Brothers Haymaker (Haymaker Adventures Book 2)

by Sam Ferguson

  “Then why didn’t Larkyn call upon the council to act?” Ruben asked incredulously.

  Jonathan shook his head. “It’s a long story.”

  Ziegler cut in with a raised hand. “We don’t have time for that. We need to reach Tomyn before Larkyn becomes wise to the fact that we survived his ambush.”

  “How do you know it was Larkyn and not one of the councilmen who sent the warriors with us?” Jason asked.

  Ziegler shook his head. “Because one of the traitors was shouting about ‘Master Larkyn,’ during the battle. It seems that he has more reach than we suspected, and he bought some of these warriors off as well.”

  “But…” Ruben interjected. He shook his head and put a hand up to his neck. “But…” Jonathan looked to the wizard and noticed that he was sweating profusely from his forehead, and his face was turning redder. “I..um…” Ruben stammered. The man slumped to his knees and Miranda shrieked.

  “There’s a dart in his back!” she gasped.

  Ziegler hurried around Ruben and inspected it while steadying the wizard with his left arm. “It’s small,” Ziegler said as he pulled it out and held it up. “It’s only a few inches long, couldn’t have pierced any organs here. It was too high for the kidneys, and too shallow to penetrate the ribs.

  Jonathan watched as Ruben’s eyes rolled into the back of his head. “Heart Spring,” he said weakly.

  “Heart Spring?” Ziegler asked. “Where is that?”

  Jonathan rushed to the campsite where Ruben had been sitting. He rifled through the pack until he found the canister with the current map and then sprinted back, nearly breaking the lid while trying to open it. He dumped the map out onto the ground and unrolled it.

  “East,” Ruben said.

  Jonathan scanned the map. He found Tomyn, and then followed the river to the northeast until he saw a large body of water drawn upon the map with the name Heart Spring written under it. “Here!” he said as he pointed.

  “Tomyn is south,” Ziegler pointed out.

  Ruben went weak and his eyes closed.

  Miranda took the dart and smelled it. “There was something on this dart,” she said as she handed it back to Ziegler. He sniffed it and nodded.

  “It isn’t any poison I know of, but it is surely something foul.”

  Miranda pointed to the map. “Heart Spring is a place where people go for special healing. My father used to tell me about it when I was a little girl. He said that if you go and bathe in the waters there, the magic in the spring will heal whatever ails you.”

  Ziegler nodded. “Jason, round up five horses, and do it quickly.”

  Jonathan looked around for his bow that he had received from Koanin and went to retrieve it as well as a full quiver of arrows. By the time he had gathered what he was after, Jason had returned with the horses.

  The forest was unforgiving as they moved eastward. There were no roads from where they were to Heart Spring. The horses, being accustomed to Tanglewood, were able to navigate the dense trees and undergrowth, but they could barely keep a light trotting pace. Still, it was faster than the group would have been able to do on foot, especially since Ruben was no longer conscious.

  What they could have covered in a day on the open road, required three days and most of two nights to cover through the forest. Only when they neared the banks of the river did the traveling get noticeably easier. Even then, Miranda still fussed over Ruben, riding near to his horse and praying over him. The trees did not grow along the sloping, grassy bank on the northern side, so the last ten miles were able to be taken at a much faster run. As it was, Ruben was barely breathing when they reached the large spring.

  Jonathan watched from the bank as Miranda hurried to lead the horse carrying Ruben to the edge of the heart-shaped spring. The bubbling waters gave off steam as they foamed all throughout the pool. Without stopping, Miranda walked the horse straight into the water until she was up to her chest. By that time, Ziegler was with her, and helped her slide Ruben down and into the pool.

  “He needs to drink some of the water,” Miranda said.

  Ziegler cupped some water in his hand and fumbled with Ruben’s limp body until he had the man’s head positioned back against his chest with the mouth slightly open. He dumped a handful of the liquid in and waited.

  “More,” Miranda said.

  Ziegler scooped up four more handfuls, but nothing happened. Jonathan and Jason moved to the edge of the bank and watched.

