Chasing Shadows (Saving Galerance, Book 1) (18 page)

Giving Ashlin a few minutes head-start, she headed into the
forest the way she had gone. Travelling slowly, she used the little signs of
broken twigs and depressed grass to tell which way she went. Her trail took her
a half mile further into the forest, then over a river, where she turned to the
east, going until she reached a meadow. Ashlin’s tracks showed that she circled
around the meadow so that she would not be seen in the open, and then continued
travelling north east.

Finally, a few minutes later, Norabel saw a wooden structure
through the trees. She made sure to stay hidden as she approached, for she
imagined that Ashlin would not take kindly to having been followed, especially
since she didn’t seem to like Norabel all that much in the first place.

Inching closer, she realized with a surprise that the
structure in the woods wasn’t just some spindly shack that had been abandoned
long before the Pax. This was a strong, comfortable cabin, with a smoking
chimney, front porch, and even a horse tethered to a tree nearby. Her eyes were
drawn to the smoking chimney, and she wondered why Ashlin had kept it burning
while she was away. It was dangerous, and that kind of carelessness didn’t seem
characteristic of her.

Then, through the walls of the cabin, she could hear Ashlin
speaking. She couldn’t make out the words, but the situation became that much
clearer. Ashlin was not living here alone. Norabel’s heart pounded against the
wall of her chest, and she hugged the tree in front of her a little tighter. It
seemed as if there was another secret that Ashlin was keeping from them. But
why wouldn’t she tell them that she was living with someone? Unless the person
needed to be kept secret.

Norabel wanted to leave right then, but she forced herself
to stay. She had jumped to conclusions about Ashlin once before, and she wasn’t
going to do that again.

A man’s voice spoke from inside the cabin, and a moment
later the front door opened. Ashlin strode outside with a man that looked to be
in his early fifties. Maybe this was the guardian that had found her in the
tree as a baby. But Ashlin had said that her guardians had died a few years
ago.

“What did you catch for dinner,” she asked the man, taking a
step forward on the porch.

“Found a rabbit,” the man said, pointing to a string that
had been tied between two trees. The limp body of the rabbit hung upside-down
from it.

Ashlin turned back to him, a look of anger on her face. “One
rabbit?” Her hand came up and lightly hit the man on the side of the head.
Norabel stifled a gasp, her own bruise stinging in sympathy.

“I’m gonna need more than one skinny rabbit,” Ashlin
complained. “Starting a rebellion takes a lot of strength.”

“Very good,” the man nodded subserviently. “I’ll see what
else I can find.”

He went back inside the cabin and returned with his bow and
arrows. As he disappeared into the forest, Ashlin walked towards a large chair
on the porch and slouched down inside it. There was a wooden beam that came up
from the end of the porch, and she took out a dagger and expertly embedded it
in the wood with a swift flick of her wrist.

“Rela!” she called out, reaching for another dagger that was
stored up her boot and embedding it in the beam as well.

The cabin creaked, and a woman appeared on the front porch a
second later.

Ashlin stared at the wooden beam, sending a third dagger
into it as she said, “The fireplace needs more wood.”

“Yes, you’re right. I’ll get on that right now.”

Norabel watched in stunned silence as the woman came down
from the porch and went around back to the pile of wood. She began to chop away
as Ashlin sat on the front porch, throwing the same three knives at the wood
again and again.

Norabel could hardly believe what she was seeing! Ashlin
seemed so passionate about life, seemed like she was such a hard worker. But
when it came to menial tasks like wood chopping and hunting, she turned
downright lazy.

Stealing away from the scene, Norabel didn’t know what to
do. Should she tell someone? But if she did, what would she say? That Ashlin
lives a double life as a lazy person that likes to hit her supposed “dead”
guardians and make them do all the work. It sounded absurd! She wouldn’t have
believed it if someone had tried to tell her. The best thing to do, she decided,
was to say nothing and keep a close eye on her. There could be any number of
reasons why she kept this part of her life a secret. However, as she went over
the possible explanations in her head, none of them sounded good.

*

The sunset swayed through the trees and danced in Hunter’s
eyes in bright orange and deep red waves. He hadn’t been asleep, but he had
closed his eyes for most of the day, realizing that if he was going to die by
the end of it, he would rather spend it inside the fantasy in his head rather
than tied to a tree.

