I only had three “followers.” I knew Tobble loved me, Maxyn grudgingly liked me, and Sabito at least pretended to care what I said. How had Khara dealt with the formidable Gambler and the permanently independent Renzo?
Better than I was doing. That was the embarrassing answer.
44
My First Test as a Leader
Our fourth day began as the others had, with Tobble and me on the lead horse. Maxyn rode behind us with the two packhorses tied to his saddle. The vast plain spread before us like a rippling golden lake.
Havoc, despite his name, proved to be a calm steed—perhaps even too calm. He had no trouble ignoring my commands if he felt like nibbling on a tuft of rengrass, or gazing at a herd of gamboling clouds. Sometimes, when I requested a gallop, all I got was an aimless stroll. I feared what might happen in the heat of a battle, when I needed him to heed my every command.
We hadn’t gone far that morning when Sabito came swooping down out of low-hanging gray clouds.
“A hunting party of men is approaching from the south,” he announced. “Five men on horses, armed with bows.”
Everyone turned to me. Tell us what to do, their eyes demanded.
How many times had I looked at Khara with that same question, certain she’d have the right answer?
“Is there a place we could hide?” I asked Sabito. To our north were bare, rolling hills, but they were several leagues away.
Sabito landed on one of the packhorses. “There’s no hiding place that I have seen. Do you have a theurgic concealment spell, by chance?”
I shook my head.
“Then we must either try to outrun them or face them,” Sabito said. “They’ll spot you within minutes, if they haven’t already.”
He didn’t seem overly concerned. But then, Sabito had less reason to be afraid: the sky is a big place.
“Are they simple, honest hunters, or bandits? That’s the question,” I said. “Maxyn?”
“Yes?”
“Untie the packhorses.”
“Untie them?”
“Odds are they’ll follow us,” I said, not at all sure I was right. “Tobble, hang on tightly.”
“Will do!”
“Maxyn, spur your horse, and let’s see if we can outrun these men,” I said with brittle confidence.
I nudged Havoc in the ribs. Maxyn did the same to his horse, and with our shouts of encouragement, both broke into a gallop. The packhorses kept pace with us, to my great relief. And Havoc surprised me with a newfound sense of urgency.
Perhaps he smelled my fear.
The hunters were coming from the south, and we could either flee in a straight line north or keep to our westward course. “Keep west!” I cried over the thunder of hooves, as if I were sure of my choice.
I sat low, hunched forward, one hand on the reins, the other on Havoc’s mane, and we flew over the ground.
It was a wild, exhilarating run. Weeds whipped our flanks, and the air grew colder as a storm closed in. We galloped until our horses’ mouths foamed and their backs were sheened with sweat.
At last I raised my hand, signaling Maxyn to slow, and Sabito went aloft to spy out the situation. He returned with the welcome news that the hunting party had headed north, even after crossing our highly visible tracks.
They were not after us. I had made my first important decision as leader, and amazingly, it seemed to be the right one.
I felt pleased, even a little proud.
But far more important, I felt relieved.
By early afternoon, we had come within distant view of Mirror Lake to our southwest. We traveled across more wind-teased fields before I held up my hand to signal a pause. In all the excitement of our frantic ride, I’d forgotten to stop for a meal.
We dismounted near a hedge of dense, prickly bushes bordered by a tiny stream. Tobble set out a simple meal while Maxyn and I watered the horses.
When we were done eating, I reached into my patchel and retrieved the notebook Luca had given me. It had been ages since I’d written in it, but I still had a small vial of ink, along with my quill pen.
Maxyn leaned back against a rock, hands laced behind his head. “What are you going to write about?”
“I thought I’d keep track of our journey,” I said. “So I can tell Khara and the others about it someday.”
I winced as soon as the words were out of my mouth. It seemed wrong, just assuming that we would all meet again. I felt as if I were tempting fate. What were the odds, really, that we would ever see our dear friends again, given all we faced?
