Mastiff (62 page)

Daeggan handed mine back to me. I stuck it inside my breeches, under the band of my loincloth, rather than risk the light escaping my pocket. Farmer’s glow faded slowly, not going out until we could dimly see the end of the tunnel, a mass of ivy. Tunstall passed his torch to Sabine. Holding up one hand in a “halt” signal, he used the other to draw his long knife. Carefully, silently, he eased out through the curtain of vines.

“Are we home?” Gareth whispered.

Daeggan hushed him. I knelt beside him and shook my head. I didn’t say it would be one of the gods’ great miracles if we made it to the boy’s home.

Halleburn Fiefdom

yet recorded in my memory

At last Tunstall returned to wave us into the open. Once we were outside, Farmer faced the tunnel. He had opened his roll of ribbon to expose two inches of it. His lips moved, shaping silent words.

Lady Nomalla reached out as if to stop him, but Sabine grabbed her by the sleeve. Nobody dared make a sound. Something pressed on me. I shoved Daeggan and Gareth back toward the others but stayed where I was, afraid that Farmer might overdo again.

The feeling moved away. The vines and their heavy wooden trunk were mashed against the stone until trunk and leaves alike flattened. Then, in the light of Farmer’s magic, I saw the rock’s edges and crevices run together. When the liquid stone had erased all sign of the door to the tunnel, it went still and took on the look of old rock.

A tiny line of smoke rose from the embroidered face of the ribbon. I advanced to look at it. A charred line ran through the face of the embroidery, marking where one color had burned. He looked at the others and shrugged. “Ma always said to close the door behind me,” he explained.

We were in the woods, but I saw open ground thirty yards away. Leaving the boys to gawp at Farmer, I advanced into the clearing and beyond, crossing a wide swathe of grass. I reached the edge of the cliff.

The moon was gone, but starlight and the castle torches below were enough to see by. I did not risk my stone lamp. Halleburn lay to my right atop its rock finger. We were on the cliff northwest of the lake and the castle. I wasn’t close enough to see the guards’ faces as they walked the walls, but I was close enough to see
them
. To my left there was a path about two yards wide, made of tamped, bare earth. It followed the cliff’s edge.

The castle was quiet, the guards bunched up to gossip on the walls. The prisoners in the other cells would have gotten free by now. Farmer’s battle with Elyot had been a noisy one, sure to draw attention. Someone would have entered the great hall to see the warring mages. Others would have found the guards that drank the drugged ale, or Elyot, or the children who had feared to join us. A servant or guard would have checked Sabine and Tunstall’s chambers. Missing them, they might have thought to call Nomalla. The alarm should be out.

Yet the guards returned to their pacing. I heard no sound of the drawbridge as it was lowered to allow pursuers to ride out, and Farmer had said nothing of meddling with the chains this time. It was all wrong.

The traitor among us must have left signs of our escape.

I would know who the traitor was only when the trap was sprung, I realized. By then all we had done and all we’d endured, all Their Majesties had endured, would be wasted.

Up there, the night breezes pushing at my face, I knew that in the end, I could only really trust Gareth, mayhap Daeggan, Pounce, and Achoo. If needful, I would leave everyone, even Farmer, to get the prince away free. It was the only way to be certain I did not have a traitor at my back.

My mind set, I ran back to my companions. They were there, pasting mud and leaves on one another. The boys even helped Nomalla to cover her armor as Sabine pinned the other mot’s bright hair in place and coated it. The lady had worn no helm.

“Cooper, darken that skin,” Tunstall ordered me. “Let’s not stand out more than we already do.”

“Do we know where we’re going?” Farmer asked.

I pulled a close cap from my pack and drew it over my head, tucking my braid into it until my hair was hidden. Then I smeared all of myself that I could reach. Farmer did the back of my neck. I did his. No one noticed if we took a few extra seconds in touching.

As we worked, Sabine told us, “Mattes and I figured out a plan with Nomalla’s help.”

Daeggan spat on the ground.

Nomalla glared down her thin nose at him. “I don’t normally explain myself to slaves, but you cannot know my father if you believe he will accept me back into his house after this.”

“Enough,” Tunstall ordered. “We’re dead deer if we’re caught. Now listen—Nomalla says there’s a village a couple miles off. We can steal horses there.”

