Hunted

by Paul Eslinger

  “We will, although I do not know when.” Zephyr’s nose pointed down the valley towards the King’s Road. “I will use the road until sunup. The followers will have to move fast to keep up.”

  She rose to all fours, took a few quick strides, and then broke into a ground-eating lope that she could maintain all day. She disappeared down the trail and reached the road by the time Trey and I made it out of the small clearing.

  We walked steadily until we reached the road and then headed upriver toward Glendale. As always, we walked on the grass at the edge of the road so we didn’t leave footprints in the dirt, although I suppose a wolf’s nose was keen enough to know when someone had recently walked on the grass.

  The moon gave enough light to see to walk, but the shadows under the trees were so dark it was impossible to see anything in them. After a while, Trey broke the silence with a quiet question after glancing over his shoulder. “Have the wolves noticed that Zephyr is moving?”

  “Hold up,” I said and stopped to take a quick look. Zephyr must have continued running because she was moving several times as fast as we did at a steady walk. She was already past the small village and no one there seemed to have noticed her passage. After looking the other direction, I shook my head. “All four wolves still seem to be sleeping.”

  “That makes no sense,” Trey said as we started walking again. “One of them should have been awake all the time to check on us.”

  Having someone to talk to was far better than walking through strange woods alone at night, so I continued talking, “That assumes the wolves can talk to each other.”

  “Of course, they can,” Trey snorted. “Zephyr can talk to us. Besides, they couldn’t stay in such a straight line if they couldn’t talk.”

  “Okay.” I nodded. “That makes sense. What will they do when they learn she is moving fast?”

  “They’ll follow,” he replied. “Possibly even come along the road.” He paused and then continued, “Do you have your magical guards up?”

  “Of course,” I replied before starting to think. With even a few minutes of head start, we should be able to keep ahead of a large traveling party. More importantly, we needed to go by the wolves undetected, and we would be near the one closest to the road in less than an hour, even less if the wolf woke up. I was using a trickle of magic to hide our passage, but I needed to do something stronger.

  “Slow down,” I said. “I need to set up stronger protections.”

  “What kind?” he asked as our quick pace slackened. “We don’t want them to hear, smell, or see us, and not be able to find us like you find them.”

  “Simple,” I growled, knowing it wasn’t. “I’ll start with the smell thing.”

  “That should be easy,” he said.

  “Easy?” I argued, feeling defensive. “I’ve never done it before.”

  “Take a breath of air,” he countered. “What do you smell?”

  My first inclination was to ignore him, and then remembered he had often had suggested good advice in the past. I pulled in a lungful of air and concentrated on the smell. “Clean air, but with a hint of dust. The cedar trees have a stronger smell than the fir, and there is a hint of pitch.”

  “Right.” He sounded insanely cheerful, given the time of day and our passage along the edge of the rough road. “I don’t know how you do it, but you want the magic to make the air blowing past us smell just like the air does when it first reaches us.”

  The advice was good and I tried to make it happen. There wasn’t any way to check the result, but I felt part of the magical energy move into new paths. “What next?” I asked, knowing there was a little sarcasm in my voice.

  “Work on the hearing thing,” he replied. “No, forget that. Work on the seeing thing next. You said you’ve done that before.”

  “Why not hearing first?” I asked.

  “You should be able to figure that out,” he shot back. “If it works, we won’t hear each other talking.”

  “Oh,” I grunted, feeling like a dunce. I pressed my lips together, accessed more power through the opals, and tried to make us invisible.

  “Not bad,” Trey said, holding one of his arms up in front of his body. “I can look right through my arm.”

  I looked down, and the problem that had plagued me previously was still present. Even though the moonlight was dim, I could still see Trey’s shadow. “It didn’t work.”

  “You must be telling the magic what to do rather than asking it to make you and your shadow invisible,” Trey said. “Am I right?” he demanded when I didn’t reply.

  “Maybe,” I grunted. I started over with framing what I wanted the magic to do in my mind. It was easy to visualize carefully asking Ara to help me do something without including anything to irritate her. I hadn’t been very good at that in the past, but it had worked a few times. Moments later, I felt more magical energy move into purposeful paths.

  “That worked,” Trey said, sounding intrigued, and a little wistful. “I can’t see you or your shadow but I can hear you breathing and your footsteps. Why don’t you move a little farther from the ruts so we don’t bump into each other?”

  I stepped further aside and felt the amount of magic I was using increase. The level went back down when I stepped closer. I made another note on my mental list. It was easier to do something magical over a short distance than a longer distance. Trey and I needed to stay close to each other, and that would be difficult if we couldn’t see or hear each other. Then, I thought about the pack floating behind me. “I have a different idea,” I exclaimed. “We have to stay close together for this to work. I’ll give you a magical string to hold, just like we use a magical tether for the pack.”

  I backed down on the amount of magic going into the invisibility function and handed Trey the end of a magical tether. He grabbed it as if it were a real string and we continued walking.

