“That is pretty amazing!” Liden admitted. He looked up at the mountains and took in a deep breath, and with his exhale, he let go of burdens he didn’t realize he had been carrying. He grabbed three rocks off the ground and tossed them in a tight circle.
“Besides,” she added, “pretty much everyone in this group makes plans better than you do. It’s best that you stick to your strengths.”
“Thanks a lot,” he dropped the stones and gave her a shove. “Maybe next time I’ll let Sarta make the plans.”
“Oh, please no!” It was Hunlok’s voice from the other side of the tree.
Sarta peeked out, “Oh, please, YES! When the sun breaks, we’ll split up into groups.” She reached out and grabbed onto Hunlok’s arm. He shoved her away and shook his head.
“Not a chance,” Debir added, stepping out from bush on the other side of the clearing.
In the morning they struck out, headed into the mountain pass. Although they had been seeing the mountains coming closer as they headed east, it was still a stark change when they stepped from the relative open space at the foot of the mountain into the narrow canyon that split the mountains. With large rock walls climbing on either side of them, Liden felt exposed and a little unprepared. This would be a perfect place for robbers to set up an ambush. The only thing that gave him hope against that fate was the fact that this pass seemed well travelled. It wasn’t a proper road that carriages and buggies could easily traverse, but it was more than just a deer path in the woods. Major boulders had been chiseled away to make passage possible, and fresh footprints let him know others had used the trail recently. Hopefully not robbers.
“It’d be near impossible to drive cattle through here. Why don’t they polish up this canyon into a road?” Hunlok asked as he made his way over an exceptionally sharp rock and ignored Sarta who was stretching out her hands toward him for help.
Liden grabbed the young girl and threw her up over the sharp rock, earning a bit of a squeal in return for his helpfulness. She turned around when she was on the ground again, her arms on her hips in a pose she had clearly learned from Knell. “Watch it!”
“I thought you wanted help,” he responded as he stepped carefully around the protrusion.
She stuck her nose up in the air and ran ahead to catch up with Hunlok. “It’s insurance against armies,” Debir responded. “If any invading army tried to pass through here, they could be attacked from all sides while they slowly hauled their supplies on their backs. It’s an effective way to keep the dirty Merrynians away.”
“I’m sure it also slows down trade and supplies from getting through.” Knell added. She leapt easily over the sharp rocks and joined with the rest of the group. “If they would just end this stupid war with the north, then they could focus on things like building passable roads.”
“But where’s the fun in that?” Liden asked with a wide grin on his face. “Without all the rocks and bumps, Sarta might not have an excuse to beg Hunlok for help.”
“And you wouldn’t have an excuse to throw me around like a doll!” she retorted without turning to look at him.
“Don’t worry about her.” Knell waved her hand dismissively. “She’s just mad she wasn’t allowed to pick Ratt’s pocket back in the army camp.”
“I could’ve done it!” Sarta ran up to her sister and held up a spare bowstring in her hand.
“Hey!” Knell protested. “How did you get that?” She grabbed it from her sister’s hand and shoved it back in her pocket.
“Trade secret.”
“What kind of trade are you in?” Liden asked, looking down with a disapproving glare.
“It’s complicated, I’ll tell you when you’re older.” Sarta reached out to pat Liden condescendingly on the head, but he ducked to the side.
Knell burst out laughing and Sarta beamed, pleased at her sister’s reaction. Oh no! Now he knew he’d never hear the end of it. He shook his head at Knell, and she mouthed the word, “Sorry,” knowing full well what she had started. She leaned in close so only Liden could hear, “But it was pretty clever.”
“It was,” he admitted.
“The only really important question,” Hunlok said above the others, “is whether we’re going to get through here some time before our great nation does decide to end the war and clean out this pass.”
“Good one, Hunlok,” Sarta said, taking a few steps so she was again at his side.
“I wasn’t joking,” he responded with his eyebrows drawn together in a mix between confusion and annoyance.
“At this rate, it’ll take us four days to get through here, if we don’t encounter any unforeseeable obstacles,” Debir answered. “We have about three full days’ worth of food, so we’ll need to cut back our rations, and we’ll also need to do some serious gathering when we get to the woods on the far side of the mountains so we’ll have food enough to get to Kyt.”
Knell looked around and nodded, “He’s definitely right; there’s not going to be any game along this trail.” Sarta looked back, a little worried. The small girl seemed to act the most put out when there wasn’t food around, which was surprising since Liden had assumed it would only take a small grain of rice to fill her skinny body. “We’ll be fine for four days,” Knell encouraged. Sarta smiled and nodded, returning her attention to Hunlok. Knell then turned to Liden and raised her eyebrow and shrugged a little. She was worried.
After spending five days in the mountain pass, Liden knew exactly why Knell was concerned. The path was not only riddled with sharp rocks, but it also had parts where the path itself was steep like they were hiking up the mountain side. He had come to realize that even if the kingdom did want a nice road through the mountains, this pass might not be any easier than going over the mountain, or having the miners from Ryr tunnel their way through. It was ridiculous! He shaded his eyes from the sun.
