White Hart (17 page)

“It will get me because it got my mother,” she says. Her face contorts as though she is going to cry or scream.

Cas walks towards her and places a hand on her shoulder. “What happened to your mother?”

“We don’t have time for sob stories. We should go,” I remind him. I don’t want to know about her family. I don’t want to feel sorry for her.

Cas lifts a hand to silence me. For the first time ever, I feel like one of his subjects, and I clench my fists in annoyance.

“I didn’t say before because... because I didn’t want to think about it. We were separated together. Borgans, or Wanderers as you call us, are different to other people... We don’t have as much loyalty. We’re not really a community or anything like that. There’s a leader, and you do his bidding, or he tosses you out of the group. We... we couldn’t keep up. My mother is... was unwell. She had a bad leg.”

A jolt runs down my spine as I think of Father and his limp.

“We ended up getting left behind, and no one came back to help us. They just left us. We drifted further and further away. Mother was in a lot of pain, and we were low on food and water. We stopped. Before the sleeping willow, back towards the twisted brook—that was where the Nix took her. I tried to stay awake. I really did. I was exhausted.” Her voice begins to crack. “I’d carried Mother all day, and my body ached all over. My eyes couldn’t stay open, and I drifted to sleep. When I woke, I heard her screams, but I couldn’t find her. I ran in every direction I could. I searched and searched the forest until I was lost. Wretched, and lost. That’s when you found me. I thought you were going to kill me anyway, but you didn’t.” Her eyes find mine and fix on me, hard and challenging.

“I’m sorry,” Cas says.

“We’ve all lost people,” I say, swallowing with a hard lump in my throat. “Let’s go.”

“I helped you with the wood nymph,” Sasha reminds me. “Doesn’t that mean something?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know yet.”

A
nta’s tracks take us out of the sleeping forest and back onto a path within the main Waerg Woods, leading us north and away from Welhewan. Cas hunts a rabbit and skins it while Sasha makes many tutting noises, informing him every few knife strokes that he’s doing it wrong. I still won’t untie her, no matter how many times Cas turns to me with his eyebrows raised and a pleading expression on his face. She cannot be trusted.

After we eat, we move on.

“Look at the tracks,” Sasha says, gesturing with a nod. The tracks are longer. Anta’s stride has elongated.

I move over to the tracks so I can measure the strides with my own. “He’s running fast here.” I follow them further into the forest. At one point he leaps from the path and darts in and out of the large oak trees. Then, he clears a felled tree and heads down a bank towards a stream. On the soft soil of the bank, you can see where he has thrashed around, and it’s there that I notice the boot prints. My stomach flips. Someone chased Anta down to the stream, and then the person caught him. A pattern of churned-up soil shows Anta trying to back away and rear.

Cas runs down the bank behind me, his feet skidding on the damp soil. “What’s happened?”

“Someone has caught Anta.” My eyes trail the footsteps as they rise back up the bank and further into the woods. Anta’s hoof prints run along in parallel. “He led him... That way! Come on. Get Gwen and the girl.” Hope bubbles in my chest. We’re close.

*

I
move quietly through the forest. We don’t know how long ago the man took Anta and where he took him to. We don’t know how many of them there are, or whether they are hunters. That heavy feeling forms behind my eyes again. I know it’s the wall of tears that I’d built up and won’t let down. It threatens to burst. If something has happened to him...

No, no... I can’t think like that.

Cas and Sasha are both on Gwen when they catch up with me. I scowl at the prince. “What is she doing up there?”

“I’m still tied up, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She lifts her hands so I can see the restraints.

“She was struggling, Mae. I had to.”

“Fine,” I say between gritted teeth. “At least she won’t slow us down now.”

We tread carefully through the forest. None of us know where we’re heading, and Sasha knows little about this part of the forest. She said there were some people who lived in the woods, and she thought it might be in this direction, but no one has actually seen them or come back from one of their camps. That sounds like a bad sign to me, but I keep my mouth shut. It doesn’t matter how dangerous it is; I have to get Anta back.

