Rocking Horse War (4 page)

The huge rocking horse hurtled towards Pearl, heavy wooden hooves hammering on the ground.

Pearl forced herself to stand still. There was no point in running away. She waited until the horse was nearly on top of her, then flung herself to the right, as the massive hooves rushed past her.

She jumped up as the mare skidded to a halt on the heather and swerved back round.

Pearl was trembling. Would the horse charge again? Could she clamber up the Twa Corbies before the horse reached her?

Suddenly the tall boy stepped forward. He stood between Pearl and the horse, his back to Pearl, his left hand out towards the mare. “Whoa, girl. Calm down, calm down. Leave her alone. I’ll deal with her. Whoa, my beauty, whoa.”

The mare obeyed. Her hooves didn’t move, but she was still breathing hard, her wooden ribcage creaking. The boy kept speaking soothingly until her eyes lost their white rims, until her ears moved forward again.

Pearl had time to slow her own breathing before he turned back to her. “My horse doesn’t like you. I wonder why?”

“I’ve no idea,” lied Pearl, ignoring the tattered 
bridle on the horse’s neck.

“So you’ve not seen this horse before?”

It was tempting to say, “Of course, lots of times, in the schoolroom.” But she didn’t want this boy to realise how much she suspected, so Pearl simply said, “No.”

“And you don’t know where either of your sisters are?”

“No.”

“We need to talk. Jasper, lead your sister down to your blaeberries and your stallion, while I coax the mare back down.”

Jasper slithered down the gully to the stones by the burn. Pearl zigzagged after him.

When they reached the bottom, Jasper asked angrily, “Why are you interfering? I’m having an adventure all of my own and I don’t need you.”

“I don’t think you’re safe with that boy. I don’t like these impossible horses and I don’t trust his talk about destiny. People told our big brother it was his destiny to defend his country, and look what happened to him.”

“That won’t happen to me.” Jasper jumped onto a rock. “I’m special. He says so. I will be very important and very powerful. That is my destiny.”

“Jasper, you fool, there’s no such thing as destiny. He’s just trying to persuade you to do something you’d refuse to do if it wasn’t dressed up in fancy words. We have to get you out of here. Do exactly as I say, and we’ll be home soon.”

Pearl looked at the birch trees growing by the water. They were short but sturdy. She tugged at a thin white branch, trying to think of a plan 
to defeat two wooden horses, an older boy and a petulant little brother.

Jasper stamped his foot. “I’m not going to do what you say!” His purple-stained mouth opened wide as he shrieked louder. “I’m going to be a power in the land, and you won’t get to boss me around any more!”

The tall boy and the mare appeared at the top of the gully. The boy strode down the slope towards Pearl, speaking right over the top of Jasper. His voice wasn’t inspiring, or sneering, or amused. It was angry and hard. “I found the flattened heather where you lay, like a sneak, eavesdropping. From there I could hear every word you were saying down here, even before your delightful little brother started having a tantrum.

“You heard
everything
I said, didn’t you?”

He stopped very close to Pearl, the two horses either side of him. She could smell the walnut oil from their shiny flanks.

Pearl didn’t like lying on principle, and she wasn’t very good at it anyway. So she shrugged. “I did hear some of what you said. But I didn’t understand it.”

“You heard about the mountains? The jewels? The landlore?”

She nodded. “You may have convinced Jasper with your fairy tales, but you didn’t convince me.”

“I didn’t convince you?” He scowled. “But you still heard me!

“Guard her,” he ordered the horses, then stomped away and kicked out viciously at a stone. It splashed into the burn, getting his perfect boots 
wet. The drops glistened for a moment on the leather, then slid off.

Pearl, trying to ignore the two horses staring at her, heard him mutter, “Damn! I’m making a complete mess of this war already. I’ve lost two triplets and I’ve told our secrets to a girl who can’t even hear the land! Damn, damn, damn!”

He kicked another stone, took a deep breath, then turned back to Pearl and Jasper. He spoke slowly and deliberately. “Alright. This is what we’ll do. Jasper, the horses will take you to my grandfather’s house, and your big sister will come with me to find the girls.”

He waved the horses away from Pearl and smiled charmingly at her. “We’ll work better as a team, don’t you think?”

