Chapter 3
The summer warmth never stayed after nightfall. No matter how hot it got during the day, the nights were always cursed with a rigid cold that numbed your bones and made you count the hours until sunrise.
As Norabel walked soundlessly through the trees, she rubbed her hands together, trying to keep them nimble. She had already made the perilous climb up and over the steep western mountain by her house, going around the city towards the eastern-lying Valor Wood in order to avoid any Pax checkpoints. Now she was trying hard to concentrate on the next task at hand.
When the Pax cart would travel down the road after packing up the last of its cargo, they would need to be ready and waiting in the trees. In order to get the woven basket full of goods out of the moving cart without alerting the officials, the Shadow first needed to sneak onto the cart, cut the rope securing the basket down, and then tie another line of rope on top so that a lowered hook would be able to grab onto it. This all had to be done before the cart reached a point called the “extraction sight.” This sight was marked by a pre-labelled tree that had some sort of naturally occurring defect on its trunk that made it easily identifiable. It was in this tree that the other three team members were waiting.
Once the Shadow saw this tree, marking the extraction sight, they needed to act quickly. Right as the cart passed this spot, the point man would throw down a rope line with a hook attached at the end of it. It was the Shadow’s job to grab the hook and connect it to the rope they had tied across the center of the basket. This had to be done within the span of two seconds, for that’s exactly how long the Lifters waited until they pulled on the line to draw it back up.
If everything was done correctly, the basket would then be lifted up into the trees, the Shadow would hop off the cart, and the Pax officials would carry on down the road as though nothing had happened. They might even travel several miles before either of the drivers decided to look back and notice that the basket was missing.
However, if something went wrong and one of the guards noticed that someone was trying to steal the basket, they set off something called a Snapper stick that would send up a bright red flare in the night, alerting any nearby Pax to come to their aid.
In the three years that Norabel had been a Shadow, she had never had a guard set off his Snapper stick, yet that didn’t mean each job they had pulled was a success. Of the fifty jobs they had attempted, ten of them had to be abandoned because she couldn’t hook the basket in time. Still, forty successful jobs was no small deal. She had heard that the team down south in the village of Fairbrooks had pulled off even more, but she still wasn’t comfortable with how much success they were having. They didn’t know which job would be the breaking point. When would Guardian Amias have enough and send soldiers flooding into Breccan, demanding that the village give up the transgressors hiding among them?
When all four of their team members arrived at the meeting point in the woods that night, Mason climbed up the tree where they stashed their ropes and equipment, and they began to quietly get ready. Mason tested the hook on the rope line, Logan and Archer slipped on gloves that would help them to better grip the line when they would need to pull it up, and Norabel tied a knife to the inside of her leg and looped a line of rope around her waist.
Then, all too quickly, it was time to get into position. Mason picked a tree as their extraction sight, telling Norabel to memorize the odd lump in the center of the trunk that looked a little like the letter “Y.” The boys then climbed up the tree, hiding high up in its leaves, leaving Norabel to trek back down the road by herself. She had to travel at least a half mile away from the tree, back towards Breccan, in order to give herself enough time to finish her job before reaching the extraction sight.
Pax carts normally left the village at nine-thirty, liking to travel in the night, for that provided the best visibility for the flares should help be called for. However, sometimes that half an hour of waiting felt like a lifetime.
As Norabel flexed her hands, trying to keep her fingers warm, she wondered what the boys were doing as they were waiting. Were they crouched in cold, lonely silence like her, waiting for any hint of the sound of the travelling cart? Or were they talking and joking with each other, trying to lighten the mood while preparing to do battle with the Pax?
Norabel shook her head at her imaginings, knowing it wouldn’t do any good to feel sorry for herself. She hadn’t joined this team to socialize and have fun; she had joined it to fight the Pax and to help out a friend. Still, the thought would always creep back in her mind that none of them were risking as much as she was. They were safely hidden away in their tree while she was just a few feet from the two Pax officials. If the job went wrong and one of them ended up getting caught, it would be her.
Mason had once assured her that she would have plenty of time to run away if one of the officials should ever spot her. He said they would need to stop the cart and dismount first if they wanted to try and catch her, and she could jump off and be running away the second she felt the cart slowing down. Norabel had pretended to be comforted by this. She didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth—that she had Jotham’s Disease and could only run so far before her lungs would close up. If Mason ever found out, she knew she would be off the team in a second, and then she would never get to spend time with him. So she had to remain silent each time she pulled off a job, secretly worrying about the very real possibility of being captured and sent off to the dungeons of Arkadiak.
When nine-thirty finally arrived, she could hear the sound of the trotting horses coming down the road. As it grew nearer, she readied herself in the shadows, preparing to run out onto the road just as it past and grab onto one of the wooden slats of the cart.
She took in a deep breath. She couldn’t feel any resistance from her lungs. She put one leg forward, ready to start into a sprint. The dress she was wearing was flexible enough that she could move around easily. She placed a hand up to the hood of the dark cape she was wearing and covered her head so that her pale hair wouldn’t shine in the dark.
