Sia came out from beneath the fallen log with something in her mouth.
Xu Hao took one look at it and stopped walking.
"No. Absolutely not."
Sia wagged her tail. Whatever she'd found was brown, soft around the edges and old enough that the smell reached him before she did.
"Put it down, girl."
She considered the request, then deposited her treasure at his feet.
Er Bao joined him on the path. Grey sniffed the air once and moved a sensible distance away.
"What is it?" Er Bao asked.
"I have no intention of finding out."
"She seems pleased."
"She once brought me a dead rat and expected a biscuit. Her standards are not reliable."
Sia looked between them, waiting for praise.
Xu Hao led her away before she could decide the gift had been rejected and pick it up again. The trouble with giving a husky a better nose was that she already believed everything in the world deserved to be smelled.
Today, at least, he hoped that enthusiasm might be useful.
* * *
Da Bao had left a strip of cloth in the forest the previous evening.
He'd taken it from an old shirt, walked down the lower trail while Xu Hao remained at camp, and returned by the ridge. Xu Hao had insisted on the separate route. He wanted to know whether Sia could follow where the cloth had travelled, rather than simply find Da Bao's ordinary scent heading home.
Da Bao had objected to being excluded from his own experiment.
"I could hide myself instead," he'd said.
"You would get hungry and light a fire."
"Not immediately."
"An important distinction."
In the end, they'd agreed that Da Bao would stay at camp with Little One. He'd pressed a second piece of the same shirt into Xu Hao's hand with the solemnity of a man surrendering a family heirloom.
Now Xu Hao unfolded that piece beside the lower stream.
"It has been most of a night," Er Bao said. "And it rained for a while."
"Which may have ruined the trail."
"Then we'll know that rain matters."
Xu Hao glanced at him. "You're beginning to sound like me."
"I've had a good teacher."
He wasn't sure whether Er Bao meant that kindly. He decided not to ask.
Sia sat beside them, her newly broad shoulders brushing Xu Hao's thigh. She had grown considerably since Superimpose. Her grey-and-white coat was the same, and one ear still folded at its tip, but the size of her paws could be alarming when she placed them on his knees without warning.
Her card described the new ability simply: Scent Track. A trail no more than one day old.
Those words didn't tell him whether rain interfered with it, whether she needed to know whose scent to follow, or whether every interesting smell would lead her astray.
He held out the cloth.
Sia sniffed it, sneezed, and looked towards the ferns.
"Find," Xu Hao said.
She lowered her head and started walking.
* * *
The first twenty paces were not encouraging.
Sia turned away from the lower trail and went straight towards a hollow tree. She pushed her nose into a crack between the roots and stayed there, tail wagging hard enough to disturb the leaves.
Xu Hao approached cautiously.
"Have you found the shirt?"
Something rustled inside the hollow. He took two steps back.
"No need to answer."
Er Bao studied the ground. "There's an animal den under there."
"Then she's found a more interesting smell."
Xu Hao called her away. She came readily enough, though she looked over her shoulder as they left. He showed her the piece of shirt again, let her sniff it, and waited.
This time Sia went past the hollow.
She crossed a patch of dry needles, climbed over a low root and took a narrow path that Xu Hao hadn't noticed. He followed with his bow on his back, careful not to give her any suggestion about which way to turn.
Er Bao walked several steps behind them.
At the first fork, Sia chose the left-hand trail. She changed her mind almost immediately, circled a mossy stone and returned to the fork. Her nose brushed the ground. Then she went right.
"Did she lose it?" Xu Hao whispered.
"Perhaps Da Bao changed direction there."
"Or perhaps she was looking for breakfast."
They reached the stream where the bank flattened into mud. Last night's rain had raised the water. It ran over stones that had been dry the day before.
Sia stopped.
She followed the near bank upstream, came back, and tried downstream. When she looked up at Xu Hao, he nearly pointed across the water.
He caught himself. He didn't know which way Da Bao had gone, and he wanted to keep it that way.
"Take your time," he told her instead.
Sia stepped into the shallows. The current tugged at her fur. She waded across, shook water over Xu Hao's trousers, and began circling the opposite bank.
"Thank you," he said. "I was worried my clothes might dry."
Er Bao crossed behind him. Neither spoke while Sia worked.
After a while she went still, nose pressed to a patch of damp moss at the foot of a twisted root. Her ears lifted. She moved uphill with sudden certainty.
Xu Hao hurried after her, slipping once where the slope turned steep. By the time he caught up, she was sitting beneath a low branch.
A strip of cloth hung from it, tucked into a split in the bark.
He stared.
Sia looked up at him and thumped her tail against the ground.
"Well," he said. "You've made us look rather slow."
He took down the cloth and compared its torn edge with the piece in his pocket. They fitted. Da Bao had also tied one end in a knot Xu Hao recognised from the shelter, though he suspected the knot was meant to survive rain rather than establish the authenticity of the evidence.