Pearl wasn’t any more impressed by his charm than she had been by his sneers or his threats.

“No. Jasper will stay with me, and you can take your nasty horses home to Grandpa. I’ll find my sisters myself. I can deal with the Laird.”

The boy’s smile dropped off his face. “You may not be convinced by me, but if you challenged the Laird he would convince you, just before he crushed you. If you want your sisters, work with me or go straight home.”

He twisted his fingers swiftly, and the two rocking horses crowded even closer to Pearl. The sun was shining behind the mare and the stallion, casting stark shadows and harsh lines on their carved skulls. The exaggerated sweep of their eyebrows hid their eyes. Their wooden ears pointed straight at Pearl, as sharp as arrowheads. 

“I’m not scared of them, I’m not scared of the Laird, and I’m not scared of you.” She clenched her fists, so her fingers wouldn’t tremble as the cold golden mare came nearer.

The boy laughed. “You aren’t scared? Really?”

He flicked his fingers and the horses moved back again. Pearl’s hands uncurled a little.

“Sit down.” He waved grandly at the chair-sized rocks. “Sit down. I think we need each other. We shouldn’t fight.”

Pearl remained standing. “Why do we need each other?”

“I know how to defeat the Laird, and you know where … you know the girls. They trust you. As you’ve just discovered, it’s hard to rescue someone who doesn’t want to be rescued.” He glanced over at Jasper, sitting on a rock, gobbling blaeberries again. “Perhaps you should have hit him on the head before you hid him?”

Pearl tried not to smile. She had wondered the same herself.

The boy continued his argument in a gentle voice. “When I find the girls with the Laird, they may not know which of us to trust, particularly if he’s charmed them rather than scared them. But if you’re with me, they’ll trust me. Then I can rescue them.”

But Pearl wasn’t persuaded by a shared joke and a soft voice. “There’s a slight flaw in your rescue plan too, I’m afraid.”

“Really? What flaw?”

She raised her eyebrows. “I don’t trust you myself, and I don’t believe your story. Even if I did, 
I don’t think it’s my sisters’ duty to help you in some petty feud with your neighbours.”

He wheeled away from her, and his voice hardened. “You heard what I said to Jasper, but you weren’t really listening, were you? Typical! You people stomp all over the surface of the land, but you don’t ever listen to it.”

Pearl’s voice rose in anger to match his. “Are you telling me I don’t listen to the world around me? Are you telling me I can’t read the land? I tracked two horses here faster than you did.” She jabbed her finger in turn at each of them, her quarry successfully tracked and taken. “I found you, I crept up on you, I listened to your secrets and I stole Jasper from you with a trick a three-year-old wouldn’t have fallen for. I can read and hunt the land better than anyone else here.”

The boy strode round her, flinging words at her. “You can read it, but you can’t hear its music or feel its pain! You might notice the thin grass, skinny game and flaking stones in the mountains, but you don’t know that the bedrock underneath is turning cold and brittle. And you can’t do anything to help or heal the land.” He paused, breathless with passion.

Pearl frowned. Before she could ask the dozen questions his words had prompted, he spoke again, more quietly. “If we don’t sing with the land, it loses its music, then its strength. The Horsburghs and Swanns have fought over these mountains, rather than cared for them, for too long. We’ve even lost the key which lets us sing to them. If the war doesn’t end soon, there will be no mountains 
left to fight over. That’s why we need to defeat the Laird; that’s why we need the triplets.”

Pearl waited. He seemed to have run out of words. So she asked the most important question. “Why the triplets?”

“Because they can hear the music of the land too.”

The tall boy called, “You can hear the land, can’t you, Jasper?”

“Can’t I what?” Jasper looked up.

“Shh, just listen.” He walked over and put his hand on Jasper’s shoulder.

Pearl could hear the water shooshing, the birch trees creaking, the horses’ hooves shifting, the boys’ breaths whistling. She heard a stag boom in the tops, and the machine-gun call of a startled grouse on the moor.

She watched Jasper and the boy. Their faces were still, their eyes half shut.

The boy whispered, “Now sing back, Jasper.”

Jasper started to hum a tune which swirled round and round, moving like the water at their feet, the air around them. The older boy smiled, a small serious smile.

