Bearers of the Black Staff - Terry Brooks [151]
He called one of the guards into the tent and asked him for a cloak to cover himself and another to lie down on. The guard, under orders to give Inch what he wanted, did not argue. He left and returned again with two all-weather cloaks. As soon as he had gone back outside to his watch, Inch built a dummy of himself out of sacks and covered it with one of the cloaks. Then he moved to the rear of the tent, cut a slit in it with his long knife, slipped on the second cloak with the hood pulled up, peered out to be sure the way was clear, and stepped through.
In the palm of his hand, he held the receiver to the tracking device he had attached to the girl’s clothing when she hugged him. A small red light blinked a slow, steady signal. As he got closer to her, it would blink more rapidly and brightly. It would lead him right to her.
Or so he hoped.
He was a big man, but he was among big people, so he wasn’t as noticeable as he would have been elsewhere. His cloak and hood hid his features, and the weather and darkness reduced visibility to almost nothing. No one paid any attention to him as he walked through the camp, absorbed in their own business and looking to get in out of the rain.
He glanced down at the signal to make certain it was growing stronger, that he was headed in the right direction. The signal told him he was. He could feel the old, familiar excitement flooding through him. He could feel himself giving in to its intoxicating rush, welcoming it like an old friend.
He checked the signal. It was blinking rapidly. The girl was just ahead.
He saw the guard at the entrance to the tent through the screen of rain, and he knew she was there. No torches lit the entry. No light came from inside. Nothing to draw attention, nothing to suggest its importance. He glanced down at the signal. The blinking orb had grown brighter. There was no question about it; he had found her.
He started toward the tent and the guard.
And suddenly a small billowing of the tent fabric caught his eye, and he changed direction instantly. It might have been the wind and nothing more. But it might also have been something inside the tent pressing up against the fabric. Whichever it was, he didn’t like it. It was an instinctual thing, raw and sharp, the sort of internal warning he had learned to trust over the years, the sort of warning that had kept him alive.
He left the tent behind and then circled back from the rear. When he was still several dozen yards away, he stopped beside a rack of spears and studied the tent in the gloom and rain and thought about what he should do. Saving the girl using the direct approach no longer seemed like such a good idea. He needed a different plan, something that would expose the truth about what else was inside the tent. And he was convinced by now that something else was. He felt it in his bones. The posting of a single guard was a lure meant to deceive him. Kill the guard, slip inside, and get to the girl—that had been his plan and maybe, just maybe, someone had figured that out.
He couldn’t have said why, but he thought suddenly that it was more than possible; it was so.
He stood in the rain a moment longer, considering his options.
He could cut through the canvas, slip in from the back of the tent, and take his chances—or he could just walk up to the guard and ask to speak to the girl, say that he needed to check again on something she had said, say that Taureq