  “Maybe he needs to go in deeper,” Miranda said.

  Ziegler nodded. “Boys, come in and help me.”

  Jonathan and Jason jumped into the water.

  The first thing Jonathan noticed was the pleasant heat. The water wasn’t scorching, but it was hot and seemed to reach into the body and warm the muscles and bones too. Then, there was a terrible sting in his leg where the arrow had grazed him during the battle. He hadn’t told anyone, but it had become slightly infected during their ride to Heart Spring. It wasn’t serious, just some puss that built up around the deeper end of the cut, but as it touched the water and the liquid flowed into the wound, Jonathan felt a searing pain.

  He pushed the sensation out of his mind. He had to help Ruben now. But just then, as he forced himself further into the pool, he felt something cool slide around his leg. Startled by the sensation, he stopped and looked down. Blood and puss was stripped away and new skin closed the wound before his eyes. Jonathan then smiled and rushed toward Ruben, confident the waters could heal him too if he could get into the pool a bit further.

  Jonathan took Ruben from Ziegler and with Jason’s help he moved him closer to the center of the pool. The ground beneath his feet dropped away sharply a few feet away from the center of the pool and he fell in up to his neck.

  “Here!” Jonathan said.

  Jason nodded and they both dunked Ruben down into the pool. Jason moved to pull Ruben up, but Jonathan shook his head as the waters healed the cut in his shoulder.

  “Wait, give it time!” Jonathan said.

  “We don’t want to drown him!” Jason replied.

  Jonathan shook his head. “He’ll be fine. Trust me.” Jonathan pulled away from Jason and he and Ruben slipped down deep under the surface. Jonathan watched through the clear water as Ruben’s hair floated up and waved in the water. Then, a strange ribbon of green came up from the depths of the pool and swirled around Ruben. By that time, Jason had dived under the water to pull them out, but he too stopped when he saw the phenomenon.

  Jonathan smiled at his brother and then watched as the green strip enlarged and whirled around Ruben until the man was spinning in the water. A thin trail of blood oozed out from Ruben’s back and a golden spark flamed into life as the wound healed over. Then, Ruben’s eyes opened and he started swimming for the surface. Jonathan and Jason followed.

  The three of them smiled and laughed, and then swam back toward the others.

  “You found it!” Ruben exclaimed. “How did you find it?”

  Ziegler pointed to Jonathan. “He used your map, and we rode straight here from the pond.”

  Ruben turned and embraced Jonathan. “Thank you!” he exclaimed. Then he turned around and wrapped Miranda in a tight hug. She smiled and laughed and then he pushed her away, looked into her eyes, and bent down to kiss her passionately.

  Jonathan’s smile lost its fire then as he watched the two kiss. He cleared his throat and started to walk out from the water.

  Travel to Tomyn. Find more Larkyn clues. Use abandoned places page for inspiration.

  CHAPTER 12

  The group ate a full meal and then packed up and prepared to leave again. Ziegler took them down to the river, following a different source that sprung up from the ground nearby and ran down to join with a river that had started somewhere beyond Heart Spring. Ziegler, having made many different types of rafts during his time in the swamps of the Murkle Quags, instructed them how to build a raft. Then he looked down to his bandaged wrist and unwound the makeshift spli
nt. He flexed his hand and bent his wrist each way before nodding and smiling.

  “It looks as though Heart Spring did us all some good,” he said. “Come on then, let’s crack on.”

  Jason cut down smaller trees with his sword. As Koanin had promised, not even the trees could dull the Telarian steel’s edge. Miranda, Jason, and Ruben were set with the task of making rope from vines and strips of pliable bark from some of the younger saplings. The job took them all the better part of a day, even with Ziegler’s experience, but they were able to set out on the river a few hours before sundown.

  In several hours, they had traveled well over fifty miles, thanks to the speed of the river. Then, as the sun was burning the sky with pinks and oranges, they pulled into an eddy as the river flattened and widened for a bit and made camp on the beach. They slept under the stars on the naked bank of sand, not daring to use any lights and risk alerting any of Larkyn’s scouts that they were still alive.

