“All right,” I said. “Let’s give it a try.”
It felt completely crazy to break out of Dracana by breaking into a house. All five of us. I only hoped the half-mad tramp would keep his mouth shut. If he began on his silly rhymes while we were inside the house, I’d clobber him with my boots. I had collected them on the way from behind the woodpile, but I hadn’t put them on yet—silence was more important than ever now.
I led the way into the laundry. I had warned everyone about the steps, and this time nobody fell. Behind me, I could hear the snuffling breath of the tramp, quite loud in the silence, but it couldn’t be helped. I could hardly tell him not to breathe.
Cautiously, I opened the door to the kitchen, took a few steps—and stiffened. What was that? Not the gentle snoring of the cook, something else… I peered around me in the darkened kitchen but could see only the faint red glow of the stove. Whatever it was I had heard, the place was silent now. Maybe it had been only my imagination. My nerves were worn pretty thin by now.
I fumbled behind me until I found Dina’s shoulder, and gave it a little push. Stay back, I meant. She touched my hand to show that she understood. Her fingers were so cold it felt like being touched by a ghost.
I crept forward another few steps. In front of me I could just make out the big table I had bumped into earlier. The glow from the woodstove caught the glaze of some large clay bowls. I paused again to listen, but all I could hear was the tramp’s snuffling breath. My own bare feet were completely soundless on the stone floor, and the cook didn’t seem to be snoring anymore.
All clear, I thought, and turned to wave the others on.
Turning, I bumped into something.
Something large. Something live.
Startled, I leaped back, knocking into the kitchen table once more. The bowls rattled.
“Ssshh!” hissed whatever I had bumped into. “You’ll wake her!”
For a brief confused moment I thought it must be one of the others. But none of them were the height of a bear. None of them had a voice that deep and rough. And now that I had my back to the stove, I could see more clearly, and what I saw was a Dragon soldier. Somewhat negligently dressed, to be sure, with his tunic unbuttoned, a large ham in one hand and a knife in the other, but a soldier nonetheless. Why, then, was he shushing me? Why didn’t he raise the alarm?
He seemed confused, too. He peered at me searchingly.
“I don’t think I know you,” he said. “What are you doing here? What’s your unit?”
Of course. I was wearing the Dragon uniform myself. Perhaps he thought I too had come to sneak an illicit slice of ham. But I doubted he would think so much longer—and in the laundry waited four others who would definitely not be mistaken for Dragon’s men.
I swung a boot and hit him straight on the nose.
“What—” he began, but that was all he had time to say. I got him by the wrist with one hand and by the throat with the other, choking off any cry of alarm he might try to make. He crashed backward with me on top of him, but after that, matters went from bad to worse. There was that knife of his, and I didn’t dare let go of his throat; one shout out of him and we were finished. And then he started hitting me with the ham. Whack! Pinpoints of light danced in front of my eyes. He kept pounding me with that stupid hunk of dead pig, and my grip started to slip, and in any case he was stronger than I. He twisted free of me and drew a deep breath.
“Guaahh—” he began. But that was as far as he got. There was a curious ringing sound, like someone hitting a gong. And then he collapsed across me like a butchered steer. Only then did I see what Rose held in her hands.
“I told you so,” she said a little breathlessly. “A frying pan always comes in handy.”
Dina looked down at the fallen Dragon soldier.
“It’s Sandor,” she said in a low voice, and looked as if she wanted to spit on him. “Valdracu’s henchman. Is he dead?”
I touched his neck. He was warm, and I could feel the pulse moving beneath his skin.
“No,” I said, “just unconscious.”
“Stick him,” hissed Tavis. “Stab him with your knife!”
That shook me. What was he—eight? Nine? And here he was, wanting me to stick a knife into an unconscious man. I had no idea Highland children were that bloodthirsty. But I supposed he had his reasons. The cellar we had taken him from had not exactly been pleasant lodgings.
“No,” I said. “We’ll tie him up. Get a clothesline or something from the laundry and—Is there a pantry or something?” I looked at Dina.
