The Tracker (18 page)

When they made it to the other side, it was time to quit for the day. Dieter fixed a fire in an already-made pit to cook the rabbits. The road to the next brother was crude indeed, the little that Arden could see of it, and so narrow that they would not be able to ride even two abreast once daylight arrived. Road was too grand a word for what was truly just a path. The captain concluded that he could not make it back safely in the growing darkness and settled in for the night with the crew on the boat.

An abandoned inn was on this side of the river, and the search party commandeered it for the night. The sheets were worn and stained, the pillows missing, and the walls bashed through in some of the rooms. The soldiers took the whole rooms; Dieter and Arden had the ones with the crumbled wall between them. Volos was tied to a chair.

Master Maraudi woke them up at dawn to move on. Riding in front, Arden was alert at all times to redirect dragons and insects. Volos had to ride behind him for this reason, and spoke warnings when he spied a predator that Arden did not. Clever birds with an eye to their food packs, a snake slithering along the path, there was little of civilization here except that which belonged to animals. Only once did they pass a log house, set back far in the forest. An old man was sitting outside it and making foothold traps. Only once as well did they pass a person on the road, and that was a boy with an insolent whistle and a line of dead dragons over his shoulder. As dragon meat was nearly as noxious as dragon shuffle, Arden assumed that they had been trapped for their scales. The boy soon left the road and vanished into the trees.

They would leave by night, Arden and Volos, when it was time. He was feeling more certain about this. Once everyone was asleep, he would unlock the shackles. Then they would creep away without the horses. There would be little light to see by, but he could call night animals to him. They would see what he and Volos couldn’t, and guide them on. If luck rested on their side, no one in the search party would notice their absence until morning. They would be miles away by then. Arden could charm a horse from a field and use it to carry them further. And if the soldiers caught up anyway . . . Arden hated to consider it, for they had not been cruel to him, but he would use his penchant to chase them off.

It was mid-afternoon when they came to the second brother. There was no inn here, only a one-room hut, and again the ferry was returning slowly from the other side. It was no steamboat, of which there was a blackened hulk of one beached on the shore, but an old tram-wood too small to carry five people and four horses all at once. The tram-wood was attached by wires to a long cord that ran over the whole of the river. As the ancient man paddled, the tram-wood slid along the cord.

The poor excuse for a ferry was falling apart, the bindings on the logs coming loose on one side. When the captain brought it near to shore, he jumped into the water and pushed it the rest of the way. His face was crumpled over a missing eye, and he could not hear half of what Master Maraudi was saying. But he would not go over again today, and when Keth showed her sword, his mind did not change. The tram-wood had to be thoroughly retied after each crossing or it would sink, and if she wanted to risk her life taking it over on her own, she was welcome to try.

“We are hours from her,” Keth said in frustration. “Mere hours.”

“Sometimes they just swim across in hide wrappings because of the snakes,” said the old man as his shaking, wrinkled hands released the ties. Swimming was not a choice for the search party, as Arden had only ever paddled about in the squelly pools, which were neither long nor deep, and Dieter could not swim at all. And to have to do it while leading the horses made the problems thornier still.

“Can’t you call on a great lot of those dragons to fly us over?” Master Maraudi asked Arden. “Leave the horses and just take us?”

It was the first time in all day that Arden was not able to find dragons nearby. He walked the shore and came across only tiny birds in small numbers. Thinking it over, he removed everything of his clothing but his undergarments and stepped into the river. The old man croaked out a warning about biting snakes, but Arden had nothing to fear.

The water was moving at a calm pace, the wind creating small crests upon its surface. He walked out until it was up to his neck and went no further. Then he sank down and searched for what creatures swam below. The fish were of no use. They were tiny, flickering things. Of water snakes there were many, streaking along in sinuous waves. Turtles moved deep beneath the surface. He could only feel their presences with his penchant; it was too dark to see them. Coming up for air, he sank back down again and searched.

