“Sorry,” he continued solemnly. “I am not sure exactly what happened. After you two left, I moved further back into the forest so that I could see the close half of the bridge and nothing else. It limited my view of the invaders, but it limited their view as well. They could not hit me with their archers and I still commanded a view of the bridge. I shot the first man over and another fell while trying to charge over and dodge my arrows. They stopped trying to cross for a long time and I thought I could hold them all day that way until I remembered the other group and wondered how long it would be before they got to me.”
“So you slipped off and made a run for it?” Antello guessed.
“No,” Syman answered. “The strangest thing happened right before my eyes. I was focused on the bridge waiting for the next invader to try crossing and suddenly there was an explosion and the close end of the huge tree rose several feet and crashed back down. It teetered on the edge for just a moment before it went crashing down into the canyon. At least I think it was an explosion. I really do not remember the sound of an explosion, but I do remember the sound of that giant fargi crashing into the canyon. The ground shook when it hit the bottom.”
Antello reached for a strip of meat from the fire pit where the invaders had cooked a deer and Syman leaped and knocked his hand away.
“Don’t touch it!” Syman shouted. “Look at the invaders. They died in their sleep and their skin is sort of blue. I think they ate poisoned meat or maybe drank something poisoned.”
Antello yanked his hand back and turned full circle to look at the invaders, counting as he did. “There should be two more if this is the group that passed us last night. Maybe we should get out of here and talk on the way.”
“There are two more farther out in the forest,” Syman informed them. “They were probably guards.”
“How did you find us?” Lyra asked. “I did not expect to ever see you again.”
“Getting here was not much of a problem,” Syman replied. “Following the trail of a group this large was easy, even in the dark. I stopped and slept a bit during the night and started tracking again as soon as there was light available. This must be the group that broke off and looked for another way across the canyon. If so, then the other group will be along sometime today. I stumbled across one of the guards first and realized he was dead. Someone cut all of their horses free too. I saw several of them wandering around.”
“Did you find anything missing when you awoke this morning?” Lyra quizzed. “Perhaps a small piece of jewelry or something like that.”
“No,” Syman shook his head. “I don’t care for jewelry much, but nothing was taken as far as I know. Why?”
“Lyra lost a chain from her neck and I lost the pin that Master Caulder gave me,” explained Antello. “Someone or something stole it from us last night. There is something very strange going on in this forest and I am anxious to put it behind us.”
“I agree with your feelings,” admitted Lyra, “but let’s not be too hasty. Maybe we can learn something from the bodies, like who they are and who hired them.”
“I have been going through their belongings,” Syman stated. “Someone was here before me though. Not a coin on them. There are some trail rations that I have been thinking about taking if I can be sure that they are not poisoned, but I am afraid to chance them. My supplies are about done.”
“Ours too,” agreed Lyra, “but I am hesitant to eat anything from this camp. I don’t want to end up as a blue corpse. Did you find anything that would identify them?”
“One thing I noticed that was curious,” Syman revealed. “Each of them has a small tattoo on the inside of his wrist. It is very small, but it looks like a coiled serpent with wings. I have never seen anything like it.”
Antello and Lyra walked to one of the corpses and examined the tattoo, shaking their heads as neither one of them recognized it.
“If someone has already looted the bodies, then we are wasting our time here,” argued Antello. “The other group will be coming for us and when they find this group, they will be mighty mad. They will think we did this.”
“I can’t see how they could be any more determined to catch us than they already are,” sighed Syman. “Still, we should use our time wisely. The tracks of the wandering horses may help us. I suggest we turn and head east for a while. They have been following us south for sometime and this may give us a chance to lose them.”
Antello and Lyra quickly agreed and the trio mounted and headed eastward. The forest looked the same and Lyra wondered how Syman could know that they were heading in any particular direction, and finally realized that it didn’t matter much. Getting away from the invaders was the important task at hand. They would eventually get out of the dreadful forest and then they could worry about finding Alamar.
The trio trudged through the seemingly endless forest without talking, each lost in their own thoughts. Lyra’s mood brightened when she saw a deer and a few small animals. It made the forest seem a little friendlier to her. At high sun, the sunlight invaded in patches and turned portions of the forest floor green and brown. Lyra began to shake the eerie feeling of the forest when Syman halted the procession and signaled for silence. They sat silent and still for at least five minutes before anyone spoke.
“I could have sworn I saw somebody up ahead,” Syman sighed. “Maybe I have been leading too long. I will let Antello lead for a while before I give everyone a nervous breakdown.”
Lyra smiled and nodded, but Antello frowned.
“It was small and brown,” Antello stated. “Not sure what it was, but I saw it too. Moved quicker than any person I ever saw and I didn’t hear a sound from it.”
“It was human, wasn’t it?” quizzed Syman.
“Not sure,” Antello stated flatly and then shook his head. “No, it couldn’t be. Too fast for a human and definitely didn’t make any noise. I bet it was a spirit. Probably floats above the ground.”