“Here,” she said, pointing at a hatch in the floor. “There’s a small fruit cellar. It’ll take them a while to find him if we put him down there.”
The cellar was barely big enough for him to lie flat. I pushed a wrinkled winter apple into his mouth and secured it with one of his own socks. Tavis pinched an apple too and started wolfing it down in big bites. Maybe they hadn’t fed him too well, either, in that cellar. A small boy doesn’t get that vengeful for no reason.
Outside, the birds had begun to sing, and what we could see of the sky through the kitchen windows was no longer black as night. We had to hurry now.
“Bring the ham,” I suggested. “It’s a long way home, and we need to eat.”
I opened the door to the hall with the staircase. And stood stock-still. In front of me was the prettiest girl I had ever seen.
Her hair was black as night and shone like silk. Her eyes were dark, and yet starry bright. Her face was so delicate that one felt it almost couldn’t be real, someone had to have painted it. In one slim hand she held a heavy golden candlestick, and her slender body was wrapped in a gleaming blue-green robe with green-and-gold dragons embroidered on the collar.
For a moment we stared at each other, equally stunned, I think. Then she opened her mouth to scream.
“Sascha, listen,” said Dina urgently. “You want to be rid of me, don’t you?”
The girl hesitated. Then she closed her mouth, nodded, and listened.
“Just pretend you haven’t seen us,” said Dina persuasively. “Go back to bed. And tomorrow, I won’t be here anymore. Everything will be just the way it was for you before I came.”
One could almost see the thoughts grinding around in the girl’s head, like the gears of a mill. Finally she nodded.
“Go,” she said. “Go away. And never come back.”
“I promise,” Dina said. “I’m never coming back here, not of my own free will.” It was obviously not a promise it was difficult to give.
The girl stepped aside to allow us to pass. She seemed a bit startled when she realized how many we were, but she didn’t say anything. She just moved to the stairs and started up them, straight-backed and with the candle raised above her head. She looked like a princess.
I wouldn’t have thought the tramp could move that fast. But before I’d even realized what he was doing, he was up the stairs. He caught the girl around the waist with one arm and started dragging her down the stairs again. She dropped the candlestick and the flame snuffed out, leaving the hall suddenly dark, but we could hear her struggles and her muffled attempts to cry out. He must have his hand over her mouth.
“What are you doing?” I hissed. “Let go of her! She was going to let us leave!”
The beggar shook his head and did not ease his grip on the struggling girl.
“Firmly hold the captive snake / Lest you feel the wrath of its fangs,” he chanted. “Fool be he who—”
“Stop that rhyming nonsense!” I was about ready to hit him with the ham.
He suddenly smiled, and at that moment looked utterly sane.
“She’ll betray us the moment we’re out the door,” he said. “We have to bring her, at least part of the way.”
This was getting completely out of hand. I had set out to free my sister. Now there were enough of us for a family outing. Couldn’t we tie her up like the Dragon soldier? But there wouldn’t be room for her in the fruit cellar, and
time was running out. Already there was much more light in the hall than there had been a moment ago. Dawn was on its way.
“If I let go of her now, she’ll scream,” said the beggar, still sounding completely normal.
“All right! We bring her too. Now, let us for heaven’s sake get out of here!”
DINA
Green and White
It was raining. Big fat drops fell from branch to branch. The trees were crowded together in a dense mass of green, and it took a while for the drops to reach the ground. But reach it they did, and we got wet, bit by bit, drop by drop.
In front of me, Tavis slipped on the steep path, and I caught his arm to steady him. He tore himself loose from me with unnecessary force, without looking at me. He clearly wanted no help from a “traitor” like me.
I could hardly believe that I was walking here, underneath the open sky, breathing air that smelled of pine and resin and summer rain. Even getting wet was wonderful, at least at first.
Davin had found me. Davin and Rose. And I was on my way home.
