Horizon (24 page)

D
ASH TRIED TO TURN HIS HEAD
to escape the pungent odor emanating from Winder’s mouth, but the minotaur gripped Dash’s chin in one of his huge, hide-covered hands and held it in place. He could feel Vachir trembling underneath him, but thankfully she stayed still and did nothing.

“This runt doesn’t look dangerous enough to scare an itsy-bitsy bird,” Winder said, “and you think the mighty Karl Strand cares if he lives or dies?”

“He does, and so does Sand Master Scorch,” Mags said calmly. “They will both care very much.”

Winder pulled away from Dash and crossed his arms over his chest. “And I suppose you want to take him to Strand all by yourself and take the reward,” Winder said. “Greedy Gizmos. No eye for the big picture. No head for strategy. For tactics!”

“Don’t want the reward,” Odd said. “Just doing our part for the war. For Strand. Helping him bring about a better world, and all that talk.”

“Oh?” Winder said. “And so you want me to march up to Strand with this little nothing and risk my reputation on your say-so?” The last few words came out as a growl.

“Talk to the Sand Master,” Mags said quickly. “Tell her who you’ve got. Tell her his name — Dash from Flame Heart herd. Friend of Aluna. And say you got Aluna’s horse, too. You say it just like that, and she’ll know right away.”

Winder appeared to be thinking. Dash heard the
thump-thump-thump
of his massive fingers along the metal bracer on his other arm. Finally, Winder reached into one of his belt pouches and pulled out a small device no bigger than the leaf of a tree. He motioned to some soldiers milling around their area. The men and women immediately stood and encircled their group.

“If Sand Master Scorch doesn’t know the boy, then you’ll all die at my feet,” Winder said. “You still want me to call?” He held the device up, his finger poised above its surface.

“Call,” Odd said. “We’re speaking true.”

Winder punched a button on the device. Dash glanced over at Pocket and was pleased to see the boy entirely focused on what Winder was doing. He had stayed quiet until now, hopefully too small and inconsequential to be of interest to Winder, but his part of the plan was quickly approaching.

Winder held the device half a meter from his face and spoke into it, just as Dash had spoken into the comm screens he’d found in Coiled Deep. Someone spoke on the other end, possibly Scorch, but Dash could not discern her words.

“Flame Heart,” Winder repeated. “And there’s a horse. And some mention of a person named Aluna.”

The minotaur’s eyes widened and his head snapped back.

“Yes, Sand Master,” he said. “At once. By the gate. As you wish.”

The tension crushing Dash’s chest eased its grip slightly. One step closer to Scorch. One step closer to his fathers.

Winder turned off his device and stowed it back in its pouch. He pointed to his soldiers. “You six, pack my tent and things. I’ll be making a delivery. One of you tell Tank that he’s in charge until I get back.”

Once the soldiers started to move and not all eyes were focused on Winder, Odd and Mags made their move.

“See? What did I tell you?” Odd said, landing a heavy hand on Winder’s shoulder. It almost looked small resting on the huge creature’s arm. The minotaur barely seemed to notice.

Mags moved to his other side. “Need help transporting the prisoner, do you? We can hunt and cook, better than what you’re eating now, I’d wager.” She pulled a grilled squirrel torso from her long coat and held it up under Winder’s huge nose.

Meanwhile, Pocket snuck around, sly as a desert fox, and slipped his hand into the mess of bags and pouches affixed to Winder’s waist. The boy yanked his hand back so fast that Dash worried he’d been hurt or discovered. Dash caught just a glint of something small and shiny slip from Pocket’s hand into one of the hidden compartments in his calf. And then Pocket was back, hanging by Mags and doing his best to look innocent and invisible.
A good little thief
, Dash thought.

Winder shoved Odd and Mags out of his way and stomped toward Dash and Vachir.