“Well whatever it was,” Lyra interjected, not wanting to return to her old feelings about the forest, “we do not have time to play with it. I will lead for a while.”
Before anyone could object, Lyra moved past the boys and continued in the direction that Syman had been going. She kept her eyes moving, searching for any sign of the spirit, but she saw nothing, heard nothing.
Flat on the top of a small hill, just off the track Lyra was holding, a pair of brown eyes watched the small procession go by. When the trio was out of sight the small woman prepared to rise, but instead turned quickly at the sound of someone making a stealthy approach behind her.
“They saw you, you know,” the newcomer berated her. “I heard them talking about you.”
“Only you could get this close to me, HawkShadow,” she smiled, rising to greet her friend.
“You should have killed them as I killed the others, Misty,” the young man stated. “Why do you ignore your trust to the Sakovans with this group?”
“I do not ignore my obligations, HawkShadow,” MistyTrail insisted as she pushed her short brown hair out of her face. “My job is to eliminate any trespassers. I have not decided that these three are a threat to us. They are my responsibility and you will not interfere with my actions.”
“I will if they get far enough into the Sakova to come to my attention,” the tall blond man asserted. “I will let you toy with them here in the fringes, but do not let them come closer to the homeland.”
“They are but youngsters and yet they brave the Sakova from which nobody returns,” quizzed MistyTrail. “Why do you suppose they are here?”
“Omunga youngsters are ignorant,” HawkShadow declared. “They probably do not know where they are.”
“There is more to it than that,” the short woman mused. “Twenty assassins on their trail indicates that someone is pretty determined to stop them from getting somewhere.”
“More like forty assassins,” HawkShadow corrected. “There is another group tracking them as we speak. It is the reason for m
e coming this far. These ones will not be foolish enough to eat game from the forest. They rely on their trail food.”
“I wanted to ask you about that,” she said. “How did you get the poison to spread to all of the meat? I would have thought that only the section where the dart pierced would contain enough poison to kill the men.”
“Not if it is carried by the animal’s bloodstream,” grinned HawkShadow, “then it spreads everywhere. It doesn’t matter which part of the animal a man eats after that.”
“But the blood stops flowing when the animal dies,” frowned MistyTrail. “That means that you had to poison the deer while it was still alive.”
“You learn quickly,” HawkShadow smiled. “The fools shot the deer fatally, but not cleanly. The animal would have survived long enough to wander away and die elsewhere. I shot it in the throat as they were coming after it. The poison had time to spread before it died.”
“I am impressed,” admired MistyTrail. “That means that you were very close to the deer when they shot it and they did not detect you. It appears that I have yet more to learn from you.”
“You learn quickly,” asserted HawkShadow with a smile. “Your tracking is almost my par, and I can say that about nobody else. You must learn to remain hidden better though, little one. Never should the enemy hear you or see you.”
“What do you have planned for the Assassin group?” MistyTrail asked.
“I am not sure,” confided HawkShadow. “I had planned to use you in eliminating them, but you still toy with the three young ones. These men are not to be toyed with. They are trained assassins and a direct confrontation could go poorly for us. I got lucky with the last group, but this one will not be so easy.”
“Aren’t you at least curious about the youngsters?” questioned MistyTrail. “Forty professional assassins is something spectacular to throw against three young ones.”
“I am curious,” nodded HawkShadow, “but I take no chances with the security of Sakova. The Omungans have tried to root us out for centuries and we have survived by not taking chances with our homeland. I guess my curiosity comes after my duty. When they are dead, we can wonder why they were here.”
“I do not agree,” objected MistyTrail. “They may not know why they are here, but they were meant to come here. The girl who dresses like a boy carries a ring, a Ring of Sakova.”
“A Ring of Sakova?” queried HawkShadow. “Why did you not tell me this?”
“To make you realize that sometimes you may kill too quickly,” MistyTrail grinned. “You would have found it after you killed her.”
“That would have been her misfortune,” frowned HawkShadow. “The Ring only allows passage if it is presented to a Sakovan. She did not present it to anyone. She probably stole it anyway. She obviously has no idea what it means.”
“I agree with you there,” she sighed. “Still, I sense something in her, something good. I do not know what it is. I guess that is why I have not killed them yet. I want to know why they are here and why the killers are tracking them.”
“Your curiosity will get you killed, Misty,” Hawkshadow warned. “In any event, we now have a problem. If we join together to whittle down the assassins, we will lose the youngsters. If we split up, I will not be able to take out the assassins before they catch up with the youngsters. You should have eliminated the three of them when you had the chance.”
“Suppose we play a game,” MistyTrail suggested. “We can follow the three youngsters and still slow the pursuit of the assassins. If the assassins catch the trio, then we have only one target and we will be together. If they do not catch the youngsters, then we will always know where they are. We have only to slow them down once in a while until we find out what I want to know.”
HawkShadow leaned his tall frame against a fargi tree and thought about the proposition. He was curious about the children and the Ring, still he had the security of Sakova to worry about. Nobody was allowed to leave once they entered Sakova; that was the law. Unless they had Right of Passage, he quickly reminded himself. The girl had not used the Ring properly and that meant that she did not know what she had possession of.