Sabine picked up the tale. “We want to try for King’s Reach—their loyalty is unquestioned. We’ll steal horses all the way if we must.”

Inside, I winced. King’s Reach was across the Great Road North at the headwaters of the Halseander. We’d have to steal a lot of horses to get there, unless we found good ones, but what other choices did we have? And all this depended as well on our pursuit. We had to
move
.

We were nearly ready when we heard something crashing in the woods. Tunstall, Sabine, and I grabbed our weapons, putting ourselves between the lads, Farmer, and Nomalla.

You worry overmuch
, Pounce told us. I knew everyone could hear it, because the lady knight and the lads turned to stare at the cat. In the darkness of the brush, he was only a pair of gleaming purple eyes.
This time, anyway. I told her to make noise so you’d have warning
.

Farmer was explaining Pounce to the boys when my poor Achoo, her curls tangled, leaves and twigs in her fur, leaped from the undergrowth into my arms. Tunstall grabbed my long dagger before she speared herself on it. I laughed as my hound washed off all the dirt I’d put so carefully on my face. Then I dropped to my knees with her. While she wiggled and whined, I dumped the meat I’d stolen from the kitchens onto the cloth I’d used to carry it. Achoo ate in several big gulps while Sabine, Tunstall, and Farmer petted her and told her what a wonderful creature she was.

I kept her in my mind
, Pounce explained, winkling a bit of pork from the pile before Achoo could devour it.
She had her work to do to keep away from the normal hunting parties, but she did it
.

“Is that
your
dog?” asked Gareth.

I turned to look at him. He and Daeggan had inched back to stand with Nomalla, the outsiders at our family welcome. “She is a hound,” I explained. Nomalla snorted. I ignored her. “Achoo—that’s her name—is a scent hound. She’s one of the finest—”

With the smell of pork out of her nose, Achoo looked around. She saw the other three members of the group, but most important of all, she
smelled
one of them, the one that she had tracked for so many miles. She threw herself at the prince, whimpering and wagging her tail as she knocked the boy over and licked his face clean. Nomalla drew her blade in a flash, I think to protect Gareth, but “It’s all right,” Sabine told her. “Achoo’s just enthusiastic.”

Gareth, met with real affection for the first time in weeks, wrapped his arms around my hound’s neck and wept.

“The king keeps hounds?” I asked him. “Did you have one?”

Gareth looked at me, still hanging on to Achoo. “They killed them. The bad men.” There was a hardness in his face that belonged to a man, not a little fellow like him. “I want to kill them.”

Tunstall knelt so he was on the same level as Gareth. “That’s what we’re going to do,” he said gravely. “Capture them that hurt your friends and take them for judgment.”

Gareth nodded. “Then let us go,” he said, a little old man in a child’s slave clothes.

Achoo would not leave him. She nuzzled him all over, as if to see if anything was broken, and licked the mud off of one of his arms. Daeggan covered Gareth with more dirt. Achoo smelled Gareth on the older lad and licked him as well, ignoring Daeggan’s complaints.

At last Farmer picked up Gareth. We formed a column, Sabine and Nomalla in front, Tunstall behind them, Farmer, Achoo, and the lads next, and me last. At first I thought Tunstall and I would quarrel over that final spot, but he gave over when Sabine hissed, “Mattes! Let’s go!”

He followed her. I felt much better about being in that last spot. I was still inclined to trust Farmer of all the other adults because my gut said he was true. Of course, my gut had been wrong before. Still, not everyone of these folk could be false. If I kept worrying, I would fail to listen to the dark, so I turned my attention to listening.

Up to the cliff’s edge and northwest we followed the path as quietly as possible, even the lads. That was how we came to startle a doe and her fawns as they grazed by the path. We halted briefly for the rustle and thump of a large creature built low to the ground. I sent up a prayer to the gods that it be a bear and that it stumble across anyone hunting us. I was certain that our scent had frightened it, unless the big thing was simply clumsy. I’d never been with such a quiet group.

The trail turned away from the cliff, down through a ripple in the ground and into the trees. Now we had cover for an enemy ambush on both sides. When we stopped at a spring for Achoo and the others to drink, Tunstall insisted on taking Gareth to give Farmer a rest. It was all done by hand signs. I moved up next to Farmer while Tunstall settled Gareth on his hip—like Farmer, Sabine, and me, Tunstall had a shoulder pack—and took my man’s hand.

