White Hart (13 page)

“We’ve nearly died at least three times,” I say.

“Like I said, not all of them have been good. But they’ve all been fascinating. Don’t you think?”

I don’t have time to answer. Cas slips on the ice and takes a tumble, letting go of Gwen’s reins at the same time. He rolls down the side of the hill, and I hurry after him, picking up Gwen’s reins at the same time.

“Are you hurt?” I shout.

Cas picks himself up and dusts down his clothes. “What an idiot I am. I’m not meant for this place.” He sighs and takes Gwen’s reins. “Ignore everything I said. This place is rotten, and I am a fool to think otherwise.”

I can’t help it. I burst out laughing. “After everything we’ve been through, it’s a fall that makes you so angry? We’ve been attacked by raining birds, frozen to near death by fog, and drained of blood by vines, yet a tumble is all it takes for you to lose faith in the woods?”

Cas regards me with his narrowed eyes. His mouth is set in an unamused line. The seriousness of his expression only makes me laugh even harder.

“And this is what finally makes you happy? My demise? My fall? Well, I think that shows a lot about your character, Mae,” he says bitterly.

I laugh so hard that I fall back and land on my bum. Then I hear a snort and realise that Cas is laughing too. He begins with a soft chuckle while shaking his head, but before long, he has tears streaming down his face. I grab his arm and pull him down in the snow. He gathers snow into his hands and throws it at me. I ball it up and push it down his back which makes him shoot up and dance around, jiggling the back of his tunic to get it out. I’m laughing so hard my stomach aches.

Cas groans loudly, shaking his body and jumping up and down. “Come on,” he says. “You’ve not said ‘We should get moving’ for ages now.”

“We should get moving,” I say.

Cas chortles and shakes his head. He reaches down and takes my hand, pulling me to my feet. He pulls me too hard, and I end up bumping into him. His face turns serious for a moment. “No, we really should get moving. Anta is out there alone.”

The spell has been broken. The brief few moments, where my troubles disappeared like melted snow, hit me with the full force of an avalanche. What right do I have, joking and playing when Anta is out there amongst Father’s killers?

“You’re right,” I say. “You’re so right.”

We pick our way down through the slope until reaching the flat areas of the forest. Cas leads Gwen off the track and into the trees. It’s warmer down here, but there’s still a chill, and I hug my body for warmth.

The forest is quiet, but we make a lot of noise moving through the undergrowth. Thorns catch on my legs. I don’t even flinch. The scrapes and scratches of the forest are something I’ve acclimatised to now.

It has been over a day and a half since we were last attacked by something in the forest, and in a way, that makes me even more nervous. What can it throw at me now? I touch the half-healed cuts on my face and wonder.

“Mae?” Cas asks. He brings Gwen to a stop and points to the right. “Does it look like someone went through those bushes over there?”

I turn to where he’s pointing to see broken twigs and a print of some kind. My heart soars, and I immediately think of Anta, but when I examine the print more closely, I realise that it is of a boot, not a hoof.

“We should follow these tracks,” I say. I don’t know where they lead or whom we’re following, but it’s better than nothing.

“Don’t you think you’re being a little impulsive?” Cas says with a raised eyebrow. “After all, every other time you’ve insisted we should do something, we usually end up stuck in killer vines or something.”

“They could take us to Anta,” I say.

Cas sighs. “How can I say no to your big brown eyes?” he mutters. “Very well. But you had better be prepared to think us out of another dangerous situation. There’s no way the woods have done with us yet.”

He walks away, and I find myself staring after him. “I have big brown eyes?”

“You know you do,” he replies, his tone rougher than usual. “And you know that they get you your own way.”

I pull myself out of my thoughts and follow him. My heartbeat quickens as we carry on down the track. After a while, my thoughts turn to what lies ahead. Will these tracks lead us to the men who killed my father, and if so, what will I do?

*

T
he footprints continue on. We’re far into the woods by the time we find a print with freshly churned mud. Then the prints stop altogether.

I slip down from Gwen’s back. “It’s impossible to simply stop like that.” I search the forest around me, looking for places he could hide.