  Figuring out the silence thing took longer than the other hiding actions. It was easy to visualize someone who was not talking, but not making any sound was more difficult. I could stop talking, but I couldn’t stop breathing and I still occasionally stepped on a twig that snapped under my moccasin. Finally, I figured out a workable solution.

  “That works,” Trey said using magic. “I can’t hear you walking and you didn’t answer when I asked you if the wolves had noticed Zephyr is gone.”

  “I haven’t checked for a while,” I replied, chagrinned at the oversight. I needed to check every few minutes because a running wolf could quickly close the distance between us. I checked again and reported, “Nothing yet.”

  “It won’t be long,” Trey predicted. “We’ve been on the move a quarter of an hour. They’ll certainly notice within the hour, probably a lot sooner.”

  I had practiced hiding in the past and even impressed Zephyr with my abilities, but now I needed to hide our mental presence as well as the dragon did, or better. That made it easy to figure out what I wanted and additional magical power flowed into our defenses. I tried to make them all stronger and then realized I couldn’t pull in more magical power. I could see the magic around us, but it didn’t respond when I reached for it. “I’m out of power,” I told Trey.

  “Are the defenses still working?” he asked.

  “Yes. But I can’t make them any stronger.”

  Fortunately, the magic defenses continued to function without a lot of focus on my part, although I knew they would stop working as soon as I stopped providing magic power. I picked up the pace, tugging on the magical tether connecting me to Trey. “Let’s walk faster.”

  Moments later, his magical voice gasped. “What’s that on the road in front of us?”

  There was wildlife all around us, but I checked during every magical scan to ensure no bears or big cats were close enough to cause us problems. My heart sped up as I looked up the road. Moments later, I relaxed. “That’s my magi
cal guard, an enchanted puma.”

  “I can see it,” he asserted. “If I can see it, so can someone else. Didn’t Zephyr see it at the camp?”

  Once again, I felt foolish while I sent the mental command to cut power to the puma and the squirrel moving through the trees beside us almost as quickly as a bird flew. All of my planning, plotting and activities might have been useless because of a simple oversight. “They’re gone,” I announced sheepishly.

  On the next check, all four wolves were awake. Their minds were bright beacons of determination and disgust. I could understand the disgust because had Zephyr had traveled a large distance along the road while they slept. Apparently, they had been assuming she was going to spend the night in one place as she had been doing. I checked one more time and then reported to Trey. “All four wolves are moving this way.”

  “They figured it out,” he retorted and then grew more thoughtful. “Now we find out if they were trailing Zephyr or if they were trailing all of us.”

  “We’ll know in a few minutes,” I replied and looked around. This wasn’t a good place to stay if the wolves came along the road. There was a high steep bank to our left and the hillside dropped off on the right toward the river.

  Trey must have been thinking the same thing because he had a suggestion. “Let’s go back to that last curve. We can leave the road and go uphill over the small rockslide. We won’t leave any tracks to follow.”

  I turned around after his first three words and we both broke into a steady trot. I beat down the temptation to lengthen my stride into a full run because I didn’t want to get winded and I didn’t have any extra power to funnel to myself or Trey. We soon reached the region of the rockslide and began climbing using both our hands and our feet.

  About four hundred paces from the road the slope moderated and grass and low bushes replaced the rocks. We soon reached a wide game trail. I could picture Trey making a gesture along it, but couldn’t see him when he asked, “Should we follow this trail?”

  Magical sight was good at times, and I checked along the trail. Two wolves were coming this way along the trail and they were only a few minutes from our position. “No,” I rasped. “We have to hide, and quickly!”

  “Uphill,” Trey commanded as I looked around, trying to see in the dim light. “We can hide in that group of boulders.”

  I hoped the magical sound suppression was still working as we struggled up the steep slope. We both stumbled through small bushes and rocks shifted under our feet. Finally, we reached the boulders and ducked behind them. I cautiously lowered the pack and then knelt, trying to peer around the boulder.

  “Keep your head down,” Trey hissed.

  “They can’t see me,” I said in a bickering tone. “I want to know when they come by here.”

  Towering fir trees cast deep shadows over the boulders we were using to hide and I had limited faith in the magical protections. I looked with just my normal eyes and couldn’t tell where the game trail was, even though we had just walked along it. I thought about Zephyr, now far down the road, and the fact she didn’t have any problem seeing at night. Could I use magic to see better at night?

  The puma and squirrel had used only a trickle of magic, but that meant I could use the trickle for something else. I closed my eyes and made the wish I could see better at night. Light beat against my closed eyelids as if I were waking up from a nap under a tree and the sun had moved far enough that I was in its direct rays.

  I slowly opened my eyes a slit and peered down the hill. Even though the light only came from Celina, it seemed as strong as full sunlight at midday, although the colors were subtly different. I could see the faint line that marked the game trail.

  Another wish about being able to hear better brought a sudden increase in the sound levels around us. The light breeze rustling the upper limbs in the trees sounded like the roar of a thunderstorm. I tried to ignore that sound and then heard what I had been expecting. Heavy feet thudded on the ground around the end of the hillside.

  I hunkered down, but still kept my head just above the edge of the boulder and touched Trey on the shoulder. “They’re coming,” I whispered.

