Dragonback 04 Dragon and Herdsman (12 page)

It was just as well that he did.

The primary line consisted of Malison Ring soldiers spaced about a
hundred feet apart. All were dressed in camouflage outfits, all of them
hidden inside patches of reeds or ferns where they were all but
invisible. Sitting silently in concealment, they were waiting for Jack
and Alison to walk right into their arms.

Under normal circumstances, Draycos would have had no trouble
dealing with them. He would have simply climbed into the treetops,
worked his way behind the line, and taken out the soldiers one by one.

But as Jack had warned, Colonel Frost knew what he and his men
were up against. This time, they'd come up with a new twist.

Just behind the main picket line a second line had been set up in
various tree branches twenty feet off the ground. If Draycos had
carelessly gone with the standard approach, he would have ended up
squarely in their line of fire.

And as an extra added touch, the upper line consisted of nonhumans
of species Draycos hadn't yet encountered in his travels with Jack.
Frost had probably hoped their unfamiliar scent would help conceal them.

Slowly, carefully, Draycos backed away, watching for any other
surprises the enemy might have planned. But the double picket line
appeared to be the full extent of their cleverness. At least for the
moment.

He took the long way back to Jack and the others, paralleling the
picket line at a cautious distance. After a quarter mile the double
line ended, replaced by a single line of soldiers spaced much farther
apart.

Apparently, Frost had followed Alison's same line of reasoning
regarding the caves to the west. He was expecting the fugitives to head
in that direction, and had arranged his forces with that in mind.

Still, even a thin picket line could be trouble, especially to a
crowd of unstealthy Erassvas and Phookas. Draycos and Jack would have
to find a way to slip the group past the sentries without being
detected.

Draycos had worried a little that Alison might have made too much
progress toward the hidden enemy in his absence. To his relief, he
found everyone sitting or lying comfortably on the ground not far from
where he'd left them.

Jack was walking the perimeter, his tangler ready in his hand.
Draycos waited until he was looking in his direction, then lifted a paw
into view. Jack changed direction, and half a minute later Draycos was
once again pressed against his host's skin.

"You okay?" Jack murmured as he resumed his patrol.

"Yes," Draycos said. "Why have we stopped? Is it the bellwether's
turn for a host?"

"No, not yet," Jack said. "I saw Taneem come back leading one of
the other Phookas and figured you'd spotted trouble. I thought it might
be a good idea to go to ground for a while, so I called a rest break."

"It was well that you did," Draycos said. "We have a problem."

Jack listened in silence as Draycos laid out the situation. "And
you don't think we can slip past them even if we keep going north?" the
boy asked when he'd finished.

"You, I, and Alison could," Draycos said. "But the others could
not."

"So what we need is for all the soldiers to go away."

"Yes," Draycos said. For all the danger they were in, he felt a
trickle of encouragement that the thought of abandoning the Erassvas
and K'da had apparently not even crossed Jack's mind. The me-first
attitude that Uncle Virgil had spent all those years hammering into the
boy was fading away with gratifying speed. "Perhaps I can arrange a
diversion."

Jack shook his head. "A K'da diversion is the first thing they'll
expect," he said, chewing thoughtfully at his lip. "I wonder how clever
they think we are.
And
how stupid."

"What do you mean?" Draycos asked.

"This." Reaching to his collar, Jack removed his comm clip. "I
don't know if I ever mentioned it, but there's a way to gimmick comm
clips so that they can be made to work as transmission scanners."

"With the ability to search for enemy transmissions?"

"Exactly," Jack said. "You usually can't actually eavesdrop on
anyone, since most comm clips operate with full encryption. But if we
had a clip like that we could estimate the strength of the mercs' own
comm clip signals and get an idea of how close they were."

"
Do
we have such a device?" Draycos asked.

Jack shook his head. "There are a couple on the
Essenay
,
but neither of the two I have with me can do that. But Frost has to
know about the technique. If he thinks I'm clever enough, and if my
comm clip suddenly goes on without me talking to anyone, he may think
that's what I'm doing."