Er Bao examined the hiding place.
"You couldn't see it from the stream."
"No. And she didn't come straight here. She followed the way he went."
"Mostly."
Xu Hao nodded. He remembered the hollow tree, the wrong turn, the long search beside the water. That was as important as the result. Sia could recover a faint trail, but she might follow something else first. She could not be relied upon to make good decisions merely because her nose was better than his.
He scratched her ears. She pushed her great head into his hand until he nearly lost his balance.
"Good girl. Very good."
Er Bao smiled. "Da Bao will be pleased."
"He'll claim he hid it so well that only magic could have found it."
"He did spend a long time choosing the branch."
"Of course he did."
* * *
They took a shorter route home.
Xu Hao wanted to get back before the sun climbed much higher. The scent trail had survived rain and most of a night, which was useful, but following it had also brought them across uneven ground and a stream they couldn't always cross safely. He had been so pleased when Sia found the cloth that he'd nearly forgotten how far she'd led them from camp.
Er Bao took the lead where the path narrowed. He showed Xu Hao a strip of bark peeled back from a tree, old and dark at the edge.
"Deer," he said. "They rub their antlers here."
Xu Hao examined it. He'd seen similar marks near the snare where they'd found the trapped animal. That had been the first time he'd noticed the other signs: cuts on trees, scraps of worked cord, the narrow routes hunters used between streams.
A little farther on, Sia stopped beside another tree.
This mark was different.
A clean slash ran through the bark at shoulder height. The exposed wood was pale. Xu Hao remembered seeing the same kind of cut along the lower trail. Someone had made them deliberately.
Sia sniffed the trunk, then the roots. Her tail stopped moving.
"What is it?" Xu Hao asked.
She turned towards the dry creek bed beyond the ferns.
Er Bao's hand went to his sword.
Not because he'd seen anyone. Xu Hao knew that much from the way he stood, listening rather than drawing. But Sia had found something worth his attention.
Xu Hao knelt beside the roots. A scrap of pale cord lay caught beneath a thorn, hardly longer than his little finger. He eased it free with a twig and held it up.
The fibres were tightly twisted. One end was cut. The other had frayed where it had caught against the wood.
"Like the snare," he said.
Er Bao examined it without taking it from him.
"Similar."
"Could it belong to the same people?"
"Could. Hunters trade cord."
Xu Hao looked from the pale slash in the tree to the dry creek bed. He wanted to know who had passed there and how recently. Sia was already facing the opening, nose working.
He could ask her to follow.
The thought was so tempting that he'd taken a step before he recognised it.
"Sia. Here."
She looked back, reluctant.
"Come, girl."
She returned to him. He laid a hand against her neck and felt the muscles moving beneath her thick fur. She was strong enough now to cover ground faster than he could run, but that would help neither of them if she found an armed hunter and he couldn't reach her.
Er Bao watched the creek bed for another moment.
"We should leave," he said.
Xu Hao pocketed the cord.
They took the higher route, keeping away from the open creek. Er Bao moved quietly, listening whenever the wind dropped. Xu Hao kept Sia close. Once she lifted her nose again, but she obeyed when he asked her to stay beside him.
They met no one.
* * *
Da Bao was repairing a leather strap when they reached camp. Little One lay across his boots, forcing him to work with his knees at an awkward angle. Grey rose to greet Er Bao, then settled once she'd inspected Sia.
"Did she find it?" Da Bao demanded.
Xu Hao held up the strip of shirt.
Da Bao's grin spread at once. "I hid that well!"
"A remarkable piece of work. We're considering a plaque."
"What's a plaque?"
"Something you hang up so other people can admire your achievements."
Da Bao looked genuinely interested. Er Bao interrupted before Xu Hao could make the situation worse.
"We found another marked tree," he said.
The grin disappeared.
Xu Hao brought out the scrap of cord and described the clean cut in the bark and Sia's interest in the creek bed. He made a point of explaining what he hadn't seen: no hunter, no weapon, no tracks he could confidently identify as recent.
"But she could smell somebody," Da Bao said.
"She was following something. I don't know whose scent, or when it was left."
"The card says one day."
"The card says she can follow trails up to one day old. It doesn't tell me everything she smells comes from a person who was there this morning."
Er Bao took the cord and turned it between his fingers.
"The route marks were there before today. The cord could have been dropped by anyone using the creek."
"Then we should find out who uses it," Da Bao said.
Xu Hao looked towards the trees below camp.
They had been carrying meat and water along that slope for weeks. Someone else had been using the same forest. Perhaps only to hunt. Perhaps for a reason that had nothing to do with them.
Sia lay down beside him, apparently content with the day's work. She'd found a cloth left overnight, crossed a stream and noticed a second scent where he would have walked straight past.
She had given them a way to follow strangers.
Xu Hao wasn't yet convinced that following them would make his family any safer.