A few of the branches of a nearby ash tree rustled. An
archer had been sent in secret to watch him in case he tried to escape. Hunter
only knew because the man had climbed down once to relieve himself when he
thought that Hunter was sleeping. The tree rustled again as the archer dropped
down from it, racing back to camp.

He could hear shouts of alarm coming from that direction.
Something had gotten them spooked. At first Hunter didn’t know what, but then
he heard it. Hoof-beats. Not just one, but a whole pack of them. They were
moving too fast for any Pax convoy he had ever seen. The only thing it sounded
like was the gallop of horses into battle.

Through the trees, he heard someone yell, “No riders!”

Hunter’s forehead scrunched in confusion. Why would the
horses have no riders? Was the Pax really there, or had a pack of their horses
simply escaped?

As these thoughts ran through his head, two men came
sprinting through the trees towards him. He recognized the father and son that
had spoken with him earlier. They both had their swords drawn as they raced up
to his tree.

The older man tried to catch his breath as he pointed his
sword down at Hunter, saying, “There is a pack of horses coming this way with
no riders on them. Explain that.”

Thinking quickly, Hunter decided that he could use their
confusion to his advantage.

“I let them out,” he answered. “I figured, if I was stealing
one horse, why not let them all go.”

“Really?” the son asked, impressed. “You nicked the whole
Breccan horse-supply!”

Hunter turned to the kid and noticed that something on his
ankle was catching in the sunlight. There was a knife sticking out of the top
part of his boot. It hadn’t been there before. He had probably grabbed it when
he heard the horses coming their way.

Earlier that day, Hunter had managed to loop his legs
through his arms so that his hands were bound in front of him instead of in
back. His chest was still bound to the tree, but if the boy could just get
close enough, he might be able to grab the knife. Luckily, both father and son were
too flustered by the sudden appearance of a whole fleet of horses to notice
that his hands had changed position.

“If you’re trying to trick us!” the father warned, looking
down at him through the shaft of his sword. Hunter noticed a strange
inscription going up the steel of the blade. It was unlike any of the swords he
had ever seen in Galerance. And there was a three pronged swirl at the top that
he knew he had seen before.

“I’m not trying to make you do anything,” Hunter said,
trying to calm the man down. “I’m just telling you the truth. Those horses
don’t have riders because I let them go. So you can either stay here with me
chatting about it, or you can try and capture them for yourselves. It’s your
choice.”

“Dad,” the son urged, growing impatient. “He has to be
telling the truth. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“No,” the man said gravely. “You know what else makes sense.
An ambush. They wait for us to take the horses and then slaughter us from
behind.”

“With all due respect sir,” Hunter said, “that makes no
sense. If the Pax set their own horses loose, they would have no way of telling
which way they’d go. And that’s assuming they even know that your group exists
and exactly where you were going to be today. If you ask me, it makes no sense
to set a pack of horses free on the off chance that they might drum up a few
rebels hiding in the woods.”

“See dad,” the son said, taking a step closer to where
Hunter was tied. “We should be going after those horses right now before they
get too far away. Just imagine how much faster we could travel with a whole
fleet of them in our camp!”

His father paused to think about it, and Hunter took the
opportunity to reach for the boy’s leg, carefully grabbing ahold of the tip of
the knife.

“Come on dad!” the son urged again, stepping towards his
father.

Hunter immediately let go of the knife, but it had been out
of the kid’s boot far enough that its weight caused it to fall out and onto the
floor.

“We have to go now!” the boy said, unaware that his knife
was missing.

Hunter’s body was blocking it from both their views, and
they would only notice its absence if the boy actually bent down to retrieve
it.

“Alright,” the father relented. “But we’ll leave the second
I spot anything suspicious.” They both started to jog back through the trees,
but the man looked over his shoulder at Hunter. “If something happens to my
boy,” the man called out. “I’m coming for you!”

Hunter gulped, hoping that the abandoned horses weren’t, in
fact, an ambush, and he had just sent both of them to their deaths. Though they
had captured him, he didn’t want them to die. Even though they were enemies of
the Pax, they didn’t deserve that.

When the father and son were no longer visible through the
trees, he stretched his hands out, hastily grasping onto the knife. First he
cut the bonds around his hands, accidentally nicking his wrists a few times in
the process. When those bonds were finally cut, he sliced the rope around his
middle with a few quick motions, and was up and running to his horse.