With everyone’s thirst quenched and the dirt replaced on those whose faces had gotten wet, we pressed on. An hour or so later Daeggan began to fall behind. It was amazing he’d kept up until then, kitchen work not preparing him for long marches. He whispered that we should leave him, but no one accepted the offer. Nomalla and Sabine cut two saplings to equal length. Farmer sacrificed his tunic and did a small bit of magic that bound the ends of the side slits together. Once the poles were slid through the armholes and slits, both lads could ride the litter if they lay sideways. Nomalla and Sabine took the first turn carrying it and Tunstall went to the head of our line.

The path continued to lead down. It got steeper, slowing us. It was so hard to see under the trees that I passed my stone lamp up to Tunstall. He used it low to the ground, keeping his hands in a shield over it to limit how much light would show. We followed the path to a stream, then up and down into a second deep cut. We stopped by a spring near the crest of the second cut to rest again and drink. I prayed the water was clear, because we had no other.

“What’s that way?” Tunstall asked, pointing northeast.

“The cliffs go all around this side of the valley,” Sabine replied. “Another trail leads out of the village where we’re bound. Keep on the cliff trail and you reach Prachet town. We want the southwest road out of there.”

Farmer crouched by the boys, who had crawled out of the litter. He held each by the hand as they stared at him. Nomalla lay flat on her back, catching her breath and staring at the sky. Such a hike in armor was new to her, I guessed, but she was tough. She’d kept up without complaint.

Sabine went to the hilltop and wriggled through the grass to survey the land beyond. The village should be there. Achoo lay on her belly beside the stream, watching me. I could not see Pounce, but it
was
very dark. After drinking his fill, Tunstall followed Sabine.

Soon, I thought. The traitor would have to move soon.

It was midnight by the stars when Sabine and Tunstall waved us onward. Pounce and Achoo led this time, trotting down the grassy slope toward the small village below. The lads would have run behind them, suddenly full of renewed strength, but we kept them back, Farmer and me. The warriors went next, then the rest. I kept glancing back, but there was no one on the hilltop.

The village dogs, the four-legged sort, did not make a sound, though they came to sniff Achoo and Pounce. The other animals, the cows, goats, sheep, and geese, were also quiet. I couldn’t know if this came from Farmer or Pounce, but I was grateful for it. Geese are much harder to silence than dogs.

We were partway through the village when soldiers ran out of several houses into the street, swords bared. Farmer grabbed Daeggan; I, Gareth. We raced into a thin opening between dwellings and out past their gardens. There were no other houses behind these—it was a very small village—only fallow fields where Dolsa, Ironwood, and Orielle stood in a bubble of light. They cast some manner of glittering veil over Farmer.

He blew it apart without appearing to do anything. “Go!” he ordered me as he put Daeggan on the ground. “Tunstall, take the boy!” he cried. He shrugged off his pack and used it to block whatever nastiness Ironwood threw at him then. I’d had no idea the shoulder pack was magical.

I froze, staring at Farmer as he opened up his entire roll of ribbon. It fell to the ground in tumbled loops, gleaming in a multitude of colors.

“Do you think you’ll fight us with
embroidery
?” Ironwood cried.

“I think I’ll beat you with your own power,” Farmer shouted back. Blue fire lashed out from his side, tangling itself around the claw that was flying at Daeggan.

Tunstall popped out of the thin gap we had used. He grabbed Daeggan and pushed Gareth and me toward the barns that lay to our right. “The girls will hold the soldiers—they’ve backed into a house they can defend,” he said, his voice rasping as we raced for the buildings. “Farmer has the mages. Our duty is the prince.”

I said nothing. Tunstall was a good Dog, even a great one, but I had always thought that, forced to a choice between Sabine and duty, he would choose Sabine. He had confused me.

He must have guessed what I was thinking, because he glanced at me and laughed. “She said if I didn’t go with the prince, she’d never see me again!”

He ran past a couple of sheds and into a horse barn with Daeggan under his arm. I spared a look at Farmer. The length of ribbon that he held blazed in five different colors as thin wisps of smoke wrapped around his face. Ironwood was shrieking spells as Dolsa and Orielle shaped magic with their hands. “Gods, take care of Farmer,” I whispered, and ducked into the barn behind Tunstall.