Chapter 8
Divide et impera
"Divide and conquer"

He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—
namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing,
it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.
- The Adventures of Mark Twain

He'd pushed them hard, but they'd reached the small range by nightfall. He landed roughly, sliding in the fine dust of the mountains. Panting, Kirara landed beside him.

"Do you sense anything?" Sango asked.

"I don't sense Kagome's reiki," Miroku stated. "Have you caught her scent at all?"

"No," he took a deep breath to steady himself. "But I do smell hawk." He turned away from them, taking a steadying breath before leaping towards the smell of a nest.

The moon was high when they stumbled onto it. Inuyasha leapt in without a second thought. Time was of the essence, and they'd wasted too much just getting here. He felt the weight of each second as they traveled and struggled under the ever increasing weight.

"Where is she?" He shouted, Tetsusaiga unsheathed and pointed at the lone female hawk.

Feathers ruffled and puffed, she moved herself between them and her nest. He'd noticed the children. Small, little things. Kagome would've called them cute. Five in total.

"Leave!" She roared in return, body blocking his view of the nest, wings extended fully. He couldn't smell her. But the smell of hawk was overbearing. But he hadn't caught a whiff of her at all. Not a scrap of her scent. It has been three days. It wouldn't—it couldn't have disappeared that quickly. The smell of her blood always lingered, burning his nostrils days afterward. But, yet again, nothing.

"Where is she? Where's Kagome?" He roared. "If you don't tell me, I'll—"

Her face. There was something wrong with her face. His eyes scanned over her again.

"Where's her mate?" Sango whispered. "The males diligently guard their broods. He would've shown up by now."

That's when it fell into place. Her mate was dead.

He'd heard the rumors, the half-lives that widowed mates lived. Inuyasha clearly remembered the sad smiles his mother always wore, even when he thought she was happy. Everything was tinged with sadness, so much so he didn't realize that it wasn't normal to smell that constantly.

Her youki flared out around her, an attempt at intimidating them, but it was so—lackluster. Even Kirara seemed unperturbed at her presence. She wasn't a risk, not anymore, maybe never again.

He sheathed his sword; there was no point.

"Inuyasha?" Miroku asked behind him.

"We're looking for a priestess. We were told she was kidnapped and brought here." He didn't yell, but he kept his tone firm, an attempt at being intimidating.

The female watched him, and he crossed his arms, waiting for her answer. She watched the three of them for a while, glancing over her shoulder at the chicks in her nest. They were older, the soft down being replaced and growing in their flight feathers. They still needed guarding, but these weren't newborns.

"Why would I bring a priestess here? Why would I put my fledglings at risk?"

"Where's your mate? Their father?" Sango asked. "Would he bring one here?"

"We are just trying to find our friend. We will not harm you or yours unless provoked," Miroku tried to reassure her, but it was a lost cause. He wouldn't trust them either, not after arriving sword raised, threatening their children.

"There is no priestess here. Nor has their ever been." She sounded beyond tired, beyond simple exhaustion. She didn't care that she was answering their questions. Her entire existence an unmanageable weight on her shoulders.

"Your mate's dead, isn't he?" Inuyasha had never been one for subtlety, and didn't see the point in starting now. "What happened?"

"I don't know. He went out hunting, and then, he was gone." Her voice was quiet and kept glancing over her shoulder at her nest. "Just gone."

"But you don't know what happened to him?" Miroku asked and made an 'oof' as Sango elbowed him.

The hawk's eyes hardened, glaring at their little group ferociously.

"This priestess," the hawk started, youki beginning to unfurl from her as she shifted her wings in something that looked like agitation. "When did she going missing?"

"Shit," Inuyasha muttered. "Kagome ain't that sort of priestess. She wouldn't hurt anyone." He watched her, his own youki rising to meet her own.

She wasn't here and never had been. Somewhere, they'd missed her. Shit. And now this stupid bird thinks that Kagome could just up and kill her mate. Shit. Shit.

