Hunted

by Paul Eslinger

  Chapter 10 – Short Visit

  Trey and I didn’t speak again until we passed the last house, which wasn’t that far from the village square. About thirty-five families lived in Glendale and the houses bunched together like goslings nestling beside their mother.

  Unlike the road leading north to the mine, work parties had widened the road to Falkirk enough that two carts could pass each other. The double ribbon of bare dirt wound between farm fields and vanished in a grove of trees in the distance. The work crews had not spent the effort to carry in paving stones, so the road was nearly impassible after heavy rains or when snow covered the ground. Today, a gentle breeze moved along the valley, moderating the summer heat, and the dirt in the lane was dry and firm. It would take a week or longer to walk to Falkirk in good weather. From there, another road led to the west up through the Gackle River valley.

  It was easier to walk on the bordering strip of low grass than in the rutted road, so both Trey and I moved to the edge. The pack was chaffing one of my shoulders, so I hitched it into a more comfortable position and stuck my thumbs through the straps. Often in the past, I had gone for hours without talking to someone. Now, I seemed to crave conversation, so I asked, “Hey, Trey, what did you think of that old woman?”

  “She knows who you are.”

  “That was obvious,” I said. “You recently said your parents talked every year to people who came from the Pig’s Ear Tavern. Did that old woman ever come with them?”

  Trey shook his head. “Usually it was two men.”

  “Was it always the same men?”

  “It was the last couple of years.”

  “What about before then?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Trey replied, throwing up his hands. “I was a little kid in a market I only visited a few times in my life. There were a lot of things to see and explore. I didn’t know anyone other than my parents. I still don’t.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling foolish. The crowds in the market had seemed so overwhelmingly large when I was younger that I didn’t remember very many faces from one visit to the next, even when Ara reminded me that some of the people we had met were family relations. “Did any of the men give their names?”

  “Not that I heard.” Trey pointed to where the dragon showed as a small dot against the southern sky. “I don’t know much about them and I’m much more interested in why the arrow that man shot didn’t hurt the dragon.”

  “The dragon used magic to protect herself,” I answered.

  “That was obvious,” Trey said with an irritated look. He poked at his chest with his thumb. “Can you do the same thing? It would be much nicer to have arrows bounce off than come close to death before you arrive and heal me. It hurt, a lot.”

  “I don’t know how,” I confessed.

  Trey shook his head so hard his hat fell off. He grabbed it in midair and jammed it more securely on his head. “That’s no excuse. Two weeks ago, you didn’t know how to heal someone. Now you do.”

  “That’s different,” I protested.

  Trey cleared his throat and made a disparaging sound. “No, it’s not. How did you pick up that little metal ball and throw it at the snake last night?”

  I started to get irritated and then slowly began to think instead. Other people, and even dragons and wolves, could do many things with magic. If someone else could do a thing using magic, then it was possible. Maybe I could also do it. I needed to adopt a new motto, I can do it.

  If Zephyr was correct in that I was unique among humans in accessing the strong magic that coursed through the ground like underground rivers, then I should be able to duplicate what others were doing. I simply lacked training. Why did I have to wait for other people to do something new using magic? Why couldn’t I be the first? I had dreamed about being the best hunter since I was a little boy, but never about doing wonderful things using magic.

  “Well?” Trey prompted, interrupting my thoughts. He continued, “How did you throw that little ball last night?”

  I pulled the sling from my pants pocket and wrapped the thongs around my fingers. “I’ve thrown stones with a sling since I was a small boy. I simply pretended I was doing something I had done many times. The magic made it happen—and it was stronger than I am.”

  “Then you can do the same thing again with one of those balls,” Trey said encouragingly. “How do you stop an arrow?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Trey made a rude noise again. “You can do better than that. Stop thinking like a little boy.”

  I tried to think and memories about arrows flooded back from real life. “A man shot an arrow at me when Ara and I were heading for Glendale. I ducked behind the edge of a hill.”

  “That’s one way of doing it,” Trey said with an unimpressed shrug. “But that dragon wasn’t carrying a hill.”

  “Yeah, right,” I grumbled. “In the case I was describing, the arrow hit my pack. Only the tip of it came through the pack and poked me in the back.”

  Trey sounded thoughtful. “That’s better. A pack is a lot smaller than an entire hill, but the dragon wasn’t carrying a pack.”

  “What do you think the dragon did?” I asked, frustrated that nothing useful was coming to mind. Ara would have already spouted a flood of ideas if she were with us. I missed her terribly, but she didn’t know I could do anything with magic and she was safer not knowing.

  “I don’t know,” Trey said, pulling on his lower lip. “It probably did one of two things. It either forced the arrow to stop using a barrier, or she removed the energy it used to fly forward. See the difference? But, it was probably a barrier.”

  “Why?” I asked before thinking and then felt like a small child. The arrow had arrow shattered like it had run into a rock.

  “It’s obvious,” Trey said. “The arrow–”

  “I get it. I get it,” I interrupted. “I just didn’t stop to think.”

