Finders-Seekers

by Gayle Greeno

  Loaded on the raft, with Harrap and Parm stowed in the center like so much excess baggage, Doyce felt a kindred sympathy with Harrap as the raft began to pitch and toss its way down-current, tethered by a cable that looked as flimsy as a spiderweb now that she rode the raft. Clinging to a guard rope with one hand and with the other planted hard on her hip, she tried not to dwell on the fragility of the matchbox raft as she let her legs absorb the motion like springs. Her stomach didn’t want to stay on an even keel, and she ardently wished she’d never heard the word “breakfast,” let alone eaten it. Jenret and Mahafny reclined at ease amongst the boxes and barrels of cargo, chatting. Doyce fixed her eyes on a spot on the far shore and tried to lock it into her vision for stability. With shock, she found herself focusing intently on the spot she’d chosen.

  “Khar, what is that? Over there.”

  The ghatta, crouched on the deck with claws sunk into the rough overplanking, looked puzzled. “Where?”

  She gestured. “No, further downstream. The forest line just above that huge boulder where the waves crash white. ”

  Scrambling onto a box and then onto the next higher one, Khar pointed herself into the wind, spray flying around her so that she slitted her eyes, riveted. “A rider, no, two. And ... a ghatt with one!” Hackles rising, she growled deep in her throat and Saam sprang up beside her, the blue-gray of his coat shimmering sharply silver on the edges where the sun and spray misted it.

  The raft lurched, dipped sickeningly, then its prow darted up, slicing through the view ahead. As they dropped back with a flat-bottomed smack, there was only forest and swift-running water to see, the trio vanished without a trace.

  “It was them, wasn’t it?” Doyce asked in a whisper.

  Khar wove her way to her side while Saam continued his vigil, scanning the high riverbank, undercut and ravaged by racing water and churning winter ice. “Saam confirms it. I will tell the others.”

  “But why?” she asked Saam, knowing the hopelessness of an answer. “Why would they wait, stay this near when they must have known we were right behind them?” she asked the others as Jenret and Mahafny, Harrap tottering behind, made their way to her.

  “They should be leagues ahead of us by now. That would have made sense.” Jenret scanned the shore for further signs. “It will make following easier, but damn it all, why?”

  Mahafny balanced between Jenret and Doyce, a hand on each to keep her equilibrium. “Exhausted, most likely. And with the rain they may not have been able to ride ahead. The ferryman said there are houses on the other side of the river. Or,” she considered, “there may be another possibility. Something that I, for one, am not sure I like to contemplate. Perhaps they mean for us to follow them and don’t want us to lose them.”

  “Why would they want us to?” Lips white and compressed, Harrap eased around the last barrel in his path, practically hauling it with him for security. He’d clung with a death-grip to each convenient object, hampered by Parm’s refusal to budge from his side—wherever Harrap stepped, Parm was underfoot.

  “I don’t know, but we’ll soon find out.” Face set, Jenret strode along the wet, slick planking to check on the horses.

  “What made you say that, Mahafny?” She gripped the older woman by the upper arm for mutual support and gave an imperious tug to turn her from contemplating the empty shoreline. It hadn’t been Jenret who had said that, someone with experience in hunter and hunted, but the eumedico, surely a woman with no experience in this sort of life and death hunt. Doubts and dark suspicions churned in her head, always there, impossible to dismiss. Why did she still distrust—even after last night? And if distrustful, why had she let her come—but the ghatti had overruled her. Did Mahafny, too, carry a whirlpool of secrets swirling within her, her doubts and fears waiting to suck her down? How had she expressed it the other night? Something about looking beyond the placid brow to the turmoil contained within?

  “I don’t know why.” She reached out her slim, elegant hand and began to pry Doyce’s tense fingers loose, giving no indication of the pain they caused. “But I can feel it. Can’t you? I think Saam can as well. Look at him. No facts to fit it or explain it, but somehow you just know.”

  With a final shudder and a splashing wave that broke over them, the ferry jammed its prow against a piling and one of the tenders leaped to shore, dragging a stern line to pull the ferry parallel against the bank. A worn trail paved with flat river stones led at an angle up the bank, heavily gullied and muddied from the rain’s runoff.

