The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(22)
Isobel was thinking something. He could tell from the way her shoulders flexed every so often, as though shaking off one idea only to have another settle. He watched but did not interrupt, keeping alert to their surroundings and letting her work her way through.
The ground beneath them remained stable, but there was a sense of tension in the air that Gabriel did not like, reminding him far too much of the queasy stillness before a demon-wind blew through. He studied the ground to either side, constantly looking for potential shelter, and when they paused at another stream to refill their canteens, he looked for the glimmer of fish in the shallows but saw nothing but stones and mud.
Still, that proved nothing. The fish might have been spooked by the quake, taking to deeper levels or shadowed alcoves. That would explain why they’d seen no deer grazing, no rabbits in the grass. He thought of the supplies they’d taken on, and mentally recalculated how long they would last, if they could not find any fresh meat at all, and the gentle warmth of the day, the clear blue skies and soft air suddenly felt more ominous than any gathering clouds. Even the mule seemed to feel something, not straying to investigate anything that looked tasty but staying close by, until Isobel lifted her head to sniff at the air, then took a deeper sniff and let out an exclamation of disgust. “What’s that smell?”
He tested the air and recoiled as he caught what she had.
“It’s worse than the buffalo,” she said. “Like . . .”
“Like it was ill when it died and the carrion-birds won’t touch it.” He looked up and noted that there were, in fact, several carrion-birds circling overhead. He squinted and wished for a spyglass: one of those birds seemed too large to be a buzzard.
A Reaper hawk here would not be unusual—in fact, this was the sort of ground they preferred: high cliffs for their nests and scattered meadows where prey could be flushed and caught. But buzzards normally cleared the sky when a Reaper appeared, since they could become prey as easily as anything on the ground.
He scanned the ground again for whatever was causing the smell but saw nothing. The smell was faint enough that it might have been hidden in the tree line, though he hadn’t thought the breeze strong enough to carry corpse-stink that far.
Or maybe, he thought, whatever it was wasn’t dead yet.
Isobel moved her mare closer, the two animals matching steps near perfectly, the mule close behind. “Something’s watching us.” She took the pocket square he’d given her earlier and held it over her mouth and nose, attempting to keep the smell away. Her voice was muffled behind the cloth. “Again.”
“Another demon?” They’d attracted the attention of one before, when trailing the Spaniards. But that demon had been sent packing, and they’d heard or seen nothing since then. And demon didn’t smell like this, didn’t smell at all that he’d noticed; it would be easier to find?—and avoid?—them if they did.
“No? No.” She sounded more certain the second time. She looked up then, too, and seemed to notice the Reaper overhead. “I think we should find cover, get out of sight.”
Gabriel didn’t think she was aware of the timbre that crept into her tone, the dark echo that lingered around her words, but when she spoke in that voice, Gabriel listened. He knew what she was.
And even if he hadn’t, he was not a fool.
“Trees?” To their left, there was a cluster of narrow pines with enough room for a horse to pass between. Gabriel had grown up in the deep woods, spent much of his early life following his uncles and cousins as they gathered their lines, but he didn’t like taking them under tree cover; his line of sight was too limited, and things could be lurking overhead as well as behind every trunk, hiding in every shadow. But if Isobel’s instincts said to hide, they would hide, and this was the only cover available.
She nodded, and turned her mare toward them, kicking the horse into a fast trot. The mule followed her, and he picked up the rear, shifting the reins into his left hand so that his right was free to reach for the knife in his boot or the one tied to his saddle equally. The carbine strapped to his saddle would be of no use except as the club he’d teased her about before, but he loosed the strap around it nonetheless.
Once they were through the first line of trees, Isobel slid down from the mare’s back, picking up the reins and leading her deeper into the gloom. The mule looked as though it might balk, and Gabriel had a moment’s rare sympathy with the beast.
“She knows what she’s doing,” he told the mule as he dismounted as well and followed them into the shaded cover, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt. At least, he noted, the trees were old enough that their lower branches had died off, removing one potential source of ambush.
“Here.” She stopped, although that patch of ground seemed no different to him from any of the others they’d walked over. “This is good?”
She’d chosen a natural clearing where an older tree had died, the fallen trunk slowly crumbling back into the soil. The clearing was blocked at one end by a massive chunk of reddish-brown rock sticking out of the ground, a little higher than Steady’s shoulder, two trees bent to grow around it. The space between the remaining trees was reasonably flat, open enough for all three animals to move freely without stepping on one another or their riders, but not much more than that. He wasn’t sure he’d be willing to risk a fire, but the stone outcrop was wide enough to block the wind, and it wasn’t likely to become too cold, or to rain, since the sky had been clear. . . .