The Staff of the Winds (The Wizard of South Corner Book 1) (35 page)

“Where are we headed now?” Jack asked his father once the pace had become more sustainable.  “Is everyone still gathering at the Campbells’?”

“We’ll take up a position in town. We’ve not been completely idle while you kids were picnicking in the country, you know,” Dan responded with a smile. “The Campbell’s place has been fortified some, and your mother and most of the other women and children are there, but a few of us have been working on a section of South Corner that we think is defensible. There are not enough of us to hold the entire town, but we’ve stripped the houses outside of our barricades of any food or other supplies, and we’ve got the wells protected, so we should be able to hold what we’ve got.”

Marian had made a point to be up before her older brother on this morning, and, as soon as she stepped out of the shelter to relieve her bladder, she planned to sneak back in and see if she could not finagle the Old Wizard’s staff head out from under the bundle of clothing that Owen used as a pillow. If she was successful, she could bury it in the woods and put an end to the extremely dangerous “practice” that Owen had devoted so much time to. Owen seemed to be unaware of it but Marian could see her brother changing with each passing day, becoming progressively more quiet and withdrawn, and she was determined to stop it, if she could before the changes were irreversible.  There was not a doubt in her mind that all of their problems could be traced back to when Owen found that evil piece of brass in the Old Wizard’s study.  Well, all of their problems except perhaps for the gorn and the foreign troops that had abducted the villagers of South Corner. But, there was nothing she could do about those problems. She could, however, save her brother from that staff head even if she couldn’t seem to save the villagers from the invaders.

Scrubbing the sleep from her eyes, Marian moved quietly to the entry of their shelter.  As she reached for the web of cedar boughs to move them aside, she peered through a gap to inspect the nearby clearing.  Her recent luck with the small buck had made this a habit.  Sure enough, her eyes picked up some furtive movement through the trees.  Marian froze in place.  It was not a deer.  There were two men, clearly soldiers from Carraghlaoch, moving cautiously and quietly just on the fringe of the far side of the clearing. Their shelter was well hidden, and fortunately the soldiers were upwind in the soft morning breeze, or they might well have smelled the ashes from last night’s fire. The horses had been hobbled in another clearing half a mile to the north-west where some green still showed.

Marian dared not move, and even though the soldiers were at least fifty yards from her hiding place, she could feel her heart beating in her throat, and was almost afraid to breath. Please don’t let Owen wake up now, she prayed silently. All she could do was watch the men work their way up to the head of the clearing, and finally disappear from view into the forest. They were clearly a scouting party, quartering the area as they moved into the wind so that their scent would not alert any possible quarry they might approach. Luckily, their track was taking them at an angle away from the woods on the shelter’s side of the clearing.

Marian remained still, and strained to catch any glimpse of the searchers.  She doubted very much that those men were simply hunting for their breakfast this far from the castle.  They had to be looking for some sign of other people.  They were probably looking specifically for her and her brother.  Finally, after several minutes, she was about to turn away and wake Owen when a third soldier appeared, following the trail of the first two.  Apparently, he was working their back trail just in case their passage through the woods raised any unnoticed attention.  He held a bow loosely in his left hand, an arrow already nocked, and his head turned methodically from side to side as he scanned the ground and woods around him. It may have been her imagination, but Marian was almost certain that his scan paused ever so slightly when he was looking directly at their shelter. He did not stop, though, and was soon out of sight.

When he was gone, Marian crept over to Owen, lightly put her hand over his mouth and nudged him awake. “Be very quiet,” she whispered into her brother’s ear, “a scouting party from the castle just passed by the far side of the clearing.”

Owen slowly moved his sister’s hand away from his lips and whispered back, “Did they spot us?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so, but one of them might have. I watched them go by, and they gave no indication. They were being very careful, though, and they had a man following behind them watching their back trail. He seemed to be seeing everything at once. He might have noticed our shelter, or some other sign of our presence around the clearing. Do you think they know that we’re out here somewhere?”

“It’s possible. Someone may have spotted us searching the trees near the castle, or it could just be a routine patrol. I’ve been wondering why we haven’t seen any signs of that already.”

“What do we do now?”

“Well, let’s not panic.  There aren’t very many soldiers left in the castle since they marched the villagers over the bridge, so maybe they can only man one patrol at a time.  One thing is for certain though, we are going to have to be a whole lot more careful than we have been.  It’s just the greatest of luck that they did not come across the path that we have been using to go back and forth each day.”

“Do you think we should move our camp further out?”

“No time right now. If you think they may have spotted us, we’d best hightail it in the other direction until we’re sure that they are not doubling back. We’ll take what we can carry, sneak out the back side of the shelter and move as quietly as we can into the trees. See if you can spot any more activity out there, while I get dressed.

“Damn, hear that? That’s no bird that’s ever sung around here before. Hurry up. I’ll open up the boughs in the back wall.”

“Right.  Grab your bow, your pack and your bedroll. We’ll have to leave the rest.”

