nii and Ento were the more experienced scouts and fighters. And it didn’t make sense to put Idra in the back or have all three of us clumped together with no one watching the rear. So I gave Loclen a few glares and did my job as we followed the footprints in the snow.

Really, we probably didn’t need two trackers when the footprints were so clear—it didn’t look like the kidnapper had done anything to disguise them—but Breck was also a good fighter to have up front and Prevna wanted to be useful. With her skills the main two things I could have her do was track or—

“I’m going to go scout ahead,” Prevna said.

Or that.

She had fallen back to walk next to me and I glowered at her. Someone should be scouting so we wouldn’t accidentally stumble onto our quarry unprepared, but I didn’t like sending out…anyone outside of Idra’s protection. I wouldn’t have eyes on them, wouldn’t be able to give directions, and they could get captured just as easily as Juniper had.

Prevna raised her eyebrows at me and waited. We both knew that there really wasn’t any good excuse to not send out a scout now that we had been following the tracks for hours. I should have made someone the scout right away in case the kidnapper had unexpectedly stopped a short distance away. And in our group that someone should be Prevna given her years of experience doing raids and ambushes with the Picker band she grew up in.

I pointed. “Take Loclen. No one should be alone and her ability could be helpful.”

Prevna considered my point. Loclen’s blessing could be helpful but her ability to sneak could also be hit or miss. Sometimes it could like when she dropped on me out of nowhere during the game of Hunter’s Quarry, but other times I swore she found every noisy thing to stumble over in a mile. She was doing fine right now other than the soft crunch of snow under her feet, but all of us were having some trouble getting that noise to go entirely away.

“There’s always the shadows too,” Prevna half-agreed with a knowing smile, but she stepped forward and caught Loclen’s attention before dragging her away through the trees. This way one of them could run and warn us if the other got caught.

There wasn’t a lot of cover to hide behind in the wide spaced woodland but we made it work when we faced the festerlings and we’d make it work again now. Everyone also had a spear, sling, and knife along with their traveling pack. We made sure of that before we left the Rookery. Others had also brought their specialty weapons but I doubted they’d be much help in a real fight. No one but Breck had a lot of experience with those. Some people, like Loclen and Idra, also hadn’t really trained to fight with their knives, but they would still be more protected with their eating knives than barehanded.

We walked as quick as we could while keeping quiet and following the footprints, and I strained to hear any warning that things had somehow gone wrong with Prevna and Loclen, but the woodland was quiet except for its usual sounds. We walked, Breck tracked, and the hours kept passing until it was late afternoon.

Prevna had been doubling back with occasional messages that everything was quiet and clear but as soon as she slipped into view on her latest report I could tell something had changed.

She gestured for us to gather together before she spoke, “There’s a camp up ahead, but it’s empty. Little more than the remains of a fire.”

The kidnapper wasn’t a whisper woman then. Which, really, I probably would have been more surprised if it had been, but it was good to start ruling out possibilities.

Breck asked, “How old do you think it is?”

Prevna shrugged. “Not that old but the fire’s small and there’s not a lot activity around the camp. Like they didn’t stay long. Come see.”

Cautiously, we followed Prevna back to where Loclen was watching the campsite. It was placed on the leeward side of a low hill, like the kidnapper wanted some protection from the elements but hadn’t known to look for the hollows that had been carved out by rivers and streams through the woodland or even the clusters of bushes that you could slip inside to keep off the worst of the snow.

The remains of the fire were small and half covered with snow, so the kidnapper was smart enough not to leave smoldering ash behind, though, from what I could tell, it wasn’t the kind of fire that would last through the night and keep you warm while you slept. Instead it seemed like the kind that the cooks threw together during the seasonal run when they didn’t have hours to cook. The kidnapper seemed to be in a hurry.

The rest of the barely there campsite had little to tell. There were a couple of impressions in the snow where the kidnapper or Juniper might have sat or laid down. Worryingly, there weren’t any marks of a struggle. Like Juniper had given up or was still sleeping. I quietly hoped it was latter. Juniper might have her priorities mixed up but I doubted she’d so willing to abandon her tribe now when she wouldn’t even let go of the idea when she was forced to become a seedling.

