The Amber Legacy (25 page)

‘What’s a big city?’

Dawn hugged her youngest son, and to Meg she said, ‘I’m going to have to do a lot of explaining.’

L
eader Westridge oversaw the packing of Meg’s gear on her horse, before he offered to help her mount. ‘I haven’t ridden much,’ she apologised.

‘Then we’ll travel as best we can,’ he said, as he adjusted her stirrups and tightened the girth strap. ‘It’s about twelve to fourteen days to Port of Joy. You’ll be a seasoned rider by then.’

Dawn, Mykel, Daryn and Peter waited on the dark road, at the edge of the torchlight, watching the archers prepare to leave. Sunfire sat with them, his ears attentively pointed. Fletcher Archer and his family and a handful of villagers were gathered to see Meg off on an adventure beyond the scope of anyone in Summerbrook. Meg searched for Emma in the gathering, but when she ascertained that the old woman wasn’t present she was disappointed. Whisper shifted to a comfortable position under her thick woollen vest, and she wondered how the soldiers were going to react when they learned that one of their travelling companions was a bush rat. ‘Group ready?’ Westridge asked, as he swung into his saddle. He followed it with, ‘Ride,’ and the company set off at walking pace towards the bridge on the southern road.

Meg went to wave to her family, who waved along with the other villagers, but she quickly clutched the reins instead, adjusting to the horse’s motion. She recalled the brief riding lessons that Treasure had given her, and that painful memory evoked a sharp pang in her heart. Hidden by the morning darkness, tears leaked down her cheeks as she rode out of Summerbrook, leaving behind her childhood home. Beyond the bridge, at the junction to Emma’s cottage, she hoped to see the old woman waiting, but the path was empty, and there was no light at the cottage.
The old woman must be sleeping in
, she thought. She was going to miss Emma’s brusque reading and writing lessons, and teaching of spells.

The eastern horizon glowed orange as the morning sun rose over the ranges. The dark silhouettes of three kangaroos hopped from the roadway into the bush and sat on their haunches with the curiosity of wild creatures to watch the passing troop. To the west, the sky was fading to a pale blue and a line of pink and purple cloud underscored the moon’s pale face as it headed for its rest. Meg was always fascinated by the moments in seasons when the sun and the moon sat at opposite extremes in the sky.

‘Is that yours?’

Meg turned to Westridge who was riding beside her. He was looking down. Sunfire was trotting beside her horse. ‘Go home,’ she ordered. The dingo’s ears pricked, and he looked up, but he didn’t alter rhythm. ‘Home,’ she repeated ineffectually. She looked at Westridge before she reined in. Sunfire obediently halted. ‘You can’t come,’ she told the dingo firmly. ‘Go home.’ Sunfire cocked his head, as if he was deciphering her instructions. ‘Home!’ she ordered again.

‘Obedient animal,’ Westridge remarked.

‘He can’t come with us,’ Meg said. ‘I have to take him back.’

‘We have to keep going. Maybe he’ll go back if we just keep riding,’ Westridge suggested.

‘Go home!’ Meg growled. Sunfire stared at her.

‘Come on,’ Westridge urged. ‘He’ll give up when he realises we’re not going back. All dogs do.’

Reluctantly, Meg acquiesced and prodded her horse into action. Sunfire padded behind.

The dingo sat at a safe distance from the riders as they reined in at the Black Kangaroo Tavern. Meg allowed Westridge to help her dismount, already feeling the pain of being on horseback for an extended time, and as the soldiers stretched and ordered drinks and food she stared forlornly at the solitary golden dingo. He had no intention of going back to Summerbrook. When he’d refused to heed her instructions, the soldiers resorted to throwing stones at him, and even riding after him to drive him away, but Sunfire simply dodged, ran and hid to escape them, and reappeared after they’d resumed their travel, unfazed by the human aggression. Westridge laughed after one attempt to chase the dingo away, and said, ‘I think he likes the game.’ Meg understood the dingo’s loyalty, and was honoured by it, but she wished he would go back to Summerbrook.

Inside the familiar tavern, she was surprised at the way in which the archers, especially Leader Westridge, treated her. The men were polite and respectful, and they seemed to be avoiding eye contact, unlike the soldiers she remembered with leering eyes outside The Whispering Forest. Westridge ensured that she was comfortable and that good food was provided for her. Then he asked if she minded if he sat with her while he ate. ‘I’ve arranged for a suitable room,’ he informed her.

‘What about all your men?’ she asked, knowing the tavern had very few rooms.