  “She’s still running high. Gonna hafta git yer feet wet,” he shouted to his passengers. Jenret untied Ophar and led him gingerly across the planking strip he’d helped shove out, the stallion shying once as he plunged into the icy, hock-high water.

  “Come on, we’d better disembark Harrap,” Mahafny commanded, crisp and practical. “At least if we lose him, he won’t sink like a stone. Those pantaloons should hold enough air to keep him afloat.”

  Despite herself, Doyce grinned. And given Harrap’s woeful expression, Parm perched neat-footed on his shoulders, but fidgeting with fear at wetting his paws, she could envision Harrap billowing down the river, Parm perched on his paunch and chattering all the way.

  She grabbed Harrap’s left arm and Mahafny the right and they propelled him down the gangplank, Harrap hunching over to hoist his purple pantaloons above his ankles and the lapping water. Jenret extended a hand to help haul the Shepherd onto the trail, his mouth moving in silent prayer, and Doyce and Mahafny returned to gather the other horses and their gear.

  “We’d best be moving quickly,” Doyce shouted back to Jenret, straining to make herself heard above the rushing water.

  He paused long enough to give her an impatient nod of agreement. “I know. Bring Harrap’s gelding across next so we can get him mounted and ready.”

  Saam, Rawn, and Khar had already sprung across without so much as dampening a paw and raced up the bank, loping smooth and sure in the direction where they had spied the shadowy horsemen and the ghatt. Panic clutched at her throat as she watched the steel-gray ghatt running free, and she prayed that Saam would wait and not rush headlong into the forest in chase. She had no idea if she could predict the ghatt’s behavior any longer, and without him, the tracking would be more difficult and time-consuming.

  Mounted at last, they picked their way across the sodden bank toward the woods where the three ghatti had raced. Doyce cast a glance back and waved at the ferry-tenders, suppressing a shudder at the thought of riding the raft back across the river against the current. Strung behind her on the path were Jenret, Mahafny, and Harrap, Parm aboard a pommel platform—Ma‘ow’s old one, she guessed—spinning like an overzealous weathervane, engaged in a running commentary with the Shepherd. If she didn’t know better, she’d judge the ghatt lacked a serious bone in his body, an eternal jester determined to live up—or down—to his particolored markings. Still, he had been astute enough to ask the enfeebled Ma’ow in which direction they should strike out to follow their most likely trail.

  Clumps of grass plastered wetly underfoot, the ground spongy and oozing so that each time one of the horses lifted a hoof, a dismal sucking sound emerged; their deep, indented tracks filled with water after each step. A series of stagnant miniature ponds, each glistening in the sunlight, marked their trail behind them and ahead of them. If only all the tracking were this easy, a string of tiny lakes from here to the Lady knew where, like a chain of water droplets on a spider’s web, but who knew what the center of the web held? Who spun the web and would they catch or be caught?

  Farther ahead the ghatti had stopped short, making agitated circles around something on the ground. Saam and Rawn appeared the most disturbed, shoulders high, sidestepping in disgust, but she couldn’t catch the drift of mindspeaking from any of them, not even Khar, as if they argued amongst themselves.

  “What have they found?” Jenret urged Ophar ahead, crowding Lokka to the side. “If Saam’s got another rolapin, I’ll send t
he beast back on the raft. Better yet, make him swim for it.”

  Irritated, Doyce jerked her arm, motioning him to quiet down, and kneed Lokka forward, not an easy task given that the horses were restive, nerves taut after their water crossing.

  Khar’s voice cut through, prim and distasteful, the words spitting out. “Absolutely disgusting. Only the very young or the very ill ...”

  “Or the very brazen would not conceal it,” Rawn finished for her. They looked with ill-disguised contempt at a pile of scat on the ground, simply lying there with absolutely no attempt made to scratch over it or bury it as any self-respecting ghatti would do.

  Threading Ophar amongst the ghatti, Jenret leaned down and poked his staff at the heap. “Fresh, too. And they’re right, just lying there for all the world to see. Why leave an obvious marker like that?”