Valance and Shaman stopped immediately and sank slowly down to cover at the sound of the call of a desert finch.  A few moments later, they spotted Tralan, who had been stalking in trail position, coming quickly and quietly in their direction.

“What’s up?” Valance asked quietly when Tralan caught up with them.

“I think we may have found our ghosts. There were clear signs of activity in that clearing we just passed. I saw some old horse droppings, and the ground near the spring in the middle looked trampled. I gave no sign that I noticed, but we need to circle back and take a closer look.”

“Right. Fan out to the west. Keep the man to your left just in sight. We’ll circle around and come on the clearing from the north-west. With luck, we’ll snare these rabbits before they know we’re here.”

Shaman was in the middle of the line, trying to maintain separation from Valance and move as quietly as possible, while at the same time not tripping over some hidden tree root and falling on his face.  He hated this forest, it was damp, cold, and the vegetation was much too thick for his tastes.  Forests where he grew up back in Baraduhne, where it was far drier, were much more open and easily traversed. Not like this miserable place, where every tree bough you passed under tried to dump a load of cold water down the back of your neck.

The first warning Owen received was the sound of a snapping branch and a muttered curse. Someone was approaching directly ahead of him. He knew it wasn’t Marian, who had headed further to the south-west when they left camp. It had seemed like a good idea to split up so as to generate less localized noise and increase the chance that at least one of them would get free, if the soldiers were actually coming back for them. ‘If’ was suddenly no longer an open question.

Owen froze and searched frantically around for a place where he could go to ground.  A few yards to his left, a fallen forest giant had taken down several of its younger neighbors, and there was a root ball sticking up leaving a cavity at its base which had drifted full of leaves.  Ducking down, and moving as quietly as he could, Owen headed for this natural shelter.  He lay down with his gear and slowly and carefully squirmed his way beneath the mound of leaves.  He was just pulling his unstrung bow and quarterstaff in after him when he spotted a soldier moving through the trees not ten yards away.  Slowly and carefully, he edged his hand back under cover, leaving the bow and staff to look like any other sticks on the forest floor,
if
his tracker was not looking too closely.

Owen could just see the man through a gap between the leaves.  He seemed to be struggling through the brush that had grown thick when the falling trees had opened up a path for the sun to reach the forest floor, and he was more intent upon where he was putting his feet than in searching the area around him. Owen held his breath, and resolutely ignored a beetle that had decided to explore his right ear. Without really intending to do so, Owen found himself slipping naturally into his observation state. It occurred to him that if he just rearranged the lines of energy flowing through the brush a little bit… As the soldier stumbled and quietly cursed again, Owen asked himself: ‘
What the hell am I doing?  The last thing I
want is to
impede this searcher as he is passing my hiding place unaware. 
Use your head, stupid!’

Not until he was sure that the soldier had moved a good twenty yards past him did Owen rise slowly from hiding and staying in a deep crouch he resumed his escape to the west.

The two spent a miserable night that night.  They had rendezvoused where the horses were hobbled, as planned, and while Marian had seen nothing of the searchers, she was frightened by Owen’s account of his narrow escape.  They both recognized that they could not return to their comfortable lean-to, and had saddled up and spent a good part of the day moving further to the north of the old castle of Carraghlaoch.  To make matters worse, they received their first snowfall of the season that night and the fir tree that they had crawled under for shelter provided far less protection than the snug little camp they had had to abandon.  The night was spent cold and wet rolled up in their bedrolls and trying to crowd as close as they could to the old tree’s trunk.

The morning dawn brought no more hope with it than had existed with the failing of the light the night before. They were now a good seven or eight rough miles from the castle, and they did not expect that the soldiers would try to track them this far without horses, but travel back and forth to the castle to search for the lost dungeon entrance was all but impossible. Plus, now that they knew that the castle guards were aware of their presence in the area, they dared not go too close. By mid day, most of the snow had melted, so they no longer had to worry about leaving tracks in it, but the sky remained a threatening gray, promising more snow in the near future. Their good fortune with the weather appeared to have finally run out.

The two had been mostly silent that morning as they tried to get the driest wood they could find to actually burn. Then it was a matter of huddling around it in the attempt to get warm and dry.

A general state of depression had settled over the pair, until Marian finally broke the silence.  “What are we doing here, Owen?  It’s obvious that we are never going to find that hidden tunnel entrance into the castle, even if it does actually exist, which I’m beginning to doubt.  We’re doing no good here at all.  We can’t save anyone; Sarah is lost to you forever, and everyone else is too well guarded for the two of us to even get near them.  Our parents, who might be able to actually make a difference don’t have any idea where we are or what we’re up against unless Jack got through to them, and if he did, why haven’t we heard anything back?  It’s way past time to admit defeat here and try to get back to South Corner.  At least we could then finally complete the job that we were originally sent out to do.”

For the longest time, Owen just sat there and looked at his sister. For her part, she’d said everything that she thought needed to be said. It was up to Owen now to recognize the obvious.