Oska Niemar knelt to examine the dung beside the trail. It was small and felted with hairs, but there were also tiny seeds of stinkberry. A female with a litter, then; nothing else than nursing female marets and some birds would have anything to do with stinkberries.
He straightened, and scanned the treetops. The nests built by marets to raise their young could be hard to spot. Usually they chose a high fork in some roivan, a leaf-tree, but in summer, the leaves obscured them.
He'd been seeing lots of signs. He'd left this part of his bounds untrapped the last two years, letting populations recover. The last two winters had been relatively mild, the snow less deep than usual. The deaths of furbearers from starvation and freezing should have been few; such years always built up populations.
He resumed his watchful walk then, his calf-length moccasins leaving little sign. His eyes noted saplings bark-stripped by herva. Fawns of the year, by the height and tooth marks. Herva numbers were high, too, after two mild winters, and jackwolves would have produced litters the last two springs to take advantage of it. There was always a good market for jackwolf pelts, soft and silver-gray in winter.
The problem would be marketing the furs, with the Komarsi blocking exports. But you could always stockpile them. The animals, on the other hand, you couldn't stockpile; come a hard winter, losses were always heavy. Trapped or not, many would die. And they were due for a hard winter.
A game trail circled a small bog pond, or rather, it circled the band of bog osier that girdled it, and despite his sixty-five years, the trapper speeded to a smooth trot. Off to his right an oroval, a small furbearer, trilled indignantly at him from a branch till he passed out of its territory. Now the game trail curved upward, crossing a low rounded ridge, and Oska slowed to a walk. Near the top, the sparse underbrush was burgeoning where a great old kren had been overthrown by wind, letting sunlight reach the ground. Had been overthrown that very summer, for its needles were still yellow-green, not tan. And wind had not acted alone; numerous pale stalks of flute, growing on the uptilted root disk, had curved to adjust to the new vertical. Obviously the old tree's roots had been badly rotted with flute in advance; the wind had defeated a giant already failing.
And something else—animal, not plant—had died nearby. Recently by the smell. And been mostly eaten, for the stench, though putrid, was not strong. He stopped, wet a finger at his mouth and held it up. West. He moved toward it. Nearby, behind an old, mossgrown blowdown, were the remains of a herva fawn. The jackwolves hadn't left much—bones, hooves, head, and scraps of hide. The pack shouldn't be far. It would surely have a litter this year, likely within a mile or so and probably somewhat closer, for they ranged no farther than necessary from the den-bound pups and mother.
He'd barely started off again when he heard the nut-yammer. At first scold he guessed it was screeching at a maret or oroval—some threat to its nest. But the scolding persisted without intensifying, and that told him it was likely a man. On what business? This was his bounds, and folks weren't likely doing wandrings with the war on.
He moved in that direction, and now his mode had changed: He trotted in somewhat of a crouch, soft-footed and smooth, more alert even than before. Not that he expected danger, but he wanted to observe unnoticed. He came to a tangle of old blowdowns, mostly broken instead of uprooted, as if a whirlwind had touched down there. The gap had grown up thick with saplings, head high and more, and he slid along its edge. The indignant nut-yammer was on the other side.
"I hate them little sonsabitches screechin' like that!"
The words startled Oska. People didn't often talk needlessly in the woods. Nor so loudly; the speaker seemed someone loud by nature.
"Goddamn it," said another voice, "dawn't shoot! Someone could hear!"
"Shit! Who's to hear?"
"I dawn't know and you dawn't neither. Now I'm tellin' you—"
The first man laughed. "Don't get your ass all bloody, Kodi. I wasn't gawnta shoot. The little bastard dawnt hold still long enough."
A third voice spoke then, a growl not loud enough that he caught the words. On all fours, Oska crept to where he could see them, some forty yards away. They wore uniforms, Smoleni by the look, but that dialect! He'd never heard Komarsi talk, but these strangers surely weren't from anywhere in Smolen. And they carried submachine guns!
He watched them pass out of sight, then got to his feet. He'd track them, and see where they were going.
Kro had sent Scrap Iron Nagel and Kodi Furn out as a team. Kodi was a corporal, so he'd been put in charge. The day before, they'd run into Chesty Inkermun by himself, and Chesty had joined them. His partner, Chesty said, had cut out for Krentorf.
The cramp hit Scrap Iron just as they crossed the low rock ridge and saw the creek ahead. The day was hot, and they were sweaty, and needed to refill their canteens, so the other two went on while Scrap Iron squatted down by a clump of evergreen shrubs to shit. Thus he was low, quiet, and holding still, when he glimpsed someone following them, a civilian slinking along with a rifle. The shrubs were between them, and Scrap Iron's head, with its green field cap, was just high enough to see over them. Slowly, slowly the Komarsi reached, picked up his submachine gun, and silently slipped off the safety. His pants were around his ankles; he left them there.
At about sixty feet he stood up, and the civilian, an old man, found himself staring into the muzzle of a .37 caliber SMG. It was kind of comical how surprised the old guy looked. "Drop your rifle, old man!" Scrap Iron called. Loudly, so the others would hear.
For once Chesty didn't talk. He came running, half a step ahead of Kodi. The old man had dropped his rifle, of course, and stood big-eyed and worried looking. Chesty laughed. "Well I'll be damned! What's that you got, Scrap Iron? Caught you with your pants down, dint he."
"I caught him. He was followin' us. He must have heard that loud mouth of yours."
Chesty laughed again, unpleasantly now, and walked up to the old man. "Now that you caught us, what you gawnta do, eh?" Without warning, he struck the old man in the face, getting leverage into it, knocking him flat, and while Kodi Furn stood watching, kicked him heavily and repeatedly in the body. Scrap Iron, meanwhile, wiped himself and pulled up his pants.
"Ayn't that about enough?" Kodi asked mildly.
Chesty turned, angry at the suggestion. "The old fart was gawnta bushwhack us!" Then he turned to his victim again. The old man was doubled up, his arms wrapped around his ribs, his neck corded with pain and the effort of silence. His face was a smear of blood. Chesty drew the trench knife from his belt and dropped to one knee. Before the others realized what he was doing, with a powerful stroke he severed the old man's left Achilles tendon.
"Yomal, Chesty! Cut his throat and have done!"
Chesty snarled, literally, all pretense of wit gone now. "Don't watch if you ayn't got the belly for it. I'm gawnta give 'im somethin' to remember." And turned again to the old man.