‘We’ll camp outside, of course,’ he replied. His eyes widened. ‘What is
that
?’

Whisper, having smelt food, emerged from Meg’s vest, nose twitching inquisitively. ‘Whisper,’ Meg explained. ‘She’s a bush rat. She travels with me.’

Westridge’s face twisted in bemused uncertainty. ‘A dingo—that’s odd enough. But a
rat?
Why a rat?’ Meg explained how Whisper had come to her, but Westridge’s expression remained sceptical. ‘When the landlady comes out with the food, you’d better make that rat disappear,’ he warned kindly, ‘or he’ll end up on the menu.’

‘She,’ Meg corrected. She stroked Whisper’s head and neck, and pushed her back inside her vest, just as Flora Cattle emerged, carrying meals for her inundation of Queen’s soldiers.

‘I take it this is all going to be on a promissory note?’ she challenged Westridge.

‘The war is over,’ Westridge replied politely. ‘It’s easy to cash the Queen’s notes now.’

‘If you live close to the city,’ Flora reminded him, her fierce green eyes flaring angrily. She plonked two bowls before Westridge and Meg, saying, ‘Enjoy,’ as she set to serving the rest of the men.

‘Cheerful soul, that one,’ Westridge said, as he picked up his spoon. ‘Is there anything else you need? I feel like irritating her.’

Meg smiled at the devilish streak Leader Westridge displayed, but she shook her head, her left hand suppressing Whisper’s efforts to climb out of her vest and onto the table.

She had never imagined that horse riding could generate so much agony. Undressed, in the lantern light of her room, she set to soothing the blisters around her crotch from the full day in the saddle with a lotion she’d
borrowed from Flora, and she rubbed her aching muscles, wondering how she would survive almost twelve days on horseback. Whisper, perched on the blackwood dresser, beady black eyes catching glints of light, was cleaning her whiskers, having enjoyed the morsels Meg gleaned from the soldiers’ meals. Meg had also wanted to take food to Sunfire, but Westridge argued that if the dingo didn’t get any food he’d be more likely to head home. Meg doubted the logic. Not only had Sunfire come too far—as far as she knew, he’d never travelled a full day from the village—he was also more than capable of feeding himself in the wilderness. She turned down the lantern and eased under the blanket. In the darkness, she could hear a dog barking in the village of Woodman’s Springs. She wondered if her mother and brothers were missing Sunfire? Were they missing her? It seemed strange to be travelling again. Her world was no longer stable. A soft weight moved on her bed, and Whisper curled up by her pillow. Outside, Sunfire was either sleeping or hunting for his dinner. At least she had some familiarity around her.

The journey continued past Quick Crossing, and they shadowed the river, journeying south-south-west. Sunfire persisted, and by the fourth day he simply became part of the party, welcomed by the Elite Mounted Archers and adopted as the Group mascot. The soldiers also got used to the bush rat, and they competed for Whisper’s attention by bribing her with morsels of food to get her to sit on their laps and shoulders. Whisper seemed to enjoy teasing the men for her favour by playing hard to get, or taking food and wandering away from the giver as if she didn’t care for him. ‘There are women in Port of Joy like her,’ a soldier named Longarm remarked one evening at the campfire,
two days south of Quick Crossing, when he offered Whisper a piece of beef jerky, which she took but ignored him. ‘I nearly married one.’

‘I think she’s the lucky one,’ quipped his friend Strip, and they laughed as Whisper decided from whom she was next going to accept food.

The relationship between the dingo and the rat also fascinated the men. ‘My dog would rip a rat apart, no matter what,’ said Strip. ‘It’s unnatural.’ And that was the general consensus, but Sunfire followed Whisper when they were camped, as if endlessly curious to see what the rat was doing, and the rat was frequently seen to curl up between the dingo’s paws when she wanted to nap.

For Meg, the journey opened a world wider than the one that she’d seen racked with war during her first adventure. New vistas, new colours, new smells presented themselves every day. She had never imagined the kingdom to be so vast, or that so many people were scattered across the land. Strangers, in villages and along the road, stopped to stare at the entourage of archers with the young red-haired woman at their head and the loping dingo in their wake. Whenever they stopped in towns she was accorded her own room in the taverns or inns, at the Queen’s expense, and treated as an important person. Her aches and blisters from horse riding healed quickly each night, and she was grateful for the Blessing and the amber crystal. She seldom dreamed, as if her daily exhaustion ensured dreamless sleep, and she aimed to remember the correlation for the future.

