Ember Rising (The Green Ember Series Book 3)

by S D Smith

  The soldiers were unsure of what to do. It was clear they were divided. “You’ll just kill him and run away,” an officer, trying to take charge, said. He stepped forward.

  “Listen,” Helmer said. “We were as good as dead a minute ago. This soulless wretch just informed me that he murdered my niece. He, a full-grown buck, killed a doe child. I have nothing to lose. I will kill him.”

  “That’s what I mean,” the officer said. “We can’t trust you.”

  “I understand, “ Helmer said. “Let this buck go, and you can have me.” He motioned to Picket.

  Picket scowled. “Master, I won’t leave you,” he began. “I won’t—”

  “You are bound to obey me by our vows, Picket,” Helmer said, pushing Daggler to the ground. The chief was recovering his breath, so Helmer drove him down and pinned him to the earth, bringing the blade point down on his back. “Please go, and fulfill our mission. Do it not only for duty but for love. Take care of my family. They’re your family now. I would do it for you,” he finished.

  Picket’s mind raced and his heart beat faster. Helmer was right. He would want his master to do the same if the situation were reversed. He nodded.

  “So the young buck goes free, and we keep you?” the officer asked. He glanced back at some of the other officers, then back at his prone chief and the wild-eyed rabbit ready to drive a sword through him. “I agree,” he said. The soldiers began to slowly move back toward the river.

  “Go, son,” Helmer said. “Now.”

  Picket looked at Helmer for a moment, and his expression said all he wasn’t able to with words. Helmer nodded.

  Picket sprinted away, heading for the thickest part of the forest. Just before he leapt into a dense thicket, he looked back to see an arrow from a keen archer loosed. Picket’s backward glance of a moment was stuck in slow motion. The arrow arcing toward his master. Helmer looking up as the arrow caught him, spinning him down with an agonized cry.

  Picket fled.

  Helmer had fallen.

  Chapter Forty-One

  RUN-IN

  Picket’s heart felt pierced by arrows unseen by any eye. He had seen Helmer fall, seen the angry band surge ahead and Daggler begin to rise. It was too awful to contemplate, but he could see little else. As he sped ahead, his eyes spilled blinding tears that he wiped away to clear his view. But in his mind’s eye, he saw Helmer fall again and again.

  Picket inhaled and tried to focus on the task at hand. He had to honor his master’s last wishes, had to be sure that Airen and Weezie were okay. He tried to blot out every other emotion, all thoughts that distracted him from his desperate flight.

  A barrage of strangled curses and breathless barked orders filled the air behind him. Daggler was after him. A hail of arrows followed, most landing just behind him and filling the surrounding woods. One arrow zipped by his ear and sank into a tree just ahead as he dodged past.

  He considered scaling a tree and trying to hide aloft, but he felt he was better off on the move, using his gifts for calculation to his advantage. He ran on, desperate now, with the sound of soldiers crashing into the forest behind him. Ducking under low limbs and dodging through thickets, he hurried back in the direction from which they had come. His mind was mapping a route he believed best to evade his hunters but would also twist back toward the secret entrance to the warrens below.

  Despair soon threatened to overwhelm him. Failure, fierce and sudden, loomed everywhere he looked. Backward glances and careful listening told him his plan couldn’t work. He determined that they were gaining on him and flanking his position as they came. These were no fools. They were an elite band of killers in familiar territory, and he was incapable of eluding them.

  But he had to press on. He ran more directly back toward the disguised entrance they had emerged from not long ago, though he doubted he could make it in time.

  Through trees and brush, he saw the telltale black uniforms everywhere he looked now except dead ahead. They closed in on him from every side. Picket was trapped, and there was no way out. He swerved back and forth, trying to throw them off the trail. But on they came, closing him in with the deadly expertise of trained hunters. From behind, he heard Daggler’s choking calls, raggedly bellowing his angry orders. Picket realized with some satisfaction that Helmer must have really damaged the twisted chief’s throat. Too bad Helmer hadn’t ended him when he could have.