  Ziegler was sure Larkyn had to have sent patrols out after them by now, which was one of the reasons he suggested using the raft to reach Tomyn. It would hopefully be the last thing Larkyn would expect.

  Jonathan was unable to sleep for much of the night. He lied upon his back and watched the stars, but couldn’t take his mind off of the kiss Ruben and Miranda had shared. Try as he might to let it go, it bothered him, deeply. After a while he sat up and glanced around. Jason was snoring loud enough to wake the dead, and the others appeared to be asleep as well. Jonathan quietly stood up and moved closer to the edge of the shore. In the silvery moonlight, he found a few stones worth skipping and began throwing them at the water. He watched each one skip, counting the number of bounces before it disappeared in the water. He was on his fifth stone when someone came up beside him. He turned, expecting to see Jason or Ziegler, but he saw Miranda.

  She smiled at him.

  He offered a half-smile and returned to throwing the rocks.

  “Can’t sleep?” she asked.

  Jonathan shook his head. “Anxious, I guess,” he replied. “What about you?”

  Miranda glanced back over her shoulder and rubbed her upper arms. “The same.” She then looked to him and offered another smile.

  Jonathan pointed to the sky and said, “Well, at least it isn’t raining all the time.”

  Miranda laughed softly. “The Murkle Quags are definitely not a place I miss,” she said. She bent down to grab a round, flat rock and then skipped it. It bounced seven times across the water, and then landed on the opposite bank.

  “Well done,” Jonathan said with a nod. He then wound up and tried to outdo her, but he angled his throw incorrectly and the rock shot straight into the water with a ker-plunk!

  “Nice try,” Miranda said as she knelt down to find more stones.

  Jonathan just shook his head and waited for her to collect more rocks.

  Miranda stood up and threw another stone. It made it to the other bank just like the first.

  “Magic is cheating,” Jonathan said.

  “I only have fire magic,” Miranda replied evenly. “That wouldn’t help much in a rock skipping contest.”

  Jonathan smirked.

  Miranda then stopped suddenly and turned to him. “It wasn’t my choice,” she said.

  Jonathan’s brows drew together in a puzzled knot. “What?” he asked.

  “The betrothal, it wasn’t my choice,” she said.

  Jonathan nodded quietly.

  “I meant what I said, back in the Warrens, about wanting to visit you. I tried three times, actually, but my father caught me each time.”

  “He stopped you?” Jonathan asked.

  Miranda nodded. “Said I wasn’t allowed to marry anyone who couldn’t wield magic. Said it was important to keep the lines going strong. When he was introduced to Ruben, well, he got the idea in his head that maybe we could even improve the magic lines. Ruben has two lines of magic in his blood, and he can use both. My father said I had to marry Ruben.”

  “And you don’t get any say?” Jonathan asked.

  Miranda shook her head. “It isn’t so hard to understand is it? I mean, I heard that your brother was betrothed to his fiancé as well, matched by your grandfather and the young woman’s father right?”

  Jonathan nodded. “They seemed to work it out in the end though,” Jonathan said as he glanced back to his snoring brother. “He didn’t like her much before he left for the war, but afterward… things changed.”

  Miranda nodded and she glanced back to Ruben.

  Jonathan looked over to the wizard and realized that things might eventually change for Miranda as well.

  “I guess that is what I am hoping for too,” Miranda said. “I am trying to make the most of it, because I don’t have any other option really.”

  Jonathan thought about telling her to run away with him, but he knew how ridiculous that would sound. They were in the middle of Tanglewood Forest, with her fiancé, looking for her father. It seemed the fates were conspiring against him.

  “I will always remember you,” Miranda said.

  Jonathan looked at her and smiled. He took her hand in his. “I have never stopped thinking of your,” he said.

  Miranda nodded and brushed her hair back with her other hand. “I guess, that’s what I need from you,” she said. “I need to know that you can be okay with this. It will always be hard, but if you could give me your blessing, it would make it easier.”

