Foul is Fair (10 page)

After this makeshift supper, Lani sighed. “Okay, Blankets out. Everyone needs to go to sleep.”

“What?” Megan asked. “You think the situation'll get better if we sleep on it?”

“Sort of,” said Lani. “Not in the biological equivalent of tech support way—” at the raised eyebrows, Lani sighed again at having to explain her joke. “The 'have you tried turning it off, and then on again' way. Anyway, never mind. I just need everybody to sleep, and then I'll handle it. But you have to be asleep.”

“What, are you Santa Claus now?”

“Wrong kind of jolly old elf. Or elf-like thing. Look, there are Restrictions, okay? What I need to do is a night-time thing, a non-menehune-are-asleep thing.”

It was Megan's turn to sigh. “Fine, fine. Just....watch out for owls.”

“Just go to sleep.”

They made a makeshift camp, once Cassia agreed her chariot wouldn't be too harmed by a little industrial use. So Megan curled up in the blankets and lay back. The stars burned bright high above, with an intensity, and a feeling of nearness Megan never remembered stars possessing before. She'd heard in freshman science class that the hotter stars burned, the more fuel they were using up. Recalling that, she'd swear half the stars in the sky could disappear at any moment.

She closed her eyes, trying to ignore the sounds of moving wheels and sliding objects, which became strangely fast as she drifted.

Megan dreamed of the castle hallways.

One of the people she'd seen about the prescriptions her mother wanted had told Megan that dreams weren't accessible to all five senses. The scent of some kind of barbecue wafted through the halls nevertheless. Megan followed her nose, ravenous, around twist after twist and turn after turn in the bizarre complex of ornate carpets, stained wood, and bare stone. She waved to a passing bloodthirsty vine. When she came upon the dining hall the smell was coming from, a sea of nightmare faces crowded around a long table, leaving only one chair empty. The huge bird dressed in the middle as the main course was not a roasted, seasoned chicken or turkey or even something like a duck or goose. It had three heads.

Megan stood in the doorway staring at this for a while, but she was still hungry. A large figure with rough hands the size of her head passed her a fork. She took the empty seat. As bones—both those on the plates and those within the arms of some shoving, elbowing diners—cracked open across the table, Megan had her meal.

When she woke, all she could think was that it was delicious.

She wasn't thinking about whether she was supposed to get up, in the not-quite-light of not-quite-dawn.

“Megan!” Lani shouted, suddenly grabbing onto the riverbank.

Megan looked around. A collection of small trees had been uprooted. Their stumps stood on the riverbank, sliced into angled wedges of varying heights, a different rope tied around each. Across the river, the higher ropes provided handholds as the lower ones were bound together with logs for stepping. The logs started off extremely close but eventually became much more sparse. On the opposite side of the riverbank, the sets of ropes were held down by—or attached to—several large rocks.

“Ah. Not done. Right. Sorry, I'll try to go back to sleep.”

“Nope. Doesn't work,” Lani said, pulling herself up. “You made it count as morning. This job is over.”

“Sorry. Oh, well. We'll just be really, really careful for the last bit.” Megan looked over as the others were getting up … and looked at the chariot. “... oh, yeah.”

Cassia stepped over and kicked one of the wedge-stumps, finding that it had, apparently, taken root again. She gauged the level of the slant of the combined area of wood. She and Lani exchanged grins for a moment, then the satyress looked back. “What do you think, boys?”

The leopard in the aviator helmet sniffed hesitantly. His brother simply stood himself near the chariot, muscles tensing again.

Cassia hitched her cats up and took the chariot far back, to where cleared trees had previously been. After a few moments, Jude and Maxwell started running.

In sophomore biology, Megan had learned that the peregrine falcon is the fastest living animal. For a moment, watching the big cats build up speed, it was harder to believe. As they ran up the rickety-but-rooted ramp, the leopards roared like, well, a motorcycle engine.  Above that was simply a high-pitched “Yeeeeee-haa!”