The cart was now at the tree she was hiding behind. She kept hidden in the shadows as she watched the two men on horses trot by. One of them was laughing as they passed. Somehow the sound made Norabel feel colder. The second that the back of the horses passed by her tree, she ran out from the shadows and onto the road. She didn’t allow any distance to come between her and the cart before she reached for its top wooden slat with both hands. She kicked off from the ground with one foot, simultaneously bringing the other one up to land on the back of the cart. A moment later she was on, crouching low enough so that the cart hid her from view.
She held her breath as she waited a moment to make sure the drivers hadn’t seen anything. Though she wasn’t heavy enough to jostle the cart when she jumped on, there was always the danger that one of them had seen her when she had run onto the road. From up ahead, she could still hear one of the men laughing, too deep in conversation to notice the extra load they had taken on.
Moving carefully, she lifted one leg up over the back railing, followed by the other, squishing herself in between the cart and the basket. Reaching down for her dress, she raised the hem and took out the knife she had hidden there. Staying low in the shadows, she started to quietly cut the first rope connecting the basket to the wooden slats of the cart. After a few saws from her knife, the rope snapped, and she swiftly pulled it through the loop of the basket and discarded it on the floor.
Inching forward, she strained her body to reach for the next line. This one was closer to the two men, and there was more risk that she could be heard. Trying to keep her body as far away from them as possible, she grabbed the rope and slowly sawed at this line. Since she was further away and couldn’t press down as hard, the rope didn’t want to cut as quickly. Luckily, with a few more hurried saws, it finally snapped. She let out a silent breath and pulled this one through, wincing at the sound the frayed rope made as it passed through the loop.
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br /> Going back to the rear of the cart, she cut the third line easily enough, but she hit a block when she came to the last connection point. She stretched her arm out like before and quietly tried to saw away, but the rope did not seem to want to cut. Holding her breath, she slid closer to it. A few feet away, the guards were talking animatedly to each other, arguing about an event that had happened in a pub.
“Except you didn’t drink it!” one of the men exclaimed.
“You callin me a liar!” the other defended.
“Nah! You slipped it under the table and spilt it all over Fletcher’s lap!”
Norabel pressed down harder on her knife as the two men continued to argue. Ten saws later, she wasn’t sure if she had made much progress. But what was wrong? She brought the knife up to her eyes and realized the problem. The blade had been worn down bare. It was hardly sharp anymore. She would probably be able to cut it if she kept at it for a minute straight, but she didn’t have that kind of time.
Not wanting to accept defeat and let Iris down in the process, she raised the knife back up to the rope. However, just as the dull blade touched the line, something came whizzing down from the trees. Norabel jerked back in shock and had to stifle an exclamation of surprise.
Looking down to the cart, she saw that there was an arrow embedded into the wood. Her heart leapt in her chest, and she could feel the subtle hand of Jotham squeezing at the entrance to her throat. But who would be shooting arrows at her? If the officials had found her, they would have taken out their swords. They didn’t travel with bows and arrows. Besides, this shot had come from the trees.
Glancing up to the basket, she realized with a shock that the line had been cut. Could it have been a coincidence? Or could the person who had fired it not been aiming for her at all, but for the line? She looked down to the arrow in the cart. It didn’t have the characteristic red and black tail like all of the arrows from the Pax. Maybe this was a friend.
Deciding to take a chance, she slid the broken rope from the basket and got to her feet. She tried to keep her hands from shaking as she stood up in the cart, exposing her top half to the view of the Pax officials or anyone that might be watching from the trees. Looping a new line of rope through the basket, she worked as quickly as possible to tie it securely so that it crisscrossed in the center. As she worked, she kept an ear open, listening to the two men’s conversation while every so often glancing up to the trees to make sure another arrow wasn’t about to come down.
She had just finished knotting the rope when she spotted the tree with the strange “Y” shaped growth on its bark. She hardly breathed as she waited for the hook to be lowered down. It was up to Mason to be able to see well enough to know when to lower it so that it wouldn’t knock into the men and their horses, but still soon enough for her to grab it. If he didn’t do this, if he accidentally hit the men or made a noise as it clinked to the cart before she could grab it, then it meant that the men would discover her.
Tilting her head up to the trees, she could just make out the silhouette of a hook descending towards the cart. It was still a few feet up in the air. Then it passed by the officers’ heads. Suddenly it took a dip down, coming just within arm-length. Norabel lunged out to grab it. Swiftly bringing it in, she looped the rope line around the hook.
At once the basket was quietly hoisted up, and she had to duck out of the way in order to avoid hitting it. Then the cart was travelling down the road in blissful ignorance, and she looked back to see the basket dangling among the trees.
Though the mission had succeeded, she felt even more exposed now. The basket was not there to shelter her, and it would only take a half glance backwards for an official to notice something was wrong. Her instincts were telling her to get off that cart as soon as she could, and her arms and legs were begging her to move faster. But she knew that moving fast was the quickest way to get caught. If she didn’t control her actions, she was liable to bump or jostle something.