Snakes! They were simply everywhere down here, slipping silently after unsuspecting fish. Long and thin, they swished their bodies back and forth to swim. None bothered Arden, all obeying a command to leave him alone. They thought of fish, fish, fish, and that was all.

He considered using turtles to make a stepping-shell path to the other side of the river. It was not as wide as the first brother. But swimming in the purplish blue were turtles too small to bear much weight. He rose again and retreated to the shore, where the captain checked him over for snakebites and was incredulous that there were none.

After drying himself and dressing, he had an idea. “Are you truly willing to leave the horses?” he asked Master Maraudi. “I think I can get us across, but not them.”

“Cut them loose,” Keth said at once, and Master Maraudi agreed. The horses were stripped of their saddles and reins, and Arden pushed a command into their minds. They could drink from the river and eat the tall grass along the shore, straying no farther than they needed for nourishment. Three were excited at their relative freedom and one worried, but she did as the others did and moved off to graze. He washed away her worry. The captain was given money to guard over their tack. Accepting the coins and directions, he protested, “But I can’t take you over just now-”

“We don’t need the tram-wood,” Arden said, and faced the river.

He commanded the snakes to rise to the surface. The purplish blue of the water turned into a dark sheet of writhing bodies. The old man shouted and backed away from the shore in fright.

More. Arden needed more.
COME TO ME
.

They came to him from all around the river and lifted to the surface. Thousands of snakes turned to face the other shore and packed themselves together into a shape almost like the tram-wood, but narrower and longer. Arden went to the water and put his foot atop them. They sank at his weight, and he called over more to bolster below. Then his foot rose.

Water boiled away from the snakes, all of them swishing fiercely as he placed his second foot on the pathway they were making over part of the river. The tram-wood captain was peeking out from around the trunk of a tree, his mouth agape. Arden beckoned to the shocked search party, who gathered up the packs of supplies and approached this bridge of snakes. Volos came onto it first, and then Keth. They followed Arden down the path, their steps hesitant at the slight sinking response to their weight. Then Master Maraudi came with a sharp command to frightened Dieter. When everyone was aboard, Arden went to the very edge of the path and called away the snakes at the shore. They swum beneath his creation and came to the front, supplying him with several more meters to walk.

“This is incredible,” Volos mumbled to himself, and Arden for once beamed at his penchant. More snakes left the back behind Dieter and pushed for the front to extend the bridge. A young bunny trapper appeared near the tram-wood captain, and the two of them cried out in wonder as the search party made it to the middle of the river.

Arden fixed his eyes on the shore and uttered quiet commands to the water snakes. They weaved the bridge around a large rock jutting from the surface, and when the wind picked up and splashed water over the path, Arden pulled over more snakes to pile on the side as a barricade.

“Dagad in heaven, Dagad in heaven,” Dieter whispered, his steps as small as if his ankles were shackled. “Don’t let us fall in, Arden.”

The snakes reached the shore and held there. Arden was the first to step off the bridge. As hesitantly as everyone had boarded it, they exited at speed and stood in relief on the solid ground. Master Maraudi roared with laughter once he disembarked. “No power worth anything, eh? That’s what your first lead said to us? Anyone could do as you do? Could he do that? A fool.” Dieter took a huge step off the bridge and scurried away from it.

FISH
, Arden reminded the snakes, and the bridge dispersed. They sank into the river and were gone.

“The king . . .” Dieter gasped. “You should be in the army, Arden, gone south to the pirate islands to fight them alongside Isle Zayre’s forces. You should be decorated as the general of animals! The king does not know what he has in you!”

No, he didn’t. And he wouldn’t until Arden was beyond his reach.

“The shackles for his ankles, Arden,” Master Maraudi said. “Long chain-”

“We can’t. We must move at top speed and not be bothered by it getting caught on things. His wrist shackles are enough,” Keth said. “A step out of line, tracker, and you will be sorry.”

