The Staff of the Winds (The Wizard of South Corner Book 1) (27 page)

Noon came and went with Jack still wending his way through the woods. Despite the cool weather, his red roan was lathered from constantly climbing into and out of gullies and forcing its way through thickets. It was mid afternoon before he finally came within sight of his objective through the trees. Jack dismounted and stared at the path, trying to determine from a safe distance whether the gorn had passed this way ahead of him or not. There was just no way to tell from where he stood. Slowly and cautiously he approached through the trees, leading his horse. To be spotted by the gorn now would not only subject him to immediate peril, but also ruin any chance he had of warning the farmers undetected. From where he was, the back trail disappeared over a small rise about a quarter mile back, and the trail forward curved around a rocky hill to the north-east. Nothing was in sight in either direction. Jack stood for several long minutes just inside the line of trees, but nothing stirred anywhere that he could see.

Finally, summoning his courage, Jack moved out into the trail to examine the ground more closely for sign.  The dry, fall grass had clearly been trampled down, but he could not be certain whether it had been done during the foreign army’s initial advance on the village, their subsequent withdrawal back up this same path, or the passage of the gorn on their way back to South Corner.  Studying the ground while working his way in the direction of the village, with frequent, apprehensive glances over his shoulder, Jack finally found the sign that he needed.  In the soft dirt of a ground-squirrel mound, there was the clear impression of a boot print headed away from the village and toward Carraghlaoch, and overlaying the side of this print, partially obliterating it was another print of a large bare foot indisputably headed in the opposite direction. The gorn were ahead of him.

Jack quickly mounted his horse and, staying to the western edge of the broad trail, began his pursuit of the gorn. It reminded him of the last time he, Owen and Marian had come this way in the other direction, but this time he was alone and could depend on no one else to spot any danger from the quarry that he followed or provide any support if he was detected by that quarry. Remembering how quickly the army had passed through this country with their captives in tow, Jack tried to make the best time that he could, but he still had to approach hill tops and bends in the trail with great care lest he find the gorn just on the other side. He most certainly did not want to come crashing into them from behind with no help at hand and with his line of flight to the village blocked.

Jack set up a regular pattern to cover the miles and preserve his horse. The long legged roan ate up the ground in a steady trot, but he could not hold it too long. When he began to tire, Jack would slow him to a walk for a while, then dismount and lead him for a while. Jack fretted over the time spent on his own feet. He did not begrudge the poor horse, who was giving him all he had, but he did hate the time lost moving at the relatively slow pace of his own two feet.

Fatigue set in as the day wore on, both for Jack and for his horse. Jack had not slept much the night before, keeping his watch on the tower wood, and the stress and physical exertion of the chase was getting to him. Still trying to be careful approaching bends in the path and hilltops, the monotony was building and he found himself losing concentration, even nodding off for brief seconds when astride the walking roan.

As the end of the day approached, and twilight began to set in, he was dreaming of home and the comforts at the end of a hard day working in the fields. He could see the farmhouse across the meadow, with the smoke from the chimney as his mother prepared the evening meal. When the air was still and heavy, the smoke would lie like a gray haze in the little hollow where the small wood house was built. He could even smell the familiar odor of the wood smoke from the old iron stove. His mother would be baking biscuits to have with dinner.

With a start, Jack pulled back on the reins, and looked hastily around. A surge of fear-born adrenalin snapped him awake. He was approaching the top of a ridge, and a small plume of smoke was rising lazily from the dip on the other side. The breeze had been in his face, and it was a campfire that he smelled.

No longer drowsy, Jack quietly turned his horse into the trees beside the trail, moving slowly back away from the ridge. As soon as his view of the path was obscured, he dismounted and led his horse deeper into the trees, trying to pick a path that offered the least opportunity for snapped branches or other sounds of his passage. He was shaking, and constantly looking over his shoulder. His greatest fear had almost come to life; he had almost blundered right into the middle of the gorn camp.