  Increasingly sure he would never get away alive, Picket’s intent narrowed to a somber certainty. He couldn’t escape, but he might do one good deed before he died. He slowed a moment, listening for the urgent calls behind. Hearing Daggler’s hoarse curses, he turned and hurried toward the source of the sound.

  One final blow to land. One final gift to the cause.

  Picket gripped the handle of his sword, clenched his teeth, and ran. Beyond the knot of trees ahead, he knew he’d find his foe. Flashing through painful memories of the past, he blinked away an image of Helmer spinning to the ground and imagined the thrust he must send through Daggler’s heart.

  Picket reached the knot of trees and prepared to dart around them, reaching for his sword, when he was astonished to see the tree before him open up. An unseen door flew open, and he was pulled inside. He nearly killed the grasping blur of a rabbit, but he let himself be hauled within. Then, in the dimness of the hollowed-out tree, he saw a single finger poised over the mouth of his rescuer. Captain Moonlight mouthed, “Quiet,” and both rabbits stood still, cramped inside the hollow tree.

  Picket tried to control his breathing and calm his heart from its awful intent of moments before. He closed his eyes and focused on taking deep, slow, quiet breaths. In a few moments, he was more relaxed. They heard urgent footfalls and wary voices, angry orders followed by consternation.

  “Where is he?” Daggler choked out, coughing as they heard him stomp around.

  “Disappeared, sir,” a soldier answered.

  “Kill him,” Daggler said, still unable to speak clearly. “Kill the daft rabbit who thinks our target merely disappeared.” An awful sound followed as his evil orders were carried out. “Now,” Daggler added, gasping. “Find him. And burn it down if you have to. Burn the whole forest down, but find him!”

  It took the soldiers only a few minutes to set about the task of setting the thicket ablaze. Picket, whose eyes had now adjusted to the dim light inside the hollow tree, made his questioning face clear to his companion. Captain Moonlight smirked but held up a hand for patience. He pointed to his long left ear. They waited, the smoke starting to reach them.

  “Back up, you fools,” Daggler rasped. “And stand ready with your bows.”

  Captain Moonlight smiled, then pointed at his throat, making mocking faces at Daggler’s painful screeds. Picket smiled, though he quickly remembered Helmer. He mouthed his master’s name, and Captain Moonlight frowned. “Tried,” he mouthed, and Picket understood that they had tried to rescue him. “Failed?” Picket asked, mouthing the word in a silent question. Captain Moonlight shrugged his shoulders. He did not know.

  The smoke was growing thicker, and the heat was reaching them now. They heard the cracking pops of brittle limbs burning. Captain Moonlight put his hand up and motioned to Picket. He placed a finger over his mouth again and then crossed his flattened hands in a gesture Picket understood as a demand for silence.

  Picket, eyes wide, made open-handed gestures to say, Of course I’ll be quiet, then pointed out toward the devouring flames, until I start catching on fire.

  Captain Moonlight nodded, then placed his hand on a jutting lever that was fixed just over his head. Then he held up three fingers. Dropping one, he now held up two fingers. Then another dropped, and only one was left. When the last finger fell, he pulled hard on the lever. Picket heard the swishing sound as a mechanism within released.

  The floor was gone.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  DESCENT INTO SONGS

  Picket was in the hollowed-out tree one moment, and the next he was not
. When Captain Moonlight pulled the release, the bottom dropped out of the hideaway. Picket fell through a narrow hole that funneled into a long slick surface of rock and slid down with exhilarating speed. He heard Moonlight behind him and realized the captain must have held on a moment in the tree while he fell first. The slick wet surface of the rock was smooth and sent Picket speeding down in a wild spiral of rapid descent. It reminded him of the terrifying ride he’d had back in Nick Hollow at Seven Mounds, escaping in the darkness with Heather and Smalls. He was going so fast! Alarmed and thrilled at once, he slid down into the dark, twisting deeps. Sometimes he slipped through something like a narrow tube and other times a massive cavern with eerie echoes of his sloshing fall. He was still picking up speed.