Both girls let out a breath Megan didn't know they were holding when the wheels of the chariot hit the opposite bank by the slightest margin. Various bits of grass and chips of bark kicked up into the water by the jump attracted the attention of strange, large fish with noticeable teeth.

“Well, our turn now,” Lani said. She looked at the water. “A bit ...uhm ... slower, and more careful.”

“Yeah,” said Megan.

They tentatively edged their way across the bridge, clutching the ropes more and more as they progressed and had to take wider steps onto fewer logs. As they drew closer to the somewhat less-elaborate moorings on the other side, the ropes drastically angled lower, which meant having to crouch lower to hold on, making it even harder to avoid looking closely at the fish-things that snapped just below the logs. It also made the increasingly bigger steps more awkward.

“Ech. I should have worn gloves,” Megan said as her hand and arm were brush-burned by the rope mid-lunge.

“You should have stayed the heck asleep,” Lani muttered.

Eventually, they managed to toss themselves on the riverbank, breathing heavily for a moment, while Cassia, Ashling, Jude, and the Count all stared at them. Maxwell was busy staring at the snapping fish-things, though Cassia said, “Maxwell, no,” without even looking at him.

Cassia then took some of the scattered logs Lani's frenetic menehune activity had left on that side of the river and started to bind them together with rope from the chariot's pack. Lani occasionally glanced over as she was drawing herself up, twitched slightly, and muttered under her breath about workmanship and Restrictions.

“No rules for me, kiddo,” Cassia said cheerfully as she propped the improvised ramp against the stones. “There. That'll be something for the way back.”

“Is this really the time to be planning the way back?” Megan asked.

“You think we'll have time when we've just stolen a magic sword?”

Chapter 16: The Hounds

Now that she could stop worrying about falling into the river, Megan's attention shifted to worrying about the hounds. She was certain that with all the noise Cassia had made, the smell of the cats, the smell of people, or just bad luck, there would be snarling monster hounds investigating at any moment.

Despite her nightmare imaginings, the area remained quiet. Unfortunately, with the terrain shifting from the plains and wooded terrain on the other side of the river to rocky hills, she also had little idea how big the area was, or how close any of the hounds might be. Suspecting the baying monsters from the paintings around any turn or just behind every rise was, to her mind, almost as bad as actually seeing them. Given the slow and careful progress of the group, Ashling's general quiet, and even Cassia and the cats' going tense, Megan guessed she wasn't alone in her paranoia.

She continued to trust in Ashling's sense of direction, the crow flying out over the hills and scouting ahead, then wheeling back to be certain the others were still following. Despite the extra effort in scaling the occasionally difficult hills, particularly for the chariot, the small group kept making the effort, pausing at the top of each rise to look around at the territory below. Megan always felt safest on the hilltops, but, of course, they couldn't stay there for long.

With the group in the midst of one of the climbs down the back side of one large hill, Ashling and the Count came diving back to the group. "They'recomingthey'recomingrunrunnow!" the pixie shouted all the way. At least she did right up until the point where a nightmare beast came racing over the top of a hill, leaping without hesitation, trying to snap at the bird in mid-air. Either Ashling or the crow noticed in time, and managed to climb, but the Count still lost a couple of tail feathers.

Megan stopped, mid-climb, just staring at the monster dog. She was pretty sure she'd seen a few horses that weren't quite that big—and it sounded like it was just the first of many. Sounds of baying started echoing through the hills.

"Megan, come on!" Lani shouted, tugging at Megan's jacket. The pair began to run, almost stumbling a few times. Cassia finally reached back, pulling each of them onto the chariot, though they had to split their effort between clutching the side of the chariot and clinging to Cassia to stay in place, as the satyr urged the leopards into a full run. The vehicle bounced and rattled down the hill. More than once, Megan was pretty sure it was going to flip over—at least as many times as she felt like she was going to be thrown free despite her death-grip, and almost as many as the times she thought she was about to be sick.