  The road passed through a grove of oak trees and the breeze was strong enough to whip the top tree limbs back and forth. I looked up at the writhing branches and a faint glimmer of thought started to emerge. It faded before I could get a good grasp on it.

  Trey also looked at the moving trees and said, “I hope we don’t get a storm tonight. I’ve never slept out in the rain and don’t want to start now.”

  “We’re going to meet Zephyr near a small cave,” I replied. “We’ll sleep there tonight and we will be dry even if it rains.”

  “Good,” Trey said with a sigh. “I’m going to miss my house.”

  “So am I,” I said as another gust of wind blew through the forest around us. I thought about the last bad storm at our house and how the wind had toppled immense trees that had weathered many previous storms. The wind must have been strong.

  I stopped in the middle of the road and clapped my hand on my hat as I thought more about strong wind. “I get it,” I exclaimed.

  Trey whirled around, trying to look in every direction. “Get what?” he asked roughly.

  “Strong winds can push hard enough to topple a huge tree. It should be strong enough to push aside a little arrow.”

  “Those are different things,” Trey immediately protested as he gave me a disgusted look. “An arrow is made to fly through the air. Trees don’t fly.”

  I began walking again, not willing to give up on the vague idea. “You’re right, but I don’t think that is important. I just have to figure out how strong wind can push back an arrow.”

  Trey shook his head. “You’re thinking about the wrong thing. Father showed me how to use a piece of wood or heavy leather as a shield to keep an angry osprey off when you get too close to their nest. You need something like that.”

  “Right. I need something like wood or thick leather without carrying it all the time. So, instead of pushing the arrow aside with the wind, I need to make the air hard around me, a
nd you, but it only needs to be hard for a short time.”

  “How do you do that?” Trey asked. His tone had changed from questioning or disparaging to encouraging.

  “I don’t know,” I confessed. “However, I don’t know how to heal someone either. I just want them to heal and the magic does the work. This may happen the same way.”

  Trey and I talked so much about magic, the dragon, and what we might find if we visited the Pig’s Ear Tavern that it didn’t seem very long before we waded across the small brook on Jude’s Road and approached Aunt Yedda’s and Uncle Inigo’s farm. My earlier resolve to visit and talk to Ara faded as I realized I didn’t know what I was going to say to her other than a strange man had killed Trey’s parents. He was tall and black-haired, but neither Trey nor I had seen his face. I could just say I had missed her, but she would know something was wrong as soon as she saw Trey.

  I fell silent and Trey seemed to sense my somber mood. He stopped asking questions when the road curved around a small hill and a shallow valley appeared on our right. Vigorous fields of onions and nearly-ripe corn and oats appeared through the trees and then a small double-track road that led through low grass towards a two-story house and a barn came into sight. The bright-green slate shingles covering the steep-pitched roof of the house formed a contrast with the large grey stone blocks in the walls. The barn was bigger than those on other farms we’d passed and none of the others had stone walls. No one was in sight.

  “There’s nobody here,” Trey muttered as we stood side by side in the shade of the trees at the edge of the road looking up the lane leading to the house.

  I pushed up the brim of my hat and glanced at the sky. Even though the thick canopy of limbs obscured the sun, the angle of the shadows indicated the sun was directly overhead. “They’re probably eating lunch,” I said and used the moment of inactivity to do a quick magical scan of the house. Even though I had vowed to make the practice a habit, I hadn’t looked around since we had left the King’s Road. There were people hunting us and I needed to get serious with the magical scans if I wanted to live very long.

  Bundles of emotions for five humans gleamed strongly in the kitchen of the house. Ara was one of them and she seemed to be having a good time. I relaxed, and then, on a whim, broadened the search. Moments later, I felt a faint emotional presence. Concentration isolated it near the intersection of Jude’s Road and King’s Road. I pulled in magic and searched more carefully than ever before. Satisfaction rolled over me when I recognized Zephyr. From the location, she might already be in the cave where we planned to meet tonight.

  I shuffled in a circle, still searching with the high level of magical energy, wondering if I could sense the dragon. We had seen in the distance three times since leaving Glendale. I didn’t feel the dragon, but I stiffened when I felt two additional wolves. They were both within an hour’s walk. One was near Glendale on the King’s Road and the other one was to the east of us at about the same distance. The wolf we had heard howling the previous evening was a lot closer then, but its mind felt different than these. That would mean there were three, if not more, wolves.

  Trey’s voice broke through my concentration. “What’s happening? Is something wrong with Ara?”

  I dropped the search, rubbed my sweaty palms on my pants and squeaked, “Ara’s fine.” I took a deep breath and spoke more normally, “There are more wolves. One is over by Glendale and the other one is east of us.”

  “What should we do?” Trey asked, looking concerned. He clutched the straps of his pack so tightly the thick leather straps folded between his white-knuckled fingers.

  “Get back in the trees so we can talk,” I said, jerking my thumb over my shoulder. We noiselessly moved deeper into the shadows until foliage obscured the house and barn.

  Trey glanced in the direction of the farm and asked the question I had been considering. “Did anyone see us?”