It was a mental battle, but she managed to creep lightly to the end of the cart and swiftly lift one leg, and then the other, up and over the lip of the cart. Bracing herself, she let go of the wooden slat and jumped off. She landed on the ground in a soft thud and remained still as she heard the cart traveling further away. She waited a few seconds more before lifting her head up. The cart turned down a bend in the road and moved out of sight.
A wave of relief passed through her, but she wasn’t out of danger yet. There was still the issue of who had fired the arrow. She peered into the woods that lied on the right side of the road, the direction in which the arrow had been fired, but could see no sign of movement there. Keeping a keen eye out, she began to quickly move back down the road towards the extraction sight.
When she got there, she found that the boys had already lowered the basket down on the road, and Mason was busy trying to cut the lock off the basket’s lid. As he did this, Logan started to make a torch. He built it with a nearby stick and the wrappings of some fabric doused in oil that he kept in his pack. Also in his pack was a small box of igniting powder called Snapper. In order to make fire instantaneously, he just had to take a small pinch of it between his fingers, and then snap them together, aiming the dust at the object he wished to ignite.
Logan raised the unlit torch in the air and held the Snapper dust tightly between his thumb and index finger. Then, with a small snap, he deftly sent the torch alight, pulling his hand safely out of the line of fire.
“Norabel,” Logan whispered when he saw her standing amongst them. “You alright?”
She nodded, as if in a daze, and took a quick look up to her right. There was still no movement in the trees. If someone was trying to shoot them down, they would have probably done it already.
“You look a little peaky,” Archer commented, staring into her face.
She turned away and looked over to Mason, knowing that she had to tell him what had happened. But, if she told him now, he might give the order to leave the load right then and there, and she would never get the Albatross Seed back to Iris. On the other hand, this was their safety she was gambling with. It would be selfish to make the decision to stay all on her own.
Norabel heard a quiet clink, and looked down to see that Mason had successfully cut off the lock and had discarded it on the floor.
“Uh, Mason?” Norabel asked timidly. “I need to talk to you.”
“Later,” he whispered. “Let’s pack up first.”
With one ceremonious sweep, Mason took off the basket’s lid, revealing the hoard of goods underneath. Norabel leaned over and peered inside, running her eyes over the objects that were lying on top. However, she knew she couldn’t search for the Albatross Seed now. So she grabbed the pack that Mason was handing to each of them, and started stuffing as many objects into it as she could. A little while later, they had grabbed nearly everything that the basket contained, aside from a few jars of pickled food that had broken during the trip, and had them all hoisted on their backs.
Before they left, Logan threw his torch on the emptied basket, leaving it to burn safely on the road. Then the four of them silently headed back towards Breccan.
When they had walked a safe half-mile away, Norabel jogged ahead to where Mason was leading their group. The extra strain that the pack put on her shoulders threatened to thin her air-supply, but she knew from experience that it would take more than this to induce an attack.
“Mason,” she whispered, standing close to him so the others couldn’t hear. “I have to talk to you.”
“So talk,” he answered almost playfully. He was always in a good mood after a successful job.
She struggled to keep up with him as she said, “When I was on the cart, someone shot an arrow down at…”
Mason stopped walking and spun towards her. “What?” he demanded in a furious whisper.
He glanced back briefly to where Logan and Archer were following a few paces behind. He must have decided that he didn’t want them hearing this conversa
tion, for he grabbed Norabel’s arm and nudged her ahead on the road.
With his hand still grasped around her upper arm, he whispered into her ear, “Why didn’t you tell me right away?”
“I tried,” she defended.
“Well if someone’s shooting arrows at you, you should have tried harder!” he scolded.
He was pushing her along the road at such a fast pace that she had to try and quietly regain her breath before speaking again.
“That’s the thing,” she told him. “I don’t know if they were actually shooting at me. I was having trouble cutting the last rope. The blade was getting too dull, and the rope wasn’t relenting. But then the arrow came down and sliced right through it. I didn’t know whether it was a coincidence, or whether they were actually trying to help me. But the arrow didn’t look like it belonged to the Pax.”
Mason was silent as he took this all in. His eyes darted to the side of the road, but he made no comment.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“I’m thinking,” he responded roughly.
Finally he let go of her arm. She could feel the coldness hitting her skin where his warm fingers used to be.
“Don’t tell them about this,” he advised her, flicking his eyes back to where Logan and Archer were walking.
“Why not?”
“I’ll tell them later. Just, for now, don’t say anything.”
She nodded and slowed her step so that Mason could walk in front of her. Logan came up a moment later and fell in step beside her, but she chose not to utter a word for the rest of the walk back to their drop-off point.
They had chosen to always drop off their recaptured goods in one of the caves that lied in the western face of the Breccan Mountains. They would then wait there for a man named Malachy. He was what they called their Head Whisperer. It was his job to return many of the stolen items back to whom they belonged.
Chasing Shadows (Saving Galerance, Book 1) Page 3