Zya could tell that Ju was not being entirely honest. What he was saying he was struggling to do so, as if something inside him was stopping him from saying it. She turned to him. “Ju. Why don't you tell us what the problem really is?”
“That is the truth,” the boy replied, retreating into the defensive shell he was so often used to hiding in. Zya held his gaze, causing him to eventually look away. “All right,” he said in defeat. “The first time anybody saw O'Bellah, he walked into town with priests at his side. They had those stones that wizards use to create magic spells. They went to the pastures and cast a spell over the herds. O'Bellah said that unless the people let him rule the council, and them, the cattle would all die, and we would be starved of meat. There was no way to get anything in other than the boar meat. So the town's leaders agreed to O'Bellah's demands, in order to get the cattle back. When he does find out that he cannot hold the people from that he will be unable to do anything, and will have to leave.”
Tarim edged his horse closer to Red. “Ju, are saying that they were going to fight back against this man?” Ju nodded, silently, afraid to say any more. “So why didn't you tell us?”
Ju shrugged his shoulders. “You were going to leave, and I was going to come with you. I hate that place, and wanted to be with you. If I had told you, you would have stayed there longer to try and help them, wouldn't you?”
“Maybe we would have, maybe we wouldn't. It would have been down to Venla at the last anyways.”
Zya felt she had to say something before her father decided that this cause was worth looking at again; she had seen him when he had felt the urge to go after something righteous, however small the task. “Father, we cannot go back there. I had a dreadful feeling about that place when we left it. As soon as we crossed the bridge I felt that something bad was going to happen to that town. It will spread here too, eventually, but as long as we keep moving, it will not get us; at least not for a while.”
The horses muffled trot on the loamy track was the only noise as Tarim considered his options. “Well even were we to turn back, there is not much we could do. Not that I do not want to, but we have more than ourselves to consider. I suggest that we reach the others and then think about what we should do next.”
The track took them on a route almost directly North from the bridge. In between the ruts made in the earth by the recently passed wagons of the caravan could be seen fresh tracks made by an animal. Zya looked down at them as she rode on. They followed the track for quite some time.
“Not afraid of the open spaces are they?” observed Cahal.
“This one has its entire litter following it.” Ju looked down at the earth.
“How can you tell?” Cahal dismounted and went to the tracks, motioning Ju to do so also.
Ju pointed out the larger tracks. “You see how these larger tracks have smaller tracks in between them? Well that is because the boars travel in single file. The small boars stick their springy little tails straight up in the air, and each boar follows the tail in front. The mother went first in case she needed to protect her litter, and also because she was the only one to know where she was going. The rest were just following tails.” Ju laughed at the thought. Zya found it amusing to imagine a line of upright tails sticking up through the undergrowth.
Mounting back up again, they followed the footprints to give Ju something to take his mind off of the village. At one point they scattered, appearing to go in every direction. They disappeared after that.
“Maybe the wagons caught up with them, or they heard them coming. There are plenty of horse prints to make it look so.”
Tarim looked at the ground after Cahal said this, studying it intently. “Cahal, those horse prints are fresher than the wagon prints and those of the draft horses. Look how the edge of the print is still crisp, where our friends' prints are crumbling and dried slightly. I would say that they were following from a fair distance, but they cannot be too far ahead.”
Zya felt that certain sense of inevitability the moment her father said this. She knew that this was linked to the bandits she had stopped in the countryside all that time ago. This was the result of their lethargy over getting rid of them. She hoped that whatever the result was, it was not bad, but she hoped they reached the wagons before these others could do too much damage. “Father. I am worried for the others. We should hurry.”
“I agree,” said Cahal. “The horses have been rested since that forced ride out of the village, and we need to get back if Zya is right. I'll take the lead.” Cahal urged his mount into a fast canter – nothing more was possible with the twists and turns accompanied by the masses of bramble. Zya and Ju followed on Red, with Tarim at the rear on his stallion. It was not the flat out speed of the gallop, but the ride was certainly more enjoyable for Zya. Ju also enjoyed it, and she could feel he was at ease as he gripped Red's flanks with his legs.