"Are there any other bird youkai near here?" Sango asked, trying to intercept the fight brewing just on the horizon that they did not have time or energy to waste on.

"We just want to find her and take her home."

"Beyond the mountains, but—" she turned away from the view and looked at them. "We made an accord with the humans. We only hunt in our woods, whatever winds up there is game."

"Thank you," Miroku said as they walked away.

"Should I find a priestess there, in my woods," The hawk called after them. "Whomever finds her first," she leered.

Inuyasha retorted with a snarl that made Miroku's hair stand on end.

"I catch you near her, and I'll—" he glanced at the fledglings and growled.

"I'll keep an eye out," the hawk continued.

"Orphans, the lot of them!" Miroku ushered him away with hands on his shoulder blades, and Inuyasha went peaceably enough; even Miroku knew that if Inuyasha wanted to stay and fight, there would be no way that a mere mortal human could stop him.

After a few moments, he broke the silence. "Thoughts?"

"She's telling the truth. Kagome hasn't been here; there's not a trace of her scent anywhere. We missed something."

"Do you think the snake was lying?" Sango asked, rubbing the fur between Kirara's ears. "Do you think that Kagome did kill her mate?"

"No," Inuyasha stated, staring out over the long stretch of trees that ran for miles. "If she did kill him, it would've been for a reason." It was a large forest, speckled with small settlements, miles and miles apart from each other. "We missed it. Whatever it was, we missed it."

"So what's the plan?" Sango asked, climbing back on Kirara, Miroku shuffling to sit directly behind her.

"Backtrack."

"We know where he was going and where he was coming from. So we follow the path and hope that something leads us to her," Miroku stated and Inuyasha agreed, starting off into the night. "And that we find her before others do."

He'd allowed short breaks, especially after Miroku fell off of Kirara and only managed to avoid certain death via gravity when Inuyasha snagged the back of his robes a few feet from the ground. But the searching was tedious. They went slower, searching air, water, and ground. They circled, trying to see if there was any sign of the young priestess, but it was starting to feel like a losing battle. The more they searched the farther and farther away she seemed. The more she appeared to be unreachable.

He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. Sure, he didn't need half the sleep they needed, but the exertion had left him drained. He ran circles around an area, spreading outward, hoping to find a trace of scent, a piece of cloth, something. Probably wasn't eating as much as he should either. But this was important. He'd eat and sleep to his body's content once they found her and she was safe.

She'd once called him overprotective. If she thought that then, she was about to learn what overprotective really meant. He chuckled darkly and looked up at the sky.

The sun was clear and bright, no sign of rain in the near future. Good weather for tracking.

"You okay, Inuyasha? Do we need to stop?" Sango asked, sounding halfway hopeful at the idea. He knew he was kicking their asses halfway across the country at the moment, but they needed to find her.

"Fine. Keep looking," he shouted back and leapt into the next round of trees. Kirara flew off, and he kept searching for something that would lead him at least to a trail that he could track.

Two days since the mountains. Two days since they realized that they'd missed her somewhere along the way. Five days since she went missing.

How was it possible for someone to so easily vanish?

He was looking, actively searching, and there was nothing. At this rate, he might as well be human and trying to find her for all the good his nose was doing. Hopelessness started to settle into his chest, but he shook it off, or at least pushed it to a back burner as he leapt to another clearing where there was still no fucking sign of her.

He should have looked for her that night. He knew that he did. He let his human heart take over and listen and grieve, and turns out, she'd never been dead at all. She hadn't been in danger until he gave up on her. She wouldn't have. She'd have insisted on working, on finding him, and he gave in so easily, so willingly. How could he ever really call himself her protector?

He'd clearly only proven himself incapable of the job.

"Inuyasha!" Sango's yell jolted him out of his reverie, and, leaping to the top of the tree, he spotted Kirara some ways away. "Over here! We think we found something!" She waved her arm like he couldn't see where she was, and he snorted, leaping the few bounds to their position as Kirara circled above him.