The tracks find their way back to a path, but this path is different to any of the others I’ve seen in the forest. It’s more like a road, with footprints of all sizes, hoof prints large and small, as well as dog prints in the dirt. The realisation hits me. There is a community living inside the Waerg Woods.

I turn to Sasha. “Are these Borgan tracks? Is this your camp?”

She shakes her head. “Ibenas. They are native to the forest.”

I exchange a confused glance with Cas. “
Native
?”

“Yes. What’s so strange about that? You have natives from all over Aegunlund, why not the forest? Just because the people in your village are superstitious idiots doesn’t mean the rest of us are,” Sasha says.

“We should get off this track and move back into the forest,” I say, after taking in Sasha’s explanation. “Whoever dwells in this area uses this as a road, and we could encounter them at any time. We don’t know anything about them, whether they are friendly or...”

Cas nods. “Hostile. We’ll head down that bank and follow parallel to the road. The trees are thick there. We can hide amongst them.”

“We need to walk silently.”

“That’s difficult with Gwen.” Cas dismounts and pulls the reins over the horse’s head. He leads her gently down the bank into the thicker trees. “We’ll have to see if we can catch a glimpse of their camp but from further away. Maybe we can figure out how to get Anta, if they have him.”

That ‘if’ troubles me. It could mean so much. If they found him in the first place, if they brought him here, if they still have him,
if
they haven’t done something to him.

“We should leave Gwen and Sasha here,” Cas says. “If we go any further with them, the camp will hear Gwen.”

“We can’t leave Sasha there alone. She’ll steal the horse and go back to the Borgans to warn them.”

“We don’t have a choice, Mae. She didn’t kill your father. She got us to the sleeping willow. She’s suffered just as much as you,” he says.

I run my hands through my hair, pulling at the roots. Cas has no idea how much I could lose if Sasha goes back to the Borgans. She could tell them I’m craft-born. She could have them hunt
me
. She could result in my death.

“You’re too trusting, Cas,” I say with a heavy sigh.

“I won’t betray you, Mae,” she says. Her eyes are emotionless blue spheres. “But if you leave me here tied up, I can’t defend myself. It would be murder.”

I step towards the horse and reach up to Sasha’s hands with my dagger. “If you do anything—”

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll hunt me down,” she says. “I get it.”

Against my better judgement, and with a stone-like feeling in my gut, I cut through the rope binding her wrists.

She rubs her hands and lets out a little laugh of relief. “Oh this feels so good. You have no idea how much it has been chafin—”

“Shh.” I place my finger to my lips. “We don’t know how close we are to the camp. They could hear you.”

She nods firmly. There is determination in the set of her jaw, and I look at her and see a girl who doesn’t like to let people down. Maybe I
have
misjudged her. Maybe she is on our side now. Maybe there weren’t any sides to begin with.

I put my dagger back in my belt and make my way back to Cas. He gives me a little tap on the arm, like an owner praising their puppy for not making a mess.

I’m thankful that Cas was taught how to hunt in Cyne, because he moves almost silently through the thicket of trees. I place my feet with care, avoiding twigs or anything that can snap. My hand hovers over the dagger, dreading the moment I’ll have to use it. A film of sweat gathers between my shoulder blades.

I hear them first. A laugh. Then a few muffled words from more than one voice. There’s the crackle and snap of a fire, plus the shuffling of animal hooves. My heartbeat quickens.
Anta!

A dog barks. I hear my pulse thudding in my ears. We creep through the woods, following the sound of the campsite but always remaining behind a thick cover of trees. Cas waves me towards a bush between two thickets of trees. There we can peer through a gap in the foliage and view the campsite.

The people are dark-skinned and wear ragged clothing. They are similar to each other in appearance, with high cheekbones, curly hair, and slanted eyes. Some don’t wear shoes, and the children run around without any clothes at all. But there are tall men with spears and serious expressions on their faces. Hunters.

The hunters are clad in bulky boots, and when I see them, I know I have found the owner of the footprints out by the stream. That means one of them hunted Anta.