  “As an indication of what they think of us.” Doyce whistled Khar back to her platform and patted Lokka’s neck as she waited. “Saam, come on, let’s go!”

  “An unusual token, to say the least.” Jenret ranged Ophar alongside Lokka, and the mare rammed the stallion affectionately with her shoulder; Doyce’s knee collided with Jenret’s. “So blatant,” he continued, yet seemed unaware of the body contact, though Ophar veered off, rolling an anxious eye at Lokka. He held himself stiff in the saddle, trying to keep from swaying in time to Ophar’s stride. Ribs must be hurting him badly, she judged. Indeed, he even seemed to have chosen the comfort of an old and worn wool shirt in red and black blocks, the first time she had ever beheld him in anything other than immaculate black; that is, if she didn’t count his appearance in Harrap’s second-best cassock. She examined his right cheekbone and eye critically—still puffy and purplish with streaks of yellow and green.

  “Did Mahafny give you anything to put on that this morning?” She swept her own hand along her face to indicate her meaning.

  He shook his head, cautious not to twist his body. “Told her it wasn’t necessary. It’ll be fine.”

  “Don’t be a martyr. The salve will bring the swelling down that much faster. You might enjoy seeing out of both eyes instead of having one squinched up like that. Harrap will be happy to sit on your ribs while we apply it, if you’re going to be stubborn.”

  “Unfair to Harrap. He of all people shouldn’t be the butt of our jokes.” His lips twitched around the beginning of a smile.

  Ignoring his comment, Doyce picked up their previous topic of conversation, worrying it back and forth. “I haven’t really had a good look at the strange ghatt—have you? It’s always been too shadowed or dark, just a strange pulsation of whiteness. As if he’s looming out there like a figment of our imaginations.”

  “Or our nightmares.” His laugh broke short and sour. “What was it about our ancestors that made the ghatti want to delve into our minds, share our secrets, offer us the gift of truth, no matter how painful? It’s a wonder Matthias Vandersma didn’t go stark mad that first time, thinking his thoughts were not his own. The absolute nightmare with no waking. I’ve thought I’ve had those nightmares—though through no fault of Rawn’s, long ago, long before his time—in the nursery with my brother.” He drifted off, then picked up his train of thought again.

  “Don’t you wonder what the ghatti were like before ...” he waved his hand to encompass them both, their tabards, “... before us. This one looks almost as if he were one of the original ancestors from the wilds. The things from which legends are made.” He tucked a shoulder as if to dismiss his fantasy, yet unable to let it go. “What uninformed parents tell their misbehaving children to beware of—or the ghatt will pluck the liars and fibbers from their beds in the dark depths of night.”

  The horses’ hooves made sucking sounds against the earth, but the farther they advanced into the woods, the sound modulated into a steady, spongy squishing noise that seemed almost soothing. “Did you believe that?” she asked.

  “Yes ... and no. I’d comfort myself in bed at night after a whipping by pretending that this wondrous wild ghatt would come sweeping through the window and claim me as his Bond. We’d leave my brother behind and range wild and free around the land doing good, battling foes, helping the helpless find the truth, just as Matthias and Kharm, the first Bondmates of them all, did. Oh ... I don’t know ... all those madly impossible things children invent for themselves when they’re oppressed or depressed.”

  He spoke into the distance, as if he relived another time where the memories weren’t all pleasant, of that she felt sure. “Was he older or younger than you?” Her words floated out light and easy as thistledown lofted high on the summer air.

  Still turned inward upon his memories, Jenret responded, “Older by two years, and I feared and worshiped him more than any other human being in the world....” He jerked ramrod straight and winced, whether at the pain in his side or the memories in his mind, she couldn’t judge. She tried for opacity, oblivious to the searching, frightened look he raked her with, and then his eyes went shuttered and cold, making her rue her intrusion, however innocently she’d meant it. Prodding Ophar into a trot, he pulled ahead, pointedly alone. “Tell the others to move along. The footing underneath is fairly dry.”

  “Prickly.” She swung her arm in a beckoning circle at Harrap and Mahafny, motioning to them to pick up speed as she urged Lokka ahead.