“Maybe he climbed a tree,” Cas suggests. “It’s beginning to get dark. Perhaps he sleeps in the trees.”

The two of us search the area with our weapons drawn. There is no one lurking behind the bushes or up in the trees. Each time I check around a corner or search the low branches, my heart skips a beat with the thought that we might find the Wanderers.

“There’s nothing here,” Cas says eventually.

I don’t want to give up yet. I move farther into the woods and cut back thorns with my dagger. I bend down and search an old fallen tree, hollowed out over the years.

A scream rips through the silence, and I straighten up and turn around sharply. My breath catches in my throat as I squint through the dusk at a shadowy figure running towards Cas. The figure holds a long, deadly sword in his hand and raises it high above their head.

“Cas!”

Without a second’s hesitation, I’m running towards the prince. I clutch hold of my dagger in my right hand and throw my body towards Cas, knocking him to the floor. The figure swings the sword, and I have just enough time to meet the sword with my short dagger. The blade of the attacker’s sword runs along my knife’s edge until it catches my hand, cutting into my flesh.

Cas pushes me off him and dives at the stranger, knocking him to the ground. He grasps the stranger’s hand and squeezes so hard that the attacker cries out in pain. I wrench the weapon from their grasp and hold the blade to their throat.

The attacker wears a hood over their face. A black cloak hides their form. Cas removes the hood and a burst of red hair is exposed. The stranger pants and blinks the hair from their blue eyes. I realise with a start that the attacker is a young girl about my age.

“Take your filthy hands off me,” she spits.

Cas squeezes her wrist once more. “That’s no way to speak to your prince.”

I give Cas a frustrated kick in the shin. “Don’t tell her that, you idiot.” I press the blade closer to her throat. “Who are you and what are you doing in the Waerg Woods?”

“I’m not telling you anything. You’ll have to kill me first.” She scrunches her eyes shut and elongates her neck as though she expects me to slit her throat.

I loosen my grip on the sword, surprised that she is so willing to die and thinks we’ll kill her without hesitation. The girl opens her eyes, sees me falter, and springs to her feet, knocking me back in the process. Cas tries to keep hold of her hand, but she is like a wild thing, with red hair whipping about her face. She wrenches herself free, and I chase after her, throwing the sword to the side, since I have no intention of using it.

She’s quick, but I am too. She darts to the left, and I chase her, my toes almost hitting the backs of her heels. I push myself forward, wrapping my arms around her body, and bring her down hard against the ground, bruising my arms in the process. She wriggles around like the frustrated toddlers you see in Halts-Walden market.

“Stop struggling,” I say breathlessly. “We are not going to kill you.”

“But we’re not letting you go, either,” Cas says. He has a length of rope in his hands. He reaches down and grasps the girl by the hair. “Hold her still, Mae.”

I take her hands and pull them behind her back. Cas wraps the rope around her wrists and then uses another piece of rope to tie her feet together, leaving enough length between her ankles to take short steps.

I glance at him quizzically. “How did you learn to do that?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he pulls the girl to her feet and places my dagger at her throat. “Who are you with?”

The girl bites her lip and looks away. “I will never tell.”

Cas grasps a handful of her hair, and she cries out. “Who are you with?”

This is a side to Cas I never expected to see. His grey eyes are hard, like opal stones.

“I will never tell you.”

He slaps her face.

“Cas!” I shout out.

He never even turns to me. His eyes never leave hers. “Don’t you want to find your father’s murderers?”

“Of course, but—”

The girl gasps. She opens her mouth as if she wants to say something and then closes it again.

I step towards her. “You know something. Tell me what it is.” My hands clench and unclench at my sides.

The girl keeps her mouth completely shut and eyes me warily. I know that there is something she is hiding, but it’s clear she’s not going to tell us. Not through brutality, anyway. Cas lifts his hand, but I calmly take hold of it and press his arm back down to his side.

“Leave it,” I say.

“But—”

“We should get moving.” I raise my eyebrows at him, and he relinquishes with a sigh.

D
arkness descends, and we have no choice but to settle down for the night with the strange girl among us. I check that her ropes are tight, sit her down by the fire, and roast root vegetables.

