“We’ll follow this,” she said, nudging him toward the trail with one knee. He grunted and responded, shoving aside the low undergrowth as he made his way onto the trail.
The shouts and hoofbeats were still behind them, but not too close. She heaved a sigh of relief.
“We’ll keep going south until we’re in the clear. Then we’ll circle around them and head back to the castle,” she told her horse. Again, he grunted, concentrating on following the narrow game trail.
Dimon had told his men that they would launch their attack on the castle the following day. It was imperative that she get back there tonight, so she could warn her mother of his treachery. Then they could forestall his bold plan to simply lead his men across the drawbridge and into the castle. She realized that he had no idea that she had been the one hiding in the gallery. He had repeatedly called on his men to catch “him.” He might even think that she had been an itinerant tramp seeking shelter there—although the presence of her horse tended to work against that assumption.
She was in a part of the fief she hadn’t seen before, and realized that the ground beneath her was rising gradually. The trees were becoming more widely spaced as well, and she was conscious of low hills rising on either side of her as she rode on. They became progressively steeper and higher, and she realized that she was riding up a valley—wide at first but becoming narrower the farther she went, as the steep hills on either side closed in.
Then Bumper came to an abrupt stop and she looked up. A sheer rock wall barred the way in front of them. She swung Bumper to the right and cantered along it, seeking a way around. But there was none. The rock wall facing her abutted the steep side of the valley, leaving no way out. Desperately, she cantered back the other way, but found the same situation on the left side. The sides of the valley formed a solid U shape, too steep to climb.
With a sinking heart, she realized she was in a blind valley, with no way out other than the way she had come.
She turned Bumper’s head back downhill, but as she did so, she saw the flare of torches among the trees below her. Dimon and his men were at the wide end of the valley.
She was trapped.
34
A line of searching men was deployed across the wide end of the valley. Every third or fourth man was carrying a torch, and the flickering light they cast shone among the trees as they made their way up the valley.
It was a search line, Maddie realized, intent on finding her. They had followed her along the game trail and made up some of the distance between her and them while she was searching for a way out of the dead end she had ridden into. Her pursuers were dismounted now, their horses back in the trees while the men moved steadily up the narrowing valley, scanning the ground for any sign of her.
She gnawed her lip anxiously, assessing the situation. With any luck, she could slip past the cordon of searching men. The light was bad, even with their torches, and the ground was uneven, with lots of low undergrowth for cover. But not with Bumper. There was no way she could conceal him.
Coming to a decision, she slid down from the saddle and patted his neck as he turned his head to look at her.
“You’re going to have to run for it,” she told him.
He shook his mane disdainfully. I can do that. Get back in the saddle and we’ll go.
“You’re going alone. I can slip past them on foot. They won’t bother you once they see I’m not riding you.”
Bumper pawed the ground uneasily. He didn’t like the idea of being separated. He saw it as his duty to protect her. But she knew it was the safest way. If they rode headlong into a line of armed men, all on the alert for them, there was too great a risk that her horse would be wounded or killed—too great a risk that she would be captured. If that happened, there’d be no way of warning Cassandra about the imminent attack on Castle Araluen.
And that, now, was her most important task.
If she and Bumper separated, there was danger for both of them. But the danger was less this way than if they stayed together. And there was always the chance that Bumper would provide a diversion for her as she tried to break through the search cordon.
She patted his neck affectionately. “Trust me,” she said, “this is the best way. Once you’re through, head back to the forest below the tunnel entrance. I’ll meet you there.”
Again, he shook his mane uncertainly. She looked downhill and saw the line of torches coming closer. She would have to move soon. As the valley narrowed, the distance between the searchers became less and less. And that would make it easier for them to spot her. She slapped the little horse lightly on the rump.
“Go!” she ordered him and he reared slightly, raising his forefeet a meter off the ground, then set off at a canter, heading diagonally across the valley to the left.
“Good boy!” she whispered. He would draw the searchers’ eyes to that side of the valley. Accordingly, she wrapped her cloak around herself and set off in a crouching run for the right side.
The undergrowth was waist high and she slid easily through it, the cloak helping her blend into the background. Crouched as she was, her head came up just above the bushes and she knew she would be all but invisible to the approaching line of men.
She heard shouts of alarm as they saw Bumper cantering toward them. Instinctively, they all turned toward the horse and began to close in on him. Realizing their attention was totally distracted, she put on a burst of speed and ran, still crouching low, toward the mouth of the valley.
“Let him go! It’s just his horse!” she heard a voice calling, and the men withdrew as the stocky little horse cantered past. Then there was more shouting, confused at first. But one voice, Dimon’s, cut through above the others.
“He’s on foot. He’ll be trying to hide farther up the valley. But he can’t get out. Re-form the line and let’s move!”
She realized that her pursuers were familiar with the terrain here. Dimon’s words indicated that he knew it was a blind valley and that their quarry would be trapped somewhere ahead of them. But it didn’t occur to him that Maddie might have turned back toward her pursuers, intending to slip through the cordon. There were very few men in the kingdom who would have the skill or the daring to attempt such a course, and Dimon had no idea that they were pursuing a Ranger.