Footprints led back off into the woods. Still so undisguised that I couldn’t help but wonder if they were part of a trap or if the kidnapper really was an idiot. Maybe they thought that no one would be able to catch up even if they did follow, but then was the point of the kidnapper’s apparent hurry?

The depth and slant to the footsteps suggested that the kidnapper was running, too.

We searched the area to make sure that there weren’t any hidden tracks but the obvious steps in the snow were the only human activity as far as we could tell. No one wanted to say it but we all knew the truth: we were going too slow. Our quarry seemed to be able to run at a steady pace for long distances despite lugging around Juniper and they had a head start. We were walking, trying to be stealthy. There wasn’t any way we’d be able to catch up if we kept up our current pace.

Either we could trust the tracks and give up any notion of stealth as we ran after the kidnapper, pushing ourselves to try and out pace them, or we could keep going as we had been and likely find Juniper once the kidnapper had gotten her to wherever they were going. Once it might be too late for whatever they had planned.

Maybe if a miracle struck we could use the shadow paths and skip over the distance and end up right where we needed to be, but we still didn’t have the stamina to make more than a dozen paths, if that, in a row and no one had the range or accuracy to show up at the kidnapper’s feet. Maybe I could get close if I could figure out how to “focus my intentions and trust the blessing” like Esie wanted but I hadn’t full grasped the concept yet. Her advice to picture the shadows but not where I wanted to go seemed contradictory at best.

We opted to run. If we did come up on the kidnapper we could use our numbers if we needed to fight or slip into the shadows and plan an ambush once they gain a little distance again. This way we’d at least use the rest of the daylight as best as we could.

Prevna and Loclen fell in with the rest of the group while we ran. Better to face whatever came together if we were giving up stealth. No one could say that Tufani’s endless running practice was pointless now.

By nightfall we had to confront the fact that Juniper and her kidnapper were still not in sight and the storming tracks continued on in the same direction they had been going since we started. We could press on and risk finding them or something else dangerous in the dark while we were tired and less focused. Or we could risk them gaining an even bigger lead and camp for the night. Without fire. Or tents.

Because while we had remembered to grab everything else we had used during trip to find the Rookery we hadn’t paid attention to where our tents had been bundled off to once we got moved into the hut and no one wanted to risk trying to get a tribe member to join us. More likely they would have stopped us and told Tufani.

So it came down to warmth. Could we find a hollow and stay warm enough to sleep for a handful of hours bundled up on our bedrolls or did we need to keep moving to stay warm?

We had refilled our water skins at the last stream but there hadn’t been another one for a while. The kidnapper didn’t seem to care for keeping near a water source. We searched for hollows in the side of rises and other hills but there went any convenient holes for us to crawl into. There were a couple of large bush clusters but after over a quarter an hour of arguments and trying to squeeze everyone in we had to admit we couldn’t all fit and that someone was going to get their eye poked out with a twig if we kept trying.

So we had to keep moving in the dark like we had when the festerlings ambushed us. No one who had been in my group was thrilled about that but at least it wasn’t likely that we’d lose the trail and there might be a place we could settle down for the night if we kept going.

We slowed back down to a walk while Ento gave Breck a break from staring at the ground and I did my best to pay attention to any little sign that we were about to be ambushed. I could hear Tufani criticizing us for going out during the cold season without fire and I ignored her whispers that said this was all that could be expected since I had tried to be clever. Instead I focused on Rawley’s words of advice on how to always be prepared, her thought exercises on how I could survive if I was caught in the wilderness alone.

My feet were aching and ready to stop but we pressed on as the stars helped guide us overhead. Loclen occasionally muttered curses under her breath about how she never have agreed to go with us and Nii would step close to her, whispering something. Prevna tried to keep spirits up but no one wanted to talk much in case the sound carried.

We found a hollow that would out the worst of the cold an hour or two before dawn and we all collapsed into it. Breck set herself to first watch, Idra grudgingly agreed to the second, and Prevna set herself between me and everyone else. I gave her a quick smile, pressed myself against the wall, and fell asleep.

The next day followed a similar pattern and on third we had face to the question of whether we should go back for support so others who weren’t tired and freezing and bigger supplies of food could take over or if we had gone too far to give up.