Then he joined in. Pearl shook her head. The triplets always did that: sang new songs no one else had ever heard, as if they came into each of their heads at the same time.

The boy started adding consonants, vowels, syllables, almost but not quite words. Jasper’s eyes snapped open. Like he recognised something. Like he understood what the boy was singing. Then he 
started to sing along. After a few bars, his eyes bright and his purple mouth wide, he leapt ahead, anticipating, singing new sounds and words before the boy.

Then the boy pointed his stick at the water, which swirled faster round the rocks, catching the sunlight in rainbows and sparkles. But Jasper didn’t look down, he looked up and sang his own melody more insistently.

Suddenly a brace of pheasants rose from the heather by the Twa Corbies and circled above the gully. Another pheasant joined them, then two more. They were usually clumsy birds, but these pheasants twisted gracefully above Jasper’s head, until the boys stopped on the same note, and the pheasants bellyflopped into the heather by the rocks.

The tall boy frowned for a moment, then patted Jasper’s back. He raised his eyebrows at Pearl. “Did you hear that? Did you hear the land sing back to us?”

“She can’t hear any music,” jeered Jasper. “She gets lost in the middle of
Three Blind Mice
.”

The boy tipped his head back and looked down his straight nose at Pearl. “Jasper sings with the land, so I’m sure his sisters can too. Even though they’ve never been taught landlore, the land’s power is all around them. Can’t you feel it?”

Pearl was silent. Of course she could feel it, everyone could. The triplets had always been special. She sat down on a rock away from the boys.

Jasper hummed a bar of the tune. “We just sing these for fun. We didn’t know they were powerful. 
Can you show me how to be powerful?”

“Yes, but first we have to find your sisters.”

The boy turned to Pearl. “So that’s why the Laird mustn’t control Emerald and Ruby. That’s why you have to help me get them back.”

“Why will they be worse off with the Laird than with you?” Pearl snapped. “You kidnap children! You set violent wooden beasts on them.”

“I didn’t kidnap anyone!” Thomas said indignantly. “The horses were created to keep the triplets safe, so when they sensed danger from Swanhaugh this morning, they got the children out of your house. But the Laird may have forced at least one horse and two girls onto his own land.”

“Will the Laird hurt them?” Pearl asked.

“I don’t think so, they’re too valuable. But he might not persuade them with stories and songs. He might threaten them.”

“Threaten them? With what?”

“The Laird uses the land’s power differently from us. My grandfather and I listen to the land and store its power simply to keep the land strong.”

Pearl snorted. “No one has land and power, and doesn’t use it for themselves.”

“We don’t use it like the Laird.” The boy glanced up at the summits, and Pearl thought she saw fear in his eyes. “We no longer use blood to deepen the land’s music, but the Laird enjoys bloodlore too much to give it up. Also, he uses his stored power to force the land to move for him. My family would never do that either, because compelling the land harms it rather than heals it.

“I think he used bloodlore to split up the horses 
today, so if your sisters won’t help him, he might use it to scare them. Do they scare easily?”

“Ruby does,” Jasper answered, “but Emmie doesn’t. Emmie isn’t afraid of anything.”

“Emmie is the sister on the white horse, isn’t she? The one that went round the mountains. I wonder if she’ll still be brave by the time we get there.”

He faced Pearl with his hands open in front of him. “So, even though you can’t hear the land, I’ve given you our secrets. Will you give me your help?”

She folded her arms. “I didn’t ask for your secrets. And I won’t promise you my help. However, if you show me where you think my sisters are, we can travel together until I get them back. But what do we do with Jasper?”

“Yes,” said the boy. “What do we do with Jasper?”

They both looked at him.

He smiled back, covered in berry juice and confident, as always, that he’d get what he wanted if he just smiled nicely. “Can I come too? Can I ride my chestnut stallion and come with you?”

“NO!” shouted both older children in unison. They glanced at each other, and the boy grinned.

“No,” repeated Pearl more gently. “I don’t want you going anywhere near this Laird.”

“He could stay here, guarded by the horses,” suggested the boy.

“I don’t think that’s safe,” said Pearl. “Perhaps the horses aren’t as clever as you think. After all, the palomino lost Ruby.”

The boy looked from Pearl to the mare and back. “Yes. I wonder how that happened.” 