“Luca told me that I should write down everything I know about dairnes,” I said, pushing past my dark thoughts. “Our myths and music and history. For scholars and such, in case we really are the last of our kind.”
“I suppose it’s as good a way as any to make the time pass,” Maxyn said.
“I’ll probably start with our family stories,” I said, twirling the feather in my fingers as I considered. “Then move on to what we remember from our history lessons.”
Maxyn laughed. “Well, that’ll take about two lines! When my father tried to teach me history, it was the surest possible way to put me to sleep.”
“I liked history. But now I really wish I’d listened even better.” I flashed on a memory of white-muzzled Dalyntor discussing dairne lore while I daydreamed about adventures.
Well, I’d gotten my share of those, hadn’t I? As my father liked to say: “Dream greatly and you may be challenged greatly.”
For the next hour, Maxyn and I reminisced about our old lives. We talked of family lore, of folktales and songs, of favorite holidays and comforting foods. (We both adored roasted blue honeycorn and fish-eye pie.)
We shed a few tears, but we also laughed: wonderful, straight-from-the-belly laughs that left us breathless. I was relieved to be able to venture back to my old life with someone who understood the dairne world. For a long time, I hadn’t let myself dwell on all that I’d lost.
I filled six pages of Luca’s notebook with my hasty scribblings. Tobble, who, with Sabito, had been listening attentively, said, “You’ll be out of ink soon, Byx. I’ll go see if I can find any berries or herbs to mix up a new batch.”
“Thank you, Tobble,” I said. “That’s very kind. I have the feeling we are going to need a lot of ink.”
Maxyn laughed, a husky, full-throated sound that reminded me of my brothers. “More ink? We’re going to need more notebooks!”
“No doubt,” Tobble said softly as he retrieved a small pouch from his saddlebag. “No doubt at all.” He gave a little wave. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Don’t dawdle,” I said, falling back into my role as occasional leader and frequent nag, but Tobble had already turned his back on us and was heading downstream.
“Is everything all right with Tobble?” Maxyn whispered. “Of course, I don’t know him as well as you, Byx, but he seems . . . distracted.”
I tapped a finger on my chin. “I’m not sure. But you’re right.”
“Perhaps he’s afraid of what lies ahead,” Sabito offered. He cocked his head, one brown eye, shiny as a chestnut, trained on me.
“Tobble is braver than the three of us put together,” I said. “No, it’s something else. I wonder if he’s pining for home.”
“At least,” Maxyn said with a shrug, “he has a home to pine for.”
I nodded. I knew what Maxyn meant, although I also knew it wasn’t fair to resent others just because they had families, and we did not.
He smiled at me, a lopsided grin that warmed my weary heart. I am looking at another dairne, I told myself for what had to be the hundredth time. At one of my own. Someone who understood my life, and my pain, in a way no one else could.
Not Khara, not Gambler, not Sabito. Not even dear Tobble, busy gathering berries, just so that I could hold on to my precious memories a little longer.
45
Mud and Misery
The storm that had threatened since
daybreak finally struck late that afternoon while we were still riding.
Sabito came streaking down out of the sky. “Hail!” he screeched, landing on one of the packhorses and covering his head with a wing.
The hail came, hard pellets as big as my fists. They flattened the field we were passing through, bounced merrily on open ground, and even drew blood when a huge ice chunk grazed Maxyn’s ear.
The hail lasted several minutes, then stopped, but we had no rest from punishment. Rain gushed down in torrents, instantly drenching us. The ground turned to thick sludge, sucking at our horses’ hooves and slowing progress to a crawl.
Before long, all four horses were clearly exhausted. We dismounted and walked beside them, our feet booted in icy mud.
And then things got worse. The temperature dropped dramatically and the wind picked up, hurling flecks of ice and fat raindrops into our faces. With stiff, numb fingers I extracted three blankets from a saddlebag and passed one each to Tobble and Maxyn. When I wrapped mine around my shoulders, I realized it was no help at all. Instantly it was soaked, and weighed as much as I did.