"But as Alison said earlier, turning it on may also give them the
ability to locate
us
," Draycos warned.

"Right," Jack said, grinning tightly. "And
that
's the
how-stupid-am-I part. How far away did you say you drove that herd of
horn-headed plant-eaters?"

Draycos cracked his jaws open in a smile of his own. "Not far," he
said. "How shall I attach it?"

"Use this," Jack said. He glanced toward Alison, then
surreptitiously slid one of the cartridges out of his tangler. "If you
pop off this cap, the netting will just slide free instead of blasting
out."

Draycos lifted his head slightly from Jack's shoulder for a closer
look. The technique seemed straightforward enough. "What about the
electrical shock?" he asked.

"Good point," Jack said, frowning. "I'd better take out the
capacitor."

"Or you could simply adjust its strength," Draycos suggested. "We
don't wish to put the animal to sleep, but a small jolt may encourage
him to leave his grazing and move away from the area more quickly."

Jack cocked his head in salute. "Good point number two," he said.
"Let's see what I can do."

Three minutes later, the cartridge was ready. "Remember, just
attach it and then get back here," Jack said. "And don't get him moving
too fast. We don't want Frost wondering why Uncle Virgil trained me to
be a thief instead of an Olympic distance runner."

"I know what to do," Draycos assured him. "Don't leave this place
until I return."

"We won't," Jack promised. "Good luck."

Silently, the dragon headed off into the woods. Jack gave him a
thirty-count to make sure he was out of sight, then headed back to the
resting herd.

Alison was sitting with her back against a tree, her gun in her
lap. "All quiet on the western front?" she asked.

"Seems that way," he confirmed, carefully filtering the annoyance
out of his voice. Alison had gotten into the habit of peppering her
conversation with these obscure comments, obviously references to
things he'd never heard of.

It was irritating, but he wasn't about to give her the
satisfaction of letting her know that. He certainly wasn't going to ask
what in blazes she was talking about.

"Good," she said. "Does that mean you're over your twitchies?"

"Being cautious in enemy territory is
not
being twitchy,"
Jack insisted stiffly. "And, no, I think we ought to stay here a little
longer"

Alison peered up at the sky. "If we do, we may be here all night,"
she warned. "We don't have much daylight left."

"I think it's worth it," Jack said firmly. "
I'm
staying,
anyway."

"Fine," Alison said, resettling herself against the tree. "You're
in charge of this expedition. So how about telling me a story?"

Jack frowned. "What kind of story?"

"Colonel Frost called you Jack Morgan," she said. "Two months ago,
when we were raw recruits sweating through basic in the Whinyard's Edge
mercenaries, they all thought your name was Jack Montana. Was it you or
them who got your name wrong?"

Jack hid a grimace. "Them," he said. "Probably a clerical error."

"Yeah, right," she said. "Come on, Jack. Like it or not, we're
stuck here together. I need to know that I can trust you."

"Fine," Jack said. "In that case, you can go first."

Alison lifted her eyebrows. "Go first where?"

"You weren't any raw recruit," he reminded her, sitting down
facing her with his back to another tree. "You could start by telling
me what you were up to that made Sergeant Grisko ready to kill both of
us."

She sighed, lowering her eyes. "It was all Dad's idea," she said
reluctantly. "He had this crazy notion that merc groups who took
teenagers probably didn't keep very good records on them. He figured he
could keep indenturing me to one after another, collect the money and
then help me get out, and they'd never catch on."

"Cute," Jack said. "More stupid than cute, actually. But no
crazier than some of the scams my uncle and I pulled over the years."

"So you
are
a con artist?" she asked. "That's sort of what
I figured."

"Reformed con artist," Jack corrected. "Trying to reform, anyway.
So what were you doing in the Whinyard's Edge HQ that night?"

"I wanted to get a peek at their records on me," Alison said.
"Just in case Dad's plan hadn't been as clever as he thought. I guess I
should have waited until we were on Sunright."

"Or skipped it completely."

She made a face. "Dad wouldn't have liked that," she said.
"He's—well, let's not go into that."

