Darkwood (25 page)

She would travel at night. She would be invisible.

The note contained a lie, but only a small one.

Dear Page, Beatrice, and Serena
,

We left at dawn. I couldn't sleep in any case, and didn't see a reason to wake you. I have my map and my muffins. I will find some way to send word when I have news
.

My love to you all
,

Annie

They set out in the perfect dark. Whatever feeling of change or wonder the dawn brought, the dark evoked its opposite. How long had they been on the road? Ten minutes? Forty? Annie felt she had always been exactly here, on this hard seat, staring between the horse's fringed ears, and always would be. It wasn't a bad feeling. The dark seemed full of patience, full of peace. The wolf dozed in the back amid sacks of food, a blanket pulled up under his chin as if he were a child. The cats slept beside her on the seat.

At the first sign of dawn they turned north to travel the few miles across country to the forest. Baggy balked at leaving the road, but Annie coaxed him into it without too much trouble.

“Apples, Baggy, as soon as we get there, with sugar on them.”

She had forgotten how dark the forest was in daylight, how long it held the night sky with its million branches. The pleasure forest on the palace grounds was no more like this forest than a lap dog was like a wolf, she thought, and wondered how Sharta had been able to stand it.

Page. Page had helped him stand it. Annie glanced back at Rinka, alert now and sniffing the air. Could they trust each other, as Page and Sharta had?

“Whoa, Baggy.”

They stopped in a clearing just wide enough to turn the wagon around. The horse's muddy hooves made dark circles in the snow covering the forest floor. She'd been glad for the
start of warmer weather, but she shouldn't have been. The road held their tracks like a mold.

Rinka swallowed his food listlessly. She tried to examine the wound in his leg, but he snarled and jumped from the wagon bed, landing clumsily chest-first in the snow. He tried a few times to walk, but each time he fell it seemed to take a greater and greater effort to get up. Finally he stayed down, turning his head away from her.

As Annie was arranging the blankets for her bed, she caught sight of Isadore washing himself. He had kicked up one hind leg above his ear and was cleaning the fluffy white fur of the underside. In that position, his leg appeared to be caught up in a sling. Annie jumped down from the wagon and hurried over to Rinka. She tore a wide band of cotton from her petticoat and knelt beside him. He didn't look at her. She touched his leg; he jerked away from her, growling. To her surprise, Annie growled back. Now Rinka did look at her, his ears cocked in surprise.

“I'm just trying to help you,” she muttered.

If a wolf could shrug, Rinka did. He laid his head on his paws and looked into the distance with a bored expression, but when she touched him again he didn't pull away. Carefully, she worked the piece of cotton around his hips and then around the second joint of the injured leg, tying it close to his body so only the tips of his toes were visible. As she worked, she spoke to him softly in her own language, telling him what she was doing and why she thought it would help. He shifted his weight from side to side as she passed the cloth under him and yapped at her when the bandage felt too tight.

Sitting back on her heels, Annie eyed her handiwork. The white cotton stood out starkly against his dark fur. Annie giggled. She couldn't help it—the bandage looked like a giant diaper. She laughed harder, until she rocked back and landed on her elbows in a mist of snow. Rinka narrowed his eyes.

“You, baby. Person baby,” Annie tried in Hippa. She must have said it correctly, because he glared harder.

“How say, ‘ha-ha-ha'?”

The Hippa sound for laughter drove the humor straight out of her. Like a rusty hinge, or a bone breaking.

Annie ate her breakfast and pretended not to watch Rinka's attempts to walk in the diaper. He fell over, once, twice, a third time, but on the fourth try he stayed standing. He hopped a few paces, stopped to steady himself, then hopped a few paces more. By the time Annie had settled under the blankets he was moving quite quickly around the copse of trees where they had made their camp.

“I take sleeps now,” she called out.

The wolf turned his head and looked at her quizzically. She cleared her throat and tried again, laying more emphasis on the first syllable of the bark:
I take sleeps now
.

This time his ears perked up and he barked back:
Sleep soundly, dark hair
.

Annie dreamt of wolves. Dozens of them ran over the white earth. One wolf began to fall behind the others. He limped on
three legs, then began to crawl, not a wolf anymore, but a baby. Behind them, out of the trees, came a laughing black bird. The bird swooped down and snatched up the child. All the wolves began to howl.

Annie sat up, heart pounding. Far off, she could hear Rinka howling for his pack. No answer came, and after a long time she heard his scuffing gait return to camp. She lay down, but did not sleep again.

The second night of their journey passed much as the first, the darkness unspooling itself slowly as they made their way along the wide, rutted road that linked east and west How-land. Annie practiced speaking Hippa to the horse, but it was hard to engage a pair of hindquarters. Rinka, exhausted from his attempts at walking, scarcely moved. Gradually the road turned south to accommodate the growing bulk of the forest. They had entered Dour County.

“Leave the road. Quickly.”