It was late evening and almost dark under the trees when Jack finally felt it was safe to stop. He had come to a small stream that cut through a shallow gully lined thickly with high brush. Deer trails provided paths down into the gully, and he discovered a wide, flat shelf down by the water that offered him a place to camp. The shelf would be under water in the spring, but now it was a soft, sandy platform, overhung with brush, just big enough to provide cover for him and his horse.

Jack allowed his horse to drink, while he refilled his canteen.  Then he stripped off the saddle and blankets, brushed down the roan’s coat while it enjoyed a double handful of grain, then tied it to a sturdy bush with a lead long enough to allow it to browse.  Finally, exhaustion taking over, Jack rolled himself in a blanket and lay down to sleep. He was pretty confident that he had avoided detection by the gorn, if only barely, and there was no reason for a gorn patrol to come this far into the woods. And frankly, Jack was tired enough that at the moment he just didn’t care. In no time at all, he was asleep.

Jack woke up cold and stiff the next morning.  The sky was just starting to lighten, with the sun not yet over the horizon, a typical time to be up for a farmer’s son.  With a groan, he rolled out of his blanket, did his ablutions, and ate a couple of very stale biscuits with cold water from the stream to wash them down.  One thing that Jack could not help looking forward to was eating a real breakfast again once he reached the Campbell’s.

Based on the previous day’s experience, Jack hoped that the gorn would remain in camp for a couple of hours yet, giving him a chance to get ahead of them. Wasting no time, he stowed his gear, saddled his horse and started leading him up from the stream. Using deer trails, through the forest, he worked his way back to the main path, aiming a little further north from where he left it. When he felt himself getting close, he slowed his pace and tried to move more stealthily. Jack had no idea how alert a troop of gorn would be at this time of the day, and he did not want to find out the hard way.

When he spotted the main path in front of him, he stopped still in the trees to look and listen. After several minutes, the forest that had grown quiet with his passing gradually came back to life. All he could hear were the normal morning sounds in the woods, nothing that would indicate the presence of any other men, or gorn, in the vicinity.

Jack tied his roan to a sapling well back out of sight from the broad path, then using all his skills as a hunter stalked through the fringe of the forest back to the south toward where he believed the campsite of the gorn had been. After covering about a quarter mile, he eased carefully over a low rise and froze. There were the gorn, camped in the middle of the path, about 200 yards from him, in the small valley between two hills.

The gorn camp seemed to be in the early stages of rousing. Jack could see no lookouts or guards posted, but six or eight of the gorn were up and moving around. There were signs of half-a-dozen camp fires from the previous night, with two of them kicked back to life. With the distance and general disorder of the camp, it was difficult for Jack to get a good count, but he estimated that there were a good thirty to thirty-five gorn camped before him.

Satisfied that his goal of getting ahead of the raiding party was accomplished, Jack eased back below the rise then quickly returned to his waiting mount. He guessed that he probably had at least an hour before the gorn party resumed their march, but he remained in the woods, traveling north on the fringe of the trail, until he was sure that the terrain would hide him from their advance. Knowing that there was more open land ahead, Jack needed to get a good lead if he was to stay out of sight of the keen-eyed gorn.

Once he was confident that he was far enough ahead, Jack rode on the more open ground of the main trail, pushing his horse as he had done the day before so as to gain a healthy lead on his enemy. This day, he did not have to worry about overtaking the gorn and being caught in a trap, the enemy was all at his back.

The weather, though cool, was clear, and he made good time, and as evening approached, he felt safe enough to spend a little time choosing his campsite for the night. He figured that he was only a couple of hours away from where he, Owen and Marian had camped their first night out from South Corner, and would have liked to stop there, but the light was failing, and he did not want to try to find the place in the dark.

Jack looked for and found a small stream back in the hills a little off the trail. It did not have deep concealing banks as his camping place the night before had had, but he did not think that he was as close to the enemy as he had been last night either.