"Bad childhood?" Jack suggested.

Alison shrugged. "Mom and Dad and I never stayed in one place very
long, if that's what you mean. Other than that . . . I don't know. I
don't really have anything to compare it to."

"I know the feeling," Jack said ruefully, thinking back over his
own life with Uncle Virge. "What kind of work do your parents do?"

"Whatever they can find," she said. "Dad's always chasing the Big
One, as he calls it. The job that'll finally bring him fame and fortune
and success."

"I gather he hasn't made it?"

She shrugged again. "There's been some success, I suppose. There
hasn't been any fame. There
certainly
hasn't been any fortune."

Jack nodded. She was being evasive, but he could read between the
lines as well as the next guy. Her father was a criminal like Uncle
Virgil, though apparently not nearly as successful.

Which was ironic, considering that it was Uncle Virgil's
spectacular career that had caught the attention of Arthur Neverlin in
the first place, which was what had dragged Jack, and now Alison, into
this mess. "Where are your parents now?" he asked. "Are they the ones
you're expecting to pick you up?"

She shook her head. "These are some friends of theirs. Actually, I
really don't know where Mom and Dad are. Like I say, they move around a
lot. What's a K'da?"

With a supreme effort. Jack managed to keep his face
expressionless. "A what?"

"A K'da," she repeated. "Frost said he didn't want you and your
K'da to suffer the same fate as your uncle. Come on—I've told you about
me. It's your turn."

"I have no idea what he meant by that," Jack said, feeling sweat
break out on the back of his neck. He'd completely forgotten that last
comment of Frost's just before he'd shut down his comm clip. This girl
was way too observant for his taste. "Some slang term, I suppose."

She stared hard at him with those dark eyes. Jack held her gaze
without flinching, and after a moment her lip twitched. "Fine," she
said. "Don't tell me. Can I at least get your real name?"

"Jack Morgan," he said. "Raised by my uncle, Virgil Morgan."

"Virgil Morgan," Alison said thoughtfully. "I've heard that name.
One of the great con men and safecrackers of our age, isn't he?"

"Certainly in his own mind," Jack said, feeling a ghostly echo of
pain and loss. Even more than a year after Uncle Virgil's death, it
still hurt sometimes. "No, that's not fair."

"Not if even half the stories are true," Alison agreed, an odd
glint in her eye. "So you're Virgil Morgan's nephew."

"Yes, we've established that," Jack said, eyeing her suspiciously.
Was there a hint of actual admiration in her voice? Or was it just more
sarcasm? Whatever it was, he didn't like it. "And I'm reformed,
remember?"

"Sure," she said, the faint admiration turning to equally faint
amusement He liked that even less. "Well. That was fun, but we really
ought to try to get a little more distance before sundown."

Ten yards behind her, Jack caught a glimpse of gold dragon scales.
"If you insist," he said, wincing as he pushed himself up off the
ground. Even during the brief rest break, his leg muscles had stiffened
up considerably. "You still want to handle point?"

"I'm still the one with the gun," she said. "By the way, have you
noticed that these Phookas can change color?"

Jack's first reaction was to wonder which of these animals could
possibly have gotten riled up enough to go into K'da combat mode. He'd
seen that effect a couple of times with Draycos, where some of the
poet-warrior's heightened blood flow seeped into his gold scales and
turned them black.

But a second later he realized what she was actually talking
about. As one K'da left his Erassva host and a differently colored one
took his place, Alison would naturally interpret that as the original
Phooka changing colors. "No, I hadn't," he said. "Interesting."

"You should pay better attention to your surroundings," Alison
said reprovingly as she got to her feet. If she was feeling stiff, it
didn't show. "And try to keep them quiet. I'm guessing the Malison Ring
will make some move before nightfall."

However Draycos had worked his end of the scheme, he'd clearly
done a terrific job of it. The group reached the area he'd described as
the site of the Malison Ring picket line to find it completely deserted.

Jack had gone perhaps twenty yards past the picket line when, from
somewhere ahead and to the right, came a sudden crashing of branches
and a distant howl of pain.