"What?" He snapped, looking up at the two humans.

"There! Kirara found something!" Sango sounded thrilled, like they had finally broken through and found a lead. He quelled his own hopes at the idea.

His eyes scanned the area that she pointed to, trying to discern what she saw.

Or smelled.

Blood.

Her blood.

It was a short bound to the tree, and he landed gracefully on a branch and looked down.

Broken branches as far as the eye could see.

"Inuyasha?" Miroku asked him.

And the one thing that he'd been looking for, the clue that could blaze a trail to her, wafted towards him on the wind.

"She was here. I can smell her here," he said, pointing to a broken branch at the top of the tree and began following her trail down, sniffing and crinkling his nose at the metallic scent of blood. Kagome once said it smelled like coins.

"But how did she—Oh," Miroku figured out the answer to his own question when Inuyasha turned and looked at him. "Oh no."

"Is she—?" Sango's own line of questioning started, but she stopped herself and even he could hear the subtle wavering of her voice and how it started to sound waterlogged at the end. "She's not—"

"She ain't at the bottom," Inuyasha answered for her. It was a relief for him too. He'd been asking himself the same question.

He landed near another tree, taking careful notes of how she fell. Broken branches and a smattering of leaves neatly outlined the indent in the soft earth below the tree. Her scent pooled where she'd obviously laid for a long time. There was a decent blood pool where it had soaked into the earth. She'd laid here for a while. A day or so, maybe longer even.

"She got away from the youkai then," Sango answered, climbing down from Kirara's back.

"Yes, but that fall—" Miroku made a 'tsk' sound. "She would be injured."

"Is there a trail to follow?" Sango asked as Kirara chirped beside her as she sat on Sango's shoulder.

He stared at the ground, noting the shapes in the ground, where fingers dug into the soft soil and leveraged weight behind them.

"You should be able to track this one, monk." Inuyasha pointed to where it looked like she'd drug herself across the ground. The scent was stale, days old at this point, but he moved, being careful as they followed it through the trees. He wasn't taking a chance on losing it, not when they finally found tangible evidence of her presence. The trail had already started to fade, and he wanted to make sure he was following it properly. He could smell blood here and there, and then paused where her scent pooled again at the base of an old oak. He heard a stream running in the distance, following her scent there to the edge of it. The banks were only a few feet tall, but he could see where the dirt was disturbed, and where she'd clearly slipped and fallen, scrambling to grab purchase on whatever she could, landing in the water that came to a little over his knee.

"Shit. She landed in the water," he muttered.

"Can you follow her scent still?"

"No, the water erases it." Eyes scanning the banks, hoping, praying, and then he spotted it. Letting out a soft noise of surprise, he can see where she clearly struggled to climb out of the stream. Claw marks and foot prints in the dirt gave away her path. She'd fought to get out, but it wasn't actually that deep, meaning that she was injured more than he initially thought. Judging from the fall down the tree, probably broken ribs, maybe an arm or a leg.

But there, at the top of the bank, her trail just stopped.

He cursed, loudly, swearing and looking at the ground for hints. His nose usually did all the work for him, but now, there was no scent trail and no physical trail for them to follow. It was like she just disappeared into thin air.

The strong scent of horse lingered on his tongue as he stood in the middle of the narrow path, one that wasn't used frequently.

Maybe, just maybe, she hitched a ride.

Maybe she was in a village being treated for her injuries.

Maybe she was already safe.

Maybe she wasn't dead.

"Inuyasha?" Miroku called.

Bunching his legs, he sprang upwards, racing to the tops of the trees. He could see a village a couple miles ahead of them.

"There's a village this way!" He shouted and leapt off in the direction that he'd pointed. Kirara transformed once she'd cleared Sango's shoulder, flying effortlessly into the air with both humans on her back as she raced after the hanyou.