  The sound of footfalls grew louder and soon I could hear the wolves without any magical enhancements. Trey shuffled position beside me and whispered faintly, “Is that the sound of them running?”

  “Yes,” I agreed, with my heart pounding in my chest almost as loud as the footfalls. My heart rate slowed as two wolves about the same size as Zephyr flashed along the trail and continued moving downriver without glancing in our direction.

  I sat on a rock beside Trey and reached out gingerly with another mental scan. I wasn’t sure how the scan worked, but I hoped I was simply looking at magical energy in use without sending any of my own. That meant others shouldn’t know when I was watching. I started feeling smug and confident, and then the confidence evaporated. If others couldn’t tell when I was watching them, then I probably couldn’t tell when someone was watching me.

  This scan indicated the other two wolves were running on the road. Trey and I were still sitting behind the boulders when the two wolves on the trail cut down across an open slope and joined the two on the road. The four continued along the road, still running at an incredible pace.

  Trey’s hand shook when he put it on my shoulder. “That went better than I expected. Now, we just have to get to Glendale before that group of travelers does.”

  Chapter 17 – Repercussions

  Trey’s words reminded me that everything we had done the last hour to evade the wolves herding Zephyr was so we could head back to Glendale and keep Ara safe. I stood, lifted the two packs using a magical touch and stepped out from the narrow crack between the boulders that had helped shield us. My moccasins were getting thin and I was glad when my feet rested on grass instead of rough rocks.

  I had taken another step, feeling immensely pleased with what I had accomplished, when my magically-enhanced sight started to darken. Not wanting to depend on normal sight in the dim moonlight, I reached for more power. My sight darkened even more and weariness washed over me. I tried to take another step and my foot seemed to weigh as much as an entire log. Then, everything went black…

  A rough hand shook me and Trey’s faint, anxious voice sounded a long distance away. “Wake up, Reuben! Wake up!”

  “Uh, what?” I mumbled. I was so tired I didn’t try to move.

  Trey sounded like he had been crying. “I thought you were dead.”

  I pried open my eyes, thinking that my magical sight had returned, until I realized that sunlight drenched the hill and the sun was directly overhead. My mouth was dry and my entire body seemed stiff. “What happened?” I croaked.

  Trey was sitting cross-legged beside me with his hand on my upper arm. His pale face and red eyes looked strained in the bright sunlight. “You took about three steps after the wolves were gone and then fell over like a tree going down in a windstorm. At first, I thought you were dead, but you were still breathing. You haven’t moved in hours.”

  I tried to sit but didn’t have the energy to finish the motion. My mind felt sluggish. I instinctively grabbed Trey’s hand when he held it out and held on with a death grip as he pulled me up to a sitting position.

  My mind started to work better while I was sitting up and I could see a huge bruise on my left forearm where I apparently had hit a rock. I instinctively reached for magic to heal the injury and then hesitated. Something must have gone wrong with the magic to cause me to pass out. I rubbed the bruise with gentle fingers as I looked at Trey. “What went wrong?”

  He looked uncomfortable and squirmed as he answered. “I don’t know. We were hiding just fine and then, whoosh, everything went back to the way it always has been.”

  I used to act the same way he was acting when I was trying to hide something. My mind started to feel like I could think again although my bo
dy was weaker than when I had been starving. I lifted my knees and wrapped my arms around them for stability before I asked, “Is there something else you should tell me?”

  Trey grimaced and looked at the ground when his fingers tapped the pocket of his pants. “Your magic stopped working, so I checked my opal when you wouldn’t wake up. It was fine…”

  “What wasn’t fine?” I demanded.

  He pointed at the pouch hanging from my belt with a shaky finger. Last night, I had decided to keep the opals with me in case I became separated from the pack. “I checked your opals. The big one is fine.”

  My hand dropped to my belt and my fingers fumbled with the string tying the pouch shut. “If it’s fine, what’s wrong with the little one? I was using all three of them last night.”

  There was a hard lump inside the piece of leather holding the largest opal but not inside the other. I pulled out the leather covering and slowly unwrapped the small opal. A pile of grey sand lay there instead of a shiny opal. “What’s this?” I barked, unable to believe what I was seeing.

  “That was your small opal,” Trey muttered, staring at the sand with wide eyes. “It looks like the sand that was left behind when that thief stole the other opal while we were in your shed.”

  “What happened to it?” I wailed, despising the fact I sounded like a small child.

  Trey shifted until he was sitting with his knees in front of him. He wrapped his arms around his legs and rocked back and forth. “I’ve had a lot of time to think. I have an idea.”

  “Go ahead,” I growled when he paused.

  “You said there’s a limit to the amount of magic you can focus through a stone. The big ones provide more power than the little ones. You’ve seen lightning, haven’t you?”

  I frowned. “Of course, but there wasn’t a storm last night.”

  “No, no,” he protested. “I think you used too much magic for the small opal to handle, and then, poof, it was like lightning hit it. It’s ruined.” His voice grew softer, “Worthless.”