“You want to play a game, do you?” quizzed HawkShadow. “Fine, but I will set the rules. Do you agree?”
“Hey, not fair,” protested the short woman. “You can make rules that stop the game before I have found out what I want to know.”
“I have always been fair with you, Misty,” smiled HawkShadow. “I will give you three days to find out what they are about. I will send word today for others to join us and help eliminate the assassins. Each night, you and I will go out and harass the assassins. At the end of the third day, when the others join us, we kill them all. Those are my rules.”
“Dawn of the fourth day,” MistyTrail bargained. “If I am out with you each night, my time to find out why they are here will be limited.”
“Done,” laughed HawkShadow. “I should know by now that you must always bargain with an elf.”
“I am not an elf,” MistyTrail protested as she dragged her hat down over her pointy ears. “There are no elves.”
“So you have said many times, my little friend,” grinned HawkShadow as he extended his leather covered arm high into the air.
MistyTrail marveled, as she always did, as the large black hawk swept out of the sky and descended silently to HawkShadow’s arm. HawkShadow removed a small capsule from his pocket and attached it to the bird’s leg. From another pocket, HawkShadow produced a treat for his bird. The bird’s beak could easily snap a bone in two, but it gently picked the treat from between HawkShadow’s fingers and cocked its head to stare at MistyTrail.
“Why does he stare at me so?” she asked.
“He wonders what I see in you,” laughed HawkShadow as he tossed the hawk into the air.
The bird rose in a circling motion and swiftly disappeared through the forest canopy. MistyTrail placed her hands on her hips and scowled at HawkShadow.
“You didn’t write a note,” she accused. “What was in the capsule?”
“Just what we discussed,” HawkShadow grinned.
“Impossible!” she declared. “I watched you the whole time and whatever went in that capsule must have been written before we started talking. Are you changing the rules already?”
“So it was,” agreed HawkShadow. “I am not changing the rules at all. The note merely asks for help with the assassins. It will take three days for that help to arrive. I had planned to harass the assassins until the help arrived anyway, so I agreed to give you three days with the youngsters. Nothing about the game has been altered.”
“And you still get what you wanted all along,” she scowled. “I have to learn to bargain with you better.”
“You learn quick enough,” HawkShadow stated as he laid his hand on her shoulder. “I have never had a student as good as you. Enough talk for now. You must hurry to keep track of the youngsters and I have to set some traps for the assassins. Give me your word that you will kill them if they try to leave the Sakova before the three days are up.”
“I will not let them leave the Sakova,” insisted MistyTrail. “If I can accomplish that task without killing them, then I am performing my duty properly.”
HawkShadow smiled and nodded and then turned and disappeared into the forest. MistyTrail watched him go with admiration. She had learned much from the Assassin of the Sakovans and he seemed to put up with her arguing with him, which he would not accept from anyone else. She would not destroy the trust he placed in her, not for the youngsters or anyone. If she wished to find out what they were doing in the forbidden Sakova, she had three days to do it in. She would not argue with HawkShadow, if after that time, he ordered her to kill the youngsters. MistyTrail started plotting as she ran through the woods to catch up with the youngsters.
Chapter 9
StarCity
The hawk soared high over the Sakova looking down at the tops of the giant fargi trees as they sped by far below. The air ch
illed as the large bird gained altitude and turned towards the Wytung Mountains. The forest below turned to smaller sevemor trees and grew sparser with numerous clearings, a favorite hunting spot of the hawk, but the hawk was not hunting right now. The small capsule attached to its foot was a constant reminder of its mission and the hawk never strayed off course. Soon the sevemor forest gave way to sharply rising mountains and the hawk caught an updraft and soared higher, banking swiftly into a near vertical climb. The side of the mountain whisked by in a blur as the hawk ran the updraft to its peak and catapulted over the top of the mountain, and pulled its wings in slightly and dived down the other side. Plummeting towards the ground, the hawk spread its wings wide and skimmed along the canyon floor, which twisted its way through the mountains. Its sharp vision picked up a rabbit running ahead, but it knew this was not hunting time and continued onward. Several more journeys over mountaintops and the distinctive three peaks of the Sakova stronghold appeared. Rising high over the mountains now, the hawk peered down at the broad expanse of the valley nestled in the center of the three peaks. As it dropped into the valley, its keen eyesight focused on its perch and the rest of the valley blurred as its speed increased in a dramatic dive. It spied the red-haired boy running towards the perch area and screeched out a welcome as it flared its wings and extended its talons to grab the perch in a controlled high-speed landing.
The red-haired boy skidded to a halt at the perch and extended his hand with a treat for the bird. Quickly the boy retrieved the capsule and ran off towards the building nearby. He ran through the gateway and turned sharply left, heading down a long stone corridor. Several more turns and corridors and the boy skidded to a halt outside a wooden door. Panting from his exertion, he banged loudly on the door. A muffled voice shouted from within and the boy opened the door and raced in.
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