“I’ve been sorry since I came low the Cascades,” Volos retorted. “I doubt there is more you can do to make me sorrier.”

“We shall see,” Keth said in deadly seriousness, and then they made haste to the path. A white bird flew overhead.

A strange sensation settled over Arden as they rushed forward into the forest. He could swear that he was seeing movement out of the corner of his eyes, but whenever he turned his head, nothing was there but the trees hunching toward the path. The branches were devoid of birds and dragons, yet at the edge of his hearing were sounds that had no one to voice them. The wind reduced their hurry to a fast walk, and the fast walk became a slow walk with all of them half-bent against the cold torrents. Yet fallen leaves beneath the trees off the path did not fly away or even rustle from it.

When Master Maraudi noticed this curiosity and stepped from the path to travel off it, the wind changed. Leaves gusted upwards to plaster his body and blind him. Volos jerked his head and stared out into the forest as Master Maraudi staggered back to the path with leaves falling off him everywhere.

“What sense is this?” Dieter asked. “Wind acting like that? This place is cursed, it is. Ghosts walk this forest.”

“Don’t speak nonsense, squire, there is no such thing as ghosts,” Keth said firmly, although Arden could see uncertainty in her eyes.

“I’m seeing things, I am,” Dieter insisted.

It was a hard walk. The path curled and climbed short, steep hills, descended sharply into ravines and vanished beneath mud puddles at the bottom. Then it disappeared altogether around a curve, and they had to stand there at its end as Master Maraudi went seeking out where it continued. The barkeep had told the soldiers that the roads went straight through the forests from one ferry landing to another, and while they were rough, and some barely wide enough to qualify as a path, they were easy to stay upon. That had not been the truth.

The hair rose on the back of Arden’s neck at this queer stretch of forest. He disliked how the trees loomed over the path and trailed fingers of leaves through his hair when he walked by them. Odd plants grew at the base of many trees, each a spike of gray with serrated edges. Small animals had perished upon them, carcasses of birds and squirrels mired in the thorns. Keth bent down to inspect a spike as they waited for Master Maraudi and then leaped away. “Dagad’s-first! Don’t touch those!”

“What are they?” Arden asked.

“A plant I have only ever seen in children’s picture books of history. This is sword-weed. Soldiers in ancient times used it for arrowheads. Those spikes are filled with toxin.”

“They’ll kill us?” Dieter gasped, jerking away from a spike near the seat of his trousers.

“No, not unless you take in too much. It will weaken and sicken you in small doses.” Keth turned around in a circle, marking how much sword-weed was there. “This has not grown for centuries. It sprouted so out of control wherever it landed that green-growth penchants swept all of Havanath, Odri, and the wildlands to kill it. Loria’s climate is too warm for it to survive. How has it made a resurgence here?”

Master Maraudi screamed.

It was not a shout but a genuine scream riding atop a blast of frigid wind. He was sprinting through the trees, a spike ripping a hole in his trousers as he fled for them with wild waves of his arms. “Penchant!
Penchant!
”

If he was calling for Arden, then there had to be an animal. Dodging sword-weed, Arden ran for him. He could not see the creature that was pursuing Master Maraudi, but the expression on the man’s craggy face left no doubt that it was something horrifying. But where was it? Nothing was coming through the hunched greenery save the soldier.

Master Maraudi twisted abruptly and ran deeper into the trees. Arden gave chase, waiting for the creature to appear and his mind seeking out the animal minds around. He found birds upon the branches, yet nothing was there, dragons squabbling over the bugs floating on the surface of a puddle, yet no dragons were around either.

He sensed bugs yet none flew in the air or crept upon the ground, nor were any marching up or down the trees. Still the soldier ran, coming near the path and then darting away from it, charging in a circle around a thick trunk, leaping a fallen tree and running until he vanished. Arden dashed on in bafflement. The animals he could not see, yet could feel, were not chasing Master Maraudi. Most had not even taken note of his presence. There was nothing malevolent around.