  “Then don’t poke and pry or he’ll curl up tighter.”

  She ducked a low-hanging branch, knocking it aside with her hand and a waterfall of droplets pelted down her leg, dappling the gray trousers with black splotches of moisture. “So there’s no soft underbelly exposed?” She picked at the damp material. “I wasn’t trying to do that. He just took it that way. ”

  “And now you know. So don’t.” Khar sat tall on the platform, narrowing her eyes, then opening them wide, casting the air currents, pink nose twitching.

  “I’m never going to understand him. That’s all I was trying to do.”

  “There’s time. More than we might like.”

  Dark horse and rider ranged nearly out of sight, blending with the wet, dark tree trunks, only the occasional brightness of Jenret’s red-patched shirt flashing, winking at her like a cardinal exploding out of the bushes.

  “I suppose you understand everything about him.” The words burst out of their own accord, sarcastic and cutting. “You and Rawn have been exchanging notes. Filling each other in on all the details, haven’t you? Well, I don’t like it. What we know of each other is private, between the two of us.” Why did she have the urgent need to shutter herself just as Jenret had moments before? She reached a contrite hand to the curve of the ghatta’s back.

  “And what’s between Jenret and Rawn is between them. No, I don’t know, but I have some ideas, just as you have, just as he must have about you. Let it alone, let it come by itself. Stop prodding.” Doyce jerked her hand away.

  Saam murmured behind her back and Khar turned sideways, listening. “Faster and more to the north. Saam says we’re drifting off their track, following where it’s easiest instead of staying on their trail.”

  “ ‘Speak the others, then. And with resignation, she turned Lokka toward the even denser forest to their right, the High Firs—toward the north, toward the dark, toward the danger.

  They had ridden for four days now, pushing themselves as far as possible despite increasingly early dusks abetted by the towering stands of hardwood and firs blockading any sun once it began its low westward creep. The trees soared tall and straight, stretching toward the light, making them weave their way amongst them as if they wandered through the columns of an ancient ruin. searching for answers to long-ago mysteries. The gloom left her with a continual uneasiness that veiled her other perceptions with the same vague anxiety. Why would anyone willingly choose to live amongst such disheartening surroundings, she had wondered more than once, or was she simply blind to a rough, remorseless grandeur indifferent to the longings of daily life, its petty hopes and fears, its need to control what it could not understand? The
Erakwa felt no disharmony in these surroundings. and although this land existed within the formal bounds of Canderis, it seemed a private world beyond her understanding.

  She gave a snort of exasperation at her maundering thoughts and tried to see with fresh eyes, to find some beauty in the land around her. The colors, perhaps? The colors of twilight, sometimes muted gray-blue, sometimes soft greenish-gray fingered with mauve, tinted the perpetual order of the day, broken by occasional clearings, some natural, a few man-made, where sunlight streamed down, and the sight of blue sky and white clouds held an intensity beyond bearing, so unnaturally pure did it seem even after so short a time without it.

  Sometimes the stumps and burn marks in the center of a clearing made it obvious that the spot was man-made, whether by Erakwa or trappers or loggers, she couldn’t surmise. Still, she had experienced enough travel to calculate that they gained ten or twelve leagues a day, although not always in a linear direction.

  She continued her reverie as they paused at one such clearing for a quick meal and to rest the horses. Their oat supply dwindled, the horses demanding more to eat after their labors and the grazing too thin for satisfaction, let alone sustenance. This site at least offered the variety of some meager yellow-tinged grass and scrub for foraging. Harrap seemed especially oppressed by the gloom, and he threw himself out of the saddle, flinging his arms wide with delight at the brightness. the lack of shadow, and his face wreathed with a smile.

  “The Lady be thanked for offering us this respite!” He circled in a joyous, impromptu dance of praise, red-lined coattails flying, and Parm capering at his feet.

  “Too brief a one, I fear, so all the more welcome.” Mahafny swung down and loosened her horse’s saddle girth. “And I, for one, am going to spend our break sunning myself atop that pile of rocks over there. Anything to bake some of this cursed dampness and depression out of my bones.”