The men began to spread out again—they had gathered together at the point where Bumper had cantered through their line. She had hoped that she might be past them by the time they were back in position, but soon saw that that wouldn’t be the case. As the search line rapidly re-formed, they were barely twenty meters short of her current position. She could see that she was halfway between two of the searchers, who were moving up the valley with a five-meter gap between them. Then the angle of the ground beneath them changed and they inadvertently swung a little to their left, so that the nearest of them would pass by her with less than a meter to spare. Now silence and absolute stillness would be her best allies. Slowly, she slid to the ground, lying flat and letting the cloak spread over her body.
As luck would have it, the undergrowth here was sparser than in any other part of the valley. She lay still, feeling horribly exposed and obvious, as she heard the nearest man stumbling and crunching his way through the low bushes toward her. Fortunately, he wasn’t one of the torchbearers, although the man on her right was. She lay, her face pressed to the ground, seeing the flaring light becoming stronger as they moved ever closer to her position.
Surely they must see her. She cringed mentally, forcing herself not to move, holding her breath, covered by the cloak and its irregular patterns of gray and green that blended into the undergrowth.
Trust the cloak.
The familiar Ranger’s mantra echoed in her head. She was sure they must hear the frantic pounding of her heart. A foot crunched through the undergrowth close by her head. It must have been barely half a meter away, she thought. Then the searc
her paused. She heard a muttered curse, then a slapping sound, right on top of her.
“What’s up now?” The voice came from her right as the torchbearer queried his comrade.
“Mosquito,” said a voice, right beside her. “I got it,” he added.
“Good for you.” The torchbearer’s reply was heavy with sarcasm. “Now let’s get a move on. We’re falling behind the line.”
Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, she felt a sharp pain in her left wrist as a heavy boot trod directly onto it, grinding it into the hard ground and pebbles beneath it. It was so sudden, so unexpected and so painful that she nearly cried out, nearly pulled her hand away. She felt an immediate sense of déjà vu, her mind instantly going back to that time weeks before during her assessment. She bit her lip, holding back the unbidden cry of pain that sprang to her lips, using every last ounce of willpower to leave her hand where it lay, unmoving.
The man above her stumbled and swore.
“What is it now?” The torchbearer’s voice reflected the impatience he felt with his clumsy, tardy companion.
“Trod on a root,” the man said. “Shine your torch over here for a moment.”
She felt her skin crawl with terror as he said it. Surely now they would see her. Then she heaved a sigh of relief at the other man’s exasperated reply.
“What for? You’ve already trodden on it. Why do you want to look at it? Now get a move on. You’re holding up the line.”
“Oh, get off my back,” the man close to her grumbled. But the pressure came off her wrist as he stepped away and began moving again. She heard the crunch of his boots and the swishing sounds as he pushed through the low bushes. The sounds began to recede and she realized, with a sense of triumph, that they had passed her by.
She was beyond the search line.
She lay unmoving, waiting, straining her ears to hear any sound of a follow-up line coming behind the first line of searchers. But there was nothing, and she realized that these men didn’t have the skills of the Rangers who had searched for her at the Gathering. They were an impromptu search party, and the idea of having sweepers behind the line hadn’t occurred to them.
Still, she lay silently, letting them move farther away from her. The sound of their voices became less and less—although she noted that the man who had trodden on her continued to whine and complain as he moved forward. She realized she had been lucky that he was the one who had come closest to her. He was obviously unmotivated, more inclined to complain about the situation than to apply himself to the search. A more conscientious searcher might well have spotted her, she thought.
Now she had to gauge the right time to move. Before long, the search line would reach the end of the valley. Then they would head back, over the ground they had already covered. By the time they did that, she would need to be well on her way.
But not too soon. She forced herself to count to fifty, then slowly rose to her knees, her head just reaching above a nearby bush. She glanced up the valley and could see the line of searching men, revealed by the flaring light of the torches they carried.
Downhill to her left, she could see more torches among the trees. But these were static, and occasionally she saw a large dark shape move in front of them. She listened and heard an occasional snort and stamping of hooves. These were the men detailed to hold the horses as the rest of the group searched.
Angling away to her right, she slipped through the undergrowth in the thigh-burning crouch she had practiced for hours at a time during her training. Her nerves were strung to breaking point as she waited for a shout that told her she had been sighted. But her skill at movement and her training stood her in good stead. She slipped silently in among the closer-growing trees at the beginning of the valley. Glancing back over her shoulder, she could see the wavering line of torches farther up the hill. They were almost to the end of the valley.
Time I wasn’t here, she thought. Glancing up at the stars to get her bearings, she began to run, jogging lightly through the trees, heading north again. As she looked at the sky, she could see the first pale rays of dawn beginning to show. She was tempted to increase the pace, but she knew that if she kept to a steady jog, she would cover more ground. Grimly, she moved on, knowing she was in a race against time.