  The stone slide banked hard, and Picket felt he was coming off and tried to steady himself against slipping too far. He heard the hollow wash of swishing water in the vast cavern below, then shot into a narrow cave. All was pitch black. Then he issued through an opening into a lighted dirt-walled room where two rabbits sat laughing. They stood up at once as Picket slid onto the floor before them. His entrance was less than spectacular. Picket hit the ground and rolled over several times, ending in a breathless heap, arms out wide, mouth open, and eyes starting like two moons.

  The surprised guards reached for the pikes that had been resting against the wall and leveled them at Picket, who did not move. Then he heard the swishing sound of another entry and watched as Captain Moonlight glided into the receiving room, standing as he came in and lightly leaping to the ground. He loomed over Picket, smiling wide, as the two guards stepped back, saluting their chief.

  “Pretty fun, isn’t it?” Moonlight asked. Picket nodded. Moonlight reached for Picket’s hand and helped him up. “Come on. Let’s find out how our friends fared.”

  Picket hurried after the captain, dripping as he went. They ran through corridor after corridor, then into another torchlit room, where Captain Moonlight leapt onto a sliding smooth-rock path that wound around into a twisting tunnel, plunging to a deeper level of the warren. Picket followed fast behind, and this time, imitating Captain Moonlight’s motions, rode the wild turns far more nimbly.

  Again they issued into a torchlit room with two guards waiting, these more alert than the last. Picket tried to slide in with the same grace that Captain Moonlight displayed, but he again toppled onto the floor with a tumbling spill. Captain Moonlight pulled him up, and they raced into the passageway ahead, taking several more turns before finally ending into a place Picket recognized.

  The Citadel of Dreams.

  Weezie was there, and, seeing him, she rushed over and smothered him with a hug. “You’re all right?” she asked. He nodded.

  “Your mother?”

  “She’s fine,” Weezie said, pointing aloft to a stairway that led to several of the inn’s rooms. “Resting comfortably.”

  Picket smiled.

  “Did Dekko’s team find Helmer?” Captain Moonlight asked, walking to where Whit stood talking with several others.

  Whit nodded, and Picket, hand in hand with Weezie, hurried to join them. “Is he—?” Picket began.

  “He took an arrow in the shoulder before Dekko was able to get to him,” Whit said, speaking from under his black mask. “He’s with the doctor now.” Picket’s heart swelled to hear that Helmer had neither been killed nor taken prisoner.

  “Where?” Picket asked, eager to be with his wounded master.

  “Just there,” Whit said, “in room four. But it’s best to let the doctor work. Helmer’s in no great danger. Doc’s given him something to help him sleep while he sees to the wound. He’ll be fit for company again in a few hours.”

  Weezie squeezed Picket’s hand. “There’s nothing you can do for him now,” she said. “He would want you to rest.”

  “And celebrate!” Captain Moonlight said, raising his glass and helping to pass out drinks to everyone around. “There’s mud in Daggler’s eye!” he said, spitting along with the rest.

  “Confusion to Morbin and all his hosts!” Whit cried, raising his glass.

  “Confusion to Morbin!” they all cried, and they drank. Picket winced at the sour taste of their brew but said nothing as the smiling band laughed and clapped each other’s backs.

  “Stompy!” Captain Moonlight called. “Get up a jig this instant! We have to celebrate a snatching that was the completest thing!”

  “Aye, Cap,” Stompy called, motioning for the band to reassemble. They did, each in turn adding to the spritely tune dashed out by Stompy’s fiddle. As the music rose and the bandleader’s wooden stump struck the floor in time with the clapping and drumming, the Citadel of Dreams filled with more and more celebrants. It was true that they were a small band, that the resistance had suffered tremendous losses and couldn’t hold out much longer. But maybe they wouldn’t have to. Maybe the end was near.

  Picket let himself be carried away on the tide of joy. He joined in the common dances, making everyone laugh with his spectacularly bad form. But he tried again with every dance and laughed loudest of all as he failed and failed again to get it right. He danced with Weezie, laughing as he hadn’t laughed for what felt like ages. The free and faithful rabbits of First Warren sang their raucous songs, few of which Picket knew but all of which he loved. They sang, full-throated and damp-eyed, of the love they had for their home and their enduring hope for the Mended Wood. Picket wept along with them, one arm around Weezie and the other around Captain Moonlight, as the band played and the crowd sang on and on.