“Is that what I think it is?”
Knell looked up and her eyes opened up in relief, “Trees!”
“Trees?” Sarta squeaked. She had been almost completely silent for the past two days when the food was dwindling. Hearing her high pitched squeal made Liden consider reducing her rations on a regular basis. But he also felt his heart leap a little at the prospect of getting out of this natural stone oven.
Without planning it, their pace picked up so that they reached the end of the mountain pass by the late afternoon and found the shade of trees. “I’m going hunting,” Knell announced. She dropped her pack in a pile of dried needles and walked off into the woods.
“Debir, do you know about the plants on this side of the mountain?”
“A little,” the shorter boy responded. “I’ll scout around and see what edible plants I can find.”
“Careful,” Hunlok said in a serious and cautionary tone. “If Knell hears you in a bush, she’ll put an arrow in you.”
Sarta waved her hand in the characteristic way Knell would have waved off something insignificant. “She wouldn’t loose an arrow into a moving bush without waiting to see what was in it.”
“I know,” Hunlok replied. “If Debir scares away the game, she’ll be hangry. You don’t want to be the one to blame for that.”
“Hangry?” Sarta looked up to Hunlok.
“Hungry and angry,” Liden responded. “He’s probably right. Best go that way,” he pointed the opposite direction from where Knell was headed. It was right through a dense wall of thorns and briars, but it seemed the better choice at this point.
Debir spent several minutes carefully making his way into the dense underbrush before he was through to the other side and out of sight. It was a little disconcerting how completely he disappeared from view the second he was a couple of feet into the woods on that side, but Debir had a good sense of directions. He was sure to find his way back. Liden looked again at the bushes, then up to the sun. There would be several hours of daylight left.
“Sarta, can you grab some kindling?” She nodded. “Just make sure…”
“The
y’re completely dry,” she finished in an exasperated tone. “I’m not an infant.”
Liden held up his hands in surrender while rolling his eyes at the girl. “Let’s go get some wood.” After about an hour, they had a pile of wood large enough to start a small fire, and cook whatever Knell might bring back. It wasn’t enough to keep a fire going all night, but if the heat here was anything like it was inside the mountain pass, they wouldn’t need the heat, and the light might just attract some unwanted attention.
A small rustle in the bushes announced that someone was coming their way. Instinctively, Liden grabbed two fist-sized stones from the ground, and Hunlok picked up his rope ready to throw a loop over whoever came into view if needed. They had learned from their experience with Ratts and the army camp. If someone was coming to get them, they weren’t going again without a fight. Hunlok slowly spun the rope over his head as the noise of the approaching person closed in on them. From the woods a short distance away, Knell popped out from behind a tree with a pheasant in one hand and a fat rabbit in the other.
“Food!” Sarta ran up to her sister and stole her kills. “Get that fire going, I’m starving!”
“You haven’t even had a single day without food,” Liden countered.
Sarta turned on him with a death-glare. “You get that fire going, so I can eat something more than a crust, or you’ll learn the meaning of the word pain!”
“Too late! I’ve been traveling with you since Ryr,” Liden responded.
Sarta dropped the animals on the ground and leapt at Liden with a scream that sounded like a primordial battle cry. Liden grabbed her hands to keep them away from gouging his eyes, and quickly twisted them so they were restrained behind her back. Although he thought she was contained, she kept struggling, sometimes catching him with a stray kick of her foot in his shin. “Ouch! Will you stop that! Hunlok give me your rope!”
“I thought Knell was bad,” Hunlok said from his place next to the fire pit where he struck a flint.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Knell folded her arms across her chest.
Hunlok shrugged his wide shoulders and blew on the small embers that were now spreading to the kindling. “Will we need a spit?” he asked in an obvious attempt to change the subject.
Knell raised an eyebrow at him, but after waiting a moment she uncrossed her arms and went back to work cleaning her fresh kills. “Na, I’ll just cut the meat into strips and we’ll cook them on sticks. They’ll cook faster that way.”
“Sounds good to me,” Sarta said, half into the dirt now that she was completely pinned down. “Now will you get off my back?”
Liden released her hands and stood up, leaving her lying on the ground. She jumped to her feet, quickly gave him a jab in the ribs, then ran over to help Hunlok with feeding the fire.
Liden took two steps toward the little kid, but Knell put her hand on his arm. “Just ignore her.”
“That obviously doesn’t work,” he replied, pointing at the way she swooned over Hunlok, who was acting oblivious to her existence.
“Point taken,” she admitted, “but we can’t kill her, and we can’t send her back, so it’s best to not have her screaming her head off, attracting all the criminals within a hundred miles while scaring off all the game.”
At this pronouncement, another rustling came from the bushes behind him. Liden searched the ground for any rocks, but couldn’t find anything in time to have a weapon in his hand when Debir burst through the thick wall of shrubs out of breath. “You need to see this, come on!” He waved his hand and turned to go back into the bushes. “Wait.” He grabbed his pack off the ground. “Bring our stuff.” Without another word of explanation, he vanished behind the bushes.
