Hunted

by Paul Eslinger

  “We’ve met,” I admitted. “Why did they kidnap him?”

  “He started yelling and shaking his fist.” The old man shook his head. “He should have kept his mouth shut. A couple of men on horses chased him down and trussed him up. They threw him onto a cart and headed out of town.”

  Trey’s fingers shook before he wrapped them around the straps to his pack. “Are they all gone? The kidnappers, that is?”

  The old man shook his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the mine. “The kidnappers are all gone, but a big man and a woman stayed behind. They claimed they were just traveling and didn’t have anything to do with the kidnappers.”

  The old man started a rambling explanation of everything the visitors did and I was trying to think of a good way to leave when Trey grabbed my arm and directed a comment at the guards, “Thank you. We need to get on to the market so we can get home before dark.”

  I glanced back before we reached the next house. The two men were no longer in sight, but a quick magical scan told me they were hiding in the bushes again. I looked the other way along the street to ensure no one else would surprise us. The Hunter was in the tavern on the far side of the town square. Most people in town were over in that direction.

  Trey’s voice broke into my concentration. “No one travels just for fun around here. They always have a purpose.”

  “The big man is the King’s Hunter,” I offered.

  “Makes sense,” Trey agreed. “But, what about the woman? Is she helping the Hunter? If so, she must be really nasty.”

  “I think I felt her presence,” I continued. “She was cold and hard and had an incredibly strong will.”

  Trey looked around at the deserted street. We were only two blocks from the town square but we had to turn right after the next house to see it. “Where is she now?”

  “I can’t seem to find her.”

  “What?” Trey blurted as he stopped in his tracks.

  When he didn’t resume walking, I stopped and turned to look at him. “What’s the problem?”

  His tone was sarcastic. “You know what it means when you can’t feel a person, don’t you?”

  “Uh,” I said. I was tired of sounding like a dunce, but maybe I acted like one at times. “I can’t feel a dragon because they use magic to hide.”

  “And you hide from them as well,” Trey responded. “So, this woman has magical abilities.”

  “Oh.” The idea made sense and I added it to my list of magical topics as I glanced at the sky. A small dot just below a lazily moving cloud was close enough I could tell it was a dragon. “You may be right,” I added.

  “Of course, I’m right. You need to spend more effort hiding your magical abilities, but not our presence.”

  Angry voices echoed across the market square as Trey and I passed the last house. A group of men gathered around an open wagon in the middle of the square and women stood in clusters in front of three shops. “Where do we start?” I asked Trey.

  “You can listen in on the men,” he said. “I’m going to start at the baker’s tent.”

  “Why there?”

  “I made up that quick story for those two guys at the edge of town. However, we could use some dry yeast and maybe even a small jar of starter. It will be to our advantage to make the lies seem genuine and I’m small enough the women still keep talking while I’m nearby.” He shrugged out of his pack and handed it to me. “Hang on to this. The bow is too long to take into the tent.”

  A white patch on the side of one of the shops caught my attention when I turned towards the group of men. That was where the poster Trey had modified was hanging on our last trip through town. I hitched up the extra pack and made my way around the edge of the square towards the poster.

  One quick glance was enough to tell that the picture still looked like it had when Trey finished modifying it. I felt relieved and then started wondering why it was still there. Was the person who put it up still around? I turned away, hoping that no one had noticed my interest.

  A woman spoke from behind me. “Have you ever seen that man?”

  Startled by the question, I spun around. Trey’s pack slipped and I snatched at it, catching it just before it hit the ground. “Huh? Oh, that picture? No, I have never seen him.”

  The woman facing me was nearly my height. Long brown hair framed her angular face and the ends of her hair flowed over her shoulders. Her skin was smooth but she wasn’t young. Her bright grey eyes studied me like I was a bug crawling over food on a table. “Do you live here?” she asked in the kind of tone Mother had used when she thought I had done something wrong.

  Even though I wasn’t trying to check their emotional state, I could feel the minds of everyone in town, except for the woman facing me. She must have been the woman I felt when I had located the Hunter. The total lack of emotion in her mind caused my stomach to clench and also loosened my tongue. I hoped I could lie as convincingly as Trey and tried to give a feeling of sincerity as I jerked my thumb over my shoulder toward the south. “I live down the road past the intersection with Jude’s Road.”

  She pursed her lips and gave me a cold stare. “Why were you looking at the picture?”

  “Never seen one hanging here before,” I answered.

  “Traveling with someone?” she asked as she pointed to Trey’s pack.

  I wanted to just walk away, but couldn’t decide if that would be worse than answering questions. “A friend of mine.”

  She raised both eyebrows. “Really?”

  The unusual urge to talk about everything in my life started to grow as the woman continued to focus her eyes on me. The vague thought that a skilled person could use magic to get other people to talk formed as I watched her eyes. I pulled a little magic between us, almost like I was erecting a shield against arrows, and managed to keep control of my thoughts. “I’m traveling with Trey,” I announced, pointing toward the baker’s tent, hoping I was talking enough to satisfy her curiosity. “He’s buying supplies.”

