Six of Spades

Keywords - Upright: the trail lost, the losing-place found  ·  Inverted: the fault as signpost, a doubled trail read true

Upright

The hunting term for losing the scent. The hounds failed the immediate task but their last heading is information worth following.

The pack has gone quiet and circling: the scent is lost, and no urging will invent it. But a trail does not vanish arbitrarily - it ends where something changed. Water, stone, a cart, a trick. The fault is a fact about the quarry, and the ground where the hounds mill is the most informative ground on the hunt. The chase has failed; the investigation has just been handed its first clue.

Inverted

Read rightly, the fault is an arrow. Quarry that breaks its own trail does it with intent, and intent has a direction: the doubling-back, the wading, the cart it hitched a ride on all point somewhere. The hounds cannot follow reasoning - but you can, and casting the pack where the reasoning leads is the next draw.

In Play

Upright. The pack loses the scent at the mill-race and circles, baffled - which tells Edda the man knew the water was here, and came this way on purpose.

Inverted. Knew the water, used the water: Edda walks the far bank until the ground softens, and casts the hounds where a wet man would have climbed out.