Annie started. She had dozed off. Light filled the sky to the east.

Blushing, hoping the wolf hadn't noticed, she turned the wagon north.

“Soon Finisterre,” she said in Hippa. “Tomorrow, or—”

“Be quiet.”

Annie turned in her seat, mouth opened in protest. The wolf
lay hunched against the wagon bed, head and ears straining toward the empty road.

“What is it?” Annie whispered.

“Listen.”

She closed her eyes and tried to quiet her heartbeat and her breath.

Koom, koom, koom
.

The sound broke in two, the beat followed by the echo of the beat.

Koom-koom, koom-koom, koom-koom
.

Hoofbeats.

The sound splintered into fragments: creak of leather, slap of reins, spatter of mud, grunting breath.

She opened her eyes. A dark cloud stood out against the brightening sky, moving fast. Annie shook the reins. “On, Baggy, on!”

To her astonishment, the old carthorse broke into a smooth, powerful canter. The wagon jumped and bumped over rocks and ditches. Annie looked back. She could make out the sharp points of spears now and the glint of armor. Soldiers, and not mercenaries this time.

The forest loomed ahead of them, a haven. Even if the King's Guard dared to follow them, they could split up. They could hide among the trees.

Only about fifty yards left, forty … the horsemen swerved from the road and pounded toward them.

Twenty yards. They were closing the distance to the forest.

They were going to make it.

Then, with a great crack, the wagon tipped sideways.
Annie screamed and gripped the seat. In a blur of orange, she saw Isadore's body flying through the air, then she felt her own fingers come loose and realized that she, too, was flying.

She landed hard. Snow filled her ear. She struggled to a sitting position and found herself looking into the flared black nostrils of a horse. Something caught hold of the back of her cloak and she was lifted onto her feet.

“Are you injured?”

Annie raised her eyes past the horse's broad chest. The horse was twice the size of Baggy. Its coat was the color of smoke. The man holding her cloak looked like an extension of the horse. His nostrils flared big and black and a bushy gray beard obscured most of his face. Behind him four more men waited on horseback. They were all broad and bearded, except for one who had no hair at all. The skin hung in triple folds around his neck, like the neck of a turtle.

“The captain asked if you were injured,” the turtle said. She shook her head, peeping around as she did so for the others. Rinka and the cats were nowhere in sight. The wagon lay on its side, three remaining wheels spinning slowly. Baggy stood trembling between the snapped shafts.

The captain surveyed the supplies scattered over the ground: apples, blankets, candles, spoons, even Bea's muffins.

“You're a tradesperson of some kind, I gather?”

Annie hesitated. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

“Produce your travel permit, please.”

“My permit. Of course.” She pretended to search her pockets, casting around all the while for something she could
use to—what? One of the horses kept tossing its head. On the ground by its feet were a carrot, a rye loaf, and there, in a red lump, the meat Beatrice had packed for Rinka.

“Oh, thank the dawn!” Annie cried. “My employer would have skinned me alive if I'd lost this.”

“Lost
that
?” the captain asked.

“Oh, yes. He's a very cruel man, my employer.” She raised her eyes in what she hoped was a pathetic expression. “He's a butcher.”

The captain looked taken aback.

“I'm wondering why she ran when she saw us, Captain,” said the turtle.

“Specialty meats!” Annie blurted. “This here is, is …
barn owl, bellaphel, bittern
… Bittern! Bittern meat, imported from Brineland. Worth its weight in ringstone. That's why he makes me travel so early. So we won't be robbed. I ran because I thought you were robbers.”

The captain looked over at his fellows, who shrugged.

“We still need to see her permit, Captain,” the turtle said. “We can't let her go without seeing that permit.” He was nearly standing in his stirrups with eagerness. Annie wrinkled her nose. The men smelled of sweat, leather, ale, horse, and, from one of them, an unmistakable, tinny sweetness. Annie took an involuntary step back, only to find her cloak still caught in the captain's grip.

He turned on the turtle impatiently. “I'm more than capable of conducting this interview myself, Remo.” Then to Annie, “Your permit, Miss.”

Annie shook her head.

“You'll have to come with us then, I'm afraid.”

“But why? I told you, my employer …”

“Strict orders from the king himself.” As he spoke, the captain leaned down and hooked his free hand under Annie's arm.

“No! I won't!” But she had barely started to struggle when a black shape hurtled toward them.

“Kinderstalk!” one of the men yelled, and everything burst suddenly into chaos.

“Run!” Rinka snarled, just before his teeth closed around the captain's arm.

Annie ran, slipping and stumbling in the snow, afraid to look back. She heard shouting, a horse's frightened whinny, and then pistol fire.

Rinka, Rinka. What have you done
?

She burst into the shelter of the trees and dropped to her hands and knees. But someone was behind her, drawing close. She scrambled up, ready to run again. Rinka's teeth nipped her shoulder.