He did not move. Did not breathe any differently. Radmila stood there another second, studying the tangle of roots. Then she turned sharply and vanished into the dark.
They were gone. But Max knew that was only the beginning. Dawn was still eight hours away.
Eight hours in icy mud without moving. And the temperature was dropping toward freezing. The night dragged on forever.
The forest went about its business. Somewhere nearby an owl called. A mouse rustled in the leaves. Far to the north, a lone wolf gave one short, ragged howl.
Then silence again. The cold worked its way into the center of him. His muscles began to cramp.
Max used the mental techniques drilled into him during training. He pushed his mind away from the body. Focused on math problems.
He reviewed the design of a rotary engine. Ran through the chemical composition of propellant. Recalled ballistic coefficients. Anything to keep from thinking about the cold and the pain.
Near dawn, the eastern sky began to pale. That was when he heard them again.
The hunters were coming back, tired, angry, and empty-handed. They had searched the bog from end to end, expecting him to blunder into their trap or panic and expose himself. He had done neither.
Radmila led the way. In the weak pre-dawn light her face was tight with frustration. She was breathing hard.
Vlasta followed, gripping her spear. “He couldn’t have vanished,” she hissed. “We checked the whole perimeter. No exit tracks.”
“Then he’s still here,” Radmila said. “Look harder. Turn over every rock.” They were back in the wider southern section of the ravine.
The light was growing stronger by the minute. Max’s camouflage had been perfect in darkness. In daylight, any mismatch in texture could give him away.
Time was now working against him. Radmila stopped again within fifteen feet of the root wall. She stood there, breathing hard, scanning.
Her eyes moved over trees, brush, and wet ground. Max knew the moment had come. He was not going to lie there and wait for chance to decide things.
He needed to break her psychologically. Show her the difference in level between them. Not with force. With control.
He had been behind her the whole time. Radmila was facing north toward the bog. Vlasta and the others were twenty yards back, working through the brush.
Max took one slow breath. His muscles, locked by cold, answered with dull pain but obeyed. He eased his right hand out from under the leaves, inch by inch. Radmila heard nothing.
In his numb hand was a small flat piece of bark. He had noticed it during the night and kept hold of it the whole time. He did not throw it. Did not make a sound.
He rose slowly to one knee, not full height. No splash. No rustle. Water slid off him without noise.
Radmila kept looking ahead. Max was now three feet behind her. He could smell her sweat mixed with wood ash.
He saw the tension in the muscles of her neck. One quick move and he could have broken it. One clean motion and she would have died before she understood what happened.
He did not attack. Instead, he reached out and, with precise care, dropped the piece of bark into her quiver between the fletched arrows.
Then he stepped back two paces and blended against the white trunk of a birch. A second later, a low horn sounded across the ravine.
The first rays of sun touched the treetops. The first trial was over. Radmila flinched and spun around.
Her eyes widened. Three yards away, leaning casually against a birch, stood Max. Dirty, covered in leaves and moss, still half merged with the woods.
He was no longer hiding. He was just looking at her. Calm. Cold. Like a man who had already made every decision he needed to make.
Vlasta and the others burst from the brush, raising their weapons. “Lower them,” Max said. His voice was hoarse from cold and silence, but steady.
The sun cleared the trees. Radmila stared at him, breathing hard. She could not understand how he had appeared behind her after she had just checked that ground.
“You hid in mud like a worm,” she snapped, trying to steady her voice. “That doesn’t make you a warrior. It makes you a coward.”
Max brushed a clump of lichen off his shoulder. “Check your quiver, Radmila.”
She frowned and reached back. Her fingers touched something flat and wrong. She pulled out the piece of wet bark.
Silence fell over the ravine. Vlasta went pale. Zora covered her mouth.
Radmila stared at the bark in her hand. The meaning of it came to her slowly and then all at once. He had not just hidden from them.
He had come right up behind her. Close enough to place something in her own gear. He could have killed her…