  The woman frowned. “Is he a new friend?”

  “No, no,” I said as if she were forcing me to keep talking, but carefully giving answers that didn’t reveal anything about my abilities. “I’ve known him since we were little kids. And you ask a lot of questions.”

  “There’s that dragon again!” shouted one of the men in the square.

  “What—” the woman bit off her question and jerked around to look at the sky.

  I hoisted the extra pack and headed toward the baker’s tent while the woman wasn’t looking at me. I no longer felt like talking and I needed to get Trey away from the square before the woman found him. He would talk incessantly about my magic and his magic if the woman got him alone.

  Other voices joined in the clamor as the dragon glided over the middle of town. I turned to look just as I reached the tent. It was the same golden dragon we had seen before, but this time it stayed high enough an arrow couldn’t reach it.

  “The dragon’s back,” Trey muttered beside me.

  “Over there,” I said quickly, pointing to a nearby wagon. A few long strides took me out of sight of the people milling around in the square.

  “Why are we hiding?” Trey asked as he followed me.

  I gestured towards the noisy crowd. “Do you see the woman over there? The one with the long brown hair?”

  “Yep,” he said after peering around the end of the wagon. “Her vest is made with really good leather.”

  “Forget the vest,” I hissed. “That’s the woman you warned me about; the one who can use magic. She can make you talk about anything.”

  He glanced back at me. “Did you talk?”

  “Yes,” I admitted, “but I learned something by listening to you. I talked without telling her anything important, at least, not telling her anything useful before the dragon showed up.”

 
; “Hmm,” Trey muttered and then peered around the end of the wagon again. “She’s over looking at the poster I modified, talking to a man. A big man.”

  Moments later, he spun back around the end of the wagon. His face was white. “She’s talking to the man who killed my parents!”

  Chapter 20 – Transformation

  Although I knew what the Hunter’s emotions felt like, I had never seen him. I held out Trey’s pack and said, “Here. Put this on so we can leave.” Trey put it on almost as fast as a frog’s tongue snares a fly, but that gave me enough time to glance over the wagon at the Hunter. He was standing sideways to me looking up in the sky but I could tell he was half a head taller than the woman. His clothing looked normal, he had a long black beard and black hair, and a big nose. His leather hat had a wide brim and the crown had an unusual point.

  “Let’s go,” Trey hissed, interrupting my study of the killer. However, I had seen enough to be able to pick him out in a crowd, especially if he was with the woman.

  “Lead on,” I whispered and then followed as he strode at a normal speed toward the baking tent. He walked faster once we were out of sight behind the tent, but didn’t break into a run.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Away from here,” Trey rasped. “If we don’t, I’m going to get my bow out and put an arrow into that man.”

  I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “They’d kill you if you did.”

  “Who would?” he barked.

  “The other people in town. They don’t know what he does.”

  Trey’s face turned red and he pulled his lips back from his teeth like he was a snarling dog. “I don’t care.”

  “I do,” I said soothingly. “We both want justice but there has to be a way to get it without getting killed in the process.”

  “How?” he asked.

  I wasn’t sure how, but right now I wanted Trey to calm down and start thinking clearly. He was usually the one who did that for me. “Did you see the woman with the Hunter?” I asked.

  Trey looked over at me and a hint of sanity reappeared in his eyes. “No. I just looked at the big man.”

  I glanced back to make sure no one was following us. The dragon had circled higher in the sky, but it was still over town. No one was visible on the street behind us. “We knew the Hunter was in town before we arrived. You warned me that a woman who could hide her emotions must have magical abilities.”

  Trey gave a satisfied smirk. “She did, didn’t she?’”

  “She did, but it wasn’t anything I expected. I went over to see if they changed the poster back to the original picture. They hadn’t, but the woman saw me checking it and started asking questions. Part of her magic was to make you answer every question she asked.”

  “Uh oh,” Trey said. “Did you answer all of her questions?”

  “Yes, but I learned by listening to you talk to those two guards. I mixed truths and half-truths with a few lies.”

  By this time, we were most of the way to the southern edge of town. Trey stopped and faced me with his hands clenched around his pack straps. “Do you think the Hunter brought in the woman so he could get people to answer his questions?”

  I shook my head. “A couple of things Zephyr told me makes me think it was the other way around. The woman sent the Hunters to find me, and you, and she traveled here to take a personal hand in the hunt when one of the Hunters was unsuccessful and another one died.”

  “Oh.” Trey let go of the straps and pulled off his hat. He swatted the hat against his leg with one hand while he ran the fingers of his other hand through his hair. “If that is true, then she will find Ara within a day or two.”

  I came to the same conclusion while Trey was saying it out loud. There were only two choices. We could run and leave Ara to deal with the stone-cold killers on her own, or we could talk her into coming with us. The end result might be the same, but she would probably live longer if we ran away together. It wasn’t really a choice. We had come back to take care of Ara, and that was what we would do. I seated my hat more firmly on my head and pointed along the road. “Let’s go get Ara.”