They reached the bottom in one piece, and Cassia turned sharply, trying to stay in the valleys between the hills so she wouldn't lose speed. Megan, glancing back, started catching sight of more and more massive forms emerging from all over the area, scaling hills to get a view of the area, and forming up into packs before tearing after them.

Caught up in watching the horde forming up behind them, Megan's head whirled around when she heard one of the cats howl a warning, followed by cursing from Cassia in what Megan was pretty sure was at least three languages. She'd heard of packs of dogs or wolves working together to drive prey into traps, which was what she was guessing had just happened, as more of the monster beasts were swarming out over the nearby hilltops.

Cassia pulled on a rein, and the cats turned sharply, taking the chariot up an incline and over rocky outcroppings large enough to briefly send the vehicle into the air, landing awkwardly on one wheel. Cassia leaned hard the other direction, and despite spending a few moments tipped precariously, the chariot came down on both wheels—just in time for Cassia to need to turn sharply again. She barely avoided the closest hound as it leaped from the top of the hill they'd been climbing, landing where they'd have been had Cassia's reflexes been any less.

"Thiswaythisway!" Ashling called frantically from nearby. Without hesitation, Cassia turned the chariot and charged in the direction of the pixie's voice. Despite the risk of low altitude, the Count dropped to just ahead of the leopards, leading the way at high speed. More of the hounds were closing in on either side of them, but they stayed just ahead of the packs, though a few snapping jaws got close enough that Megan could feel the hot breath.

"Ashling! Higher!" Megan heard herself calling, more than a little surprised that her first thoughts were of getting at least the pixie out of reach. She was even more surprised when the flighty little creature looked back, shook her head firmly, and continued to lead the way, rising only to make sure they were still on a clear path, making adjustments for Cassia to follow.

The chariot made another jump, landing amidst stones and dirt loose enough to send it skidding off to one side, briefly pulling one of the leopards off balance. The shift in momentum was enough to break Lani's grip, and she went tumbling over the side of the chariot, landing hard and headfirst. The cats recovered enough to take off at a run again, either not noticing or not caring that they'd left a passenger behind.

"Lani!" Megan called, leaping off the back of the chariot, reaching her friend before the nearest hounds did. With Lani trying to struggle to her feet, obviously dizzy, Megan tackled her out of the way of the nearest hound.

With more hounds coming from seemingly all directions, Megan did the first thing that came to mind—singing a few bars of the first song she thought of at the top of her lungs. To her surprise, a sudden gust of intense wind picked up some of the loose dirt and debris, carrying it into the eyes of the frontmost hounds.

The lead dogs pulled up short, trying to shake the irritants out of their eyes, and the hounds behind them crashed into the lead rank. Megan tried again, hitting the next bars as another hound came at them. This time, nothing happened. She tensed, seeing the creature bearing down on her, before it pulled up short, snapping at a black, feathered form that just clawed at the side of his head.

"Megan, go!" Ashling shouted, dive bombing a few more of the hounds, weaving and climbing and turning the small pack around.

Once Megan helped Lani to her feet, the two started to run again, though unlike last time they went at a full sprint, now it was Lani who was lagging behind, visibly almost losing her balance a few times. Megan slowed. Lani opened her mouth as if to argue, but Megan interrupted. "Not leaving you."

Coming around another hill, Megan saw a flat expanse, extending quite some way, before reaching another rise, this one an almost vertical wall of rocks and occasional grass patches. From here, it looked like a trap, somewhere the hounds would pin them against with nowhere to run, provided they didn't just run them down in the open plain, which seemed far more likely.

Then her eyes settled on Cassia and the cats, turned and waiting for them. Megan tugged on Lani's arm, starting towards the satyr even as the baying picked up again. A glance back confirmed that the distraction was over, and the hounds were in pursuit again. She turned her head back around, starting to sprint for Cassia, who appeared to be talking to someone—and the cats, though looking agitated, were howling and hissing back. Cassia finally seemed to reach a consensus, shaking her head at the girls running her way.