The light of the forest never changed. With the trees out of reach contesting for the sunlight, there were hardly any patches in the foliage. Zya could not tell if the sky had cleared or not. Besides, she was too busy concentrating on guiding Red through the apparent maze that was the forest track. As they rounded a bend, Zya thought she saw a blur of brown though the bushes. Suddenly, something huge and brown erupted through the bushes and onto the track, directly in the path of Cahal and his horse. Not having time to get out of the way, Cahal spurred his horse for the jump, hoping to clear it.
“Cahal! NO!” she screamed, knowing he would not make it. The huge brown boar charged straight for the horse, thrusting upward with its huge yellowed tusks before Cahal could get his horse to jump. The horse screamed as tusks penetrated its side. The boar, frothing at the mouth, was in a rage, trying to strike out at anything moving. With the momentum, Cahal flew out of the saddle as his horse twisted in agony. He landed on his back a ways off, and lay there unmoving. The horse collapsed onto its side, screaming in pain and left with a huge gaping wound in its side.
Zya stayed well back from the whole scene, lest the boar see her and come after. It was amazing that the boar had even known they were there, so poor was its eyesight. Cahal was up in an instant, sword ready to defend himself should the boar consider another charge.
However, as soon as the boar had come, so had it disappeared again. There was a rustle in the bushes off to their left where something was ploughing through the undergrowth, but it grew fainter. Fate it seemed had a sense of dramatic irony. Just as they really needed to catch up to the others, nature involved itself to delay them. Zya and Ju jumped down from Red, who was perfectly content to graze on a patch of grass at the side of the road. She rushed over to Cahal. “Are you all right?” she asked, concern enriching her voice.
“I am okay,” the old guard answered, working his limbs as if to show that he was unaffected. “I am just a little dizzy from the fall. I'm glad the boar did not charge again. For a second there, I saw three of them looking at me, and then they charged off.”
Zya looked at Cahal's forehead – it was swelling slightly. Zya frowned at him. “You fall off of your horse, landing on your head, see three of the same boar and you say you're okay? Lean forward.” Cahal leaned forward so that Zya could see the bruise spreading on his head, but when she expected him to stop, he carried on leaning against her. Thinking Cahal was jesting, Zya stepped back to see his eyes roll up in his head before he collapsed in a heap on the track.
“Father! Cahal is hurt!”
Tarim ran back from the last tracks of the boar and straight to Cahal's side. “Quick,” he commanded, “Lay him out flat.” Zya did so, as Tarim took one of the bedrolls and laid it under Cahal's head, so that his neck was supported, and then lifted one of Cahal's eyelids before checking his head. “He'll be all right when he comes around. Ju, will you keep an eye on him for me?” Ju nodded. “Come with me, Zya.” Zya followed her father to the scene of abject misery that lay on the track. The horse had lost so much blood from the gash that it had already gone into shock, and
lay quite still. The only sign it was alive at all was the slight quivering of its nostrils. As they watched, even that stopped. Tarim laid his hand on the horse's neck, and finding no obvious pulse he pulled away.
“There's nothing we can do here,” Tarim said quietly.
“Father, what about Cahal? Will he be okay?”
Tarim chuckled. “Zya, if I had not seen him bleed before, I would believe that Cahal was formed entirely from bone. He is as tough as they come. When you were little, I saw Cahal get thrown head-first into a stone wall, only to get back up and do the same to his assailants – all three of them. They did not get up. He will likely be right as rain when he wakes up, which would be good as we have to catch up with the rest of the group. We have been losing them of late, and this setback doesn't help. You go see that Ju is okay, and I will round up the horses we have left.
Zya walked back to the sleeping Cahal, where Ju was keeping watch. “How is he?” “Sleeping, and until just then, snoring.”