  More than one farmer or field worker watched us walk past. I glanced back after we passed a couple of farms and several of the workers were still watching us. Some of them were simply wary, but more than one gave the sense they would talk to anyone if given even the smallest coin.

  The sun was straight overhead when we reached the region of the knoll where we had spent the night. I was ready for a break and something to eat, so pointed to a grove of cedar trees on the south side of the road. “Let’s take a rest stop out of sight of anyone walking by.”

  “I’m ready for one,” Trey agreed. He looked both ways along the road and then glanced at the sky. “The dragon has kept us in sight since we left town.”

  “You think so?” I asked. “Oh, I’ve seen it several times, but do you really think it is watching us?”

  “It’s watching,” Trey said cryptically and then led the way towards the trees. He ignored the closer trees and moved towards the far end of a small clearing before pointing to one side where there was deep shade under the trees. “No one will see us in there,” he said confidently.

  “Other than the dragon,” I replied and jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “It has come a lot closer since we turned off the road.”

  The dragon had been circling high in the sky, keeping aloft with occasional slow wing movements. Now she was facing us with stiffly-extended wings.

  “It’s coming toward us,” Trey muttered.

  We both continued to watch from the clearing rather than disappearing among the towering green trees. To my surprise, the golden dragon continued to glide directly toward us. Soon, she was close enough to make out details. The hind legs extended below the rest of the body in the general posture a duck used just before landing.

  The horns on the rear of her head were visible when the dragon shifted direction slightly so she faced us again. Soon, she was below the tops of the tallest trees but didn’t make any movement to regain altitude. A red tongue showed in her open mouth as she gave a single powerful stroke with both wings and came to a stop not far from us with her hind legs just touching the ground. A gust of air pushed by her wings blew over us.

  “Wow,” breathed Trey.

  “Yeah,” I muttered, too excited at seeing the dragon up close to turn and run into the woods. She furled smooth-edged wings along the edges of her body and stood upright, almost like a human. The thin whip-like tail extended into the grass on the far side.

  The dragon swung her head from side to side and sniffed the air. Moments later, she used one arm-like front leg to touch the middle of her chest. A piece of the chest peeled away and dropped to the ground. Fascinated, I quickly realized she had been carrying something like a pack and had dropped it rather than shedding skin.

  After one more look in our direction, the dragon stood erect. Shifting movements replaced the normal action of legs, arms or wings. The wings shrank and disappeared into her back and the tail also shrank to nothing. Her arms and legs grew thinner and her body widened across the shoulders as growing hair obscured the shrinking horns.

  A couple of heartbeats later, a tall naked woman stood where the dragon had been. Her long grey hair spread out over her shoulders and obscured her breasts as she leaned over and pulled a cloak from the pack she had dropped. She twirled the cloak around her form in a practiced manner and tied it shut before turning in our direction. She spoke easily as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened, “We meet again, Reuben and Trey.”

  “We’ve met before? H-h-hello,” I stuttered. She looked similar to the woman who had appeared in my dreams but there were subtle differences in the shape of her face. However, she looked exactly like the woman who had recently talked to Trey and me in Glendale. My mind ran in circles, trying to reject the
memory of the magical transformation I had just seen, but it was impossible to ignore. Also, Zephyr had said no one now alive could shift between forms as the woman had just done. Even in the past, they had done it by cooperating as a group and no one could do it alone. “How did you do that?” I whispered.

  “The how is not important at the moment,” she said smoothly. “You are in danger if you remain close to Glendale.”

  “Danger?” I barked, still having difficulty understanding how the woman changed from a dragon to a woman. But then, had she really changed? “You wouldn’t believe the things I have seen in the last few days. Did you really change between forms, or are you just looking different in the way I have a beard?”

  The woman stepped close enough so she could converse easily, but stopped far enough away she was out of reach. She cocked her head and seemed to study Trey and me before answering, “I really changed physical forms.”

  “But, but… Zephyr said no one could do that,” I protested.

  “Ah, Zephyr.” The woman seemed interested but not amused. “She is a practitioner of magic, but the wolves do not recognize they have incomplete information.”

  I spread out my hands, thinking this woman had a smooth way with words. She could have called Zephyr a liar. I added, “Zephyr talked about a Council of wolves and dragons.”

  “Indeed,” murmured the woman. “She speaks to you in areas of concern where she has foresworn silence.”

  That comment made sense because other wolves were following Zephyr.

  Trey took a small step forward and pointed at the woman. “Do you have a name?”

  “What do you think, Trey?” she countered.

  He flapped his hands as if brushing aside her question. “We all have names. My parents once talked to each other about a woman named Sorcha who matched your description.” He took a deep breath before continuing, “Your human description, that is. They said you were an invalid most of the time, with occasional short periods of recovery. They didn’t know I was listening.”