Vincent’s first, immediate reaction was a fit of hot jealousy and he hurriedly slammed a mental door in the face of that feeling. Rage would get him nowhere and only cloud his judgement. And had he not sworn to himself that if she would at any given point chose herself another man, he would bear it like he had everything else before? After taking a deep breath he asked one of the farmers who had brought the body in where they had found him, and the man took him to the place, outside the city gates and atop the low mound of rubble covered with earth and sand that ringed the city. Vincent thanked the man and examined the spot.
There was a large blotch of blood in the sand where Cobra’s body had been lying, and kneeling down, Vincent could see no traces of kicked-up dust or scrapes of fingers that would have indicated death throes, so he had died very quickly. Since there had been several people running around the spot after finding the body any footprints that could have given him a lead were long gone, but he still trained his eyes on the ground in the hopes of finding anything; only what, he couldn’t say.
His patience was rewarded when after a few minutes, he saw, a few feet away from the place where Cobra had died and downward on the slope of the fortification, another set of tracks.
Several pairs of feet having trampled down dried grass.
Something large and heavy being dragged along.
A few drops of dried blood and beside them a stone, about the size of a fist, with a trace of blood on it.
More footsteps, leading away from the city, fainter already as they moved out of the lee of the fortification. Vincent knew he need not follow them, once out in the open desert they would long since have disappeared, covered by the relentless desert wind and the dust it carried. And then something else caught his eye: the sheen of something metallic in the dust a few steps away. He knelt down and wiped his fingers across it, and at the same moment, his heart froze in his chest.
Before him in the dust, attached to a torn leather string and mounted in its frame of copper wire, was the Platinum Chip.
Turn Wounds into Wisdom 2c/?
There was a large blotch of blood in the sand where Cobra’s body had been lying, and kneeling down, Vincent could see no traces of kicked-up dust or scrapes of fingers that would have indicated death throes, so he had died very quickly. Since there had been several people running around the spot after finding the body any footprints that could have given him a lead were long gone, but he still trained his eyes on the ground in the hopes of finding anything; only what, he couldn’t say.
His patience was rewarded when after a few minutes, he saw, a few feet away from the place where Cobra had died and downward on the slope of the fortification, another set of tracks.
Several pairs of feet having trampled down dried grass.
Something large and heavy being dragged along.
A few drops of dried blood and beside them a stone, about the size of a fist, with a trace of blood on it.
More footsteps, leading away from the city, fainter already as they moved out of the lee of the fortification.
Vincent knew he need not follow them, once out in the open desert they would long since have disappeared, covered by the relentless desert wind and the dust it carried.
And then something else caught his eye: the sheen of something metallic in the dust a few steps away.
He knelt down and wiped his fingers across it, and at the same moment, his heart froze in his chest.
Before him in the dust, attached to a torn leather string and mounted in its frame of copper wire, was the Platinum Chip.
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