I hate tracking. It's so tedious. But Kenshin hadn't made it home yet when I popped back for the lantern, and it was this or sit at home and wait.
I gave the sandbar another cursory look before starting into the woods. Kenshin really should have been more careful about leaving tracks. He'd made it much too easy for me. A student of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu shouldn't leave such obvious signs of his passage. I decided I'd have to teach him tracking, so he'll know how to cover his own traces. Next time, he could do the tedious work. Just as soon as I found him.
Kenshin's sandal-prints led from the fine sandy soil of a tracker's dream to the fallen leaves of a tracker's nightmare. You might think that fallen leaves make an easy surface for tracking. You would be wrong. They are one of the most difficult. Only bare stone and pine needles are worse, and I would get a shot at the latter as well before the end of the night. But of course, a tracker as skilled as myself is not bothered by such a thing.
I followed his trail into the forest, holding the lantern up above my head to simulate the angle of daylight and to avoid dazzling my night-vision. The last of the twilight was still fading from the sky, but under the trees it was already completely dark.
There's a trick to tracking on fallen leaves, as much as on any difficult surface, and it is to keep your eyes off the ground right in front of your feet. A skilled tracker can pick up the slight variation in the pattern of fallen leaves caused by another's passage, and it's easier at a distance when the varied mosaic begins to blur together. There was a limit to the range of my lantern, so it wasn't as easy for me as it would have been by daylight, but it was still straightforward enough. For the most part, I could guess which way Kenshin had gone just by looking at the lay of the land, and assuming some minimal sensibility on his part. And there are more signs than just footprints to track a person by.
He'd kept mostly to the level, cutting across the slope of the mountain and keeping the sharp rise of the embankment to his right. Sensible, indeed -- it was exactly what I would have done. But the terrain was not entirely cooperative. The so-called level was cut by small ravines and blocked by thickets and tangles of fallen trees. A mile and a half into the woods, Kenshin had clearly been struggling. At first, he'd hopped lightly down into the ravines and climbed straight back out of them, disturbing the leaves only a little, but as his trail wore on he'd started sliding down the embankments and scrambling out with difficulty, leaving big swathes of displaced leaf-mold and ending up a little further downhill each time. He'd started detouring around the denser thickets to the downhill side, too, and continuing along the new level rather than working his way back up. Not too smart; he'd have to make up that elevation anyway when he finally hit the road.
I couldn't be that far behind him -- three, four hours at the most, judging by the age of the marks I'd seen at the riverbank. And I'd no doubt been gaining on him coming through the woods, although I'd seen no signs that he'd stopped to rest for any length of time. I paused to listen. You'd be surprised how well sound carries at night. But the wind had picked up, sighing through the dark treetops and masking any distant noises. The temperature was dropping, too, the stars glittering diamond-bright through the gaps in the forest canopy. It was turning into another chilly night.
I couldn't help worrying. Kenshin had gone out in short sleeves and thin trousers, expecting to work up a sweat, and by all indications he'd cut up his shirt as well. And he's too little. He'd get cold fast. He's grown three, four inches in the two years since I found him, but still he's much smaller than the other boys his age down in the village. He's no taller than the seven-year-olds. Unless they're breeding a generation of giants down there, that's not normal.
I'd like to blame the slavers for starving him and stunting his growth, but they'd only had Kenshin for half a year. I had to blame his parents instead. Unfairly, of course; they had no control over the famines. Unless he simply came from a family of short people. I had a vision of a village populated entirely by tiny red-heads. Creepy. I shook my head to clear it. Must concentrate on tracking.
Indeed, there were more signs than just footprints. The occasional broken twig I would expect, especially from a stupid student with no tracking experience of his own. But the handprint in blood on the smooth trunk of a maple was too much. Was he trying to leave a trail? And if so, for me or for the scavengers? Honestly!
I glanced back at the big tangle of fallen trees that I'd just hopped across. For Kenshin, it must not have been quite so effortless. The blood on the treetrunk was still tacky. Two hours old, give or take. I quickened my pace.
Finally, finally I reached the road. There were more skid marks in the leaves, where Kenshin had slid down the slight embankment from the forest floor onto the hard-packed clay. I scanned the surface of the road, shifting mental tracking gears. There, a hint of a sandal-print in a patch of dust. And another drop of blood.