Zya looked around. They were in a glade that had opened up in the middle of the forest. The track wound its way down the middle, with grass full of little yellow and pink wild-flowers surrounding it, and the trees a way back up the slope. The track was swallowed up by the trees a little further on, but this glade was quite pleasant. It seemed typical of their luck that something bad happened in such a pretty place. Had the sky been clear, this would have been a place to relax in, but the streaky grey cloud only detracted from the beauty of the area. It seemed to emphasise that there was a reason for them being there, and the reason was not a good one.
“Should we build him a shelter or something?” Ju asked of the sleeping Cahal. “No I think we are going to be okay in that respect,” replied Zya, looking up at the sky. If there was any breeze to accompany the grey streaks, Zya could not feel it. “Father says he will be okay soon, but that fall caught him by surprise. He would have rolled when he fell, but the horse reared and prevented him.”
With the mention of the horse, Ju looked back to where Zya had walked from. “Is he all right?”
Zya looked at the floor and shook her head. “The boar got him right where it bled worst. He died, I'm sorry, Ju.”
Ju looked visibly shaken. He had such an empathy with the horses that losing one of them must have been like losing a brother or sister. Zya put an arm around her small friend while he trembled and sobbed for a while. Eventually he got up and went off to tend to Red and Tarim's horse. Zya kept watch over Cahal, who was resting peacefully, with the occasional grunt as he snored.
The sky began to darken slightly, as night began to creep ever closer. Zya sniffed the air. It would not be cold tonight, not after the heat of days they had been getting. However, it would still be prudent to erect some sort of shelter for Cahal. Zya walked through the glade to where the track disappeared into the undergrowth, and began pulling stout, but dead branches from the forest floor. When she had enough, Zya dragged them back through the glade to where Cahal still lay in slumber. Planting them into the earth like her father had shown her she wedged the tops of the branches against each other. By the time she had secured a canvas sheet over the top the sky had grown dim. Zya realised that all this time she had not heard a peep from either her father or Ju. She walked over to the horses, who were contentedly nibbling on the grass. Red gave her a snort of acknowledgement, and she rubbed his ears in reply. There was no sign of either of them. As Zya walked back towards Cahal, she saw the pair of them emerge from the lower entrance to the glade. They eventually caught up with her. “Found anything exciting?”
“I have been teaching young Ju to read signs on the track. What did you find?” Ju positively beamed in response. “We found that the others passed through here, but they have got a ways ahead of us.”
Tarim appraised the makeshift camp. “I see you have done the shelter. That looks sturdy enough. I suppose there is nothing we can do until the morning now. Cahal should have woken by then. Let us make a fire and then we will worry about covering the unfortunate horse.
The evening passed slowly. After building a very merry but rather small fire they wondered about the horse. It was not possible to bury it so instead, they piled dead wood and stray brambles over it to conceal it from passersby, not that many people had ever made it this far into the woods. After that, there was little to do other than watch the fire or the sky. Tarim kept watch most of the night. In the caravan, it was generally distributed amongst the men, so one was not on watch that often.
Zya woke in the middle of the night to see her father gazing up at the sky. She stood, trying not to disturb the slumberous Ju, who had finally fallen asleep whilst trying to prove how able to guard he was at night. Creeping near, she was aware that her father already knew she was up. Zya was quieter of foot than most people, but her father's senses, especially at night, were more than a match for her stealth. He did not turn, but carried on gazing.
“Ondulyn is hidden in her cloak this evening, my dear. But when she chooses to show herself, she is radiant indeed.” Zya looked up to the sky. The moon was barely visible through the cloud, but when the cloud thinned, it provided a spectacular sight as the moons' luminescence lit the entire region of the sky.
“You two have been alone for long enough, father. It will be dawn in a couple of hours, why don't you get some rest too?”
Tarim looked down at his daughter. Fair in the moonlight she looked, but deadly also. How he could see this in her he did not know, but she was special to him. “I take it you are going to insist on this, Zya?”