  “No,” I said, letting out a long sigh, knowing I had drawn the correct conclusion after magically checking the people in the house and the animals near the house. “Their dog, Bolts, barks at anyone he sees. He must not have seen us.”

  “Why are we hiding? Are there more wolves close by? Are you going to talk to Ara?” Trey spit out the questions and waved his hands aimlessly back and forth. “We walked for hours just so you could talk to her.”

  I twiddled my thumbs as I tried to think. Coming to talk with Ara had made sense to me, but the desire to know she was happy was stronger than any of my previous thoughts. What was I going to tell her? That someone had killed Trey’s parents and the killer might come looking for her? That would certainly scare her, but it might not make her any safer and could do just the opposite.

  There were really only two choices, for now. One was to grab Ara and have her travel with us, hoping to get away from the Hunter and the wolves, or… Or I could simply fade into the shadows and lead the Hunter somewhere else. I swallowed the bile rising in my throat, not wanting to decide, but already knowing which decision was right.

  I started loosening the cross-ties on my pack before I looked at Trey. My throat was raspy when I started explaining, “Ara’s emotions indicate she is fine. Give me your pack. We’re going to run back and find Zephyr. She may know what is happening with the new wolves.”

  “They’re hunting. That’s what wolves do,” Trey growled as he deposited his pack on the ground beside mine. He looked at me with a frown. “Can’t you just mind-talk with Zephyr?”

  “I could,” I said, not willing to admit I had forgotten about that aspect of my new abilities. “But we are planning to meet her there anyway.”

  “Okay,” Trey grumbled with an expression that indicated I wasn’t being very helpful. “Can you do that thing again where you give me some strength? I can run faster if you do.”

  “I’ll do it,” I said as I magically hoisted the joined packs in the air. Moments later, Trey and I were running side by side along the road away from the house. Once before, I had been able to make the pack invisible except for making a shadow on the ground. I did the same thing so workmen in the fields we passed wouldn’t notice the strange sight.

  We jogged at a steady pace and my breathing soon became so labored it was difficult to talk. I shifted over to the magical approach to communication. “Trey, how are you doing?”

  “Fine, for now,” he replied. “Will we get to where Zephyr is before the other wolf goes that far?”

  “We don’t know if the wolf will go that far down the road,” I hedged.

  “Start thinking,” he snapped. “This is the third day the dragon has been flying around us. Now, two or three wolves are following us. They must be working together.”

  “Zephyr said this dragon wasn’t on the Council,” I protested.

  Trey shook his head, removed his hat and then jammed it fiercely back in place. “You’re not thinking. I also listened to what Zephyr didn’t say.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I protested.

  “It does, too,” he countered. “She got mad and left the first time you asked her about whether the dragon we have seen was on the Council. The next time, when we were digging, she didn’t answer your question. Finally, she said the dragon wasn’t on the Council, but she didn’t tell you this dragon had nothing to do with the Council, or that she opposed the Council.”

  I felt like a little child again, and couldn’t keep the chagrin out of my voice. “Oh. You’re right. I didn’t think of it that way.”

  “You should,” Trey said disapprovingly. “You can hide the truth in many different ways without openly lying.”

  Chapter 11 – Herding Wolves

  Trey and I soon reached the second ford in the small brook and took a short break from running. The water felt wonderful on my tired feet as we waded across, holding up our moccasins so they didn’t get wet. After putting my moccasins back on, I drank some of the cool water fro
m my cup and then tucked it back in my pack. I watched Trey do the same thing and returned to a topic we had already discussed. “I should be able to talk to Zephyr from here.”

  “Good,” he replied and then raised his eyebrows. “Will the dragon or the other wolves hear you talking?”

  “Zephyr said we could have a private conversation if I wanted it that way.”

  “Right,” Trey drawled.

  I started to ignore the implication he didn’t totally believe Zephyr and then decided to put the idea of a private conversation to the test. “I’ll try to make it a private talk between Zephyr and me. Tell me if you overhear anything.”

  “I’ll be listening,” he promised.

  After carefully framing and mentally holding onto the concept that I wanted to speak with Zephyr privately, I sent her a vigorous thought. “Zephyr?”

  “I’m here,” she responded. “You don’t have to shout.”

  “Did you know there are two other wolves this side of Glendale? Possibly even three.”

  There was a long silence. Finally, Zephyr responded. “I only know what you said about hearing a wolf yesterday.”

  I decided to poke her a bit, interested in learning more about her abilities. “You have the small stone to help you. Can’t you check for the others?”

  “I just checked and I didn’t feel them.”

  I send out a questing magical probe. It took little effort to feel the new wolves. I put more power into the search and shivered when I located two more. One was upriver towards my old house and the other was almost due west of us. The two closest ones were moving this direction, but they weren’t traveling as fast as Trey and I had been running. I shifted my focus back to Zephyr. “There are now four, and they are all obvious.”

  Zephyr sounded frightened and irritated. “Obvious to you, but not to me. We train long and hard to hide our presence. The dragons think they are better at it than we are, but trained wolves can hide from each other.”