“We have to stop!” Maxyn shouted.
“But where?” I called back.
Our visibility was down to a few yards. I saw no trees to shelter beneath, no convenient gullies or rock outcroppings to hide us from the wind. We were in a plowed, fallow field, with muck that rose to the horses’ fetlocks.
Maxyn reined to a halt. “I have an idea!” He explained it in gasps and shouts, and while it sounded unlikely, it was better than nothing.
While Sabito watched, Maxyn, Tobble, and I tied the lead rope of each horse to the tail of the horse before him. Carefully, we shepherded all four into a circle and tied the rope to the last tail, forming a tight ring of snorting, unhappy horses.
Finally, we stretched our canvas ground cover over the horses. They were a bit protected and so were we, although it made for a windy, muddy, freezing shelter.
We four—even Sabito joined us—crawled under the legs of our horses to enter. The rain pooled onto our makeshift tent, so periodically Maxyn or I would stand on tiptoes, stretching our hands up into the canvas to make a sort of tent pole, in an attempt to shed accumulating water.
The horses did what horses do, and in copious amounts, so that in addition to our other discomforts, we also had to smell horse urine and . . . other things. Still, I reminded myself, the horses were doing us a favor, and they were certainly no happier about the circumstances than we were. It was an endless, exceedingly miserable night.
Morning was little better. We were greeted with wan sunlight and snow falling thick and fast. It was certainly prettier than rain, and less immediately terrifying than hail, but the mud that surrounded us like a vast brown pudding hadn’t yet frozen. We slogged on in silence, encased in slush and muck. Visibility was terrible, and Sabito wisely chose to ride on the back of Maxyn’s horse, Zara, rather than attempt to fly.
After just a few hours, we stumbled upon a small, burned-out building made of boulders and wood. Two walls were steady, a third wall was mostly gone, and the fourth wall was nowhere to be seen. Part of the roof remained, covering one corner, and we huddled there together, with the horses once again drawn close.
We spent two days in that charcoal wreckage, feeding the horses with oats from our saddlebags, and ourselves with cheese and soggy bread. We had nothing to burn—the remaining timbers of the shack were soaked—so a fire wasn’t a possibility.
We passed much of the time lost in our own thoughts. Every so often one of us would ask a variation on two questions: “How are Khara and Renzo and Gambler doing?” or “Do you think we’ll really find more dairnes?”
While Maxyn and I kept up a constant stream of complaints about the mud and slush, Tobble was subdued. “I’m starting to wonder if you actually like this miserable weather,” Maxyn said to him, as darkness wrapped around us like a sodden black cloak.
Tobble gave a smile. “I’m from Bossyp. It’s a journey of many days from here, but the weather is quite similar.”
“I’ve flown over Bossyp,” said Sabito. “Veered off course during a storm. Beautiful place.”
“It is,” Tobble agreed. “This time of the year we do something called ‘warren watch.’ When you live in dens underground, weather this wet can be dangerous indeed. During warren watch, we took turns doing night patrols, looking for water leaks or signs of collapse. Of course, with one hundred and twenty-seven siblings, we had plenty of help.”
“One hundred and twenty-seven?” Maxyn exclaimed.
“Wobbyks have several litters a year.”
Maxyn shook his head. “I wouldn’t know what to do with that many siblings.”
“True, my parents sometimes forgot our names.” Tobble smoothed his braided tails. “Well, often they did. But having so many warm bodies in our tunnels made things nice and toasty.”
He sounded wistful, so I said, “Perhaps when we’re done with our search, we could visit Bossyp, Tobble.”
Tobble’s long whiskers quivered, and his big, round eyes glistened. “I would like that, Byx. Very much indeed.”
It was a relief to see Tobble’s smile return, though it didn’t last. He fell quiet while Maxyn and I played a silly pup game called Jip-Jop-Nop. It involved making three different shapes with your fingers and thumbs, but since we barely recalled the rules, we made up our own.