With a stroke of luck, he found that his pack was still
strapped to the back of his saddle. No doubt it had been searched and all that
had been found were food provisions, a blanket, and a bit of Snapper to start a
fire. Nothing bore the seal of the Pax, which was perhaps why they hadn’t taken
it away yet. Maybe they really were in doubt about whether he was an official
or not.

Untying his horse, he mounted up and decided on a heading.
The fleet of horses were coming from the west, and luckily he had to keep
travelling east. Kicking his horse into action, he began to gallop away. He
kept his eyes peeled for any stray arrows that might be flying towards him, but
after several minutes of hard riding, he did not see any sign that the rebel
camp had followed him.

Hunter shook his head at his good fortune. Not only had the
horses been an opportune distraction to help him escape, they had also provided
the perfect sound cover so that no one could hear him galloping away.

Travelling east at a rate that any horseman would be proud
of, he kept off the road and put as much distance between him and his captors
as he possibly could. He figured it wouldn’t be long until they discovered him
missing, and now that they had horses, they would be able to travel much
faster. Of course, none of them had been taught to ride as he had. He should be
safe as long as he kept riding until night fall.

For the next few days, Hunter kept himself to a rigorous
schedule of riding and staying alert. He had already lost a day’s ride, and he
was determined to make that up and then some. A strong determination and
longing to return home fueled his steps, pushing him nearly to his breaking
point. The only thing that kept him from travelling straight to his destination
was knowing that his horse couldn’t take it. Every stop he forced himself to
take was not because he longed for a rest, but because he couldn’t stand making
his horse suffer any more.

It was on the fourth day after he had escaped from the rebel
camp that he spotted a mountain in the distance. It was a lone mountain with a
uniquely curved snowy peak at the top. This was the land-mark he had been told
to look for so he would know the forest of Liadrel was nearby.

Dismounting from his horse, he rummaged in his pack and took
out the white flag he had been given. Then, tying it to his horse’s tail, he
got back on and searched for the main road that led into Liadrel. A few minutes
later he spotted a wooden sign through the trees. Riding over to it, he found
the road. He had not been riding on it for five minutes before he heard the
sound of a horse coming down the path in front of him.

Hunter chose to dismount so that the white flag on his
horse’s tail would be more visible. As he stood there, holding the reins in his
hands and waiting for the horseman to appear, he looked down at the dirt path
underfoot and noticed something strange. There were deep rivets in the ground,
indicating that something heavy had been carted through on several occasions.
There were also signs of heavy horse traffic coming to and fro, and even the
mark of boot prints. For a forest that was supposed to be forbidden, there sure
seemed to be a lot of people streaming in and out of it.

Hunter quickly put these thoughts out of his head as the
horseman rounded the corner in front of him. He was carrying a bow in his
hands, but no arrow had been loaded into it.

“Who sent you?” the man called out, keeping a few lengths
between their horses.

“Chief Auberon of Breccan,” Hunter replied.

The man nodded and looked to the tail of his horse. “You’re
a fast rider. We weren’t expecting you for at least another day.”

“You won’t find another rider in Breccan faster than me,” he
said, choosing not to tell him about the rebel camp that had captured him on
his way over. Somehow he felt like he would be betraying his fantasy if he told
the Pax of their existence.

“Wait there,” the man ordered, turning his horse around and
trotting back the way he had come.

Only a few minutes had passed before another man on
horseback arrived. This man dismounted from his horse when he saw Hunter, and
then went to his pack and pulled out a white cloth bag. He began to walk
towards him, and Hunter stepped forward as well, meeting him halfway.

“This is your cargo,” the man told him. He dug his hand inside
and pulled out three silver boxes. He put two of them back in the bag and
carefully lifted the lid of the third. Hunter peered inside and saw that it was
filled with a black powder. An involuntary shiver of fear ran through his
spine. He knew how dangerous Black Powder was, but was careful not to make any
comment on it.

“This one,” the man said, extending the box to him, “you are
to take back to the stronghold and give to Auberon.”

Hunter took the box, and the man went back to the bag for
the other two. Opening them one at a time, they each revealed a white powder.

