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.
Finally Owen sighed, hung his head and responded in a sad voice, “I know you’re right. The same thoughts have been going through my head for the past couple days. I just did not want to say them out loud. I’ve been worried about Jack as well. If he had made it through ahead of the gorn, he’d have been back weeks ago. Since he isn’t, that must mean that the gorn have been looting and killing the farmers for some time now. It also means that they are all still in the countryside between here and home.”
“So what do we do?”
“I don’t know, Marian. We can’t go back to our old camp, so we’ve got very little food and other gear. I guess we’ll have to cut through the hills from here heading northeast and do our best to make it back alive. Sooner or later, we’ll hit the old road and that will take us back to South Corner. I just hope that the weeks that we’ve wasted here haven’t made things worse for the villagers or our friends back home.
“Let’s cut a few boughs and build a temporary shelter for tonight, and start back in the morning,” Owen sighed. “At least by then we’ll be dry, if not actually warm. I think that it’s going to snow again tonight, and I’d hate to get caught out in it with no more shelter than we had last night.”
Owen’s weather forecast was right on. Late that afternoon, the snow began to fall. This time, the clouds were dropping big wet flakes at a greater rate than the previous night, as if that earlier fall had just been a rehearsal.
The two sat glumly in their shelter, watching as the temperature continued to drop and the world turned white around them. Owen was examining the staff head once again to pass the time, and it occurred to him that the quarterstaff that the Old Wizard had given him just might fit into the hole in its base. Sure enough, the fit was perfect. So tight, in fact, that once Owen had joined the two he had to struggle to pull them back apart. When he examined them in an observation state, he was amazed to see the concentration of lines of energy that now flowed through his newly formed staff. The staff head alone had concentrated the lines, but the combination of the two appeared to be many times more effective.
Once the excitement of assembling the staff had abated, Owen sat dejectedly with the staff in his lap rearranging the lines of energy which joined the earth to the sky above, causing the snowfall to concentrate in one area while avoiding the ground nearby. It was the same trick that he had done without the aid of the staff head days before when he had made it rain harder over his sister, but with the help of the staff, the trick was almost effortless. Over the past half hour, he had built up a pretty impressive snow drift not far from their tree.
“I’m going to turn in,” Marian said, with a yawn. “Let’s hope that you don’t bring an avalanche down on us before morning.”
“Yeah, okay. I’m not far behind you. I just wish that we had had better luck and managed to do something to help the folks of South Corner rather than heading back home with our tails tucked.”
The brief conversation ended there. Marian crawled down as deep as she could get into her bedroll, and turned to face the other way. Both she and her bag were still a little damp, and she had to tuck herself into a ball to keep from shivering.
Marian was just starting to get warm and about to fall asleep when Owen suddenly exclaimed: “Damn! That’s it! Come on, Marian, pack up your gear, we’ve got to go, now.”
“What are you talking about? We’re more likely to get lost and freeze to death in this storm than we are to find our way back to South Corner, especially in the dark.”
“We’re not going to South Corner; we’re going back to the castle. I know how to get us past the sentries,” Owen said, and briefly explained his plan to his sister.
Even with Owen parting the falling snow in a wedge before them, so that they could see with what little moonlight filtered down through the clouds, the trip back to Carraghlaoch was long and difficult. They dared not drive their horses above a walk, despite their excitement at finally having a plan that had at least a small chance of success. It was past midnight, and the faint glow of the moon had all but disappeared over the horizon when they finally reached the small ridge overlooking the valley of Carraghlaoch.
Marian picketed the horses in the nearby woods, while Owen studied the walls of the castle, barely visible through the falling snow, using his newly acquired skills. The storm had continued through the night, so far, and he prayed that it would not choose this time to finally stop. It seemed to him that the snow fall had lessened somewhat, but he wasn’t sure. It might just be the effect of standing still instead of riding through it. It had definitely become drier and more powdery with the increasing cold.
Cautiously, the two walked toward the castle. They had not been this deep into the valley before, and they were both interested in and a little afraid of the collapsed skeletons of the old houses that clustered at the bottom of the approach ramp. In all of their previous observations, they had never seen the soldiers show any interest in these ruins, but they could not help but worry that a lookout might be hidden there, or perhaps the ghost of some long forgotten ancestor.
Owen was concentrating his attention both ahead and behind. Ahead of them, he was using his skills with the lines of force to direct a gradually increasing density of snowfall between themselves and the castle walls where he was reasonably certain that any lookouts would be. Behind them, he was inducing a little chaos in the already fallen snow so as to cover up their tracks. The masking wasn’t perfect, but with the continued snowfall, it should suffice to eliminate their tracks before an observer might see them at first light.
By the time they had reached the bottom of the ramp that climbed up along the face of the northern city wall, Owen had gradually concentrated the snowfall all along that wall to the point that they could barely see a few feet in front of them. What with the snow in the air, and the snow on their heads and shoulders—he could no longer afford the extra energy his trick of keeping himself and his sister in the clear required—they were effectively invisible from any guards who might be on the walls above. It was Owen’s hope, that what guards there were had sought shelter long since.
They hugged the wall as they made their way up the ramp. The moon had set, leaving the land in near total darkness, and in the near whiteout conditions, it would have been all too easy to walk right off the side of the road. They slowed as the huge timber gates loomed into view ahead of them. They remained sagging on their hinges, just as Owen had seem them through his avian eyes what seemed like months ago. Unlike repairs that the soldiers had been able to make elsewhere along the fortifications, the pure mass of these gates and their lack of manpower had frustrated any of their attempts to put them back into service.
Owen stopped, put his mouth ne
xt to Marian’s ear, and spoke as softly as he could. “You’re on your own from here, little sister. I’m sorry that I have to leave you, but I think that this may be my only chance. If I don’t take it now…”
“Don’t worry Owen. I’ll be alright. Just go. Go while you still can.”
“Try to find a good, unused vantage and stay hidden until you can determine where the remaining villagers are kept and how to get them free. Remember what I told you about the dungeon side of the escape tunnel. When you next see dad, please tell him I did my best.” With that, Owen strode away from the gates and towards the drawbridge across the river while Marian slipped around the corner, and into the castle grounds.
After crossing the drawbridge, Owen paused and looked in the direction in which the majority of the villagers had been taken. He knew that he should try to do something for them; he knew that he should not be abandoning his sister to the soldiers in Carraghlaoch, but with a sigh and a pang of guilt he turned toward the arch that led over the Wizard’s Moat—the arch that led to Sarah.
Chapter 14
Breakout
Marian cautiously passed through the open castle gates. Thanks to Owen, snow was swirling violently around her, and under the gateway arch. In the chaos of the storm, Marian could not see where she was going and had to trail a hand against the stone wall on her left in order to keep from wandering. The murder holes over her head were, of course, unmanned since the soldiers had no concern of invasion, but even if there had been someone overhead, nothing would have been seen through the dark and blowing snow. This was her one and only chance to get into the castle, find any villagers still being held here and free them from the armed men who held them captive. ‘Nothing that any seventeen year old girl couldn’t do on her own,’ Marian thought ruefully, groping in the dark. She couldn’t help but be scared almost to death at her undertaking, but what else was she to do? She couldn’t stay outside the castle; the soldiers knew that they were there now and were looking for them. She couldn’t go with Owen and just abandon the captives that they were both sure were being held in the castle. She couldn’t go back to South Corner to get help; there were at least thirty gorn between here and there and the chances of making that trip on her own did not seem very good. So, she swallowed her fear and pressed on.
The Staff of the Winds (The Wizard of South Corner Book 1) Page 25