“The horses could take Jasper back home,” Pearl said casually.

“That wouldn’t be safe either. There are too many swans over your land. He really must go to my grandfather.”

“Where is your grandfather?”

“Horsburgh Hall, just a couple of miles over the moor. I know you never come and visit us, but you must have seen it. He’ll be safe there.”

“But you’re trying to involve him in a war. That’s not safe,” insisted Pearl.

The boy sat down beside Jasper and thought for a while. Then he spoke softly to Pearl. “Let’s make a deal. Let’s work together to find the girls, then once we’ve reunited all three triplets, I’ll try to persuade them their destiny lies with me and the power of the land; and I give you my word that you will have an equal chance to persuade them their destiny lies with cocoa and cakes at home. Does that sound fair?”

Pearl considered his offer. Ruby was safe in the woods, separated from her rocking horse, hidden from this tall boy and his destiny. So he wouldn’t be able to get all three together anyway. And she might need his knowledge of the southern lands to find Emmie.

She looked at Jasper. Was it wise to let him go to Horsburgh Hall? Her mother had never let them meet the neighbours, but Pearl knew that their housekeepers occasionally nodded to each other in the shops in Perth. Surely Jasper would be safe for a few hours in a building filled with adults? Surely he’d be sensible enough to wait there for her? 

Then she wondered, if they ever did have to argue their cases, what choice would Jasper make? “Are you hungry, Jasper?”

“Starving,” he groaned.

She laughed. “A choice between destiny and cakes. That sounds fair. Once we have all three, not before. So first, we go and get Emmie. And Ruby, of course.”

The boy pulled a small notebook out of his pocket and scribbled a note. He handed it to Jasper. “Give this to my grandfather, so he knows who you are and where I’ve gone.” He glanced at Pearl. “And the housekeeper will feed you as many cakes as you can eat.”

He led the horses up the side of the gully. Pearl and Jasper followed.

Pearl gave Jasper a hug. He squirmed away. “Be polite to his grandfather,” she said sternly, “but don’t agree to anything until I arrive. And stay there until I come to collect you. Do you hear me?”

Jasper grunted and leapt onto the stallion’s back. Pearl watched as the two horses galloped west across the moorland, carrying her brother even further from home.

The tall boy turned to her and smiled. Pearl scowled at him. He held out his hand for her to shake. She ignored it.

“I should introduce myself. I’m Thomas Horsburgh, grandson of the Earl of Horsburgh. May I ask your name, Miss Chayne?”

Pearl stared at him. She’d guessed who he was when he first mentioned his grandfather, and realised her guess was right when he admitted to 
living at Horsburgh Hall. Thomas Horsburgh. The beloved only grandchild of the biggest landowner in the county. Local gossip said Thomas was sent off to the poshest school in England, and only came back to Scotland for short holidays, but he was still provided with the best horses and guns. The best of everything. When the women gossiped, he was a spoilt brat. When the girls giggled, he was tall, dark and handsome. But no one had said he was dangerous.

He repeated the question. “May I ask your name?”

“You may ask, but I can’t be bothered telling it to someone so small and insignificant.”

His eyebrows rose into his shiny black curls, then he laughed. “Was that what I said at the gate? I’m sorry, that was rude of me. I underestimated you. But we’re allies now, aren’t we? Maybe you aren’t so small and insignificant after all.”

“That shouldn’t matter, though, should it?” she said quietly. “You can’t just despise people until you need them.”

“I’m sorry. I was worried about the triplets and I didn’t want to be protecting anyone else. I was trying to annoy you, so you would go safely home. It didn’t work, did it?”

“You did annoy me. But I won’t go home until we find the girls.”

“We will find them. Together.” He held out his hand again.

“Alright. Together.” She took his hand. It was warm and smooth. “My name is Pearl.”

He looked at her with sudden sharp interest. 
“Pearl! A gift from the water! I wonder …”

“It’s just a name. It doesn’t mean anything. I’m not an ingredient in anyone’s magic spell.”

“All names mean something.”

Pearl shook her head. “We’ve no time for wordgames. We have to find the Laird. Which way do we go?”

Thomas settled the gun and the stick in the crook of his arm, and pointed south. “We go through the mountains.”