“These,” he explained, “you are to drop off first to a man
named Brin. You will find him in the woods just outside of Breccan.” The man
dug his hand into the bag and pulled out a folded piece of parchment. “You can
find him with this map.”

Hunter took it and nodded.

“And there’s something else,” the man added. “When you see
his cabin, make sure you only knock if you see a white shirt hanging on the
front door. If it’s not there, you leave and come back when it is. It’s very
important that you do this.”

“Yes sir.”

“If there’s no shirt on the front door, leave that second
and don’t look back. And when you do speak to Brin, don’t ask any questions.
Just give him the two boxes, and then go.”

“I understand,” Hunter assured him.

“You had better,” the man said, eyeing him. “Or else it’s
your head.”

The man held the white bag out for him to take, and once Hunter
had it in his hands, the officer headed back to his horse.

“I expect you’re tired,” the man called out, angling his
horse to turn around. “You probably want food and rest.”

Hunter did not answer him, but instead waited for him to
continue.

“Well, you’ll find none here,” he said. “Continue down this
road, and you will be shot.” He glanced back at him over his shoulder, adding,
“No offense.”

With that, the man galloped away, leaving Hunter with
nothing else to do but to turn around and start the long and dangerous journey
back home.

*

For the week that passed after the stable job, the Harbinger
team did not let up in their persistency. Though the Pax could no longer send
carts of goods to Cashel because they were missing their horses, the officials still
took what they could from the villagers and carried the baskets through town in
groups of four men. The Harbingers managed to commandeer one of these baskets
one night, re-taking everything inside and leaving the basket flaming right on
the steps of the stronghold.

The next day, Ashlin appeared in the north end of the city,
stopping a few officials from beating up a group of villagers that refused to
hand over the money in their pockets. She stopped the fight in all of one
minute, humiliating the officials in the process and dealing them some pretty
large bruises.

Luckily they hadn’t needed Norabel for jobs like this, and
she was able to spend some of her free time tending to Wren’s mother with the
Timber Ivy she collected. Though she never seemed to get any better, Norabel
was at least able to report back to Wren every day and give her word of her
mother.

However, the Harbinger’s latest stunt took away all of
Norabel’s free time. It was of such a great magnitude that it had to be carefully
coordinated with the Whispers of Breccan. Ashlin wanted to put a piece of
parchment into each person’s Amias Gift one morning, bearing the Harbinger
motto and listing off several names of known leachers. In order to write them
all out, Ashlin had Norabel, along with Malachy and his kids, working
practically non-stop to get them all done. Ashlin called it her “Declaration of
War on the Leachers,” saying it would leave more of an impact if she called
them out individually. Since Norabel wrote over a thousand of her declarations,
she knew very well that Fletcher’s name was on that list, and it made her
uneasy every time she wrote it out.

Fletcher had been coming to her house nearly every night
that week, taking food and money and demanding her to do little things for him.
He hadn’t hit her again, not until he woke up one morning and found his name on
a hit list. That night, when he showed up at her house, all he took was her
blood. He punched her right in the face, splitting her lip open, and left the
second after he did it, saying, “I just felt like doing that.”

Though he had no idea that she was behind that list, she
still felt as if she had secretly defied him. In at least a small way, she had
made him accountable for what he was doing to her. But this knowledge didn’t
make her feel any better. Seeing his name on the list only made Fletcher more
violent. She shuddered to think if the other leachers on the list were taking
it out on their victims the same way he was.

That next morning, Norabel looked at her reflection, saw the
split lip and the fading bruise by her eye, and decided that she had stayed
silent long enough. She needed to feel safe again. She needed to know that she
wasn’t alone in this. She wanted her friends to help her through this. And, if
nothing else, she wanted them to feel angry over what was happening. Then maybe
waking up to a bruised and bloodied face wouldn’t feel so bad.

The Harbinger team had arranged to meet at Logan and Mason’s
house that morning since it was a Toil-Free day, and Norabel decided that it
was probably the best time to tell them. When she got to their home on the
north sector, she could hear Logan around the side of the house, talking with
Aleta. By the way they were speaking, they seemed to be discussing something
earnestly, and she didn’t want to interrupt them. Walking inside the house, she
looked for Mason, but did not find him in the front room or kitchen like she
thought she would.

“Mason?” she called out timidly.