Ahead of me, Davin and the tramp had stopped to untangle Sascha, whose sleeve had caught on a branch. She wanted no more help than Tavis. She tore herself free of the branch with a furious jerk, even though it damaged her silk robe. The tramp carefully removed every single shiny turquoise thread from the branch. She’s doing it on purpose, I thought; she is trying to make it easier for them to find us.
“Can’t we just leave her here?” I asked. I didn’t dare shout. We hadn’t heard or seen any sign of pursuit yet, and I thought our escape might still be undiscovered. But that happy state of affairs probably wouldn’t last long, and there was no reason to tempt fate. “We could tie her to a tree—they’d be sure to find her quite soon.”
The tramp looked as if the plan appealed to him, but Davin seemed more doubtful. And Sascha widened her eyes and put on a terrified expression.
“Oh, no,” she moaned, “don’t do that. Wolves will eat me!”
I somehow doubted that, this close to Dracana. And most of her terror looked like playacting to me.
“We can’t keep dragging her along,” I said. “First chance she gets, she’ll betray us.”
Sascha blinked her big dark eyes, and—was that tears? Yes, a gleaming tear was actually making its way down each smooth cheek.
“Never!” she vowed. “You don’t know what horrors you have saved me from. That man”—she heaved a teary sigh—“that man is evil.”
I didn’t doubt that in the least. But the last time I had seen them together, she had called him Lord and gazed at him with adoration.
“Perhaps we don’t need to tie her up,” Davin said. “We could just let her go, couldn’t we?”
Sascha put her hand on his arm and widened her eyes at him.
“Please let me come with you. I never want to see that man again.”
Surely that was too thick for even my fool of a brother to swallow? Apparently not. He looked as if he wanted to wrap her in cotton wool and carry her away in his arms.
“Davin, we can’t. She’s lying! Can’t you see she’s lying?”
“We can’t send her back to that monster!” he protested. “Not if she doesn’t want to. Dina, look at her. If she speaks the truth, then… then she’s coming with us. All the way to the Highlands, if need be.”
He might as well have kicked me in the stomach.
I had almost forgotten about it because I had been so happy to see Davin and Rose, and then there had been all the danger, and finally freedom. Now it hit me again. I couldn’t look Sascha in the eye. Or rather, I could. Only, nothing would happen. The gift I had inherited from my mother was broken. Gone. Gone like the signet I had lost.
I was not a Shamer anymore.
“Dina. What is it?” He looked at me searchingly. I hung my head.
“Nothing.” I simply couldn’t tell him. “Davin, she’s lying.”
“You haven’t even looked at her. Not properly. How can you be sure, then?”
I shrugged helplessly. “I can’t.” I started walking. “Do as you like.”
“Dina!” he objected, irritation and confusion warring in his voice.
“Do as you like,” I repeated, not looking back.
About an hour later, when we reached the place where Black-Arse was hiding with the horses, Sascha was still with us. She threw me a triumphant sneer when she thought no one was looking.
There were only two horses, so we didn’t really travel any quicker. At least we could take turns resting our feet a bit. Much of the time, Sascha somehow managed to get one of the horses to herself. Tavis had short legs and little strength after his many days in the cellar, so he spent most of the day on horseback, too. But even though the tramp was actually in a worse state than any of us, he refused to ride.
“When the woodsman wants to hide / Shank’s Mare is the horse to ride,” he sang. And despite his limp and his troubled breathing, he was surprisingly quick on his feet. It was not the tramp who slowed us down.
The tramp… I couldn’t keep calling him that.
“What is your name?” I asked, trotting along next to him.
He smiled—a quick flash of teeth that looked astonishingly white. But that might be only because the rest of him was so weather-darkened and dirty.
“Rover by name and Rover by nature,” he chanted.
“Rover? What kind of a name is that? For a man, I mean.”
He shrugged.
“It’s all the name I have these days,” he said.
“Ssshh,” hissed Davin. “I think I heard something.”
We all stopped. Davin was right. A sound reached us, distant but chilling. The sound of hounds baying.