Behind her, she heard a horn blowing. The Foxes must have reached the end of the valley, and Dimon, finding no sign of her, was now sounding the recall. Some minutes later, she heard the low rumble of hooves as the Foxes regained their horses and began cantering back toward the castle. There was no way she could outdistance them, and the sound of their horses passed her by and gradually died away.
She jogged on, grimly determined to reach the tunnel before Dimon could enter the castle.
It took a few minutes for her to realize she was lost. She was in among the trees again, and couldn’t see the stars. Even if she could, she had no idea where she was. When she had escaped from the abbey, she had given Bumper free rein to take her wherever he could. He had zigzagged wildly through the trees, then moved onto the game trail, which wound erratically back and forth.
She had a vague feeling that the abbey lay somewhere to her right. Her best bet was to make her way back to it. From there, she would know what direction to take. She stopped, pondering her next move. Her instincts told her that the way to the castle lay ahead and slightly left, and she was tempted to trust them. But she knew she needed to get her bearings first, to get to a location she was familiar with and start from there. And the only place she could do that was the abbey. Otherwise, there was a good chance that she would blunder through the forest, losing her way completely.
Grimly, she recalled the words of an old joke about a traveler asking for directions to a town from an old farmer.
“Well,” said the farmer, “if I was going there, I wouldn’t start from here.”
That was her predicament now. To get to the castle, she had to find a start point she knew. She wished that she had been able to keep up with Dimon and his mounted men in order to follow them. They knew the countryside and they would know the best way back to Castle Araluen.
“Wishing doesn’t get it done,” she said. It was a favorite saying of Will’s—which he had learned from Halt in his turn.
Glumly, she headed to the right to look for the abbey. Her heart sank as she realized she had just lost the race back to Castle Araluen.
35
Maddie heaved a sigh of relief as she saw the abbey’s tall tower looming over the treetops. A few minutes later, she reached the clearing where the crumbling old stone building was situated, approaching carefully in case there was anyone around.
The clearing was deserted, however, and she glanced around quickly. The door hung open on its hinges once more, and she could see the gaping hole where the stained-glass window had been, and the litter of broken glass and lead strips on the ground below it, evidence of her violent exit.
She heaved a sigh of relief. She finally had a familiar location from which to head back to Castle Araluen. Then she looked up at the sun, now rising over the treetops, and her heart sank. She knew the daily routine at the castle. The drawbridge would be lowered and the portcullis opened each morning between the eighth and ninth hour, once the garrison had surveyed the surrounding countryside and ensured there was no enemy in sight. Judging by the sun, it was nearly that time now. Any minute, the huge cogs would turn and the bridge would come down. Dimon had said they would assemble at noon for his treacherous entry into the castle, but he would waste no time now that the Foxes’ secret was known to an outsider. Already, she assumed, his men would be in the forest below the castle, donning the uniforms that would identify them as members of the garrison.
“No alternative,” she said to herself, and, turning away from the abbey, she began to jog through the forest. As before, she resisted the temptation to run at full speed. Better to maintain a steady pace and eat up the miles. T
here was always the chance that Dimon could be delayed and she might make it back through the tunnel in time to raise the alarm.
Unconsciously, she began counting her paces in her head to measure the distance she had traveled. She would reach one hundred and begin again, the silent cadence matching the rhythm of her feet pounding softly on the forest floor.
Her mind kept going over the words Dimon had uttered the night before—specifically the threat to her mother. He would kill her, she knew, without the slightest compunction. He intended to seize the throne and could leave no other claimant alive to thwart him—or to provide a rallying point for any resistance to his rule. He would kill her grandfather as well, and the thought of Dimon’s threat to the helpless old man made the anger burn brightly within her.
She thought about his intention to claim that he had defeated the Red Fox Clan and driven them off—unfortunately too late for Cassandra and her family. Would her father and Gilan believe the story? Regretfully, she concluded that they probably would—at least initially. They would have no reason to suspect Dimon of treachery. He had established himself as a loyal officer, and a protector of the Crown Princess. Horace would be devastated by the death of his wife and daughter, but he would see no reason to disbelieve Dimon’s story.
Neither would Gilan, she thought. His loyalty and his oath was to the crown, and he would continue to serve Dimon as Commandant of the Ranger Corps. Perhaps neither man would like the situation, but they would probably accept it.
“Not while I’m around,” she repeated grimly. Her presence, and her knowledge of his treachery, was the one factor that Dimon hadn’t reckoned on. He assumed she was still in the castle with Cassandra. And he assumed that she would be an easy victim. For the first time, she understood the value of maintaining secrecy over the fact that she was a trainee Ranger. Before this, she had thought of it as somewhat melodramatic and unnecessary. But she had gone along with it for the sake of peace and quiet. Also, she had realized that if she resisted the idea of maintaining the secret, she might be barred from her Ranger training. At times, the subterfuge had been a nuisance and even something of an encumbrance, with the whole rigmarole of changing clothing, horses and identities. But now she was grateful for it.
The Red Fox Clan Page 24