  Jonathan smirked and shrugged. What was he supposed to say? What could he say? She already knew how he felt, but she was asking him to let it go, to let her go. Jonathan looked down and wiggled his toe in the dirt. Finally, he nodded his head. “Yeah, I can do that,” he told her. “I understand. It’s out of your hands, and you should be as happy as you can be.”

  Miranda smiled and leaned in to give him a warm, soft kiss on the cheek, then she pulled away. “Thank you,” she said. “I will always have you here,” she said as she patted her heart.

  Jonathan smiled sheepishly and then watched her go back to her bed roll. Then he turned around and picked up the biggest rock he could find and lobbed it across the river and into a large tree on the other side. K-nok! The sound was loud and sharp, but nobody in the camp stirred. He kept watching the river drift by in the darkness for hours, until at last his body temperature dropped and his muscles yearned for sleep, then he turned in for the rest of the night.

  They were all up early the next morning and onto the raft before the fog had lifted from the river. The rapid waters carried them swiftly through the lush forest, winding around large rocks and shooting down steep stretches at almost terrifying speeds. There were times when they all bent low to the raft and held on as they dropped nearly vertically down long expanses that stretched for a mile or more before crashing into slower waters as the river leveled out once more.

  At sunset they pulled in to shore again, and pitched camp for the night. They slept under a cloudy night, the first they had experienced since leaving Holstead, and woke up to a dreary, drizzling rain that soaked their bodies and dampened their spirits. Their remaining bread was ruined before midday, and they had even lost one of their backpacks with fruit when the raft unavoidably slammed into a rock jutting out of the waters.

  To make matters worse, around midafternoon they neared a large waterfall and had to fight the current to bring their craft in to shore. They tried to carry the raft, but it was too large and the terrain was too slippery and dangerous with jagged rocks and thick trees at every step. At last they decided to send the raft down the waterfall and hope it survived the drop. Ruben and Ziegler waited at the top, while Jonathan and Jason hurried to get into position at the bottom.

  Jonathan scrambled over a few mossy logs and then down the rocky sloe until he came to the bottom of the drop off. The waterfall was as loud as thunder up close. Water spray wafted on the air away from the waterfall and added to the still drizzling rain.

  Jason pointed out a spot about fifty yards downriver from the bottom o
f the waterfall where the river looked slow enough to stand and try to catch the raft. The two rushed toward it and got into the water up to their knees. Then they watched the waterfall for any sign that the raft was on its way.

  A few seconds later, Jonathan pointed as the raft tipped over the edge and flipped to crash down upon its top. The rushing water pummeled it from above and the raft turned over and over in the water beneath the falls.

  “Should we go get it?” Jonathan asked.

  “Are you nuts?” Jason shot back. “If the raft can’t get out from under the current, how well do you think we would do against it?”

  Jonathan shrugged. His brother had a point which seemed obvious now, but at the same time, Jonathan could see some of the rigging coming undone under the power of the water, and two of the logs had already separated away from the raft.

  The others were half way down the slope when the raft finally broke free and floated down the river again. Jonathan and Jason moved out and grabbed hold of the craft, or what was left of it, and with great effort brought it into the shallows, and then pulled it up onto the bank.

  “What a mess,” Ziegler said when he came upon the wreck. “Still, easier to fix this then build a new one from scratch.”

  As before, Jason and Ziegler cut down some trees while Miranda, Jonathan, and Ruben cleaned off the limbs and fastened the logs together to make the raft whole again. Unfortunately, it took them the remainder of the daylight to do so. They spent the third night there, beneath the waterfall, and then resumed their journey in the morning. Fortunately, by the next day the rains had stopped and Ruben and Miranda were able to use their magic to dry out everyone’s clothes and supplies.

  They all clambered back atop the raft, and let the river carry them the rest of the way to Tomyn. They could just make out a tall tower, covered with ivy and overgrowth from lack of use, as they pulled into the shore for the night. They were careful to camp on the opposite bank that night, and cover their raft with branches and debris before camping further in the forest for good measure. Ziegler took first watch. Jason took second, and Jonathan took the final watch before morning.