Without a word we set off again, faster now, and as quietly as possible.
The hunt was on.
Without Rover, we would have been caught a hundred times. I think he may have been part badger, or perhaps part fox. Except foxes don’t climb trees, and Rover did.
He laid a dozen false trails. He found us shortcuts and hiding places. He found ways through many a wilderness I would have sworn was impassable. He blocked the way behind us in hundreds of ways—with rocks, with water, with fallen trees. Once he led the hounds astray with a hare he had caught. Another time he flung a wasps’ nest into the camp of our pursuers, so that half their horses took off and they had to spend hours catching them.
Yet we still had the Dragon soldiers on our heels. There were so many of them, and they never seemed to sleep. All the time they were there, somewhere behind us or in front of us, and every time we had found a hiding place to get a few hours’ sleep, we were torn from our rest and driven onward.
“You get stupid from not sleeping enough,” Davin complained, rubbing one eye. “You drop stuff, or you forget to look where you’re going.”
“Of all the gifts that Nature gave / The boon of sleep we deepest crave,” muttered Rover, taking a long swallow of water from one of the two flasks we had left—Black-Arse had lost his the day before, probably while we were crossing a small, fierce river none of us knew the name of.
On the second day, we lost the horses. And Sascha, although I didn’t consider that much of a loss.
We were getting closer to the Highlands now, and the ground was growing stonier and steeper. We had to cross a rocky spur with not much cover, and to put a bit of distance between us and our hunters before that, Rover had laid yet another of his false trails. Davin, Black-Arse, and Sascha were to hide with the horses on one side of the trail we hoped our pursuers would choose.
“Keep an eye on her,” I told Davin, before Rose and Tavis and I went to our own hiding place, comfortably high above the trail on the opposite side.
“You’re so suspicious,” said Davin. “Has she done anything to harm us?”
Not if you didn’t count being terribly slow and leaving turquoise threads all over the landscape. But I didn’t mention that.
“Just be careful,” I said, and he sighed in irritation.
“Of course.”
So now we were waiting, they in their hiding place and Rose and Tavis and me in ours, all of us hoping that Valdracu’s men would pass by without noticing us.
“Here they come,” Rose whispered, squeezing my hand. “Listen to the hounds.”
Hoouuuuww. Hoouuuuuwww. Oh, yes, I could hear them clearly now—the peculiar drawn-out howls the Dragon hounds gave when they had the scent of something. And then the first ones appeared, brindled gray rough-coated beasts that could look a child in the eye without rearing. Tavis gave a tiny moan and closed his eyes tightly. He was afraid of the hounds and often dreamed of them, if the starts and cries he made were anything to go by. Rose put a hand on his shoulder—she was much better at comforting him than I was. He still didn’t trust me.
I wasn’t exactly blissfully calm myself. My palms were clammy with sweat, but the hounds down there had their noses glued to the trail and noticed nothing else. They bounded along, heads low and tails high. After them came the riders—eight, no, nine Dragon soldiers advancing at a brisk trot. I tried to remember to breathe. Being this close to the hunters was an unsettling experience, but they seemed as intent on the trail as the hounds were.
This is going great, I thought. Rover really is a wizard at this game.
And then things stopped going great. Two horses came crashing through the shrubbery on the other side of the trail, one of them with a gleaming blue-green figure on its back.
“Soldier!” screamed Sascha at the top of her lungs. “Soldier, halt! The enemies of Lord Valdracu are right here!”
And Davin, the idiot, was running after her.
“Davin,” I cried, and meant to rise, but Rose gave an almighty tug at my skirts and pulled me down again.
“Be quiet!” she whispered furiously. “What good does it do him if they catch you too?”
The hounds continued, but the riders pulled up sharply. It seemed to occur to Davin that he was running straight into the grasp of the enemy, and that it was far too late to stop Sascha. He turned and dashed off in the opposite direction, zigzagging among the trees. He ran like a deer, but the woods weren’t dense enough, they were bound to catch him, and now one of them raised a bow.
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