“Hood! Rope!” Winder called. A soldier rushed forward and threw a rope around Vachir’s neck. Another came carrying a sack of black cloth. Dash felt a knot form in his stomach. The soldier yanked Dash to the side, almost pulling him off Vachir, and shoved the hood over his head. The world plunged into blackness.

The kludge was gone. He could not see them, he could not hear them. His world became filled with the chaos of clanking soldiers and orders barked too close to his ears. His only comfort was Vachir, calm beneath him despite the storm everywhere else.

Vachir jumped forward, and Dash cursed under his breath. They had yanked the rope around her neck too harshly. Now it was his turn to stay still and let the game play out. The time for weighing options and making choices was gone. They were now prisoners, truly cut off from their friends and powerless against their enemies.

Dash thought he heard Odd’s voice calling over the crowd and twisted in his saddle. Something hard slammed into his face. His head felt loose, as if it had become unfastened from his neck.

“Eyes front,” a gruff voice said.

He tried to calm himself. When he trained falcons, the hood was often the most important part of the process. It acclimated the birds to Equian touch and kept them still and at ease. But as soon as the hood was removed, the falcon was alert, ready. As fierce as it ever was before.

If he wanted to survive this ordeal — not just in body, but also in mind — then he must find a way to be like a falcon.

They traveled for hours, stopping only once so Winder and the soldiers could drink and relieve themselves. No one gave him or Vachir water or food, or checked their wounds. He wanted to talk to Vachir, to offer words of comfort, but he was not that foolish. Instead, he bent forward and pressed his cheek against her neck. Vachir whinnied softly.

When Dash had first proposed this plan to the kludge, they had been against it. Squirrel had wanted to sneak into Strand’s secret lair somehow and keep the group together. But Dash had fought hard for this — it meant less risk for the others, a better opportunity for getting crucial information to Aluna and Hoku, and the chance that he might see his fathers one last time.

Erke and Gan had already been given to Scorch. If he was lucky, she would imprison him and Vachir in the same place.

If. If. If.
There were too many variables, too much left to chance. Scorch might kill him the moment she saw him. Because of the hood, he would never even see the blow falling.

The air grew colder. They were walking up, into the mountains. The soldiers in their group grunted more often, and occasionally one of them commented on a part of the landscape. Dash listened closely to everything they said.

Eventually, Winder called, “Halt.” Hands pulled Dash off Vachir and dragged him forward.

A familiar rhythmic thudding broke through the silence. Hoofbeats! He wanted to drop and put his ear to the ground, but a soldier held him in place. Instead, he closed his eyes and counted. Four horses, approaching fast but beginning to slow. They pulled something behind them, a vehicle with two large wheels that crushed the earth as they rolled.

The horses slowed, their harnesses jangling, the wheels of the transport sliding to a stop. Someone jumped down and walked toward them, boots crunching the earth with each step.

“Sand Master Scorch, I’ve brought the boy and the horse, as you commanded,” Winder said, far more humbly than Dash had thought him capable of being. Scorch strode forward as if Winder had said nothing.

Dash tensed as she stalked closer and closer. His hands were tied behind his back and he was essentially blind and surrounded by enemies. Even if he could reach his sword, they would cut him down before he managed to extend the blade. And then they would kill Vachir.

Scorch stopped in front of Dash. He could feel her there, a predator waiting to pounce. He tried to step backward, but a soldier held him firmly in place. Scorch leaned closer until he could feel her hot breath through the cloth over his ear.

“Are you in there, little failed Equian?” Scorch whispered. “If it’s really you, then I’ve got a nice present for you.”

Scorch ripped off his hood. The sun blinded him. He squinted and blinked, trying to recover his eyesight. When the white glare finally began to subside, he found Scorch had moved to the side, giving him an unobstructed view of her vehicle.

A chariot. He had seen books depicting the ancient carts. But instead of harnessed horses, Scorch’s chariot was being pulled by four Equians.

“Erke! Gan!” Dash cried. His voice cracked.

