Dropping to hands and knees, Tharn placed sensitive nostrils close to the marks. To that unbelievably keen organ was borne the individual scent spoor of Alurna, as well as that of Mog, the sullen. Immediately there were engraved on Tharn's memory, scent impressions he would recognize among a hundred others for a long time to come.
He found more of Mog's footprints, all leading along the path and away from Sephar. He followed these, increasing his pace when they showed no indication of swerving from the trail. Satisfied that locating Alurna's captor was only a matter of following the path underfoot, Tharn went on. He felt no inclination to hurry. Too long had he been denied freedom from supervision. The sooner he found the missing girl, the sooner he must return to Sephar—even though he and Dylara were to be freed the moment he returned.
As he strolled along, he was reminded of the bow and arrows hanging at his back—these and a stone knife and a grass rope were the weapons he had chosen when preparing to leave Sephar.
The bow, he found, was fashioned from a hard black wood. Its inner surface was nearly flat; the outer quite round. Both ends were gracefully tapered, each notched to hold a string of catgut.
The arrows were made from the same wood as the bow. Their heads were of flint, painstakingly shaped into the likeness of a small leaf, and exceedingly sharp. Each head was fitted snugly into a deep groove, packed about with a clay-like substance and hardened by fire until nearly impossible to loosen. Near the butt of each arrow a thin rounded bit of wood had been inserted to guide its flight.
Bordering the trail some fifty paces ahead, stood a small tree. During some recent storm a lightning bolt had torn a jagged streak in its bole, close to the ground, leaving a strip of white wood gleaming in the sun.
Partly through accident and partly by clear reasoning, Tharn drew the bow with the finished technique of a veteran archer. His left arm, stiffly extended, pointed straight at the selected mark; his right hand, fingers hooked about the string, came smoothly back to a point just below the lobe of his right ear.
There sounded a singing "twang" and a polished bolt flashed in the sunlight, passed the tree's bole by a good foot and disappeared into the foliage.
Tharn ruefully rubbed an angry welt on his left wrist where the bowstring had stung him. He understood, now, why many of Sephar's warriors wore wristbands.