He did not reply, but she heard a noise coming from a back
room. It was the sound of metal on metal, and it seemed to be coming from one
of the bedrooms. At first Norabel paused, not wanting to have to speak with him
back there. But she reminded herself that this was important; she was being
beaten, and it needed to stop.

Taking in a deep breath, she walked down the small hallway
to the open door at the end. Inside, she found Mason kneeling on the ground.
There was a floorboard missing in front of him, and he was reaching down and
pulling several objects out. There was already a small pile of metal tools,
slips of parchment, and various other mementoes beside him. Norabel couldn’t
say exactly what it all was, but by the way Mason was looking at them, they
seemed to belong to a part of his past—to a time when his parents were still
alive.

She hated to have to walk in on him like this. She made sure
to stay in the doorway so he wouldn’t feel like his privacy was being invaded
as she called out to him. “Uh, Mason?” she said quietly, a hint of remorse
painting her voice. “I need to talk to you.”

Mason didn’t look up at her as he announced gruffly, “This
isn’t a good time.”

He dug his hand inside the hole in the floorboards and took out
what looked like a metal chisel.

“It’s just,” she stuttered, twisting her hands in front of
her. “I think…” She took a deep breath, wondering why it was so hard to admit
what she had to say. “I think I’m in trouble. There’s this guy…”

She stopped herself as Mason tossed a stack of parchment
onto the floor and muttered something to himself as he searched through them.

“Mason?” she asked, a stab of pain reaching her heart as she
realized he hadn’t even been listening to her.

“You say something?” he asked, staring from the parchment in
his hands to the chisel that was resting at his knees.

He hadn’t taken the time to look up at her once this whole
time; he was so preoccupied with the stash before him. But Norabel figured that
the moment he saw her face, he would realize that something was wrong, that
what she was trying to tell him was important enough to listen to.

“Will you just look at me for one second?” she exclaimed,
her tiny voice sounding flustered and cracked with exhaustion.

Finally his head shot up at her, and she thought for sure he
would notice the blood on her lip, but he was too angry to see it.

“You know, I could do with a bit of space right now,
Norabel,” he said, half yelling the words in annoyance. “Do you think you could
do that? Just a little space!” He raised his hand, still clinging onto a piece
of parchment, and motioned to the window. “Just go outside and talk to my
brother until its time. You’re good at that, remember?”

He went back to the parchment in his hands, but Norabel was
so stunned she couldn’t move. Maybe her mother had been right. Maybe she could
never make him happy again. Or maybe she was looking at it the wrong way. Maybe
what was making him so unhappy…was her.

She bit down on her tongue to keep her emotions from
spilling out, and turned away from his room. With shaky legs she walked down
the hallway, feeling the blood in her lip throb and the room before her turn
fuzzy with tears. She took a deep breath and forced the tears back inside. She
was here as a Harbinger, and Harbingers didn’t cry.

Doing what Mason said, she went outside in search of Logan.
Aleta passed her on the way, but she was so deep in thought that she didn’t
notice her. When Norabel turned the corner, she found Logan with his back
leaning against the wall and his palms pressed into his forehead. Something
must have happened between him and Aleta, she realized, and it didn’t seem to
have ended well. There was no way she could tell him about her leacher problems
now when he seemed to be dealing with heavy issues of his own.

She took a few shy steps towards him and stopped several feet
away. “Are you okay, Logan?” she asked.

He took his palms from his forehead, but seeing who it was,
he placed them back down, saying in a half moan, “Oh, I’ll be alright…I think.”
He let his hands fall, and he stared down at his boots. “Aleta and I are
just…we just have to work through some things is all.”

“But you’ll be okay though, right?”

He closed his tired eyes and nodded. “She’s just concerned
about everything we’re doing. I’ve told her that,” he paused, his face showing
a hint of embarrassment. “I’ve told her that I want to start a family with her.
I’ll marry her the second she’ll have me. But she said that you can’t start a
family and a war at the same time.”

Logan looked out at her and saw that she was staring down at
the dirt in worry and discontent. “Don’t worry, I’m not leaving you,” he
reassured her with a smile.

She nodded to the ground, but she couldn’t shake the feeling
of pain from her features.

“Norabel,” he said, taking a step closer to her. “Is
something wrong?”

She shook her head, keeping her eyes pointed to her feet.

He took another step closer. “I heard Mason a minute ago,”
he told her apologetically.