Dragon Hunters pt 1

"You're mad, Fern. I'm no scout who can sneak around alone and hope to find something other than a fall." After a few months with the hunting party, Mara was a lot more comfortable on her feet than she used to be, but the occasional cliff or ravine always made her worry about breaking bones. The odd jibe from the Northerners in the group, who insisted on calling these mountains "hills", did not change that.

Fern shrugged, spreading her hands in a what-would-you gesture. "If there are magic tripwires"—Mara noted the rising tone on the hunt-leader's calm voice, and nodded. She had not made that up.—"you are the only one who can see them, so you are the only one with a chance of not getting spotted. Finding someone else would be possible, but take too long. Unless..."

She turned to Luen, who pulled a pointed ear and went, "Um."

Mara shot him a glare. If the goblin hadn't caught a whiff of magic in the air... he would have blundered into the wards, alarming their weaver, and they might all be dead by now. And even if he alone would have been caught, Mara didn't have a reason to wish an end as a snack on him, so she rolled her eyes at herself and scrounged up a smile. "From what I hear, smell doesn't let you locate something terribly precisely."

"Not so's I'd want to bet our lives on it," Luen said.

"Do I know that feeling." She took a few careful steps towards the edge of the cliff that had been the best vantage point they could find in a hurry, shaded her eyes and again took measure of the ward. She could not see all of it, as the faint white lines faded against the bright sky even at a shorter distance than her magic sight would reach under better conditions, but enough to make out its curvature. Big enough to put a small town or big village inside. And the terrain? Hard to say when most of what Mara could see when not focusing on her magic sight were the blue-green needles of pines, with the occasional dark grey rock face at a visible bend. At least their canopy seemed quite even, hinting at relatively gentle slopes. The carpet of fallen needles also tended to keep undergrowth down. Should be manageable. Mara's eyes strayed to the sky again. The outer shell of ward-lines made it hard to make out its inner structure, but there were lines running towards its centre. Better than a compass. And she knew nothing else was a realistic option, Fern's suggestion merely a polite fiction. "All right, I signed up for this operation, so I'll do my job. What's the plan for everybody else?"

Fern glanced skywards. "They should be warned and at least on the way back to our last camp. If by now nobody else blundered into that barrier, it shouldn't happen."

Mara shuddered and hugged herself, rubbing her arms more to show she wanted to pretend the problem was the wind—which really was not chill any more at all—than believing she could fool the others.

Luen looked rather exasperated, but Fern did her the favour. She just asked, "Do you need anything from camp? I can’t tell how big an area you’re looking at."

"Just give me your canteen. I’ve got some food, and I should make it back to camp by nightfall."