Jack unsaddled and hobbled his gelding, then brushed him down. He gave the roan the last of his grain and allowed him to browse on the late fall vegetation while he made a meager meal for himself with what food he had left. He had left most of the provisions, such as they had, with Owen and Marian, since he was going back to actual farm cooking while his friends would be living rough for some time yet. As a consequence, what he had left for himself wasn’t much.

Farm cooking, and a soft warm bed.  The more he considered it, the better it sounded.  He would be riding in with a small army on his tail, and there would be much work and danger to be faced, but meals would likely be hot, and beds would likely be… well, beds.  It was those meals and beds, both of them warm, that Jack thought of as he rolled himself up in his blankets that night.  Briefly, he thought of the McMichaels back keeping watch on the castle of Carraghlaoch, and felt a little guilty that he was thinking of comforts and not of the safety of his friends, but with a sigh he figured that they would understand. He hadn’t forgotten Owen, Marian, and the danger that they all faced—he knew that he would be returning to Carraghlaoch with help as soon as he could—it was just that there wasn’t anything more that he could do about it just then. And with a silent prayer for his friends, he went to sleep.

The sky was grey with a low overcast when Jack woke the next morning. The sun was still below the horizon, but it was already obvious that it would not be seen that day. Dark clouds had moved in during the night and they lay thick above him, promising him an uncomfortable day of travel. A chill wind blew out of the north.

Jack wasted no time breaking camp and resuming his journey.  He thought that if he made good enough time, he had a small chance of reaching the Campbell’s farm before nightfall. He should at least be able to make it to South Corner, but he wasn’t sure how comforting that would be. When he last left the village, it was a place of carnage and destruction. If it was still abandoned, Jack thought that he would rather camp the night in the woods than spend it all alone in a looted house in the town, wondering when the gorn would arrive. If it was storming by then, he thought that it would somehow be even worse.

This day promised to be much like the previous, alternately riding and walking, except that it was colder and there was a forewarning of moisture in the air.  Each time he dismounted, it took him several minutes of walking to work out the stiffness that had settled into his legs while he rode, and when he climbed back into the saddle his legs ached from the fast pace that he set for himself while walking.  His back seemed to ache whether he was up or down.  Despite the cold, his exertion caused him to sweat, and the sweat froze against him with the wind from the north when he rode.  Jack didn’t know which was worse, the ache in his legs or the chill in his shoulders, but he was making good time.  He kept telling himself that, ‘
I’m making good time
.’

The red roan was becoming more and more fatigued as the day wore on. It had done very well, but the last few days had been far more difficult than it was used to. John Prior, owner of the Meadows Inn and the roan that Jack was riding, had used him for an occasional trip to Shepherds Hill and rented him out when someone in the town needed a reliable mount for a day or two, but there was rarely any reason to hurry on those rides, and the horse generally led a pretty easy life. Jack found himself walking more often and for longer periods to preserve the animal as the day progressed, and he began to reassess his estimate of the likely distance he would cover by the end of the day.

It was early afternoon when Jack crested a slight rise, walking with his long-legged stride, leading the horse, both with their heads down in fatigue, when across the valley ahead he spotted riders. Panicked, he frantically scrambling for his bow which he had thoughtlessly lashed to his saddle under the stirrup leathers on the left side, when he realized that these could not possibly be enemy soldiers ahead of him. They were coming from the wrong direction for one thing, he and his friends had seen no evidence of cavalry for another, and on closer look, the riders just did not look like soldiers.

Realizing with relief that he was not under attack, Jack took another look and immediately recognized his dad, Mr. McMichaels, and several more of the nearly three dozen men on horseback riding toward him. They had reined up briefly when they first spotted him, but were now cantering down the valley in his direction, his dad and Matthew McMichaels in the lead. They were all carrying longbows and each had a heavy staff tied under his saddle leathers.

Jack continued a little further down the hill to get below the crest then stood and waited for the men to arrive.