Most of the group sit around chatting in a language I don’t understand, but the hunters sit silently, chewing on grass roots, their faces covered by wide-brimmed hats. Even though my body itches with impatience, we sit and watch them for a while, noticing how their body language is different to mine, to the people I am used to in Halts-Walden. There doesn’t seem to be any affection amongst them, not even towards those who appear to be related. Their voices are loud, almost to the point of shouting.

Cas nudges me and nods towards the back of the camp. I’d been so enthralled by the curious tribe that I hadn’t noticed the antlers peeking out from behind a tent.
Anta
. I grab hold of Cas’s tunic for support. He’s here. But how are we going to get him back? I gulp as I survey the people in the camp. There are at least a few dozen, including experienced hunters, not to mention a complete language barrier.

We could try to steal him, but these people will not abide by laws of the realm. Just one look at them shows that they have their own way of life, their own customs. If we steal from them, they could kill us. And why shouldn’t they? They don’t know that Anta belongs to me. They wouldn’t believe me even if I could tell them.

I move back away from the camp, and Cas joins me. “What are we going to do?” I whisper. “We can’t take those hunters on. Can we steal him back?”

Cas folds his arms and places one hand underneath his jaw. “What if Anta saw you? Would he come for you?”

“Yes, but that would only work if he was untied. Do you really think they’ll keep an animal like Anta untied?”

“No, it’s unlikely,” he admits.

We creep around the edge of the camp, listening to them going about their business. Cas is a warm, comforting presence beside me. He could have turned around and left, but he chose to stay and help me. I shoot a quick glance in his direction, taking in the depth of his eyes. If he does this for me, I will help him get Ellen back. I make a silent promise.

“He’s tied up behind that shack,” Cas whispers.

I squint through the trees at the camp. Anta is tied up by his bridle, but his saddle has been removed. He seems in good condition, still fat enough, with his head down grazing.

“Mae, call to him, get his attention,” Cas says. He nods encouragingly.

“The camp will hear. It’s too dangerous.”

“Then I’ll create a distraction for you,” he says, grinning. He begins to straighten up, but I seize him by the arm and pull him down.

“Are you crazy?” I say. “You can’t do that! What if they capture you? What if they kill you?”

“I’m not afraid,” he says, smoothing down the front of his tunic and puffing out his chest. “Listen, you’ve saved my life three times already in the forest. I want to do this for you. And if they do capture me, you’ll just have to save my life again. You seem pretty good at it.”

I glare at him. “I was hoping to avoid having to do it again.”

He laughs. “So was I.”

Before I can reply, he springs to his feet and runs out from the bushes into the camp. At first the people are so shocked that they sit there, utterly frozen. Then Cas begins to yell and runs straight through their camp, knocking things over. The two largest hunters with the heavy boots narrow their eyes in confusion before chasing Cas through the camp. I have to work fast. I make my way over to Anta, and his head shoots up as soon as he sees me.

“You’re causing a lot of trouble, old boy,” I say, giving him a quick nose rub. Then I untie his bridle. He rubs his face against my shoulder in greeting. “Where’s your saddle, lad? Huh? No time. Come on.”

I spring up onto his back and kick him hard. Anta comes to life, darting through the trees away from the camp. I have to find Cas before he’s captured, so we follow the length of the camp, moving so fast that I have to grip onto Anta’s coat to stay on his back. A rush of exhilaration sweeps over me like a forceful wind. It’s so good to be back riding my stag. The ground disappears below me, the trees blur beside me, and the sound of the natives is a mere echo next to the thundering of Anta’s hooves. I lose myself for a moment, pulled back to reality only by the piercing scream of a man.

Cas
.

With a tug on my reins, Anta turns towards the scream. This time his thundering hooves have the opposite effect on my body, mimicking the pounding of my heart instead of relaxing me into a familiar rhythm. They must have caught him. If something happens to him, I will never forgive myself.

Anta responds to my urgency. His shoulders tense, and he stretches out his neck so that I have to hold on to him for dear life. My knuckles whiten as I cling to his fur. It’s at the entrance of the camp that I see the crowd of people and the curled-up body in the mud. One of the hunters retracts his leg and hits the curled-up body with the toe of his boot, causing Cas to cry out in pain.