  And the night stretched on into a long happy fancy that felt to Picket like something unreal in its flood of delight. He remembered his duty, remembered the hard days behind and grim work ahead. But he was completely and happily present, alive and awake here, in the Citadel of Dreams.

  As the night wore on, he learned their songs. And he sang along when they sang.

  “Come all you travelers, wounded and worn,

  Come over your mountains and streams.

  Though bruised and abused, come be introduced

  To the Citadel of Dreams.

  The road has been hard, you’re harried and hurt,

  And the wide world’s unkind as it seems.

  You’re soak’n and broken, but kind words are spoken

  At the Citadel of Dreams!

  Come, come, and rest, forget your pains,

  Or remember them among friends.

  At the Citadel of Dreams you’ll find

  A welcome that never ends.

  Come, come and find your friends inside,

  Come while the kind light beams.

  Lend your voice and your ear, we’ll sing and we’ll cheer

  In the Citadel of Dreams.

  We have a hope, but for now it’s buried,

  It’s a seed stuffed with stories and schemes.

  For now it’s the winter, but we can’t be bitter

  At the Citadel of Dreams!

  Come, come, and rest, forget your pains,

  Or remember them among friends.

  At the Citadel of Dreams you’ll find

  A welcome that never ends.

  The time will come, when the dark becomes dawn,

  And the ember bursts into a flame

  That lights up the sky, showing the world is my

  Own Citadel of Dreams!”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  VICTORY EVE

  Picket woke up smiling and saw Whit standing over him, shaking him awake. The rabbit’s eyes were friendly, and Picket could tell that beneath the mask there must be a smile to match his own.

  “My, but you’re hard to waken. Get up, lad,” Whit said. “We have work to do today. It’s Victory Eve.”

  “Of course,” Picket answered, stretching. “Tomorrow is the so-called Victory Day.”

  “Hurry up,” Whit said.

  Picket nodded, standing up. He had slept hard in the inn section of the Citadel of Dreams. Late the night before he had crashed into bed after checking on Helmer,
following the enchanting evening of song and dance. He felt happy and hopeful. “I didn’t dream, Whit,” he said, stretching. “I feel like I didn’t get what I was promised.”

  “That’s disappointing,” Whit answered. “Maybe we shall have to change the name to the Citadel of a Good Night’s Rest.”

  “Why do you wear the mask, Whit?” Picket asked. “I understand why you wear it on missions, but aren’t we all friends down here now?”

  “We are friends,” Whit said, looking down. “But I have many scars.” He moved toward the door, then turned his head and removed his mask. He was white, with some splashes of black fur. But he had not exaggerated. Whit was cruelly scarred, with a missing ear and marks of hardship all over his face.

  “You remind me of the prince,” Picket said, wrapping the black scarf around his own neck. “Prince Smalls, my very dear friend.” It had been nearly a week since Smalls had fallen, though so much had happened since. Still, the wound in his heart felt very fresh.

  Whit nodded. “He was my little brother, though I never really knew him.”

  “You’re one of King Jupiter’s sons?” Picket asked, astonished. “I thought they were all loyal to Winslow.”

  “I am a son,” Whit said, frowning, “and I was unfaithful for a long time, going along with Winslow’s betrayals. I mended my ways and turned back to my father’s cause a few years ago. I have paid for the change,” he said, looking down. “I was once considered quite handsome.”

  “You have a great heart, Whit,” Picket said, “as your brother had. And your scars are marks of valor to me. I would wish you to never cover even one but to bare them all with honor.”

  “Thank you, Picket,” Whit said, then nodded to the door. “Cap calls a council. Come to the common room when you’re ready.”

  “Yes, Your Highness,” Picket said, bowing.

  “Here I am only Whit, and Cap alone knows my secret.”

  “Then when we are with the others, I will help guard your secret,” Picket said. “But in my heart, I will keep the old ways and honor your birth and blood. More than that, I will honor your scars.”