“What about the fire?” Hunlok called after him, but received no answer.
He looked to Liden, who simply shrugged and went to pick up his pack. “It’s got to be important.” Hunlok stamped out the fire, Knell hung the food from her belt again, and Sarta looked longingly back and forth between the food and the fire, but to her credit, didn’t make any complaints.
After fighting his way through the thorn bush, the path was actually relatively clear and he could see Debir in the distance between the trunks of the old evergreens. What could possibly be more important than getting their food prepared at this hour? If it was going to be something nerdy like a rock formation that looked like the number five, Liden would absolutely consider striking out on his own.
They hiked through the woods for about fifteen minutes until they came to an overgrown, abandoned-looking hunting trail. “Debir, where are you taking us?”
“Just wait, you really have to see this. It’s not much farther.” They followed the trail through the woods for another half hour until they came to a stone wall with two pillars that had a rusted gate fallen off the hinges, but what they saw past the gate shocked even Sarta to silence. A large house in the middle of nowhere. It was built using rough sawn wood with bark exterior that matched the trees, as if it was meant to blend in despite the stone wall and path that led up to it. The most shocking part about the house was the large windows. Liden had never seen so many windows on a single house. How had they delivered them all the way out here? How could someone spend so much on a house, then abandon it? The whole situation made no sense.
“Let’s get out of here,” Hunlok said, looking cautiously at the large home.
“No way!” Knell stepped up through the gate and practically ran to the front door, ignoring Hunlok’s exasperated sigh and Debir’s call for caution.
“What’s inside?” Liden asked as they tried to catch up to Knell.
“No idea! As soon as I saw it, I went back for you. It’s a safe shelter for the night, at the very least.”
“Safe?” Hunlok said again, looking up at the building like it was going to open the door and eat them. By this time Knell was already pounding on the front door, calling out to ask whether anyone was home. Just as the rest of the group came to the door, she turned the nob and shoved it open.
The entire group stood with their mouths open as they looked into this seemingly abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. Inside the door the house opened up to a massive living space the size of a dining hall of an inn. It had tile floors throughout the entire room with a bear-skin rug. The walls were rough sawn wood adorned with stuffed heads of animals, and the vaulted ceiling was tall enough for two stories.
“Pantry,” Sarta was of course the first to speak. She walked across the room and the others followed her through an opening into the kitchen. There was a large stone counter next to a fireplace, and empty shelves that probably had housed foodstuffs at one time. She opened the short, double doored cabinet.
“There’s not going to be any food…” Liden started, but shut his mouth when the door swung open.
Sarta stood next to the open door and despite her starvation, took time to tilt her head in a very self-satisfied way. The room was filled with sacks of food supplies and even some root vegetables. Some were a little wilted, others were soft, but some were still good for eating. Dried herbs hung down from the ceiling and there were several unmarked pottery containers that had lids tightly closed.
“Let’s get the fire going!” Knell said with delight. She reached out and grabbed a pottery vase off the shelf.
SNAP!
Chapter 12
Wren stopped at a large boulder situated amidst a grove of pine saplings. He placed one hand on the west side of the boulder and then counted out eleven paces. Once there, he turned southward and counted another ten paces. His raven squawked in the branches above him as it watched with keen interest. Wren pulled a small spade from his backpack and set to digging. The dirt was soft from having been dug up recently. He found a small, tin canister about two feet below ground, just as had been agreed.
“Well then, let’s see what we have here,” Wren said as he prized the lid open. His eager smile vanished when he saw nothing but a note with a smudged bit of dirt on th
e back side. He pulled it up and read the message aloud. “Your idea failed. The agent is still free, and is back in Kyt. He nearly killed my cousin. Deal’s off.”
Wren crumpled the paper and shoved it into the pouch at his belt. Instead of a spiteful note, he was supposed to have received a very valuable potion, one that would help him with his ultimate goal and final mission before he could set off for the islands and live out the rest of his life in peace. Without the potion, he wouldn’t be able to pull off his final mission, and that was unacceptable.
“So what went wrong, Raven?” he called up to the bird. “I know I set the trap. I greased the appropriate palms and spread all the right rumors. That agent should have been there.” The only way to find out was to investigate.
Wren gave a short whistle and the raven took off, flying low below the branches as the assassin made his way through the woods while keeping a cautious eye turned toward the shadows. Perhaps the client had gotten cold feet and warned the target. Or maybe the target had somehow uncovered the plot and set a trap for Wren. It was entirely possible that something far less nefarious had occurred, but until he knew for sure, he kept his left hand on a mini-crossbow, and his right hand hovered just over the handle of his dagger.
The raven wouldn’t make a noise unless it spotted something dangerous. It worked a graceful pattern in front of Wren and then maneuvered its way around to survey behind the assassin as well. It was said that ravens were much more intelligent than people gave them credit for. In this case, the bird verged on the edge of magical in its abilities and awareness. It was always so loyal, and satisfied with a simple cracker for its work. It was a wonder more spies didn’t use ravens the way Wren did.
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