Two hours it had taken me to cover those two miles of forest. Two hours! I looked up the empty road. A mile and a half from here to the cottage, over easy terrain.
I cursed out loud, thinking I should have sat at home and waited after all. I had a sudden vision of Kenshin, alone, bleeding onto the floor next to the cold fireplace, and broke into a run.
The cottage was dark. Not unexpected. But it was also empty. Kenshin hadn't made it this far.
Stupid, stupid! I'd allowed myself to get rattled, and it had spoiled my judgement. I'd just wasted twenty minutes, forty by the time I would pick up Kenshin's trail again. If I'd tracked him like I should have done, it would've taken me forty-five minutes, tops, to cover this distance. Kenshin hadn't made it this far, and he'd clearly left the road again. As I ran back downhill, I already knew why.
We'd made a trip down to Arashiyama toward the end of July to see the cormorant fishing. If you haven't seen this, it's worth a trip. They do it at night, by torchlight, with the leashed cormorants diving in a wild flurry for the fish that they never get to swallow. It's quite a spectacle. Still, even if the birds do most of the work, it's an awful lot of trouble just to catch a few fish. Give me a fishing rod at the pond any day.
And boy does it attract the crowds! Kenshin spent the whole day walking around in a daze, goggling at everything with those big eyes of his. I'm sure he saw more people that day than he'd seen in his entire life. He'd never seen a bamboo forest before, either.
Normally I don't like crowds. They're too noisy, too messy, and too annoying. But summer festival crowds mean girls dressed up in their finest, and are therefore marginally acceptable. Clusters of yukata-clad beauties would gather to whisper behind their festival fans as we passed. Finally one approached me, blushing prettily.
"Your son is very cute," she said.
I twitched an eyebrow. "He's not my son," I growled. "He's my apprentice." I'm hardly old enough to be Kenshin's father; I would have been only fourteen when he was born. And I was a little annoyed. A future master of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu shouldn't be 'cute'. A future master of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu should be tall and strong and handsome, like myself. This is not just for aesthetic reasons. There are important techniques that require it -- the tall and strong parts at least; my own shishou seemed to get along fine despite looking like a horse -- charging attacks that require weight, multiple-strike attacks that require arm strength. I'm starting to despair of Kenshin ever having either. I work him to exhaustion every day, make sure he gets enough to eat, make sure he sleeps well, but still he never seems to grow any muscles. It's a good thing he's fast, or he'd be hopeless. Speed, more than anything, is the heart and soul of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryuu.
By mid-day this had happened half a dozen times. Who knew a cute little kid was such a babe magnet? But Kenshin was cramping my style, so I sent him off to the bamboo forest to do his kata and a couple hundred sword swings. He seemed relieved to get away from the crowds and do something familiar. And anyway, my own god-like physique is magnet enough.
In any case, we left late, after the fishing, and walked all night and into the next morning. By noon, Kenshin was getting pretty worn out, so I decided we'd stop for lunch and a bit of a rest. He agreed eagerly, and started to set down his travelling gear at the side of the road.
"I see my idiot apprentice wants to stop on the side of the road," I commented.
Kenshin stared up at me, clearly at a loss. "Um. Yes?"
"Such a nice place to stop, the side of the road," I continued, my voice heavy with sarcasm. "An ideal place to sit and watch the world go by. And what will my idiot apprentice do if, say, a group of bandits happens by and decides that he looks like an attractive target?"
He gaped at me. Obviously he wasn't thinking too clearly after having been up all night. That's something he'll have to work on.
"Well?" I prompted him.
"I could fight them--"
"Idiot!"
"Or run away?"
"No! Never limit your options like that! What if you were injured, or sick, or even just tired like you are now? It's always better to avoid the fight. You stop off the road, where you're hidden from view. That way you choose whether anything happens, not them. You choose whether you're going to fight any bandits that come along, or whether you're going to let them walk on without ever having seen you."
"I see." Kenshin looked chastened, his eyes downcast.
"And if you do choose to fight them, this way you have the initiative. You have the element of surprise. When I saved your life, do you think those bandits saw me coming? Not a chance."
Kenshin nodded. He'd closed his eyes, looking a little sick.
"And you don't fight if you don't have to. Even if they're bandits, a life is still a life. You know that."
He nodded again.
"Good. Now come on." I started into the forest at the side of the road. "I'll show you how to find a spot that's hidden, comfortable, and still has a good view."