I offered to teach Sabito and Tobble, but Sabito said it was beneath his dignity to play pup games. Tobble simply held up his paws and shook his head. “I seem to be a bit short on fingers,” he said.
I felt badly I hadn’t considered that before asking. It was thoughtless of me, and I promised myself I’d be more careful in the future.
The next morning dawned cold and gray, but free from hail, rain, or snow. I could barely move after sitting cramped for so long, and the others seemed equally miserable.
Through chattering teeth, I ordered everyone to pack up. We led our horses from the wrecked home and discovered that the ground had begun to freeze and was firmer underfoot.
“Have patience,” I told my friends. “When the horses warm up, we should be able to mount again and make better progress.”
What I should have done before departing was ask Sabito to take to the air and scout our surroundings.
What I should have done was assess all possible threats, then plan accordingly.
What I should have done was be the leader I was supposed to be.
But I didn’t do those things.
And I would forever regret it.
46
The Chase
As we slogged along, Sabito surveyed our path from the air. Moments later, he veered back, screeching a warning—one that came too late, for even I could see that not a quarter league away was an encampment of six large tents, with a dozen horses tethered beneath a long canvas lean-to.
It was not a hunters’ camp. Nor was it a camp set up by a traveling caravan. No, it was the one thing that, above all else, I didn’t want to see.
It was, unmistakably, an army camp. Already two riders in the Murdano’s livery were galloping toward us to see whether we were friend or foe.
I couldn’t drop to all fours, stay mute, and pass myself off as a dog. That works if no one looks closely. But dogs do not ride horses or lead expeditions.
“Everyone stay calm,” I whispered, despite the fact that “calm” was the last thing I was feeling. “Remember: we are adventurers seeking a fabled lost diamond mine.”
That lie had seemed plausible enough when Renzo had cooked it up. But now the idea that anyone would accept it seemed ludicrous.
We stood still and waited. That’s what the innocent do. Only the guilty flee.
The soldiers clattered up, their huge warhorses towering over our steeds. Both riders stayed in their saddles, unconcerned that their animals were kicking up mud and snow and frightening our horses. Not to mention us.
“State your names and business,” the smaller of
the two men snapped.
“Yes, of course,” I said, trying to locate a steady voice. “I am Byx, this is Maxyn, and this is Tobble.”
“And what are you?”
“Me? I am from the far, far south.”
“I didn’t ask where you came from. I asked what you are.”
“Ah, I see. Yes, I must look strange to your eyes, but I am a . . . a . . . southern felivet.”
“A what?”
“We are an offshoot of felivets.” I clenched my hands into fists to hide their trembling. “A subspecies of small, harmless catlike animals.”
The large man scowled. “You look more dog than cat.”
“Yes, well, as I said, we come from a distant land. A strange land with strange creatures. Creatures like us.”
I was babbling, and my fear was getting the better of me. I could only hope he assumed my teeth were chattering because of cold rather than guilt.
The two men consulted for a moment. Then the larger one spoke in a commanding voice. “You will come to our camp. The captain can question you.”
I knew we couldn’t refuse. Two armed men, soldiers, would cut us down in less time than it took to draw a breath, let alone draw a weapon.
“Of course,” I said, defeated.
We set off, following the soldiers.
“Byx,” Maxyn said in a whisper, “if they sense anything wrong, they will torture us for information.”
I gritted my teeth. Surely not? We were harmless enough.
Except.
Except that we carried too many weapons to be mere adventurers. Except that someone in the human camp might know just enough to recognize us as dairnes.
“Warhorses are big but slow,” Maxyn said. “We can outrun them.”
Could we? But where would we run? And would the soldiers pursue us, or would they pass us off as irrelevant? They might assume we were mere poachers—lawbreakers, but not the sort of lawbreakers that a common soldier would care much about.
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