Gradually the archers braved questions about her exploits in the Battle of The Whispering Forest, but when she declined to answer them they didn’t press her. She overheard Leader Westridge warning them not to annoy the Queen’s guest, and thereafter there were no more questions.

They crossed a new river eight days into the journey, the Forest River as she was told, a smaller tributary of the River of Kings that ran from the heart of The Whispering Forest. Beyond it, Meg was amazed at the number of farms and quarters of ploughed paddocks that filled the landscape. The wild bushland had been eradicated and replaced with houses and stock and crops. ‘Welcome to the civilised world,’ Westridge announced when he saw her expression the first morning they crested a rise and the farmlands spread as far as the eye could see. She could only gaze in wonder at the new world. ‘Seven more days and you’ll be standing before Queen Sunset,’ Westridge said. ‘Your life will never be the same afterwards.’

‘I’m not certain this is what I want,’ she murmured, but the new landscape mesmerised her.

That night, Westridge chose a camp for his troop at the edge of Broadfields. As the soldiers dismounted, Sunfire loped away, intent on some quick hunting before the night settled in. ‘He has a mind of his own,’ Westridge noted, watching the dingo’s golden shape melt into the bushes. When he was satisfied that the Group were setting up the camp, he walked with Meg as the sun was setting into the town square, and led her to an inn called The Maiden’s Delight. ‘This place is one of the best in the kingdom,’ he told her. ‘Popular with soldiers and travellers.’ A coach was parked at the front, with a man sitting patiently on the driver’s seat and two roan mares in the harness. Two young women were leaning against the wall by the blue entrance door. One clutched a bottle, and as Westridge and Meg approached, she asked, ‘Bringing your own, love?’

‘She’s a guest of the Queen,’ Westridge replied, smiling.

‘Ooh-ahh,’ the dark-haired woman said, adding, ‘lade-da.’

‘She’s a bit too pretty for a plain lad like yourself,’ the other woman, a shorter, buxom, brown-haired individual, remarked sarcastically. ‘You’d do better with a plain-acting woman like me,’ and she flashed a breast provocatively out of her dark blue dress. Westridge laughed, as he led Meg past the two women.

The interior was sumptuously furnished with dark wood and maroon padding on the chairs. A woman was standing on a stool lighting the lanterns that hung from the walls and ceiling beams, while two young women—Meg guessed that they were near her age—were washing glasses and mugs behind a chunky wooden bar. A black dog rose from the shadows and wandered out to sniff Westridge’s leg. ‘Where’s Beer?’ Westridge inquired.

‘Who’d be asking?’ the woman at the lanterns wanted to know without looking in Westridge’s direction. She was a stern, robust woman with straw-like hair.

‘Leader Westridge. Beer knows who I am. So do you, Liz.’

Liz lowered the lantern she was preparing and climbed down from the stool. ‘Ah, now I’m sorry, Leader Westridge,’ she said, and pointed to a heavy and dark wooden door to the right of the bar. ‘Master Beer is out in the stables and he said to send you out as soon as you arrived.’

Westridge nodded. ‘Good. In the meantime, Liz, can you organise a room for this young lady? She’s a guest of Her Majesty.’

‘Under arrest then?’

Westridge laughed. ‘No. She’s to be honoured for service to the Queen.’

‘Ooh,’ Liz remarked, and affected a ludicrously executed bow. As she straightened, she said, ‘Not often
given a real lady to look after. Usually it’s just Beer’s sluts.’

‘Liz will take you to a room,’ Westridge told Meg. ‘I’ll see Beer, and then I’ll come back and see if there’s anything else you need.’ He left via the dark door.

‘Well now,’ said Liz, ‘best we put you in the right place.’ To the young women, she said, ‘You two can go into the kitchen and organise the cook. Make sure he’s sober enough to do some decent cooking tonight.’ The girls stopped their cleaning and left via a door behind the bar. Liz seemed to be listening for something. Then, to Meg, she said, ‘You must be a very important person for the Queen to make so much fuss about you.’

‘What fuss?’ Meg asked, puzzled.

‘Oh, you’ll see,’ said Liz cryptically.

The odd answer made Meg uncomfortable. Whisper shifted restlessly inside her vest, and Meg noticed that Liz was staring at her moving chest. ‘My pet,’ she said. ‘She’s clean and harmless.’

‘What is it?’

‘A bush rat.’

Liz’s eyebrows rose, but before the woman could comment, the dark door at the back opened and four men strode through it. They surrounded Meg, and one said in a threatening tone, ‘Don’t scream, and don’t make any trouble, and you won’t get hurt.’