His fathers were tied to the chariot as if they were animals. He saw cloths tied around their mouths and tight ropes binding their Human hands behind their backs. Their horse flanks were wet with sweat and bled from Scorch’s lashings.

Erke looked up at Dash’s outburst and his eyes widened. Gan made a strangled noise through his gag.

Dash felt his heart swell. Tears formed in his eyes and slid down his bruised cheek. It had been almost three years since he had seen them. Even now, with all of them prisoners facing death at Scorch’s hand, he felt nothing but relief at seeing them again.

No matter what happened after this, regardless of how each of them went to their endless night, they would know that he tried.

“Pretty horses, don’t you think?” Scorch asked. He had almost forgotten she was there. “Not as obedient as real horses at first, but they’ve been broken nicely. Of course, now I’ll need to get rid of one to make room for Aluna’s four-legged piece of meat.”

Dash looked at his captor. Her brown hair was still short, and she wore it just like the old Karl Strand from the picture. Her black-rimmed glasses remained the same as well, although up close, he saw that they contained no glass or material of any kind. They were merely frames intended to make her look like her father.

She loved her father, or at least desired his praise, Dash thought. Could he use that? Then again, perhaps she did not know he was related to two of her Equian prisoners.

“No Equian should be treated like that,” Dash said. “If you release them, and Vachir, I will do anything you wish.”

Scorch laughed, reminding him that she was neither stupid nor merciful. “You’ll do anything I wish no matter what I do to your fathers.”

He cringed.

“Oh, they talked,” Scorch said. “Not at first. Equians are stubborn, I’ll give them that.” She reached out a hand and pressed a fingertip into the damaged flesh on Dash’s face. “But everyone breaks in the end.”

Dash gasped from the pain. “I will make you a bargain,” he said. “I will give you —”

Scorch’s fist smashed into his face and his vision exploded in black sparks. He fell to his knees.

“Take him to the chariot,” Scorch said. “Tie the horse behind it.”

Strong arms dragged him over the ground. His head throbbed. He could not find the strength to pull his legs under his body and stand. The soldiers threw him into the chariot and he stayed where he fell, crumpled against the curved plastic shell. Scorch stepped in and picked up her reins.

The chariot roared into motion, each bump and rock under the wheels making Dash groan. He touched his arm, where Odd’s homing beacon silently signaled his position to the kludge. He was helping his friends. He was helping the world. No matter what happened next, that thought would be
his
beacon.

Scorch cracked her driving whip. The chariot circled around and headed back up the path, Vachir galloping behind it on a short lead. Dash managed to keep his head, looking at her, until Scorch drove the chariot into a wide tunnel carved into the side of the mountain. As they thundered down the passage, he watched soldiers block the entrance with a massive boulder.

The world plunged into darkness again. Dash closed his eyes and made one last wish: that the homing beacon gave the others what they needed to defeat Strand . . . even if he was not alive to see it.

A
LUNA SHOULD HAVE BEEN GRATEFUL.
The encounter between the Deepfell, the surface colony, and the Kampii hunting party had not ended in anyone’s death. But the discussion hadn’t resolved anything, either; it had only bought them time. In order to forge a real alliance, they needed approval from the Kampii council of Elders.

And before they could win over the council, they needed to win over its most intimidating Elder of all: her father.

Now Aluna found herself in her family’s nest, trying hard not to slip back into the person she was before she’d left for the Above World. She’d felt small then. Unimportant and invisible, except when she was causing her father embarrassment. It didn’t help that everything about the nest looked the same. The lichens on the walls glowed in colorful but fading patterns. Their resting sticks stuck out of the coral floor in the same weary circle around the carved coral dais where Daphine was busy hooking nets of oysters, mussels, kelp, and fish.

Only Anadar was missing. He’d stayed behind with Eekikee to get the surface colony Kampii settled in their temporary cave home. Aluna missed his presence greatly — he was almost as big as Ehu and Pilipo and had a knack for calming everyone down when tempers swirled too fast.