When all he received in return was a firm nod, Tarim went to the place by the slowly dying fire that Zya had left, and laid down next to Ju. Zya took up the watch, trying to see where the dark of the forest ended and the dark of the cloudy sky began. Zya must have pondered this for some time, for as soon as she saw a glow that she thought might have been the far off moon, she realised that it was early dawn approaching. She had stood there for the gods only knew how long and observed the sky in a state of concentration rare for most people. Remembering where she was she turned back to where the others were sleeping.
All was as she remembered it. Her father and Ju were sound asleep on one side of the fire, whilst on the other side the shelter was empty. Zya looked around in a panic. Had someone taken Cahal? She felt a stab of guilt for having become absorbed with the heavens when she was supposed to be guarding the camp.
It was only when Zya saw Cahal trudging back through the dew soaked grass that she felt relief. Cahal smiled in his brusque way as he got closer. “Morning,” he whispered, careful not to wake the other two.
“Are you all right?” asked Zya.
“Fine. It was only a bump on the head, girl. I have had much worse in my younger days.” Cahal glanced around the camp, and up and down the track. “But I think you might want to rethink your strategy for guard duty, girl. When I awoke you were stood there in some sort of trance. I checked the area and found a stream nearby, so I thought I would fill the skins.”
Zya swallowed at the gentle rebuke from her long-time friend. Looking up and down the track, she could tell that Cahal had carefully checked out all the ways into the glade. That is what it meant to be a guard. “Cahal I have no idea what happened. One moment I was staring at the sky, concentrating on finding the moon, then the next thing I notice dawn is breaking.”
Cahal pondered this for a moment. “You say you were concentrating. Really hard?”
Zya nodded. “I wanted to find the moon behind the clouds, but it was quite difficult.”
“Sounds like you have got the makings of a wizard in you, Zya. Maybe that is something Anita will be able to help you with when we get back to the others.”
“And what know you of wizards, Cahal?” asked Tarim, who had managed again to outwit both of them by moving with the stealth of a mountain cat stalking its prey. The two men gripped each other's forearms in a formal meeting. Zya could see in her father's eyes that he was truly glad to have Cahal safe and well
.
“Shall we get going then?”
“Sure,” replied Cahal. “I see that the horse died. That's truly a shame, that old nag was tough. You ride, and I will walk.”
“I don't think so, my friend. After your bump yesterday, you are in no state to be walking any great distance. You ride mine, and the others can ride Red.”
Once Zya had eventually woken Ju, she could see he was not really up for any exertion. She knew he would get used to the life on the road, but for now she let him ride Red alone. Red seemed to like Ju well enough. People had learnt to avoid Red. He bucked at people he didn't like, a trait Zya had worked hard at training out of him. He still did it, but less frequently. Zya settled for walking with her father in front of the two horses. They set a distance-eating pace that would have been hard on less fit people, but to the horses it was nothing special. From the tracks Zya noticed, it was obvious that they had lost time. The wheel marks in the mud were faint and dried. They would have to walk hard to catch the group up.
The day blossomed into a repetition of the previous one, which was somewhat of a blessing. At the pace they were moving, a hot day was the last thing they wanted. Where the foliage broke above their heads Zya could see that there was not a hint of the sun. Despite that it was still a nice walk in the woods for her. Anything that put her near nature made her feel at ease. That day they made good time, and camped for the evening at the site the travellers had used the previous night.
Tarim actually tutted under his breath when he found more than a blade of grass out of place. She even saw Cahal frown when he replaced a divot kicked up by one of the draft horses the previous night. The next day, the signs showed that they were within hours of the caravan. The tracks were again fresh and the spoor of the horses was still damp. The scenery had not changed much; the trees still fought for light and the undergrowth still consumed everything it could touch. Signs of the boars were still difficult to see, but here in the deeper enclaves of the forest, the track was used more often as a game path then as a merchant's route. Still, the animals were shy and kept well away from the quartet of travellers. As they moved on they swapped, so Cahal could get his strength back. Even Ju walked along briskly, albeit for a brief time.
The Focus Stone (The Tome of Law Book 1) Page 21