The girl watches my every movement. My stomach churns when I think of the people she belongs to—the same ones that killed my father?

When the food is cooked, I divide it up between the prince and me. He sits and watches our prisoner, hardly ever moving his eyes from her. For a brief moment I wonder if he is attracted to her, but then I brush that thought aside, first because it’s stupid, and second because not long ago I had to stop him from slapping her in the face.

“You’re not feeding me, then?” she says with a sneer on her face.

Cas and I stay silent, eating our portions. The girl struggles against her ropes for a moment and then goes still.

“I know what you’re doing,” she says. “You think if you starve me that I’ll talk. Well I won’t.”

Her voice has the slightest hint of a tremor, and I flash Cas a look to say that she will crack soon enough. His head is bent low over his food, and the flames cast his eyes in shadow. With the new hope of finding the Wanderers, Cas is more determined than I have ever seen him before. I often find myself turning to him, examining the new tension in his features, made curious by his silence.

The girl leans back against the tree and closes her eyes. After the food, and after watering Gwen, we both settle down on our blankets. We have arranged lookout sessions tonight, making sure that one of us is awake at all times. For all we know, someone could be looking for the girl, and they may decide to snatch her back in the night. So I sit with my dagger on my lap as the black of the night begins to swallow us whole.

*

C
lick-ick-ick-click-ick-ick-click

The familiar sound sends a shiver down my spine. The girl’s head snaps up from where she was dozing. She whips her head around, and her chest rises and falls in quick succession. Her eyes are wide open with terror.

“Where is it?” she whispers. “I can hear it but—”

“You know what it is, don’t you?” I say.

The girl clamps her mouth shut and turns away from me. I pick up my whetstone and begin to sharpen the dagger on my knee. More than once, I feel her stare on my bent head. So much rests on this girl that my fingers tremble. She is the key to finding the Wanderers and avenging my father. She knows something. I saw the expression on her face when we mentioned Father’s murder. I have to play her like a negotiation in the marketplace. I have to wait her out until she’s so desperate she starts talking.

It won’t be tonight, and even though I am bursting to say so many things, I simply wake Cas up from his slumber, inform him that he cannot say a word to the girl, and rest my head for a few hours before dawn.

In the morning, I wake with a surge of hope that Anta might have found his way back to us. He is not there again. My stomach drops like a felled tree. Cas sits by the fire, whittling a piece of wood. He stops and places it in his pocket when he sees me wake. I glance over to our prisoner. She sits defiantly, with her chin in the air.

“Any trouble?” I ask.

He shakes his head and says in a loud voice, “Looks like there isn’t anyone coming for her.”

I can’t help but smirk when the girl blinks and shakes her head so her hair falls over her face, hiding the wetness on her cheeks. She’s beginning to crack.

Cas and I share a breakfast of berries and water from a nearby stream. Cas helps the girl drink a few gulps of water. I let him, starving her out is one thing, but I couldn’t deprive her of water as well. Gwen grazes by our feet. The only thing that mars the morning is the occasional clicking sound from the mysterious monster in the woods. Every time the noise starts up again, the girl gasps and stiffens. She knows what the monster is, and I long to go over to her and make her talk. Curiosity is itching away on the surface of my skin. But I won’t do it.

Cas sits next to me on the grass and says in a low voice, “What are we going to do with her? She’s had no food and she’s getting weak. We can’t keep that up forever.”

“We’ll take her with us and get her to show us how to find the Wanderers,” I say. “She’ll crack soon.”

“What if she doesn’t? We’ll be murderers, just like them,” he says.

I don’t want to think about that. “Let’s get moving and decide on the way.”

Cas nods and begins clearing away our camp. I stamp out the fire and pack up our blankets into Gwen’s saddle. The girl watches us with furtive eyes.

“You’re not going to leave me here, are you? Not with that monster waiting in the forest,” she says.

“Maybe,” I say. I fasten Gwen’s bridle with my head turned away from her.

The girl squirms against the ropes. “I don’t care. I don’t care about dying.”